Chapter 14 - Marco
The car ride from the compound feels like an eternity compressed into minutes.
Valentina sits beside me in the backseat, close enough that her perfume mingles with the leather and gun oil that clings to my suit.
Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin.
Three weeks and three days I’ve waited for this moment, and now that it’s here, the victory tastes like ash.
Tommy pulls into my private garage, and I dismiss him with a look.
The elevator requires my keycard, trapping us in the small space as it rises.
Valentina stands beside me, her dress still carrying traces of the morning's chaos: dust from her father's estate, a small tear at the hem from our escape.
Not blood, she'd cleaned herself after helping Ana, but the evidence of the day's violence clings to her anyway.
"Forty floors," she murmurs, watching the numbers climb. "Appropriate. Feels like ascending to judgment."
"Or descending to hell." My voice comes out rougher than intended.
She turns to look at me, and there's something in her expression I can't read. Not quite resignation, not quite anticipation. Something more complex that makes my chest tight.
The elevator reaches our floor, doors opening to reveal the penthouse bathed in late morning light.
She steps out first, heels clicking on marble deliberately.
I follow, watching the way her hips move beneath the simple clothes she threw on this morning for the rescue, the way her hand drifts to the pocket where she keeps her mother's rosary.
"I should change," she says, not looking back. "This shirt, these pants… they've been through too much today."
"Leave it." The words escape before I can stop them. "I want you exactly as you are."
She stops in the middle of the living room, shoulders tensing. When she turns, her chin lifts in that defiant way that's haunted my dreams. "Covered in the dust of my father's destruction? That's what does it for you?"
"No." I cross to her, unable to maintain distance any longer. "What does it for me is you. The woman who saved Ana and her baby. Who destroyed her father's empire with truth. Who chose to come home to me."
"I came home for Alice." But her voice wavers, betraying the lie.
"Did you?" I stop just out of reach, close enough to see her pulse jumping at her throat. "Or did you come home because your body already knows where it belongs?"
She backs up until she hits the window, forty floors of Chicago spread beneath us. The morning light turns her skin golden, highlights the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing quickens.
"I owe you a debt," she says, but her hands are already reaching for me. "That's all this is."
Her fingers find my jacket, pulling me closer until our bodies align.
The contact shoots straight to my cock, three weeks of wanting more crystallizing into pure need.
We've done things, God, the memory of her coming on my tongue still haunts me, but never everything.
Never what we both crave. But something's wrong.
This isn't how I imagined it. Not her surrendering out of obligation, not a transaction to clear a debt.
"Valentina…" I start, but she silences me with her mouth.
The kiss explodes through me like wildfire.
Her lips are soft but demanding, her tongue sliding against mine with a hunger that matches my own.
She tastes like orange juice and coffee, like victory and defeat mixed together.
Her hands tangle in my hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and the pain only makes me harder.
I press her against the glass, my hands finding her waist, feeling the heat of her through the thin fabric.
She moans into my mouth, the sound shooting straight to my cock.
Three weeks of sleeping beside her, breathing her scent, that one night of tasting her, and now she's finally in my arms, kissing me like she'll die if she stops.
But it's not enough. Not like this.
I pull back, breathing hard. "Stop."
Her eyes fly open, pupils blown wide with desire. "What?"
"Not like this." The words physically hurt to say. "Not because you owe me. Not as payment for saving Alice."
She stares at me like I've lost my mind. Maybe I have. Marco Rosetti, turning down what he's wanted for weeks. But I want her to want this. Want her to choose me, not the debt.
"Are you serious?" Her voice rises, color flooding her cheeks. "Three weeks of torture, of making me sleep beside you, of these games, and now you don't want me?"
"I want you more than I want to breathe." My hands grip her waist tighter. "But not as a transaction. When I fuck you, principessa, it'll be because you're begging for it. Because you need my cock more than your next heartbeat. Not because you think you owe me."
"You arrogant bastard." She shoves at my chest, but I don't move. "You think I don't want this? After what we did that first week?"
"That was different. That was me proving a point."
"Fuck you." The words are venomous. "You steal me from my wedding, force me to marry you at gunpoint, make me come on your tongue until I screamed, and now you develop a conscience?"
She's right. The hypocrisy burns, but I can't shake the feeling that taking her now would break something between us that's just starting to grow.
"When you come to my bed for more than my mouth," I say, stepping back, giving her space, "it'll be because you choose to. Not because…"
Her hand cracks across my face, the slap echoing through the penthouse. "Don't you dare tell me what I choose."
I touch my jaw where she struck me, taste copper where my teeth cut my cheek. Any other person would be dead for that. But looking at her now, fury and arousal warring in her eyes, I just want her more.
"I'm done with your games," she says, voice deadly quiet. "Done pretending I don't feel this." She gestures between us. "Done fighting what my body wants."
"Valentina…"
"Shut up." She drops to her knees.
The sight stops my heart. Valentina Rosetti on her knees before me, looking up with those dark eyes full of challenge, glinting with furious gold. Her hands go to my belt, movements sure despite the tremor in her fingers.
"Stop," I manage, but my voice lacks conviction.
"No." She works my belt open, then my zipper. "You want me to beg? Want me to choose? Fine. I choose this. I choose to take what I've wanted since you pressed that gun to my head and made me yours."
She stares up at me from where she kneels, daring me to flinch, the golden specks in her dark eyes catching the early light pouring through the windows.
My chest seizes, seized in some mixture of panic and awe.
