Chapter 44
Lorenzo
T he snow falls like a confession outside the window—relentless, accumu lating, refusing to stop until everything is buried in white. Cleveland disappears beneath it, the city lights diffused into hazy halos that barely penetrate the thick curtain of white.
Inside, the warmth of our apartment feels like another world entirely—quiet, golden, sealed off from everything but each other. It’s Christmas Eve, and the world outside doesn’t exist.
I watch her more than I watch the snow. She’s curled into the corner of my Italian leather sofa, those long legs stretched across my lap.
She’s wearing my shirt—white cotton, half-buttoned, draped like sin across bare skin. The collar slips wide, teasing the slope of her collarbone, the shadow between her tits. Her hair is a tousled mass of dark waves, still bearing the impression of my fingers from earlier.
“Open yours first,” she says, nudging the box on her lap toward me. It’s larger than the one I’m holding, wrapped in matte black paper with a thin gold ribbon.
“No.” I place my palm over her gift, pushing it back toward her. “Mine first.”
She smiles—that particular smile that comes after she’s already decided to let me win. “Fine. But it’s too small to cause much trouble, right?” She picks up the black velvet box I’ve placed on her thigh.
I don’t answer. I just watch her fingers, the way they hesitate just a fraction of a second before lifting the lid. There’s always that moment with my toy—that split second where she considers whether to keep fighting me, even over the smallest things.
When she sees what’s inside, the change is immediate. Her body goes completely still. The box sits open in her palm, and inside it, a sleek obsidian business card catches the low amber light from t he lamp behind us. Her name is engraved in gold beside mine. Our title beneath it.
Piper of me carrying her out of the secret hospital wing at Arlington Diagnostic & Preventive Services after Ben drugged her.
Piper shifts closer, her fingers brush against my wrist. “This is when I knew,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m yours, Lorenzo, and you’re mine. I love you.”
I can’t speak. The puzzle piece is still in my hand, and I’m suddenly aware of how easily I could crush it. How fragile stone can be. How fragile everything is except what I feel for her.
She’s watching me, waiting. Always gauging my reactions. But there’s something else there too—a hunger for my approval that she would deny if I pointed it out.
“Say something,” she demands, and I hear the smallest tremor in her voice.
I don’t answer with words. I can’t. Instead, I place the piece carefully back in the case, close it, and set it on the coffee table. Then I grasp her face between my hands and take her mouth in a kiss.
The sudden movement knocks the case. It topples, spilling pieces across the hardwood floor with sharp, decisive clicks. I hear them rolling, scattering, but I don’t care. All I care about is the taste of her, the soft noise she makes as I bite her lower lip, the way her fingers curl into my hair.
Piper breaks the kiss first, her lips red and swollen from my teeth. Her palm flattens against my chest, not pushing me away but establishing her intent.
“I love you,” she repeats.
“And I love you, my toy,” I vow.
There’s a glint in her eyes—that particular shine that means she’s about to take what she wants. My body responds before my mind can catch up, blood rushing south as she presses me backward until I’m lying flat on the sofa.
“So,” she says, straddling my thighs, “we should talk about the future.” Her fingers trace idle patterns on my chest, dipping lower with each pass. “If I’m going to be a Russo, we need to make some plans.”
I could flip her over, take control back in an instant. But watching her ho ver above me, her skin flushed and her eyes bright with purpose, is everything.
“What kind of plans?” I keep my voice measured despite the heat building under my skin.
“I want us to move in together. For real.” Her fingertips trace each muscle with deliberate slowness. “Not your place. Not mine. Somewhere new. Somewhere just for us.”
Her nails scrape lightly across my skin as she says this, and my cock hardens beneath the thin fabric of my boxer briefs. She immediately shifts her weight so she’s pressing against it.
“Whatever you want, Toy.” I reach up to brush her hair back from her face. “Name the neighborhood. I’ll have a place by morning.”
She laughs, a soft, throaty sound that makes my heart contract. “So accommodating.” Her fingers slip beneath the waistband of my boxers, tugging them down past my hips, and immediately reaching for my hardness.
“I aim to please,” I groan.
“If I’m going to be your fiancée,” she says, beginning a slow, steady stroke, “I need a ring.”
I watch her face as she works me, the slight furrow of concentration between her brows, the way she wets her lips unconsciously. “Greedy girl.”
Her hand twists on the upstroke, and it’s exquisite torture. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” I’d give her the fucking moon if she asked for it like this. “I already have it.”
Her eyes widen fractionally, her rhythm faltering for just a moment. “You do?”
“It’s safe at the estate. Custom. Six carats. The diamond is shaped like a puzzle.” I reach for her free hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. “Black band.”
“So that’s the last piece.” She smiles, and there’s something almost tender in it before her expression shifts, becoming more calculating. Her grip on me tightens, her strokes quickening.
“And what about Ben?” she asks, and the name is a cold shock in the heated air between us.
But then her thumb circles the head, spreading the pre-cum that’s gathered there, and cold turns to fire as I realize what she’s doing—talking about killing a man while jerking me off like it’s the most natural combination in the world.
“We can kill him whenever you want,” I say, my voice rougher now. “Or I can have someone do it.”
She shakes her head, her hair falling forward to frame her face. “After graduation,” she says, her strokes becoming harder, more insistent. “I need to end one life before I start another.”
Fuck. The casual way she says it—like she’s discussing a haircut or a dinn er reservation. It shouldn’t be so goddamn sexy. But it is. My hips rise to meet her hand, chasing the friction.
“Whatever you need.” I’m close now, tension building at the base of my spine.
She leans down, her lips brushing my ear. “I want to watch the light leave his eyes,” she whispers, and it’s nearly my undoing. I grab her wrist, stilling her movements before I come too soon.
“Not yet,” I growl, flipping us so she’s beneath me. But she laughs, pushing against my chest again.
“No,” she says, her eyes dark with desire and something else—something that looks like power. “Not like that. Not right now.”
And I find myself yielding, letting her maneuver me back into position. This woman who speaks of murder with the same breath she uses to demand diamonds. This woman who arranges me like I’m one of her puzzle pieces—as if I haven’t already surrendered every game to her.
I would burn cities for her smile. I would end bloodlines for her pleasure. But most of all—I would let her lead me, follow her onto whatever path she chooses, because the alternative is a world without her voice in my ear, telling me exactly how she plans to destroy a man who dared to touch her.
She pulls my shirt over her head in one fluid motion, her body unveiled like a secret I’ve already memorized but will never tire of reading.
Instead of straddling my hips as I expect, she crawls up my body with predatory grace, positioning her thighs on either side of my face. She’s facing away from me, toward my dick, which strains upward as if seeking her heat.
The scent of her arousal fills my lungs—dark honey, salt, woman. Mine.
“Is this okay?” she asks, lowering herself until her sex hovers just above my mouth.
I answer by gripping her hips and pulling her down against my tongue. She gasps, her back arching as I lick a slow path through her folds.
She’s already wet—slick and swollen from our earlier kisses, from the control she’s been exercising. I feel her thighs tense on either side of my head as I circle her clit with the tip of my tongue.
With a moan, she bends forward, and the hot, wet suction of her mouth engulfs me. The sensation is electric, a current that arcs from my groin to the base of my skull.