Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fiero
Twenty-three nights to go.
I turn my back as she stands, her fingers still caressing the lip I just bit. I can’t look at her anymore. She just swallowed me down like a prize and it made the caveman in me want to own every fucking inch of her.
And I can’t.
Because I’m supposed to hate her.
I’m not supposed to remember every small encounter we had as kids, when all it took was a smile from her pretty, freckled face to make my teenage heart swell to twice its size. When a brush of her arm against mine in the lunch hall would elicit a crack of electricity through every bone.
It was more than a crush. She was like me. We’d both lost our moms. We were both kind of outsiders in that way. She walked to school like hundreds of other kids, while I came up from Jersey everyday just so my dad could say I went to a particular school on the lower east side.
Berman High wasn’t reputable but it had a reputation. All the mob kids went there. Kids of mobsters that the Di Santo’s eventually pushed south.
It took me weeks to build up the courage to talk to her, and I only did once. That was all it took to turn my whole fucking life upside down.
That’s what I need to hold onto—the memory of what she did.
I need to remember this woman is the exact same person I knew back then.
It doesn’t matter how sweet she tastes, how much I love the feel of her pussy tightening around my tongue, or how damn good she licks my cock, especially when dressed in the closest gown I could find to the one she wore to her prom—the same prom I had to watch through CCTV footage around the venue because I wasn’t invited.
Doesn’t matter how traitorously beautiful she’s become, how kind she is to my staff, how submissive she is when I get her alone.
She’s a little whore whose actions turned me into Il Diavolo.
“You can go,” I say, monotone, my back still turned.
I listen to the sound of her hands smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress from where she’s been kneeling at my feet, and the tip tap of the heels I had Vivienne buy for my little pet.
The door opens and there’s a pause before it closes again.
If she’s waiting on a backward glance, she’s going to be waiting a long time.
I pull on the jacket I’d discarded over a chair and pour myself a shot of grappa, then tip it down my throat. Harsh realizations call for harsh liquor. I brought her here to punish her, so that’s exactly what I intend to do.
I’m sitting in my office when I feel Remo’s gaze heating the side of my face. “Something on your mind?”
I point to one of the screens. “Who’s that guy?
“Associate of the Fagans.”
“The Irish? What the fuck is he doing in here?”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. There’s a mic right above his head feeding data direct to Boston. It’s useful stuff.”
I quickly assess the other screens, telling myself it’s for purely professional reasons.
“Is that all you’re looking at?” Remo says. He’s too astute for my liking today.
I shoot him a look. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing,” he shrugs. “How’s Pfeiffer’s punishment going? Does she realize yet what she did?”
My back teeth grind slowly. “She doesn’t remember me.”
He stares back, surprised. “Have you removed your mask?”
“No. And even if I do, I don’t think she’ll recognize me.”
He cocks a brow.
“She knows my name yet it doesn’t seem to prompt any recollection whatsoever.”
On the one hand, that pisses me off, but on the other… It's almost liberating. As long as she’s blissfully unaware of my identity and our past, I can do whatever I want with her.
“So maybe you need to explain exactly what it is she did. She might be feigning ignorance—for her safety. Fuck knows I would if Il Diavolo subjected me to a month of forced intimacy.”
I don’t move a muscle.
“That is what you’re doing, isn’t it? Using her for kicks?”
After the other night I can say in full confidence that is what I’ve been doing, but it’s not the whole story.
The truth is I’ve pleasured her and I want to continue.
I love the way her body responds to me and the sound of my name when she cries it out mid-climax. My teenage self is walking around on a constant high knowing how fucking pliable she is for me now.
When I ordered her out of the room, it felt unfinished. She sucked my cock, made me come and then she left. I washed my hands of her—on the surface.
Beneath though, I wanted to drag her back into the room, lift her by the thighs, tear that green satin dress as I ram her up against the door and fuck her into next week.
But I can’t tell Remo that. All he can see is what he lost—what we all lost—because of what she did.
I’m itching to get her alone again. Our business with the Di Santo’s took me away from the club the last few nights and I’m already craving the taste of her skin.
I ache to put my hands on her but that’s her one condition. It’s a fucking awkward one at that. It means I can’t do half the things I want to, which of course, would have been her intention. I’m determined to find out why having hands on her body is such an issue for her.
