Page 16 of Abducted By the Mafia Don

The dress I bought is good, but is it good enough? I look down at the deep, shimmering blue of the full-length dress. I don’t know what the fabric is exactly, but it’s incredibly soft, and feels amazing against my skin.

It’s wild that on Friday night I went to a club to get my first kiss, and on Saturday night I’m pretending to be married to the man who killed three people to protect me. Granny was sceptical about my staying with Dom, and I didn’t even dare tell her about the fake wife thing. As predicted, she refused to come and stay here. Dismissed it with a “Pshh, don’t be ridiculous”.

“Taggie.” Dom’s voice comes from outside my door.

My tummy flutters. “Come in, it’s unlocked.”

“I thought I told you to lock your…” He stops mid grumble when he sees me, and stares in silence.

He’s wearing a black tuxedo with a bow tie that’s theperfect amount of imperfect, and my mouth waters at the sight of him. My fake husband.

“Is it okay?” I ask nervously.

He sweeps his gaze down over my body.

“I know you said to spend lots, but it wasn’t the most,” I babble out with all the coherence of a three-year-old. “It was?—”

“Was it the one youwanted?” he cuts me off.

I straighten. “Yes.”

“Then it’s perfect. You look perfect.”

“Good enough for Richmond?”

“A credit to Richmond,” he says sincerely, then adds with a wry twist of his lips. “Too good, really.”

I can’t help but laugh. “That’s not true, you…”

I stop because I’m about to embarrass both of us. He looks delicious enough to eat without a spoon. I’d put my whole face on him and eat every part of him in greedy licks.

“I what?” There’s a shadow over his expression, and something serious in his black-brown eyes.

“You look nice in that tux,” I admit in a whisper. A spectacular understatement. He’d look amazing in anything, and I wish I could see him out of it, too.

“Nice,” he repeats, with the inference that I mean it as an insult.

“Very nice.” I’m blushing. I shouldn’t be imagining him naked. He obviously doesn’t think of me that way, whereas I’m hallucinating him in my bedroom at night.

Because it was a dream.

Wasn’t it?

“Thank you, Taggie,” he says roughly, and I go still with the sound of my name on his lips.

It’s just because I’m a silly girl fantasising about a man out of my league when he’s been kind enough to protect meby pretending to be my husband. It’s not that he sounds like the man in my room last night… In my dream.

Is it?

All the way downstairs, Dom keeping a careful distance as though he’s aware I’d climb him like a tree given half a chance, fancy dress or no, and I think about that dream. I’ve never had one like that before. The bit with the book was just weird, but the man I saw in the darkness was… Vivid.

Real?

“We’re going to the Blackwood triplets’ forty-first birthday and there will be a lot of the London Mafia Syndicate there,” Dom explains when we’re in the limo. “Hopefully there won’t be any violence, except possibly from Mayfair if there are too many stupid jokes about maths. And all you really need to know about the maths club is that Rhys Cavendish wanted a baby with his now wife so badly that he pretended the mafia syndicate was a maths club so she wouldn’t realise he was dangerous.”

I snort at the idea anyone could marry a mafia boss without realising he was dangerous, then catch myself. Because I have first-hand experience of how deadly the man I’m pretending is my husband is, but I can suddenly understand why someone would make that mistake. Because there’s an unshakable feeling in all my vital organs that Dom is trustworthy.

Dom tells me more about the London Mafia Syndicate as we travel to the event, filling me in on who’s who, and that I should expect to be adopted by the wives and dragged along to their book club. No dragging needed, though.