Page 2 of Christmas Mafia Prince
I look like I own a yacht. They look as though they’d writeEat the richon the side of my boat. And yet things between us usually work out for a while. I like the challenge of breaking an unruly wild horse.
I sit down in my booth with a drink in hand. It’s the perfect spot to observe the men on offer tonight, and quiet enough to hear a conversation. Call me vain, but with a face like mine, only men painfully loyal to their partners would turn me down. If it’s not my wide shoulders and confidence that lures them in, it’s the long eyelashes and beauty spots. I’m like a shark when I go in for the kill. I just need to find my prey.
Two men slide into the next booth over, both facing away from me, so I can see they wear merch from the current tour of some metal band with a name I cannot decipher. “That won’t work. You know my dad’s lactose intolerant,” one of them says, sliding his thick tattooed arm around the other’s shoulders in a move so casual it’s likely something he does all the time.
His companion, whose long, somewhat dry hair is styled into one of those modern mullets that are so popular nowadays, scowls. “But your mom and her side of the family aren’t. They shouldn’t be missing out on the real thing because of one person.”
The first guy growls and leans back so rapidly his red locks fall down the backseat inside my booth. “It’s the first time they’ll all meet you. Can’t you make a small portion just for Dad?”
They’re both so young. When I was inmylate teens, it wouldn’t even occur to me to bring a guy over, yet here are those two punks, arguing over something as mundane as the choice of food they’re going to take to some family event.
They look as though they don’t have fifty bucks between them, and it’s confirmed when one of them complains about the price of oat milk, yet I’m the one sitting alone at almost thirty. Too emotionally constipated to confront my family about my sexuality. All that money I make, the fancy apartment in Manhattan, the private jet, they can’t heal any of my bitterness. Whether I choose to fuck someone tonight or not, it won’t make leaving for Christmas alone any sweeter.
I’m about to stand up to get another drink when I notice a green-haired presence at my side. My reflexes can be deadly, but I don’t expect an assassin here, so I leave my gun in its discreet holster and catch the tripping man instead.
He yelps, and in the awkwardness of his fall, lands straight in my lap.
His big dark eyes meet mine from up close, and I think I might have found my prey. My lips quirk into a smile when I glance at the nose ring, the snake head tattooed on his neck, and then the pretty lips I’d love to feel around my dick.
He looks away from me, toward the bar, and I sense the stress on him along with an unexpectedly floral perfume. Before I know it, he wraps an arm over my shoulders.
“Please, quick, pretend you’re my boyfriend.”
An idea hits me like a polo mallet to the face. My father said the rule is being married. He never specified it needs to be to a woman. If I lie for this hot twink, he could do the same for me. Nobody is going to check my marital status over the holiday season.
I can have my cake and eat it.
Chapter 2
Killian
Myheartisinmy throat as I push through a crowd of people who all seemed to have decided now is the best time to get a drink at the bar.Now, when I’m trying to lose Happy, whose face doesn’t really do his nickname justice.
He shouldn’t be here, but it seems that despite me dumping his cheating ass two weeks ago, he’s not given up on trying to win me back. I’m ashamed to say he’s managed to get me backtwice now. I might be the most naive fucker on the planet to believe he wanted to now be withme and only me. It didn’t help that he cornered me in my house last time, courtesy of my damn neighbor letting him into the building. When he took his shirt off I may have forgotten for fifteen minutes too long that I dumped him in the first place because he took money out of my wallet and punched me when I tried to stop him.
My taste in men is atrocious, and Happy’s tattooed face in the crowd is proof of that, but why should I stop coming to a bar I like just because he might be stalking me here? I’m so sick of that overgrown meathead… yet now I question my decision, because I’m here on my own, five-feet-seven-inches tall only because my boots have an inch-thick sole, and he’s set on getting to me. If he makes a scene, we might both get kicked out.
And then he’d be chasing me through tight back alleys, which at best might end up with a fuck to appease him, and at worst—he might just fucking kill me, a fate my dadgraciouslywarned me about when he kicked me out at sixteen. When I, inevitably, end up murdered by one of my exes,But Daddy I love him! should be on the T-shirt I wear in the coffin, as a testament to the dumb choices of the past five years.
I walk into a guy who scowls at me, so I turn to show him the finger. The back of my heel slips on the damp floor, and I trip just as a man stands up from a booth I’m passing. I drop straight into his lap.
When I stare into his eyes, I’m so startled that for half a second I forget all about Happy.
This man could model, not only for a brand catering to guys like me but one of the fancy ones with stores on Fifth Avenue. Flickering light plays in his hazel eyes as time seems to slow down around us. My heart speeds up though, its warning beats as if to say ‘Don’t do it, Killian, don’t do it’. He’s not justhandsome. He’s beautiful like the statue of a fallen angel I once befriended when I spent two weeks sleeping in a church.
Fallen or not, could he possibly be my guardian angel tonight? He’s sturdy under that elegant suit, maybe even big enough to make Happy think twice about throwing his weight around.
I’m forced to think about my reality, so I look away from the beauty spot on the stranger’s cheek and search for Happy in the crowd. He knows where I am and heads our way, so I wrap my arm around the man’s shoulders in desperation and whisper.
“Please, quick, pretend you’re my boyfriend.”
Happy won’t respect it or like it, but at least he’ll think I’m not alone, which is the only deterrent I can think of right now.
The stranger has the longest eyelashes I’ve seen on a man, wavy dark hair in a neat yet romantic do, and when he looks straight at me, danger crawls to the edges of my mind, replaced by excitement.
In real life, someone like this guy wouldn’t look my way, but in this artificial reality—
I stop breathing when he holds my chin with two fingers and leans in, meeting my lips with his. The kiss is soft, almost chaste, but it makes my balls throb unexpectedly.
