16. ~Julian~
16
~Julian~
“I’m fine,” Caterina insisted. “It’s just a minor flesh wound.”
“If you say you’re fine one more time, I’m gonna gag you with my fucking cock,” Nico rumbled in that dangerous tone of his.
“Wow,” I uttered, eyeing him as I took another swig of my bottle of vodka while I watched Milo stitching up Caterina’s wound on my chaise.
Nico was standing there tapping his foot and flicking his Zippo on and off like crazy.
“She needs to keep calm and control her breathing, so cock-sucking is off the menu,” Milo told him over his shoulder as he concentrated on what he was doing.
“I’m just… pissed,” she told Nico.
“Let me guess, because, in your mind, we took over your mission? Put down too many hostiles for your liking? Didn’t save enough for you?”
“No,” she murmured, and it had me worried because her usual bite wasn’t there with her response to him when he pissed her off or challenged her.
“Then what?” Nico snapped, barely keeping his shit together in light of her being hurt.
“Because you were right… about me not being a team player.”
“Uh, darlin’, you saved Milo’s life,” I pointed out.
“Literally,” Milo affirmed. “I saw where that fucker was aiming with that blade. If you hadn’t blocked him, that wound would have been fatal for me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I know, but… I’m not used to… to… the distractions. And I was so distracted tonight. As soon as we were all on that battlefield, sharing it, inside the house. I’m not used to having others there fighting alongside me, to being concerned for other people while I’m in combat. It threw me off. Majorly. I should have… I should have been able to react faster, more efficiently, so I wasn’t taken out of the fight when I stepped in to help Emilio. I… I have a lot to learn, I guess, where the teamwork part is concerned.” Emotion swam in her eyes and she brought her hand up to scrub over her face in a bid to both contain it and to hide it, it looked like. “I thought I was an asset, but… I didn’t even get to finish the mission and—”
“Stop,” Milo said, stilling with his stitching and lifting his head. “You saved my life. That’s ultimate teamwork. You could have gone the other way and focused on the takedown, the rest of us be damned. You would have got what you wanted that way—eliminating that human trafficking ring of your father’s and undercutting his power, delivering him a hell of a blow. Instead, you went the team route, you went with us. ”
Nico pocketed his lighter and knelt down beside her head, actually showing a shit-ton of tenderness as he wiped her tears away with the pads of his thumbs and told her, “You’re not used to working as part of a team? I knew that with us going into this. We all did. And you’ll learn. It takes practice. Julian was a lone wolf, a lot like you before Milo and I came along.”
I stepped forward. “It’s true. And I didn’t try to embrace it like you did tonight either. Not at first. Honestly, I was a bit of a shithead about it. You’re not. You’re trying. And, for the record, watching you take down some of those fuckers was a hell of a turn-on. You’ve got major skills, Cat.”
“Cat,” Milo chuckled. “There it is again.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I like it.” I eyed her. “You cool with that?”
She actually smiled. “I can work with it.”
Nico lifted his chin at me, silently thanking me for cheering her up a little.
“The mission was a success,” Nico told her. “All enemy targets were eliminated, the hostages have been transported to a secure facility for care and their protection. Julian has framed two of the buyers, like we planned, who Santino will blame for this takedown. The sleazy fuckers will likely be put down by his soldiers too, so we’re also ridding the world of them as well. Aside from you being stabbed, it couldn’t have gone better.”
Her emerald eyes shone at his words as the realization began to set in. “The beginning of what’s coming to them.”
“The beginning of the end, principessa.”
“All done,” Milo said, taping a gauze pad over his supreme stitching. “Antibiotics?” he asked, eyeing me.
“Being delivered in ten minutes.”
He nodded. “Good.” He moved back and started clearing up his equipment and disposing of the waste in the small garbage can that I’d brought in from the kitchen. “You’ll be okay with some rest and taking it easy for a few days,” he told Cat. “Take the painkillers every four to six hours, and the antibiotics four times a day until they’re finished.”
“Understood,” she said, carefully starting to sit up.
As she did, Nico snatched one of my white cotton robes off the back of the adjacent couch where I’d left it earlier after retrieving it for her.
“I’ve got it,” she told him when he tried to help her into it to cover her bra and panties. All lace, Nico’s favorite. He’d barely noticed, though, with the injured state of her. That was all he could see.
It always was. He didn’t take well to it when me or Milo were injured either. He considered it a personal failure on his part. But that wasn’t all. Although it was all he could admit to himself. The truth was that it scared him when our mortality was front and center like that from sustaining a wound. He’d spent his life around a brutal and fucked-up family that used him, abused him, and didn’t have his back. Now he’d made his own in me and Milo, he couldn’t stand the thought of losing it, of losing us.
