16. Stella
16
STELLA
I forgot what it felt like.
Kissing Leo De Tore.
Where Genevieve’s kiss was warm and languid, Leo’s is all-consuming, like walking directly into a raging wildfire. Even after I spent years trying to ignore his memory, the effect remains the same.
When his tongue flicks against mine, I forget all about the other woman. As if driven by some primal instinct, my hands slide up the lapels of his suit jacket, and my fingers claw at his chest. I shift closer, deepening the kiss, and he lets out a low groan that vibrates between my legs.
That’s when I snap out of it.
Yanking my head back, I disconnect our lips and try to shove him away. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have changed one bit since I last saw him. His skin is a little tanner, his black hair a bit longer, and his sharp jaw is clean-shaven.
Otherwise, he’s the same bastard as always. His hands are encased in those damn leather gloves, and he loops them around my waist, keeping me pressed tightly to him. Rage seeps into my vision.
I beat at his pecs with my fists, trying to ignore how rock-solid he feels. It might be doing more harm to me than him.
His dark chuckle skates over my skin. He shifts, his right leg coming to the outside of mine so my thigh is stuck between his.
“Feel that?” he rasps, and it takes me a second to notice the pressure from his pelvis. “You should know your violence makes me really fucking hard, stellina .”
“Maybe you should get your brain checked. Delusions like that are sometimes signs of a stroke.”
“It’s sweet that you care.”
My breaths come in harsh bursts from my chest, the weight of reality crashing down like a boulder smashing into the earth. For seven years, he’s left me alone. Years I’ve spent getting my bachelor’s degree, fighting to be heard and respected in biomed forums, doing scut work for Rampion Core, and volunteering at local conferences and fundraisers. Being my own person and making a name for myself outside of the Ricci brand.
Still, at some point, I tricked myself into thinking he had no interest, because I can’t help feeling pure, unadulterated panic now that he’s here.
How long will it be before he takes everything from me?
I thought I was free, but freedom is just an illusion in this world. You don’t really get to leave.
Finally, he releases me. I’m not expecting it, so I stumble a bit when he hastily steps back, making his way over to the auction items lined up in the center of the room.
“God, there’s a lot of expensive bullshit in here.”
I don’t think he’s looking for a response, so I don’t say anything. He passes a diamond necklace and scoffs at a silvery-gold, ruby-studded chalice.
“These items pale in comparison to the people putting themselves on the block tomorrow. Inanimate objects tend to be more complicated to wield for personal benefit, whereas humans…well.” He glances at me, his eyes growing somehow darker than ever. “Humans strike deals. Solicit favors. If you play your cards right, you can manipulate anyone into doing your bidding.”
I lift my chin. “Too bad for you, I’m not for sale.”
Another chuckle. “Are you forgetting the fact you already belong to me? If I wanted you up on a pedestal tomorrow, you’d be up there.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You would if you wanted the Orchidée Sans Nom that badly.”
Surprise arches my eyebrows, and my jaw drops slightly at the mention of the flower. I suppose it’s not difficult to determine which of the items I’d be most interested in, but there’s something almost violating about hearing him say it.
His index finger slides along the flower’s glass case, screeching loudly. “You know, there are only two of these in existence. The first was being held by some Japanese botany facility for preservation, and it sold at auction for half a billion. Didn’t even go to a band of scientists or someone who wants to try and use it for good. It was just sitting at someone’s home, gathering dust on its petals for the sake of vanity.”
My eyes narrow. How does he know all that? The last auction was private, and the recipients’ names were sealed to keep poachers away.
“I wonder what would happen if this got into the wrong hands,” he says, squinting at the flower. “Someone with ulterior motives might use it as leverage.”
“Well, that isn’t going to happen.”
He glances up at me, rounding the case so it’s between us. “No?”
“I’m winning the orchid tomorrow, then taking it back to my lab so they can research it and see if it actually has medicinal qualities.”
“Such an altruist.” He taps the glass with one gloved finger. “Would be a shame if someone were to outbid you.”
Anger courses through my fingertips, and I wish I had a weapon right now. Even if it got me escorted off the property, assaulting this man would be worth it.
“Are you threatening me?” I ask, growing weary of the back and forth.
“I don’t like that term. I’d prefer if we called it ‘blackmailing.’”
“Does that make you feel better about doing it?”
“Considerably, yes.” Exhaling slowly, Leo rounds the glass case before stopping just in front of it. He leans back, extending his legs and crossing one ankle over the other.
The picture of complete ease. I wonder if this is a window into how simple it was for him to let me go back then and not even bother to come after me.
Not that I wanted him to. It’s just the principle of the matter.
His eyes darken as they drag down my form, leaving a path of hot carnage in their wake. “Take down your hair.”
“What?”
“Your hair. I’d like to see it down when I take your virginity.”
“That’s presumptuous.” I tilt my chin. “Besides, who says I’m still a virgin?”
Something dangerous flashes in his gaze. “How about we test my theory?”