At the same time, I can’t kiss her. After the first attempt when my head damn near exploded, that’s off the table for me. It was so good I know if go there again, it’ll be a slippery slope into mindlessness.
I need to keep some measure of distance if I’m going to chew her up and spit her out at the end of the month. I rub my chin, my focus elsewhere. There’s plenty other stuff I can do to get myself off with her. I just need to get creative.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
Remo’s pissed off question pulls my attention back to the room.
“No.”
“Jeez, man. You need to get some drugs, or some sleep, or something…”
“I’m fine. What did you say?”
“I’ll be in Philly the next few days. Call me if you need anything.”
He stands and buttons his jacket.
“Yeah, I will.”
“Okay,” he huffs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Get some sleep.”
I roll my eyes at the door as it closes behind him, then return my gaze to the screens. Immediately, it lands on Pfeiffer.
She’s a natural with people, and our guests gravitate to her.
Not just for her looks but her demeanor.
She has time for everyone and nothing is too much trouble.
I know she told Hallie she wasn’t cut out for this kind of work but she’s wrong.
It might not be what she wants to do, but she’s good at it.
I take my phone out of my inside pocket and fire out a text to Vivienne, then I take one last look at the screen before making my way back up to the suites.
Twenty minutes later, Pfeiffer enters wearing another dress I picked out for her.
This month is going to cost me a fortune but I love the fact I’m dressing her.
It gives me even more of a sense of ownership.
And the way she smooths her hands over the garments, implying she likes them too, makes my chest heat possessively.
This dress is deep scarlet. It skims over her breasts, the neckline low enough I could see her naval if I leaned over, and falls to just below her ass. The heels make her legs look like skyscrapers.
I lick my lips, suddenly greedy.
Walking to the center of the room, I stop about three yards in front of her.
“Tonight, Pfeiffer, you’re going to show me what you like.”
Her eyes widen, only a touch of suspicion tightening the corners.
“You don’t want my hands on you so I’m putting you in control.”
Her head tilts up as she processes this information.
“The only catch is, you have to use me. How you do that is up to you.”
The blush in her cheeks deepens.
From what I’ve witnessed this past week, she doesn’t seem to have a ton of experience.
I mean, she’d never had a cock in her mouth at twenty-eight?
Come to think of it, I didn’t see her with many men all the years I watched her in Boston.
This announcement is likely causing her to panic. I need to start her off somehow.
“I’ll lie back on the bed. Do you want me dressed or undressed?”
Her eyes stretch wide and she swallows. “Um, undressed, I guess?”
I wipe the beginning of a smile away with a rough knuckle, then I remove my jacket and cufflinks.
She looks stunned as I slowly unbutton my shirt, tugging it out of my pants. She hasn’t seen my inked chest before. Her gaze drops, then flicks back to my face intermittently, as if she wants to devour the ink but doesn’t want to appear rude by feasting her eyes on my taut skin.
I unbuckle my belt, marveling at how this, right here, is better than any drug on the market. Her eyes ravaging my body as I reveal it to her inch by inch is enough to make me high.
I push my pants over my hips and she looks up sharp. “Leave the shorts.”
Pausing with my pants halfway down my thighs, I nod and step out of them, kicking my shoes and socks to the side. The lust on her face is addicting and I feel her gaze lick at each limb like it’s a flaming torch.
I walk to the bed and climb on to it, lying back against the pillows to watch what she does next. She follows, tentatively, crawling up onto the bed sheets until she’s at my side.
Eventually, she releases the hold on my gaze and peers down at the bulge in my boxers. I don’t know if she knows she’s doing it, but she’s licking her lips and biting down on the bottom one shyly.
“You can touch me,” I say, frankly. “If you want.”
She swallows and lifts a hand, resting it carefully on my chest. She trails her fingers slowly along the outline of my ink. A thorned crown, a scorpion, a bloody dagger—each one representing a different period in my adult life, from the first man I knifed to death, to the day I became don.
Her soft fingertips travel over my hard abdominal muscles and her gaze follows. Each inch she covers sends me into a deeper internal frenzy. She seems to lose herself in the moment, trailing my body for several minutes before reaching the waistband of my boxers.
Then she pauses, concentration furrowing her smooth brow.