Chapter 27
CALIGULA
I kept it together while everyone was here, but now my hands are shaking again. I sit on the sofa, the sagging springs giving way under my weight, and let out a long breath.
The olive oil and bread that Strike brought for the ceremony are still on the coffee table. I’ve never seen it done, but my father told me about it once. The oil, the bread, the vow. Sacred things, done in back rooms by men with blood on their hands.
I expected to feel like a complete fraud, but everything seemed…
Right.
It felt natural to order them around, even though most of them were so much older than me. And to my relief, it felt completely natural to think and strategize in the moment. Letting that Morelli plant in, for example. Strike and Dami both protested, but neither could see the bigger picture.
I’ll deal with the Morellis in due course.
But after everything that’s happened, I needed this moment. To come back to myself. To remember who I am aside from the weight of a name that makes me a target, a joke, an object of vengeance.
I take in a long breath, trying to flush out all those stress hormones flooding my system. Exhaustion is starting to catch up with me, and I have a headache starting at the back of my neck.
And downstairs, waiting in the car for me—no doubt furious—I have a more immediate problem to deal with.
I’m not sure how long I sit there. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. But I sit up when I hear a creak on the stairs outside.
Dami wouldn’t creep.
He’d just stomp up the steps and bang on the door, demanding I open it.
Maybe it was my imagination. But a second later, there’s a scratching sound. Very quiet. The door handle moves slowly. Down until it hits the lock. Then up again, silent.
My heart freezes for one horrible second, and I’m back in the basement, chained in the dark, hearing sounds I can’t identify, waiting endlessly.
But this isn’t the basement. I’m not chained. I can move. I can fight.
I scramble off the couch, looking for cover, but there is none. The tiny kitchen is in a room that opens fully into the rest of the space, and there aren’t any implements in there. Definitely no knives. Nothing except—
A rusty length of rebar, lying forgotten on a low shelf in a doorless cupboard. I grab it.
The door explodes open, slamming into the wall, and I yelp in fright.
But a second later, I sag against the wall with relief. Damiano Orsini stands there, having just kicked the door in. “I told you it wasn’t safe.”
“You broke down a door just to make a point?” I snap, anger coursing through me to cover up the fear.
And underneath the anger and the fear, something else. Something hot and electric that I only feel around this man.
He takes a slow step forward. “I told you anyone could walk in here. You thought those no-hopers would keep you safe.” Another step. “But there’s only one person in this city who can really keep you safe, little prince.” He stops. Waits. “Isn’t there?”
Something in me rises up. Something I thought I’d lost.
“You’re right about that, Dami,” I say. “And I’ve done a pretty good job of looking after myself. I’m still standing, aren’t I?”
He takes another step. “Are you, though?” His eyes drop to my hand. The rebar. “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Show me you can protect yourself. Hit me.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Hit me.”
“You made your point,” I say, “when you kicked the damn door in.”
“Nah. I’m not done making it.” He takes another two steps, and he’s close now. Almost in range. Behind him, the door is still wide open, and the stairs lead down three flights to the street.
He could throw me down them.
“You’re worried,” he observes. “Even though I’ve always been the one to save you, golden boy. Save you from yourself, even.”
I can already feel his hands around my neck again—or is that my heart in my throat? I lift up the metal bar. “Stay away from me,” I say, but it comes out strangled.
He smiles. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll…” I wave the rebar at him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
His smile widens. “Go ahead and try.”
I don’t want to hurt him, though. No matter how much I might like to bait him, it’s true: he is the only protection I have right now.
He also chained me up in the dark and left me there.
Both of those things are true.
“Come on,” he says. “Do it.”
His arms are loose at his sides, his weight forward on the balls of his feet, his knees relaxed. I’ve never even thrown a punch before, but I recognize the posture of a man who fights for a living.
He’s inviting me in.
“Come on, Don Clemenza,” he says. “Come at me. And do it like you mean it.”
I know perfectly well that swinging a metal bar at Damiano Orsini will accomplish nothing.
But my God, I want to do it.
I telegraph my movement, I know that the instant I begin, but I can’t stop myself.
