“Queen Sold-Her-Soul-to-the-Devil!” I joke, and he laughs.
“It’s all a matter of perception with Jaid. She is reserved, but also appreciates when people acknowledge her presence.”
“Don’t let her fool you,” I caution. “She won’t be a silent queen.”
“No, I’ll be out the door the day Cristos passes.”
“Why?”
He rubs his scruff. “Let’s just say there is some bad blood between us.”
“Because of Sal?”
“Yes,” he sneers. “Sal and I have a relationship that Jaid doesn’t approve of it. She never has. Because back in the day, when he didn’t have a pot to piss in, I had the good candy and loved that boy like the family he is.”
“Drugs.”
With a shrug of one shoulder, he blinks. “She blames me for his coke problem.”
“Is it your fault?”
“No, that honor belongs solely to Cristos.”
All the more reason to eliminate him.
“Does she blame you for his sexuality?”
“No,” he says. “That honor belongs to Deacon Cruz and others. I won’t deny the things we’ve done or what I’ve done for him. I had a night with Nicky a long time ago.”
“… Nico?”
“Yeah, little tidbit no one knows,” he says, crossing his legs. “First time I ever swallowed spunk while praying for my life.”
“What else did you do with my husband, Jonathan?”
“Made a lot of money letting Daddy Cristos watch,” he cackles. “Cristos would have done anything for Sal, and in return, Sal was his pet.”
“Was this before Deacon?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Kaci was still alive, but he didn’t know her. Our rancid romps started the first night he walked into Juliet.”
“Why, rancid?”
“You take a guy as beautiful as Sal with a guy like me, and magic could’ve…should’ve…would’ve happened.”
Feeling the pain in his words, I close my eyes. “But it didn’t happen because of Cristos. You loved Sal.”
“He loved me,” he says, turning his moment of sadness into a smile. “In fact, I know he still does or he wouldn’t have trusted you with me.”
The Master
A subtle chill fills the basement dungeon as darkness enshrouds our souls. My bare feet step around the bench, and my eyes scan the length antique mirror bar I purchased years ago from the closing watering hole next to Mario’s Deli.
Old Poppa saw his reflection in that same glass.
I see me.
Black jeans. Black belt. Shirtless. Inked. Branded. Scarred. Gold necklace. Many bands of various textures—rubber, cloth, and leather—cinch around my wrists, reminding me to be reverent. I am never without the bands, tethering me to the creed of Dominance and submission. The cuffs symbolize my religion and are as important as my other tokens of faith—my wedding bands to Iris and Deacon, my crab ring, and my crucifix.
I covet mastery.
Perfection in everything I handle.
I don’t want to be in his image if I cannot be the absolute best. That is a bitter pill and the source of my downward spiral. How do I, a street punk from the North End, live up to the Luca Raniero legacy? Cesario failed. In the motherland, Pietro Veramonte was as impressive as Luca. His son, my father, failed.
Why do I deserve the crown, when statistically, I will fail?
I hate math—mostly because it’s a waste of my time—but I am a numbers-crunching guy. I like challenging problems. Unsolvable problems with out of the box solutions.
Figure that one out.
My gaze drifts to the man holding the paddle across from me. He’s steeped in the same history, and we speak the same language where wine belongs on the table during every meal. We have a deeper understanding.
I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in him.
And if he didn’t believe in me, he wouldn’t be here.
She poses like a textbook example of a bottom with the bright red ball gag clenched in her teeth and the black silk blindfold around her eyes.
Her head is high. Her back is straight. Her breasts are out. Spiraling chains attach to her peaked nipples and sparkle in the glow of candle flames.
He’s a lucky son of a bitch.
I pray they remember this.
Pulling the darkness away from her eyes, I offer a smile and release the gag. She doesn’t need to be frightened. “How is your bottom side?”
“Good, thank you.”
