Taming London, page 1
Taming London
The Submission of London Mackenzie
Jordan Bell
Other Stories by Jordan Bell
The Curvy Sister
Her Secret Pleasure (Secrets #1)
Her Secret Betrayal (Secrets #2)
Coming Soon: Her Secret Power (Secrets #3)
The Billionaire’s Son: Distracting Jonah Silver
Taming London: The Submission of London Mackenzie
Billionaire Bait: Breakfast with Mia, Ménage for Dessert
The Submissive Behind the Mask #1: Bondage & Curiosity
Coming Soon: The Submissive Behind the Mask #2: Bondage & Discipline
Thank you for buying this e-book!
Subscribe to my mailing list.
Get cool stuff.
All new subscribers receive a coupon code for one free copy of a current bestselling title as well as sneak peeks on new releases and discounts available only to subscribers.
Subscribe
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
1
“You got one of those for me, eh?” I squinted up into the hard face of a very young girl, the boss’s niece, newly arrived from some scandalous termination of her college career. She’d been at the house for a week but this was the first day she’d more than come to the window. Her auntie’d made her bring us lemonade and she seemed obliging but stoic. The most somber lemonade stand I’d ever seen.
She sighed, picked a glass with ice frost around the lip and handed it over, not working too hard to stretch toward me. I had to lean over the rail of the porch to take it from her and she never answered me. The other boys got the same silent stroke before she set the tray down and collapsed into a big, overstuffed porch chair. The effort of lemonade delivery had wiped her.
I grinned at her, waved her toward us. “Why don’t you come down here and help us, mija? I’ll give you my shovel. What do you think?” I crossed an arm over the railing and gave her my best panty-melting smile, but she just stared impassively, unimpressed, uninterested. She was nice looking, not in that drop dead sort of way I liked women, but there was something about her, something very much alive about her, as if she had the power to explode like a nuclear detonation at any moment. She had a soft, heavy body, curvy in my favorite places, with dark mahogany hair to just beneath her shoulder blades. She used it to hide behind, to glower behind, a face of resentment on an otherwise pretty girl. She probably wasn’t quite twenty-one yet, or just only, but the distant, burning anger beneath her skin aged her. Her cherry red, pouty lips hid teeth that could kill.
Despite the heaviness of her breasts and hips, she had strong looking thighs. Thighs like a runner.
That girl looked right at me and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
It shouldn’t have been funny, the venom in her voice, but I’m 6’3 and built like weight lifter. Latin, you know? A bad boy petty criminal doing work at her auntie’s place to work off my community service where my probation could be observed and recorded. And the old lady paid us. No disrespect, I liked her auntie. She gave us lunch and snacks sometimes, sent us out water and lemonade and ice tea if it was made in time. She forced breaks on us in the shade of her apple trees and urged us to pick as much from her vegetable garden as we could carry since she said she couldn’t eat nearly as much as she planted but couldn’t stand not planting as much as her garden could yield. I’d spent worse summers.
If this little white girl was intimidated by my tattoos or my size or the color of my skin, she sure as shit didn’t show it.
“What’s your name, mija?”
She rolled her eyes and made a show of it. Big hazel eyes with large dark eyelashes. She leveled her gaze at me, narrowed them almost imperceptivity with a challenge. Come any closer and I’ll destroy you. She stood up then and gave me a view of her shorts riding up over the bottom curve of her snow white ass and went inside without a word.
She never gave me anything easy that summer.
* * *
Her name was London Mackenzie. I found it out a few days later when she was dragged out onto the back porch to keep her Aunt Vi company. We were taking a break from digging post holes for the new fence and lounging around the big deck with them. That’s how Vi Mackenzie liked it though. To her we weren’t criminals paying our dues or big Latino guys from the south side of the city who could handle the hot sun and the tired hours. We were her guests and we were doing her a nice favor and she didn’t let us forget it. Even Carlo, a tough gangbanger with a certain unwelcome reputation became just some regular guy stretched out across her porch steps, drinking a glass of ice tea and shooting the shit.
The girl was on one of them full body deck chairs spread out, ankles crossed, barefoot. Sunglasses hid her eyes and she was reading a book about werewolves with some shirtless guy on the cover. She’d parted her thick hair down the middle and looped it into two pig tails that totally killed me. Aunt Vi had her seed baskets out, and with glasses down to the tip of her nose, was planting and marking each tiny one. I was on the steps watching the girl read.
“My sister reads those books.”
Vi looked up, but I couldn’t see the girl’s eyes behind her sunglasses.
“She’s got a million of them. Couldn’t pass a single English class in high school but devours books like that all the time. I think my dad works a second job just to keep her supplied in them.”
Vi smiled, but the girl said nothing. I noticed her mouth tighten though, a fraction, biting down on whatever terrible insult she had cooling on her tongue.
“You read much?”
Silence. The other guys sort of snickered. Vi’s niece was a lost cause and they knew it. Cold as her snow white skin. A cock tease, if she smiled more.
