Chapter 8 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
The guy under me is panting like this means something. That breathy, high-pitched kind of desperation that always comes when they think they’re special. His fingers are clawing at my back like he’s trying to drag me closer, but I’m already drifting.
My body’s here. My head? Not even close.
I thrust my hips just to make him gasp again, but the sound doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. It doesn’t make me feel wanted or powerful. He says my name all needy and sweet, and that’s when I realize I’m officially bored.
“Get out,” I mutter, pulling back and untangling from him.
He blinks, confused and still hard. “W-what?”
“I said get out,” I repeat, slower this time as I push off the bed. “We’re done.”
“But you didn’t—”
“No,” I cut in, grabbing my shirt off the floor, “I didn’t. Because I got bored.”
He sits up, flustered, cheeks red and lip bruised, probably already thinking of what to say to his friends when they ask how it went with Dragovich. He’ll lie; they always do. Pretend it was intense, pretend it mattered, pretend I didn’t leave halfway through with a hard-on and a headache.
He mumbles something as he starts collecting his clothes, but I’m not listening. My mind’s already gone.
To fucking Vieri.
Because it hit me somewhere between the second thrust and the fourth sigh—this guy could’ve begged in Italian, bitten my throat, cried for it, and it still wouldn’t have felt as good as the way Vincenzo keeps glaring at me.
He’s trying so hard to hate me with dignity, and I want to set fire to every scrap of it.
The door clicks shut behind my unfinished distraction, and I slip off the condom, then light a cigarette just to fill the space. The smoke doesn’t taste like anything tonight. Nothing does, not really.
None of them are exciting. Not the ones who sneak into my room after curfew, not the ones who want the thrill of saying they touched a Dragovich, not the ones who beg to be used like it’ll earn them favor with my cousins or my name.
They’re all easy. And I’ve never been good at caring about what’s easy.
It’s not that I’m insatiable; I know how to take what I want. But lately, nothing sticks, and no one burns. Their hands are all the same, their mouths forgettable. And even when I’m inside them, I’m not here. My mind keeps sliding elsewhere.
To the way Vincenzo looked at me in the ring last night. To the heat in his hands when he pinned me down, and the way his breath shook like he hated himself for enjoying it.
He’s everything I was taught to hate. Everything I should hate.
And yet, I can’t stop watching him.
Not only because I’m supposed to kill him—though that mission is always burning in the back of my skull—but also because he’s the only thing in this place that moves me. The only one who makes me think that if I bite down hard enough, he might finally bleed the way I need.
His glares feel better than orgasms. His silence is addictive. His smirk? That sharp, slanted curve of contempt that he throws over his shoulder like a curse? I think about it more than I should. I replay the way his lips pull tight, the way his tongue swipes over the corner of his lips.
And the way he looks at me, really looks at me, when he thinks I’m not watching? That’s not hate; that’s curiosity dressed in fury.
I saw it. I fucking felt it. His whole body burned with restraint so fierce it nearly singed my skin. He wanted—but he didn’t dare. And that kind of control, that shame-coiled restraint, is intoxicating.
I know his type. I’ve known them my whole life. Men who dress like saints and bleed like sinners. Who sit on thrones built on tradition and act like it’s honor that keeps their hands clean when it’s really fear. Fear of scandal, fear of blood, fear of what they’d see in themselves if they gave in.
Fear of what one man could ignite in another.
The Cosa Nostra doesn’t make space for men like me.
My kind of want is a death sentence in their world, and if Vincenzo Vieri is anything, it’s a perfect soldier of their archaic rules.
He doesn’t just carry his family’s name, he’s married to it.
Bound in rings of duty, silenced with stitched mouths, and haunted by the fact that desire for another man would unravel everything his father built.
And yet… he looked. Not just once, not like a flinch or a mistake. It was curiosity. It was hunger, even if he didn’t understand it. Which means it’s mine to feed.
