I’ve just emerged from my office and am crossing the main floor of the house when I hear the clatter of high heels on the stairs. I reach the front door and turn just in time to get punched in the face.
That’s what it feels like. That’s what my Songbird looks like, coming down the stairs. So beautiful she’s a blow to the fucking head.
I barely notice my cousin beside her as Deirdre descends the stairs. Her steps are quick but wobbly, and she’s looking down like she’s afraid she’s going to fall and snap her neck. Which, considering the shoes she’s wearing, is probably a valid concern. My gaze slides from her silver shoes, up the tantalizing line of her leg appearing at the slit in her dress, to her hips, her sweet little waist and tits. That dress is a goddamn dream on her, encasing her body in silk so dark blue it makes her eyes look like midnight instead of their usual midday sky.
Those deep blue eyes meet mine, and Deirdre freezes on the stairs. Valentina just keeps on going, practically sprinting even though her heels are even higher than Deirdre’s.
Deirdre and I stare at each other for so long I wonder if she’s planning to stay on that step all night.
“Need me to carry you again?” I ask.
She inhales sharply, her lush mouth tightening.
“No, thank you,” she says, her tone clipped. “I don’t need another dress ruined by your blood.”
Valentina tenses beside me, no doubt fearing my anger. But I surprise them both by letting out a chuckle.
“I’m all stitched up, remember, Songbird? Good as new.”
Not exactly true. My shoulder’s going to be a pain in my ass for a while. But Morelli checked my stitches today and put new bandages on earlier, at least, so I won’t be bleeding all over her. I stare at her cleavage, her collarbones, remembering what my blood looked like smeared there, and the crotch of my pants feels suddenly tighter.
Deirdre starts walking again, descending the last few steps. My gaze is stuck on her chest, and I frown, feeling like something’s missing before I realize what it is.
“Where’s her jewellery?” I ask my cousin.
Valentina smacks the palm of her hand to her forehead.
“Ah, shit. It’s upstairs with the shoes.”
“Go get it,” I tell her, keeping my eyes on Deirdre’s bare neck.
“But we’re late! Mamma’s already there and pissed about it. I’ve got about a dozen texts from her and-”
I tear my gaze from Deirdre’s skin long enough to give Valentina a look that sends her running for the stairs.
“I’ll be right back!” she calls. She’s like a tiny fucking track athlete even in those shoes. She’s running like it’s her job.
I’m alone with Deirdre now. There are a few soldiers scattered around the main floor of the house, and Curse and Enzo are both outside ready to go, but in this space by the door, it’s just the two of us.
Deirdre looks everywhere but at me when she finally speaks.
“So, how does this work? The jewellery, the clothes. Is this all getting added on to my debt? Because I’d rather not have it at all.”
I pause, drinking in the sight of her in a dress I paid for, already imagining the tens of thousands of dollars of gemstones I’m about to wrap around her throat. A collar with Titone spelled out in the language of diamonds.
“I’m feeling generous. Consider it a birthday gift,” I say. Her gaze snaps to me, and I don’t miss the way it slides up and down my body in my black suit and black shirt. The only thing not black on me is my pocket square. A slight wrinkle appears between her eyebrows when her gaze snags there, and I wonder if she recognizes it.
I almost ask her, but Valentina is back, panting as she careens down the stairs.
“Here, quick, quick!” she says to Deirdre, holding out sparkly stuff. My cousin’s frenetic impatience is grinding my nerves raw. I hold out my hand for the jewellery and tell her, “Go ahead. Curse and Enzo will take you.”
Valentina dumps the shimmering gems and metal into my hand without a moment’s hesitation before running for the door, pulling it open and disappearing. Deirdre flutters, looks like she’ll call out something like “Wait!” But it’s too late. Valentina is gone and it’s just us again. Her eyes fall to my hand, where bright, clear diamonds and white gold shine in stark contrast to the black leather of my glove. Her mouth primly puckered, she reaches for my hand, but I pull it back.
“I’ll do it.”
“What do you mean, you’ll do it? If I have to wear it, I’ll put it on myself.”
She reaches forward again, but once again I move my hand, curling my fingers into a fist.
“We aren’t leaving until I put this stuff on you.”
She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand what showing up in public wearing my finery, my diamonds, means. It will tell the entire fucking city that she’s mine now. Not as a debtor, someone to torture or to kill over what she owes. Not as someone I couldn’t care less about losing.
But someone possessed.
Someone protected.
“Then we won’t leave at all,” she snaps.
I don’t say anything else. I step towards her. She steps back. We do this over and over until she collides with the wall. She’s trapped by my body, and I hold up my fist between us, loosening my grip slightly until a white gold chain slithers out and dangles in the air. It swings like a pendulum, and her blue eyes track the movement.
“You’ll find that things will be much easier for you if you don’t disobey me,” I mutter.
