Chapter 38
DAMIANO
The light on the elevator panel blinks green, and I’m on my feet before it hits the landing, grabbing my gun just in case, because this has to be an emergency, right? There’s no other reason Caligula Clemenza would come down here.
The doors open, and he stands there in the wash of fluorescent light wearing my robe. His face is set in that expression I’ve come to recognize as the one he wears when he’s made up his mind and is going to be a pain in the ass about it.
He looks at the gun. Then at my face. “I thought you’d decided not to kill me.”
If that’s his opening sting, I can’t wait to see how this is going to end. I put down the gun on the nearest surface. “What are you doing down here?”
“Making bad choices.”
He steps out of the elevator. The doors close behind him, and the darkness swallows us both for a second until he moves to the light switch and turns it on. I blink, my eyes adjusting, while Caligula walks over to me. “You’ve been sleeping in my bed,” he says.
“Your bed?” I repeat, feeling stupid and dull.
“That bed was mine a lot longer than it was yours.”
Today was tough. Trying to think about what moves Big Gee will make when he figures out I’ve gone rogue isn’t difficult—the man is not a master strategist—but I don’t know how much the Bratva are backing him already, or how hard they’ll come for the Clemenza.
Not “the Clemenza.”
Caligula.
He’s not just a Clemenza anymore, which is something I’ve had to admit to myself down here in the darkness.
My robe hangs off his shoulder like always, showing the line of his collarbone, and I want to pull it back up or push it the rest of the way off, and I can’t do either.
“I should hate you,” he says, looking up into my face.
“Yeah.”
“I should be upstairs right now, calling Finch D’Amato and begging the Morellis to come get me.”
“Yeah, you probably should.”
“But here I am in your creepy fucking basement at two in the morning because I can’t stop thinking about your hands on me.”
“Caligula, this ain’t a good—”
He puts a hand on my chest. Flat, fingers spread, like he’s testing a wall to see if it’s still standing. “You don’t need to tell me this isn’t a good idea. I already know.”
His hand is over my heart, and I know he can feel it going. That’s the thing about Caligula. He reads me like a fucking book, and then he uses what he finds.
He curls his fingers into my shirt and pulls me down.
I go. Because I always go. Wherever Caligula Clemenza leads, I follow. I don’t know when it started, but that’s just how it is now.
He kisses me. His mouth is warm and I kiss him back until he pulls away. His eyes are dark amber in this light, and he’s trembling, and he’s the bravest person I’ve ever met.
“Are you going to stand there or are you going to undress me?” he asks.
I yank the robe off him and he makes a noise, startled but relieved. Then I put my hands on his waist and lift him up. His legs wrap around me and his arms wind around my neck.
I carry him to the bed. His bed.
I lay him down and he pulls me over him. He’s already hard, but something in me goes quiet. I’ve been nothing but noise inside since this ice wall shot up between us, and I didn’t even notice until now, when everything gets quiet again, and I’m focused on him.
“What the hell do you want from me?” I sigh, amused and bitter at the same time.
“You know what I want. You always know. That’s the worst fucking thing about this, Dami. You always know what I want even when I don’t.”
He wants my hands on his throat, my weight pinning him down, the growl in my voice when I tell him what to do. He wants the beast.
But he wants the beast with a leash. And he wants to be the one holding it.
I fist my hand in his hair and pull his head back. His breath catches and his back arches and his cock twitches against my stomach.
“Look at me,” I tell him.
He does. The pupils blown wide, the lower lip damp from kissing. Gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous. And mine. Even though I have no right to call him that and no future to offer him.
I kiss his throat. I put my mouth on the spot where his pulse hammers, tasting salt and heat. He groans. His hips push up against me and I push them back down with one hand, pinning him flat.
“Stay still,” I say against his skin.
“Make me.”
I pin both his wrists over his head with one hand. He tests the grip, pulling once, twice, and then goes slack.
Not broken. Surrendered.
There’s a difference, and I’m starting to learn what it is.
I put my mouth to his neck, but I don’t kiss him. I bite him. Not hard enough to break the skin. Just hard enough for him to feel it, a claiming. His whole body shudders, and a gasp escapes him.
“I told you to stay still.” I want to leave my marks all over him. My teeth on his collarbones, my fingerprints on his hips, my dick imprinted in his ass.
I release his wrists and he keeps them there, though his chest is heaving as he breathes faster and faster.
I grab the lube from the nightstand and slick my fingers, get a hand between his legs.
His knees fall apart, a wanton, shameless invitation, and I trace the tight knot of his asshole.
He whines, high and desperate, and I reward him by pushing one finger inside, then two.
The slick channel opens up easy as it always does.
“That’s enough,” he says.
“No it ain’t.”
“Yes it is,” he insists. “And I should know, since it’s my goddamn asshole.”
I almost laugh, but he’s really frustrated, and that just excites me more. “You want it rough?”
“Yes.”
I slide a hand into his hair and grab it. Not enough to really hurt. Enough to feel. “You want me to hold you down?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to make you take it?”
“God, yes.”
I’m so hard I feel like my dick’s about to rip right out of my underwear, so I pull my fingers out.
“Turn over,” I tell him. “Hands and knees.” I pull off my underwear while he gets into position and then I take a second to just stare at him.
Stare at that round, perfect ass, and at his asshole, wet and pink and waiting for me.
I want him with a hunger that goes beyond anything I’ve ever felt before. A desire that blows away everything else in my life like dry leaves. All that anger I’ve been nursing, all that hate that kept me warm at night—it pales in comparison to this need.
