Chapter 31 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The moment the high breaks, it’s like my body remembers how to breathe again—but my mind won’t let me.
I lie there for a second, completely still, feeling the sweat cooling on my skin, the mess between my thighs, the raw burn of being undone.
Nikolaj is behind me, warm and quiet, his hand still resting at my waist like he doesn’t want to let go, like he thinks if he does, I’ll vanish.
He’s not wrong.
Something inside me is unraveling, and it’s not just from what we did. It’s from what it meant. From the goddamn truth of it.
I shift slightly, and the sensation of him still on my skin—in my skin—makes me jerk forward like I’ve been branded. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. It feels wrong. All of it feels wrong.
Not the act.
Me.
I sit up too fast. My chest tightens, my breath stutters, and I feel like I’ve just stepped out of my own body and walked into someone else’s skin.
My hands run through my hair, tugging, scratching, trying to ground myself, but I can’t find anything solid.
Not in this bed. Not in this room. Not in myself.
“Vincenzo,” Nikolaj says behind me, his voice still hoarse. “Don’t.”
“I need air.” I don’t look at him. I can’t.
If I look at him, I’ll see it—what I let him take.
What I gave him. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, ignoring the ache he left and trying to focus on the floor.
On the way, the moonlight cuts across the rug as if illuminating everything I’d rather ignore.
On the fact that I’m still here. That I did this.
“Don’t run from it,” he says, sitting up behind me, and I can already hear the shift in his voice—more alert now, more guarded. “You knew this would change everything.”
I bark out a laugh, dry and cracked. “Yeah, well, I didn’t think it would fucking feel like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m coming undone.” My voice shakes despite how hard I grit my teeth. “Like I can’t fucking breathe.”
He’s quiet for a second, and I know he’s trying to choose his next words carefully because one wrong move will shatter me more than I already am. I hate that he knows me this well. I hate that I let him in far enough to see this.
“You’re not broken, Enzo,” he says finally, and I flinch at the softness in his tone. At the truth he layers into that nickname. “You’re just not used to being touched without a knife in your hand.”
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. His voice is everywhere. His fingerprints are still on my skin. His cum is still inside me, and fuck—just the thought makes something wild and helpless rise in my throat.
I stand. My legs are unsteady, but I need to move, need to get away, even if it’s just across the room.
I grab my pants off the floor, but my hands are shaking too badly to pull them on.
I manage to shove one leg through before I give up and drop them, bracing myself against the edge of the desk instead.
My breathing’s gone shallow again, and his cum slipping down my inner thigh proves what just happened wasn’t a dream.
“I can’t be this,” I whisper. “I wasn’t supposed to be this.”
“You weren’t supposed to be what?” He rises from the bed slowly, careful not to touch me. “A man who wants another man? A crown who wanted his enemy? What, Vincenzo? Say it.”
“I can’t,” I snap, spinning on him. “Don’t you get it?
You—this—it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was never supposed to want a man, let alone my fucking enemy.
” My chest rises and falls, fast and tight.
“I’m supposed to marry some porcelain doll with family connections and dead eyes and pretend I’m in love while I build an empire soaked in blood and tradition. That’s what I was bred for.”
“And yet, here you are,” he says quietly.
“Shut up.”
“You let me touch you.”
My breath stutters. “Don’t—”
“You begged me for it.”
“Stop.”
“You let me have you, Vincenzo. You wanted me to.”
“I didn’t want to!” I growl, storming back toward him, fists clenched. “I didn’t plan it, didn’t ask for this. I fought you every step of the way—”
“Then why are you still shaking?” he says, his voice too calm. Too fucking steady.
I stop dead in my tracks.
“Why are you trembling like your body still hasn’t recovered from the way I split you open? Why does your voice break every time you say my name?” His eyes narrow. “You can lie to yourself, but your body doesn’t lie.”
I stumble back like he hit me. My legs knock against the chair, and I collapse into it, elbows on my knees, hands cradling my head.
“I was never supposed to want you,” I say, the tone of my voice raw and ugly. “You’re him. You’re the reason everything’s been burning since the day I stepped foot in Vintermoor. You’re the problem. And now…” My stomach twists violently. “Now you’re in my fucking blood and I don’t want you out.”
Nikolaj kneels in front of me, silent for a moment. “You know what the worst part is?” he murmurs.
I look up, jaw clenched.
“You think this is your shame to carry.” His eyes flicker with something too dangerous to be pity. “But it’s your freedom.”
I shake my head. “Don’t.”
“I’m not here to make you something you’re not,” he says. “But maybe… maybe I’m here to show you what you are. Not what your father raised. Not what your future marriage contract says. Just you.”
I stare at him, stunned by the calm in his voice. The steadiness. He’s not unshaken. I can see the effort it takes for him to stay still, to not touch me again.
“I don’t know how to want you like this,” I whisper. “Without ruining everything.”
“You already ruined everything, Prince,” he says with a smirk that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Might as well make it worth the fallout.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, the sound sharp and bitter. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
“And yet you came on my cock.”
I groan and shove his shoulder, and he lets himself fall backward as if he’s weightless and sprawls out on the floor, eyes closing for a beat.
I lean back in the chair and run a hand over my face. My skin’s still buzzing. Not with arousal, not anymore—but with the memory. With the way it felt to let go of everything. My legacy. My mask. My-fucking-self. For just a few moments, I wasn’t the heir.