I lower my hands to her hips, scooting her back along the bench before spreading her legs off the sides. I straddle onto the bench facing her. Her feet bump into my calves. And I smell the wetness emanating from her nether region. It is hypnotic. Blissful. “I need to ask you a question.”
“Okay,” she mutters.
“And you may not want to answer, Hannah,” I whisper. “But I need you to.”
“I will do my best.”
That’s my girl.
I would’ve married a Cruz and made her a Raniero without even blinking. I thought about asking at the Shack when Iris was off with Cruz. I am insanely—quietly—in love with Skeeter. Make no mistake. I am doing this for her, but there is a benefit for me—I inhale her like a good cut.
And he will die for what he did.
Bury him. Forget him. He is dead.
“Did he say who they were?”
“No.”
“They,” I repeat. “Or, them.”
Her lip trembles, “No. Should I know who they are?”
“No, sweetheart,” I say, pulling her close and kissing her forehead. “What happened was not your fault, and I will never let him hurt you again.”
“Does my brother know?”
“The convict is still breathing,” I gently report.
“… Deacon’s going to kill him?”
“Someone will.”
“Can I see him before that happens?”
Have I mentioned how much I love girls with enormous fucking lady balls?
“I will do my best,” I tenderly say. “I can’t make any promises.”
“When can I go home?” She asks with lips and eyes reminding me of Deacon.
She’s so damned beautiful.
I could have a baby with Hannah, and it would look like Deacon and me. I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling—too high on the romance of the idea, too far in the darkened forest, falling too fast to a scary place and landing on bones of skeletons we hide, where he and I…where he and I…are one.
“Are you ready to trust Mass?”
“I am ready for this hurt to be over,” she says, sniffling. “Are we done?”
My fingers brush over her hair. “We don’t have to be. We can stay here as long as you want. And we can do whatever you want.”
“Anything?”
I blink up to Mass, and he nods. “Yes, anything.”
“I want to be so enraptured that what happened is a million miles from where my heart is.”
“How do you want to do that?” I ask, defining the terms of our agreement for the eve as her hand moves to my thigh. “I will do anything to make this right.”
“I want you to baptize my holes. Make me pure again. Make me not see his face every time I close my damn eyes. Make me not hear his groans. Make his ejaculation not be the last one in me. And don’t fucking stop until I am so exhausted that I can’t stand up straight.”
With my elbow on my knee, I rub my scruff and glance up to Hannah. My eyes lock between hers and his. Mass closes his eyes and nods as I stand and unzip my jeans.
“You want to suck my dick, baby girl?”
“Yes, Master…yes, I do.”
73
A Riveting Chess Match
The Master
Her blue eyes dance to mine and lower to my erection. She lightly runs her finger along the length. “I wanted you for so long.”
“I know.”
“You belong to another,” she whispers.
/> “Not tonight, I don’t,” I mutter. “Tonight, for one night, I am all yours.”
“Will you make it not hurt?” Tears stream from her eyes as rage fills my veins. I want to call for a plane, march into the jail, and put a bullet in his heart. “Will one illicit night make the fixated leer of a sociopath dissipate?”
The back of my hand caresses along her jaw as Mass says, “You don’t need me here.” He kisses her lips. “In another time…in another place…you will be mine.”
Fuck.
He walks away as her lips part, and we hear the door shut. “Did my ex-would-be-once-again boyfriend just walk out on me?”
“Ya,” I mumble, biting my lip. “He did.”
“You can go too,” she mumbles, giving up and crying harder. “I’ll figure it all out.”
“He may not be capable, but I am.”
“Sal,” she whispers, reaching for my hand as I slip out of her grasp and pace towards the door to throw the locks. Walking back to the bench, I smooth my hand over my belly and under the jeans, pulling the denim down and letting them fall. I kick the fabric away. Her tongue glosses over her lip as she breathes, “Oh, God…”
“If he can’t handle your demons, he doesn’t deserve you.”
