4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

ELIO

Rage rushes and churns inside of me, pulsing white hot until it tastes like ash on my tongue. I barely register the disdain in Orion’s eyes when they land on me, I don’t even get a chance to savor and fucking wallow in it. He’s hustled out of the makeshift ring in one direction, blood dripping from the slice along his jaw, and his opponent, Timothy Riker, is roughly shoved in the other direction by another large, impatient employee.

As much as I want to follow Orion, to get another hit of the drug I’m so fucking addicted to, there’s something I need to take care of first. Timothy’s height makes it easy to follow him through the crowd, his head towering above all the others. I shove past the men who are pressing up close to the ring again, salivating for the next round of fighters to enter the ring. Most of them are too drunk or too stupid to recognize me on sight, but the few who do fall over themselves to get out of my way.

Timothy doesn’t bother to stop to lick his wounds. He grabs a handful of napkins off the bar as he passes it, not slowing his stride, and heads straight for the stairway that leads back to the alley. By the time he reaches the top of the steps, I’m only a couple of paces behind him, taking the last two stairs at once to close the gap between us.

I grab him by the back of the shirt before he even realizes I’m behind him. It’s damp with his sweat, twisting easily in my fist. Jamming my knuckles into his spine, I use the leverage and the element of surprise to swing him into the nearest wall. His reflexes are quick enough that he catches himself with his hands before his already bloodied face can connect with the rough brick of the building’s exterior.

“What the fuck?” he grunts, struggling against me.

I pin him to the wall with my elbow shoved roughly between his shoulder blades, and lean in close to his ear. The salty, metallic taste of blood and the stale smell of the bar cling to him.

“That’s exactly what I was going to ask.” The humorless laugh I let out sounds menacing even to me, and Timothy struggles harder against my hold. I jam my elbow harder into his back, gritting my teeth as I growl the next words, “What the fuck makes you think you can put goddamn weapons on your knuckles before a fight? What the fuck makes you think you can make Orion bleed like that without paying the price?”

“Are you insane?” His voice is pitched a few octaves higher with the realization that he’s not going to be able to throw me off. “It’s a no-rules fight. Anything goes.”

“The greedy maniacs who organize this shit might not have any rules.” I drop my voice lower, quieter, letting every ounce of menace I possess slip into it. “But the Morettis do.”

He yelps like a trapped animal and the sour smell of piss fills my nostrils.

“Jesus, I’m sorry. I didn’t know Orion was… protected or whatever. Fuck, please, I… I have a kid.” His babbled pleas turn him from a vicious fighter into a scared little boy in the blink of an eye.

I chew on the inside of my cheek for a minute, holding him silently in place while I decide what to do with him. The visual of the blood running down Orion’s face is still stoking the flames of rage inside of me. But underneath that, I’m a reasonable man. At least, I like to think I am. With another low growl in my throat, I yank Timothy away from the wall and spin him around to pin him again, so we’re face to face this time.

“Orion Barros is protected. Spread the word. The next person who tries to fight him dirty is going to end up with their head splattered against the nearest available surface. Got it?”

He grimaces, the silver fangs he has fitted over his canine teeth glinting in the moonlight as he nods rapidly.

“Good.” I let go of him and take a step back, but he doesn’t move, still plastered to the wall, not sure if a single twitch of his muscles will end with a bullet between his eyes. “Go,” I bark, jerking my head towards the mouth of the alley.

I don’t wait around for him to make his escape, smoothing my suit down and turning back towards the entrance. The bouncer is standing silently, his eyes dutifully fixed on the wall. Smart man. He pulls the door open again in a hurry, and I descend the stairs back into the dank bunker of a bar below.

The smell of blood and alcohol hangs heavily in the air. With Timothy dealt with, the only thing on my mind now is finding Orion. Since the alley is the only exit, I know he hasn’t left yet. I make my best guess and head towards the bathroom.

I blink in the harsh fluorescent light of the bathroom as I step inside. Sure enough, Orion is standing over the sink, looking at his reflection in the mirror that hangs on the wall over it, rust gathered around the edges. He’s holding a paper towel against his jaw, scowling before he even notices me standing behind him. His eyes flicker to mine and the furrow between his eyebrows deepens, his lips curling into a snarl.

“Nice fight.”

He narrows his eyes at me, but before he can respond, the stall door a few feet away swings open and a drunk man stumbles out. My patience is already hanging on by a fucking thread tonight, the tension that gathered in my shoulders when I saw the blood bloom across Orion’s face during the fight still lingering. I flick the button on my suit jacket open and reach for my holstered pistol in one quick motion.

“Get the fuck out.” My tone is cold as ice, and the drunk’s eyes go wide. He holds one hand up in surrender and books it for the bathroom door, doing up his belt with his other hand on his way out.

