I gave her another two weeks. In that time, I knew that Ivan had been training her. I knew she still went to see Dante at the gym, even when I’d forbade her to. She wanted a damn punishment, I swear. I also knew she met with Cade and Bastian. They even invited me to sit in on their meetings.
I didn’t. That woman was about as malleable as a rock. She wouldn’t give in to my request for her address at all.
She hadn’t reached out again by texting or calling. I tried to give her time. I even got to the point where I hoped she’d send a message via Cade, Bastian, or Dante.
That shit hurt my pride. It enraged me. Why the hell was I the one she had to avoid when she’d been in my bed, slept in my damn panic room, and wanted me most? I saw the look in her eyes even when I was putting a bullet in someone. That woman wanted me.
I could have hassled Cade for her address. I could have got it, but I was trying not to give in to the rage that normally consumed me. She had me and us all looking at ourselves in the mirror and questioning our own existence. We’d lived powerful lives based on what the mafia had given us. It was easy to take, to enforce, to get what we wanted. I wanted her to come willingly.
That was one of the hardest things to admit to myself over the past few weeks.
We needed to change.
It started with me asking for something. At least I’d given her a head’s up this time. That was more than we normally did.
I was the enforcer of the family. She had to know that, from me, she only got change to a certain point.
If she didn’t want me to show up in the dead of the night, she should have given me the damn address.
Instead, I was sitting on the loveseat in her new penthouse suite, the coils of tension that had been wrapped around every muscle in my body finally relaxing at being near her. We belonged together in the shadows and darkness. It was where we thrived.
I breathed in deep and watched her chest rise like we were in sync. She’d kept her hair bone-straight over the past couple weeks and as black as ink. She appeared lethal despite how small she was.
I left without waking her and walked down a flight of stairs to the apartment I’d bought out from another resident. Ivan’s team wasn’t doing enough to protect her. The fact that this was even doable showed that.
They had men outside the building and thought their checks inside the building were enough. Not now that I lived there. Not now that I could sneak in and out after each of their checks.
I broke into her penthouse the next night and the night after. No man at her door made it that easy.
I’d been about to leave when a whimper escaped her lips. She clutched the sheets over her and twisted in them. Her face scrunched in pain as she whispered “no” over and over again. There was a monster in me that usually controlled my biggest emotions, and the one I had in that moment was fucking love. My mind tried to pull me toward the door, but the beast loved Katalina more than it loved me. He dragged me to her, and I knelt down.
“Kate-Bait,” I whispered and put a hand to her cheek. “You’re okay, huh? You’re okay.”
She jolted awake and the hand that was at her sheet went under her pillow and drew a knife. It was at my throat so fast, another man would have been left at her mercy. My hand moved quick though. I caught her wrist just far enough away from me that the knife didn’t break skin.
She sucked in small breaths, each of them rapid with adrenaline. Our gazes held in the moonlight.
“No weapon is going to save you from me,” I said.
“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” Instead of taking the knife from my neck, she shoved it harder into me. I smiled at her fight, at the part of her that didn’t ever back down.
“I’m making sure you’re safe from your nightmares, no?”
“You are my nightmare.” She snatched her hand away from me and threw her knife onto the nightstand before ripping the sheets from her legs and leaping from her bed. “Go home.”
“What are you doing?”
She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door. I heard her vomiting in there so loud I wasn’t going to stay on the other side.
I barged in. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She glared up, her cheeks hollowing in and out from her labored breathing. She held up one finger and barfed again into the toilet.
“Jesus Christ,” I grumbled as I strode forward and scooped up her dark hair into my hands. The smooth strands fell from my fingertips. “Why you keep straightening your hair is beyond me.”
“This hair makes me look like I take no shit.”
“Gives me barely anything to grab on to, woman.” The remark was more for myself than for her. I missed the way she’d looked in my panic room. Relaxed and at home, like we hadn’t tightened her so much that all the wild in her was gone.
“My hair isn’t styled for you.” She wiped her mouth and then sighed before flushing the toilet. “I’m good.”
“Sure?” I kept my fingers threaded through her hair as she stood and faced me, wanting an extra second here before she went back to pretending there was nothing between us. My grip tightened when she nodded. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
She felt it as she smiled and tilted her head into my wrist. “You can’t hold me forever, Rome.”
“I might try.”
She laughed and then bit her lip before she whispered, “Let go, monster.”
