Chapter 7 Sienna #2
"You'll build your greenhouses on my land," he says, his voice dropping to something low and architectural, the tone of a man who doesn't make offers—he absorbs needs into structure.
"You'll answer to no one but me. I haven't replaced your shop, Sienna—I've absorbed your world into mine.
There is no going back to the Riverwalk.
There is only forward, inside my architecture. "
I stare up at him, tears of pure, blinding frustration spilling hot over my cheeks.
He means every word. He genuinely cannot comprehend why I am grieving.
He has spent twenty years building a criminal empire fueled by vengeance, orchestrating wars, and burying his emotions under a mountain of violent pragmatism.
To him, survival is the only currency. He has completely divorced himself from the concept that a person's soul is tied to the things they love, the things they build.
"You didn't save my life," I whisper, my throat raw. "You just dragged me into your war, watched my world burn to the ground, and then bought a prettier cage to lock me in."
Something vicious and dangerous cracks behind his eyes.
The silver-templed patriarch vanishes, replaced by the lethal predator who has ruthlessly dominated the Chicago underworld.
His eyes track the wetness of my lips before dropping to the frantic pulse in my throat, tracking the frantic, erratic pulse beating against my skin.
"I am the only thing keeping you breathing," he says, his voice a low, lethal rasp that scrapes along my nerve endings.
"The men who burned that building would have burned you inside it just to send me a message.
Do not mistake my protection for a cage, Sienna.
Out there, you are a target. In here, you are mine. "
"I am not a possession you can just throw money at when you break something!" I shout, and turn, practically running back toward the staircase.
I need distance. I need to get away from the suffocating gravity of him.
I sprint up the stairs, my bare feet slapping against the wood, my chest heaving with dry sobs.
I reach the massive oak door of his suite, hurl myself inside, and slam it shut.
I throw my weight against it, my hands frantically searching for a lock, a deadbolt, anything.
The door violently shoves open before I can even find the latch.
He lets me have exactly the amount of resistance I always was going to have—none. I know it even as I press myself into the wood. He didn't chase me because I got away. He let my hands go and watched where the prey would run.
Dominic steps into the bedroom, his chest rising and falling heavily. He kicks the door shut behind him with the heel of his tailored shoe. The heavy click of the latch dropping into place sounds like a prison cell sealing shut.
"Do not ever walk away from me when I am speaking to you," he snarls, stripping off his charcoal suit jacket and tossing it carelessly onto the floor.
"Get out!" I scream, backing away until my calves hit the heavy wooden frame of the bed. "I don't want you in here! I don't want your money, I don't want your protection, I want my life back!"
"You don't have a life back there!" he roars, the sudden explosion of his volume making me flinch.
He crosses the room in three massive strides, crowding me against the bedpost. His hands slam flat onto the wood on either side of my head, caging me in.
He is so close I can feel the furious heat rolling off his body, smell the dark, spicy scent of his cologne masking the inherent violence in his blood.
"Your life is gone! The Bellantis made sure of that.
The only thing standing between you and a shallow grave is me.
You think I care about a flower shop? I would burn this entire fucking city down to the bedrock to keep your heart beating, and you are crying over wood and glass! "
"I am crying because you didn't even care enough to tell me!
" I shout back, craning my neck to glare up into his dark, furious eyes.
"You were going to let me sit in this room, wearing your clothes, sleeping in your bed, thinking my world was safe, while you paid men to sweep up the ashes of everything I ever loved!
You don't see me, Dominic. You just see something you own. "
His jaw flexes so hard I hear the bone pop. His gaze drops to my mouth, then drags down the slender column of my throat, tracking the frantic, erratic pulse beating against my skin.
"I see exactly what you are," he murmurs, his voice suddenly dropping into a dark, gravelly register that makes the blood roar in my ears.
He steps perfectly flush against me. The hard, heavy planes of his chest press against my breasts through the thin silk of the robe.
I can feel the thick, rigid length of his erection pressing heavily against my stomach through his tailored trousers.
"Dominic, no—" I gasp, but the protest is weak, my voice betraying the sudden, catastrophic shift in my biology. The anger is still there, burning hot and bright in my chest, but the moment his body aligns with mine, a deep, hollow ache blooms between my thighs in absolute contradiction to my fury.
"No?" he mocks darkly, dropping his face into the curve of my neck. His hot breath ghosting over my skin makes my knees buckle. "Your mouth says no. Your heart is beating out of your chest for me."
He brings his large hands down, gripping my hips with bruising, possessive force.
He lifts me effortlessly, sitting me backward onto the edge of the high mattress so my legs dangle over the side.
He immediately steps between my thighs, forcing them wide apart, his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the room.
"You think I treat you like a possession?
" he asks, his hands finding the knot of my silk sash and yanking it loose.
The robe falls open, exposing my flushed, aching body to his dark, consuming gaze.
"A possession sits on a shelf. A possession doesn't make me narrow to a single point.