“Thanks,” Cat told Milo as she tied the robe with shaking hands, then held onto the edge of the chaise to support her upright, standing state.
He actually smiled at her genuinely. “Right back at you, bellezza.”
They stared at one another for a moment—peacefully, for once.
And then Cat announced, “I need to head home.”
“Home?” I questioned. “No, you can stay here tonight. No worries there.”
“I appreciate it, but I need to wake up in my own bed. And I have a meeting at the crack of dawn. It’s a video call, but all the necessary documentation is at my place.”
“We’ll have it moved here,” Milo suggested, surprising both me and Nico.
She shook her head. “It’s already enough of an issue sneaking me in and out of here, let alone doing that. No, I’ll get dressed, then head home. It’s best for everyone.”
“I’m coming with you then,” Nico told her.
“I’ll be okay, honestly.”
“The painkillers are going to kick in soon.”
“I… fuck, fine.”
He grinned. “Glad that’s sorted.”
She rolled her eyes, then asked me, “Are the extra clothes from a couple of days ago still in that spare room?”
“Haven’t been moved, darlin’.
“Thanks,” she said, starting past us to head down there, struggling a little with the fresh stitches.
Nico headed out after her and I heard them bantering back and forth down the corridor in their usual way as they went.
I took a seat on my couch and leaned back, taking another big swig from my bottle of vodka.
“Is that working on calming you down from the adrenaline high that battle is to you?” Milo asked, walking over and perching on the arm near me.
“Not just battle, all of us on a mission. Gets me every time. Especially with having our new feisty warrior woman along for the ride this time.”
“It was definitely different having her there during a takedown.”
“Not all bad after all, huh? And not just because she saved your sweet ass.”
“Maybe.” He gave me a withering look. “But lay off the psychoanalyzing for tonight.”
“You’re still processing, got it.”
He looked me up and down in my motocross pants from earlier. I’d shed the boots, socks, and the jacket, just down to a blue tank on top. He was hesitant about it, though, looking rather than actually eye-fucking me. Or at least trying to hide the fact.
No doubt, it was because of my comments lately about our fucking and all that.
“So, is it?” he asked, gesturing at the bottle of vodka I was clutching in a death grip. “Taking the edge off?”
“No. Not yet, at least.” I leaned forward and put it down on the coffee table in front of me, before leaning back and stretching my arms out on either side of the top of the couch. “Why? Got a better idea?”
“Really? You’d be down for that?”
Before I could get a word out, he stepped up to me. “Because, if you were, I was thinking we could wake up early and just chill , as you call it.”
“What about Nico?”
“You think he’s actually going to head back to the Manor? He’s gonna stay over at Caterina’s to ensure she’s okay through the night. And if she doesn’t allow that because of the obvious issues of them being seen together, especially in an amicable way, he’ll keep her on video call all night long.”
“In spite of your assurances, yeah.”
“You know how he gets when those close to him are hurt.”
“I surely do.”
“Now she’s one of those.”
“I think she has been for a while, Milo. For the last few years, in fact. That time at the sleazy club isn’t the only time he’s intervened on her behalf to ensure her wellbeing.”
“True. That move he secretly made against Santino Leone to protect her comes to mind the most. Talk about walking a dangerous line. And now he’s no longer standing at a distance from her or only interacting through their war all bets are off.”
“It seems you’re gonna start accepting that now.”
“She could’ve let me fall tonight. She chose a different path. It says a lot.”
“It does, yeah.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, then took a moment, before admitting, “That was too close for my liking. She wasn’t the only one distracted. I guess I’m feeling the weight of things. I should’ve picked up on that threat without anyone needing to step in like that. And I think… I mean…”
“It freaked you out and you’re in need of comfort.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
I patted the couch. “Come sit with me. The meds will arrive for Cat in a few minutes, then her and Nico will head out and I’ll see to you.”
He nodded and slumped down beside me, his big body and all that hard muscle pressing up against me. I reached up and stroked his spiky silver hair and a peaceful sigh escaped him.
As I did, with him this close, the intimacy of it, and now having a quiet few moments, the brutal realization of just how close it had come for him tonight sank in.
In the most awful of ways.
And so did the fact that this was just the beginning of a major undertaking that would no doubt soon play out in one hell of a bloody war.
I sucked in a breath in a bid to calm myself as the thought of it started to infect me more so with every passing second.
I kicked my bedroom door shut with much more force than was necessary.
Milo spun at the violent thud reverberating through the room. “Sunshine?” he questioned, arching an eyebrow.
I stalked toward him and slammed both hands into his chest, knocking him onto my bed. “Don’t ever fucking do that to me again.” I jerked off my pants and tossed them roughly across the room. I was going commando as usual, so all I had to worry about was my tank then, and I gave it the same angry treatment.