Her eyes flash. “Maybe I don’t want this to be easy.”
“What do you want this to be, then?”
Her reply is flat and grim. “Over.”
A concoction of emotions I don’t like and won’t name floods my body. I feel like I could crush the diamonds in my fist.
“Put your fucking hair behind your ears.”
She stares at me in mute defiance, and I grunt as I lift my left hand, ignoring Morelli’s instructions not to use that arm as much as possible. Deirdre gasps when I grasp all her hair at the nape of her neck and tug, forcing her head back, baring her throat. Her heart beats a rapid-fire rhythm there, poetry of the body and of blood. It’s a song in and of itself. I want to put my fucking tongue there.
Instead, I reach to the side with my right hand, depositing the jewellery on a small stand near the wall. From the pile, I grab one earring. It’s a dangly diamond thing with a simple hook to slide through her earlobe. No back or clasp.
Deirdre can’t move much with her hair bound so tightly by my fist. She breathes rapidly, staring at the earring like it’s a murder weapon. Her body vibrates with what I assume is fury. She doesn’t look afraid. She looks fucking pissed.
But something changes when the leather of my glove brushes the shell of her ear. She makes a sound, between a whimper and a gasp, that jolts straight to my dick. Her entire body goes taut, her breath catching as I skim a single knuckle over her earlobe. I stop looking at her ear for a second and see that her eyes are scrunched shut. Her back is arching away from the wall, and it’s not because I’ve started pulling her hair. And…
Her nipples are hard.
I couldn’t see them through the dress before, but I can see them now. The temperature hasn’t changed. It’s toasty fucking warm. Honestly a little too hot for my liking, now that my blood is boiling inside me.
“Sensitive, Songbird?” I mutter quietly, brushing my knuckle down her ear again experimentally. I watch her as I do it. Watch the flutter that goes through the muscles in her face, the tautness that spreads down her body. Watch the way her nipples swell and tighten further, begging me to mouth them through the slippery fabric of her dress. Her hands are plastered to the wall at her back.
“Can you just get this over with?” she breathes, her eyes still closed, as if she can’t stand to look at me. Can’t stand to acknowledge what she might be feeling in response to my touch.
But now I want to take my fucking time. Unlike Valentina I don’t really care when we arrive at this event. I don’t plan to stay long, anyway. Just long enough to give Sev his money and make sure everybody sees Deirdre at my side.
Slowly, I release my grip on her hair. I don’t think she needs me to hold her there anymore, and I’m right. She’s completely bound by tension, just from that slight touch at her ear. She’s definitely beyond sensitive there. Which is damn good information to have. I gently take her plump earlobe between my left thumb and forefinger and guide the earring hook to the small hole there. I press it slowly in, penetrating the silky flesh, while Deirdre remains perfectly still except for her ragged breathing. Bent this close to her face, I wish I’d told Valentina to go a little easier on the makeup. I can’t see her freckles now, and that bothers me.
I let go of the earring, watching the long line of diamonds dangle and bump the side of her throat. Then, I ease my fingertips under her chin, tipping her head to the other side to do the same on the other ear. Her eyes flare open, and she stares at me, gaze sparking, as I reach for the other earring.
“Like to watch when men put things inside you?” I ask, feeling her gaze on me as I slide the second earring into place.
“Wouldn’t know,” she hisses. “I’ve never let a man put something inside me.”
I freeze, and so does she. Her eyes widen, her lips clamping together as if she didn’t mean to say that. Now that the earring is in, I release it. My fingers skim down her throat, and she swallows.
“You’re a virgin?”
My fingers keep sliding down her neck, tracing her collarbones, then brushing a knuckle between her breasts.
I can barely see the red blush beneath all her makeup, but I know it’s there, because it creeps up her neck, too. I slowly rub my knuckle up and down the valley between her breasts. I can’t stop staring at how much she reacts to me. How flushed her fair skin gets, just from this slightest touch.
“I don’t see why that matters!” she stammers.
I don’t know why it matters, either. I’ve never cared about virginity as a concept before. A lot of men in our world do, want their mafia brides untouched, but I couldn’t care less. If anything, getting saddled with a virgin who doesn’t know what she’s doing seems like an easy way to guarantee a boring night in the sack.
But now…
Now, I find I do care. Care that nobody else has been inside Deirdre. If I wanted to, I could be the first man, the last man, the only man who’s ever fucked her. A possessive satisfaction rises up inside me, telling me that she’s mine in all ways now, even if she fights it.
“I don’t even know why I said that,” she groans. “Well, at least it proves that I’ll be useless to you in that department if you ever decide you want me for something other than violin. Since I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“You’d have an idea of what you were doing if someone taught you.”
She breathes in sharply at my words. She’s about to say something else, but I silence her with a feather-light but unmistakeably intentional brush of my thumb over her hardened nipple.
