Page 10 of Confession (Constantine Brothers #2)

NINE

Quinn

Eclipse has live music on Sundays. Tonight it’s hip-hop, which isn’t my thing, but it works in this setting. Standing at the railing of the mezzanine, keeping watch, I tune it out like everything else.

I try to tune out my thoughts as well because I have a job to do. I don’t like that Gavino DiMaggio came in here last night. I didn’t learn that until this morning from Sasha, but it certainly explains why Vitali was upset last night.

It does not, however, explain the rest of it. I don’t know what to make of what happened. I don’t believe, not for a second, that he’s actually interested in me.

There’s a lot of shit going on in Vitali’s life right now and his head’s pretty fucked up. That was very obvious last night, and it helped me put a few other things together.

He’s outmatched by the DiMaggios right now and isn’t sure what to do. All the responsibility is on him, and it’s a heavy burden. He’s also fucked up about his uncle’s betrayal and hasn’t worked through that yet. He’s furious about it, but he’s also hurt and isn’t ready to recognize that.

Then there’s Roman.

What a complicated fucking mess. Half the problem is that Vitali is a fixer. I think he knows that there’s no fixing Roman, but he still wants to. He wants Roman to be healed, to be happy, to be whole and normal. That’s never going to happen, and it’s hard for Vitali to accept that.

He also feels guilty as hell about what happened to Roman. He shouldn’t, but he does.

He hasn’t told me any of this, but I know him. I can tell. Hell, I bet even he doesn’t realize most of this. It’s all in the background, fucking up his brain, rewiring shit and confusing him.

That’s why he’s drinking so much.

That’s why he’s suddenly bi-curious.

It’s not really about me. I’m simply convenient. A distraction. I can’t let myself forget that even if I let myself … fuck, I don’t know. How far will he want to go?

He kissed me. Fucking hell, Vitali Constatine kissed me.

I’ve gotten hard so many times thinking about it. His lips against mine, his tongue in my mouth, his hands roaming my body …

I’m so lost in my head that I don’t see the girl coming up to me until her hand is on my arm. I barely stop myself from instinctively shoving her. I need to focus, to be present. I have a job to do. Thank god Sasha’s downstairs. Anyone could get by me right now.

The girl asks me where the restroom is. She leans into me. Why can’t these girls tell how violent I am? I’ve killed so many people. And I’m not safe in bed. I’m violent there too. The only difference is, there, I don’t want to win the fight.

But I escort her to the restroom. She’s drunk and I don’t want her to get hurt. When she emerges, I ask her who her DD is. She doesn’t have one. She leans into me again, puts her hands on me. I text one of the bouncers to come get her and arrange a ride.

I enjoy a brief moment of peace and focus before I attract fresh attention, this time from a twink who at least reads my sexuality correctly.

Or maybe he noted my lack of interest in the pretty little drunk I sent away.

Whatever the case, he cozies up to me while I’m scanning the crowd on the ground floor.

“You looking for someone?” His sparkly nails rake lightly down my forearm. I have my sleeves down, but I still don’t like when people touch me there.

I move my arm away from him. “Just doing my job. You should go have fun.”

“Ooh, you work here. Are you a bouncer?”

“Not exactly.”

“Too bad. You could bounce me.” He smiles. This time, his hand skims my shoulder.

I’m considering my options for getting rid of him when my phone vibrates in my back pocket. I pull it out and shift away just in case there’s something sensitive in the text.

Vitali: Get your ass in here.

My heart skips at the thought that something might be wrong, but I’m careful to show no emotion. I stow my phone.

The twink says something to me, but I don’t hear it. I’m already cutting across the mezzanine to Vitali’s office door.

I open it and step inside, alert for trouble. Trouble is exactly what I find, but not the kind I expect. Vitali is glaring at me from behind his desk.

I close the door, cutting off the noise and general chaos of the club. My senses aren’t ready for the abrupt silence or the sudden intensity of Vitali’s stare cutting across the luxurious space of his sharply modern office. My scalp prickles.

“Why do you let people touch you?” he demands.

At first, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then I realize, “You’ve been watching me via the security cameras.”

“Yes. And people have been all over you. Why do you allow it?”

My body heats at the thought of him watching me. It’s a confusing heat, both wariness and arousal. It doesn’t help when he looks like that, so damn gorgeous, his close-fitting white shirt partially unbuttoned to offer a glimpse of his tattooed chest.

