A Bloody Kingdom (Ruthless People 4)

The ride to the penthouse suite was short. The two men already standing at the entrance did not say a word, only opening the suite room for me. I didn’t give a shit about how nice the room looked or how good the view was. The moment I saw her, dressed in a sinfully tight, long cream gown that hugged each one her curves and hung off of her shoulders, exposing the top of her back, nothing else mattered. She stood on the terrace, staring out at the city. Before I even realized it, I was behind her, brushing her hair over to the side with one hand and gripping her waist with the other, kissing the nape of her neck.

“Careful,” she said, “my husband will be here soon.”

Kissing up her neck, I bit the top of her ear and whispered, “don’t push me, Melody. I’m not above hiking this dress up and fucking you in front of all of Chicago.”

“Ahh…” She moaned when I grabbed her breasts, both of us frustrated over the amount of fabric between my palm and her skin. I was already hard for her and the way she pressed into me, I’m sure she knew.

“Liam—we…can’t…now.”

God fucking damn it.

Taking a deep breath, I let go of her and she grabbed onto the rail in front and tilted her head back.

“14 days, 3 hours, 20 something minutes, I think we’ve broken our record.” She turned to face me leaning against the rail, a growing smile on her face.

“Not having time to have sex is not a record I want to break.” I frowned and placed my hands on either side of her. Two weeks. Two God-forsaken weeks—that was how long it had been since I had sex and I was starting to lose my fucking mind. Between both of our “jobs” and our kids, we didn’t have time. Before, we always made time…didn’t matter what was going on. “Acting like an adult and being reasonable is doing nothing but giving me blue balls. I’m far too sexy to be suffering from blue balls.”

She laughed, freely, and openly, a laugh reserved for our children and me. “I wouldn’t say nothing. From what I hear The Mad Hatter is as terrifying as ever. Meanwhile, Bloody Melody is stuck in bureaucracy, and slowly losing her goddamn mind.”

“Honestly babe, I really don’t give a fuck right now,” I said and her eyebrow twitched in annoyance. “Because all I want to hear is our bed slamming up against the wall, you moaning underneath me and my heart racing as I slam my cock into you over and over and over again.”

Her brown eyes filled with lust. “Someone is confident in his abilities.”

“Well, you keep coming back for more, so how can I not be?”

“Then tonight it better go down exactly as you describe, Mr. Callahan.”

Cupping the side of her cheek, I couldn’t look away from her lips. “Or you’ll do what, Mrs. Callahan? You want me as badly as I want you, I bet you’re getting wet right now.”

She glared, but she didn’t deny it. Instead, she brushed my hand off her face and changed the subject. “What happened to our guest in the Presidential suite?”

“He was treated in a very un-presidential manner, but lives,” I said and I could not stop myself from glancing down the length of her body.

Twenty-minutes…all we needed was a good…

“And…” She grabbed my chin and lifted my head back up to meet hers. “What did he say?”

“He cried out for his father like a bitch. I’m guessing he came here to prove to his father and the rest of the triad that he had balls…I took them away.”

“Everything in me says to kill him, Liam. To kill them all now before this escalates.” She said and crossed her arms over chest, pushing her breasts up, obviously to torture me. God. After all of these years, I was still addicted to her. “We have spent a long time slowly building a balance, Liam…we can never—”

“I know,” I said seriously. I kissed her forehead before resting mine on hers. “And if anything comes against us, we will do what we have always done.”

“Fight?”

“Win.”

TWO

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”

~ Margaret Atwood

MELODY

At eighteen, I became the first ever female Boss of the Italian Mafia and to this day I can still remember, the shock, the horror, the disgust on their faces. How dare a woman try to lead them? It was not possible. It was not plausible and in their eyes, it was a sin. I did not know my place. So one by one, they sent men after me, or brought men to replace me and one by one, I tore them down. I spared no one. No mercy. No fear. Just death. Not just to them, or the ones that sent

them, but their families, their neighbors, and even their mailmen. I didn’t just kill them, I wiped them off of the face of the goddamn earth as a lesson to the next motherfucker who thought he could stand against me. It was a lesson learned very quickly.