Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fiero
If I could bottle this feeling, I would. Then I’d get high on it every fucking night. Finally, I’ve got her exactly where I want her.
Vulnerable, confused, scared.
And my dick is so hard I’m not sure I could stand if I wanted to.
She wets her lips, then releases a stuttered whisper. “Il Diavolo.”
I almost come.
Because that’s what they call me. The Sovereign Devil.
Although you’ll remember me as someone else entirely, cucciola.
If I were to tell her we were in the same class at school, she wouldn’t believe me.
I let her whisper float in the still air and feast my gaze on the hairs standing erect all over her smooth skin. Those mouthwatering thighs and tapered ankles, insane eyes and wet lips.
Fuck.
I hate how hot she is.
I always liked her, almost obsessively, in that hormone-ravaged way teenage boys do. But she was clearly a late bloomer, like me. She didn’t yet have legs up to her armpits, curves that could burst a dam and eyes as hypnotic as a siren song.
I’ve watched her from afar. A grainy photograph here, a CCTV clip there, and I could always see she was beautiful. But those depictions pale in comparison to the flesh and blood reality standing in front of me now.
My gaze doesn’t move as I lift my glass and take a long pull of whiskey. Lifting my forefinger away from the crystal, I wipe a stray drop of alcohol from the corner of my mouth with a knuckle, and watch her eyes fall to my lips.
My dick twitches. It doesn’t know what hatred is. It only knows hunger.
Raw, instinctive, and inconvenient as hell.
I swallow the liquid. I’ve never liked when people stare.
It takes me back to the moment it all changed, and she’s the reason for that.
Which is why I don’t understand… I like when she stares at me.
Just like this. Like she wants to memorize every damn inch of me, understand every line and contour, figure me out, get under my skin.
A soft chuckle leaves my throat.
Then my jaw tightens, molars grinding as I drag my attention back up to her face.
“Take off your mask.”
My voice is rough and unrecognizable.
She lifts trembling fingers to her face and pushes the gold mask up her forehead, sliding it from her crown.
“Why did you put yourself up for auction?”
She blinks, and wavers. Then… “Why did you bid for me?”
I lower my glass to a small table and watch the liquid settle for a moment. She recoils a little when I return my gaze to her face.
“I didn’t.”
Her lips part in a sweet gasp.
“I marked you as off limits.”
Those lips snap shut.
Interlinking my fingers between my thighs, I savor the anger starting to brew beneath her bones. I’ve always been able to see these things—things that take real observation unhindered by an obsession with the spoken word. Too many people enjoy the sound of their own voice, I’ve found.
That’s why they call me Il Diavolo. I observe, I learn, I bend to my will.
“What did you think was going to happen, Pfeiffer?” A sadistic smile pulls at the edges of my mouth. “Did you think someone would bid enough money that you’d be able to pay off your uncle’s debt and get out of this place?”
The way she swallows multiple times makes my dick heavy. Her skin paling makes me even harder.
I allow the smile to breach my face. “After everything I’m sure you’ve heard about me, I can only describe your little plan as na?ve. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Her chin tips up and a tear rolls down her cheek. “What do you want from me?”
Now, there’s a question. What do I want from her?
No one has asked me that before.
My brothers think they know the answer already. Even Vivienne thinks she knows. They think I want to punish her for what she did, make her hurt, if only a fraction of the hurt I endured for years. But that isn’t enough. Now that she’s here, I want more.
There’s really only one word for it.
“Everything.”
She sucks a bottom lip between her teeth, her arms wrapping around her middle, protectively. Another tear falls.
“Can you be more specific?”
I pause, then let my head shake, slowly.
“Why do you want to leave?” I ask. “Some people would give their right arm to work here.”
She sniffs. “I’m not ‘some people.’”
Fuck if she isn’t right there. Pfeiffer McAllister is like no one else. She’s otherworldly. Untouchable—literally. Which reminds me of her one condition.
“Why ‘no hands’?”
Her arms tighten around her torso. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
I like how defiant she’s being, though I can see the tremble on her lips from all the way over here. I sit forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my hands still clasped, and let my gaze stroke from her toes all the way up her body to those disarming eyes.
“Why do you stare at me?” I ask, softly.
Her lips part, then close, then part again.
“I don’t,” she says finally, but it lacks substance.
I huff out a quiet breath, leaning back just enough to study her properly. “Liar.”
Her eyes flash, irritated.
My next demand is taut. “Answer the question.”
She shifts her weight and digs her fingers into her own arms like she’s holding pieces of herself together.
“Because I like it when you stare back.”
My lungs collapse.
Christ.
I wasn’t expecting that. Her honesty makes my throat dry.
“Why?”
