Sniping Her Mafia King

Deal with the Devil

The rest of the week flew by quickly. Arwen had ignored every single text message Adrianu had sent her over the last three days. They had grown increasingly annoyed with her for “playing games” as he called it. However, the morning after she’d taunted him, she’d woken up with a strong sense of foreboding, concerned perhaps, she’d poked the bear too much.

Worried as she considered what Jesse had said about him being a very jealous man, she had remembered with brutal clarity she had explicitly told Adrianu about having rough s*x with Trace and a stranger in a b**m parlor. If he was the jealous man he was purported to be, then there was a very real possibility he would want to punish her.

Arwen wasn’t worried about how a man with his dominant aura and known history of being ruthless would punish her. She was terrified she would enjoy it far too much, become addicted to his use of power on her and then spend the rest of her life chasing a high after he kicked her to the curb. If he were as rough and tough as she was imagining him to be, he would ruin her for any other man.

And therefore, she had ignored his messages. She had considered blocking his number but then considered it would send a message to him she was scared. She’d rather he thought she was unbothered by him. It gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction to let him stew. He was in another state, and it wasn’t as if he could simply show up on her doorstep. If he was well and truly annoyed, as most of his messages implied, then he could tell it to her face the next time he was in town.

Arwen smiled as her last appointment of the day strolled through her office door. “Nate, how are you?” She let him give her a sideways hug. “You ready to be reassessed?”

“Yes.”

She waved him in the direction of the gym. “Joy said you blew you through your exercise program this week. I’ve ramped it up. I’m going to show you a couple of new ones to strengthen your bicep and then we’re going to increase reps. I want you to have a chat with the doctor about reducing your pain meds again.”

He nodded as he followed her into the gym. “Joy ratted me out.” There was no anger in his tone just a fact.

She didn’t back down, “she said you reported an increase in use this week. I don’t treat addicts and while there is a very real benefit to using pain meds in the acute phase of your injury, you’re not going to get a real measure of healing if you’re hiding behind the drugs. Pain doesn’t mean you’re injuring yourself Nate. There’s a difference between muscles hurting from being used again after a period of recovery and then harm. Your surgery was long enough in the past, you shouldn’t be relying on the drugs. Use heat, ice, the TENS machine or at most an ibuprofen but the opiates need to stop.”

“You just lay it out there, huh.” His blue eyes sparkled as he looked down at her.

He was a big man. According to her intake assessment he was six foot four and was the centerman for an NHL team. He’d torn his bicep during the playoffs, and he needed to be better in time for training camps over the summer. At first, he’d balked at an all-woman team tending to his injury. Then Arwen had told him to either do what he was told or get the f**k out. She wasn’t wasting her time on a guy who didn’t take his recovery or his career seriously.

“Yes. I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself. Talk to your surgeon.”

“I’ll call him as soon as we’re done here today.”

“Good. I’m sending him my report today before end of day, so he knows I’m expecting him to have this conversation with you.” She motioned to the weight machine. “I want you to start implementing these new exercises.”

She started by demonstrating each exercise having him repeat it until he did it correctly and then moving on to the next one. With each addition to his program, she made sure he understood the mechanics of what he was doing, the muscle he was targeting and the benefit of the exercise.

After a solid hour of going through the exercises and making sure he knew exactly what he needed to do for the following week she clapped him on the back. “I won’t reassess on Monday next week. We’ll push it to Friday. I think you can do the five days in clinic with the girls, but you won’t need to see me until Friday. We’ve added enough to this home program, if I evaluate you on Monday, you’re going to be regressed and I don’t want you to be down about it. We’re taking a step back to make good gains. Keep this in mind.”

“Yes ma’am.” He stretched out as she instructed.

“Karla is waiting for you to do heat therapy so you can head over to her room now. Have a good weekend. I’ll go do up my report and send it off to your ortho.”

“Thanks Arwen. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I really am grateful.”

“You’re welcome.” She watched as he moved to Karla’s massage therapy suite and then moved back to her office. She focused intently on getting her reports done and then grimaced when her cell phone rang. She looked at it and then sighed. She didn’t have time to deal with Cavallaro right now. She had four reports she needed out today, two of them on NHL players, which needed to be copied to surgeons, coaches, and managers. She had heard from a potential new client she may need to visit the following week. She would know for sure over the weekend.

