4. Orion
Orion
I t became our little routine.
Every night, I would find Vince in the office, his stare loosely focused on a piece of paper, or the wall, or out the window.
I would come in and ask him if he wanted me to light a fire.
Sometimes we would banter about it, sometimes he said yes, and sometimes he said no.
Every time, I wondered if it was going to be the last time.
He didn’t know he was on a fourteen-day countdown, or if he did, he never let on.
On day eight, I walked in and he had his Sig in pieces on the desk, his fingers working carefully as he meticulously cleaned his piece.
He stopped when I entered, leaning back in his chair and looking me directly in the eyes.
He was too kind for a job like this. Even though he tried to present himself as being the same as his father, he didn’t have it in him.
Vince could be rough, but he wasn’t cruel .
“What was the nature of your relationship with my father?” he asked me that night, slowly sliding his gun back together and setting it in the center of his desk, barrel pointed toward me.
“What do you mean?”
He licked his lips, annoyance obvious on his face. “Were you his lover?”
That wasn’t the word I would have used to describe the nature of my relationship with Ricardo Angelini.
“I was indebted to your father,” I answered.
“An unwilling lover, then.” Vince tilted his head to the side thoughtfully, and I knew we were both thinking of that night we never spoke about.
“On occasion,” I said.
“What else?” he pressed. “When you weren’t willing or unwilling…what was the nature of it?”
“That was determined at his discretion.” Shame flooded me, and I frowned at the floor.
“He did not treat you well?”
I didn’t know how to answer that either, and my silence was answer enough.
Vince sighed heavily, resigned but not tired.
“He trusted you,” Vince said, not asking. “You were his confidant, his assistant. Were you his advisor?”
“Rarely,” I whispered.
Confidant, sometimes. Assistant, often.
Ricardo always had me handling his dirty work or delegating it out to others so his hands would stay clean.
Vince had no idea the depraved things I’d done in his father’s name, and part of me hoped he would never find out.
Not because I cared how it would cause him to see his father, but because of how it would cause him to see me.
“I would like for you to be those things to me,” he said softly, assuredly. Lifting his gun, he pointed it at me, then returned it to the holster at the small of his back. “But not under duress.”
“I understand, Sir.”
“Admittedly, Orion—” He paused, and I loved how my name sounded in his mouth. “I think we started on the wrong foot.”
“How do you figure?”
“With you on your knees.”
I blinked slowly, heat flooding my stomach at the memory of our encounter the night he killed his father.
“I…I don’t…”
“It was dubious?—"
“No.” I interrupted him before he could finish the thought. “It was not.”
“I had a gun to your head,” he reminded me.
“I’m not scared of dying, Sir,” I said. “The threat of a bullet would never be enough to force me into doing something I don’t want.”
“So you just didn’t care for my father, then?” he asked. “How could he take you unwillingly if you were not…are not…afraid to die?”
“Standing here now, it feels complicated to explain.”
Maybe because I knew Vince was going to be dead in less than a week, the thought of him forcing himself on me wasn’t as all-consuming as when his father did it.
With Ricardo, there was no end in sight, no bottom of the well of what I owed him.
More likely, though, it had to do with the soft differences between the two of them.
Vince had love coursing through his veins whether he wanted to admit it or not.
I doubted he ever would, but his father was made of nothing more than malice and contempt.
It was not my fear of dying that determined when I would be willing, but the manner of the man taking me.
Ricardo fucked me to prove a point to me.
Vince had fucked me to prove a point to himself.
“I understand complicated,” he said. “I’d like it if you lit a fire.”
The return to our normal snapped me back into the present, and I gave him a quick and succinct nod. “Yes, Sir. Sorry.”
I went to the fireplace and twisted the gas on, not bothering to rear back when the flames licked to life, burning treacherously close in front of my face. The discomfort of the fire was welcome because, eight days on, I still hadn’t found my footing in this new order of the Angelini clan.
“It’s still cold in here,” he said from the desk.
I straightened and turned in time to see him trace his tongue across the swell of his bottom lip.
I swallowed back a moan that had no place breathing itself into existence.
It had been so long since I’d been fucked the way I liked, the way I needed.
I didn’t think Vince had it in him, though.
That sharp edge of contempt his father always carried for me was the kink I’d grown to love the most.
Sleeping with Vince Angelini would only be for pleasure, not purpose.
“I can warm you, Sir,” I said, standing in front of the fire with nervous hands shoved into my pockets.
“How would you do that?”
He pushed his chair back from the desk, eyes alert.
He tracked me the way a predator would track its prey as I closed the space between the fireplace and the desk.
When I reached him, I sank down to my knees and made quick work of his belt, of his fly.
He lifted enough off the chair for me to tug his pants and underwear down.
His cock was not hard yet, a little heavier than flaccid, the sweet scent of sweat and soap permeating the air.
I took his softness into my mouth, all the way to the back of my tongue until my nose was buried in the short hairs around the base of his shaft, then I rested my cheek on his thigh and closed my eyes.
Vince made a surprised sound, then threaded his fingers through my hair, stroking it away from my face and behind my ear.
He groaned quietly, lifting a little more off his seat, pushing deeper into my mouth.
He was quickly getting hard, and as his cock swelled in my mouth, restricting my air, my own erection followed after.
But I made no move to suck or lick or swallow.
I simply held him in my mouth, relishing the soft, yet still dominating way he touched my hair.
“That’s a good pet,” he murmured, leaning back in his chair, leather creaking as he moved, and I shivered from my place on the floor. “I’m much warmer now. Much warmer.”
And as he curled his fingers around the base of my skull to hold me in his lap, I knew that by calling in the hit on Vince Angelini, I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.