There’s an agonisingly long pause before she replies. “Because the way you look at me makes me… feel.”
I swallow hard. “Feel what?”
She shakes her head and tips her gaze to the ceiling. She lets it all out on a heavy sigh. “Everything. Fear, terror, elation, intrigue.” She shrugs like she’s all out of ideas. “Alive.”
Something hot and sharp explodes inside my chest. I drag in a breath but my lungs are ash.
I wet my lips, my brows drawing together.
“That’s what I do to you?”
Her gaze locks with mine, and this time she doesn’t look away.
“Yes.”
My grip tightens on my own hands, and without glancing down, I know my knuckles are white. I also know the script I’ve had in my head for fifteen years is tearing down the middle. I need to end this conversation so I can think.
Just because she’s admitted something I didn’t know I wanted, doesn’t mean my objective is null and void. I can still hate her and I can want her too. I just need to figure out how to navigate both those desires at the same time.
But my body has formulated a response before my brain can approve it.
“Fine. You continue to work here for one month. During that month, as well as your club duties, you will do whatever I want, whenever I want, exactly as I want it. I’ll honor your condition—I won’t put my hands on you.
But you’ll facilitate my pleasure in other ways.
Exactly one month from now, I’ll consider your uncle’s debt repaid, and you can leave. ”
Her body softens but her shoulders remain stiff.
“O-other ways?”
Her eyes widen as I stand. I move closer until I’m towering over her frame.
Her legs are long but she still only reaches maybe five four. I have to mentally force my dick down as I peer into the valley between her breasts.
They’re so fucking soft and creamy, like her thighs. I want my mouth between them, all over them. I want to bury my face in her chest, inhale her, taste everything my teenage self could only dream about.
“You don’t want me to use my hands,” I remind her. “But I’ll want you to make me come.”
She bites down on her lip turning it white as I step into her. The gold mask falls to the floor.
“You’ll pay back your uncle’s debt by doing everything I say, do you understand?”
Her forehead glistens with sweat and her irises are swimming. I know that look. She won’t admit it to herself but she’s lustful. She’s consented to pleasuring me—I have it in writing. Nothing stated I have to give anything to her, least of all pleasure.
But right here, in this moment, I realise that the thing I’ve wanted since the age of thirteen is standing in front of me, on a metaphorical silver platter, offering me all my wet dreams.
I fucking want her.
But that’s not all.
Understanding unfolds, making me sick with weakness. This realization, this admission…
I need her to want me too.
I need to hear her whimper. Against every molecule of her soul.
A minute passes. A full minute of savoring the sweet lust rising from her body. Then I take a step back. Her lungs contract instantly.
I carefully remove my jacket and lay it on a chair to the side of the room. Pulling my tie loose, I slide it from my collar, watching her as I fold it neatly.
My mouth is filling with saliva. Her neck.
My tongue is restless to taste the skin trailing from the lobe of her ear to the curve of her collar.
“Tie back your hair.”
“I don’t have a hair tie,” she says quietly.
I almost laugh at the speed of her reply. “Then bunch it behind your head for me.”
She does as I instruct, her fingers trembling, and I move behind her. I unfold the tie and wrap it around her strawberry blond hair. It’s longer than it used to be but gleams like it always did. I pull the tie into a bow letting the ponytail fall down her back.
Rounding her body, I stand close enough that I can feel her heat penetrate my shirt. The scent rising from her skin is intoxicating, like honey wending through my veins, flooding my brain with something addictive.
My sense of control just slipped its leash.
I shouldn’t be this close to her. Every instinct I’ve honed over the years—discipline, restraint, detachment—is starting to fracture.
Her breath stutters, her chest rising and falling.
My gaze drops to her throat, and there it is. A pulse, fluttering wildly beneath her soft skin.
My mouth floods again and I take a step closer. Close enough that there’s no space left between us, that if she sways even an inch she’ll collide with me.
“Don’t move,” I murmur.
She freezes to the spot, rigid.
I bend my head slowly and deliberately. My nose brushes the curve of her jaw first, a whisper of contact that makes her inhale sharply. I follow the line of her skin down, grazing, fondling with my senses, until I reach the place where her neck meets her shoulder.
And then I stop.
My head feels dizzy and my hands are burning to touch her. Her scent wraps around me like a blanket—warm, sweet, and achingly real. It hooks into my flesh like a claw. Like a beautiful madness. It fills my lungs, settles under my skin, turns my thoughts into thick syrup.
I’m floating when she makes a sound. Like a hum, or a sigh. Whatever it was, she swallowed it fast.
My lips hover just shy of her skin, not quite touching, but close enough that every breath I take drags across her like a promise.
Satisfaction crawls across every inch of me, because for one whole month, Pfeiffer McAllister—finally—is mine.