She cranked on a playlist to keep her moving, ignoring her phone to dig deep to get into the report. She was typing furiously, her head bent with her ear buds in, listening to music blasting to keep her on task. Singing along a bit under her breath as she bobbed her head to the tune. She lifted her pen, crossed off a name off the list and then sent the report to her admin assistant for final edit before being sent off to the appropriate parties.

She hummed under her breath as she got to work on the next report and movement outside her office through the glass door caught her eye. She didn’t bother to look up considering it was still business hours, all the girls were still there, and they had patients in the clinic. Arwen kept her eyes on the prize, wanting to have no reports due out by the end of the day and she was on track. She started typing away from her notes and wrinkled her nose when the scent of cologne hit her nostrils. She closed her eyes impatiently and pulled her blasting earbuds out of her ears. She looked up furiously to the man standing on the other side of her desk.

“Mr. Cavallaro, why are you here?”

He lifted her cell phone off her desk and held it up to her. “Did you forget how this thing works?”

“No, I’m well aware of how it works. I’m busy,” she waved at her computer.

“You’ve been busy since Wednesday morning to the extent you haven’t been able to respond to a single message?”

“Well, your first message I saw Wednesday morning appeared threatening. The second one suggested I was a possession to be owned and who I opted to have s*x with was no longer my decision. I found it offensive. I’m not one of your Vegas barbie dolls who wants the big bad mob boss to stake a claim and make me a kept girl who f***s on command. After that message, I stopped reading.” She held his furious gaze with cool eyes and then dumped a piece of gum from a container on her desk and shoved it in her mouth. Gum was a great distraction she considered as she chomped furiously. She waved to the closed door behind him, “the exit is there.”

“We are having dinner this evening. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“No.” she refuted him. “Not interested. I changed my mind.” She moved to put her earbuds back in her ears, but a strong bronzed hand reached out and ripped them from her grasp. “Excuse me?”

“I’m done being ignored Arwen. You gave me your word for dinner. We’re having dinner.” He yanked her from behind her desk and positioned her, until she was against the wall behind her desk, her chair spinning from the way he’d tugged her from it. One of his hands gripped her chin and the other flat against the wall beside her head. He stood with his feet on either side of hers, their hips almost touching.

Arwen noted his nostrils flared, a faint hint of color on his cheeks and the way his eyebrows were almost one with the way they knitted together in his anger. His breathing though was calm, and his chest rose and fell in easy rhythm. It was the heat emanating off him which had her attention. He possessed an aura of furious energy coming off him in waves. She felt her breath hitch in her throat at the way he was staring into her eyes. “f**k,” she thought to herself, “he is stunning.” Her thong panties were soaked with just the strength of him. “Addy,” she whispered just before his lips ground against hers.

The way his fingers clenched her chin while he slid his mouth back and forth over hers, demanding her response, made her think of how she had imagined his fingers playing with her earlier in the week and she whimpered as her fists bunched up the lapel of his jacket. She leaned into his masculinity, breathing him deep, her eyes tightly closed as his tongue shoved past her teeth and slipped along hers, exploring every millimetre within. He tasted of cigarettes and hard alcohol, and she moaned when his hand moved from the wall to the nape of her neck, twisting in her hair, keeping her tight to his frame. It was clear he was angry, but the hard length of his erection pressed against her middle made her aware as angry as he was, he was turned on.

Suddenly he broke the kiss off and they stood panting and staring at each other.

“Dinner.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t get to order me around. This is my office,” she ground out.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, “Arwen, would you do me the honor of having dinner with me this evening?”

“Um,” she pretended to consider it, wishing her n*****s weren’t so hard against the inside of her padded bra.

“Please,” he added as if the word was a foreign language to him.

“I don’t know,” Arwen was aware he was trying to not be a demanding asshole and was struggling. She enjoyed his struggle. “I have a lot of things to do tonight.” Her lips felt full and swollen from his kisses. She’d be lying to say she didn’t want more.

“I said please,” he frowned furiously.

