Chapter 17
CALIGULA
The light in the basement hasn’t gone off since he left, which should be a relief after three days in darkness.
It isn’t. It’s worse. So much worse. The light is soft, golden, falsely kind—the eye of a benevolent god. And it shows that mockery of my heritage laid out in a creepy basement. Reminds me of everything I’ve lost.
I ate every damn meal. Showered more than I probably needed to. And I tried to sleep, burying my face under my arms. Mostly I just sat here staring at the newspaper Damiano left behind, reading the same headline over and over until the words lost all meaning.
Infamous Clemenza Townhouse Continues to Auction Despite Tragic Suicide.
The last stronghold. The last thread connecting me to everything I used to be. And that monster upstairs holds a pair of scissors.
I hear the elevator at last, the hiss of hydraulics, the clink of metal. I sit up, wipe my palms on my thighs. I don’t know what’s about to happen, but I asked for it.
And I can only hope my offer is a good one.
The doors open and Damiano steps into the room, phone in one hand, looking me over with a critical eye. The washed hair. The shaved jaw. The empty plate.
The desperate hope I’m trying so hard to hide.
He walks to his usual throne and sets his phone down on the table next to it. “I arranged for my real estate guy to go to the auction for me,” he says, as casually as though he’s discussing the weather. “If I want to bid. It’s about to start, he tells me.”
My throat feels like it’s lined with sandpaper. “Thank you.”
He raises an eyebrow, amused. “Don’t thank me yet, golden boy. Since the question is, what in the hell do you have to bargain with?”
I know the answer. Have known it since the moment he said that maybe I could earn it. Because I know what a man like Damiano Orsini wants in this life. Aside from vengeance, of course. He has this house, built from obsession. He has all the power he could want. All the money.
And no class.
The words stick in my throat before I can spit them out. “My respect,” I say.
“Your respect?” At least he sounds intrigued. He settles into my grandfather’s chair again, eyes on me. His phone buzzes, and he casts a glance at the screen. “Bidding started at five million,” he tells me. “Okay, then. Show me how much you respect me, Caligula Clemenza.”
I force myself to move, get off the bed. My knees hit the concrete, but it’s not cold. That’s something I’ve noticed; he keeps me naked down here, but it’s always temperate. No chance I’ll freeze to death.
Just go slowly crazy.
“You think just kneeling for me is worth five mill, little prince?” He sounds amused. “Come on. How much do you really want that townhouse?”
I rest my hands on my thighs to hide their trembling and lift my chin just enough to meet his eyes. “More than anything.”
“Then how, exactly, are you going to show me your respect?”
“I’ll suck your dick.” There’s no point sugar-coating it. Crassness is all this man understands.
He laughs. “If I want you to suck my dick, I just have to tell you to do it.”
“That’s the point. You’d be telling me to do it. Making me do it. But this way, I’m offering. Offering out of respect. And you’d know it, because…” I take a breath. “Because you’d be the first man I’ve ever asked to let me.”
He lets me sweat for a second. Then he says, “Your offer is an amateur blow job and a sweet smile?” I stay quiet, hoping. Praying. “If you’ve never done it before, it won’t even be all that good.”
“No. But you could—you could teach me.”
“Now you want me to teach you?”
I want to kill you slowly and watch you bleed out with the same dead stare you’ve been giving me since I came here.
“If you would be so kind,” I say.
His eyes narrow at my tone. But he just says, “Crawl over here.”
I comply, shuffling over on my hands and knees and trying not to glance over at the vivisection of my grandfather’s townhouse.
The distance between the bed and chair feels infinite, and the chain from the collar around my neck drags along with me.
My palms are sweating against the concrete, and by the time I reach him, I can barely bring myself to meet his eyes.
But I do.
He’s undoing his belt with one hand while picking up his phone with the other. “Hands behind your back,” he says without looking up. “And don’t move them unless I tell you to.”
He sounds almost bored. But I obey, clasping my fingers together at the small of my back.
