Page 45

He brings his glistening fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean, his eyes never leaving mine. It’s the most obscene, erotic thing I’ve ever witnessed, and despite everything, I feel a fresh pulse of desire.

“Sweet as I remembered,” he says, his voice rough with his own unfulfilled need. “But this was just the beginning of your punishment, the beginning of what you owe me, little liar. We have a long way to go.”

I should feel degraded. Instead, I feel marked, claimed in a way that goes beyond physical. I’ve survived brutal foster homes, protected my twin sister through hell, kept us both alive on the streets—but nothing has ever made me feel as vulnerable, as alive, as the way Marco Bianchi just made me come apart with only his fingers and his words.

He turns and walks to the door, pauses with his hand on the knob. “I’ll be sleeping in another room tonight. And Aria? Next time you lie to me, I won’t be so merciful.”

He leaves without a backward glance. But I hear the sharp click of the door like a breath he didn’t want me to hear.

I slide down to the floor, my legs unable to support me any longer. My body still tingles with aftershocks, my mind reeling from what just happened.

The worst part isn’t that he used me for his pleasure—it’s that he didn’t. He gave without taking, dominated me completely while denying himself release. And I now know I owe him even more than before.

12

MARCO

Isit at the head of the table, holding a meeting with my most trusted men, but my mind is a thousand miles away.

The men talk numbers that would make most men sweat. But all I can think of is her—Aria.

Last night still burns in my memory, playing on a loop in my head. The way she trembled under my touch. The way she gasped my name when she came apart against my fingers. I should have left her alone and not started what I did.

But it wasn’t just her submission that undid me.

It was her choice.

She didn’t just give in—she asked me to take her. And I did. And now I can’t stop.

I told myself she deserved punishment for her lies, and she did, but the truth is, I did it for me.

I wanted to break her. I wanted to own her.

Instead, she got under my skin, and I’ve only been punishing myself since last night.

“The Turkish shipment needs rerouting,” someone says to my right. The voices blur away and I suck in a breath of air as her half-naked body drives a wedge into my vision, makes my bloodheat, weakens my grip on control. How gorgeous she looked, how beautiful, when I had her arms pinned above her head, her breasts rising up to meet my gaze.

She was supposed to be out of my system after last night. I thought I’d teach her a lesson and remind her of her debt. But when I left her trembling and gasping, I realized with sick certainty—I’m not done with her. Not even close.

That’s why I left our bed untouched. Why I used another room down the hall. Because if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have stopped. I would have ruined her. And I wasn’t ready to ruin her under those circumstances.

A stack of papers slides in front of me. I make a show of going through the financial reports and pass them to Nicolo, telling him to do with it what he thinks best, for all I can see is the curve of her neck as she threw her head back, the way her blonde waves spilled across her shoulders, down her breasts.

I had her. Right there. Beneath me. Surrendering.

And I left.

What kind of man walks away from that? The kind who knows that one taste isn’t enough. The kind who recognizes an addiction forming before the first hit fully takes hold. Had I stayed, I wouldn’t have walked away, wouldn’t have been able to stop. The image of Aria’s flushed, tear-streaked, desperate, raw, wild, pleasured face burns into my memory.

“Marco.”

I try to stop thinking of how her lips parted in a gasp. “What?”

Nicolo leans forward, his silver cufflinks catching the light. At forty-two, he’s been with me since the beginning, when I was just a twenty-year-old with ambition to prove myself to my father. He knows me too well, which is why his eyes narrow now.

“You asked for this meeting,” he reminds me. “The Russo territory. Your decision?”

Right. The Russo family. Small-time operators trying to scale up by moving product through our neighborhoods. Normally, I’d have them eliminated without a second thought, but there’s strategic value in keeping them alive while bleeding them dry.