She fought a smile tugging at her lips. “Maybe I can change my schedule around a bit.”

“You know the words I need to hear.”

He was full on dominating, and she squirmed with it. “Yes.” She nodded at his tone, “yes, I’ll go with you to dinner.”

“You,” he touched her nose with his lips gently, “are going to make me f*****g insane.”

“Ditto,” she quipped as his hand slid from behind her neck to move down her shoulders in a long caress to her hands. When he met her fingers resting on his chest, he linked them and then lifted them to his lips. She had a feeling she’d just agreed to sell her soul to the devil, and she felt not an iota of fear as she stared into the bottomless fathoms of his gaze.

“You are so God damn beautiful. It is taking everything in me not to bend you over the desk and plow into you.”

His words took her breath away and she giggled nervously at how intense he was staring at her, “Glass doors. I feel my staff and patients would be upset to see such a thing occur.”

“You don’t get to ignore my calls or my messages. If you continue to do so, I will show up on your doorstep and you will be punished.”

“Is that so? You don’t own me.”

“Make no mistake Arwen. You’ve agreed to go out with me. You are mine. No other man, woman or beast will touch you. Mine.”

“Jesus Christ, this isn’t the eighteen hundreds. I belong to me.”

He leaned closer and growled in her ear, “keep being sassy and I will tie you to the bed, spank your ass red and then f**k you until you can’t walk straight. Try my patience, mia cara. Please, I implore you, continue to try my patience. I have thought of nothing this week other than ways to punish you for the last three days. Give me an excuse.” He yanked her hair, “and before you shoot your mouth off about how you’re a feminist who doesn’t belong to any man yada, yada, yada, I saw the photo of the drawer of devices. You crave to be dominated the same way I crave to dominate.”

“I- “she swallowed the lump in her throat as his mouth rested near hers, a breath could barely pass between them and yet their lips didn’t touch. She’d absolutely had him pegged correctly. Her mouth salivated with the notion the man wanted to play with her.

“Mine,” he repeated as he stepped back, suddenly releasing her, adjusting his jacket and then his sleeves and cufflinks, he was in full possession of his temperament. “Now, I know you’re hot and bothered right now thinking of the ways I could and will punish you for being disrespectful this week,” as she flushed at his words he held her gaze seriously, “but if you so much as inadvertently touch a n****e changing your bra today, I will leave you hanging on the precipice of pleasure for so long it will be torturous. No touching yourself today. None. Capisce?”

His words instantly made her panties flooded with her juices. He was reading her like a wide-open book, and it was wicked and naughty and everything she craved in a man. f**k. She needed her toy. As if reading her thoughts, he wagged his finger in her direction.

“Do not touch what is mine until I give you permission to do so.”

Without another word, he walked out of the office.

She sank into her seat and groaned dropping her face into her hands and feeling the heat of her skin of her cheeks. She was so horny now she was worse than a teenager discovering s*x for the first time. She suddenly realized in her thirty-one years, she’d never met anyone like Adrianu Cavallaro, and it was quite possible she never would again.

Spinsterhood, living with chickens, goats and sheep was highly likely her future once he was done with her.

She looked at her phone as it pinged on her desk. The word ‘mine’ in block letters was the last text from him and she felt her heart thunder at the message. Adrianu Cavallaro was staking a claim. She had tangled with the mob boss and was going to pay the price.

She grabbed her water bottle and drank thirstily and immediately regretted it. It washed the taste of him away from her lips. She considered for the first time she hadn’t known he smoked but she had clearly tasted it on his lips and tongue. She had never been a smoker. Arwen hated the habit and the smell and yet, she ran her tongue over her lips as if desperate to taste it. She reached for gum and then realized the piece she’d popped into her mouth when he’d arrived was now gone. He’d taken the gum right out of her mouth. She felt strange thinking of it. He was unnerving.

She scrolled through the apps on her phone and found her meditation app and forced herself to take three minutes to get centered again before tackling her other reports.

It took over an hour before she got through the rest of her reporting and then she sighed, stretched, and made her way to the outer offices of the clinic. She paused at the desk. “I’m heading out.”

