by Stasia Black
Cora felt it the moment he came up against her barrier and so did he. Cora could see it in his eyes. He didn’t stop, though, and she didn’t want him to. She nodded again and he pushed forwards. Her hip twitched and there was a sharp pinch before her flesh gave way. He sank deeper. She closed her eyes and clutched his shoulders.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
Why? Why? He knew what she was giving. She’d been a fool to think she could ever wrest any power away from this man. He was an unstoppable force and to him she was nothing but a wildflower, here today and paved over tomorrow.
“Cora, give me your eyes.”
Her throat stung as she opened her eyes. She felt the tears as they rolled down her temples and into her hair.
Marcus’s sharp eyebrows were drawn together, his huge body looming over her small one, as he worked himself inside her, inch by inch.
Her breath caught as he probed the tight fist of her inner muscles. “Easy. Open...open for me.”
Her hands clawed his back, caught his strong shoulders, and hung on.
“That’s it,” his breath tickled her ear. “Hold tight to me.”
The pressure grew. She gritted her teeth, ducking her head to hide in the curve of Marcus’s throat. He was a rock, immovable. She was the ocean, ebbing, moving around him.
Slowly her body opened, her legs softening even as the pain swam through her.
“Yes. Yes, that’s it, beautiful. Give yourself to me.”
“Marcus,” she rasped. Tremors ran through her head to toe. His hips melded with hers as he invaded her. When he stopped, fully rooted, thrills ran down her sides. Her chest rose and fell, nipples hardened to diamond points.
Marcus held himself over her, his arms taut by her face. His head was bowed, dark lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. His lips moved slightly.
If she didn’t know different, she’d guess he was praying. She felt like praying too. They were fully merged, his body towering over hers, protecting and claiming her.
This was what heaven felt like.
She’d never felt more connected to another human being.
The pain ebbed and he began to move. Slow rocks at first, nudging further into her inner sanctum, trespassing boldly. The strong ridge of his manhood rubbed a delicious part of her and Cora raised her hips, seeking more.
“Cora,” he rasped, and there was a world of possibility in her name. Her fingers passed over his face as if she were blind and wanted to memorize the cut of his features. In this room, this dark womb, she would forget all the hurt he’d done her.
“Marcus,” she turned her face up to his. He dragged his lips over her mouth, her cheek, the corner of her eye, giving her silent, bruising promises as his body reaped pleasure from hers. He made a prolonged, male sound, pushing deeper. His eyes were closed, his face intent as if he’d found something important, something beautiful he’d longed for, but never hoped to experience.
Yes, she prayed. Marcus, come back to me. He groaned again, the muscles in his back turning to steel under her stroking hands.
She felt it. For the first time, she understood how the entire act worked in harmony, every part of his body so perfectly made to bring pleasure to every part of hers.
He was made for her.
“Oh gods,” she cried out. “Oh…oh…oh! Marcus!”
Her chest thrust up and out and she clung to him, her fingers in his hair as the climax hit, bright and beautiful, and so, so right. Yes, yes. This. Him.
A thrust, two, three, and he rooted himself deep and stayed there. She held on and hoped she read the signs right.
After an eternity, he pulled out. She hissed, her insides protesting.
“You all right?” he searched her face.
“I’m good.” Her legs were noodles, her muscles overstretched. She’d be sore tomorrow.
“That was...thank you.” She shouldn’t thank her captor. But this was Marcus. He’d come back to her for a moment and for a moment, it was beautiful.
“Yes. You did well.” He parted her legs and studied the stains on the sheets. Watery blossoms, evidence of her virginity. She covered her cheeks. She shouldn’t be embarrassed, but it seemed more intimate. She’d bled for him. Her blood mingled with his seed.
But then something seemed to come over his face and he turned away from her. Long seconds ticked by. Finally, his back stiffened and then he looked over his shoulder.
“Not bad, for a virgin.” She flinched and met his mercury stare, horror rising in her as he said, “I know I’ll watch the recording of this many times. And I think your uncles will really appreciate Part II of the wedding video, especially when you screamed my name and came all over my cock.”
With a dark smirk, he nodded toward the corner camera.
The blood left her face. No. Not after all this. They couldn’t be back to where they’d started. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her when he was deep inside her. She’d seen it in his eyes…hadn’t she?
The pain twisting her guts felt like that first night all over again when he’d first betrayed her.
But she didn’t say a word or speak up for herself as, without another word, he left the room.
Fifteen
Well, that had not gone according to plan.
Not the sex and not his cruel comments afterward. It was a lie about the cameras recording. He always turned the cameras off whenever he was with her.
And gods knew he thought about taking her virginity. Thought about it all damn week and for the months before. But this last week, fuck, every time he teased and tasted her, every time his cock grew painful in his pants, all he could think about was finally taking her and making her his.
But he was training her and training meant discipline. Patience. Making her crave him and pleasing him above all else.
