Oath of Silence: A Dark Mafia Romance (Deviant Doms), page 18
“You liked that.”
Did I?
“It hurt!” Another whip of his belt makes me scream.
A casual shrug of his shoulder tells me he doesn’t care. Tiny welts rise along my skin, but the pain quickly melds into heat. The thrumming need of my pussy only heightens.
“It should hurt.” The harsh tone of his voice pulses between my thighs, pulsing in tune to the steady lash of his belt on my thighs, my hips, and across my breasts. My ass aches with the memory of another punishment.
“And what if I obey you?” I’m panting. If he breathes on my pussy, I’ll come. Every ounce of blood in my body seems concentrated between my thighs.
“If you obey me, bella, I’ll make you the happiest woman on Earth.” It’s an exaggeration, it has to be, and yet, maybe I believe him.
He doesn’t even know me. How could he know how to make me happy? How does he know what I want?
Bending down, for one perfect moment, he presses his thumb between my thighs, and my hips rise. Heat throttles my ability to speak. I want him so badly it’s painful.
He knows one thing I want, anyway.
He bends down, leaning against his forearm. Small beads of sweat dot his forehead. He hasn’t put that much physical effort into whipping me, and he doesn’t need to. I’m half his size, naked, and restrained. He’s the king of the castle, fully dressed, and wielding a wicked leather belt along with a devilish tongue. Gawd.
“Okay, alright,” I breathe, captivated by the power he holds, mesmerized by the promise of pleasure, greedy for so much more.
He walks over to me with a wicked glint in his eye. Is he going to take his, then? I let my eyes rove over the thick ridge in his pants. His lips are pressed into a tight, firm line, as if concerned that if he allows himself to speak, he’s going to say something he regrets. The bed sags when he sits beside me.
I don’t realize I’m crying until he brushes his thumb across my cheek. “If you don’t like being punished, you’ll remember to obey.”
Is that why I’m crying? I want to claw my way out of my own skin.
He pulls my head back and bares his teeth. “You’ll fucking obey.”
I nod. I’ve seen what happens when I disobey. I wouldn’t say I fear it, but a part of me wonders what it would be like to gain his pleasure, to please him. To obey him. Would it feel nice?
He tips me to the side and slams his palm against my ass so hard I scream. “Don’t try me, Vittoria.”
“Okay!” I nod. A part of this was playing, but he’s not playing now. There’s steel in his tone and undeniable authority in his eyes when he flips me onto my back again.
“Spread your legs.” The rough tone of his voice makes my nipples harden, and my body quickly remembers where this was going, what it wants, how badly I want him. Heat and warmth pool between my legs. My knees part, granting him access.
I groan when he rubs his stubbled cheek along the damp inside of my thighs. He suckles the skin and releases it, over and over, leaving tiny pink circles on my inner thighs. My clit throbs. I want his tongue there. Right there.
One stroke of his tongue and I’m on the cusp of exploding.
“Will you obey me?”
I nod frantically, my fingers forming into fists with the frustration of not being able to touch him, to reach him, to stroke his hair between my fingers while he licks me. He grasps my breasts and strokes my nipples while he drags his tongue over my throbbing sex. His words are hot and insistent against my body.
“Will you take your punishment when you disobey?”
Again, a frantic nod. Yes, yes, I’ll take my punishment in whatever sick version of dom and sub he wants to play, because I need him. I need him so badly I could cry.
“Tell me.” He suckles my clit while he thrusts two fingers in me. “Tell me you’re mine.” He pumps. I close my eyes at the sensation. His voice becomes insistent, angry. “Tell me you’ll marry me. Tell me no other man will ever touch what’s mine, Vittoria.” He pumps so hard, he sends spasms through my body. I whimper.
He’s manipulating me, and I don’t care. I might feel differently in the morning, when I’m sober and sane, but tonight, I don’t care.
My mind races, trying to fuse logic to logic.