A possession doesn't make every variable I've tracked for twenty years fall away just to feel her breathe against my mouth. "
He reaches for his belt. The sharp scrape of the leather sliding through the buckle is deafening in the quiet room.
He unzips his trousers and pushes the fabric down his narrow hips, freeing his heavy, thick cock.
It springs out, pulsing with a lethal, purple heat, a bead of precum gathering at the blunt head.
My lungs seize. I am so angry with him I want to claw his eyes out, but looking at the massive, hard length of him makes my pussy clench in a violent, demanding throb.
He doesn't bother with foreplay. He already knows what my body is doing. He slides his large, rough hand up the inside of my thigh, his thumb pressing deliberately against my pussy. I gasp, my back arching violently as his thumb slides right through the slick, dripping wetness pooling there.
The air between us thickens with the unmistakable scent of my arousal, sharp and heavy. His nostrils flare. His jaw tightens with sudden, lethal focus.
"Look how angry you are," he taunts, his voice thick with a dark, primal arrogance. He strokes his thumb directly over my swollen clit, pressing down hard enough to make a jagged moan tear out of my throat. "Look how wet you are for a man you claim to hate."
"I don't... I don't hate you," I sob, my hands dropping to grip his broad shoulders as my hips involuntarily chase the pressure of his hand.
"Good," he growls. He grips the back of my thighs, pulling me flush to the absolute edge of the mattress. He grips his thick cock and aligns the blunt head with my slick, swollen pussy.
He doesn't warn me. He just grabs my hips and drives forward, burying the massive, thick length of his cock deep inside my tight heat in one brutal, relentless thrust. I scream as he seats himself to the hilt, stretching my walls until they feel ready to snap.
I gasp, my fingernails digging viciously into the fabric of his shirt. He stretches me wide, filling the deep, aching hollow inside me so completely that I feel the pressure against my internal walls, deep and absolute. The blunt force of his entry steals the air from my lungs.
He groans, his eyes rolling back slightly as he seats himself to the hilt, burying his face in my hair. "Christ, Sienna. You're so fucking tight."
He pulls back, dragging the thick ridge of his cock along my sensitive internal walls, and then slams his hips forward again. Each thrust lands with a heavy impact that fills the room—the sound of bodies colliding with raw, unfiltered desperation.
It is rougher than last night. Last night was a worshipful claiming. This is an anchor. This is a man terrified of the emotional wedge that has just been driven between us, desperately using the only tool he understands—physical domination—to chain me back to him.
He thrusts into me with a hard, punishing rhythm, his hands gripping my hips so tightly I know he will leave bruises in the shape of his fingers. Every time he drives deep, his hips grind against my sensitive clit, sending explosive shocks of pleasure radiating through my pelvis.
"You are mine," he snarls, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin of my neck as he pounds into me, driving me back against the mattress. "Not your shop. Not your past. Me. I am your life now."
"Dominic—" I cry out, my head thrashing on the pillows. I want to fight the claim, but the physical sensation is too overwhelming. He hits a deep, sensitive spot inside me, and my hips completely betray me, bucking up to take him even deeper.
"Say it," he demands, his thrusts becoming faster, more desperate, the friction generating a frantic, consuming heat that burns away every coherent thought in my brain. He drags his thumb back down, pressing it hard against my clit while he continues to ravage me. "Say you're mine."
The combination of his thick cock stretching me open and the relentless, hard pressure of his thumb on my clit shatters me.
My climax rips through me with the force of a hurricane.
I scream his name, my inner walls clenching violently, milking the hard, heavy length of him with rhythmic, pulsing spasms.
Dominic roars, his control snapping completely. He thrusts his hips forward one final, brutal time, burying himself as deep as he can possibly go. Hot, thick pulses of his cum flood my pussy, filling me, claiming me, marking me in the most primal, absolute way possible.
He doesn't pull out. He stays buried inside me, his massive chest heaving against my breasts, his face pressed into the crook of my neck. His arms wrap entirely around my torso, crushing me to him as if I might evaporate into thin air.
Finally, he hauls himself fully onto the mattress without withdrawing, pulling me with him into the center of the bed, our bodies still locked together.
Only then—slowly, with a wet, suctioning slide that leaves me feeling hollow and marked all at once—does he separate from me.
He immediately drags me back against his chest, one heavy arm banding across my waist, his hand splayed warm and possessive against my stomach.
We lie there in the tangled wreckage of the silk robe and the ruined sheets. My body is completely sated, humming with the heavy afterglow of the brutal orgasm he just pulled from me.
But as the adrenaline fades, the cold reality of the room bleeds back in.
Dominic holds me tightly, his breathing slowing, his massive body heavy and relaxed. He thinks he won. He thinks that because my body surrendered, the argument is over. He thinks his physical claiming has erased the betrayal of the ashes on the Riverwalk.
I turn my head, staring blankly at the reinforced window frame across the room. I feel the damp heat of him still on me, his protection a crushing cage surrounding me. I am safe. I am protected. And I have never felt more utterly, completely alone.
He didn't fix the cage. He just locked the door tighter.