I pull back hard, and by the time I swing the bar at Damiano, he’s already moved into my orbit and blocks my wrist with his forearm.
It jars me so hard I feel the reverberations down my arm and into my chest. He grabs my wrist with his other hand and twists, making me drop my weapon with a cry.
He pivots his weight, grabs the back of my neck, and throws me toward the sofa. I hit the back and fold over it. When I push back up, he’s just standing there watching me.
“That all you got?” he asks.
“Fuck you,” I spit.
He throws the rebar down on the ground at my feet. “Pick it up.”
I bend warily and grab it.
“Now hit me.”
Fuck this guy. This time, I try stabbing, thrusting at him instead of pulling back to swing, but he catches it and yanks me forward, stumbling into him. For a half-second I’m pressed against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat, fast and hard.
Same as mine.
Then he disarms me and shoves me hard, into the arm of the sofa this time, so I lose my balance and fall back onto it. The old wooden frame creaks ominously.
I lie there for a second, staring at the water-stained ceiling, and then I roll off and to my feet.
“Again,” he says.
He’s enjoying this. But I’m going at it all wrong. I’m not using the natural advantages I have. I don’t have many, that’s for sure…but I’m fast.
And I’m closer to the door than I am to him.
When he tosses the bar at my feet again, I pick it up—and then I hurl it at him. It cartwheels across the room and he has to throw his hands up to protect himself.
I bolt. I run for the door, even get a foot out on the landing before a hand lands on the back of my shirt, yanking me back into the apartment.
“No, you don’t,” he laughs, and this time when he throws me, he actually throws me; I get airborne and land hard on my back on the sofa, my legs banging down on the arm.
He strolls over and looks down at me. “Okay. Now I made my point.”
I glare at him and try to sit up. I get about two inches up before his hand on my chest pushes me flat down again. It’s not violent. Not even hard. Just firm.
“Give up,” he tells me.
I think about it. Doing what he says. And then I try to push up again, hard as I can.
His eyes darken, and he’s on me at once, one knee between my thighs, his weight pressing me down into the saggy cushions.
My hands come up to his chest automatically, but whether it’s to push him away or just touch him, I’m not sure.
I can feel his heart again, pumping much harder than it should be.
It’s not like he had to exert himself to get me here.
Underneath him.
“Get off me,” I pant out.
He takes my wrists slowly and pins them down over my head on the arm of the couch. “Make me,” he says softly. “Make me get off.”
The heat that floods through me is total, annihilating. I’m hard. He’s hard. I can feel it, and my hips lift into him automatically. But my face burns from humiliation as much as desire.
I could fight. I could bite. I could knee him in the groin and be out that door before he recovered.
I don’t. And the fact that I don’t—the fact that some sick, starving, needy part of me would rather be pinned under Damiano Orsini than get free of him—is something I’m going to have to work through, sooner or later.
What would Nonno Lou think of his last heir right now? Pinned to a broken couch, getting hard from being manhandled by a Giuliano?
He’d think exactly what he always thought. That I was born to bend.
Born to break.
But Nonno Lou is dead. I’m still here.
“Someone might come back,” I gasp out. “And stop you.”
“You think they could stop me?”
I buck and twist and writhe, but I’m pinned in place by solid muscle. There’s a rushing noise in my ears, and a beat pulsing through my whole body as I feel Damiano Orsini’s hard cock pressing up against mine.
I grind up into him.
There’s something wrong with me. There must be.
But if there’s something wrong with me, there’s something wrong with Dami, too, because his pupils are blown so wide they’ve turned his brown eyes black.
I writhe again, pointlessly. “At least shut the door.”
“No. If one of them comes back, I want them to see their precious Don getting fucked in the ass by the man who really owns him.”
Desire zings through me at the idea. He rolls off me, but only to rip my shirt open, making me protest. But it was just a distraction, because a second later he pulls me up and flips me over the back of the sofa—face dangling down toward the floor, my weight folded over the spine.
He yanks my shirt right off, and then his hands are at my waist, tugging my pants and underwear down.
And I let him do it.
More than that.
I want him to do it.
