She nodded, and I saw the bob of her throat when she swallowed. “You got it,Capo.”
“You mean,il mio capo.”
“You noticed that?”
“I notice everything.”
“Why do you seem…upset?”
“Going forward, no more making deals with men who are not me.”
“You mean Rocco. The ring.”
“Yeah. Rocco. The ring. Never again.”
“As you wish, Capo.”
When she first called me that, I had a hard time not fucking her at The Club. And the more she said it, the more it made me feel like a feral animal in a cage. Not being able to touch her until she was ready was like thinking important words but not being able to speak them.
After a few minutes, she took a deep breath in, untied the robe and opened it, releasing the breath she had been holding after. She was naked underneath.
My eyes feasted on her naked body like they were starved. Somehow our roles had reversed. I was the one who couldn’t seem to get enough. She was fucking perfect. The light from the monitors highlighted every one of her bones. Her tits were enough to overflow in my hands. Her waist was small, and her hips had some slope. Her nipples were hard, and a thin sheen of her desire coated the inside of her firm thighs. I could smell her arousal—so fucking sweet I could taste it on my tongue. My tongue darted out, wetting my bottom lip, craving the hit.
“I thought you should see what you committed yourself to exclusively,il mio capo.Me. Hopefully I was worth the high price.” When I could tear my eyes from her body, I met her eyes, but she looked the other way. “I’m nothing but skin and bone, but—”
When my hands took firm grips of her hips and lifted her onto the desk, she gasped. When I yanked her closer to me, her mouth parted, and a cool stream of her breath came over my burning skin. I pressed her closer to my dick, pushing against her until a breathless noise came from her soft mouth. Her hands reached out, almost clawing through my shirt, trying to get to skin.
My teeth bit at her neck, working my way to her ear. “I got a deal,” I said. “You should have demanded more.”
“Ah.” She sucked in a breath and hissed it out when I bit her neck harder. Her nails sunk into my skin, and the burn made me even hungrier. “Maybe we should go back to the table.”
“I’d need unlimited funds, because,fuck.Un estimabile valore.” There wasn’t a price I wouldn’t have paid to have her. No term that I wouldn’t have agreed to. She might have come into the deal with nothing monetary, but complete power stood in her corner. There was something about her that possessed me. Made me obsessed.
Then a strike of something else, something foreign, burned me deep.
Jealousy.
The word seemed to come at me like a shock of lightning during a storm—right as I stood in a puddle and next to a tree.
Rocco’s face at City Hall, his words, suddenly clicked together.
I was old enough to know better, but I didn’t give a fuck. I was jealous when Harry Boy told her that he loved her. When he had called her that pathetic nickname.Strings.
The thought made my fingers dig into her hips, pulling her even tighter against my dick. Something wild drove me to claim. To possess. To control. To dominate her scent with my own. My lips drifted down her chest, my tongue savoring the taste of her skin, and when I took her nipple in my mouth, she bucked underneath me.
“Just,” she breathed out, “don’t cover my mouth.”
My pace slowed, not to make her feel that she had caused me to stop with her words. I looked up at her from my position. Her hands fisted my shirt, but her claws had retracted. Her eyes were closed tight. The heart in her chest seemed to beat in my ears but not in pleasure—from fear.
Her wings tried to fly, but she was rooted at the same time.
She wanted me. Wanted this. But that fucker had done something to her that she’d never recovered from. It was the first time I had ever heard vulnerability in her voice. Even at The Club, when she had no clue what she had signed up for, she was martyr-strong.
Vivo o muoi provando. I live or die trying.
At my slowing, she seemed to relax some, and the moment passed. She had agreed to give me time. I had agreed to the same.
“Mariposa,” I said, my voice low and gruff.