I’ve seen men kneel before me, forced to do it, broken and bleeding, but this…
this is Valentina on her knees because she chooses to be—not for surrender, but as an act of war.
She undoes my belt with a single smooth motion.
Her hands are steady, almost businesslike, not the fumbling mess of lust or fear.
It’s almost clinical, the way she opens my pants and reaches in, and when her hand closes around my cock, everything in me goes bright white and shatters.
I suck in a breath so sharp my throat burns.
“Valentina…” Her name leaves my mouth like it’s the last good thing in the world.
She tilts her head, still holding my gaze.
“I said shut up.” Her voice is lower now, thick with something that sounds like old anger, or maybe hunger.
“You want me to beg? Is that the game now? You want me to kneel and say please, Marco? You want me to admit I want you?” She strokes me with long, even pulls, her grip sure, and I almost fold right there.
All the words I could say die in my mouth.
The only things left are the sounds she pulls out of me: a strangled moan; a laugh that’s half a sob.
Three weeks of sleeping beside her, and every night I’d wake up with my cock so hard it hurt, my skin tight with wanting.
Three weeks of her eyes on me at breakfast, of her anger, her clever tongue, her defiance.
I thought I could break her. I thought I could wait her out. Now she’s breaking me instead.
“You made me want you,” she says, each word sharp as a blade. “You made me wet every night. You made me touch myself with you in the next room, and you knew. Didn’t you?” She leans in, her breath hot on my skin. “You made me come on your tongue then walked away. Now it's your turn."
She starts with her tongue, a slow, deliberate flick across the head of my cock like a threat more than a promise.
I’m so hard it hurts, and the heat of her mouth when she finally slides her lips over the tip makes me dizzy.
She sucks, just once, deep and greedy, and I have to plant my hand on the glass behind her to keep from collapsing.
There’s no embarrassment in her—she’s not blushing, not avoiding my eyes.
She looks up at me, daring me to break, and her gaze is steady, hungry, almost unbearably intense.
Her mouth is so fucking tight, the suction perfect, the wet heat of her tongue swirling around the ridge and then flattening beneath me as she takes me deeper, inch by inch, until I hit the back of her throat.
She doesn’t gag. She just breathes through her nose, her dark lashes fluttering as she adjusts, and for a split second, I feel that old urge to conquer, to force myself all the way in.
But she’s already in control; she always is.
Whatever game I thought I was playing, she’s rewritten the rules.
She pulls back, lets me slide out just enough that the air hits the hypersensitive skin, then descends again, this time swallowing me whole.
Her hand wraps around the base, squeezing in rhythm with her mouth, the pressure perfectly calculated to drive me mad without ever letting me come.
She’s studied me, even if she pretends not to care—she knows exactly how to touch, how to tease, how to hold me at the edge.
I watch the way her lips stretch around me, the glitter of spit on her mouth, the line of her jaw clenching with determination.
Every movement is precise, practiced, not desperate or clumsy, and the effect is devastating.
I want to sink my hands into her hair and fuck her face until I explode, but I can’t bring myself to ruin the pride in her eyes, the satisfaction she gets from making me helpless.
Instead, I just clutch at her scalp, not guiding, only holding on for survival.
“God, Valentina,” I groan, the words raw, torn out of somewhere deep and unguarded. “You’re going to kill me.”
She smirks, the motion sending a ripple of pleasure up my spine, and then she starts humming—just a low, mocking sound in her chest, and the vibration makes my knees threaten to buckle for real.
She stares up at me, unblinking, as her free hand slides up my thigh to cup my balls, rolling them with just enough pressure to make my vision spark at the edges.
She’s not gentle. She’s not cruel, either, but she’s relentless—never easing up, never letting me get my bearings.
Every time I think she’ll slow down, give me a chance to breathe, she doubles down, sucking harder, pulling me deeper.
I realize, in some distant, rational corner of my mind, that I’m sweating, that my heart is pounding out of control, that if I don’t focus every fiber of my willpower I’ll embarrass myself right here and now.
It would be worth it, just to see her triumph.
She withdraws, lips popping off the tip, and I almost cry out at the loss.
She strokes me with one hand, her other still cradling me, her eyes never leaving mine.
“You wanted me to beg,” she whispers, the words low and hoarse.
“You wanted me to admit I needed you.” Her tongue darts out, tasting the precum smeared across the head.
“Here you are, Marco. Begging. Needing me.”
I can’t breathe. Every muscle in my body is locked, and I feel wild, desperate, totally lost. “Fuck, principessa—”
She hushes me with a shake of her head and dives back down, bobbing her head now, fast and ruthless, the wet slap of her mouth obscene in the sunlit penthouse.
My hips jerk, involuntary, and finally I let myself thrust, just a little, just enough to feel the rigid line of her teeth against the soft skin, the way she opens wider to take me deeper.
She moans, and the sound drives me up and over the brink.
The sight of her, my stolen bride, my reluctant wife, choosing to worship my cock with her perfect mouth, breaks something in me. All the control I pride myself on shatters as she hollows her cheeks, sucking harder.
I’m right there, seconds from coming, and I try to warn her, but she digs her nails into my thigh and locks eyes with me, daring me to finish, to lose control in her mouth.
And I do. I come with a shout, exploding down her throat, my vision white-hot as she swallows, never breaking eye contact, never slowing until I’m wrung dry and shaking.
She lets me go with a final, gentle suck, then sits back on her heels, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She’s flushed, her hair wild, her mouth swollen and red, and she looks like a fucking goddess. Like victory and defeat at the same time.