19. Valentin
19
VALENTIN
Angelo dropped to his knees in front of me, then snaked my belt out of its loops, his fingers dragging over my abs in a seductive caress.
“What a delightful gift you brought me,” he murmured as he freed my cock. “A brat,” he continued sardonically.
My laugh turned into a strangled moan when he wrapped his lips around me. “ Putain , Angelo,” I gasped. “She’s a hellcat, and I don’t want to talk about her with my cock in your mouth.”
Angelo smiled around my cock, fisting the base as he licked at the tip, then pumping his fist up and down as he looked up at me. “No? You don’t want to talk about how hard you get when you spank her? How much she likes the pain? Or how about those perfect tits that beg for you to mark them, as if she isn’t perfect for you too?”
“She’s a reckless witch. You fell in love with the idea of her when she was sixteen and you have no fucking idea who she is as an adult. And neither do I. Three months of taming her and you’ll be—” Angelo took me down his throat and wiped all thought from my consciousness. The obscene sounds he made as he bobbed up on and down my cock only fueled my need.
I clenched my fists to stop myself from tangling my fingers in his hair and fucking the back of his throat like I needed—like he hated.
He pulled back and looked up at me, his eyes more thoughtful than usual. “You love my obsessions.”
True.
“You love indulging my obsessions.”
Also true.
“And you love it when I come back to you after I throw them away.”
So fucking true.
But I didn’t think he was going to throw this one away.
I moaned as he tightened his fingers around me. “Is that your plan? Indulge yourself while you train her, work her out of your system, so you can give her away to someone else?”
He licked the crown of my cock. “I can’t give you what you need. I won’t put up with your sadistic bullshit. But she will.”
The thought of Ana, sweet, vicious Ana, on her knees in front of me, her face covered in tears, her ass red from the shock of my belt, had my hips jerking toward Angelo. I’d taken lovers before, we both had. We’d shared. But we’d never found someone who could scratch both our itches.
Maybe Ana could. And that terrified me. Ana was hell personified, temptation in a gorgeous package that threatened to tear down my carefully erected walls and destroy me when she left. And leave she would. I’d never admit it out loud, but women like her deserved better than sadistic assholes like me.
Women like Ana deserved Angelo’s ruthless devotion , a quiet voice whispered in the back of my mind.
Fuck. I resisted the temptation to slam into the back of his throat, to wrap my fingers in his hair and pull until tears leaked out of his eyes, to remind him who he belonged to and that he’d promised I’d be his forever.
Angelo drew back, amusement dancing in his eyes. Violence was the one outlet neither of us permitted with the other. With both of us dominant and cruel, we’d found equilibrium in gentleness. I stilled, my nails digging so hard into my palms I drew blood.
Angelo took me in his mouth again, meeting his lips with his fist as he slid my cock down his throat, tight and hot. Electric pleasure coiled in my spine as he sucked me, as controlling of me as I was of him, even on his knees before me.
I stilled my hips, well aware he’d move away from me if I did, just as I teased him when I was in control. Edging each other, loving each other, was a dangerous game we played, where each of us needed control but neither could give it up.
Ana could give us both that.
Angelo sped up, sucking harder, flicking his tongue along the bottom of my length until I couldn’t restrain myself, thoughts of him and her mingling together in my head, filling me with disgust for my emotional betrayal of Angelo as much as I exalted in the fantasy of Ana in front of me, her skin flushed rosy from a flogger. I bucked my hips up into him as I came, bliss exploding from me as he drew a powerful climax out of me.
When I finished, I dropped back onto the couch, relaxed, exhausted, a smile teasing at my lips. Angelo cleaned me with his tongue, then reverently tucked me back into my pants as I caught my breath.
He surged up to kiss me, his lips dancing over mine, and I dragged him down until he sprawled against me. He laughed softly, then arranged himself on the couch beside me, lifting my arm to drape around his shoulders.
“Think of how much better that would have been if you could have hurt me.”
I looked at him sharply. “ Absolument pas .” He had to know I loved him as he was, that I didn’t want him to change just because I was fucked up and twisted. He was content to love me, even though I’d never submit to him, never cede the total control that he sought.
“Think of how much better it would have been if you could have hurt her. ”
Merde.
“I’m fucking hungry!” Ana yelled from her room, rousing me from a deep sleep.
Angelo scrubbed his face, cursing in quiet Italian.
“I’ll do it,” I murmured, looking at my phone. It was time to begin her training in earnest. We had another week, if we were lucky, before Angelo had to return to the States to complete his consolidation of the Costa territory in Yorkfield. The Tchérnovs were burning through Costa properties, and Angelo risked losing control if we didn’t return soon.
Wearing nothing but silk pajama pants, I opened Ana’s door, only to find her yanking at her bonds, hollering for food, to let her use the bathroom, to, “fucking let me go right fucking now.”
“Ana,” I said softly.
She stopped immediately, her eyes flicking over my chest and my abs in a way that told me she wasn’t entirely immune to my charms. To be fair, I wasn’t immune to hers either, the way her soft breasts pressed into the air with every furious breath, or how she exposed her pretty pussy when she tried to twist her body, even though her wrists were tied together and attached to the headboard above her head.
“What do you want?”
She blinked, her green eyes sharpening. “Release me, motherfucker.”
“That’s not how we ask for things in this household,” I answered gently before striding out of the room and closing the door.
Screams and shouts followed me. With a deep sigh, I rifled through the duffle bags in the sitting area and found a pair of earplugs.
Angelo accepted them with a grateful sigh, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
Ignoring the tempting play of muscles across his broad back, I padded back to the couch and began scanning through my phone, wincing at the increasingly unhinged messages from Boris Tchérnov, demanding the return of our sweet (hah!) angel so Grégoire could marry her. No, so he could kill her. No, he didn’t want her at all, he wanted me to buy him a new fucking yacht.