Romeo Rossi is the head of this family, and if I give him what he wants, he’ll solidify that role. He thrives as leader, the natural order of things aligning with the universe.
I don’t know him, and yet he wants me to marry him. Marriage in this family may be convenience, a box to check off. There’s no love lost between any of them, I know this already.
Marriage to him means putting myself in danger, but I’m already there. I’m already under his father’s watchful eye. I’m penniless because I was swindled, and it’s because of me a man’s dead.
I nod. “I’m yours.” I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what he’ll demand of me. But in my sex-addled mind, it’s the only choice. “Yes. I’m yours.”
“Good girl,” he breathes, and with another stroke of his fingers on my clit, a delicious shudder warms my body, and the first spasm of ecstasy ripples through me. His touch is electric, and my response is so swift it’s almost violent. I close my eyes against the power of my climax, swimming in euphoria.
I come so hard and so long I’m breathless, the muscles in my body tense. I fall to the bed as the aftershocks ripple through me. My breathing comes in gasps. I open my eyes, coming back to Earth.
Slowly, gently, he strokes his fingers through my hair, smoothing it off my forehead and neatly behind my back. I feel the weight of it as his finger traces my hairline.
“Tonight, we played. But your punishment was real.” He reaches for the silk tie and unfastens my wrists. “I don’t enjoy watching you come to the edge of pleasure like this and leaving you hanging.”
I swallow, as he rubs the cinched part of my wrists to get the blood flowing again. “Don’t you?”
He shakes his head. “I have almost everything I want, Vittoria. Almost. Wealth. Fame. Respect. Power.” He leans in close to me. He bends and kisses my cheek. “All I need is you.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” Romeo and Juliet
Romeo
I’ve never slept with a woman in my bed. So that’s another first.
Letting a woman get to me… that is a first, too.
I climb in beside Vittoria. She’s already half asleep, her arm tossed over her head on the pillow. I never saw a woman come so hard. Fucking rewarding.
But I won’t fuck her. Not tonight.
I lay beside her for hours while she sleeps, staring at the canopy above my bed that hides the ceiling that’s so far up it fades into darkness. I have to think. Plan. Plot.
I’m used to not sleeping. My father’s been Don in name only for a while now. As acting Don, the weight of the Family comes on my shoulders, so it’s not unusual for me to be woken from sleep or to go to bed when the sun’s beginning to rise. Tonight’s no exception.
Narciso Rossi’s been pushed over the edge. I don’t trust him. And we still don’t know why Vittoria’s even here, why her name was in my grandfather’s will to begin with.
Why her?
I finally strip off my clothes and curl up next to her. Dead asleep, she nestles closer. I inhale and hold her to me. I breathe in and out. So this is why people share a bed. I never knew. There’s a comfort in having her here tucked in my arms, my breathing matching hers.
I’m turning everything over in my mind when I finally fall asleep.
I wake before my alarm to the insistent buzzing of my phone. I look over quickly to see Vittoria still fast asleep beside me.
On instinct, I check to see if she’s breathing. Things that matter don’t last in my world. I don’t want to lose her. But she’s breathing as softly as a sleeping baby.
I push myself out of bed and walk to the sitting area, phone in hand.
Orlando.
I answer the phone. “Yeah?” I whisper, still not wanting to wake her.
“Fuckin’ problem, Rome.”
“Spill.”
Santo was run off the road last night, we know this, while my father went missing. “It’s Mama.”
Fuck.
My mother goes on drinking binges when my father takes another woman. One would think she’d be used to it by now. Fidelity isn’t part of the Rossi family code. She isn’t, though.
“What about her?”
“She’s missing, Rome.”
I stand up straighter. Mama doesn’t even leave the house to get groceries. What few friends she has come here to The Castle to eat lunch with her. Papa doesn’t like her traveling, so the only time she ever leaves the house is when she goes to Tuscany with him.
I look over at the bed to see Vittoria still asleep even through my conversation. I grab a faded pair of jeans from the back of the chair and tug them on. I rapidly get dressed with my phone tucked under my chin, listening while he fills me in.