The bursts of aggression weren’t helping to ease the infection running through me, though. The infection that had seeped into me when tonight’s events had collided with the realization of what was coming.
I pounced on Milo, straddling his thighs, and his gaze flicked all over my naked body, drinking me in.
“Did you hear me?” I demanded, my Dom voice coming through of its own accord, despite the fact that I didn’t want to bring that tonight. I wasn’t levelheaded enough to bring it tonight and things could become dangerous with that sort of play, if that was the case. Not to mention, I’d also been drinking. While it wasn’t enough to make me drunk, it was enough to alter my reaction rates and times, another thing that could be proven dangerous if I was to take a Sub in this sort of state. I wouldn’t. I never did. And I especially wouldn’t do that to Milo. So, no games tonight.
Besides, I wasn’t in the mood to play.
Having him beneath me, starting to pant at my closeness, the need blazing back at me, was a heady thing. Something real, something intense, something undeniable.
There was an ache permeating every part of me, and while he needed comfort from me, that infection making me ache needed to be soothed.
“Heard you, just having trouble processing,” he uttered, reaching up and brushing his fingers over the stubble along my jawline.
I snatched his wrist, jarring him. Getting his attention, just like I wanted.
Like I needed.
“Don’t ever put yourself in that position again.”
“It wasn’t exactly—”
“Watch your own back, not just Nico’s.”
His lips quirked. “Apparently, there’s no need. I have a new little guardian angel.”
“I’m serious.” I shoved his tank up to his pecs, baring all that insane muscle and bulk of his torso to my roaming gaze.
He hissed in need as I ran my fingers over his skin, tracing some of his tattoos, then moving from scar to scar, all of which were hidden in amongst the ink covering the beautiful canvas, strategically concealed by the artwork. But I knew and remembered where they all were. I’d spent a lot of time touching him, exploring and learning him over the years, since we’d first gone there senior year of high school during a particularly tumultuous night when I’d broken up with my cheating girlfriend. He’d been there for me then, in more ways than either of us had imagined. Well, I had imagined it—several times over, in fact—but I hadn’t thought it would become a reality.
“Too many,” I said, fingering a particularly nasty scar near his ribs, a serrated one that had been caused by him blocking the hit of a broken beer bottle that had been intended for Nico.
I knew it was a part of his role, the only outward one that people saw of him being Nico’s guard , but with what was coming, the stakes had been raised substantially and what had happened tonight had been a major wake-up call where that was concerned.
I’d been focused on the positive of it all, something I made myself do, or my mind could venture down very dark paths thanks to what my father had incited in me for years. That positive being upending the current system of the three families, of taking power and ripping back our freedom from the Marchetti Syndicate and the whole fucking thing in the process.
But now there was this side of it that could no longer be denied.
The risk.
Major fucking risk.
His hand covered my fingers tracing that scar. “Sunshine,” he spoke. “I’m okay. Nothing actually happened to me. All right?”
It wasn’t enough for me.
“The wrecking ball approach is off the table going forward. You and Nico need to retire it. The risk is too great, and I saw that front and center tonight.”
“It’s been extremely effective over the years.”
“That has been when going up against enemies to the three families, upstarts and the like. Not the families themselves. Not their well-trained and extremely brutal soldiers. It’s different, just as we saw tonight. So we need to approach it differently going forward.”
He released my hand and pulled his tank the rest of the way off. “I hear you, and I’ll talk to Nico about it,” he said, reaching beneath me and unbuckling his belt, then opening his pants.
“If you don’t, I’ll make myself your unofficial guard on all further operations.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You know I don’t like that.”
“Oh, I’m well aware.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near me fighting. You need to keep your distance. With my size versus yours, you can’t take what I can. You get in my vicinity when I’m fighting like that and you could get crushed or beaten really fucking bad. There’s no room for those fancy kicks of yours when you’re in the thick of it.”
“I’ll make myself into a human shield if I have to.”
He snagged my hips and rolled me beneath him, his mammoth hard body looming over me as he bared his teeth like an animal. “No,” he rumbled. He pulled off his jeans and boxers while still on me, then glared hard down at me. “ I’m the protector.”
I reached back and pulled a packet of lube from underneath one of my pillows. Ripping it open, I coated some on my fingers and slicked up my hard cock, then passed it to him. “Things are changing. We’re going to war, for fuck’s sakes. The way we do things needs to alter to accommodate that.” I slapped his ass, and he took the cue, flipping us again so I was straddling him again and on top.
