Chapter 32 Vincenzo #2
His mouth is perfect and full of me. His hands grip my thighs like he’s holding something sacred, and I hate that he knows exactly what he’s doing—how much this is breaking me, warping the steel I was forged in.
I fuck into him harder because I need to remind myself this means nothing. That I still have control. That I’m still the one wearing the crown and not the boy losing it to the enemy kneeling in front of me like he’s the throne.
Nikolaj gags around my cock and I nearly come then and there. His eyes roll back, and when I pull out just enough to let him breathe, he gasps, spit trailing from his lips to the head of my cock like a leash.
“Pathetic,” I sneer, my voice raw. “You look fucking pathetic like this.”
His mouth is red and wet, eyes glassy, and he just smiles. “Then why do you look like you’re praying?” he rasps, voice shredded and smug and so goddamn proud.
I slam back into his mouth without warning, groaning through my teeth as his throat closes around me. I don’t answer. I can’t. There’s no air left in my lungs to lie with.
I fuck into his mouth and use him until I’m shaking, until my body threatens to seize from holding back, and then I snap. My orgasm hits with enough force to blackout for a second, heat flooding his throat as I come, gasping like I’m drowning.
He takes it. All of it. And when I finally pull back, my knees unsteady, he rests his head against my thigh like I’m the altar and he’s the faithful sinner. I run a hand through his hair without thinking, and he breathes hot over my skin, then grins. “So. Breakfast?”
I let out a laugh. “You’re such a fucking bastard,” I manage.
“You say that like it’s a surprise,” he chuckles. “Your father’s going to shit himself when he finds out what you let me do to you.”
I glare down at him, barely holding onto composure. “He won’t find out.”
Nikolaj grins against my skin. “You’re so fucking lucky there’s no windows overlooking your private little wing, Prince, or we’d both be dead by now.”
The silence that follows is brutal.
I can still feel the ghost of my father’s voice bleeding into my skin, cold and sharp like a blade never meant to wound in front of an audience—but always designed to cut.
His words still echo somewhere in the back of my skull, replaying like a broken record even as the phone lies forgotten on the balcony floor.
Dead like the conversation. Dead like the part of me that still wants to be the heir he raised.
But Nikolaj’s mouth?
That’s the part bringing me back to life.
He slides his tongue over me one last time before pulling back with a breathy, obscene sound that makes my knees wobble.
My thighs tremble under the cold air and the weight of what he just did—what I just let him do while speaking to the man who taught me control.
My spine hums with overstimulation and my throat’s dry from saying too much and still not enough.
“You really don’t know when to quit, do you?” I rasp.
Nikolaj gets to his feet and presses his chest to mine, skin fever-hot compared to the wind. “Don’t insult me. You’d hate it if I quit.”
I take a step back, turn, and slam him against the wall with one hand at his throat before I realize I’ve moved. His breath hitches, his eyes darken, and his hips roll up against mine, and I just know this is exactly what he wanted.
“Did Daddy dearest give you permission to keep your little Russian secret, or do I need to make it more obvious who you belong to?”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I whisper, but my voice is hoarse and my throat tight.
He kisses me anyway—fast, reckless, all teeth and heat—and I kiss him back because I can’t not. Because he knows how to light every fuse in my chest and laugh while it all burns. Our mouths crash, our teeth clash, and I hate him for it. I hate him for being right.
For knowing me this well.
When we break apart, we’re both panting. His hands slide down my sides like he wants to take more. Take everything. “You looked like a god,” he murmurs. “All stiff spine and icy voice, talking to Daddy while I ruined you from the inside out.”
I dig my fingers into his jaw, make him meet my eyes. “You’re going to choke on your own arrogance one day.”
He licks the corner of his mouth. “I’d rather choke on your cock every day.”
I shove him back again. “You have two options for breakfast,” I say flatly, changing the subject. “Eggs or exile.”
“Eggs and exile,” he replies, nodding thoughtfully. “You get breakfast, I leave after… a few more rounds of proving I own your tight little hole.”
He grins and walks back inside, bare-chested, cock hard, and completely unbothered.