She went to bed before anyone else did, Marialena saw her go up. Then this morning, Rosa went up with Natalia because Natalia wanted to see her Nonna. She was gone.
“Did she take anything?”
“Not that we noticed.”
Fuck. My heart beats faster as I think about my father’s desperation. Maybe he won’t come after me. Maybe he’ll off Mama so he can take another wife. Not unheard of in the circles we run in.
He wants a wife but doesn’t want her. Divorce ain’t an option.
I scowl at the bed where Vittoria still lies. If she were mine, I’d have the power to oust him. I could pull every made man this side of the ocean out of jobs to hunt him down and punish him for what he’s done. I’d have the power to change anything.
Without that bond, my hands are tied.
We live in an ancient castle, still bound by ancient laws. Stupid fucking archaic laws.
I could make her. I fucking could, and I know it. I’ve threatened it. How much would she resent me?
I’ve given her every possible option I could think of, tantalized her with everything that could be hers.
But that’s not what she needs. She doesn’t want money or status or any of the riches I could promise her.
What does she want?
She needs time.
It’s the one thing I can’t give her.
Fuck.
I hang up the phone with a promise I’ll be down. She stirs on the bed and looks over at me. A twinkle lights her beautiful eyes.
“They should put men in jeans and white T-shirts on the cover of men’s magazines,” she says as she tucks her hands under her chin.
“I’m not an expert, but I think they do.”
“Oh,” she says with a smile. “I should check them out.” She sobers when I don’t respond. “Something the matter?”
I tell her. She sits up straighter in bed. “Oh, God, Romeo. Would he hurt her?”
“If you have to ask that question, you really haven’t fully grasped what he’s capable of, Vittoria.”
“Fu—” she catches my eye, about to curse. She swallows. “You should find her,” she says with a sigh. “I want to go with you.”
I shake my head firmly. “I don’t want to take you into something dangerous. He could be baiting me.”
“And maybe he’s baiting you to leave so I’m here alone.” Her eyes widen with panic, then she gasps when someone pounds on the door.
“Rome! Romeo, let me the fuck in.”
Leo. I throw the covers up over Vittoria as I head for the door. He’s still wearing last night’s clothes.
“Where the fuck is she?” He looks like shit.
“Just woke up, how the fuck do I know? Where was her bodyguard?”
That’s when I see him, hanging behind Leo in the shadow of the hallway. Leo jerks his head toward me.
“Come here,” he growls. “Tell your fuckin’ Don why his mother’s missing.”
Amadeo hangs his head. “Fell asleep, Boss. Think someone drugged my drink.”
I clench my fists so I don’t hit him. I’ll deal with him in private. I don’t want to scare Vittoria. I keep my tone tight, my voice calm. “You were fucking drinking when you were on the job?”
He winces and doesn’t respond. I’ll punish him, but not in front of her. If he wasn’t so loyal to the Family, I’d kill him.
“You go with Tavi and Leo, and you scour the fucking Earth until you find her. When she’s safe, you come and tell me. You understand me?”
He nods. “Yessir.”
Leo scowls and cuffs him on the back of the head, muttering about fucking millennials and how his generation knew their place. Bullshit they did. Probably makes him feel better, though.
I slam the door. Vittoria’s awake, rubbing sleep from her eyes. If my mother wasn’t missing, I’d have plans for that naked body of hers.
“So,” she says, as if she’s been thinking this over. “I’m guessing that your mother’s bodyguard failed at his job?” She asks as if trying to understand the order of things around here. She needs to know. I’ll tell her everything.
“He did.”
“And does he… answer to you?”
I sigh, pulling on a leather jacket. No suit today. “Vittoria.” Her eyes meet mine. “Everyone answers to me.”
A slow smile spreads across her lips. “That’s hot.”
Fuck, I wish I had time with her. We’ll get there.
