That earns me the ghost of a smile. A miserable one. Better than nothing. I look at him properly again—at the hurt still in his face, at the stubborn pride holding him upright under it, at the way he’s still letting me hold his throat—and the emotion rising in me bypasses language entirely.
I lean in until my mouth is just above his ear and say, “Your heart has always been treacherous, and it still beats in the wrong direction—mine. It belongs to me, and you know it. Don’t test me with another body just because you want proof I’d still tear through a crowd to get to you.”
I drop my hand from his throat, and sink to one knee, head bowed. The position is a surrender and a vow in one—something no ruler in this bloody underworld gives lightly.
The floor is hard beneath me. My tuxedo trousers will be ruined at that knee, but I don’t care. Vincenzo stares down at me as if the world has tipped sideways, all sarcasm stripped out of him at last.
I brace my hands lightly at his hips, not pushing or taking more than I’m given. Trembling fingers thread into my hair, tilting my face up again. His eyes shine too bright for the dim room.
“Get up,” he says, the order brittle. “Kings don’t kneel.”
“I kneel for mine,” I answer, staying exactly where I am. “My King. Let me make up for some of what I took from you.”
His breath catches hard enough to be audible.
My pulse roars in my ears, but I keep my grip gentle, thumbs circling the silk at Vincenzo’s hips. He’s marble-still, chin lifted like a man expecting a sword, not a mercy.
A tremor ghosts through his thighs when I mouth the crease of his trousers—only pressure, no demand—so I wait, breath warm against fabric, until he gives me permission the way he always does: with silence and that faint, involuntary tilt forward that says,‘Take what you already own.’
“Tell me to stop, and I’ll stand. Tell me to stay, and I’ll worship.”
A shudder racks through him, and I watch the war play out in his eyes: pride, rage, and wrecked devotion that never learned how to die.
“Stay,” he says so softly I almost miss it. But the command is in the grip he takes at the back of my head, the way he tilts my face up so he can see everything breaking open in me.
I mouth him through the trousers, and his head falls back against the wall with a dull thud.
“Nikolaj—” The word is a ragged exhale.
I drag the zipper down carefully. He’s already hard, dark silk briefs damp where the head presses. I nose along the shape ofhim, breathing in the salt and smoke that’s uniquely Vincenzo, and the whole time he keeps that fist in my hair, not pushing, not guiding—just anchoring.
When I free his cock, the sound he makes tears straight through me. I lick the dark trail of hair leading to the base of his cock and nuzzle there. He keeps himself trimmed neat—short coarse hair that tells me he still obsesses over appearances even when his world is on fire.
The neatness highlights everything masculine about him: the heavy weight of his balls, the thick vein that ridges the underside of his cock, the foreskin that still covers the head in a soft flush of deeper color.
I’ve always loved that detail, that he’s uncut, that I can tease the sensate edge just by tugging the loose skin down with my lips and letting the dark pink crown erupt slick and wet against my tongue.
I do exactly that now; easing back the shy hood until the gleam of precum smears across my lower lip. His fingers tighten in my hair hard enough to sting and there’s no polite restraint in it; he’s staking claim even while I’m on my knees claiming him.
He groans my name again, and the sound vibrates along my spine, fueling a vicious pride.
I wrap one hand around the base—no games, no teasing—and look up again. His gaze is feral, pupils blown wide, lashes wet. A king drowning on dry land.
“You shouldn’t be on your knees,” he rasps.
I stroke him once and watch his lip curl as if the pleasure hurts. “No other place exists right now.”
He swallows hard. “Don’t—don’t make promises you’ll leave me to keep.”
“I’m giving penance, not promises,” I breathe, and then I seal my mouth over the head.
He curses in Italian, low and vicious, hips lurching before he slams them back to the door. I hollow my cheeks, take him deeper, let my tongue flatten along the underside where I know the ridge is hypersensitive.
“Look at me,” he orders, voice shredded.
I look up through my lashes while I continue to swallow him down inch by inch. His jaw drops, a soft, broken sound escaping as the head bumps the back of my throat.
He’s shaking—powerless and furious about it but yielding all the same. The sight claws pleasure through my own spine so sharp I have to breathe through it.
