Chapter 19 Vincenzo #2
He pulls back to whisper, “Say my fucking name, Prince.”
My hand curls tighter in his hair. I yank his head back, baring his throat, and murmur against the skin there—voice guttural and filthy. “Nikolaj.”
His whole body shudders, and just for a second, just for a breath, I see it: the crack in his mask.
Then he’s kissing me again—harder, hungrier, more desperate than I’ve ever seen him. And I let him. I take it, I give it, I meet him there in the ruin. Because this isn’t power or even strategy.
This is fucking war.
But he gets cocky. For all his noise and fire, he’s predictable in one way: he always loses focus the second he thinks he’s winning.
I move before I can stop myself. A sharp twist of my hips, my thigh knocking him off balance.
My arm comes up hard beneath his ribs, flipping him off me and onto his back.
He grunts, surprised, but not helpless—not fucking close.
He laughs as he hits the mattress, and before he can roll away, I’m already straddling him, my hand catching his wrist, pinning it down above his head.
The blade he brought clatters to the floor and skids across the room.
Now he’s exactly where he belongs: beneath me.
His breath hitches, but he doesn’t fight me. Not really. He lies there under me, grinning like he wanted this. Like he fucking planned it.
I lean in slowly, closing the distance until my mouth brushes the edge of his jaw. “You forget your place, Dragovich.”
“Pretty sure I’m exactly where I want to be,” he rasps, eyes flicking up to mine with that familiar brand of chaos. “Under you, cock hard as fuck.”
I ignore the throb in my groin, the way those words hit too easily. I let them hang in the air like bait and lean in closer, my mouth brushing the shell of his ear.
“Stray dogs don’t get to mount kings,” I say, letting the words drip with venom and control. “They get dragged back to the dirt and reminded why they crawl.”
He laughs—it’s guttural and drenched in something that sounds like both hate and hunger. He throws his head back on the pillow and grins like I just handed him exactly what he wanted.
“Oh, is that what this is?” he pants, his chest rising hard against mine. “You trying to convince yourself you’re not dying to be the one beneath me?”
My grip tightens. He catches it and smirks wider.
“I’ve seen how you look at me, Vieri. You think I don’t notice?
That tight little jaw of yours clenching every time I walk past. The way your fists curl when I touch someone else.
” He chuckles darkly, then lifts his head to whisper against my throat, “You’ve been wanting to kneel for this stray dog since the supply closet. ”
My spine goes rigid, and he grins.
“I know you heard the way that mercenary moaned for me,” he hums like he’s savoring it. “You couldn’t stop thinking about it, could you? I fucked his mouth so hard, he couldn’t speak for two days after. You know what I pictured the whole time?”
I grit my teeth. “Shut your mouth.”
“Your face,” he says, eyes gleaming. “Your fucking face staring up at me while I came down his throat.”
I slam his wrists harder into the bed, grinding down again, this time with enough force to pull a needy sound from deep in his chest. He shudders under me, but he doesn’t stop.
“That night,” he says, breath hitching, “you went back to your room and jerked off thinking about me, didn’t you?”
“I said shut up.”
“You probably imagined it was you on your knees, hands behind your back, waiting for me to decide if I’d touch you.
Or maybe—” he licks his lips, grinning like a devil who already knows he’s won, “—maybe you imagined me crawling for you, begging you to use my holes, all broken and just for you, my Prince.”
I grab his chin and lower my face until our foreheads touch, until our noses brush, until he has nowhere else to look but at me.
“You think because I haven’t touched you, it means I’m weak?” I murmur. “You think because I walked away, you won? You don’t know what restraint costs me, Nikolaj.”
He swallows hard, and I drag my mouth across his, just once, not a kiss—just enough pressure to make his breath catch. My voice is all teeth when I speak again. “You want the truth?”
He doesn’t answer, but I give it anyway.
“I’ve thought about breaking you, but not with fists or threats.
But like this, with my body pinning yours.
With my hands dragging pleasure out of you until you’re crying for it.
I’ve thought about fucking the hate out of you.
About making you come so hard you forget why you hate me in the first place. ”
“Fuck,” he groans, eyes fluttering shut, and for the first time tonight, he doesn’t have a comeback. Just a broken little laugh that fades into a moan when I grind down again, slow and punishing.
His eyes open and find mine, lit with that reckless Dragovich fire, that try me, break me, own me look that makes it so fucking hard to keep my spine straight and my self-control tighter than a noose.
The corner of his mouth twitches as if to pull into a smirk, so I punch him hard enough to erase it. His head snaps to the side, hair fanning across the pillow, and I stare down at him. There’s no satisfaction in the blow—no release. I feel even more wound up now than I did seconds ago.
He licks his lip where fresh blood wells. “Feel better?”
No.
But I don’t say it. I don’t fucking breathe it.
This isn’t supposed to happen. He’s the enemy.
A Dragovich. The Bloody Prince, the Rogue Heir, the boy who was raised to put a bullet in my spine and dance on my grave.
There is no room for attraction here. No place for temptation.
Only hate, legacy, and the fucking war between us.
“You think we match now that you’ve marked me back? Fine. But if you think that earns you something, you don’t know me at all,” I whisper, my voice cracked. “I think I need to remind you why I’ll be King.”
My mouth crushes into his with a violence that startles even me—sharp teeth and bruised lips, and the kind of need that doesn’t ask for permission. His hands strain against my grip, but I don’t let go, keeping him pinned beneath me as I devour him, forcing my control into the seams of his defiance.
I taste metal, anger, and the unholy truth of everything I’ve been denying since the day he walked into Vintermoor like a blade searching for its sheath.
He slips a hand out of my grasp and fists it in my hair, pulling hard enough to sting.
The pain reminds me that this isn’t surrender—it’s war with a different kind of weapon.
His hips buck beneath mine, his thigh pushing up against my groin, and I let out a growl against his mouth that’s equal parts fury and need.
When I pull back, we're both leaking red—his split lip and my neck. We’re both panting, our chests rising and falling like we’ve gone ten rounds in the ring.
“I’m going to kill you one day,” he whispers.
I nod, dragging my thumb down his cheek. “Not before I make you kneel.”
He grins again, that fucking devil’s grin that makes everything in my chest twist. We breathe and bleed in tandem.
I want to hit him again. I want to kiss him again.
But I do neither and lean in close again. “I don’t kneel, Nikolaj,” I whisper, lips brushing his ear, “but I’ll drag you to your knees over and over until your legs give out, and then I’ll keep going.”
His mouth parts on a gasp, and I let go of his wrist, but he doesn’t move. I climb off him like I’m doing him a favor. I grab my robe, smooth my hair, step over the knife he dropped, and walk toward the door without looking back.
“Lock it on your way out,” I say.
And then I’m gone.