“So what happens to him now?” She flinches as if she doesn’t want to hear the answer. “Do you, like… kill him?”
Not gonna shield her. “I would, if this wasn’t his first time failing at the job.” I check my gun, not missing the way her eyes watch every move. I slide it into a holster. “I’ll beat the fucking shit out of him, though.” I flex my fingers, ready to give a goddamn beat down now.
When she doesn’t respond, I look up at her. The sun’s risen, illuminating her skin, still pink but almost normal. Hardly shows any signs of our session the night before. “He can’t do that, Vittoria.”
“Oh, I know. It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
A thoughtful look crosses her face. “It’s convenient, isn’t it? You want to marry me. I haven’t married you yet. Your mom goes missing, and you’re called away, when no one’s secured your father yet…”
“Yeah.” I sigh. I’ve already thought the same thing. What if he wants me away from her? But blood’s thicker than water. I can’t give up the hunt for my goddamn mother when the woman who isn’t my wife needs me. “If we were married…”
“I know,” she finishes quietly. “And I agreed last night.”
I look at her wonderingly. I questioned if she’d change her mind when she woke, when she wasn’t drunk on sex and adrenaline. She tosses her hair with a teasing look. “I don’t go back on my word, Mr. Rossi. I’ve thought things through. And I have choices, but they’re limited.”
She’s absolutely right.
“I don’t have time,” I say in a low voice, sitting on the edge of the bed. I pull her to me and drag her across my lap. I just want to touch her. To hold her. I just want to taste her one more time. Her warm body presses up against my clothed one.
“For what?” Her eyes meet mine with curiosity and something else. Excitement?
“To seal that promise. To make you mine. Now.”
She nuzzles against me like a content little kitten.
“Do what you need to. Leave me with who you trust. Later, we finish this.” She swallows hard. “Romeo, in my world we do things differently. We… take our time, I guess you would say.” She sighs. “I’m seeing that you play by a very different set of rules in your world.”
I nod. “You could say that.”
“I’m learning.”
I kiss her cheek. Maybe Vittoria could mean more to me than a crown, more to me than the power I want to wield. It’s dangerous to fall in love, though. Men like me lose power and threaten everything when they do.
Maybe men like me lose even more when they don’t.
I think of my father, the years of infidelity and the coldness between him and my mother. I think of raising children with a woman I don’t love.
I’m someone who craves control. How much of this is really in my hands?
“I wish you could come with me,” I mutter to myself. I hate the thought of leaving her here. But taking her with me’s arguably worse. It’s a dangerous fucking move, one I can’t risk.
She gets dressed and comes downstairs with me, but my mind’s a mile away. She mutters something under her breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Both of us are in our heads, a world apart from each other, but trying to bridge that gap with everything we can.
I squeeze her hand as Tavi and Orlando march into the Great Hall, armed and ready to go.
Orlando interrupts. “Rome, we got a lead. Tavi played back the surveillance footage outside Mama’s room, and two armed men entered her room around four this morning.”
I don’t have time to talk to Vittoria anymore. I give her a meaningful look. “We’ll talk later.”
She only nods.
Loud, raucous barks sound the alarm before anyone else does. My dogs, trained to attack. Vittoria screams as the largest window to the Great Hall shatters into fragments. They’re back. I fucking knew it.
“Get down!”
It all happens in a matter of seconds. Shattered glass and high-pitched screams, just before the deafening gunshots.
“Cazzo!”
My whole body’s over Vittoria’s, covering her, while my men spring into action. Leo’s on a fucking table. Frantic over the loss of my mother, he doesn’t care about the spray of bullets, doesn’t even fucking flinch when he’s struck.
I look next to see if my sisters are secured, my instincts honed. Gunshots from the east, armored car. Guards outside responded on cue; it had bulletproof glass, but one threw himself bodily to block it. Rosa… Rosa’s sprawled under the weight of Mario’s arm, her cheek to the floor. Mario’s eyes meet mine across the room. I jerk my chin at him.