Ana’s screams faded to hoarse cries, and then to silence as I made sandwiches of yesterday’s baguettes, high quality ham, and butter. Classic, French, and everything I both loved and loathed about the country.
I nudged her door open with my foot, and she began to struggle again, fighting and gasping as she writhed against her restraints. “Why the fuck are you doing this?”
I ignored her, showing her the sandwich I’d wrapped in a paper towel. “Food is earned, and you haven’t earned it yet.”
She silenced immediately, watching me with wary eyes as I rounded the bed and looked down at her naked form.
Disheveled.
Tracks of tears down her face.
Filthy.
Miserable.
Absolutely fucking gorgeous.
“Is it drugged?” she asked, suspiciously.
My brow furrowed as I turned her question over, examining the contours of it, not liking the conclusions I drew about why she’d ask. “No, it’s a sandwich.”
“Great. Let me out of these chains and I’ll eat it.”
“You have to earn it first.”
Ana quieted as she contemplated the meaning behind my words, the hints I’d dropped when I told her my expectations.
“How? Blow jobs in exchange for not starving to death? You’re an asshole, Valentin. Fuck you.”
I laughed quietly. Training indeed. After setting the sandwich on the dresser, I locked the door behind me, then unbuckled the cuffs that held her ankles before turning her on her stomach.
“Hey! What the fuck?”
“You will speak respectfully, or you won’t speak at all.”
I slid my hands up her legs, noting the bruises where those fuckers had beaten her, then smiling at the bruises on her ass from her spanking in the casino.
“What are you?—”
I spanked her, hard, not bothering with a warmup. Then I did it again and again and again.
“Stop, please,” she begged.
When I finally did, I straddled her legs, the heat of her skin burning me through my pants. Gently, I ran my hands over the globes of her ass, soothing the skin I knew had to be aching. She shifted under my touch as she cried.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you doing this, ma?tre ,” I corrected, keeping my voice soft. We had to give her the opportunity to submit eventually, and now was as good a time as any.
When she didn’t correct herself, I spanked her bottom again, watching the glorious flesh bounce and jiggle with every stroke, imagining myself plunging between them, fucking her raw as punishment.
“You’re so beautiful,” I murmured, soothing the ache with gentle caresses. When she unconsciously pressed her ass against my hand, my cock hardened, and regretfully, I stood and reattached her ankles to the baseboard, leaving her face down in the bed.
“Slut,” I said, “if you want something from me, you have to be respectful.”
Ana buried her face in the covers and screamed. I left the sandwich out of reach, then strolled out of the room.
An hour later, my own hunger satiated, dressed in a suit and ready to get to work, I heard a feeble voice from the bedroom. “ Ma?tre? ”
A shark-like smile crept over my face before I calmed my expression to impassivity as I opened the door. She couldn’t see me, but I didn’t want her to hear the eagerness in my voice either.
“Yes, slut?”
“Could I please have the sandwich, please?” she gasped. “ Ma?tre ?”
That took less time than I expected.
“I’m going to uncuff you. If you fuck with me, I’ll punish you.”
Ana’s eyes shot to mine, glinting with an emotion I didn’t understand before dulling into languid softness.
“Okay,” she agreed. I wasn’t fooled. Ana didn’t grow up in Gio Costa’s household without learning to disguise her emotions.
I leaned over her, enjoying the heat of her skin against mine. It’d been a long time since a woman had interested me, or Angelo for that matter, but this one— putain —she fascinated both of us.
Ana lay there, frozen, not even taking a breath, as I leaned back. Our little captive wasn’t as unaffected as she liked to pretend.
“Sit up,” I commanded. She rolled onto her back and scooted backward, her hands darting over her stomach, as if she could hide her nakedness.
Once she was settled against the headboard, I grabbed her wrists and set them in front of her, cuffing them together once again.
“Wait,” she said. “I need to?—”
“I didn’t give you permission to speak,” I interrupted. “Do you remember the rules?”
She flushed and shook her head.
“Obedience. Speak only when spoken to. Your orgasms belong to me. Do you remember, now?”
I waited, my hands around her wrists, my head cocked.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Yes, ma?tre .”
“Now tell me, toy, what do you need?”
“ Ma?tre , I need to pee.” She peeked up at me through her long lashes. “And to shower, honestly.”
And to dress her wounds, I noted, ruthlessly repressing the rage that shot through me at the idea of her suffering at anyone’s hands but my own.
I held out my hand to her. She ignored it, swinging her legs around and standing on unsteady feet. When she wobbled, I caught her, one arm around her shoulders, the other holding her hand, as she got her balance again after twelve hours of being chained up.
She stopped. “How long did I sleep, ma?tre? ”
“Did I ask you a question?”
She clenched her jaw, but looked away, and let me lead her to the toilet, where we repeated the humiliating exercise of the day before, this time with little complaint.
“Sit on the bed,” I ordered her and brought her the sandwich. She reached for it, but I smacked her bound hands.
“What the hell?”
When my head cocked, she flushed and pressed her full lips together.
I should have let Angelo do this instead of letting him go back to sleep. I could hurt her, break her down until she was confused and sobbing and climaxing at the same time, but kindness?
Ana winced when her ass made contact with the covers, but she pressed her thighs together. As I suspected, the pain turned her on, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it.
I held the end of the sandwich up to her mouth, and she scoffed. “I can feed myself.” She paused, then her eyes widened. “I can feed myself, ma?tre .” Oh yes, Ana was trainable. God, she was going to be a delightful sub.
“Of course you can. But pets don’t have to.”
Her brow furrowed. “Am I a pet or a toy or a slave, ma?tre ?”
“Does it matter? Eat.”