Norah held up her reports for signature and Arwen grabbed a pen. “I saw you let the scary guy leave with both his legs and no gunshots.” Norah laughed at her. “He’s gorgeous but he makes me want to duck for cover under the desk. He had a bodyguard with him and wouldn’t let any of us down the hall. We know you can take care of yourself, and I admit when he left, I came down and peeked in at you to make sure he didn’t murder you. You were meditating but f**k me, he’s frighteningly hot.”

“He really is,” Arwen grinned. “He came to ask me to dinner.”

“Are you going?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Arwen shrugged. “You know me. If I don’t go, I’ll spend the entire weekend wondering why I didn’t go. I’m going to let him scratch an itch.” She winked at Norah who laughed.

“My husband no longer scratches itches. He gives them,” Norah sighed. “Have him scratch a couple for me.”

Arwen laughed at her receptionist as she finished signing off the last page of what the woman held out to her.

She made her way out of the clinic and then to her bike parked in her spot. She noted a sports car parked across the street near a deli and she c****d her head at the man exiting it. He caught her gaze and gave a sheepish grin and then jogged across the street.

“Screwing with your diet, Nate?”

“Maybe?” he gave a chuckle as he took in her appearance on the bike. “I feel like I did a month of training camp in a day today. The girls were tough on me.” He held up a sub sandwich, “I deserve this.”

“The girls were tough on you because I told them to be. Eat the sub. You worked hard this week.” She laughed as he grinned.

“You won’t tell coach?”

“Nope. It’ll be our little secret,” she winked at him and squeezed his shoulder.

“You’re the best, Arwen. Have a good weekend.” He turned and jogged back to his car and gave a final wave in her direction before driving off.

She shook her head with a smile and slipped her helmet on. As she pulled the bike away from the curb, she noted the dark sedan at the end of the street and gave an impatient sigh. She had suspected Addy was going to have her followed by his guys and intuitively knew they were his. She purposefully gave them the runaround, ducking through side alleys and then through an underground parking lot before losing them and the longer she drove the more furious she was.

By the time she reached her home she was spitting and sputtering with fury. Deidre was sitting on the porch swing on the deck with her friend and she parked the bike in the garage and then came back out closing it behind her. She could have gone through the inside door but wanted to talk to Deidre.

“Hey girls.”

“Hi Arwen,” Deidre said kicking her foot off the swing. “Addy called me today and said he was taking you for dinner. He told me I should have my friend come stay with me so I wouldn’t be lonely if you got home late. He is sending us dinner.”

“Did he now?” she felt her chest ache at the thoughtfulness. She was still pissed about the escort home but the diversion of his attention to Deidre made her release a fraction of her irritation.

She giggled, “he even sent a car to pick us up at school, so we didn’t need to take public transport.”

Deidre’s friend Miley grinned, “it felt very fancy to be driven around like a rich kid.”

“I bet,” she stopped and dropped a kiss to Deidre’s head, forgetting all about her anger at Addy seeing how happy he’d made Dee. “Love you, kiddo.”

“Love you too,” Deidre looked up at her. “Arwen, before I forget, Portia had her friend call me. You told me to let you know what products she recommended. I checked them out online. They’re stupid expensive. There’s no way – “

“Order them. Put them on my credit card.”

“Arwen, one of the creams is six hundred dollars for thirty ounces.”

“Will you use it?” Arwen asked her seriously. “Do you promise to stick to the regime and use it and try it for a month without skipping?”

“Yes, but I can’t ask you to spend that kind of money. It will cost nearly three thousand dollars for a month. What if I love it and I get addicted to it?”

“Then I’ll up my prices at the clinic. Don’t worry about the money. Order it.”

“Are you sure?”

“If you don’t, I’m going to. Either way, you’re going to try it. If it makes you feel better, then it’s worth it.”

“Thanks Arwen.” Deidre whispered as Miley squeezed her hand excitedly.

Arwen dropped another kiss to her hair and then moved inside the house. If helping rich athletes get back on track couldn’t pay for Deidre’s wants, then shooting perverts in the head would. It wasn’t as if she spent her money on much anyway. She’d do anything for her girl and if she had to snipe until she was a hundred to keep her cousin flush in facial creams, she would.