Page 24 of The Kingpin’s Bride

“I’m going to take every last drop.”

I wondered what his name was. What I did know was the way he had looked at me when he took the knife from Dario. Like I was already his and the rest of the world just hadn’t caught up yet.

I added a third finger. It hurt. It felt perfect. I worked myself harder, faster, chasing the edge while the filthy words kept tumbling out of my mouth in broken whispers.

“You watched me for weeks. You sat in the dark and decided I was yours. Then you walked into that room like you had every right and made him bleed for touching me. You don’t even know me and you already act like my body belongs to you.”

My thighs started to shake.

“I hate you,” I gasped. “I hate how hard I came thinking about your hands. I hate that I wanted you to be the one holding the knife. I hate that when you told me to leave, my body obeyed before my brain even finished panicking.”

The orgasm hit like a slap. I curled onto my side, fingers still barely buried inside myself, and shook through it with his imaginary name on my tongue. Wetness soaked the sheet beneath me. My pussy swelled around my own fingers in helpless little pulses like it was trying to keep something that wasn’t even there.

When it was over I stared at the ceiling, breathing hard.

The guilt came back twice as strong.

I had just fingered myself, almost breaking the seal, for a man whose name

I didn’t know while my sister was being held somewhere as leverage and an auction clock was ticking down on my virginity. I had protected that last boundary for years and then almost thrown it away in the dark for a fantasy about cold eyes and tattooed hands and a voice that said “Leave, Rena” like it was the only order that had ever mattered.

I rolled onto my stomach and pressed my face into the pillow so hard it hurt.

“You’re disgusting,” I told myself. “You’re exactly what Dario said you are. A wet, desperate piece of meat who gets off on the idea of being owned by the next monster who looks at her too long.”

The worst part was that it didn’t feel like a lie.

Somewhere in the city a tall man with tattoos existed. Somewhere he was probably sleeping like a normal person who hadn’t just rearranged my entire nervous system with one quiet command. And I was here, on a mattress on the floor, with my own cum drying on my thighs and the taste of his name still in my mouth.

I didn’t wash my hands.

I just pulled the blanket back up, curled into a ball, and stared at the locked door until the sky started to lighten.

Tomorrow I would dance again. Tomorrow Dario would show me another photo of Camilla and remind me what happened if the money dropped. Tomorrow the auction would be one day closer.

And I already knew that when I stepped onto that stage, I would look for the dark presence in the shadows first.

Chapter Six

Matteo

The door swung shut behind her.

I listened to Morena’s footsteps fade down the hallway until the bass from the main floor swallowed them completely, turning the last soft click of her heels into nothing more than another throb in the club’s endless pulse. Only then did I look back at the man in front of me.

Dario stood with his pants open, blood seeping through the cut in his shirt in a slow, dark bloom, eyes wide and wet with the kind of fear that came from finally meeting someone who would not stop. His chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked jerks. The private room held the sour edge of his cologne and the sharper metallic scent of fresh blood. Underneath it all lingered the faintest trace of Rena, something clean and warm that did not belong in a place like this.

I kept the knife where it was. The tip sat just inside the skin of his stomach, a precise, deliberate pressure. Another inch and the conversation would be over.

My hand was steady. My breathing was even. Everything about the moment felt clean in the way only violence ever did for me.

My voice sounded calm even to me, the same low register I used when giving orders that ended lives. “You put a knife on her throat. You were going to take what does not belong to you.”

Dario’s throat worked. A thin line of sweat cut through the powder on his temple. “The deal’s off until the auction. I can do what I want with my own…”

I pressed forward. The blade sank a little deeper. A fresh line of red ran down into his waistband, dark against the pale fabric. He choked on the rest of the sentence, the sound wet and broken. His hands hovered uselessly at his sides, fingers twitching as if he wanted to push me away and knew exactly what would happen if he tried.

“She is not fucking yours.”