My body loved the threat. My brain screamed at me to run for the hills. There was a thrill to the forbidden and a kick in breaking the rules. To be the object of desire to someone who didn’t take no for an answer that he’d destroy anything in the way to have you, even you. To want what you couldn’t have, to crave what destroyed you.
I had that with Ty. Why would I want it again with Laius?
It had to stop. No matter how much I wanted him, I couldn’t repeat the same mistake and expect a different result. Furore and I would end the same way Ty and I did. In pain, tears and heartbreak. The only way.
I refused to remain in that narrative when I was treated as property only to be disowned later. A disgrace. Something to be used for twisted men’s pleasure and then tossed away when they were done. I’d learned my lesson, which I should have learned way earlier, even before Ty, because I saw what happened to the women who did that. I refused to become like my mother. I wasn’t Madeline Kelly, and I wouldn’t meet the same destiny.
I didn’t care if the thought of Laius alone made me smile or that his touch was the only source of happiness there was in my life when I was certain I was going to be alone forever, trapped in a bleak life enforced by the danger that would always surround me.
I didn’t care if he said he was going to protect me because even if he’d proven he was capable, even if I believed he meant it now, once he was done with me—and he would because that was what my father did to Mom and what Tirone did to me despite their promises—I’d be in danger again and piling up more heartaches.
You couldn’t overlook all the red flags and expect something good to come out of it, right? Declan Larvin was a mafia boss, a criminal who broke the law and took lives on a daily basis, not to mention he was a cheater. How could Mom have expected he would have protected her or me?
And I, an idiot who repeated her mistake falling for another toxic man, boy, who at seventeen wasn’t afraid of breaking the law—and I didn’t just mean sleeping with his teacher—who constantly used me for his pleasure, whispering false and dark promises in my ears, manipulating me emotionally to keep me while he’d been planning a disappearing act all along. How could I have expected him to live up to such promises of love, protection and forever?
Furore, although different from those two men because he’d demonstrated several acts of both honesty and chivalry, wasn’t any less toxic. He was an outlaw and one of those who took what they wanted whenever they wanted. How could I expect his promises to last as long as I, not he, wanted them to last?
We had our fun, Furore and I, but that was it. That was why I was here at the gates, filling another form to visit him. He had to know, face to face, it was over.
As I walked down the hallway after the security check, I practiced my speech. I needed to be firm so he’d know I was determined to—
A hand grabbed me and pulled me toward a side door swinging open. My heart stopped, and so did my brain for a second. Then I recognized the tattoos on the arm.
The door closed behind us as he pulled me into the pitch black room. “Furore, what the hell?”
“Is what the hell very creative, Miss Meneceo? I know you can do better than that.” His lips crashed down on my mouth and claimed mine.
Giddy, too lost in the swirl of emotions showering me in that kiss, our first kiss, I forgot everything I’d practiced to say to him. I forgot the reason I came here and all the lectures I’d been giving myself all the way. All fear and danger and logic abandoned me. All that was left was hunger and need that could only be fulfilled by Laius’s lips.
His hand held me by the back of my neck, as if I were a cat he was petting, but he didn’t tangle his fingers in my hair as he pulled me tight against his hard body. Did he know that wasn’t my hair?
I couldn’t wonder or ask because my whole attention was consumed by the tongue slipping past my lips, taking without permission. My mouth parted wider in surrender. The part of me I’d been fighting all night and all day, the part that wanted him to have every inch of me he desired, to be used for his pleasure, to submit to his dominance no matter how toxic, triumphed over everything else.
In that kiss, I fell backwards. In his lips I drowned back into my old ways, and I didn’t give a shit.
DIRTY SLUT.
“I wanna see you,” he groaned, his hand leaving my neck. Light flooded the room as he flipped a switch, and I was grateful for my sunglasses.
I took in the place and realized we were in some sort of a holding cell. Then my heart dipped when I discovered we weren’t alone. There was a guard in the room.
“Don’t pay attention to him. He’s good,” Laius said.
“Good? What do you mean good?”
“It means for the next fifteen minutes, he’s guarding us.”
“In exchange for what? Watching?” I was sick to my stomach.
The guard cleared his throat and gave us his back. Then he pretended to be busy with his phone.
“No, baby. You see that new, shiny phone he’s playing with? That’s his reward. I’m not ready to share you.” Laius brushed his calloused fingers over my cheek. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to share you.”
“You share a lot of women?”
He slid the sunglasses off my face and made sure I was hidden entirely from the guard’s view. “Every time I look into your eyes, something tells me I won’t share another woman ever again.”
My lashes fluttered, and so did my heart. I couldn’t help the little moan that fled my chest. His lips glided under my earlobe and across my jaw and chin. Grinding his erection into my stomach, he seared my skin with his tongue. Then his hand found my neck again, this time closing on my throat.
His eyes roamed hungrily over my body. “Did you do as you were told?”
Breath stuck in my throat, I managed to cock a brow at him.