Vi tossed a seed at her niece who reacted like her aunt had shot her and curled her knees up against her body.
“Answer the young man.” The way she said young man was funny as hell. I was older than her niece by a few years. Not many. But I hadn’t looked like a young man since I was a little shit in high school. Before the weight lifting and fighting came along.
Her mouth tightened and she pulled her sunglasses from her face, twisted them between her fingers, and stared at me like she could force me to burst into flames.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “I read often.”
“You staying with your aunt Vi all summer?”
She shifted in her seat like my questions made her physically uncomfortable. She glanced at her aunt who had on the stern you will answer face.
“I don’t know how long I’m staying.”
“You never did tell us your name.”
Silence like boiling water. Vi didn’t seem upset by my asking about her niece’s name. Some people wouldn’t like that, as if it might make her a target by the criminal element, but not Vi.
“For goodness sakes! Be polite!” Vi smacked her gardening gloves against her thighs and the girl closed her book.
“London,” she snapped. “My name is London. Don’t they have work they should be doing? They’re criminals. That’s why they are here, right?”
The other guys stood up, hackles raised, irritated and offended and she deserved them saying something to her face, but they respected Vi too much to go down that path. I heard them under their breaths, bitch please, and shit, but they were out of earshot of the women. I stared hard at her and wondered how I’d ever thought there was something sexy about her at all.
I was seconds away from putting her in her bitchy little place when Vi stepped in.
“Go inside, London. You’re done for the day. Go. Now.”
Her niece stared, stared hard, stared holes right through her aunt, and without a word she slipped her glasses back on her nose, swung her leg over the deck chair, and marched inside. I apologized to Vi and went back to work.
* * *
I only caught glimpses of London after that. She wandered through rooms of her aunt’s big Victorian house and I saw her in the windows. I stopped to watch whenever she appeared and I didn’t really know why at the time. Inside, without her sunglasses on, she seemed very sad. I never saw her go anywhere. Just wandered. First one room, then the other. Lost.
When the four of us arrived by bus the next day, Vi and London were already in the backyard. Vi had a shovel between her hands and was leaning into it with this enormous hat shadowing her entire body. London was on her knees in the dirt along a section of the yard we’d tilled the day before. I couldn’t stop looking at her like that, on her knees, bent forward, shorts straining around the fullness of her ass. I wasn’t the only one staring. She was planting bulbs, her expression hidden behind her wide, celebrity style sunglasses.
“If you have no objections, my niece is going to assist you with some of the work. She needs to get her hands dirty. Needs something to occupy herself. I’ve got her started planting flowers, but when she’s done, put her to work. Fair?”
The guys found this amusing, felt smug about it, but the seed of telling London what to do had set then and it was all I could think about, all day long. We took advantage of the situation, I know, because she didn’t argue despite the growling, the clenched fists. Her aunt must have laid into her good last night to get some obedience out of her. We sent her fetching gloves we didn’t need, water we didn’t want.
“Asshole,” she swore and ripped her glasses off her face because they kept falling down her sweaty nose, and tossed them angrily across the yard.
“Maybe you’ll learn not to be such a bitch,” I told her. I leaned against the gazebo we were planting around and watched her ass, watched the sweat roll down her dirty thighs. It was so fucking beautiful.
“What I’ll learn,” she said, and wiped her face with her sleeve, “is to keep my mouth shut around my aunt. Being a bitch is not up for compromise.”
“Ouch. That’s fine. We can play it like that. I could watch you on your hands and knees all day.”
She snapped her hands back as if I’d struck her. I watched her throat work as she swallowed her breath. A curious reaction I’d think about late into the night. When she dealt with whatever had caught her off guard, she wiped her face again. “I…I think this hole is ready. Give me the flower.”
I picked up the little bush and knelt across from her. “It’s a shrub. Concorde Barberry. It turns the color of grapes, really deep coloring. Watch the thorns.”
She raised an eyebrow and took the shrub, eased it into the hole, and adjusted its base so it filled the space evenly. “That’s incredibly specific knowledge for a petty criminal.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve all got to have our day jobs.” We scooped the dirt into the hole together, our hands crossing and brushing occasionally. It was thrilling, almost touching her for real.
“Good work today, chica,” Carlo told her as we gathered our things to leave that night. She looked dog tired, and the sun had turned her skin red. It looked like it hurt, but she said nothing and complained about nothing. That was one thing we’d all noticed. For having such a bad attitude, she didn’t complain. She did her time like the rest of us, didn’t take extra breaks though the ones she took she spent alone. She got mouthy a few times when the guys pushed her further than she was willing to take it, but she worked all day. We gave her credit for that and forgave her for her bitchiness. A day with her and it was apparent her resentment had nothing to do with us, anyway, and we could kind of understand that ourselves.
The guys headed for the street and I knelt down to where she was sitting by the shed. She had her knees up and her arms draped across them like she was considering staying there for the night rather than ever standing again. She squared her jaw at me and prepared insults if I so much as looked at her wrong.
