Chapter 26 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
It takes three days for Nikolaj to come collect on his kill.
Three days of tension coiled so tight it leaves splinters. Of silent stares that scream louder than threats. Of pretending I don’t feel his rage crawling across the simulation field like it has a spine of its own. It stalks me—he stalks me—with that feral stillness he wears like a second skin.
Then comes the library.
It’s four in the goddamn morning. That liminal hour before the world decides to start breathing again, when everything still smells like secrets and regret. I come for strategy, solitude, and space to think.
I should’ve known better. The moment I turn the aisle near the north stacks, I feel the way the air goes still, thick like the eye of a storm… and then he’s there.
He slams me against the shelves so hard that a row of books spills above us. His hand clamps around my throat without hesitation, the pressure immediate, cruel, controlled. His other hand fists into the collar of my shirt and rips, and my breath is caught somewhere between a curse and a laugh.
“Merda,” I gasp, spine bowing under the pressure, caught between the shelves and his rage.
He doesn’t say anything, he just stares. And fuck, I wish he didn’t. His eyes aren’t blank; they’re vicious as murder lives in his gaze. He looks like the kind of nightmare you’d kill to survive and kiss just to taste your own destruction.
“You really want to die, don’t you?” His voice is a low rasp, barely audible, dangerous in how quiet it is.
I can’t help but smile. “You’re three days late. Too busy playing with your other toys?”
His grip tightens—not enough to cut off my breath completely, but enough to make my vision pulse around the edges. Enough to make the blood in my ears rush louder than his voice.
“I should put a Beretta down your throat for what you’ve done to me,” he says, like he’s stating the weather. “Just fuck that pretty mouth full of bullets and see which one breaks first—your teeth or your pride.”
“But you won’t,” I chuckle, daring him anyway. “If you kill me, who else will make your fists itch? Who will you spend your sleepless nights thinking about?”
“You’re a fucking parasite,” he whispers, his words thick with contempt.
“Still feeding off you, then,” I smile, breath ragged. “And you let me.”
His eyes flick to my mouth, then back up.
He looks like he wants to break my jaw and kiss me in the same breath, but then he wedges his thigh between mine, slamming me harder into the shelf.
The impact rattles every bone in my back.
His chest presses into mine—warm, solid, wrong.
His mouth hovers just above mine, lips parted, breath slow and hateful.
“You talk a lot for someone whose mouth was made to be gagged,” he mutters, tone like poison. “I could ruin your throat and leave you dripping cum and humiliation for the next poor bastard who finds you, since you think this is a fucking game.”
“It was always a game,” I hiss, my grin sharpened by bloodlust. “You’re just pissed I finally figured out how to win—”
His mouth crashes into mine before I finish the last word, teeth biting down on my lower lip, hard enough to split skin. I taste blood and fury and the thing that’s been coiling in both of us since the first time we touched and pretended it didn’t matter.
His mouth is wild, angry, frantic. It’s not about hunger; it’s about punishment. He kisses me like he wants to make sure I taste this every time I think of anyone else.
I respond with equal violence.
I bite his lip hard enough to split it. He groans, the sound ripped from his throat as if it hurts to let it out.
My hands slide down to his waist and dig in, nails scraping flesh through fabric.
His thigh presses up against me harder, and his fingers slip from my throat into my hair, exposing my jaw so he can mouth at it, sucking hard enough to bruise.
“Tell me this wasn’t what you were begging for the entire time,” he snarls against my jaw, his mouth trailing down to my throat again. “Tell me you didn’t wear that smug little smirk to bait me. You get off on how much you loathe me.”
I’m breathless and fucking drunk on him. “This is what we are,” I whisper. “Poison in a shared glass.”
“You always were more poetry than power,” he murmurs. “You wear defiance like a costume, but your body? Your body was made to surrender to me.”
I slip my hand up into his hair and pull hard. “I hope you choke on your delusions, Nikolaj. I’d rather die than be yours.”
He grins. “You’ve been mine since the first time I knocked you on your ass and you moaned.”
“Fuck you,” I breathe.
His thigh grinds up between mine again, and this time, I can’t swallow the gasp. “You’d like that too much, Little Prince.”
His mouth is back on mine before I can curse him again—lips dragging over the blood he left there, pulling more from mine in return. I slam my palms into his chest to break the kiss and push him away, but he doesn’t let me.
