Chapter 14 Caligula
CALIGULA
The whir of elevator machinery jolts me from a light doze. I slept restlessly, no better than when I was on the street. I sit up groggily, slowly, strangely weighted down—
Oh. The collar he put on me, heavy around my throat. I’d almost forgotten.
Light floods the basement. I wince, throwing a hand up to shield my eyes.
“Good morning, golden boy.” Damiano steps out of the elevator carrying a tray. My first reaction is to make some cutting remark, push back where I can, but my stomach seizes with sudden, desperate hunger as the smell hits me. Eggs, bacon, toast. And coffee. Hot, black coffee.
My mouth waters so hard it actually hurts.
“Thirsty?” he asks.
“Hungry.”
He sets the plate on the side table next to his throne and takes out a water bottle from the mini-fridge I’ve been ignoring all night, cracking it open. “Drink this first.”
He hands me the bottle, and I drain half of it immediately, not realizing how parched I was until the cool liquid hits my throat.
“All of it,” he commands, settling into his chair with a steaming coffee mug of his own. There’s a second mug, too, which I assume is meant for me. I finish the bottle under his steady gaze, but then he gestures toward the metal toilet in the corner. “Go.”
Heat stings my cheeks. “I don’t need to—”
“What’s rule number one?” He’s using the tone of voice that I’ve already figured out means he’s not fucking around.
Well, this is a new low. And considering my recent trajectory, that’s saying something.
Still, I shuffle to the toilet, the chain dragging behind me, acutely aware of his eyes tracking my every movement, and manage the logistics of pissing through the golden cage at last. I take my time washing my hands, trying to slow down whatever is happening here.
But Damiano waits patiently until I can’t string it out any longer, and then points me back to the bed.
“Now you can eat,” he tells me. But when I reach for the plate in his hands, he pulls it away. “Did I say you could feed yourself?”
My stomach clenches with more than hunger this time and I stare at him mutely.
“Hands behind your back.”
I link my fingers behind me.
He cuts a piece of bacon and holds the fork out to me. “Open.”
I obey, and he slides the food into my mouth, watching me chew with the same intense focus he had last night. I barely taste what’s in my mouth, not with his dark eyes locked on my face.
Bite by bite, he feeds me my entire breakfast while I sit with my hands bound behind my back by nothing but his will. When I’m finished, he leans in. For one disorienting moment, I think he’s going to swipe his tongue across my lips, and I feel mine part before I can stop them—
But he just wipes my mouth clean with his thumb.
“I want you to know,” he says, “that you’re only alive because it suits me to keep you alive. Contract or no contract. You hear me?”
Oh, yes. I hear him. I nod my head.
“Go and shower.”
“The collar—”
“Stays on.” He settles back into his throne, coffee mug in hand. “Now go.”
I’m worried the collar will heat up, burn my skin. But I don’t have a choice, and using the toilet was way worse than this, so I head to the shower, the chain dragging across the floor.
The water is hot at once, but as I step under the spray, I find the collar stays body-temperature on the inside, with a rubber coating to insulate my throat from the hot metal.
So I relax a little and let the water wash away the sweat and fear from last night, hyperaware of Damiano’s gaze.
I try to keep my back turned to him, keep my head under the water where I can pretend I’m somewhere else, anywhere else.
Maybe a nice spa in Tuscany. With significantly fewer chains and threats.
But my thoughts come back to Damiano. His behavior this morning, this whole experience, is designed to be degrading. I should be furious, terrified, anything except…
Except this. My body is responding to his attention, to being watched. To being wanted. And he does want me. I feel it in the weight of his stare when I glance through the steamed glass.
I might be a virgin, but I still know when someone is lusting after me.
The Clemenza Family built an empire on finding people’s weaknesses and exploiting them.
Damiano Orsini wants me—and not just to torture or kill.
He wants to fuck me. I can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his eyes follow the water streaming down my skin. That want is a weakness I can use.
But how do I use it when I don’t know what I’m doing?
On the other hand…how hard can it be? If Jesse Foster could manipulate some billionaire into a ten-year contract, surely I can figure it out. It’s instinct, right? Sex is instinctual. Every animal knows how to fuck, how to present itself for breeding.
I reach for the soap with trembling hands.
I’ve never done this before, tried to be…
Hell, I don’t even know what to call it.
Appealing? I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be noticed.
But I let my hands linger on my chest as I soap myself up, the way I’ve seen people do in movies, trying to look deliberate instead of desperate.
When I glance his way again, something has shifted in his posture. He’s leaning forward slightly. And he’s still watching.
Whatever I’m doing, it’s working.
When I finally step out and reach for a towel, Damiano’s voice stops me. “Stay there.”
He rises from his seat, setting his coffee aside, and approaches, grabbing up the towel. My heart pounds as he stands in front of me.
“Arms up.”
I raise my arms, water still streaming down my body, and he begins to towel me down.
Not gentle, but thorough. He drags the towel across my chest, down my arms, around my back.
And he follows the towel with his own hand, each touch entitled, possessive, like he’s making sure his prize poodle is in perfect condition.
His hands linger longer than necessary in some areas. I try to stay perfectly still, to not react, but when he moves behind me to dry my back, his palm slides over the curve of my ass—deliberate, unmistakable.
My breath catches. Blood rushes south, but the cage prevents any real response, creating a dull ache that makes me grit my teeth.
“Turn around.”
I face him again, and his eyes drop to the golden cage, noting the way it’s grown tighter. A slow smile spreads across his lips.