And then I do it again.
“What are you doing?” she whispers thickly.
I don’t answer her with words, instead drawing an achingly slow, firm circle around the outer edge of her nipple. Teasing, not coming close to the sensitive bud of it again. Her breath is coming in short little pants. Fuck, I want to take her breast roughly in my hand, knead it, draw up the skirt of her dress and pin her to the wall.
I don’t. Jaw tight, I keep circling, slowly, so fucking slowly, until I think Deirdre is going to come apart at the seams. She’s too proud to ask me to do it, but I can see she needs it.
“Do you want me to touch you there again?” I murmur against her ear. She shudders at the cascade of my breath over her skin.
“Fuck you. Let me go,” is all she says, but it’s practically a whine. She may not be begging me with words, but she is with her body. Her back is arching towards me, seeking my touch.
“I think you do,” I say. “Right now, I bet all you can think about is what this leather will feel like sliding across your bare skin.”
She jerks beneath my touch, and I know I’m right.
It would be so easy, too. To slide the silk of the dress over, maybe even rip it like I did last night. Rub the puckering berries of her nipples between my gloved fingers. Take one and then the other in my mouth so I could feel her properly, no fabric between us. My cock pounds at the thought, my tongue lashing the backs of my teeth.
I want her to beg me to do it.
Even though I know she won’t.
With an impatient growl, I give her what she needs but won’t ever ask for. I press my palms to the sides of her breasts, moving my thumbs across her nipples in demanding strokes. She lets out a soft moan, then clamps her mouth shut, as if pissed off by the escape of the sound. Like that moan is a betrayal.
She doesn’t want to feel what she’s feeling. To react to me the way she’s reacting. All I’m doing is playing with her pretty little nipples, and she’s getting all twitchy and wiggly, her hips bucking forward before she stops the movement, fighting for control.
She’s not just sensitive around her ears. She could come like this, is probably already fucking close. The thought inflames me, makes me forget every rule, everything I’ve told myself about why I’ve brought her here.
My lips touch her ear this time when I growl, “If I pulled your panties to the side right now, I think I’d find that virgin pussy soaking for me, Songbird.”
Her hands, hands that this entire time have been plastered to the wall, not touching me or pushing me away and pretending to be neutral participants in all of this, rise between us. She plants them on my chest and shoves, eyes burning me with blue fire.
“So everything you told me before is a lie, then,” she snaps, shoving again. “You do want a whore. You just want me for my body.”
I drop my hands from her breasts and capture her chin in my fingers, forcing her gaze to remain on mine as I lean in and tell her, “I want everything. I want your fucking soul.”
She tries to shake her head but can’t.
“Six million dollars for a soul,” she whispers, and she doesn’t sound angry now, but sad.
I let her go, flexing my fingers inside my gloves and shrugging, sending lancing pain through my shoulder, and simply reply, “Small price to pay.”
I would have paid millions more. There’s something in her that speaks to me in a language I’ve half-forgotten. It’s like an itch at the back of my mind that I need to locate so I can scratch it until it bleeds.
I’m about to turn towards the door and take her out of here when I see something glittering. The necklace. I pick it up.
“Turn around,” I say.
She just stares at me, arms crossed over her chest as if to keep those pesky, sensitive nipples of hers in check around me. I hold up the necklace, and she merely lifts her chin and narrows her gaze.
Fine by me. I can put it on like this.
I lean close to her again, and at the last second she decides to finally listen and does turn around. Maybe she thinks this is all a little better if she doesn’t actually have to look at me.
I sweep her hair forward over one shoulder, doing my best to ignore the crackling colour of it. Fucking hell, she’s got a lot of it. Long and thick. It completely hid her back before, but now…
Now I can see everything.
Valentina may have gone overboard on the makeup, but I have to hand it to my cousin. She chose the perfect dress.
The back of the dress isn’t even a back at all. It’s a gaping plunge of silk, exposing Deirdre from shoulder blade to hip. I let the chain of the necklace dangle from my hand, letting the thin end of it drag up the curve of her spine to her neck. I can see the goosebumps as they rise. See the way Deirdre’s arms tighten around her body.
I move in closer behind Deirdre, taking a moment to look at the necklace to figure out how it clasps. It has a short, wide band of diamonds with a central large stone that must go at the front. I sweep it around the front of her neck, then do up the clasp at the back. I pause to admire the effect, and the effect goes straight to my balls.
Because the necklace looks like a diamond collar, fitted tightly around her throat. And the white-gold chain dangles down Deirdre’s back like a glittering leash.
I finger the chain at the back, tugging lightly, and smirk when Deirdre vaults backwards in response, stumbling in her heels until she crashes into my chest. She rights herself quickly, trying to pull away from me as fast as she can.
But I don’t let go of the chain until she’s in my car.