I tuck my gun away and turn my attention back to Orion, catching his eyes through the reflection in the mirror again. They’re harsh, dancing with bitter disdain that makes my heart race and my cock swell.

“That easy, huh?” he scoffs, dabbing his cut again before pulling the paper towel away and wadding it up in his hand. “You wave a gun around and people do whatever the fuck you want? Does that make you feel like a big man?” He spins around to face me, the harsh words ricocheting through me like a slap.

“I wasn’t going to shoot him,” I mutter, dropping my gaze and feeling like a child being scolded. Not that that stops my cock from stiffening, aching for more of Orion’s harsh words.

He makes another half-amused, largely dismissive sound, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink.

“What are you even doing here? What the fuck do you want? Are you here to make sure I pay up? Is that it?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a roll of bills. “It’s not like I’ve missed a payment yet, but sure, whatever. Fucking take it.” He whips the roll at me, and it bounces off of the center of my chest. I catch it on the rebound, wrapping my fingers around it and licking my lips.

“Not my department.” I toss the money back to him. He doesn’t make a move to grab it though, letting it hit the ground near his feet without so much as blinking at it, his gaze still fixed on me.

Something hot dances behind his eyes. Rage and adrenaline, the kind of violence I would drown myself in if he let me.

“What then?” he demands through clenched teeth, blood still flowing freely from the wound on his face, trickling down onto the collar of his shirt and streaking across his throat. “Every time I turn around, you’re there. You’re the goddamn shadow I can’t stop seeing in the corner of my eye everywhere I go. What do you want from me?”

He pushes off the sink and steps into my space, bringing his face close to mine the same way he did last night, every exhaled breath bathing my face. My insides buzz and vibrate, heat churning in my gut as my cock pulses so hard it makes my knees tremble. My breaths come out in embarrassing little pants.

“ You ,” I answer.

ORION

I’m sure I heard him wrong. Or maybe I just don’t understand the meaning of the single, whispered word, even if it seems like it should be obvious.

You .

My nostrils flare, my pulse still beating at a frantic pace, the thrill of the fight pumping in my veins, leaving me drunk with unspent violence and frustration. And now he’s here, fucking with me, taunting me. Maybe this is some kind of homophobic bullshit. He heard I was gay and made it his pet cause to mess with my head, to throw me off balance and take the little bit of control I manage to cling to in my life.

Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe he thinks that since I owe his family money, he’s entitled to whatever he wants from me. He thinks he can make me his powerless plaything and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Does he think he’s getting back at me for getting in his face last night?

A dark, humorless laugh rumbles in my throat and I take another step towards him, kicking the roll of bills out of the way in the process. Elio’s throat bobs with a heavy swallow, but he holds his ground, his dark eyes burning into mine, his lips parted with heavy breaths. Whichever one of those possibilities is true, whatever his reason for fucking with me is, it’s not going to go down the way he thinks it is. I can guaran-fucking-tee that much.

If he wants to play, I’ll fucking play. But it’s going to be on my terms, not his.

I dart a hand out and wrap it around his throat. There’s a voice in the back of my head making a valiant attempt to save me from myself, trying to remind me that Elio can pull out his gun and shoot me if he wants to. He can make my life miserable in a million other ways too. Ways I’m sure I couldn’t even fathom if I tried. But the feeling of his Adam’s apple moving under my palm, the quiet, almost inaudible whimper that falls from his lips, the way his eyes widen with a hint of fear and arousal, all tap into the primal things inside of me that I struggle to control on my best days.

I tighten my grip and take another step towards him, shoving him backward until his back hits the wall. We’re roughly the same height, but the way he shrinks under me makes it feel like I’m towering over him, overpowering him. His hands slide up my belly, bunching up my shirt as he drags his uncalloused fingers over my skin. Elio’s eyelashes flutter, his lids drooping, the hard, thick shape of his arousal jerking eagerly against my thigh.

“You’re here because you want me ?” My voice is rough as gravel, my fingers flexing around his throat again, not pressing quite hard enough to cut off his air, but enough to let him know I could if I wanted to.

“Yes.” The word comes out as a hungry, gut-deep moan, stroking my cock to life and heating my skin from head to toe.

I’m still not sure what he’s playing at. Calling my bluff? Or maybe this unhinged Mafia prince gets off on being roughed up a little. Maybe he’s gotten tired of convincing the quivering yes-men in his life to push him around in bed and pretend to hate him, and now he wants the real thing. He wants to know what it’s like to be used and discarded by someone who actually fucking hates him.

“You’re a spoiled, pathetic brat,” I spit, bringing my face so close to his that our noses touch, the smell of his expensive cologne filling my lungs and lingering on my tongue.

Elio’s eyes roll back and his whole body convulses, trapped between me and the wall. He lets loose another one of those rattling moans, a sound that’s pure sex.