It was like prying my hands from the edge of a cliff. This girl didn’t know I was hanging on by a thread, that I wasn’t sleeping without staring at her in the middle of the night, that when I did sleep, I dreamt of her, that my body was being controlled by a desolate beast that only wanted to be with her.
She turned toward the marble vanity and started the faucet. Cupping her palms together, she caught enough water to wash out her mouth.
“You sick, or is this a result of the nightmares?” I motioned toward the toilet.
“Maybe the nightmare.” She shrugged. “Maybe a little of everything.”
“Have you been to the doctor?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“For what?” She bent to grab mouthwash from under the sink and I stared at her ass the whole time. She cleared her throat and I snapped my gaze to hers in the mirror. “Rome, I’m not sleeping with you. So you can go home now.”
I sighed and pulled at my neck as I looked toward the high ceilings. “I’m not here to fuck you.”
She shimmied her ass and my dick jumped. “Sure about that?”
“Don’t tempt me, Kate-Bait. You’re changing the subject. Get a doctor’s appointment.”
“There’s no need. I have issues when I sleep. The nightmares are… I didn’t use to have them. It’s just stress.”
“Probably best not to take a chance. You could have the flu or something.”
“Do you ever not map out the ‘what ifs?’ I’m not your concern anymore.”
I swear to God, she wanted to taunt me or wanted a reaction. My feet ate up the tiled floors to cage her into that vanity, my arms on either side of her. “What makes you my concern, huh? You want me to drag you out of here and lock you up in a room again? I’m happy to.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d start a war.”
Her words held weight. She wanted me to back off, to cower from her. Yet her pulse jumped on her neck and her breaths came faster. I watched her breasts rise and fall against the thin fabric. Her nipples hardened, dark and pointed under the smooth cream of her shirt.
My dick hardened against her ass. “If you want me to start a war for you, I will. It’d be one I would win because I’m not afraid to spill blood for you. The whole city could bathe in red for all I care. We both know that. The bratva is no match for us. And maybe it’s best that way. If I lock you up with me and take away this new bloodline of yours, there are no complications.”
“Except that you’d have stripped me of my freedom, Rome. And that’s all I ever wanted.”
“You were always free with me, Cleo.”
“Not free from tradition, not free to have a say and a voice. Not free from where the family thought I belonged. And even still, what worth would I have?”
“The worth of being with me. Us together. Is that not enough?”
“You love me when I’m yours, but can you love me when I’m not too?”
“Unfortunately, that seems to be the case, doesn’t it? I’m hovering over you like a lovesick puppy in the middle of the night. And keeping tabs on things I never would have before. All because you wouldn’t give me a damn address so I could see you, so I could know you were safe.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy.” Her voice strained, trying to hold back her anger. “You couldn’t pick forgiveness or love in that moment with Mario. You chose hate and the family way instead. And I chose to walk away from the family that did that time and time again. I chose to create a different family here with them.”
“I’m going to follow you wherever you go, woman. You’re not walking very far without me.” I gripped the counter on either side of her, trying my best not to grab her hips and bend her over to remind her that I had some power here, some control, at least in our relationship.
She sighed and combed her fingers through her inky black hair. “Go home, Rome.”
My grip turned to a white-knuckled one as I ground my teeth together at her trying to make me leave. I tilted my head just close enough to her neck that I could breathe her in. The smell of her, the way goosebumps skittered across her collarbone, and the soft gasp that escaped from her lips emboldened me. “Home is up against your ass. I live where you are.”
“No. I live with the bratva now. There’s men out there that will come if I call them.”
“You intending to call them up? You want me to lay bodies down for you tonight? I’m at the point that I will.”
She bit her bottom lip and arched her ass into my cock. It was enough of an answer, even if she didn’t speak. I let go of the counter so I could lift her shirt, knowing I’d find nothing under it.
“Rome, we shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered, but she was letting the fabric inch higher and higher.
When the fabric skimmed her ass, she shuddered and I smiled like a wolf about to eat his meal. I hummed at her statement, not giving it much attention. I was focused on those two round globes. With her back arched, they were just the right size for me to squeeze. My hand latched on and I watched my fingers press into her soft skin, my thumb dangerously close to that asshole that I wanted to fuck.
“You like being in power in the bratva, Katalina?” I whispered as I massaged her cheek. Her body moved in rhythm with my touch, like she couldn’t help herself. She panted and I saw how her arms had moved in over her breasts like she was trying to feel them up herself.
“Power’s a loose term, Rome. I’m learning and it’s still Ivan’s say over mine.”