I answer, “It makes a scene if I don’t.”

“Do you like it?”

He’s such a dangerous man, and I hear it in his tone. I see it in the way he remains so casually behind his desk, one elbow resting on it, his dark eyes intent.

I don’t answer him because I’m unsure why he’s angry—and he’s definitely angry.

“Answer me,” he demands.

“No.”

His nostrils flare. “No you don’t like it, or no you won’t answer?”

My own temper, latent, buried deep, stirs.

I don’t like that he’s trying to put me on the defense.

I stalk toward his desk. I plant my hands on it and lean down.

He regards me steadily. His features are so classically Greek and Italian, so carved and cold and beautiful.

I’m no match for him, not in an argument, but I’m still going to fight.

“No,” I answer, “I don’t like when people touch me.”

“What do you feel when people touch you?”

“Depends on the person.”

“But you always hate it?”

“You’re obviously trying to herd me somewhere with your questions. Get to the point, Vitali.”

“All right. Why do you react badly when I touch you?”

My heart skips. He asked this last night too. He was drunk, so I managed to sort of evade the question, but he’s not drunk now and the way he’s asking tells me that he already knows the answer. But then, how could he not after last night?

He caught me off guard. I had prepared myself for the wrong thing, for an ending. I didn’t expect him to touch me like that. I didn’t expect him to kiss me.

There’s no point in lying, so I admit, “I don’t hate it.”

“If you don’t hate it, then there’s a different reason you react badly when I touch you.”

He knows the truth, I can tell. He’s figured it out. And I can see in his eyes that he’s well aware that he’s trapped me, that I can’t evade him anymore. His lips tug slightly as he reveals my secret: “You’re attracted to me. You always have been.”

God, his arrogance. I hate it. I love it. My dick stiffens at the way he’s defeated me.

“Yes,” I confess. What else can I do?

He regards me, studies me. “You’ve hidden it well.”

“I never had any reason to think you were anything but straight.”

“I gave you a reason last night.”

“You were drunk last night,” I remind him.

“I’m not drunk now.”

“And you’re still curious?”

“Curious,” he echoes. “Is that what you think I am?”

“You tell me.”

He smiles. How can his lips look so cruel and so sensual at the same time?

“You’re getting better at this, Quinn. I should grill you more often.”

“We’re on more even footing now. The power has shifted to me.”

He’s amused. “How so?”

My heart is pounding because I’m about to say something that there’s no going back from. But there’s no going back anyway. Things between us are already irrevocably changed, and I want this. Fuck, I do. And I need his reaction. I can’t handle any more uncertainty, not at this point.

“Because, between the two of us, Vitali, I’m the only one who knows how to suck a dick.”

His lips part as he inhales sharply. He didn’t expect that. I’ve never talked that way with him. I’ve been so careful not to. So he doesn’t know how dirty I am. He’s about to find out—if he wants to.

And he does want to. He smiles. He likes the idea. Fuck, this is really going to happen.

“Are you good at it?” he asks.

“Good enough to make you come down my throat, I guarantee it.”

Those cruel, sensual lips twist. “Oh, Quinn. I don’t think this is going to go quite like you think.”

He stands from his desk, making me straighten from it. My eyes drop instantly to where his cock is pressing hard against the front of his close-fitting light blue dress pants. He’s such a damn peacock sometimes. And yet my mouth waters. My dick throbs in my jeans.

As Vitali starts unbuttoning his shirt, my eyes lift to watch him. He has beautiful hands, elegant and refined looking, but I know how brutal they can be. I’ve watched them break people apart. I’ve felt them at my throat.

He tugs his shirt from his waistband, exposing a swath of his chiseled abdomen.

His tattoos heavily mark his shoulders and chest, but most of his abs are olive skin over cut muscle.

I’m so distracted that I’m in something of a haze as he walks around the desk and fits himself between it and me.

His hand clamps on my shoulder. He pushes downward.

I drop to my knees. I should have known that his inexperience with men wasn’t going to give me an edge over him. For one second, in his shock, I had the upper hand, but I’ve already lost it—and I’m glad. This is what I want.

With one hand, Vitali unbuttons and unzips his pants. With his other, he grabs my jaw and makes me look up. I shiver in pleasure at his dominance.

His lips tug in a half smile. “That’s what I thought.”

