Chapter 31
Thirty-One
VIOLET
What in the hell was that?
After Mateo leaves, I walk back to the restroom, where I put my bra on and then pull the shirt over my head, and when I return to the main area, Archie’s got his arms crossed, and he’s glaring at me.
“What are you mad about?”
“Your man is one of the Kings of Vegas? Really, Violet? Are you trying to get me fucking killed?”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“He’s not,” Lucky says, shaking his head. “He’s lucky the boss didn’t shoot him where he stands.”
“It’s a tattoo shop!” I toss my hands in the air and stomp back and forth. “I got a freaking tattoo!”
“Listen, I’m your friend, and I have no issue with working on your ink, even if I’ve had a thing for you for two years and the most I could get out of you was a quick fuck in the employee lounge.”
My jaw drops, Bobby swears under his breath, and Archie keeps talking.
“But I’m going to ask you not to call me again. I prefer to be alive, Violet.”
I stare at him, blinking, and then turn to the other guys, and they are also staring at me like I’m the one who did something wrong.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say slowly.
“He touched you,” Bobby says. “That’s all it took.”
I glance at Lucky, who just stares back at me, and feel the blood leave my face.
Archie has done all my ink since I moved to Vegas. I’m not interested in anything else from him. But why didn’t it fucking occur to me that I should have mentioned to Mateo that my tattoo artist is a man?
Why can’t I keep from fucking everything up?
“What do I owe you?”
“It’s on the house.” Archie sighs. “Good luck with that guy. Be careful.”
I grab my bag and march out to the SUV, where Bobby opens the door for me and I slide in just as my phone pings with a text.
From Mateo.
Mateo: Rapture. One hour. Black dress, no panties.
I stare at the message and feel both a little excited and pissed off. He’s not speaking to me, but he can order me to go to Rapture without any underwear on?
A bitchy part of me wants to ignore him. To check into a hotel somewhere and stay there for a few days, but I’m not that kind of girl.
I don’t really care if Mateo’s mad at me if I deserve it.
But I don’t think I deserve the coldness from him. I was wrong, and I’m happy to apologize for what I’m sure he sees as being blindsided, but he could have just talked to me.
I don’t like the way this feels. It makes my stomach clench and my heart hurt. So, I’ll go to the club and have a conversation with my man.
“Take me to the penthouse,” I tell Bobby. “And then we’ll be going to Rapture.”
I’m in the dress with my freshly inked back on display but still covered by the dermal bandage, sparkly boots, hair up in a high ponytail, and as instructed, no panties.
My attitude is still firmly in place too. I plan to give Mateo a piece of my mind.
I don’t recognize the girl at the reception desk when I walk into the lobby, but she smiles at me and gestures for me to go right in.
“Hello, Miss Walker. Enjoy your evening.”
Rather than ask her how she knows my name, I walk down the long dark hallway to the elevator and check out my reflection in the mirrored wall once I’ve stepped inside.
I look . . . pissed.
Maybe a little worried.
Okay, I’m a lot worried.
If I get in there and I find out that Mateo has arranged for me to watch him have sex with some slut in that playroom, I’ll rip that Prince Albert out of his glorious cock. Is that what he’s going to do?
Jesus, he’d better not do something like that to me. I’ve read books and seen movies, and I know that urban legend has it that Mafia men cheat and shit, but I will lose the plot if he lets someone else touch him.
I stride into the lounge and see Lulu bartending. She’s not moving super fast, but she’s smiling, and I walk over to say hi.
“Hey, you look amazing,” Lulu says and wiggles her eyebrows. “Hot as hell.”
“Thanks,” I reply with a snort. “I was summoned by a certain someone.”
“Fun.” She glances over my shoulder and then back at me. “Good luck.”
Before I can ask her why I need luck, someone taps my shoulder, and I turn to find the woman I saw at the reception desk that first night that I came here. I think her name is Beth.
“Hi, Violet. I’ve been asked to escort you back. Please come with me.”
“Sure. Lead the way.”
Beth opens the door to the playroom, and my stomach is suddenly filled with lead. Something doesn’t feel right.
“Back this way,” Beth says, indicating the hallway that leads to the private rooms, and when we reach the end of the hall, she knocks twice before opening the door. She steps in ahead of me, and I stop just inside the doorway.
Mateo’s standing on the far side of the room. He’s in torn blue jeans and nothing else. His feet are bare. His shaggy dark hair is a little wild, matching the heat in his eyes, and his hands are in fists at his sides.
God, his muscles should be illegal.
I can’t help but swallow hard as my eyes roam down his torso, so freaking perfect. His arms are covered in tats to his knuckles, and I can see the pocket watch I put on his side.
The door closes behind me, but I’m startled when Beth stands next to me.
“Beth, come here,” Mateo orders, his voice hard and cold. His eyes don’t leave mine as Beth crosses to him, and when he lifts his hand to touch her, I shake my head.
“Hell no.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask you.”
To my shock and horror, my eyes want to fill with tears. I’m not a crier. I don’t dissolve into a puddle at the drop of a hat, but this hurts. And when he drags his hand down her arm, I want to come out of my skin. He lifts her hand to his lips, kisses her knuckles, and then smiles kindly at her.
“That’ll be all. Thanks, Beth.”
She nods, smiles at me with sympathy, and then leaves the room, closing it behind her, and we’re alone.
“Fuck you,” I say, ignoring the tear that just escaped.
He doesn’t reply. Because of course he doesn’t. He’s not speaking to me. He’s giving me the fucking silent treatment like a child.
I hate the silent treatment.
He walks slowly to a spanking bench and tests the restraints for the hands and feet, and then motions for me to join him.
Fuck that.
“I’m not—”
“Get your ass over here, Violet.”
