Omertà Anthology - A Very Merry Mafioso Christmas

by V. Domino

  And even though it’s stupid, and dangerous, and he’s convinced himself he doesn’t want anything to do with me, I want to be the one who sees him break. Want it to be me he takes his rage out on.

  “Make me.”

  Eyes bugging out, his chin whips in my direction. “What?”

  I shrug, pulling the door shut and shifting so my dress hikes up my thighs as I spread them slightly. His throat bobs over a swallow, his gaze locked on my fingers as I glide them up my legs, slipping just below my hemline. His breathing grows shallow as I continue the ascent, letting out a soft whimper when I reach the lace of my panties.

  “Stop,” he grunts, still watching me. Waiting to see what I’ll do next.

  Smirking, I slip my index finger beneath the elastic of my underwear, swiping lazily at my seam, dipping between the soft folds of my sex. Kal’s nostrils flare, his fists curling so tight around the steering wheel that it wheezes under the pressure, and I can’t stop the moan that falls from my lips as I swirl the pad of my finger around my clit.

  It throbs, desperate to have him see me come undone, for him to know that every time I’ve ever touched myself, it’s been to the image of him.

  Moving my fingers faster, my breaths come in rapid spurts, my mouth hanging open as my eyes stay on his. Anguish colors the harsh planes of his face, sending shivers of delight and misery echoing through my body in white hot waves.

  Delight because it’s obvious he wants me, even if he won’t admit it out loud.

  Misery because he denies me.

  But if that’s how my handsome Angel of Death wants to play, I’m not above manipulating the confession from him.

  Even if I have to ride my own hand to Kingdom Come.

  “Do you remember what I asked you for on my eighteenth birthday?”

  To kiss me. Fuck me.

  He’d refused.

  Kal freezes. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Really?” Pulling my hand out from under my skirt, I lave over my finger with my tongue, slurping up the arousal collected on the tip. His jaw locks. My pussy weeps in protest, but I ignore it, lifting my knee and hoisting myself over the center console.

  “Jesus Christ, Elena, what the hell are you doing?”

  I launch myself into his lap before he has a chance to push me away, planting my knees on either side of his hips. My dress bunches up just beneath the curve of my ass, but as I settle onto the tops of his thighs and grind into his pelvis, I don’t even care.

  Gripping my hips, he starts to shove me off of him, but I slide my hands behind his neck and lock them there, my hold iron clad. Papà put Ari, Stella, and me in self-defense classes at a young age, and one of the first things they taught was how to get too close for a perpetrator to be able to attack.

  Kal digs his fingers into me, and I writhe on top of him, the pain causing euphoria to build in my lower belly. “Goddamnit, little one, you’re asking for trouble.”

  Ignoring the jab, I move my hips faster, leaning slightly to create friction on my clit. My panties are soaked, cold where they’re pressed against his pants, but I’m too far sucked into a web of pleasure to give a shit.

  “Give in, Kallum. Take from me before Mateo does.”

  He groans, the sound ricocheting off the windows, using his hold on me to increase my speed and pressure. I feel him harden beneath me, my brain locking in on the sensation of his thick cock between my pussy lips.

  “I’m not like the boys from your little private schools. I’ll ruin you and not think twice about it.”

  Pressure coils tight inside my stomach, electricity zinging through my veins. “So ruin me.”

  It takes a moment; he sweeps his gaze around, inspecting the street for onlookers, but the windows have fogged up so much at this point that it’s impossible to see out or in without some effort. Goose bumps pop up on my skin the second some kind of switch flips in him, desperation bleeding from his movements.

  Tearing the neckline of my dress, Kal’s mouth latches on to the space where my throat meets my shoulder, sucking so hard and fast that I cry out from the intensity. His hands snake up my thighs, heavy and deliberate, and I’m still riding his pants-clad cock when his fingers find my dripping core.