“You like being caged up, huh?” he asks, voice deceptively gentle as he reaches out to tap the metal with one finger.
Even that light touch sends a jolt through me. “No.”
His smile widens. “Your body is more honest than your mouth, golden boy.” He tosses the towel aside.
Shame and need are warring in me. Because he’s right. My body doesn’t seem to care about should or shouldn’t.
“Go lie down,” he says.
I crawl back onto the white sheets. I expect this will be the moment, the moment he follows me to the bed, stretches out on top of me, takes that pesky virginity that drove the price up at the auction.
But he doesn’t do that.
He returns to his throne, takes up his coffee mug, and simply watches me again.
The silence stretches tighter and tenser like a rubber band until I can’t stand it anymore. Time to see how much power I actually have here. “Why aren’t you fucking me?”
He doesn’t reply.
“I thought that was the point. Of the plug.” The words feel clumsy in my mouth. “To keep me ready for you.”
His eyes sharpen immediately. I prop myself up on one elbow, trying to channel a confidence I don’t feel.
“You keep staring. I don’t understand why you won’t just…” I trail off. I should have leverage here, but I don’t know how to find it. I don’t know how to do this. “Use me?” I finish lamely.
“I didn’t buy you to fuck you.” His voice is icy. “I bought you to break you.”
I study his face as hard as he’s been studying mine. The way his pupils dilate when I move. The tension in his shoulders. The careful way he sets down his coffee mug.
Maybe I’m terrible at this, but something is working.
“Are you sure about that?” I try like hell to channel Jesse Foster and shift slowly on the bed, hoping it looks intentional. Looks sexy. “You put a bed in here. A bed with a good mattress and clean sheets, when you could’ve made me sleep on the floor. This bed is for fucking.”
“You think I spent ten million on you just so I could get my dick wet?” The words explode from him.
What Would Jesse Do?
I force myself to laugh, light and mocking. “You’re a terrible liar, Dami.” I draw the nickname out, slow and deliberate, Dah-mee, so it sounds intimate.
And it’s a stroke of fucking genius, because it lands. He sucks in a breath. I roll onto my stomach, making sure he has a clear view of my ass, spread my legs a little to give it definition.
“You’re the one who put a bed down here, Dami,” I continue. “You don’t do that for someone you’re not planning to fuck. You don’t sit there staring and drooling—”
And just like that, his control snaps. He’s standing over me in a millisecond, hand closing on my hair, yanking my head back.
“You think you know me?” he snarls. “You think you can manipulate me with that bitch mouth of yours?”
Triumph and terror war in my chest. I got a reaction. I do have power here. But power I can’t control might be worse than no power at all.
Up close, like this, he’s terrifying.
“I think you’re more affected by me than you want to admit,” I gasp out.
His grip tightens and I wince, but I don’t back down. This is a game I need to figure out how to play, even if I’m making it up as I go.
“I think you don’t even know what to do with me now that you have me,” I pant. “I think you expected me to beg and cry, and instead I’m…” I lick my lips slowly, the way I used to see Jesse doing in the clubs when he wanted a free drink from a hot guy. “I’m offering myself to you.”
His free hand traces my jaw, gentle enough to make my breath catch. For a moment, I think he’ll kiss me.
But he releases me abruptly, and I fall back against the mattress.
“You can’t offer yourself to me, Caligula Clemenza. I own you already—and if someday I want to use your body, just because it’s convenient for me, I will. But you won’t ever seduce me. You won’t ever make me want you, golden boy.”
I let out a startled cry as he grabs my ankle, hauling me closer. But he just fishes a golden key out of his pocket and unlocks the cage, tugging it off. My cock springs gratefully free, hardening despite myself.
“You seem to think this is all about sex,” he says, pocketing the ornament. “Maybe taking this off will help you understand that it’s not.” His voice drops dangerously. “This is about vengeance. Nothing more.”
“I know you want me,” I tell him recklessly, shooting my last shot. “Why can’t you just—”
His hand closes around my mouth and nose, cutting off my air along with my words. But my traitor dick just gets harder. He leans close to my ear. “One day you’ll remember this moment, when you thought you could control me. And you’ll understand how very foolish you were.”
He releases me and steps back, leaving me panting for breath, hard and aching and completely confused by my own reactions.
“Maybe some time alone in the dark will help you understand your new role in life.” He heads toward the elevator again. “And don’t you dare touch yourself while I’m gone. That toy between your legs—it belongs to me now.”
The lights cut out and darkness swallows the room completely as the elevator starts its ascent. I lie there in the black, heart pounding, cock aching, my body still humming from his touch.
I tried. But I have no idea what I’m doing. Every move felt clumsy, every word uncertain. I’m flying blind, grasping for power I don’t understand.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I’m a Clemenza. We don’t submit. We don’t beg. We certainly don’t get aroused by being caged and collared and suffocated.
But my body doesn’t care about Family pride. It only cares that Damiano’s hands felt good on my skin, that his attention—even cruel attention—made me feel…
I trail my fingers over my aching cock, then jerk my hand away, remembering his words. It belongs to me now.
Even my obedience in denying myself sends another jolt of arousal through me. I roll onto my side, chain clinking, and force my breathing back to normal.
I might not know what I’m doing, but I proved something today. I have an effect on him. I can get under his skin, make him lose control. That’s what matters.
Not the way my pulse races when I remember his hands on me.
Not the way I keep replaying the look in his eyes as he watched me shower.
And definitely not the way part of me—some twisted, shameful part—wants him to come back down here and finish what we started.