I went to touch her shoulder and she pulled away before I could. “Put some aloe on that or you’ll be miserable tomorrow. Your tia has some in her garden.”
She shook her head, touched her tender skin and flinched. I smirked at her, grabbed her hands and before she could protest, hauled her to her feet. She wrestled her hands out of mine, swatted me away, and shot her laser eyes at me. London was a feisty, angry kitten with claws, but it was fun to make her squirm.
I walked over to the garden and she followed apprehensively, rubbing at her hands as if my touch had burned her, and watched skeptically as I stepped into the area Vi called her ‘useful garden’ and broke off a leaf of one of her aloe plants. The gel oozed from the wound and London stepped away when I approached. Like a feral cat.
“I’m not going to fucking poison you. Stand still, mija. I’ll show you so I can go home and you can go inside.”
“This better not be some weird attempt to hit on me because it isn’t going to happen. Not in your lifetime.” She eyeballed me nervously. I made a derisive noise and rubbed some of the aloe gel onto her skin. It was smooth and soft like I imagined it would be. She froze when I caressed the medicine into her skin and I lingered longer than necessary. I rubbed my whole hand over her shoulder, down the back of her arm, then just my thumb along the inside, perilously close to the swell of her breast.
“That’s enough,” she warned, but unmistakably breathless. She took a step back when I didn’t let her go and I shrugged coolly, like it wasn’t a big deal, but inside I was a mess. I gave her the leaf and hoped she didn’t notice my shaking hand in the dusky light.
“Whatever. Scrape the end of the leaf when you get all cleaned up and apply until you’ve covered your exposed skin. Tomorrow, wear a long sleeve shirt or hat like your auntie.”
She said nothing, stared cautiously at the spot on her shoulder where I’d been touching her, like maybe it didn’t belong to her anymore, like maybe it might grow a third eye or some shit. I’d never seen a girl so untrusting, so despising in my life. Maybe if she’d been a little less of a mystery, a little less untamed, I wouldn’t have become so obsessed with her as I did in those coming weeks.
2
I didn’t speak to her again that week. She worked with Carlo on the fence the next day, and then with her Aunt Vi the days after that. They left for the city where her aunt volunteered. I missed her when she was gone and the week drug out long and hot, the work especially difficult.
I saw her next on the bus up to her auntie’s house from Southie Monday afternoon and there she was at the very back, curled up in the seat with her knees to her chest, her arms around her knees, a book in her hands. She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses and her hair was loose over her shoulders. I’d had business to take care of that morning, so I doubted she expected to see me there, and I really didn’t expect to see her.
The way the light filtered in through the dirty windows made her seem dreamlike and alone and admittedly, it was a pleasure to watch her like that. Around people who didn’t care, she dropped the spoiled brat routine. I think this one, this sad, lost little girl look, was closer to the truth of her. Not quite, but close.
I went to her without thinking. Drawn, I guess. Like a moth to flame.
“You lost or have you just been missing me?” I slid into the seat at her feet so that she was trapped between me, the wall of the bus, and the seat in front of her. Her eyes got real wide and her mouth opened. What surprised me was how tense she became. Like stone.
“I get it, don’t answer that. You’re not much for idle conversation. Me either. I only tried to talk to you because I’ve been working next to three other shirtless dudes five days a week, from breakfast to fucking supper. I have to walk to the bus stop with those guys and then ride the bus home with them. I haven’t had the chance to talk to a girl who wasn’t related to me for a fucking month. After meeting you though, I think women might be overrated.”
Surprise turned to fury and she dug her chin into her knees and concentrated hard on her book.
“Then stop talking to me and go away.”
The bus idled at a stop light. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the way her chin sat in the v space made by her clutched knees and her little red pouting mouth.
“What are you even doing in Southie? It’s a long way from your nice house.”
She picked at the corner of her book. Her nails had once been painted dark blue but hadn’t seen any attention in a while and most of it had chipped off.
“Lunch.” Then she seemed to look a little guilty. “I like real Mexican food.”
I threw my head back and laughed. She twisted her mouth in this guilty white girl way, like she was afraid of offending me as a Mexican, but never afraid of offending me as a human being. She looked uncomfortable and a little irritated that I was laughing at her. “Where’d you end up going, mija?”
She shrugged. “Alejandro’s? I just got off the bus and walked into the first place I saw.”
“Good tacos. That’s my name you know. You’ve found me out. Alejandro Rey. We never really met officially because you were being too much of a brat to take the time.”
London closed her book, bristling, getting those claws of hers out. She reached for her backpack on the floor, couldn’t quite grab it, so I picked it up and handed it to her. She snatched it back like I intended to make off with it.
“You can call me Alex, though.”
“Why would I need to call you anything?”
“I don’t know, add some variety to you extensive vocabulary? Instead of saying, ‘Hey, fuck you.’ You could also say, ‘Hey, fuck you, Alex.”