  “Merry fucking Christmas to me,” he growls against me, biting the space he’s just kissed until I’m sure he breaks the skin. My eyes roll back, my body bucking as he seems to drink from me, a vampire feasting on its willing victim. Long fingers probe through my folds, the lewd sounds of my arousal making my cheeks heat, and then he pulls away to reach into the glove compartment. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  I obey, disengaging from his neck while he drags a black satin ribbon out and shuts the door. There’s a red stain on the corner of his mouth, and for a moment he looks positively unhinged. Fear surges through me, mixed with a strange sense of excitement, and I lean forward to lick the blood from his lips.

  It’s metallic and sweet, my essence mixed with cinnamon lip balm, and my pussy seems to ignite at the taste.

  But he doesn’t give me what I really want.

  I’m three seconds from shooting my load inside my slacks and not finishing what I started here when Elena starts lapping at my mouth, sucking her own blood from my flesh like a goddamn siren in heat. My dick is enraged, gorged beyond belief as she dry fucks me, the scent of her intoxicating little cunt making my vision blur.

  I have to end this before I do something I regret. Something I can’t fucking take back.

  Pulling the ribbon through my fingers, I take her wrists in my hands and knot the fabric around her joints, pinning them together in a way that won’t cause nerve damage. Her chest rises and falls against mine, the lace of her bra where I tore the outfit scraping against my suit jacket with each breath.

  Ensuring the knot is fastened, I lean forward, dragging my tongue along the bloody bite mark by her neck and relishing in how she shudders into me and not away. As if she too has sick, violent desires.

  Of course, I already know she does. The bruises and cuts on her glorious tan skin hint at it, and the way she rode my lap while I tore into her proves it.

  Still, that doesn’t change the fact. Doesn’t change the reality that I cannot have her, and certainly not like this.

  Trailing my lips up to her ear, nipping the lobe so hard she squeals, I flick my tongue against her tragus. “Get the fuck off me.”

  I haul her up and dump her into the seat next to me before she has a chance to protest, reveling in the gasp that tears from her chest. She maneuvers around, hands still bound behind her back, and glares at me. “You’re an asshole.”

  Shrugging, I shift the car into drive and reach past her to once again open her door. “I tried to warn you.”

  Sputtering, she shakes her head. “Aren’t you gonna untie me?”

  “You’re a tough girl, remember?” I wink, keeping my foot on the brake pedal and moving to shove her out onto the sidewalk. She spills like a drunkard outside her home, drawing attention from people as they pass by to look at the Christmas decorations. “Figure it out yourself.”

  A knock on my front door draws me from my security feed; very few people are aware that I own a house on Linden Street, the rest content to believe that a man dubbed Doctor Death by the rumor mill in every town he’s ever lived isn’t a resident within their city limits.

  On the monitor, Elena assists her two younger sisters with decorating the large flocked Christmas tree in their foyer, while Rafael’s mother sits on the couch drinking a bottle of Chardonnay.

  Grieving, I suppose, though I’ve never quite understood the concept. What’s the point in crying over a man who chose to live the life of a criminal? How can you delude yourself into believing there’s any other possible outcome for a made man?

  Elena alternates between feeding lights around the tree to the middle child, Ariana, and nibbling on peanut butter fudge from a tray in the kitchen. She’s barefoot on their hardwood floors, wearing skinny jeans and a T-shir
t of some obscure band from long before she was even born, constantly checking over her shoulder as if she expects trouble to appear out of thin air.

  Her naivety makes me chuckle.

  Like she’d ever know I was there in the first place.

  I can still smell her on my fingers, even though I’ve washed my hands until they bled. Can still feel her grinding on my cock, her wetness coating me, seeping into my flesh as she chased her release.

  It should’ve been enough to sate my hunger for her, and yet it feels as though it’s done nothing but fan the flames.

  Pushing away from my desk, I get to my feet and slip from the office as the knocking grows incessant, hoping carolers haven’t decided to stop by again this year. Keying in the code for the room, ensuring no one could accidentally see my workspace, I move down the hall, taking the stairs two at a time, and throw open the front door.