Temptation’s what I do best. I was raised in the art of indulgence, taught to seduce, to manipulate, and to crawl inside minds like a virus and take root. And Vincenzo’s mind is a damn cathedral—tall walls, locked doors, and stained glass morals.
I want to fucking shatter it.
I stand, stretching out the stiffness in my arms, then yank on a clean black shirt, just loose enough to ride up if I move the right way. My joggers hang low, waistband slung carelessly. I towel the sweat from my neck, finger-brush my hair back, and grin at my reflection.
I know where he is, and where I’m going.
The gym.
He goes there when he’s angry, which lately means he practically lives there. And what better place to press a man already half-cracked than the one place he thinks he’s safe from temptation?
The walk to the gym is quiet, but my blood is loud. It hums with anticipation and the kind of pulse that only exists when I’m about to do something reckless.
I slide my keycard through the panel, let the door unlock, and step inside. The gym is dark in some places, lit in others. Half the overheads are dimmed for late-night sessions, but the ring is glowing, a spotlight humming above it like a stage light.
He’s here, of course. Shirtless again, because god forbid the Prince of the East Wing show restraint.
That fucking dragon tattoo on his back is the first thing I see.
Not just any ink—no, his is art soaked in legacy and violence.
The wings flare out over his shoulder blades, inked in vicious black that bleeds down into the serpentine coils that consume his entire back.
A dragon devouring itself, etched in the kind of detail only old money and older scars can afford.
Crossing my arms, I lean against the far wall and watch. He doesn’t see me at first; he’s too focused. Too consumed.
I admire the way his muscles move beneath his skin, the line of his jaw clenched tight, mouth slightly parted from exertion.
Sweat rolls down his tattooed spine in slow rivulets that glisten beneath the overhead lights, catching in the crease of his shoulders, dripping lower—right past that numbered tattoo inked under his ribs.
12.04.07.29.
I don’t know what it means, and it bothers me more than it should. I want to know what gets past the armor and what makes him need to ink permanence into his body with such veneration.
Every time he pivots, the cords in his arms flex, pulling the shadows tighter over that impossibly tanned skin—the kind that speaks of Sicilian blood and Mediterranean summers.
Golden and violent. A statue sculpted in heat and pressure, all sun-baked arrogance and lethal discipline. Even his fucking skin looks like a threat. I want to run my hand down it just to see if he shivers.
I don’t want to want it; I want to ruin it.
He keeps moving, footwork tight, like he’s punishing the floor for not collapsing under him. His hair’s damp, curls sticking to his temples. He’s drenched in effort, fury stitched into every inhale, every strike, every second he doesn’t see me.
I don’t know what I want more—his destruction or his attention.
I move into his periphery. Let him feel me first. Then I walk barefoot against the mat-lined floor until I’m leaning against the edge of the ring.
He doesn’t stop, but his rhythm stutters.
I grin before I finally make a sound. Just a breath—louder than necessary, careless on purpose.
His head snaps toward me, and there it is.
That fucking glare. The one that slices. The one that says he’d rather tear off his own jaw than let my name rest on his tongue. The one that gets my cock throbbing.
The bag hanging from the ceiling sways slightly behind him. “You hit that bag like it owes you an apology,” I say, stepping closer, amused. “Rough day, golden boy?”
His jaw tightens. “What the fuck do you want, Dragovich?”
“I was bored,” I say simply, trailing my gaze down his torso, slow and unashamed. “Thought I’d come find something worth watching.”
He doesn’t flinch, but I catch the pulse at his throat. It kicks; that barely-there flicker. The tell he doesn’t know he’s giving me. “Shouldn’t you be sucking someone else off by now?”
“Already did,” I answer, stepping forward. “Didn’t scratch the itch.”
He turns away, grabs a towel, wipes the sweat from his neck and chest. “Then get tested.”
I grin. “Aw. Concerned about me, Prince?”
“I’m concerned about sanitation. You bring filth into every room you enter.”
“Yet you keep letting me in.”