His weight shifts on the sofa, and I hear his belt open. The rasp of a zipper. And then I hear the clink of the olive oil bottle being picked up from the coffee table.
I go rigid, look over my shoulder at him. “Don’t use that.”
“You don’t want this dry. Believe me.”
The oil. Brought for the ceremony, the sacred anointing that would make me Don. Dami is pouring it over his fingers, and I can hear the slick sound as he coats himself, and the profanity of it should horrify me.
It just excites me more.
He lines up and starts pushing in, no prep at all. I claw at the sofa, astonished at the way my body opens for him, every time, without hesitation. Even now. Even after everything he’s done to me.
I make a sound that I wish I could un-hear. It’s not pain, not protest. It’s need. Unfiltered need from the deepest part of me.
He was right. I’m all hunger. Hunger and need…
Dami bottoms out. Holds still. His hand is in the small of my back, keeping me where he wants me. His breathing is controlled.
So I reach back and grab his hip.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I ask breathlessly, using his own words against him. “It’ll take more than that to put me in my place, Dami.”
I hear his breath catch, and the sound of that tiny, involuntary hitch sends a bolt of triumph through me.
He might have me bent over a couch.
But I have him.
He answers me by pulling out, leaving me empty and aching, and then slamming back in all the way. Hard. So hard the sofa frame gives a warning crack under the force of it.
And then he keeps going. There’s no finesse. Nothing gentle about it. The worst part, the humiliating part, the exquisite part, is how much I love it. He shifts his angle, hitting that spot inside me that makes me cry out.
“That’s it,” he hisses. “Sing for me, little prince. Let me hear how much you love it.”
He grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls me up, flush against his chest, my cock dragging over the rough fibers of the sofa. Every thrust becomes a relentless stimulation that’s pushing me toward climax faster than I ever thought possible.
The shame is sharp enough to hurt, but the pleasure is so intense it eclipses everything else. And the open door isn’t a threat anymore. It’s a thrill. I almost wish someone would climb up those stairs, see me like this…
I hate him for it. Hate him and want him at the same time, more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I’ve never felt so alive, every sense heightened. I can smell the dusty air, hear the slap of flesh on flesh, feel the stretch in my ass…
“Look at you,” he says again, but this time, it sounds different. Impressed. Even awed. “Look at you taking it so well from me.”
Pride wells in me along with the need to shoot. The pressure is building, my balls pulling up high and tight. But I want to hold on, to drag it out. I want to savor this strange, violent intimacy. And I don’t even know if he’ll let me shoot this time.
But then he puts his lips to my ear. “Come for me, golden boy.”
That’s all it takes. My body obeys him before my mind can even process the command. I come for him without a hand on me, spilling all over the already stained sofa. And I’m not alone; he’s burying himself deep inside me with a guttural groan, filling me up, making a mess of me.
We collapse forward together, a sweaty, panting flop over the back of the sofa, which gives another ominous creak.
He’s still inside me, his weight a heavy but comforting presence on my back.
I feel the frantic trip of his heart against my shoulder blades, and then his forehead drops against my spine.
I feel the slide of his wet brow, the heat of his breath.
And his lips, pressing against my skin.
He heaves me up again, his cock sliding out of me, but he grabs my face, forcing me to turn, to listen to him.
“Well, would you look at that,” he murmurs.
“You’re still alive. And not a single fucking Morelli or Clemenza around to protect you.
You couldn’t even protect yourself. What does that tell you? ”
I blink at him, dazed and uncomprehending.
He seems almost disappointed by my lack of response, but says nothing more. He gets off the couch, zipping up his pants. “Get dressed,” he says. “Vito’s waiting.”
I stagger off the couch and pull my pants back up, wincing slightly at the mess I can feel soaking into my underwear.
Dami is already at the door, not looking at me, the line of his shoulders much more tense than I’d expect from a man who just had an orgasm that almost broke a piece of furniture.
I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know who I am right now. Not my grandfather’s heir, not Dami’s prisoner, not the Don those men came to follow.
Snakes shed their skins. That’s what this feels like. A shedding of identities.
But what, exactly, will I be left with?