“No,” he squeaks. “Rosa might?—”
“Rosa stays where she’s damn well told to, unlike you,” I say, pulling him along with me. He doesn’t resist. “But I don’t want you spilling all over the fucking carpet. So we’ll go over here?—”
I flick the switch that raises the security shutters over the French doors. It’s still dark and gray outside, the river flat gunmetal, the bridge just a sketch of lights. His face stares back at me from the glass, wide-eyed, but he’s too close to the window to see his own reflection.
I strip the robe off him and he sucks in a breath. Goosebumps race up his arms, his nipples tightening. I press up behind him, one arm banded around his chest, and he wriggles against me,testing, until I close my hand over his nutsack in a warning. “Stay still and let’s get this over with.”
But my words are opposite to my actions. I take him in my hand, feel the weight and heat of him in my palm. I drop him again and hold my hand up to his mouth. “Spit.”
He does. I add my own to it, too, and he makes a sound low in his throat, his head dropping back against my shoulder.
And then I start working him. I keep the strokes long and unhurried. Each time my thumb drags over the head, his breath catches and his hips stutter forward, trying to fuck into my fist. I don’t let him. I set the pace: slow on the upstroke, a twist at the crown, then back down. His hand comes up and grabs my forearm, holding on.
“Dami,” he breathes, and for once it doesn’t sound like mockery. It sounds like he doesn’t have any air left in his lungs.
I tighten my grip, just enough. His whole body shudders. His reflection in the glass is wrecked—lips parted, eyes half-shut, that aristocratic composure dissolving into something much more needy.
And I don’t speed up. I keep it slow and thorough and deliberate, each stroke pulling another sound out of him that he’s trying not to make. He’s close; his thighs tense up and his breathing fractures into sharp gasps.
He’ll never be more vulnerable than right now, and never more likely to be reduced to honesty.
So I stop.
“Why did you leave?” I murmur in his ear, like it’s just dirty talk.
Like that question hasn’t been eating me alive.
“What?” he gasps out. “Dami, come on, I’m so close?—”
“Why. Did you. Leave? Tell me, or I’ll leave you all backed up again.”
He’s panting and shaking in my arms as though that might make me take pity on him. But I’ll never feel sorry for him again, not after what he did to me.
Not just to me—to the household.
“Tell me,” I say again, when the Clemenza stays mute. I close a hand on his balls again, squeeze a warning.
“Ihadto,” he yelps out. “I couldn’t trust you. I heard—I heard—oh, God, please, could you just?—”
“You heardwhat?”
“I heard you telling Sammy,” he gasps out, “about my Loyalists…”
It takes a second for his meaning to click. Sammy? His Loyalists?
And then it rushes back. Sitting around the kitchen table and eating dinner with everyone like I had any right to play happy families. Going out to the trash with Sammy, worried about the Bratva. And this little snake was hiding inside, listening in as I assured Sammy I was keeping the Clemenza under control.
Caligula is pulling at my arm around his chest. I’m so angry my hold has tightened without me knowing it. When I let go, he breathes in, harsh and ragged, and I catch sight of my own face in the glass. Hollow eyes, clenched jaw, the cords in my neck standing out. I’m looming over his shoulder like a demon riding him, my face twisted up.
And he’s still hard. Still pressed back against me. Still wanting the demon.
If he hadn’t overheard me, he might never have left. We wouldn’t be here—him thinking he can lord it over my household, command me like some servant.
But wearehere. Him trembling in my arms, still hard, still desperate, still begging for my touch even after I nearly cracked his ribs.
I should stop. Walk away.
Instead, I wrap my hand back around his cock and jack him hard and fast. He cries out, shocked, his back arching off my chest until I pull him close again. I set my mouth against his neck—not a kiss, just my open mouth against his pulse, breathing him in while I work him—and his hand flies back and grabs my hip. Again. Holding on like I’m the only solid thing in the world.