Page 99 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
"One night," I say. "We burn this out, whatever it is. Tomorrow you keep your leverage, I keep my case, and neither of us confuses a reward for anything more."
"You believe that is possible."
"I believe it's necessary."
He sets the glass down untouched and crosses the room, unhurried, stopping close enough that I have to lift my chin to hold his gaze. I catalog him on instinct. Open collar. Ink at his throat. A pulse there, moving faster than his voice admits.
"Counteroffer," he says. "One night. And you say my name like you mean it."
"That's all?"
"You will find it is expensive."
I kiss him first.
I need that fact on the record. I moved first. I chose this.
His control lasts three seconds. Then his hand fists in the fabric at my back, my shoulders meet the wall, and his mouth turns hungry, whiskey-warm, thorough enough to empty every careful plan out of my head. I hear my zipper give. The dress slides from my shoulders and pools by the door.
"Look at me." He waits until I do. "If you want this to end, you say stop. One word, at any moment, and it ends. No explanation owed. Tell me you understand."
"I understand."
"Good girl."
The praise shouldn't reach me. It does anyway — heat rolling low and liquid through my belly — and he watches it happen with the focus of a man memorizing a weakness he intends to use.
He uses it.
His mouth traces my jaw, my throat, the slope of my breast, closing hot over my nipple until my head tips back against the wall and my fingers dig into his shoulders. He takes his time. He learns which touch makes me gasp and which makes me swear, and when his hand finally slides beneath the lace at my hips, we both feel exactly how ready I am.
"Maya." His voice has gone rough. "Say it."
"Stefano."
His fingers stroke through my slickness, slow and deliberate, circling exactly where I need him until my knees threaten to quit — then two fingers sink into me while his thumb keeps that devastating rhythm. I say his name again. It comes out broken. He rewards it, curling his fingers, and the first climax takes me standing up, shaking, his mouth swallowing the sound I can't hold back.
He carries me to the bed before my legs remember their job.
I watch him undress — scars I don't ask about, ink I want to — and then he's over me, heavy and warm, one hand braced beside my head.
"Last chance to renegotiate," he murmurs.
I pull him down.
He pushes inside me slowly, stretching me, filling me, watching my face the entire time as if every reaction is intelligence he's been starving for. Then he moves, and nothing careful survives it. I meet him. I mark his back. I say his name the way he demanded, again and again, until it stops being a term of the deal and becomes the only word I have left. When I break the second time, he follows, my name grinding out of him like something taken by force.
After, he doesn't let me retreat to my side of the bed. His arm hooks my waist and pulls me back against his chest, and I'm too undone to pretend I mind.
The whiskey sits on the sideboard, abandoned.
Neither of us finishes it.
Chapter Thirteen
Maya
Iwake with Stefano’s arm heavy across my waist and the first thin gray of morning pressing against the curtains.
