Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Pfeiffer
Twelve nights to go.
I wake slowly to a beam of light slicing across the room. As awareness comes back to me, I remember I’m still in the suite eighteen stories above Velvet and apparently it’s daylight.
I’ve only been in the suite at night so I didn’t even register the fact it might have windows.
I lie perfectly still beneath the heavy warmth pushed up against my back and try to separate dream from memory.
My body feels different—loose in places, aching in others. My lips sting softly, and there’s a deep soreness between my thighs that makes heat creep into my cheeks the second I become aware of it.
Last night wasn’t a dream.
Fiero Bellucci really took my virginity.
We kissed for what felt like hours after we’d finished, his cock lying lax and heavy inside me. I could feel the blood and our combined come leaking between my legs but I didn’t want to move. It just seeped into the bedding and neither of us cared.
When we eventually pulled apart, he led me to the shower, standing me gently beneath the hot water, and cleaned me all over with a soft cloth and expensive soap. He didn’t put his hands on me once.
After toweling me dry and wrapping me in a soft robe, he led me to the sofa and made me sit while he changed the bedsheets himself. I curled up and floated in and out of sleep while he went to fetch fresh linens.
When he returned, he brought food, and we sat in mostly comfortable silence while I devoured a plate of cold meats and cheese.
At some point he noticed my eyelids fall and he carried me in cradled arms back to the bed.
I let the robe fall to the floor and climbed in naked.
He did the same, then he stretched out, inviting me into his body.
Still without laying a hand on me, he wrapped an arm around my back and I fell asleep rising and falling to the rhythm of his breaths. It was the deepest sleep I’ve had in years.
I slowly turn my head until his profile comes into view.
His face looks less ferocious in sleep. His dark lashes rest against olive skin. The sharpness that was carved into his features as he punched through my hymen has softened beneath exertion and perhaps exhaustion after taking a bullet. For me.
One arm is banded heavily around my waist beneath the sheets as if I might try to escape.
The sight of him like this does terrible things to me. It makes me not care who he is.
Fiero Bellucci is Il Diavolo. He’s dangerous. He kills people. He commands a whole army of killers. I’ve seen the way people defer to him, second guess their responses when he speaks. People fear him. Men fear him.
Yet, last night, after discovering I was a virgin, he handled me like a piece of fragile porcelain.
My throat tightens revealing a lump at the base.
I turn my gaze to the ceiling. What the hell is wrong with me?
I should feel mortified and ashamed. At the very least I should feel used. This man has bought me for a month. He’s simply calling in a debt and I’m delivering.
When he all but dragged me into this room, I thought he was going to hurt me in some way. He had a look in his eye that could cripple a monster.
I was too terrified to feel aroused. I was thankful when he stripped too, because the dirty—filthy—sight of him stroking his cock right in front of me filled me with something seedy and sordid. I got wet real quick.
A part of me knew he was going to fuck me. It felt like the one thing left to do. And I wanted it. I’ve been carrying my virginity around like a shackle, about to give it away to the highest bidder. I’m glad that, in the end, it was him.
Fiero Bellucci is the first and only man to ever consider my feelings and my pleasure. He’s the only man who’s aroused me so much I can feel it running down my leg.
And now, even in the light of day, I feel connected to him in a deep, soul-level way.
Is this what happens when two people have sex? Does it always feel like they’ve found a part that has been missing? How do people stop? How on earth do I walk away from this?
My gaze falls to the dressing on his chest and another invisible fist curls around my heart. He took a bullet for me.
This man who claims to have bought me as nothing more than a debt repayment, has not only given me mind-blowing pleasure, but he’s risked his life for me.
I stare down at the sheets twisted around our bodies. I’m supposed to hate him, but I don’t. Maybe this is like some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever it is, it’s unexpected and it’s in my bones.
Last night, Fiero Bellucci claimed me.
The thought sends another wave of warmth crashing through me simultaneously. Because it isn’t just that he took my virginity. It’s that between those slow kisses and whispered words and the impossible gentleness, Fiero Bellucci made me feel precious. Like something worth protecting.
And no one has ever made me feel that way before.
My fingertips hover over the dressing before I stop myself from touching him. Despite everything we’ve done, touching the dressing over his bullet wound feels too intimate somehow.
Suddenly, his arm tightens around my waist.
I freeze. I don’t know anything about morning-after etiquette and besides, this isn’t an ordinary morning after. It’s so completely abnormal, maybe the right etiquette doesn’t exist.
“Where are you going?” he asks in a voice rough with sleep.
“I need to call my father.”
One eye opens sleepily. Dark, dark brown, rich and heavy.
“Why?”
“I’m usually home by now. He’ll be worried.”
He nods once. “Be quick.”
I climb self-consciously out of the sheets, grab my phone and dive into the bathroom. There’s no answer so I leave a short message.
When I return to Fiero, he’s awake and looking back at me with lazy bed eyes.
Now that I can fully see his face, I can’t seem to stop staring at it. He’s tragically handsome, features cut deep like a Shakespearian hero. There’s also a world behind his eyes that he isn’t letting me see.
Acutely aware that I’m naked, I slip into bed and tug the sheets up to my chin. He watches me with an amused curve to his lips.
“Come here.” He opens his arms, inviting me to curl into his hard, inked chest again, which I do.
After a few minutes, he inhales a long breath. “Why don’t you want me to put my hands on you?”
My body braces. I evaded this question the last time he asked, but things have changed. He’s been inside me.
“It’s not just your hands,” I clarify. “It’s anyone’s hands. I can’t stand anyone’s hands on me.”
He doesn’t repeat the question again but I know he’s waiting on an answer.
“I…” Swallowing, I try to remember the reply I’d rehearsed in my head. “A long time ago, someone touched me when I asked them not to. I kept asking them to stop, but they didn’t listen.”