He stared at my outfit again. A sky blue shirt and an orange summer skirt. Nothing pink. He slid his hand under my skirt and cupped my pussy. I gasped as he gave it a little squeeze before he lifted my skirt to see the color of my panties. Orange like the skirt.
He glared at me, squeezing tighter on my neck and pussy. “You really want to be punished, naughty girl, don’t ya?”
I drenched his palm with my wetness, but I kept my defiant look. His hand on my pussy traveled to my butt and smacked. I hissed, but I didn’t fold. He pinched me, and God if I didn’t enjoy it, the punishment while I was doing the teasing for once.
He unbuttoned my shirt, his fingers on my chest leaving a trail of flames, ripping another hiss from me. “You love to drive me nuts, don’t you, baby?”
Guilty, I smirked. Then when he pushed open my shirt, I knew I won this round.
“Fuck, baby.” He stared at my breasts, at the pink bra I was hiding underneath. “Why didn’t you just say you were my good girl all this time?”
“Who said I want to be your good girl?” I did, but I wanted to tease him more. I wanted him to make me his good girl. I needed to earn it.
He licked his lip before his mouth swooped down on the visible parts of my breasts, licking, biting, devouring. “Fine. Be a bad girl. As long as you’re mine.” Then he pulled them out, took them in with a feral gaze and feasted on my nipples. “You’re so fucking hot.” He groaned, and it sounded painful, the need he had for me intoxicating.
His gaze held me captive. It was always the fucking eyes. The way he looked at me, the way he couldn’t keep his hands off me as if he couldn’t survive another day without having me, dulled away all caution and sense. Under his gaze and touch, I was a bundle of twisted need that craved his attention and nothing else.
He bent a little, and both his big hands were on my boobs, pushing them together. He groaned again as he stared at them. “I wanna cram my cock between your tits and then come all over them.”
My thighs rubbed together with the tangling, sweet pain between them. I loved the way he dirty talked to me. It brought me to a different level of arousal. My fingers tangled in his hair as he sucked hard on my nipple, and I realized this was the first time I touched him without any guidance from him. His hair was so soft yet thick enough to bury my fingers in. I pulled him closer as he tugged and pinched my other nipple, loving the pain of his roughness and the hunger he was showing for my flesh.
“Yes, touch me, baby.” He noticed. “I’m yours like you’re mine.”
I started to unbutton his shirt, doing a lousy job because I couldn’t concentrate on a task as simple as working a few buttons. It took a substantial time, but I finally reached the last button and realized just now he wasn’t wearing anything under it. He shrugged off the shirt for me, and…the woman was too stunned to speak.
He was muscular, but I didn’t think he was that ripped. He’d looked rather on the lean side with his clothes on, but those shoulders, that chest, those abs and that fucking Adonis belt… He was rippling with sinewy muscles and angry tattoos. The perfect amount of muscle and flesh and dark art.
Then I touched him. I dared let my fingers feel the toned sculpture of his body. “Oh God.”
“That’s right, baby. I’m your god. Now, I need you to be a good girl for me and show me what’s mine.”
In a trance, I just pulled my skirt up. His hands were fast on the panties, ripping them out, and then he lifted them to his nose. He grunted and hissed, his eyes pinned on mine, growing darker, almost black with arousal. His breath grew louder as he shoved them in his pocket. “I’m keeping these until the next time I see you.” The sound of his zipper coming undone tore into the silence, and my heart skipped a beat.
“I wanted to wait for this, but I just can’t. I have to have you now.” He wrapped my legs around his waist, his erection poking my hip. “Hold tight.”
Dazed, I couldn’t believe I was in a cell, spreading my legs for a prisoner, about to be fucked by the most gorgeous gangster biker, where an officer kept watch.
My eyes darted at the guard. The back of his bowed head stared at me, yet it triggered something in me. Sanity.
“Don’t look away from me, Jo,” Furore commanded. “Keep your eyes on me.”
“No.”
“No?”
I shook my head, a sudden wakeup call ringing in my head. “Put me down. I’m done.”
“Done with what, baby?”
“Being a dirty whore.” That was what I was. With Tirone and now with Furore. “This needs to stop. I have to stop.”
“You’re not a dirty whore. You’re my dirty whore.” He bit my earlobe and gave me a playful kiss. “My princess, too. I promise once I’m outta here, I’ll spoil the fuck out of you, baby.”
“Until you’re done with me.”
“What?”
All my traumas and insecurities came down on me at once. “Until you don’t want me anymore, and then you’ll throw me away. Then I’ll be a dirty whore that loathes herself for letting more people abuse her like that.”
He scowled at me. Then he put me down carefully yet angrily. His palms caught either side of my face as his eyes bore into me. “Who did this to you before? What motherfucking loser had you and then dared leave you? Who fucking called you a dirty whore, Jo? I’ll rip their fucking tongue out of their throat and shove it up their ass.”
I blinked. Hard. I didn’t expect that response. I didn’t expect anything from him.