My hand immediately goes to the side of my head, feeling the soft strands held back by Valerie’s pins. Every nerve in my body tightens, like wire coiling around a spring. “I…no. I’m not going to do that. We aren’t doing that.”
“I’m happy to see your spine is still intact after all these years. I won’t feel so bad about coming to collect what I’m owed.”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
He grins, big and toothy. It’s unsettling—predatory. Like I’m prey, and I just walked into his trap.
“Your father is dead, cara mia. Normally, that’d make the deal we struck up null and void.” His long legs carry him to me in a few strides, and I back up, trying to keep as much distance between us as possible. “Problem is, we’re still very much married. So the deal transfers to you…and is currently unfulfilled, I’m afraid, as you left my condo without consummation.”
“I don’t remember signing anything legal?—”
Within seconds, he slams me into a wall, and I’m thrust back in time to when he pinned me in the alley behind the church and kissed me. How it felt like my world shifted on its axis with that kiss. I’ve been secretly yearning for that same high ever since.
The only difference is that now I’ve tasted freedom. I won’t give it up so easily—and certainly not for some measly kiss.
Leo’s hips brush mine. My chest heaves, each breath a struggle as my brain begins short-circuiting from his presence and scent alone. I don’t know why he has this effect on me—I can’t even make sense of it biologically, though I know the technical evidence is there.
He’s attractive, and my body remembers how good he is with his tongue and hands. But all that should be moot, given everything he represents.
Yet I ache for him to touch me. After all this time, the sting of his rejection still reverberates in the back of my mind, and I wish he’d prove it was a fluke.
After reaching into his interior jacket pocket, Leo pulls out a folded slip of paper. He presses it to my chest, his grin turning sinister.
“You signed. Or at least, someone signed your name.”
“Forgery? Seriously?”
A shrug. “All I have to do is show a judge the security footage of you naked in my kitchen, letting me put my filthy mouth between your luscious thighs. It wouldn’t take much more to convince them that we consummated, and in that case, why wouldn’t you have signed? These factors are all very easy to manipulate, I’m afraid, Stella. And you did commit to being my wife in your vows. Before you left me.”
Exasperation heats my body. My fingertips itch to scratch his eyes out. “I didn’t leave you . I left everything . Do you think that was easy, abandoning my life? My sisters? I didn’t even get to attend my parents’ funerals, and you have the audacity to come in here and demand things from me, push me around, and try to drag me back? I’m not going.”
His face remains impassive, as if he’s unaffected by the raw emotion dripping from my words. It makes me angrier.
“Why do you even care all of a sudden? You rejected me, and then for seven years, I didn’t hear a fucking peep. Why come back now when I’ve actually got things going for me? Do you just enjoy seeing me suffer? Is that why you showed up? Have you just been stalking me, waiting to ruin a perfect moment?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Fine. You want me so badly?”
I shove him backward, then scramble toward him, reaching to undo the belt hidden beneath his jacket. His brows furrow and he moves to stop me, but I smack him away and crouch.
Getting on my knees in this dress is probably not a good idea, but I’m so filled with rage and fear that I don’t care.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind?—”
“Shut up . You want to come, right? That’s why you want to fuck me. New deal—if I make you come, we’re even. Tit for tat. You can leave me and the orchid alone. Sound good? Good.” I undo his zipper, ignoring the tremor in my fingers, and peer up at him for some sort of confirmation.
His gray eyes are impossible to read. Sweat slicks my palms at the thought of him rejecting me once again, but he just tucks the folded marriage license back in his jacket and says, “I want to come inside you.”
For some reason, the image causes goosebumps to sprout along my arms and my nipples to tighten. “Then you’ll leave me be?”
“Let’s not overestimate the quality of your services, stellina . You were a virgin when I met you, after all.” He pauses as I yank his pants down. “I’m assuming your little tryst with Genevieve was an isolated incident.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
A muscle in his jaw thumps. “Fortunately for you, I know that’s not true. You’ve been too busy studying and working to let anyone touch you. Not that they’d compare anyway.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“An asshole whose dick you’re about to put in your mouth.”
The band of his black boxers slides lower, and suddenly, his dick springs free, dark pink and already hard as granite. A large vein twists up the side, and even though it’s my first time seeing one this close, I can’t help feeling a tinge of something intoxicatingly wicked in my stomach.
I’ve watched enough porn to know he’s on the larger side and thicker than most. Frankly, even as I curl my fingers around his shaft, just above where he holds it, I’m having a hard time believing I’ll be able to take him in my mouth.
Vaginas can stretch to accommodate dicks and babies. Mouths are a different story.
His smirk tells me he knows what I’m thinking, too. “Don’t worry,” he says, reaching down to grab the base, stroking once so it grows somehow bigger. “I’ll fit as long as you’re wet enough.”
I roll my eyes. “I know how sex works.”
“Is that right?” Something profoundly possessive flashes in his expression. “Prove it. Suck my dick like you know what you’re doing, and maybe you’ll come away from all this unscathed.”