My funny, affectionate, sexy man isn’t in this room. This man is angry and cold, and he makes me so damn uneasy.
But I take a step toward him, and when I’m a few feet away, I stop.
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Tell me why you’re mad at me.”
“Bend over this bench. Knees here, hands here.”
I don’t move, and he holds my gaze impassively, waiting for me to do as I’m told.
“Mateo—”
He’s so fucking fast as he moves into me, grips my chin in his hand, and his nose is an inch from mine when he growls, “What’s your fucking safe word, Violet?”
“Salmon.” My voice is shaky, and that pisses me off too.
“That’s the only thing you’ll say unless I ask you a question that needs a direct answer. You’re not in control here tonight. I am. Now get on the fucking bench.”
He’s so pissed, but there’s hurt in his eyes, too, and I don’t know why. I want to beg him to tell me what I did wrong, but I know he won’t. For whatever reason, he needs to punish me first.
So, I go to straddle the bench, but he interrupts me.
“Get naked.”
Without a word, I slip the dress off and let it fall around my feet. I take off the bra and step out of my boots, and then I straddle the bench, planting my knees and laying my front down over the top. It’s cushioned and covered in red velvet, so it’s not uncomfortable.
Methodically, Mateo shackles my ankles and wrists so I can’t move, and I wait.
He circles me a couple of times and then strides to the other side of the room and takes a sip of whiskey.
“How often have you fucked him?”
I frown and try to look over at Mateo, but I’m at a weird angle, and all I can see is the floor.
“Who?”
He slaps my ass hard, and I gasp at the sting, but also feel my core begin to ache.
“How often?”
“I don’t know who—”
He smacks me again, and I whimper, feeling myself growing wet.
“I fuck you every chance I get.”
Another slap, and this time I rest my cheek on the velvet. Christ, I like that.
“The asshole who had his hands on what’s mine tonight,” he growls next to my ear.
“Archie? Jesus, Mateo, he’s just—”
He squats in front of me and pins me in his glare. “What? He’s just what?”
“My tattoo guy.”
“You fucked him.”
“Not today.”
He shakes his head and stands, and I want to pull him back to me.
“Mateo, I didn’t fuck him today. He didn’t touch me or do anything inappropriate. We were in the line of sight of the windows to the Strip and both of my guards the entire time.”
Suddenly, he’s standing behind me, his hands drifting over the globes of my heated ass, and then his fingers move through my wet slit, and I moan.
“This turns you on,” he says softly. “Does pissing me off get you going, Savage?”
“No.” He pushes a finger inside me, making me whimper. “No, you turn me on, but I’m so mad, and—”
Slap!
He drags his fingertip over the piercing in my clit, and I wiggle, seeking more, and then he’s gone.
“Please—”
“Don’t make me gag you,” he snarls. “Apparently, you think it’s okay to let another man touch you. To look at you.”
I shake my head in frustration. “If you’d have an adult conversation with me—”
Slap!
“Damn it, Mateo.”
He pushes two fingers inside me now, his thumb over my asshole, and shakes those fingers, and holy shit, I’m going to come.
But before I can, he pulls away.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as I am tonight,” he says, and I fucking hate how cold he sounds.
How disconnected from me. “I wanted to kill both of you. You thought you were pissed when I kissed Beth’s hand?
How would it make you feel to know that I’ve fucked her?
I’ve fucked her tied up in my restraints for the entire goddamn club to see. ”
Fuck, I don’t want to know that.
“She’d better watch her back.”
“Imagine my fucking surprise when I heard that dead man walking talk about fucking you in the back room.”
Wait, what?
He did?
“I didn’t—”
He loops my ponytail around his fist, holds my head to the side, and pushes his cock into my mouth.
“That’ll shut you up. Suck my cock, baby, while I explain to you that not one other motherfucker on this planet gets to touch you ever again.”
Christ, this shouldn’t be hot. It should be degrading and shaming and a giant fucking red flag.
But damn it, I love his cock.
I hollow my cheeks and suck, and he grunts as he slides his free hand along my neck, holding me. He’s avoiding my back, I know, and I wish he could touch it. I wish he could see it because then he’d know what I was doing tonight.
“Do you understand what it means when I tell you—fuck, you suck my cock so well—that you’re mine?”
He pulls out until just the crown is inside my lips and I swirl my tongue over it, over the warm metal of his piercing, licking the precum that’s pooled there, and then he pushes inside again, down my throat, making me gag.
And I fucking love it.
“It means that no one gets to lay their hands on you. Not to tattoo you, not for any fucking reason.”
He pulls back so I can take a breath, and then he pushes in again.
“And you absofuckinglutely will not be alone with men who’ve been inside you.”
When he pulls away, he lets go of me entirely, and I miss his touch so much that every cell in my body screams out for him.
“Please,” I say with a small voice. Who the fuck is that?
“Please what, Violet?”
“Don’t stop touching me.”
I hear him moving behind me, and then the tip of his cock is at my entrance, and he slams inside, slaps my ass, and proceeds to fuck the hell out of me.
“Oh my God!”
“That’s right, I’m your fucking god. I’m the only one you’re going to remember by the time I’m done with you tonight.”
My inner walls start to quiver, and he pulls out.
“Damn it!”
“This is what happens when you fucking hurt me, Violet. You don’t get to come.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I let the tears come now, and I’m not even ashamed of them because damn it, I didn’t mean to hurt him. That was exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do. “Just—”
I swallow hard.
“Just what?” He pushes inside me again, slower this time, and that piercing drags over my G-spot, and damn it. I want to come so bad.
“Mateo.”
“Just what?” He slaps my ass, but not as hard as before. “Tell me.”
“Take the bandage off.”
He stills, buried deep inside me.
“Take it off,” I repeat.