He lets go of my hair and pulls my hips up high.
His rhythm doesn’t falter. He just keeps pistoning into me, a relentless rhythm that’s dragging me closer to the edge, whether I want to go or not. And then he reaches under and wraps his fingers around my cock. I cry out, my hips bucking uncontrollably.
“I knew it,” he sneers. “Dripping all over the place like a bitch in heat. You can’t help it, can you?”
“Dami—please?—”
I wish I was begging for him tostop.
“Come on,” he croons. “Show me how much you love this.”
My whole body tenses, my toes curling, my spine tingling. And I don’t even try to fight it. “Please,” I whimper. “Please, Dami. Please let me?—”
“Still trying to give me orders?” he scoffs. “You never learn, do you? What do you think those Loyalists of yours would say if they could see you now?” he asks. “Begging. Pleading. Taking it up the ass from a Giuliano, a man whoownsyou.” He lays over me, one hand still working me, the other around my throat. “You’d make a terrible Don. You know why?”
I can’t speak. And what response could I possibly give, anyway?
“Because a Don takes what he wants.” He tightens his grip on my cock. And my throat. “Allyouwant is to be taken.”
With that, he slams into me one final time and comes with a cry that sounds like it’s been ripped out of him by torture. I feel him pulsing inside me, his forehead dropping to the back of my neck, his breath hot against my sweat-soaked skin.
And I explode right along with him.
Days and days of denial break like a dam, and for one blinding second, relief and horror are the same thing, my body singing while my mind screams. I can’t tell them apart, can’t separate the pleasure from the devastation.
I don’t want it to stop.
“There,” he says quietly, when I’ve collapsed completely, the aftershocks still running through me. “Head nice and clear now?”
I can’t answer. I’m trying to find something inside myself to hold onto. The Clemenza name. My strategy. My pride.
It’s all gone. There’s nothing there. I’ve been hollowed out.
Damiano climbs off the bed. Wipes his hands on Nonna Mellie’s quilt. Then he walks to each surveillance camera I covered during my search and strips my clothes away, letting each item drift to the ground while I lie there and watch, naked and spent and unable to move.
“What—” I start.
“If you’re anywhere near as clever as you think you are,” he says, not looking at me, “you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
He comes back over, grabs my arm, and pulls me to my feet. I stumble, my legs too shaky to hold me. He doesn’t steady me, just pulls me over to the other bed.
The one with the collar and chain.
Only then does my brain kick in, and I start struggling. But it’s no use. He gets me on that bed face down, his heavy hand between my shoulder blades, and reaches for the collar.
“Please,” I beg. “Dami, don’t do this—the Morellis will still come for you?—”
“And they’ll discover that you ran away again,” he tells me. “Ran away and broke my poor heart. Isn’t that the story you set up? That I was so crazy about you, I gave up on killing you? But you ran before. They’ll believe you ran again.”
I can see how he’ll twist it. And this is going to happen, no matter what I do or say.
The collar closes around my neck. Locks in place.
He walks off to pull on his clothes, then wanders back over to look at me. “Don’t worry, little Clemenza. You can pretend you’re still a Don, play at being a Mob Boss right here in your dollhouse.”
That’s what this has always been for him. A toy. He set up a dollhouse for me.
And I’m the doll.