He just hadn’t expected— He never could have prepared himself for—
He hadn’t even worn a condom. And if he had it to do again, he would have done it the same way. She’d gotten the shot almost a month ago and gods, feeling her virgin pussy, nothing between them, with how she clenched like a vise around him—
He scrubbed a hand down his face and watched her on the monitor even though he was disgusted at himself for doing it. Every second he wasn’t in her presence, he found himself glued to this damn screen. She was supposed to be obsessed with him, not the other way around.
He was about to shove his laptop screen shut when he saw her back start to shake.
Fuck. She was crying.
She looked so tiny in the big bed.
He dragged a hand through his hair, remembering every moment of when she’d taken him into her body, so hot and tight—gods she’d gripped him like a vice—eyes wide, without guile—
Like an innocent. She was a virgin. He’d known she was, but knowing and experiencing were two different things.
And when her orgasm had hit, milking his climax out of him at the same time, she’d looked at him like he was a god himself, like she’d worship at his feet forever and give him her submission along with her whole self and her soul, too.
The problem was, he was terrified he might have been looking at her the same way.
So he’d shut it down and reminded them both of who they were.
And now she was crying.
Marcus wanted to hit something. She wasn’t playing by the rules. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. None of this was going according to plan.
His phone rang once, loudly in the otherwise silent room. Marcus snatched it out of his pocket, never more glad for the distraction.
“What?” Marcus barked.
“We got a situation,” Sharo’s voice rumbled.
“Don’t tell me I gotta come down.”
“You gotta come down.” Sharo confirmed.
He gave a sharp nod even though Sharo couldn’t see him. Maybe getting out of here was exactly what he needed. He needed to get his head together, that was for damn sure.
“Be there in twenty.”
Marcus hung up and stood. He went to his bedroom and dressed in quick, practiced movements.
He meant to leave right then and there. But, without fully intending to, his feet took him to Cora’s door.
Leave. You only did what had to be done. She’s the enemy.
He stood frozen for several more moments. And then he quietly opened the door.
Cora was laying down now and he walked to the bed. He didn’t know what he meant to say when he got close, but then he saw it didn’t matter. She’d cried herself to sleep.
She was beautiful in repose, but then she was beautiful no matter what she was doing. Sleep didn’t erase the furrow of distress on her brow. Was she dreaming of him?
His eyes squeezed shut. Sentimental idiot.
Still, he couldn’t leave without giving her something. She’d be sore when she woke. Even though it had been her first time, he hadn’t taken it easy on her. The least he could do was give her the means to take a bath in peace.
He ran a hand gently down her calf and when she didn’t wake, he undid the ankle cuff and freed her from the bed post.
“Sleep well, wife,” he murmured. She didn’t so much as twitch.
Without another word, he turned and flipped the lock he’d had installed outside her door as he left. Then he strode for the front door and soon he was in his Bentley, his driver speeding toward the Styx.
No, tonight had not gone according to plan.
But nothing with Cora ever had. She was never supposed to show up in his office that night, bedraggled and beautiful. She was never supposed to flash him that trusting, adoring smile afterwards, day after day after day.
He’d made a new plan, of course. Marrying Demi’s daughter had struck him as an even better means of revenge than the simple kidnap and ransom he’d initially intended.
It all served the same purpose: to draw the Titans out into the open and make them pay for their crimes. Cora’s father had been the one holding the knife, but his brothers had been there, too.
Marcus had waited a long time for his vengeance but he would have it now.
None of the remaining Titan brothers had children. Cora was the only heir. Demi would go to the brothers. She had no choice, no power on her own.
And if he could make her suffer in the meantime, imagining the horrors he’d visit upon her daughter? All the better.
But there was still no sign or word from any of them.
And today he’d crossed a line he didn’t know how to come back from.
Innocents ought to be spared.
Marcus lived his life by a code and that was its bedrock. He mired himself neck deep in shit doing what had to be done because at least when he was in charge, he could make sure that only the guilty paid.
But it was never meant to touch the innocent.
Like his sister.
Chiara was beautiful. Delicate and pale, her head in the clouds all the time, she’d never seemed to fully inhabit the same grimy reality as the rest of the world.
And that was as it ought to have been.
What should never have been was finding her bleeding out on a dirty mattress in a filthy crack house where the Titan brothers had taken and discarded her.
His parent’s death, he’d understood. His father had started as a lowly immigrant shopkeeper, and built an empire. Vito Ubeli had faced injustices and fought in the face of it, and built an army to protect the weak. That didn’t mean he wasn’t brutal, and one day found death at the hands of an enemy he’d crushed. And when he’d died, his son Marcus was meant to assume control.
But Marcus was only fifteen at the time and he’d waited, thinking someone more qualified would take the lead in his stead. In another year’s time, his sister was dead. He’d never forgotten the lesson: strike first and strike fast, and seize any power to be had.
He was a necessary evil to hold back the chaos.
He watched the city lights fly by as they drove. East of the city, the streets grew narrow together. Marcus had his driver stop at an alley way too small to fit a car into.
“Cover me,” Marcus said, after scanning every corner of the intersection.
