But he releases me abruptly, and I fall back against the mattress.
“You can’tofferyourself to me, Caligula Clemenza. I own you already—and if someday I want to use your body, just because it’s convenient for me, I will. But you won’t ever seduce me. You won’t ever make mewantyou, golden boy.”
I let out a startled cry as he grabs my ankle, hauling me closer. But he just fishes a golden key out of his pocket and unlocks the cage, tugging it off. My cock springs gratefully free, hardening despite myself.
“You seem to think this is all about sex,” he says, pocketing the ornament. “Maybe taking this off will help you understand thatit’s not.” His voice drops dangerously. “This is about vengeance. Nothing more.”
“Iknowyou want me,” I tell him recklessly, shooting my last shot. “Why can’t you just?—”
His hand closes around my mouth and nose, cutting off my air along with my words. But my traitor dick just gets harder. He leans close to my ear. “One day you’ll remember this moment, when you thought you could control me. And you’ll understand how very foolish you were.”
He releases me and steps back, leaving me panting for breath, hard and aching and completely confused by my own reactions.
“Maybe some time alone in the dark will help you understand your new role in life.” He heads toward the elevator again. “And don’t you dare touch yourself while I’m gone. That toy between your legs—it belongs to me now.”
The lights cut out and darkness swallows the room completely as the elevator starts its ascent. I lie there in the black, heart pounding, cock aching, my body still humming from his touch.
I tried. But I have no idea what I’m doing. Every move felt clumsy, every word uncertain. I’m flying blind, grasping for power I don’t understand.
What thefuckis wrong with me?
I’m a Clemenza. We don’t submit. We don’t beg. We certainly don’t get aroused by being caged and collared and suffocated.
But my body doesn’t care about Family pride. It only cares that Damiano’s hands felt good on my skin, that his attention—even cruel attention—made me feel…
I trail my fingers over my aching cock, then jerk my hand away, remembering his words.It belongs to me now.
Even my obedience in denying myself sends another jolt of arousal through me. I roll onto my side, chain clinking, and force my breathing back to normal.
I might not know what I’m doing, but I proved something today. I have an effect on him. I can get under his skin, make him lose control.That’swhat matters.
Not the way my pulse races when I remember his hands on me.
Not the way I keep replaying the look in his eyes as he watched me shower.
And definitely not the way part of me—some twisted, shameful part—wants him to come back down here and finish what we started.
CHAPTER 15
DAMIANO
I’ve always knownClemenzas were devious snakes, just like their Family symbol, and Caligula is doing nothing to change my mind. He’s a serpent wrapped in human flesh, just as underhanded as his friend Jesse Foster, and I don’t know why I thought he’d be any different.
But heisgetting under my skin. He’s too fucking clever for his own good.
And too fucking pretty.
I’m distracted from my musings when I get back upstairs by a text from Sebastiano Conti, the Giuliano Underboss. He’s the closest thing I have to a friend—though that’s a low bar.
The Giulianos are run by Seb’s younger half-brother, Giuseppe—Big Gee to everyone who wants to keep breathing. Seb is smarter. Calmer. And if anything, their father seemed to prefer Seb, the older son he had with his favorite mistress. But in this Family, lineage matters. Big Gee is the Don because he has the name, but Seb was the natural choice as his Underboss.
So I can’t ignore a summons from Seb any more than I could ignore one from Big Gee. But for the first time, being called todo something for the Family irritates me rather than interests me. It feels like the whole world is conspiring to steal days away from my time with the Clemenza. But I get my head in the game and get Vito to drive me out to the butcher shop where Seb asked me to meet for lunch. I go in, spare a nod for the guy behind the counter, and head upstairs to the apartment above.
Seb is there already. Like me, he’s queer but quiet about it. I don’t know if his dad ever knew Seb’s preferences before the old man got blown up in Chicago by the Irish, but Big Gee is aware, just like he knows about me, too. He doesn’t have a problem with it so long as we don’t make it an issue. Maybe that’s why Seb and I get along so well. Most Giulianos aren’t exactly welcoming, but maybe a little less hostile now that Luca D’Amato is in charge of the New York Commission.
I get the feeling sometimes that Big Gee thinks Seb and I might know something about D’Amato that he doesn’t, like there’s some secret gay handshake that might come in useful someday.
He’s wrong about that. I hate D’Amato just as much as any Giuliano worth their salt.