I smacked her ass hard and she yelped, but before she could pull away I was massaging it again. “I’ll punish you for downplaying your power. Remember you’ve always been ready for this.”
Her gaze on me softened. “I’m only me, Rome.”
“It’s not only you. It’s Katalina, Cleo, Kate-Bait that rose to the queen of the bratva. You’re everything and you handle anything.” I brushed my thumb over the tight ring I’d yet to enter.
She gasped and pulled her back up a little.
Retreating from one another wasn’t an option at this point. I tangled my other hand in her hair and pulled her back. “Don’t think we aren’t going here, Cleo.”
“It won’t be tonight,” she panted, trying her best to keep it together. “You’re going home.”
“You think you’re kicking me out without letting me taste you? I’ve been starved of my favorite meal for far too long.” I dipped my finger far into her pussy so that she’d gasp for me before I slid it out and sucked the juices off. “I’m going to show you why I need to stay.”
“You can’t show me because there’s no good reason for you t—”
“Watch yourself in the mirror while I eat my meal, woman.” I kneeled on a knee and smelled exactly what I’d been missing for weeks.
She didn’t say yes or no, nor did she move. I brushed my finger over her clit, and her nipples tightened under the shirt instantly. “Bend forward. A ruler knows when to take the gift they’ve been offered.”
She shook her head like I was being ridiculous, but her pussy was open to me now. I dragged my tongue across her pink lips and licked slowly. I took my time. I enjoyed my feast.
She moaned my name like she was mine, she rolled her hips over my face like she was mine, and she definitely tasted like she was mine.
I ate her out like a ravenous animal.
It didn’t take long for her to scream out and clench around my tongue as I thrust it into her center while still rolling my fingers over her clit.
I pulled away and stood, but held her hips up so she could steady herself and come back from her orgasm. When the muscles in her shoulders relaxed and she opened her gray eyes, I saw the smoky haze of a woman satiated.
I licked my lips as we stared at one another. “Best meal I’ve tasted in a long time.”
She nudged up against my dick that was standing to attention. “I want the rest of you, I can’t deny that,” she murmured. “But if they find out about us, I’ve lost them all because of you.”
“No. You can handle them all and that’s what you need to understand.”
She didn’t say anything and it reminded me that still somewhere in her was someone small and completely vulnerable.
“Look at yourself in that mirror, Katalina. Hold your head high.”
We stared at one another, finally alone in a place where we could. Under the bathroom lights in her new penthouse that cost millions of bratva dollars, we exchanged something. I was the killer of her enemy and she was a leader choosing to lead or to love.
“I can’t have you and them, Rome.”
“You can and you will. You’ve made a damn bed with me, you gave me access to the most precious thing you own, and it’s not your pussy. You gave me your heart. If not me, then the monster in me. You going to lead without a heart? Most of those before you have done it, but it wouldn’t be the smart thing to do.”
“Why is it that you always come to me speaking of leading when you don’t?”
At that point, I didn’t want to talk. My dick was resting just between her ass cheeks, my hand was wet with her orgasm, and my mouth still tasted like her pussy. “I lead here.” I tensed my cock against her and she shuddered. I grabbed her neck and she lifted her chin automatically. “Do I not?”
“Fucking a woman doesn’t take a lot of leading. It takes a good dick and some rhythm. I have to lead a disorganized group of heartless men who don’t trust me.”
“So, build trust.”
She squinted at me. “I don’t—”
My hand squeezed her windpipe closed. Her eyes flared along with her temper. She didn’t like being cut off, but I didn’t like her doubting herself. She needed to learn to have the confidence in herself that I had in her. Tonight, I would show her what it meant to rule.
“Who took your virginity?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Answer the question, Katie.” It was a command because she didn’t need to know the reason at that moment.
“Jimmy’s son. I don’t know if you remember—”
“I remember.” Her description stung, but I didn’t focus on it. This wasn’t about me or my jealousy of any man who slept with her.
“Did you trust him?”
“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged at me like my questioning was going nowhere. Her ass pushed into my dick, and it reminded me how impatient she could be. “I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t.”
“You gave him a prized possession because you trusted him. How did he earn that trust?”
“I don’t know, Rome. It was a long time ago. “
“Let me show you.” My hand snaked down to grab her breast and my other hand snaked down her spine.
The hole that no one had entered, the hole that she felt was too sacred to give anybody access to, would be mine. My fingers slid down into her crack and she eyed me curiously.
“Bend forward for me, Katalina.”