I get on the bed behind him and I don’t bother warning him. I just line up and push right in. And the sheer, tight, clenching heat of him is so fucking good that I have to pause when I bottom out, my balls resting against him, my whole body shaking.
It’s a fight not to come right then.
“Dami,” he moans, pushing back against me. “Please.”
I grab a handful of his hair, pulling his head back. “Please what?”
“Fuck me. Wreck me.”
He’s begging for it just the way I like. And I’m going to give him exactly what he wants.
I pull out slow, feeling every inch of that tight channel, and then slam back in.
The force rocks him forward, but he pushes back, meeting me thrust for thrust as I watch my dick disappear into that perfect, greedy little hole over and over, my blood running hot.
He’s so tight it’s almost too much, the most incredible friction on my cock, that hot, wet suction, and the sounds he’s making are the dirtiest fucking things I’ve ever heard.
I wrap an arm around his chest, pulling him upright so his back is flush against my chest. His head falls back on my shoulder as I continue to fuck into him, deep and hard.
One of my hands finds his throat again, just resting there.
Possessive. “This what you wanted?” I pant out.
“To get split open on my cock, fucked so hard you’ll still feel it a week from now? ”
“Yes,” he whimpers, his hands coming up to cover mine on his throat, holding me there. “Yes.”
I bite the side of his neck, a hard, sucking kiss that will leave a mark. “You want to pop?”
He nods frantically.
“Then you better work for it. If you come, you come from my dick alone. Hear me?”
He lets out a breathless laugh. “Then you’d better fuck me a lot harder than this, Dami.”
I push him down again, my hand on the back of his neck as I drive into him. “Get that ass up higher,” I command, and he obeys instantly, arching his back, presenting himself to me.
His asshole is stretched taut around me, flushed, shiny with lube, and I can’t resist it.
I spit, watching my saliva drip down to where my cock’s pounding into him.
Then I use my thumb to work it into that stretched rim, pushing it in alongside my dick.
He cries out, his whole body shuddering under me.
“Too much?” I ask, but I don’t slow down. Not for a second.
“Don’t you dare stop,” he chokes out.
It’s rough. Punishing, even. I don’t know how to be gentle and I’ve never wanted to learn.
But I know how to pay attention. I know the difference between the hitch in his breathing that means more and the one that means wait.
I know the angle that makes his whole body tighten, and I know when to slow down and when to drive harder.
I know him.
So I work my thumb in deeper, feeling the stretch of that tight knot, the way he clenches down on me.
It’s too much, too tight, too good, and I feel my balls draw up, that hot tingling start at the base of my spine.
I’m worried I’m gonna spill before he’s there, because there’s no way I’m not going to let him shoot tonight.
Not after everything.
But just when I think I can’t hang on another second, his asshole clamps down on me like a goddamn vise. A hot splash lands on my thighs as I keep railing him, the smell of it sharp between us.
I pull my thumb out and grip his hips with both hands, fingers digging in hard enough to make him yelp. My rhythm falters, and then I’m buried to the hilt, my cock pulsing as I empty myself into his belly, shaking with the force of it.
I’m still breathing hard when I pull out, watching as my cum leaks out of his red, fucked-out asshole. He collapses forward onto the bed, and for a minute I just look at him, at the marks on his neck and the red handprints on his hips, and that hole I fucked so good he came hands-free.
I marked him. I branded him as mine.
And it’s still not enough.
That’s the part I don’t understand. I’ve had every inch of him.
My teeth, my hands, my cum—he’s covered in proof that he belongs to me.
And there’s still something inside me that’s starving for him.
Some hunger the sex doesn’t satisfy. I thought if I could just fuck him deep enough, make him come hard enough, the wanting would stop.
It never stops. And I don’t know what would make it stop. I don’t know what I want from him that I haven’t already taken.
Exhaustion finally sweeps over me, and I collapse over the top of him. He grunts at my weight, shoves with his shoulder. “You weigh as much as a car.”
“Bullshit.”
“A small car. A Fiat, maybe.”
I laugh. Into his neck. The sound surprises both of us.
I roll to the side and pull him with me, and he comes without resistance, fitting himself into the curve of my body with familiarity. His back against my chest. My arm across his waist. My nose in his hair.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable. Just full.
“I’m tired, Dami,” he says at last. Not sleepy-tired. Tired like a man who’s been carrying something too heavy for too long.
I wait.
“I can’t offer you forgiveness. I don’t have that yet.” He turns his head, just enough that I can see the edge of his jaw, the curve of his ear. “But I think maybe you feel the same. You carried around that vendetta for all those years. That’s not something you can just give up.”
I wish I could say he’s right, that I’m still trying to be loyal to my father. But the truth is, I think I gave up on justice for him a while ago. Maybe even the first night I took Caligula Clemenza home.
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I’m offering you a ceasefire.”
“A ceasefire?”
“We stop punishing each other. We deal with what’s coming. Together. And if we survive—” A pause. “We figure out the rest then.”
Together.
“I should call Strike Ferraro,” I say, because the practical thing is easier than the feeling thing. “Set up your meeting.”
“Yes.”
“But on my terms. I already told you that.”
“You did.”
I press my mouth to the back of his neck. “Ceasefire,” I say.
“Ceasefire.” He covers my hand with his, the one across his waist, and threads his fingers between mine. The “G” tattoo is against his palm, but he doesn’t pull away from it.
He holds on.