The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

“If I had struck out on my own that would’ve been the same as getting myself killed, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it?” she said with a fake, coy innocence he couldn’t have found less attractive. “And why is that?”

“Come on, Bella, you know the answer to that.  You think your dad would be OK with training me up just to have me strike out on my own, set myself up as his competition?  Does that sound reasonable to you?”

“Who knows?” she said moving in even closer, so close now that her very liberal dousing of perfume threatened to take up all of the viable air Tyler had to breathe. “My dad can be an unpredictable man.  I’m sure you know that.  You never know if he’s going to shake a man’s hand or shoot him in the back.  Or if he’s going to shake a man’s hand and then shoot him in the back.  Hard to tell what’s in that man’s head.  Must be that fiery Italian blood.  Kind of runs a man’s behavior, doesn’t it?”

“Kind of run’s a woman’s behavior, too, near as I can tell.”

“I guess I can’t argue that,” she said, moving in so close her body was practically pressed up against his flesh, leaving nothing of her curvy body to the imagination. “I know I’m as crazy as they come.  I’ve been trying to tell you that, Ty, ever since we were kids.  You underestimate me.  Always have.  That can be dangerous, you know?  Makes a woman feel unappreciated.”

“Good.  That’s good.  Makes it sound like you might be coming to your senses some, finally.  I was beginning to think that wasn’t ever gonna happen, you know?  I was starting to think you might be a lost cause.  Even thought about talking to daddy about it, on more than one occasion.  When I got frustrated.  I don’t make the best decisions when I get frustrated.”

Good god, but this girl was forward.  He had met women who weren’t afraid to go after what they wanted, this was by no means the only one.  Guys like Tyler seemed to bring them out of the woodwork.  Their brawn and potential danger was like catnip and a certain kind of female found it irresistible.  So sure, he had experience with this certain kind of woman but he had never met one who came on quite as strong as Bella did.  How was a man supposed to say no to a girl who simply refused to hear it? 

Not that she wasn’t attractive, that wasn’t the problem.  She had a nice, curvy body, voluptuous enough that men stopped on the street to give her appreciative second looks and whistles.  Far from being offended by the attention, Bella was the kind of girl who ate it up, soaked it up like a sponge.  She had rich brown eyes and brown hair she had long ago dyed a bright platinum blonde.

She had an olive colored complexion and one of the most aggressive personalities Tyler had ever encountered in either a man or a woman.  Bella was Geno’s little daughter, a girl he had known since he was sixteen years old and she was only eleven.  Back then she had just been this bratty little girl who was intent on following him and Caleb around on every task her father gave them.  She had been a nuisance, a kid they couldn’t really get rid of because she was the boss’s daughter but who they would gladly have gotten rid of by whatever means necessary if it had been an option.

As she grew up she started to get into more and more trouble and after some kind of scare everyone knew about but nobody had the details on, Geno had sent her away, sent her off to Italy to live with their kinsfolk and straighten herself out.  That had been three years ago now and as far as anybody knew, that was where she would remain. 

Except she wasn’t in Italy, was she?  No.  She was right here, standing in Geno’s joint like she had never left and what had been a mild flirtation and infatuation from afar when she left had developed into a full blown attack.  She had set her eyes on Tyler, made him the man she was determined to get, and she was going to get him to do what she wanted, come hell or high water.  So what was he supposed to do?  How did a man shoot down the boss’s daughter without getting himself into a whole heap of trouble? 

He was sort of surprised, honestly, that she didn’t feel even a little bit of reservation in throwing herself at him right in front of her father.  After all, hadn’t her wild behavior been one of the things that got her sent away in the first place?  She couldn’t have been back for all that long and here she was, grinding her body against his in front of most of Geno’s people. 

She was making a spectacle.  People were staring, starting to whisper to each other and point in his direction, and when he looked over at Caleb and Meena, they both had looks of mild horror mixed with amusement.  This was not what he had been expecting when he arrived here tonight.  Everything was finally starting to calm down some, to even out into a sort of a routine, and it had taken more than four months for that to happen. 

As it turned out, navigating a ménage a trois relationship was more difficult in practice than it was in theory.  A relationship between two people was difficult enough (or so he had been told; he had never attempted one of his own).  Adding a third person in there added a whole new level and it had taken some time to figure out how they were going to work things out. 

But lately things had finally started to gel and Tyler had been able to settle down some.  He didn’t want this new intrusion.  He just wanted things to stay calm for more than five minutes.  But apparently this was not the time for that and so he sighed, shut his eyes briefly, and peeled her arms off him, noting with dread her already darkening expression.

“Whoa, there, Bella, let’s take it down a notch, OK?”

“Take it down a notch?” She stepped back, hand on her hip in a stance he knew meant a woman was nowhere near satisfied with a thing. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, take it down a notch?”

“I’m not trying to piss you off, Bella, honest to god I’m not.  I just think we should probably take a step back, OK?  You haven’t been around in three years, right?  Let’s just calm things down, catch up on how things have been.  Keep things light, simple.  You know what I mean.”

“I sure as hell do,” she said loudly, looking around the room to make sure people were watching the scene she was fixing to make, “it means you’re a pu*sy, that’s what it means.”