Shifting forward, I spread my ankles apart a bit to better distribute my weight, which is being held up solely by these skinny heels.
“Spit on it first,” he says. “It’ll make it easier for me to glide in and out.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll bite?”
“Just afraid I’ll like it.”
His grin strokes a fire deep in my belly, fanning flames I’ve long left dormant. It feels so odd to have such perfect banter with a man I haven’t seen in years, even if we have been married all this time.
Pursing my lips, I collect some saliva on the tip of my tongue and let it pool over the slit in his crown. He doesn’t react, even as I slide my hand up to spread the spit around, awkwardly trying to mimic what I’ve seen online.
My sisters say porn isn’t realistic in that aspect, but right now, I don’t really care. I just want to get all this over with so I can bid on the orchid tomorrow, unimpeded.
Penises have four thousand nerve endings in the head alone, according to the biology lab I took my freshman year of college. It shouldn’t take much effort to achieve an orgasm.
Plus, I’m an excellent student when I want to be.
Leo’s hips flex and his cock seems to twitch beneath my touch. I watch closely, looking for the spots where he seems to be most sensitive and using my thumb to apply extra pressure. It’s mesmerizing, seeing his muscles and veins strain against his soft flesh and hearing the way his breaths hitch with each stroke.
“Tighter. You’re not going to hurt me.”
I glance up, startled by the choked command. His hand comes down over mine, forcing it to fist him in an ironclad grip. He guides me slowly, turning my wrist and dragging me from base to tip each time.
“Fuck. Put your mouth on me.”
“Jesus, you could say ‘please.’”
“ Please , Stella. I need to feel you.”
My eyes widen at how quickly he caves and the hint of desperation lacing his words. I stare at him as our hands continue moving and finally inch forward, letting my lips close over his tip. He’s silky smooth on my tongue, and a slightly salty taste takes over my senses.
His head tilts back instantly, his hips bucking toward me in an attempt to fill more space.
Pressing my free hand to his pelvis, I halt his forward motion and pull back, removing him from my mouth and using the new saliva to coat his length.
He watches every movement of mine like a hawk. “Take off your dress.”
“No.”
“Put your hair down.”
I squeeze tightly at the base of his crown, then drag my teeth lightly over the crown. He shudders.
“Stop telling me what to do,” I tell him.
“Hey, I was just trying to help it go quicker. If you want more time with my cock, stellina , just say so.”
Rolling my eyes again, I open my mouth and take him in it, this time a little deeper than before. He slides past my lips easily, and I chase the motion of my fist, testing to see how far I can go without gagging.
Leo releases a grunt when I pull off this time. One of his hands finds the back of my head, though he doesn’t try to shove me down. It just rests there, as if grounding him in the moment.
His eyes are turbulent storm clouds, his breathing labored, and I can’t deny the satisfaction creeping up my thighs at the realization that so little from effort me is unraveling him.
I move in again, bobbing my head in shorter, faster movements. My jaw starts to ache, and I go too deep at one point; the tip prods the back of my throat, and I immediately gag with him lodged there, cutting off my own air supply.
My toes tingle, and my pussy throbs like it’s being directly stimulated by his actions.
He emits a low groan. “That’s good, baby. Really fucking good.”
I ignore the shiver his praise sends over my clammy skin and move away, drool pooling out when I free my mouth. “You like me choking?”
“I love the desperation. Your desperation. Knowing you’re hot enough for me to gag on my dick makes me very happy.” He cups my cheek with his free hand, and I’m in enough of a haze from everything going on that I don’t reject the touch. “Open your mouth.”
“Why—”
Grabbing his cock, he bats me away. I settle both hands in my lap and bounce slightly, trying to regain feeling in my legs from my crouched position. Leo tugs at himself in brutal, rapid strokes, moving so fast that his fingers are almost a blur, even right before my eyes.
“Open, Stella.”
At the sound of my name, uttered with a broken whimper as crimson floods his cheeks, my lips part. I feel like one of Pavlov’s dogs, but I refuse to consider the implication of what that means for me and my hyper-independency.
Slut. I can almost hear Mamma uttering the word from wherever she’s being tortured in the afterlife.
But only the sounds of his harsh, stuttered breathing, a roaring noise between my ears, and his palm shuffling in slick thrusts fill the room. His noises drown out the maternal judgment, replacing it with something delicious.
I shift, rubbing my thighs together. If I could just reach under my dress, maybe I could?—
My heart beats a staccato rhythm in my chest, almost in time with his panting, and I’m so focused on the pure pleasure stretching across his handsome face that I barely notice when he starts to come.
The first thick, warm spurt hits my chin, and then he angles differently, aiming directly inside my mouth. Ropes of semen land on my tongue, and I cringe at the still-unfamiliar sensation. But I don’t close my lips and bar him access.
If anything, I lean into it, my face growing hot at the awestruck look in his eyes and the slack in his jaw.
Having his complete attention, his touch, feels too good to ignore.