“You sure?” The man in black also looked suspiciously down the alley.
A door opened in the side of one building and Sharo’s unmistakable silhouette stepped into the pool of light.
“Wait for me. Should be under an hour,” Marcus told his soldier, and got out of the car.
“Picked one of our men up tonight, late to a drop,” Sharo said. “Went looking for him and found him in a bar on the Westside.”
Sharo emphasized the name of the territory between New Olympus and their sister city, Metropolis. Like Marcus ran the Underworld of New Olympus, the Titans ran Metropolis. And the Westside was currently a no man’s land where Marcus still battled for the same control he enjoyed over the rest of New Olympus.
“Said someone stopped him and took his shipment, so he was hiding out, trying to figure out how to tell us.”
“You believe his story?”
As usual, Sharo’s face held no expression. Lesser men cracked after an hour staring into the mask of rich, midnight skin and fathomless eyes. Like staring into the fucking abyss, Roscoe, one of the capos, would say.
“His story doesn’t add up. And there’s been suspicious activity on his route before, which is why we had eyes on him. We think he handed over the goods to our old friend’s out West, but got them to cash him out and make it look like a hold up.”
“If it’s our old friends,” Marcus used the euphemism for the Titans, his blood heating, “then this driver isn’t just passing on goods. He’s feeding them information.”
The two men walked through the warehouse, passing by rows and racks of garments, until they reached stairs to the basement. The air reeked from the stench of the fabric dyes and detergents. The chemical smells did a good job of masking the scent of blood.
Sharo paused at the foot of the stairs. “Got the boys to soften him up a bit. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Alright,” Marcus said. “We play it like we did with that last switch—what was his name? The Frenchman.”
“Le Mouchard,” Sharo pronounced perfectly, and stood aside, letting Marcus lead the way through between the dye vats to the cleared space where they’d tied the snitch up.
A few men all in black stood around a wretched figure blindfolded and hanging from the ceiling so that his feet barely brushed the floor.
The Shades were Marcus’s soldiers, loyal enforcers who ran his massive empire. They were recruited young off the streets, trained in a central facility, and given every opportunity to rise through the ranks. You can tell a leader by the men who follow him, Marcus’s father had told him time and time again.
The Shades all nodded to acknowledge their leader and Marcus let himself almost grin, before slipping into character.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, and his voice rang out in the empty space. The snitch, a doughy man in a stained wife beater and khaki shorts that had seen better days, started shivering. Sweat ran down under his blindfold, into his sparse beard. Marcus knew the Shades had worked him over a little bit, but left nothing more than painful bruises. His blood had yet to flow.
Marcus directed his false anger around the circle of Shades. “I ask you to bring him in for questions and this is what you do?”
“Fuck, sorry, boss.”
“Cut him down. For fuck’s sake. Now.”
The men scrambled to bring a chair and loosen the ropes that held the man suspended from a few exposed ceiling pipes.
“Give him some water.”
Marcus sat in the chair that was provided for him and continued to study the traitor.
“Take that fucking thing off.” He nodded at the blindfold. “Gods, this isn’t an interrogation. This how you treat my employees?”
A Shade handed Marcus a bottle of water and the boss waited until the blindfold was cut away.
The man before him was breathing heavily, tr
embling with relief. As soon as the filthy scrap of cloth was gone, Marcus leaned forward, filling the snitch’s vision.
“Here.” Marcus handed over the water bottle, and rested his forearms on his knees, studying the snitch.
“T–t-thank you,” the traitor said. “I thought I was a dead man.”
“Marty, right?”
The man nodded.
“I’m Marcus Ubeli.”
“Yessir, I know you, Mr. Ubeli.” The man took a sloppy swig of water, holding the bottle with shaking hands.
Marcus smiled. “I remember you. You took that gun shipment up to Eyrie, when the suits were putting in checkpoints at the weigh in stations up and down 95.”
“Yeah, yeah, that was me.”
“You took back roads around all the points, and when a local cop stopped you at two am, you told him you were looking for a place that was open so you could take a dump.”
“Right, that’s it,” the man guffawed half-heartedly, his beady eyes darting around the room at the silent circle of Shades.
“That was good thinking.” Marcus raised a finger and shook it at Marty. “Real good.”
“Thank you, sir. Can I ask—”
“No muss, no fuss, no questions asked,” Marcus cut him off, and the man fell silent. Bingo, Marcus thought. “So what happened to my shipment?”
“Your shipment?”
“Yes, Marty, all the goods that go in the back of your truck belong to me. I’m ultimately responsible for them, so if there’s a break in the chain, I need to know about it.”
“Uh…I told them, sir, and they didn’t believe me. Someone took it.”
“Someone? Do you know who?”
“No, fuck, I’d tell you if I could,” the man’s voice strained with sincerity, and he never broke eye contact. A sure sign he was lying. “They wore masks.”
“Of course,” Marcus motioned towards his water bottle. “You need another of those?”
“What?” the man stared at it like it had sprouted from his hand, then took another swig. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”