“Answer me, baby, who fucking did this? Who fucking hurt you? I’ll kill them.”
“No one,” I answered fast. I didn’t want him to hurt anyone on my behalf. Mostly, because I didn’t want him to get hurt or go back to prison when he was about to be free. I was as protective of him as he was of me. I had to admit, though, it felt good to have someone defending you like that. Someone who cared enough to stand up for you. Someone who wasn’t afraid to go the extra mile to protect you, to make you feel worthy of love.
“Jo, I’m your man now,” he said as a warning. “You have to tell me so I can take care of you.”
The fuzzy feelings he was inducing in me convoluted my thoughts. Instead of embracing them and allowing them in, worry and suspicion took over. “You don’t even know me. You can’t possibly… Why are you trying to—”
“Don’t even say it.”
He looked hurt, but that let suspicion crawl up higher in me. Why would a man like him be soft and gentle and caring to me? Why risk anything for a stranger like me? Why was he so eager to make me believe he genuinely liked me and was willing to do anything for me?
Someone like me that was marked by shame, guilt, abandonment and danger couldn’t be desired that much. Wasn’t worth that much. It couldn’t be real. Right? He was manipulating me. But why? It couldn’t be just to get in my pants. I wasn’t that pretty either.
Could it be another bet? The first to bring the slut teacher in a cell and fuck her would win ten packs of cigarettes. My panties were proof, and the guard was the witness.
It didn’t make any sense, though. He was going out. He wouldn’t care about winning because he wasn’t staying long enough. Then what the fuck was it?
“Listen, Furore, whatever your game is, I don’t want to play.”
“What fucking game? Everything I’ve told you and done for you so far isn’t enough to prove I’m not playing?”
It should have been, but I wasn’t wired to believe I deserved any love or happiness. If my own father didn’t want me, if he’d allowed his wife to send men over to kill me, if the only man that said he loved me dumped me without so much of a word, then how was I supposed to believe anyone else when they said they cared? “I came here today to tell you that it’s over.”
He snorted as his stare dropped to my boobs that were still out and his cock that was digging a hole in my stomach. “Over? Baby, we haven’t even started yet.”
Blushing, I tucked my breasts in and fixed my skirt. “I’m sorry, but I need to leave.” I was ruining everything, but sooner or later things would be ruined anyway. It was best if I did it now myself. “I wish you the best in life and hope you can reconnect with your son.”
I didn’t take two steps before he grabbed my wrist and pinned me to the wall. Then his mouth crushed mine in a demanding, violent kiss. He bit my lips so hard I thought I was bleeding, but he stopped right before, and then his fist cupped my jaw. “If I was using you, if I wanted to fucking hurt you, I’d have done it already and you couldn’t have done anything about it. I put my neck out on the line for you, and you still think I’m speaking out of my ass? You still can’t tell that I’m crazy about you, that I wanna make you mine?”
“Because it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t want me like that, not that much.”
“Yeah?” He grabbed my thighs and hooked me around his hips. Then he guided the tip of his cock to my entrance. “How about now?”
I gasped and whimpered as I squirmed in his grip. Split in half, part of me wanted to bear down on him and make him take care of the pain I couldn’t reach, the other part screamed at me to run. “Laius, please, let me go.”
“No.” He moved the crown of his cock in and out of me in shallow thrusts. “Not before I make you mine.”
Fear thudded in my chest and shamefully made me wetter. “No. Please. I—”
“You don’t have a say in it. Not anymore. You knew what would happen when you came yesterday, and when you came back today. You know I’m never letting you go. I warned you, Jo, but you didn’t listen.”
“No, no, you can’t do this.”
“I can and I will. You’re mine.”
“Not like that. Please, I’m begging you, let me leave.”
“Oh, you’ll be begging all right, but not for that.” He thrust a little deeper, but not too deep. “You know why, baby? Because as much as I want to feast on your sweet cunt, give you an orgasm you’ll never forget and then fuck you right after to show you a glimpse of what we’re gonna have together, I won’t.” He rocked his hips, entering me but only teasing. Torturing me. “No pleasure for you, naughty girl. I’m giving you just the tip, leaving you wanting more so you’ll come beg for it later. Then I’ll decide if I wanna give it to you because I own your orgasms now, baby. And I’m fucking coming inside you now so you’ll know who fucking owns you and your cunt.”
With a groan and a few faster tormenting strokes that were meant to grow the painful need not to ease it, his face hardened as his cum poured thick and hot inside of me bare. He devoured my lips as I clenched around the tip, rubbing myself in a desperate attempt to get any kind of relief.
He’d marked me for the second time, sealing his ownership of me.
If I hadn’t believed him before, I believed him, at least, when he said I was going to beg for him and the kind of pleasure I now understood only he could give me. And I believed him when he said I didn’t have a say in it anymore.
Everything was clear in my head, and every doubt I had about my decisions vanished. I belonged to Laius Lazzarini. I belonged to the president of the Night Skulls.
I belonged to Furore.