His chest glistens under the light, the sheen of sweat trailing down his pecs, sliding across his abs. I look on purpose, just to watch his reaction. His fingers curl around the edge of the towel like he wants to snap it across my face.
“You always come here to jerk off in the shadows?” he asks coldly. “Is voyeurism just your pathetic idea of foreplay?”
The way he says foreplay makes my blood burn. He’s not careful enough. Not with that voice, not with the edge on it.
“I prefer actual foreplay,” I say, taking one more step into his space. “But watching you drip in sweat and control? That’s almost better.”
His eyes flick down—barely. A split second, but I catch it. Then he climbs through the ropes and comes right up to me. Bare chest inches from mine. Sweat still clinging to him, breath still quick from training, but his eyes are murder.
“Keep pushing me,” he whispers, “and I will end you.”
I groan like a whore. “You could try, but you’d have to touch me first.”
His nostrils flare, his hands flex at his sides. And his eyes drag down to my mouth, and I can feel him imagining what it would cost him to shut me up with a kiss instead of a bullet. He hates me; that much is obvious.
But hate is a fucking slippery thing when it’s soaked in curiosity.
“You want me to admit it?” I ask, leaning closer, just enough to let our mouths share breath.
“Fine. I like watching you struggle. I like the way your hands twitch when I walk past. I like knowing you’d rather die than look at me the way you did in that ring.
But you did, Vincenzo. You looked, and I saw what it cost you. ”
He stands there like he’s deciding whether to kill me or kiss me—and I fucking live for that indecision.
“You saw nothing,” he grits out. “You want this to be something it’s not because that’s how you survive. You build games out of other people’s limits and act shocked when someone finally fucking snaps.”
I breathe him in. Sweat, leather, the subtle scent of his cologne under it all. My stomach clenches and my cock’s already halfway hard. He hates me, and I want him anyway. I want him especially because of that hate.
“I’m not playing,” I say, and it’s not a tease this time. It’s true, and we both feel it. “Not with you.”
“You think obsession makes you honest?” he snaps. “You think crawling around my edges like a fucking parasite won’t get your face fucked up?”
I can smell the salt on his skin, and it sends a shiver up my spine. “I don’t need your fists,” I murmur. “Not when your eyes already fuck me every time I walk into a room—”
He lunges before I finish the sentence.
It’s not violent or even fast. It’s just one hand slamming into my chest, and pushing me hard against the gym wall.
The other comes up, fisting the front of my shirt in that same elegant rage he carries in his bloodline, like even his violence was taught in a finishing school.
My breath stutters, but I don’t break eye contact.
“There it is,” I whisper, grinning wide, chest pinned tight under his grip.
“You’re poison,” he growls. “Fucking venom.”
“Then take the whole dose and choke on it.”
He laughs. It’s dry, cracked open by too many sleepless nights and too much weight on his shoulders. “You’re disgusting, Nikolaj,” he breathes.
“You’re leaking for disgusting,” I whisper, tone slipping into filth.
“You want to see how much worse I can be? Because I’ll drop to my knees right now, suck you through the fucking hate, let you fuck my throat until you’re drunk on it.
I’ll gag on your cock and thank you for the privilege. Is that what you want, your Majesty?”
His nostrils flare at my audacity, then he takes a step back. “Get out.”
I moan, low and slow, letting it slide down his spine like poison. “Say please.”
“Out. Now.”
But he doesn’t move or back away, because right now, in this moment, with his skin flushed gold, sweat glistening down his abs, and his heart thudding against ribs carved by legacy and guilt—he doesn’t want me gone.
He wants me burned out of him. And I plan to make that very, very difficult.
I tap his chest twice, right over where his heart should be. “Next time you pin me down, try doing it because you want to,” I say, my voice low. “Not because you think it’ll shut me up.”
Then I leave, because that’s how you own a man like Vincenzo Vieri.
You don’t need to fuck him.
You just need to make him want it.