She bit her bottom lip. We both knew what I was about to do. She took her time, chewed those supple lips for a few seconds too long.
I had been waiting, my dick had been throbbing, the monster in me was shaking to get to her. I smacked her ass hard, harder than I had intended. She gasped, biting her lip to keep from moaning at how she liked it. It would leave a hand mark, but I saw that she was finally going to comply. She bent slowly at her waist, arching her back so that her ass popped out further, her cheeks spreading so that I could see her puckered hole, the one place no one had ever had the pleasure of fucking, the place I would own. Me, and me alone.
I’d get to take that innocence, dirty it, destroy what made it virgin, and my cock pulsed at the thought.
My fingers moved back and forth over it. “How do you earn trust, Katalina, from someone who has had their trust broken again and again?”
Her breaths were coming more quickly. She shrugged, and I nodded because it wasn’t an easy answer.
“You have to learn what they like.” I smacked her ass again hard, and this time she moaned.
My other hand was at her pussy, and as I slid a finger in, I got the lubrication I needed. “What they like is their weakness, it’s what makes them open up to you, gives you what you need to get the job done. You know all this. You’ve found a man’s weakness time and time again and earned their trust.”
I slid my finger from her pussy and up to her ass. I didn’t wait for permission. I shoved my dick home into her pussy and pushed my middle finger up her ass. She screamed, slamming a hand into the mirror as I rammed her hard enough to give her bruises where the front of her thighs pressed against the counter.
“You feel that? It’s what you like. It’s how you’ll end up giving me the last virgin piece of you,” I whispered in her ear as my dick fucked her to a place where she’d beg for it over and over.
“Rome, it’s too much.”
“Or is it not enough?”
She bent further down, her forearms resting on the counter, and let me lean over her.
She clenched around my finger and I pulled it from her ass before she hit her high. “What the—”
“Trust takes time, Katalina. We have all the time in the world.” I leaned farther over her, placed my hands on the mirror to position myself at a better angle.
“No.” She shook her head furiously. “We have no time left, Rome.”
When she said the words, something overcame me. Fury that she didn’t think we could conquer them, passion to own her like I knew I could, and rage at thinking anyone would try to stop me.
Shoving into her fast again, I hit her G-spot, using the mirror as leverage. I fucked her hard to remind her where I belonged.
She yelled my name every time my dick pumped into her. Her straight hair swung back and forth in rhythm, fast and smooth, her mouth open to pant.
One hand went to her hair, and I bunched it up, pulled her face high. “Say you’re mine.. Say I can have you as long as I want.”
“Time’s not up to me.”
“The fuck it isn’t.” My other hand fisted and pounded into the mirror. The force cracked the glass and my blood stained the edges of it. “Say it.”
“You bleed for something that’s not doable.”
“We can do anything. You can do anything,” I whispered. She could rule these men; she could rip them apart too. She could bring down the whole city if she wanted or put it back together.
She was Cleopatra and I just had to make her see. I had to remind her that she’d survived the worst already, that the bratva were malleable, didn’t have a hold on someone like her.
I slid my dick from her, slow this time, let her feel each inch of it come out. I stepped away from her. “Turn around. Look at what you do to the man who is supposed to kill you. To kill anyone who’s a threat to the Armanelli Family.”
She turned slowly and glanced down at me stroking my cock for her. Her gaze lingered before she hopped up onto the counter and spread her legs. I walked to the edge and tilted the head of my cock toward her entrance. I let the wetness drip onto it before I ran it over her clit. She immediately shuddered, and I saw those nipples tighten like I’d pinched them.
“You better fuck me like you mean it, Rome.”
“You better rule the bratva and this city like you mean it. Show them what we’re made of, huh?”
Her jaw tightened, her mouth thinned, and her grey eyes turned as cold as a stone in the middle of a Chicago winter storm.
There was that fighter, that survivor, that queen. She’d have them kneel before her. Anyone would bow.
She wrapped one leg around me and then the other before she lowered her body down where it belonged.
Hard.
Here we were, remembering what we wanted.
What we deserved.
What we were.
Together.
I met her thrust for thrust and our stares stayed glued on one another. “You’ll do it. You know how I know?”
“How?”
I dragged my hand along her ribcage where she had my words written. “Because if you don’t, you’ll die. I will too. My blood is still your blood, Katalina.”
I pushed into her again and her eyes changed. From prey to predator, I saw Katie transform to Katalina, to Cleo, to the woman I knew she was. A tear streamed down her face in recognition.
The weight of the city had just borne down upon us.