  Elena’s mother stands on my doorstep, a red parka buttoned up to her delicate chin. Dark eyes peer into mine as she presses her pink lips together, familiarity floating in the depths of her irises that I refuse to read into.

  Something sharp flares in my chest, an abscess that’s gone untreated for far too long and is now infected, more sinister and malignant than ever before.

  Reaching for the doorframe, I grip it in my palm and keep myself from swaying beneath her penetrating perusal. “Carmen. To what do I owe this immense displeasure?”

  Her foot taps on the concrete, a look of annoyance flickering over her face. “It’s rude not to invite people in when it’s snowing.”

  Glancing over her shoulder as flurries drift from the gray sky, I slide my gaze back to her and do my best to ignore the irritation spiking in my gut. Things were just going too well for me. “It’s rude to show up to people’s homes uninvited.”

  “Ah, but that never stopped you, did it?”

  A tic forms in my jaw, thrumming through the muscle there and pulling it tight. Stepping out on the porch, I yank the front door closed and pounce on her, wrapping my hand around the slender slope of her neck and pressing her into one of the porch columns. I don’t press hard enough to rob her of air or leave a mark, my fingers placed just so she’s aware of who she’s dealing with.

  I’m not anything like the boy she once claimed to love.

  Something that looks a lot like disappointment flashes over her face as her skull connects with the pillar. “It’s nice to see some things never change, Kal.”

  “You’ve got three seconds to explain what you’re doing here, before I take you down to my basement and send you home so disfigured, even the man who’s been buried in your dried up pussy the last twenty years won’t recognize you.”

  “Mature.” She rolls her eyes, then narrows them when I don’t move. “I might be more willing to confess if you took your hands off me.”

  “You’re a part of my world, doll. Don’t pretend to be ignorant of why I am the way I am.”

  Still, I release her, if only because it burns my palms to have my hands on her skin so soon after caressing the smooth curves of her daughter. My obsession, my muse. My Persephone. The one woman I’d kill to have rule at my side.

  And yet, the woman in front of me is the main reason I know I can never have her.

  Normally, I welcome silence.

  Crave it, even.

  After a decade of either relishing or squirming in the agony of others, the deafening quiet became the only solace available. The only place I could go where not even my darkest sins could try to kill me.

  Tonight, the silence only furthers my own personal torture, twisting the white-hot metaphorical knife of betrayal and admonition in my gut until it feels like I might pass out from the pain. My fingers grasp at my cotton bedsheets as I thrash from one side to the other, replaying the words of my former lover in my mind like a broken record.

  How could Carmen ever think that showing up and begging me to leave her daughter alone would do the trick? That it wouldn’t create an even greater impossibility between us, make me salivate for the young, untouched flesh even more?

  ‘Please, Kal. If you care about her, or me, at all. You’ll leave her alone. Each time you even so much as look at her, it puts her in danger. You know what The Elders would do if they thought she’d been impure before her wedding night, and that’s not even including what Rafe would do.’

  The thing is, though, I don’t.

  Care, I mean. At least about anything other than hurting Carmen and defiling Elena Ricci. Claiming her for myself and ruining her soul beyond repair. Something tells me she’d enjoy the fucking ride, too.

  And as much as I want to resist the twenty-year-old goddess, as much as I don’t want sinful thoughts of her delicious ass running rampant through my mind, I can’t stop myself. Can’t wrench out of the depraved fantasies playing on repeat behind my eyelids, amplified by the silence cloaking my bedroom.

  Throwing off my comforter, I yank on a pair of discarded black slacks and head for my office, tossing the deli owner passed out in the corner a disgusted look. For a moment, I consider resuming my work on him—lustful depravity aside, my main focus is supposed to be the job Rafe brought me to town for: figuring out who leaked word of the Riccis’ business being used as a front for a sports betting ring. I don’t know that Tony Pesognelli has the exact answers, but I’m willing to bet a greaseball like him isn’t innocent.