“Get on your knees.” I release my grip on his throat and take a step back so quickly that he stumbles, his eyes flying open as he sways forward, then immediately hits his knees right there on the filthy bathroom floor.

I look down at him, taking in the once-in-a-lifetime sight of a man like Elio Moretti kneeling in a suit that would pay for at least a month of Jack’s care. His face is flushed and his tie is loose, askew. His normally perfect hair is rumpled, and his chest is heaving with rapid, shallow breaths. He tilts his face up, meeting my gaze again with a desperate, almost helpless expression. Pleading written all over him.

I could walk away right now, leave him here on his knees, off balance and confused. The power in that is satisfying all on its own.

I reach down and palm my cock through my shorts, feeling the heat of my throbbing erection through two layers of clothing. It’s been too damn long since I’ve seen any action that didn’t come from my own right hand. Even longer since I’ve had a man willing to crawl for me. And the lingering adrenaline from the fight is making every twitch of his muscles, every bitten-off whimper he tries to swallow feel more intense, more exciting, more fucking necessary .

The fact that it’s Elio fucking Moretti making my balls tighten and my heart thunder only pisses me off more. People like him think they own the rest of us. He struts around this city like it’s his own little kingdom, waving his gun around wherever he pleases. Robbing people, killing people, taking anything he likes without a second thought about the consequences because he’s never had any. What he needs is to learn a lesson. Forget teaching him manners. He needs to know that he doesn’t own me.

I hook my fingers in the elastic waistband of my shorts and the jockstrap underneath, shoving them both down around my thighs. My cock springs free, bobbing in front of Elio’s face, hard and thick, flushed with the blood that’s pumping through it at the same frantic pace as my heartbeat. I tangle my fingers savagely in his hair, taking pleasure in messing it up even more, destroying the pristine image of him as a man with a five-hundred-dollar haircut. He can live in my world for a few minutes, hair wild and tangled.

I grip the base of my cock and press the tip against his soft, parted lips. He darts his tongue out, catching it on the loose, sensitive skin of my foreskin. I hiss, and a fat droplet of clear, slick precum oozes from my slit. Elio laps that up too, gasping quietly like he just fucking tasted his favorite dessert. I clench my jaw and tighten my fingers around my cock, making the tip swell even more.

“You’ve got everyone in this city on their knees for you. You want to see what it feels like when the tables turn? Well, here you fucking go,” I snarl, slamming my hips forward to force my cock between his lips.

His tongue vibrates against my shaft with a muffled groan. His eyes roll back again, and he balls his hands into fists on his lap, his erection visibly twitching through his expensive slacks. His lips stretch around the weighty girth of my cock as I bury myself deep. His throat convulses around me when I hit the fleshy back of it, making his entire body heave with a gag.

I choke back the moan that rises from my chest, refusing to give him the satisfaction. I pull back and snap my hips forward again, letting my head loll, biting down on my bottom lip as his throat gives way around me this time, engulfing me in tight, wet heat from root to tip. The ridges along the roof of his mouth drag along my shaft with each thrust, the eager, hungry stroke of his tongue bathing the underside and lapping at my head each time I pull out before fucking deep into his throat again.

I don’t give him the chance to catch his breath, falling into a brutal, greedy pace. Grunts rumble in my throat as I tug his hair harder, bleeding out all the aggression left over from the fight with each ruthless thrust. Tears stream from his eyes, staining his cheeks as he stares up at me with something that looks so much like fucking reverence that it makes me want to scream.

“You. Can’t. Fucking. Own. Me,” I rasp with each thrust. “But right now, I fucking own you .”

He makes a strangled, muffled sound around my cock, his body trembling and his cock flexing again. I slam my cock deep into his throat again and a guttural sound vibrates around me, Elio’s body shuddering with an unmistakable orgasm. I roar, twisting his hair, tugging it so hard I nearly tear chunks of it right out of his scalp as my balls pull up tight and my cock starts to pulse, painting the back of his throat with rope after rope of my cum, choking him with it, drowning him in it.

Elio swallows every drop and laps at my slit for more when I start to pull out, sucking and whimpering like the pathetic cock slut he is. My head is spinning, my pulse thundering so loudly in my ears I can’t hear anything else. His chest is rising and falling with the breaths he gulps down. I take him in again, his hair a disaster, his cheeks stained with tears, his pants wet with the orgasm that came from being hate fucked in the mouth on the floor of a public bathroom.

A hot, satisfied feeling courses through me.

I tuck my spent cock away and pull my shorts back into place before I stoop to pick up the roll of bills I threw at him earlier and stuff it into my pocket. Elio still hasn’t gotten up. He hasn’t said a word. The silence becomes a deafening white noise for another minute before I turn around and stride back over to the sink where he found me when he first came in.