I was just his.
“I can’t undo it,” I say finally.
“No,” Nikolaj agrees. “And I wouldn’t let you.”
I look at him. Really look. The way his hair’s a mess, sticking up in wild blond waves. The bruises on his neck from where I bit him. The scratches down his chest from my nails. He looks like sin and satisfaction, wrecked and content, and I realize—
He’s not spiraling because this isn’t new for him. It’s me. I’m the one who’s never been allowed to feel without consequence. To want without strategy. To take without bloodshed.
Nikolaj stays on the floor longer than he needs to, like he knows I need the space to recalibrate.
To let the walls settle back into place, even if they’re already cracked beyond repair.
He stretches an arm out over the rug and tilts his head lazily toward me, like we didn’t just fuck each other open like war, like his mouth wasn’t on my spine while I broke apart and tried to call it silence.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he says eventually, voice quieter now. Still smug, but softer around the edges. “I can hear it from here.”
I drop my head back against the chair. “Then shut me up.”
His brows twitch. A shift, a spark—barely there. He sits up slowly, eyes dragging over me as he rises to his feet with the kind of predatory grace that makes it hard to remember how not to react.
But when he stands between my legs, it’s not with the same dominance as before. His hands don’t grab. He doesn’t pull or shove. He just looks down at me like he’s measuring something fragile. And then he sinks to his knees again.
I flinch. “Nikolaj—”
“Shh,” he whispers, placing his palms on the inside of my thighs. He presses gently—not enough to force, just enough to coax them apart. “Don’t run from it this time. Let me make you forget.”
“I shouldn’t need to forget.”
“And yet…” he trails off, fingers ghosting up to my hips, “you do.”
I let him touch me. Let him spread my legs wider until I’m half-slouched in the chair, exposed and aching, and already too open. My thighs are still trembling. My cock’s half-hard again just from the way he’s looking at me.
This isn’t about getting off. Not really. It’s about the way he shifts the balance—flipping control on its head and pretending it’s mine.
He doesn’t demand. He doesn’t taunt. He kisses my knee softly, trailing his lips up the inside of my thigh with reverence that doesn’t belong to someone like him. Nikolaj Dragovich was made to ruin, not to worship.
And yet, here he is, pretending like I’m the one with the power. Like he didn’t make me come undone with a single command earlier.
“You said you didn’t know how to want me like this,” he murmurs, his lips dragging higher with each word. “Then don’t want me. Take me.”
His hands slide up to my hips, and he looks up at me from beneath his lashes—not coy, not submissive, but inviting. Tempting.
A wolf wearing the skin of obedience.
“I’m not asking you to be gentle,” he says softly. “I’m asking you to stop pretending you want anything else.”
The words split something in me wide open.
I lurch forward, grabbing his hair and tangling my fingers in those untamed platinum locks like I’m afraid he’ll vanish. His mouth opens immediately, and when I push him down, he moans for it. No resistance. No restraint.
He takes me in, slowly at first, letting me feel every inch of heat, every drag of tongue against oversensitive skin. My hips twitch, and his hands tighten on my thighs, holding me steady even as he gives in, swallowing me deeper.
“Fuck—Nikolaj—” I choke, my voice breaking on the edge of something raw.
He hums around me, the vibration shooting straight to my spine. My back arches. I grip the chair harder with one hand, the other still twisted in his hair as he works me with the kind of ruthless precision that says this isn’t about pleasure—it’s about claiming.
He pulls back with a slick pop, eyes sharp and glazed. “More,” he whispers, breathless, licking his lips like he’s starving. “Use my mouth. Make it yours.”
I don’t recognize the sound I make next. It’s not a command, not a moan—it’s some ugly, fractured thing torn from my chest.
And I do what he asked.
I shove forward, burying myself in his throat, and this time he doesn’t moan—he groans, low and filthy, his fingers digging bruises into my hips like he needs the pain to stay grounded.
I fuck into his mouth like I’ve lost my mind, like it’s the only way to silence the storm still tearing me apart inside.
Because this isn’t just about release. It’s about control. About taking something back from the wreckage we made of each other.
“Don’t stop,” I pant. “Fucking take it.”
He does. God, he does—eyes watering, mouth slick, tongue working around the base as I fuck his throat, fast and rough and desperate. He lets it happen. Wants it to happen.
And when I come again—when it rips through me like a goddamn exorcism—he swallows every drop. Not one flinch. Not one sound.
Just quiet.
I pull out of his mouth, panting, half-wrecked, and he leans back on his heels with spit on his chin and pride in his eyes.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
He grins and tilts his head to the side. “No, you don’t.”
I drag both hands down my face, still shaking, still reeling.
“You feel better?” he asks, all mock innocence.
I glare at him, but I’m too wrung out to fight. “You’re such a manipulative bastard.”
He shrugs. “And you’re addicted to me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I don’t have to,” he says, standing slowly. “Your knees were shaking harder than mine.”
He steps backward, still completely naked, still smug as hell, then turns and walks back toward the bed like he didn’t just offer himself up on the altar of my unraveling. I stare after him, heart still pounding, and realize—with a horrible, inevitable certainty—
I’ll let him do it again.
Because for the first time in my life, submission felt like power.
And he knew it the whole damn time.