  Still, even as I prod his knee with a branding iron, waking the balding man from his fitful slumber, my heart isn’t in it. I sigh as he sobs into his ball gag, something I had leftover from the last time I entertained a lady years ago, and stalk to the other side of the room to flop behind my desk.

  Propping my feet up on the wooden surface, I exhale and pull a manila envelope into my lap, opening one side and studying the pictures in it. My computer monitor comes to life, indicating movement on the security feed, but I don’t look immediately.

  Instead, I peer into the deep, warm brown gaze that haunted my memory long before Elena ever did. Black hair twisted into an elegant braid that hangs off one pale, freckled shoulder, a smile that beams for another as she stares off beyond the camera.

  There’s a softness here I don’t see often; she’s absent of the sharpness I feel in my veins and the tar in my heart. Everything that makes me me, and evil by default.

  A monster.

  Part of me wonders which girl I’ll destroy first.

  Carmen’s words echo through me as I shut the folder and tap my keyboard, bringing the camera feed up with the push of one button. Elena stands in front of the floor-length mirror in her en suite bathroom with her sister Ariana checking her makeup. Preparing for the Christmas-slash-birthday shindig the Riccis throw every year.

  I normally make it a point not to attend. Crowds and I don’t exactly mesh.

  But as I zoom in, my gaze roving over my Persephone’s curves, exaggerated in the skin-tight, blush-colored gown she has on, I notice the slightest hint of a fresh bruise on her right shoulder blade.

  The average onlooker might not see the hand-shaped shadow, might not see the wince as she turns to apply mascara to her sister’s eyes, but I do. And as I watch her, my obsession expands, a balloon stretching to accommodate as much air as it can before it pops.

  My girl likes to fight—that’s a common fact around Boston. But there’s something about this particular mark that makes my insides shrivel. It looks too familiar to be random.

  And as I stalk back to my bedroom, pull on a dress shirt and my trench coat, I know exactly how to quell the typhoon of noise wreaking havoc on my mind.

  “Are you okay?” Ari’s face twists, contorting into a mask of concern. She tucks light brown hair behind her ears, rubbing her thumbs over each lobe twice, before her hands drop to her sides. It’s a calming gesture our nonnina taught us when we were kids, insisting the ears are the gateway to healing the rest of our bodies.

  She’d say the things we allowed ourselves to hear had the potential to poison our minds, and that once the m
ind was poisoned, it was a slippery slope before the rest of our bodies wilted as well.

  Evidently, she didn’t know there were plenty of other ways to poison your mind. Like allowing lust to cloud your judgment and dry humping a man almost twice your age. A man not only employed by my father and feared by everyone, but who’s also made it clear he wants very little to do with me.

  My hand goes to the hickey he left on my neck yesterday, the flesh tender as I slather foundation over it. The makeup barely hides the purple constellation, and his teeth indentation feels permanent. It makes my core throb, little sparks of desire igniting low in my abdomen, but I ignore it as a wave of nausea nearly knocks me into the sink.

  I’ve already covered as much of my black eye as I could with several layers of a thick concealer, after sitting with a bag of frozen peas on it half the night. Ari hasn’t mentioned anything about it, which tells me I’ve done a decent job of erasing the evidence of Mateo’s temper.

  He’d been angry that I left yesterday, and frankly, it was stupid of me not to think there’d be consequences. Mateo’s been proving our whole lives that he’ll stop at nothing to have me, and that he’ll obliterate anyone who tries to stand in his way. And while I know I don’t deserve the treatment, don’t deserve him putting his hands on me, there’s very little I can do.

  Papà’s on edge all the time, and he needs this wedding to work to try to bridge the gap between all of Boston and Ricci Inc.’s reputation. Unfortunately, in this world we live in, our loyalty lies in our blood bonds, and I refuse to be responsible for my father’s downfall or be killed in the face of my defiance.

  Besides, it’s not like Mateo left our brunch date without a limp. A black eye in exchange for making the asshole impotent is about as fair as it can get, I think.

  “E?” Ari frowns, poking my stomach with one manicured finger. “Hello? Are you even listening to me?”