His hands press into my shoulders, fingers bruising. He straddles the line between breaking me and claiming me, and I hate him more than I’ve hated anything in my life.
And God help me—I can’t stop kissing him.
He kisses me back like he’s trying to bury a body. Like if he fucks my mouth hard enough with his tongue, he can silence the thing between us. Blood smears between our mouths, down my chin, over his jaw. I don’t know whose it is anymore. I don’t care.
I claw at his back, pulling him down harder, his hips pressing into mine like punishment. Every kiss tastes like revenge, every touch a threat. If this were love, it would be soft. If this were hate, it would be distant. But this is obsession, and obsession doesn’t care if it ends in blood.
His hips grind down into mine, clothed and brutal, no rhythm—just punishment. Heat sparks where we connect, friction catching like a lit match in a drought. I hiss through clenched teeth and push back harder, bodies locked, cocks pressed thick and aching between fabric and fury.
We’re rubbing against each other like animals, caged, rabid and feral with want.
His mouth stays on mine, all teeth and spit, stealing my air like it belongs to him.
Each drag of his hips sends electricity down my spine, my back arching off the shelf with a low, broken sound I don’t recognize as mine until he snarls against my jaw.
“God, listen to you.” His voice is breathless, lips dragging down to my throat. “Rubbing against me like a fucking bitch in heat.”
“Fuck you,” I grit out again, grinding up once more because I need it. Because my cock’s already soaking the inside of my briefs, and I hate that he knows.
“You’re doing that all by yourself, Vincenzo.” He rolls his hips again, slow, precise, just to make me choke on air. “So desperate. So filthy. Is this all it takes?”
He ruts down harder, cock pressed thick and solid through the layers between us—slacks and briefs, rough friction and zero give. My hands claw at the back of his hoodie, yanking him down until our foreheads slam together and we’re breathing the same ragged air.
“You think you’re in control? You’re fucking grinding on me like the dog you are.”
“I’m proving a point.” He rocks forward again, his breath stuttering just enough to show me he’s not immune. “That you’ll come in your pants for this fucking dog without a single inch of skin.”
My back slams against the metal shelving with enough force to rattle the frame and send another avalanche of books crashing to the floor.
I don’t flinch. I can’t. Not with the way Nikolaj’s thigh is wedged between mine, and his breath is scorched into my throat like a brand I’ll never get rid of.
His mouth is still on mine, wet and red, teeth sharp enough to make me bleed again if I speak the wrong syllable.
But fuck silence. I never learned how to be quiet around him.
“You want to fuck me or kill me?” I rasp against his lips. “Pick one before I make the decision for you.”
He grins like I just dared him to drag me to hell and leave me smiling.
“You still think this is about you,” he whispers, and his voice is colder now. Almost clinical. “Like your name is enough to keep me from doing what needs to be done.”
His hand drops from my throat, but the absence burns worse than the grip. I know what’s coming before I see it. I know that shoulder twitch, the way his jaw tightens like he’s swallowing something metallic and sharp. I move first.
My fingers wrap around the grip at the back of my waistband. I slide the safety off in one motion, the cold weight of my Glock grounding me even as my heartbeat spikes.
He’s already moving, mirroring me, pulling the Makarov from the inside of his jeans like he’s done this before. Like we have done this before. Like this is just the next step in whatever sick waltz we’ve been dancing in since the day we met.
His gun presses beneath my jaw at the same moment mine kisses the side of his throat.
A standstill. Two heartbeats. Two weapons. A trigger’s breadth away from carnage.
His grin just widens.
Fucking psycho.
“This is where we always end up,” he says. “We were always a slow-motion bullet.”
“You pull, I pull,” I grit out. “Let’s see which kingdom burns faster.”
His finger strokes the trigger. Not pressure—just a tease. The same way his mouth does. The same way his words always do.
“Go on, Prince,” he whispers, eyes flicking down to my lips before dragging back up. “Pull it. You know you want to.”
And that’s it. That’s the fucking matchstick to the powder keg.
We drop the guns at the same time, and the second the metal clatters against concrete, we’re on each other.
There’s no restraint, no slow build—just violence masquerading as want, as need, as starvation.
He slams me harder into the shelves, and I drag him down by the front of his hoodie, crashing our mouths together with enough force to bruise.