“So?” I pushed, sitting back on my haunches and stroking my lubed cock as I watched him teasing his hole with slicked fingers. I only just managed to suppress a groan as he slid two inside at once, twisting and pushing in deep, making himself nice and slippery for me. “Are you going to be a good boy for me?”
A groan escaped him as he started having too much fun with the prep, driving deeper and going rougher and harder right before my eyes. “Agree to your terms?”
“That’s what I mean, yes.”
I batted his hand away, making him pull his fingers from his asshole.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Yes, I’ll see to it. We’ll change things to your liking.”
“To the liking and wellbeing of us all,” I corrected him.
“Yeah, that,” he said, clearly having reached the point of no return, his brain on lockdown as he fixated on my cock.
And what it was about to do to him.
He fucking knew he’d never had it as good as he did with me.
I grasped his thighs and spread them wide, then moved in between them.
His breath hitched as I teased his hole with my piercings.
I pushed in an inch, watching him take me so fucking well.
“Goddammit, yes,” he uttered, throwing his head back. “Sink inside, Sunshine. Give it to me. Give me that glorious fucking jewelry.”
I pushed in just another inch, then rocked slowly in and out, readying him for me.
The way I was feeling, I knew I couldn’t be gentle.
He was all for the rough and harsh with me, but he sometimes asked for things he wasn’t ready for. Fortunately, he had, in me, somebody who understood his limits better than he did. He was shortsighted when it came to sex. It wasn’t often that he got turned on to such an extent where he was craving a fuck. Something that was the opposite for me. So when he did get like that in those rare times, like tonight, he got too desperate and demanded things he couldn’t handle.
“More,” he rasped. “Fucking more already.”
“Patience, big boy,” I crooned, rocking into him and opening him up for me, gritting my teeth as his ass clenched down around my shaft, sending shocks of pleasure through me.
I reached out and grasped his cock, which was already dripping pre-cum all over his abs. His entire body shuddered. And it did a whole lot more than that as I started jerking him roughly and rapid-fire.
He cursed and dug his nails into the sheets, unable to keep still, and trying to thrust back on my cock.
I pulled out, and he whimpered, his need bleeding into me.
I couldn’t fucking hold out any longer.
I shifted my weight, covered his body with mine until we were pressed chest to chest, my hand slapping down either side of his head, as I then drove into him, filling him to the brim with my raging hard cock.
“ Goddamn!” he roared out into the room.
Angling myself just a little was all it took to brush his sweet spot with my piercings, and then his thighs were shaking either side of me, his cock leaking a whole lot more pre-cum on our abs.
I watched pleasure and utter rapture flit across his ruggedly handsome face.
And such relief too, relief that all the craziness and emotions of what had happened tonight that had clearly slammed into him had an outlet. In me. In us.
At least for this moment in time when I had him here like this. In body and mind. The latter of which was the issue. It was always the issue for him.
I stared into his deep espresso eyes as I slowed my pace a little, taking him long and deep, savoring the feel of him and the sweet torture that it was to my cock. And also making sure it wasn’t over too quickly. I could make him come in moments, and he clearly wanted that relief. But it wouldn’t be enough. For either of us.
His gaze collided with mine and he got sucked into my penetrative gaze. “Sunshine?” he rasped, barely able to talk as I drew out the pleasure.
“I can’t lose you. Do you understand me?”
“Julian, it’s—”
“I can’t. You’re my family. The only family I have left.”
Emotion etched his features. “I know. It’s the same for me.”
He brought his hands up and wrapped them around me, pulling me down to him.
“We’ll do this right, I swear it to you. We won’t fall.”
I nodded against him, burying my face in his warmth as I shielded my own emotion.
I drew almost all the way out, then slammed back inside him, rocking us both from the force of it and earning a delicious growl from him.
I didn’t stop then, all of it, all this shit taking me over, and then I was jack hammering into him, with Milo fucking back against me, matching my pace with all that powerhouse energy and stamina of his. More than that, all that fucking fiery passion that he only ever unleashed with me.
“Fuck,” I grunted, shocks of ecstasy shooting along my dick and taking my whole body right along with it.
“Yeah… ungh… Julian… I’m coming… fucking coming for you.”
In the next moment, his whole body lurched, his thighs shaking, and he spurted all over our abs.
I followed him over the edge with a snarl, filling him with my hot cum.
He tightened his hold on me before I could move to pull out or do anything. “Not yet,” he panted at my ear. “Just stay with me for a little while. I need to feel you all over me.”
I smiled against him. “Right back at you.”
War was coming and moments like this needed to be savored.
It was comfort and solace, as much as it was a reminder of what we were fighting for.
We weren’t like the three families.
It wasn’t just about power and money to us.
It was about each other, what we shared, what we’d built between us.
And it would always stand above all the rest.