His body stiffens beneath me, then a growl tumbles from his throat. “Who?”
This is a question I wasn’t anticipating. Why would he care who it was?
“It doesn’t matter now. It was a long time ago.”
“Was it a guy?”
The pause drags out. “Yes.”
“Is he still in your life?”
Unfortunately, yes. “No.”
“Do you know if he’s alive?”
Unfortunately, that’s another yes. “I don’t know.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me the truth?”
My upper body freezes. Because you’re Il Diavolo—the devil with the sixth sense.
“Because you don’t like not knowing and you want to believe there’s someone out there you can punish.”
His head bends forward and he nuzzles my neck. I almost pass out from the sweetness of it.
“When did it happen?”
“Freshman year.”
There’s a shift in his breathing. Barely perceptible, but because my skin is pressed up against his, I feel it.
“That’s when it started, anyway. He didn’t stop until I was in twelfth grade and I broke his collarbone.”
A look of pride ghosts over his face. “How did you do that?”
“I took self-defense classes for two years,” I reply.
I’ve never told anyone about the ‘incident’ because I feel so ashamed, not only of the fact I let my uncle touch me and blackmail me for four years but because I did him serious physical harm. But Fiero’s reaction is making me feel proud of myself for the first time.
A few minutes pass before he speaks again.
“How did he get away with doing that for so long?”
I lift a finger and bite down on the nail. These questions are inching too close for comfort.
“He was a family friend,” I say.
I can almost hear him making mental notes so something propels me to make light of it. I don’t want any more blood on my hands—the two Irishmen were enough.
“He’s not anymore. I haven’t seen him since.”
My fingers walk across his chest to the dressing above the wound. “Doesn’t this hurt?”
He hisses in a breath like he’s only just remembered he took a bullet five nights ago.
“Yeah. Like a bitch.”
“H-how did you do it last night? That must have been really painful.”
Just the memory of him holding himself over me while he kissed me half to death makes me wince at the thought of the pain he must have been in.
His lips drag over my crown. “I didn’t notice it. I had other things going on if you hadn’t noticed.”
I smile to myself. I took his pain away, for a little while.
“We should get you some painkillers,” I say, adopting my official nurse voice.
Without using his hands, he somehow manages to roll me onto my back, straddles me with his thighs and catches a nipple between his teeth. The shock of it arches my spine.
He closes his lips over my breast, taking a deep suck before letting my nipple pop free, all taut, pink and glistening with excitement.
He looks up. “I can think of better ways to numb the pain.”
I bite my bottom lip as he crawls down the bed dragging his lips and teeth over my stomach and hips, until he pauses at the top of my thighs, a wicked look on his face.
“Spread your legs for me, Pfeiffer.”
I’m too self-conscious to ‘spread’ but I open my legs enough to allow his shoulders to squeeze between them. My heartbeat is thrumming unevenly.
He dips his head from view and I feel a wet heat between my legs. He licks me from back to front, completely unabashed, and taking his sweet damn time over it. I go to buck my hips but an arm comes down across my middle, pinning me to the bed.
After a few thoroughly long licks, he positions himself over my clit and laps at me gently, alternating with soft sucks and nibbles that have my head spinning.
How can this man, who started out so rough, be so gentle now? I don’t give it too much thought because he does something with his tongue deep inside me that turns my world upside down.
I grip the headboard with one hand to ground myself while I thread my fingers of the other through his hair, tugging it with each stroke of his tongue.
Last night my pussy hurt. I was sore and ruined, despite having had an orgasm. It’s made my flesh extra sensitive, but he seems to know that. Every swirl of his tongue is decadent and thoughtful, making my toes curl.
“I could eat you out all fucking day,” he murmurs between nibbles. “I always knew you’d taste this good.”
I let his words wash over me until something taps at the back of my brain. He always knew? Since when?
He sucks my clit into his mouth once more and I come without warning, my head falling back on a cry, my thighs parting, my nails digging into his scalp. I’m floating on a long, deep climax, and everything else fades away.
I open my eyes to see him braced above me like last night.
“Do you think you can take me again?”
I nod, rapidly. I feel looser for having come just now, but still not sated. Now that I know how it feels to have a part of him inside me—so deep and so intimate—I want more of it. So this time I part my thighs again without being asked.
He takes his cock in his fist and shifts until the crown is positioned at my opening. Then he places his hands either side of my shoulders, bending at the elbows to sink onto my lips. With his tongue sweeping across mine, he slides right inside me.
My insides are tender but he moves slowly and gently, as if he knows. It’s only when unplanned, moderately unhinged noises start to fall from my lips that he drives a little deeper, moves a little faster.
“You feel so good,” he breathes. “I’m not going to last.”
“Kiss me again,” I whisper. He bends his head and slants his mouth across me, gliding his tongue dreamily across mine.
Being fucked by Fiero Bellucci is an existence-altering experience. His weight is delectable, his heat just enough to make my eyes steam. His thick thighs bulge between mine, the muscles lengthening and contracting. The entirety of him thrusts, like he’s fucking me with his whole body.
He moans gruffly into my mouth, sweeping his tongue into me. I return soft sounds and run my nails down his back.
“I’m gonna fill you, cucciola,” he whispers, hoarsely.
His sexy threat makes an orgasm rocket through my bones and I grip him tightly, my nails digging in.
He pistons into me with his full might, stilling his mouth on mine, and releases a loud groan that ripples through my whole body.
His come floods into me, deep, and I make a mental note to get onto birth control the second I get out of here.
But, for now, I allow the high to settle over us while I trail kisses over his face and neck.
We’re already halfway through the month and I’ve just discovered mind-blowing sex. I’m going to enjoy this for as long as I can.