Page 1 of Possessive Mafia Vows

PROLOGUE

SIENNA

The nightclub. The heavy beat vibrating inside my chest. The sticky heat of too many bodies crammed inside a room, dancing and jumping and swinging each other around like they’re having the best night of their lives.

I lose track of time in the bottom of a shot glass that seems to refill itself on demand. I kiss lots of cheeks, I laugh a lot, head tipped back, raucous laughter that accompanies saying goodbye to the old year. Midnight comes and goes in a frenzy of dance moves that are probably nowhere near as elegant as I imagine in my fuzzy head.

Victoria is right behind me as we leave the restroom, and then she isn’t.

“V?” I push my way through the crowd that seems to close in on me like water filling a room. Panic creeps into my veins. Not for me, but for Victoria who feels out of her comfort zone if she walks the wrong way around the grocery store.

Then I spot Kenickie fromGrease.

Or rather, he spots me.

His dark hair is pulled into a perfect quiff that flops over his forehead, but it’s the green eyes that hold my attention. Even in the flashing lights and the hazy atmosphere, I know they are the most perfect green eyes I’ve ever seen. And everything else vanishes.

Apart from the string of beads around my neck. The chunky beads worn by Wilma fromThe Flintstones, that choose this exact moment to break free and pitter-patter across the floor towards the leather-jacketed demi-God heading my way.

Dear fucking God, shoot me now.

He bends and picks up a stray rock, still warm from my skin, and hands it to me, and I instinctively take it.

To our left, a woman in a white vest and panties dressed as Ripley fromAlien, skids on a bead, her arms cartwheeling as a guy in a floor-length black robe catches her. Ordinarily, I’d have been mortified and simultaneously trying not to laugh out loud. But it seems my body has been drained of every emotion other than rip-my-clothes-off-and-devour-me-now desire.

“Cat’s eyes.” I’m still staring when he stands right in front of me.

They crinkle at the corners. “Actually, I’m Kenickie.” He has a faint accent that I can’t place in three words, but I know I want to hear more when I reach up to touch the lines fanning from his eyes.

“You should meet—” I was going to say he should meet my friend Victoria who is dressed as Sandy for the costume party.

But he cuts me off with, “I think I already did.”

He places a warm hand on the small of my back and guides me into him so that our hips are touching. Anyone else, and I’d haveslapped their hand away and told them to fuck off, but not my green-eyed Kenickie. The word ‘my’ has already slipped into my vocabulary, and when he raises my hand above my head and spins me around, I focus on the moment our bodies will touch again.

I don’t hear the song that’s playing. We’re dancing to our own tune, every touch of his hand against mine sending electricity through my veins and straight down to my sex. It’s inevitable that we will kiss before the night is over.

When we do, I know that one kiss is never going to be enough. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone more than I want him, and it comes to me in a flash of inspiration that we need to get the hell out of there before it’s time to go our separate ways.

“We should go watch the sunrise.”

I watch his face light up, his eyes glinting like emeralds.

“Where?” he asks.

“Anywhere.”

I slide my hand into his, so easily it’s like they were made to fit together and drag him towards the exit. I look for Victoria. She has literally vanished, but all that matters is that I have Kenickie until sunrise and I’m not going to waste a moment.

We burst onto the sidewalk like we’ve just jumped out of a giant cake—surprise—dragging the heat with us. Kenickie squeezes my hand. I’m like a magnet unable to resist when he pulls me against him, melding our bodies together.

“Mo leanbh alainn.” His lips brush my ear sending shivers down my spine.

I’d never have believed it possible to get so many sensations from my earlobe, but whatever he whispered, I’m already throbbing for him.

“What does that mean?” I can barely hear my own voice over the blood gushing through my veins.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he backs away from the sidewalk and down the alleyway between the nightclub and the building next to it, and I follow. My feet may or may not have touched the ground. It’s immaterial.

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