In her brilliance, she considers my remark before responding, “Do you wrangle Iris’ monsters?”
“I do.”
“She already doesn’t like me.” Her thumb and finger encircle my shaft, deliberately stroking, laboriously provoking. She tightens them like a cockring at the base, and a moan rumbles from my gut. “She’s going to hate me for this.”
“My wife,” I reluctantly growl, leaning into her limbs. My eyes close with flashes of Iris in the spring. She was begging me. Pleading me. Wanting so much more than I thought I could ever give. I drew the boundaries up, barricading myself in, and posted the no trespassing signs. It was never her, but me. “Iris is out making waves of her own. Let my flames burn bright.”
“… She’s cheating?”
“We accept the things about one another that we know will never change,” I reply, wishing this boner-killing conversation would cease. “She is who she is; I am who I am. We’re good together; we’re good apart. True love doesn’t build walls; it tears them down, so freedom can be found.”
“You have an open relationship…”
“Our merger is boundless love. The legal marriage was for her grace with The Commission. She knows I will never leave her, and I know the same is true for her. Add in my lover boy, my mistress, and my Master...”
“A mistress as in a lover or a Mistress as in a Dominatrix?”
“Hannah,” I bluntly state. With no room to be unclear, I lightly grasp her arm, and she glances at my dick. “I don’t want to talk about this. I am crazy about you, and that is why you are still my assistant. But I’ve had a hard-on for a long fucking time for you, and I want to put my cock inside of you.”
Soft evolves into emotional.
Brittle evolves into wisened.
Open…practiced…real…aware…hardened.
And all fucking me.
Her fingers move slowly up my dick, and I close my eyes. “I don’t want to be your secretary. I want to be your submissive.”
“Put my dick in your mouth,” I demand with a dull tone. “Suck me. Worship my savage. I want to swim in your pussy.”
I’ve had her casual I-need-to-get-off-let-me-use-your-orifice blow jobs for months, but she’s never been this intense. We’ve never been this intense. Never this compulsive. I have to fuck this girl. I must fuck this girl.
My fingers release the clip from her hair and twist into the long dirty blonde locks. I pull her hair and push her back onto me.
I take. I claim. I conquer.
I force.
To erase someone else.
I didn’t plan on how good it would feel on my end, how my synapses would radiate with zealous power, and how rich the hit of adrenaline would be.
I could’ve known…should’ve known…would’ve known that night in March in this house with Iris, but I was too inebriated. My body was too entangled on sledding the slopes of cocaine to acknowledge how magnificent being untouchable was.
… How good sovereignty was.
… How good seizing total control was.
I’m so fucking high on Hannah, and maybe it is an age thing. We’re almost a decade apart, her twenty to my twenty-nine. Perhaps my mid-life crisis arrived early.
Gagging on my dick, she slobbers, frothing with dewy spindles pirouetting to the bench as tearful streams leak from the corners of her eyes, etching charcoal lines.
So pretty when submissives crumble in my hands— intoxicating me—as they flood these drought-stricken lands.
I hoist her onto my shoulder. She doesn’t squeal, trusting me, but giggles until I plop her ass on the bar. I fucked my former fiancée here, and I have no problem consecrating the wood with Hannah’s holy water.
Her hands rest on my shoulders as her legs spread wide. “You’re incredible,” she whispers as I avoid the lips I long to kiss. I can’t. She’ll be too sweet, too soft, too much of an overdose I desperately crave. “And I’m fucking empty.”
“Let me help you.”
I haven’t had this in years; I haven’t let go like this in years.
I’ve been lost, caught up in a world I didn’t want, but with every breath from her lips to my skin, she finds me.
She brings me home.
I reflect on the last minutes before I buried the code—in a prison office with another. Clanking in rusted armor, ravaged by swarms in our bloodsport, I crawled back to my famiglia, tethered to their vigilante tactics, relinquishing my soul to the devil on my knees, and I raised the white flag.
