She takes every inch of me, her body arching up to meet my violent thrusts. The friction is blinding. The heat of her tight pussy, the slick sounds of our bodies, the whimpers falling from her lips—it drives me to absolute madness. I lean down, bitingthe curve of her neck, my teeth sinking into the soft flesh right over her pulse point. I want to mark her. I want every man in this city to see the purple heat of my handprints on her thighs and the bite marks on her neck, and know that her body is my sovereign territory. Touching her isn't just a crime; it's a death sentence carried out in real-time.
"Sienna," I roar against her skin, the heavy, building pressure in my cock reaching a critical mass.
"Dom," she screams, her body going entirely rigid beneath me. Her internal walls spasm, milking my cock with crushing force.
Her climax drags me directly over the edge. I slam my hips forward, burying myself to the root as I erupt inside her. I empty my seed deep inside her pussy with a violence that shakes my entire frame, hot, thick pulses flooding her, claiming her from the inside out. I hold myself deep inside her, my chest heaving, my muscles trembling from the exertion.
We stay perfectly still for a long time. The only sounds in the room are the harsh, jagged rasps of our breathing and the frantic pounding of my heart against her ribs. I don't move my weight off her. I need the pressure. I need the absolute certainty that she is beneath me, safe and trapped in my arms.
Eventually, her hands smooth down my back, her fingers gently tracing the heavy musculature of my spine. "You're heavy," she whispers, though there is no complaint in her tone.
I reluctantly shift to the side, withdrawing with a slow, wet slide that I feel in my own chest—the loss of her warmth a physical subtraction. I pull her with me so we are facing each other, my arm securely wrapped around her waist, my thigh thrown overher legs to pin her to the mattress. I reach down, pressing my fingers gently to the slick, swollen wetness.
"I need to clean you," I murmur, my voice low and completely stripped of its usual commanding edge.
She blinks lazily. "You don't have to."
"I want to."
I pull myself out of bed, the cold air hitting my sweat-sheened skin. I walk into the massive, marble-lined en suite bathroom. The stark white of the stone contrasts violently with the dark mood in the bedroom. I turn on the brass faucet, waiting for the water to run hot. I take a thick, white washcloth, soaking it in the steaming water, then wring it out.
When I walk back into the bedroom, Sienna is watching me. Her eyes track the heavy scars across my torso—the knife wound from a street fight in Pine Valley, the bullet graze on my left shoulder. She looks at my body not with fear, but with a quiet, profound understanding. She knows what I am. She knows what I do. And she is still in my bed.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and gently pull her toward me. I part her thighs. She flushes deeply, her hands coming up to cover her face, but I gently pull her wrists away.
"Never hide from me," I tell her softly.
I press the hot, damp cloth to her swollen pussy. She hisses at the heat, her internal walls twitching. I wipe away the slick mixture of my cum and her own arousal, cleaning her with a meticulous, possessive reverence. I want her clean so I can mark her again tomorrow. I clean the wetness from her inner thighs, moving slowly, taking in the bruises already deepening there—finger-shaped, deliberate, mine—making sure she is entirely comfortable.
When I am finished, I toss the cloth onto the floor and slide back into the bed, pulling the heavy charcoal sheets up over us. I gather her into my chest, her back pressed against my front, pulling her tightly against my body. I wrap my arm around her torso, my large hand splayed wide over her flat stomach.
Sienna settles instantly, her breathing evening out as exhaustion pulls her back under. I press my lips to the crown of her head, smelling the peonies and the warm, lingering scent of her skin beneath mine.
My heart beats a steady, powerful rhythm against her spine. My lungs expand fully, drawing in deep, effortless breaths.
I stare into the darkness of the room, the amber city light catching the edges of the ballistic glass. Down the hall, Matteo's boots move against the hardwood in the kitchen—a restless, rhythmic pace I recognize. He left his penthouse to manage the war from here, but he is still baking. The faint, earthy scent of yeast and toasted flour drifts under the sealed door: his bread, made in the middle of the night without fail, the one ritual the brooding underboss keeps like a prayer. I hear him pause by the corridor once, then continue. He registered it—the shift in the air of this building, the fact that his cousin and Don has recalibrated every priority around a woman who smells of flowers. He didn't knock. He won't. Not tonight.
Santi said nothing when I passed him in the hallway earlier. He simply looked at me once—a single, unhurried glance that moved from my face to the closed bedroom door and back. He catalogued it all. He suspected what it meant long before I admitted it to myself. He always does.
Tomorrow, I will gather my brothers and my cousins. Tomorrow, I will structure the destruction of the Bellanti empire. I will hunt them down one by one, and I will rip their legacy to shreds.
Before today, I was doing it for revenge. I was doing it for the ghosts of my parents, for the empty graves in Pine Valley. For twenty years, I called that purpose. It was dormancy dressed as devotion—a man standing perfectly still, calling it patience, when really he has simply forgotten what he was fighting toward.
But holding the warm, breathing weight of Sienna Marchetti against my chest, the parameters of the war have shifted. She woke the predator I'd put to sleep. I am no longer fighting for the dead. I am fighting for her. I will scorch the earth and drown Chicago in blood to ensure that no threat ever reaches this brownstone.
She is mine. And I will not let anything breathe that threatens what is mine.
7
Sienna
The mattress is empty,and the sudden absence of Dominic's suffocating, heavy heat is what wakes me.
I blink against the dim lighting of the fortified suite, my body heavy and aching. A deep, pulsing soreness radiates between my thighs, a visceral reminder of how thoroughly he dismantled me. Every time I shift, the friction sends a flush of heat straight through me. I smell exactly like his dark cedar and bergamot cologne.
I push myself up, my muscles stiff in the cool air of the room. The thick blackout curtains are drawn tight, sealing us off from whatever hour of the morning it is in Chicago. I look around the massive space. The heavy mahogany dressers, the reinforced steel framing around the windows, the fresh vase of massive pink peonies he had ordered to replace the ones I dropped in his restaurant. It's a gilded, impenetrable cage.
I slide my legs over the edge of the mattress and stand. A sharp ache shoots up my inner thighs, making me inhale sharply. He stretched me out, marked me, filled me until there was no room left for my own thoughts. And I let him. I surrendered to theterrifying, obsessive gravity of a man who makes a living in blood.
