Page 98 of The Beast Who Broke Me
It won’t. How could it?
And then I jump a little as Damiano starts laughing. He runs his hands over his face, shoulders shaking. “You want me to pay for Sammy to get a custom suit?” he says, still half-laughing, his hands still covering his face.
Sammy is the person in this house who has the most reason to hate me aside from Damiano, and the least power to do anything about it. He’s trapped here with the ghost of his trauma walking around in a Clemenza skin, and nobody is asking him how he feels about that.
I know what it’s like to be the one nobody asks.
“I want you to show him hematters,” I say quietly, but I don’t think Dami hears me. He’s too busy chuckling to himself. “Is it really such an absurd idea?” I ask sharply, because the laughter is unsettling me.
He shakes his head, still grinning. “It’s fucking crazy. But hell, why not? Why not, little prince? Let’s invite your old friend Benedetti over and dress Sammy up in a fucking penguin suit. I’m sure he’ll love it.”
There’s something dark under his laughter. Something in the way he looks at me now, with that cold fire in his eyes.
“What happened with Big Gee?” I ask cautiously.
Damiano stops laughing at once. “That’s Family business.”
“But what did you?—”
“You don’t ask questions.” All his shutters have come down just like they do on his house, metal barriers against the world.
He takes a step forward. I’m already sitting on the bed, and I don’t want to seem like I’m intimidated by him, so I don’t shrink away. I just watch him come close and loom over me.
His hand comes up. Slowly. The one with the “G” tattoo that I’m starting to loathe. His fingers settle around my throat, a collar ofwarm flesh that reminds me, despite myself, of the metal collar he made me wear in the basement.
I know this hand. I’ve felt it do terrible things to me and tender things to me and everything in between. Right now, it’s just resting against my pulse.
“Dami, what—” I begin, but before I can say anything more, his mouth slams down onto mine, and he’s devouring my words along with my breath.
He’s kissing me.
The last time our mouths touched, I was performing for an audience. I kissed him in front of Big Gee and the D’Amatos to sell a lie, and his lips were stiff with shock, and it meant nothing.
This kiss…
This kiss means everything.
His hands are everywhere—my hair, my face, my shoulders, pulling my shirt over my head, pulling me up onto my knees on the bed so our faces are level. He kisses me like he’s trying to consume me. Like he wants to climb inside me.
“Dami.” I try to pull back, to look at him, to understand what’s happening.
“Don’t talk,” he says against my mouth. “Please. Just—don’t.”
Thepleaseis what undoes me.
Damiano Orsini doesn’t say please. Not to anyone, and certainly not to me. So I just give in to the tidal wave of him. His tongue is in my mouth, hungry and possessive, and my hands are on his chest, feeling the heavy thud of his heart under muscle and bone.
We’re wrestling now, a clumsy, desperate struggle to get naked, to have nothing between us. He yanks at my pants and I kick them off at last, my dick already hard and leaking against my stomach. He shoves me back onto the bed, climbs over me?—
And he stops. Looks down at me with an expression that just about breaks my heart, because it’s sorrow and regret and pity all wrapped up together. I want to ask again what’s wrong, but before I can, he’s bending my knees, pushing them back toward my chest so that I’m fully exposed and vulnerable.
And I just lie there and let Damiano Orsini do whatever the hell he wants to me.
He grabs the lube from the nightstand and then kisses me while he plays with my ass, working me open while his tongue continues its relentless assault on my mouth. And when he stops, when his mouth pulls away from mine and his fingers leave my ass, I reach for him, trying to pull him back.
But he’s not going anywhere. He’s just repositioning himself, settling between my thighs, slicking up his thick shaft. He’s looking down at me, that same confounding look in his eyes. A desperate, beautiful pain.
“You have no idea,” he says, his voice rough. “You have no fucking idea what you do to me.”