Get me out of prison, Daddy. Get me out of here because my body can’t stand against the storm. The walls are shaking. The pillars are crumbling. The very infrastructure in my architecture is failing. And if I fall, if I tumble to the agitating ocean, my flames will extinguish.
Help me, Daddy. Help my fire breathe. Save one ember.
Save me, motherfucker.
And he did.
I consented to the change. I brought it on. They stripped the shell, peeling the melted fur-liner away from the charred skin, and tossed a tailored suit on the body before I automatedly did the tasks they set before me. But it wasn’t me. It never was.
I had infections festering with gross bleeding from ignored wounds. No amount of bandages could stop the hemorrhage.
I died in Boston.
I remember the seconds before my resurrection when she yearned for my fires to reignite her depleted spirit. To be the man I am—not the one they want me to be. I am not a torch to aim, but a wild, winged inferno brought back from the ash.
Uncontrollable. Reckless. Brave.
And that is what they fear the most.
“I need you.”
Her three words inspire the spit to my palm, and I rub the dewy essence over the shaft. It isn’t warranted, but I seek to claim what is mine. My dick. Mine. Not theirs.
Wetlands do not scare me; my blaze burns eternal.
I don’t bother to knock, blotting the mushroom in the nectar, with a warning of my impending arrival. I tap the source, fully immersing in her slickness, unafraid of what becomes of us as we induce a spill.
Unable to withstand the lure, my lips collide to hers, mingling our tongues like a prayer with a holy verse that no one knows. We’re secrets in salvation, worshipping the only soldier—an invisible magic—balanced between a Dom and sub.
My hands tightly grip her ass, thrusting my cock deeper inside of her injured hull. I was battered and beaten and saved by a virtuous seeker, and that is why I bestow her this gift.
It is my duty.
It is my sworn oath.
I am held in every breath by these beliefs, my convictions, and the man I am—it is all that I have—the reputation of my name and the connections I spark to take to the grave.
I cannot
possess the tools of the trade and use them irresponsibly. I cannot save everyone, but by fucking God, I can save Hannah Cruz. I can make her better because I have been where she is—on the fucking ground, getting my spirit decimated by an unwelcome guest ransacking the tomb of my ass. I can bring her back and make her feel again. I purify her in my fires, so she knows this won’t last forever, and sometimes all we have is hope.
I cauterize wounds as a Dominant, and if it makes me vile or vain, then I’ll suffer the verdict and welcome the punishment.
This one is worth it.
And I am reborn in Boston.
His Submissive
He stills inside of me and takes my hand. His knuckles slide over the only ring on my fingers as the memory floods my mind.
“I don’t want to get out of this.”
“Fuck, Sal…”
“And I will try because I’m bad,” he admitted, holding my hand. “Sometimes, fate needs to test our resilience…but sometimes you fucking know when you meet someone special. You have brought so much light into my darkness.”
“Because of love. You’re my best friend.”
“And you’re mine.” He pulled the ring from his pocket. “I want to do this. Whatever this is.”
“That’s a—hhh ring.”
“This was one of my Nonna’s rings, and I want you to have it. Not a promise ring. Not a commitment ring. Not an engagement ring. A real ring…from three generations back. A best friend ring. A thank you for putting up with my bullshit ring.”
“An heirloom,” I whispered as my eyes lit up. “Holy fuck… You’re serious…”
“I’m a fucking mess, Skeet,” he confided with no fear. “I can’t tell you where I’m going to be from one day to the next. And I can’t tell you I won’t do things I won’t regret. But I am not going to lie to you.”
“Please, don’t take it away,” I beg. “Anything but that.”
The full swell of his lips briefly smirk. “I would never, Cruz.” I smile as he reaches behind his neck and undoes the clasp of the chain. “You aren’t getting away from me. And I can’t deny what I want any longer.”
A Dark Place (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 5) Page 58