Page 34 of The Kingpin’s Bride

His coat settled around my naked body a moment later, heavy and smelling of expensive wool and him and sex. He did not speak. He just held me tighter against his chest and walked toward the black car waiting at the curb, one hand splayed possessively over the small of my back, the other cradling the back of my head.

I closed my eyes and felt the heavy gold ring on my finger, the deep, sweet ache between my legs, the warm wetness of a complete stranger leaking out of me with every step, and the terrible, unavoidable truth settling into my bones.

I belonged to a man who I did not even know. And the entire underworld had just watched him force my body to prove it.

Chapter Eight

Matteo

Icarried my wife out of the club without looking back.

The coat I had thrown over her naked body slipped with every step, exposing the curve of one breast, the dark collar locked around her throat, the chains binding her wrists in front of her. Cum leaked down the inside of her thighs and left faint wet trails on the expensive wool. She trembled against my chest, small and silent, her face pressed into the side of my neck like she could hide there. She could not. The entire underworld had seen everything.

The black car waited at the curb with the engine running. My driver opened the rear door and kept his eyes carefully averted. I slid in first, then pulled her onto my lap rather than letting her sit alone. The door shut. The locks engaged. The car pulled away from After Dark and into the wet city night.

She tried to shift off me. I kept one arm banded around her waist and the other resting on her thigh, fingers splayed over the sticky mess I had left between her legs.

“Stay,” I said.

The single word was flat. She froze.

“Good girl.”

I stared out the window at the streaking lights and forced my breathing to stay even. My cock was half-hard against the curve of her ass.

The scent of her, fear and sex and the faint chemical sweetness of the club soap, filled the closed space of the car. It was intoxicating in a way I refused to name.

I had just fucked her in front of every man who mattered in this city. I had filled her while they watched and touched themselves.

The broken sounds she had made when I forced the orgasm out of her kept replaying. The way her eyes had stayed locked on mine while she came, like she was choosing to look at the man destroying her instead of closing them.

The wet heat of my own release seeping out of her and soaking into my coat. I curled my fingers into fists against her skin so she wouldn’t feel it.

I had wanted the watching men to see her come apart for me. I had wanted her to feel it against her will. Both goals had been achieved. So why did the pain feel like it had been split wider with every thrust?I hated that thought.

I hated how true it felt.

She shifted again, a small, restless movement that pressed her bare skin more firmly against the front of my trousers. My cock twitched. I ignored it. My hand tightened on her thigh hard enough to leave new marks beside the ones blooming there.

“Be still, please.”

She went still.

“Good girl,” I muttered again.

The drive to the penthouse took fourteen minutes. I counted every one of them.

Fourteen minutes of her weight on my lap, of her soft, uneven breathing against my throat, of the wet heat of my own release seeping out of her and soaking into the fabric of my coat. Fourteen minutes of forcing every darker impulse back behind the same cold wall I had used for years.

I had not bought her to feel things. I had bought her to fill a seat. Emotion was a liability. I had watched it destroy better men than me.

When the car finally stopped beneath the building I owned, I lifted her out without ceremony. The private elevator required a keycard and a code. I entered both one-handed while she hung against my chest, limp and quiet. The doors closed. The lift rose in silence. She did not ask where we were going, or what would happen next.

She only stared at the polished metal wall with empty eyes and let the tears dry in cold tracks on her cheeks.

The penthouse doors opened onto darkness and floor-to-ceiling glass. The city glittered beyond them like something conquered. I carried Morena straight through the main room, past the covered walls that hid the photographs of her face, the maps with the red string and the crossed-out Vernizzi names, and into the bedroom I had prepared three nights earlier.

I set her on her feet in the center of the dark space.