Whoever he’s calling answers, and he orders, “Bid six million.” He looks down at me, moving the phone only a few inches away from his mouth, so whoever is on the end of that line could hear him if they wanted to.
“Look how fast you got to your knees. Almost like you want my dick as much as the townhouse.” I say nothing. “Open your mouth.”
I part my lips, and he traces them with his thumb. The touch is impersonal, testing, examining his property. It reminds me of my first night in his house, when he examined my asshole the same way.
“Wider.”
I open my mouth more, feeling foolish and exposed. He presses down on my bottom lip with his thumb, and I tentatively touch it with my tongue, not sure if that’s right.
“Now use your tongue. Show me what you plan to do with your mouth.”
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I’ve seen things in videos, heard stories from Jesse and his cronies, but actually doing it feels impossible.
I try to take his thumb into my mouth, but I’m clumsy about it, unsure of the pressure, the movement.
While I try to figure out what he wants me to do, I accidentally bump his knuckle with my teeth.
“Careful,” he mutters. But his pupils grow a little larger, and that gives me a flicker of hope.
“Seven and a half million,” he says into the phone, but his voice has dropped half an octave. “Christ. People will pay anything for real estate in New York these days.”
He pulls out his thumb and slides his hand into my hair, gripping just tight enough to hurt.
“Listen carefully,” he says, looking down at me with those empty eyes. “You’re going to take me in your mouth. Slowly. And if you gag, you breathe through your nose and keep going. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
His grip in my hair tightens sharply, even though I’m pretty fucking sure I kept any sarcasm out of my reply, despite what I was thinking.
“No,” he growls. “You say my name. I don’t want you to forget for a second who you’re kneeling for.”
Heat crawls up my chest, my neck. “Yes, Damiano.”
“Better. And if I feel teeth, you’re gonna die with my dick in your mouth. You get me?”
“I get you.”
He fishes himself out, and he’s already hard, thick and imposing. How is that supposed to fit in my mouth? “Come on,” he says. “Show me what those pretty Clemenza lips are good for besides lying.”
I lean forward, press my lips to the head of his cock like I’m giving it a kiss. He tastes like salt, like the ocean. I pull back, looking up at him uncertainly.
“More,” he says. “Open your mouth.”
I part my lips and try to take him in, but I gag on just the tip, the strange feeling of having something that big in my mouth. My eyes water, and I pull back, coughing.
“Breathe through your nose,” he instructs, his free hand stroking my hair almost gently. “Try again.”
The second attempt goes better, but barely. I can still only manage the very tip. I don’t know what I’m doing with my tongue, and I keep accidentally scraping him with my teeth.
Despite what he said, he doesn’t kill me for that. So I guess I should count myself lucky.
“Relax your jaw,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Good boy. Don’t think so much.”
I hate how delicious he smells. I hate how my stomach flips when he calls me a good boy. I hate that I want him to like it.
He sets his phone down and puts it on speaker. The auction continues in the background—eight million, eight and a half. But all I can focus on is trying not to embarrass myself further. Trying to figure out how to breathe. Trying to understand what he wants from me.
I find a rhythm, taking him a little deeper each time. I figure out that sealing my lips and using suction makes his thighs tense around me. Running my tongue along the underside makes his fingers tighten in my hair.
“Am I doing it right?” I cough, pulling back to look up at him. My eyes are watering. I hope he doesn’t think I’m crying.
His teeth are clenched. “Stop asking questions,” he says roughly. “Just…keep going.”
I get back to it, try to take him deeper like I’ve seen in videos, but I immediately gag and have to pull back, gasping and choking. Tears stream down my face, and I feel like a complete failure.
“Twelve million!” the voice crackles through the speaker.
I work just the head, using my tongue more deliberately now, and find a spot just under the ridge where he’s sensitive. When I press my tongue there and suck at the same time, his hips shift forward involuntarily.
