Page 61 of The Kingpin’s Bride

He edged himself again. Once. Twice. The third time he did not stop. His breathing went rough, chest rising harder under the black shirt. His hand moved faster, tighter, the wet sound of it obscene in the quiet. I watched every second, legs spread, cream dripping from me onto the sheets, the need so sharp I felt tears gather at the corners of my eyes.

When he came it was standing over me, out of reach, thick pulses spilling onto the marble floor between us in deliberate filthy ropes. Some of it landed close enough that I could smell the salt of him, warm and sharp. None of it landed on me. The denial of even that small claim made something inside me twist hard and hungry.

Silence stretched.

He looked down at the mess he had made on the floor. The white marble was marked with thick streaks of him, warm, glistening.

My stomach dropped. The cream had me so sensitive that the simple act of moving made me whimper, every shift of my thighs sending fresh sparks of heat through places that felt too full of need. I slid off the bed. I crawled, the soft white fabric of the trousers pulling tight across my hips.

“What are you doing, Rena?”

I lowered my head. The first taste of him on the cold marble made a broken sound catch in my throat. Salt. Heat. The unmistakable evidence of how hard he had come while watching me stay open and denied.

“Holy fuck,” Matteo muttered.

I dragged my tongue through the thickest puddle, slow, thorough, cleaning the floor. The position left me completely exposed. Ass up. Thighs slick with cream. The soft white fabric of the dress pulled up just enough that the air kissed the wetness between my legs. He watched every second, dark eyes unreadable, the same cold focus he had worn the night he walked into that private room and took Dario’s knife like it belonged to him.

I cleaned the next streak. Then the next. The taste of him filled my mouth, thick and familiar, and the cream made every small movement of my body feel like another form of denial. My clit throbbed against nothing. My entrance clenched around emptiness. Shame burned through me hot and thick, but the need was stronger, meaner, the kind of need that made me press my thighs together for half a second before the chain reminded me of the rules.

I kept my eyes on him, even when the humiliation of it made fresh tears slip down my cheeks and drip onto the marble beside his release.

When I finished the last drop he tipped my chin up with two fingers so I had to look at him with his taste in my mouth. My lips were wet. My face was flushed. “Good girl.”

The words were quiet. Dangerous. They settled under my skin the same way the cream had, slow and impossible to ignore.

“You stay exactly like that. Open. Aching. Denied. While I finish the calls that bring your sister home. The cream will keep working. You will not touch yourself. If you come without permission, the next time I use the cream I will keep you on the edge for hours. Do you understand me, baby?”

“Yes, Matteo.”

Chapter Sixteen

Matteo

The first reports came in twelve hours later. I stood at the long table under the windows and three separate secure lines open. The teams had the full packet. Dario’s known addresses. The plants who had delivered the photographs. The private airstrip used by mid-level operators who moved people when the price was right. Clean extraction. No noise. The child unharmed. Those were the strict instructions.

I gave the orders in the same flat voice I used for everything that needed to end cleanly. Then I waited.

The first call came forty-seven minutes later.

Empty apartment.

No signs of a struggle.

The second safe house had been cleared out in the night. The third location was a burned shell. The airstrip cameras had been wiped. No flight plan.

No surviving witnesses who were willing to talk, and mostly dead now from the efforts to make them. Dario Rizzo and the little girl in the red shirt had vanished into thin air.

I ended the last call and stood in the quiet for a long time.

The wall of photographs watched me. Morena under stage lights. Morena leaving the club with her arms wrapped around herself. Camilla’s photo had been added, and it scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t fear for myself. Fear of the look that would settle in those blue eyes of my wife’s when she realized the only pure thing left in her life was still gone.The failure sat in my chest like a second pulse.

Then I walked to the bedroom. She was awake.

Soft fabric twisted around her hips. Blue eyes lifted to mine the moment the door opened. The residual ache from the night before lived in the way she shifted against the mattress. I had left her denied. The cream had kept working for hours. She looked soft and restless and half-lost in the need I had refused to satisfy.

“I think we both need a distraction,” I said.

She pulled her legs up against her chest. “You don’t have any new leads?”