Vitali keeps hold of my jaw to keep my head still while his other hand is busy at his groin. The tease of not being able to watch has my dick throbbing. I want to see. I need to.

He tilts my head down slowly. My eyes travel along his notched abdomen.

I already knew that his upper body was stripped of hair, not uncommon in men with tattoos, but he’s bare all the way down.

My eyes greedily drink in the sight of his lower abdomen, the muscle angling inward from each hip, arrowing straight to the stiff length of his cock.

The shaft is threaded with veins and the tip is flushed an angry red.

My lips part at the sight of it. My mouth waters.

His pants are open but too close-fitting to fall, and the waistband of his underwear is tugged below his heavy, swollen balls.

Vitali lets me take in the sight for a moment, then he wedges a finger between my teeth and forces my mouth open as he pushes his cock into it.

My eyes roll back in my head at the way he penetrates me and I know instantly that he can give me what I need. A deep terror wakes up in the back of my mind at that thought, but I wall it off and let myself exist in this moment. A moment that I never, ever thought would happen.

His finger leaves my mouth as his hand moves to the back of my head. When his cock hits the back of my throat, he stops. I look up to see his eyes on me. His lips are parted. His eyes are heavy lidded.

He says in a rough voice, “I had no idea this would look so fucking beautiful.”

I moan around his cock, which makes him close his eyes and press harder into me. I open my throat for him. I reach up and grip his swollen balls.

“Jesus fuck,” he mutters and thrusts shallowly into my throat. He’s trying to be careful, but I can take him, the real him, so I knead and roll and tug his balls until he starts thrusting deeper.

My eyes are watering. I keep choking, but I don’t care. I slide my free hand up his abdomen, feeling his muscles contract as he fucks my mouth, feeling him breathe. I keep working his balls and the base of his shaft.

He’s big so it’s hard for me to take all of him, but I angle myself and open my throat to let him in. I lose myself in his musky scent, in the rhythm of his thrusting, in the feel of his cock gliding into me.

I’m so hard and aching that I drop my hand from his abs to my dick, pressing against it for relief. I moan around Vitali’s cock.

“Are you gonna come for me?” he rasps. “Choking on my cock?”

I can only moan and shudder and keep working him.

“Look at me,” he orders.

The second I look up and see his face, I come.

My cry is strangled by his dick in my throat.

As I jerk and seize against him while my dick pumps hot and uncontrolled in my jeans, Vitali buries myself deep and ejaculates so hard that his cock kicks inside my throat, choking and gagging me, disorienting me as I release another hot pulse of cum.

I must black out briefly because the next thing I know I’m falling forward. Vitali half catches me, but I still end up on my face, coughing.

“Jesus,” he mutters. “Fuck.”

He has one arm hooked around my ribs, his other hand on my back. As soon as I recover enough, I sit up and push him away. I stagger to my feet and make my way to the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

I turn on the light but don’t look in the mirror. I wash my face then stay leaning over the sink while I try to regulate my breathing. My throat is raw. I can feel where he was. I can taste him.

I close my eyes as the shudders go through me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why I’m upset. I 100% wanted that. I still want—

I cut that thought off before it fully forms, but it doesn’t stop the shudders from intensifying.

Just fucking breathe, Jesus Christ, he’s right outside the door.

You’re fine. You’re fucking fine, and you don’t need anything.

I breathe.

I calm down.

I push all my thoughts away.

Straightening, I grab a washcloth and do what I can to clean myself up. I didn’t expect to come from blowing him, but now I have to deal with the consequences.

I know Vitali has spare clothes here, and I know he would lend me some, but that would require more interaction with him than I’m willing to have right now. I’m too raw. He would see too much.

So I toss the washcloth in the basket and wash my hands. Then I look in the mirror.

Jesus Christ. I look drunk. I scrape back my hair with my fingers, though it doesn’t really change it, take a deep breath, and open the door.

“Are you okay?”

Vitali is blocking my exit. He’s fixed his clothes and looks exactly as he did before I blew him. Well, maybe not exactly. He looks … worried.

I can’t fucking deal with that, so I brush past him saying, “My throat’s been used harder than that.” Shit, my voice is wrecked.

That was an asshole thing to say, I know, but it pisses him off enough that he doesn’t come after me as I walk to the office door and escape into the noise and chaos of the club.