I follow him inside because I’m weak for the way he moves, and he knows it.
He drops onto the bed without a hint of modesty, one arm thrown behind his head, the other draped lazily across his stomach like he’s posing for a Renaissance painting commissioned by the devil.
The sheets are still a mess, and the room smells like us—sex, expensive cologne, and silk-soft ruin.
He doesn’t bother covering up. He sprawls on the bed the way only someone who’s never apologized for existing can.
And God help me… he’s beautiful—bare, unapologetically built, and so sinfully marked that my pulse stutters just taking him in.
His entire chest is a mural of violence and faith twisted into something beautiful.
Black ink spills over him in a pattern that shouldn’t work but does: sweeping lines that frame the curve of his ribs, stark shading that drags the eye up the center of him, geometric shapes and Slavic script woven through with imagery too personal to be coincidence.
It climbs up his torso, wraps along his clavicles, and vanishes beneath the sharp line of his throat only to reappear in the faint curls of ink licking the underside of his jaw.
It should make him look imprisoned in his own skin. Instead, it makes him look carved. Claimed. A walking confession bound in ink and bone.
“Eyes up here, Prince,” he murmurs without opening his own, voice thick with amusement.
I clench my jaw, because he’s right—I am staring, and he loves it. He thrives off being watched, wanted, studied like a weapon no one else is allowed to touch. He shifts on the bed, stretching like a cat, his torso lengthening, muscles rolling, the nipple piercings catching the light again.
“Didn’t say you had permission to admire me,” he adds lazily.
“You’re not worth admiring,” I lie.
He cracks one eye open, and there’s that glint—mocking, knowing, dark as a match head seconds before the strike. “Then why can’t you stop? You’re staring like a man deciding whether to paint me or pray to me,” he murmurs. “Either works.”
“Shut up.” I say, but then I notice the spaces. Two distinct patches of untouched skin near the tops of his shoulders, each side marked by the abrupt stop of ink. Perfect ovals of emptiness in a sea of pattern—like something was meant to be there. Like something’s missing.
I step closer before I realize I’m moving, my eyes dragging over the blank spots instead of the rest of him. “You left these on purpose,” I say, voice quieter than I mean it to be. “The empty spaces.”
His entire body goes still. Not a freeze or a hesitation.
Still.
His expression shutters fast, and the shift is nothing short of violent. The lazy sprawl disappears and his jaw tightens.
He sits up slowly, forearms resting on his knees, head tilted just enough to make him look dangerous instead of relaxed. “Why are you looking at that?” he asks, tone light but wrong. Not casual—performed.
“Because it looks like you’re saving the space,” I say, stepping closer. “Waiting for something.”
“Everyone saves space,” he replies, shrugging one shoulder. “Artists do it for balance. Mercenaries do it for future kills. Prisoners do it for milestones. Ink’s ink, Vieri.”
“That’s not what this is,” I murmur.
His eyes flick up—ice blue, empty in a way that warns me I’m close to a line neither of us has ever crossed.
“It looks like something’s missing,” I continue, unable to stop. “Like you were waiting for—”
“Drop it.” His voice cuts clean through mine.
I blink, taken aback by the abruptness. “Nikolaj—”
“I said drop it, Vincenzo,” he warns again, softer this time. “Before you ask something you won’t want answered.”
His voice isn’t cocky or mocking or laced with that cruel smirk he hides behind. It’s flat. Quiet. Close to something that feels like exhaustion—or confession. The words don’t match the Nikolaj I’ve come to know.
It hits me all at once. Whatever those spaces are for… it isn’t something he wants me near.
“You know, we could keep playing pretend. You can go to your morning meetings. I can go back to the North Wing. Or…” he smirks. “You can sit on my face again.”
I sigh at the welcome change in subject, grab a fistful of his hair, and yank his head back until he hisses, his smile breaking into something hungrier. “You know they’ll try to separate us.”
His smile drops at the truth behind my statement. “Then let’s keep pretending there’s no end to this,” he says quietly. “At least for today.”
And I let him.
Because this is the closest I’ve ever been to free.