“Thirteen,” Damiano spits out, echoed by whoever is on the other end of that phone. But he’s not really listening to the auction anymore; he’s staring down at me with an intensity that makes my skin burn. His hand tightens in my hair. “Use your hand, too.”
I bring my hands from behind my back—he said not to move them unless he told me, and now he’s telling me—and use one to grip him, the angle unfamiliar.
I try to coordinate my mouth and hand, and it’s clumsy at first, like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach simultaneously.
But I do my best to match my strokes to my sucks, and when I look up at him through my wet lashes, something in his expression shifts. His control is slipping.
I have power here. I really do.
I slide him into my mouth again, finding it easier this time, his thick crown weighing down the back of my tongue.
“Look at you, learning so fast,” he says. “Natural talent, I guess.” The words should sting, not make my cock twitch. I channel my irritation into working him harder, more suction, tighter grip, finding that spot under the ridge again and pressing until he curses.
“Fifteen million!” The voice on the phone is getting excited now.
So is Damiano. “Eighteen,” he counters, voice strained.
I’m getting better. His breathing is heavy now, his hips jerking in micro-movements. The grip in my hair disappears and his hands frame my face. He brushes away my tears with his thumbs, and the tenderness of that gesture in the middle of this transaction nearly breaks my concentration.
“Eighteen and a half!” chirps the phone.
“Twenty,” Damiano says unsteadily. “Twenty million for a townhouse that doesn’t even have a view of the Park.”
I take him deeper than I’ve managed before—not deep, by any standard, but enough that I feel him hit the back of my throat, and this time I breathe through the gag and hold. His thighs are rigid. The hands around my face are trembling.
“And let’s be honest,” he says, looking down at me with pupils blown black, “you’re not even worth half that, are you, little prince? Despite what I paid for you.”
The casual cruelty barely registers, because I’m too focused on the way his hips are moving, the way his cock feels like it’s swelling so much my jaw might unhinge. Because despite my inexperience, despite how clumsy I am, I’m affecting him.
And despite everything he’s done to me, I want to be good at this. Want him to lose control…and let me take it.
“Twenty million going once…going twice…”
His balls are tight and hard, the flesh in my mouth impossibly swollen. I prepare myself for what’s coming, hope I won’t choke—
He pushes me away, his cock falling out of my mouth as I go back on my heels, gasping and confused, saliva and pre-cum gushing down my chin.
He tucks himself away.
“Sold! Twenty million dollars to bidder number seven!”
Damiano reaches out to end the call with a sharp tap.
“But you didn’t finish,” I say stupidly.
He looks down at me. “Finish? From that pathetic attempt? It’s a good thing you never whored yourself out on the streets, Clemenza. No one in their right mind would pay for your skills. Lucky for you I’m—how did you put it that first night? Oh, yeah.” He leans forward. “Fucking insane.”
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying.
I’m not sorry. He is fucking insane.
And he’s a fucking liar, too. That might not have been the best blow job he’s ever had, but he was into it.
“The townhouse is mine,” he continues, standing and straightening his pants.
“And it could be yours, at the end of our year together. But not with a performance like that.” He shakes his head with a disappointed sigh, and then heads toward the elevator.
He pauses there, looking back at me, still kneeling on the floor.
“Maybe next time you’ll put a little more effort into showing your respect. ”
I’m left alone once the elevator ascends, kneeling on hard concrete, mouth still wet, a dull throbbing between my legs. And something burning inside me, something close to hate.
But not quite hate.
I wipe my lips with the back of my hand. Twenty million dollars. Twice what he paid for me. For a townhouse he claimed not to want, and hasn’t even guaranteed to hand over to me. I paid a high price.
But it was worth it.
Because I know for sure, now. I do affect him. I have power over him, even if he won’t admit it.
And twenty million dollars says Damiano Orsini is upstairs right now watching me, watching my reaction. For the first time in days, I feel my fire returning.
I look directly at the camera in the corner, the one angled at the bed. I hold its eye the way I held his. And I let one corner of my mouth lift.
He wants to play games?
Game fucking on.