Page 46 of Savage Ambition

“No, I play to win.” I refocused on pushing us both to the edge. His body yielded to me no matter how rough I got. Seeing him spread beneath me, calling my name in his accent, was unlike anything I’d experienced before. Despite my need to keep Dante separate from Dragon, each time Renato gasped my real name, it pushed me toward my climax.

I was almost there when Renato pulled me down, slowing our pace. He nuzzled against my neck before whispering in Italian, “Come for me, Dante. Right now. I don’t care what it takes. Go harder. Use your teeth. Make me bleed if that’s what you need. I can handle whatever you’ve been afraid to give anyone else. I’m being greedy, and want every drop of you before you walk out that door and pretend this didn’t matter.”

Unbeknownst to him, I understood every word, thanks to my birth mother being Italian. His words hit their mark, the forbidden intimacy of my real name on his lips combining with the dark promise in his voice.

I turned my face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in. His woodsy cologne wrecked me. I dragged my open mouth along the line of his throat, savoring the taste. When I closed my teeth over the soft skin where his neck met his shoulder, Renato moaned and tilted his head to invite me to take more.

My professional veneer disappeared as I sucked at his skin until he whimpered and a dark mark bloomed. He’d see in every mirror, feel beneath every collar, and remember exactly whose mouth put it there.

It was a claim I had no business making. He wasn’t mine. He never could be. But in that moment, marking him felt as necessary as breathing, and Renato’s needy sounds told me he wanted to be claimed just as badly.

My orgasm ambushed me. I buried myself to the hilt as the first pulse hit, my fingers digging into his flesh hard enough to leave crescent-shaped marks. My muscles locked up, then contracted so violently I couldn’t breathe. I’d made thousands of men come, had orgasmed more times than I could count, but it was something else with Renato. It wasn’t the mechanical release I’d grown accustomed to, the perfunctory conclusion to a transaction.

My body betrayed every defense I’d built, every wall I’d constructed between Dante and Dragon. It was total surrender.

“That’s it,” Renato urged, his voice rough as he clenched around me. “Give me everything.”

I couldn’t have held back if I tried. My hips jerked as a sound tore from my throat, unfiltered and unrecognizable. Not the practiced moans I’d perfected over years of performance, but something authentic that startled me.

The pleasure was almost violent in its intensity, radiating outward from my balls until even my fingertips tingled with it. I’d always approached sex as a technician, but Renato had demolished that clinical distance. For the first time in years, I wasn’t calculating my next move or monitoring my client’s reactions. I was present in my own body, drowning in sensation instead of orchestrating it.

“You gave me everything,” Renato murmured in Italian. “Which means you’re mine now.”

His words should have triggered every alarm in my mind. I was Salvatore’s property, his trained dog on a short leash. My body wasn’t mine to give. Being claimed by another was dangerous, potentially fatal for all involved.

Yet something buried deep within me responded to Renato’s claim with a visceral hunger I didn’t recognize. Not the calculated compliance I showed Salvatore, not the performative submission I gave clients who craved dominance, but something more primitive and honest. A part of me awakened to the possibility that someone could want both sides of me.

Shaw only wanted Dante, the college student. He pretended Dragon didn’t exist, closing his eyes to the reality of what I did and who I was. But Renato had sought Dragon first, then greedily demanded Dante, too. He didn’t want me compartmentalized. He wanted all of me, the light and the darkness, the real me and the whore.

Only muscle memory made me reach for his neglected cock. Two quick strokes were all it took before he arched up while gasping my name as he painted his stomach with cum.

In the aftermath, he embodied sin incarnate, his eyes glazed, lips swollen, body marked by my hands and mouth. But it wasn’t only the physical evidence of our coupling that captivated me. His gaze penetrated me, as though he’d discovered treasure beneath my carefully constructed personas.

“Wait until next time, Dante. I’ll have you screaming my name then.”

I shuddered at his promise, already craving whatever he had planned.

His mouth found mine with startling gentleness that transformed into something hungrier. He kissed me as if he were mapping territories, learning boundaries only to cross them. His tongue traced the seam of my lips before pushing inside, not asking permission but assuming rightful ownership.

The kiss deepened, becoming primal and all-consuming. His teeth caught my bottom lip, not enough to hurt but enough to promise he could if I craved that pain. His hand slid up to cradle my jaw, thumb pressing against my pulse point as if measuring my response, while his other traced possessive patterns across my skin.

When I tried to dominate the kiss, to fall back on Dragon’s practiced techniques, he made a low sound of disapproval in his throat. His fingers slid into my hair, tugging hard enough to communicate his refusal. He didn’t want my practiced performance. He wanted the unfiltered response he’d drawn from me moments before.

When he pulled back, his eyes held mine with an intensity that made something in my chest constrict painfully. No one had ever looked at me as if I were a treasure they’d kill to possess, a truth they’d die to protect.

I pulled out slowly, making him groan before he tugged me down for another kiss. With sex and his cologne filling my lungs, I felt drugged as I lost myself in him. Between kisses, he whispered my forbidden name against my lips like a prayer.

“Dante,” he breathed, the syllables caressing my skin.

The sound of my real name in his accent felt like coming home to a place I’d never been, but had always been meant to find.

Reality crashed back when I heard Salvatore’s hand working his cock with increasing urgency. I knew the sound intimately, having been forced to listen to it countless times in that room. The rhythm always accelerated right before he finished, followed by his breath hitching, then the guttural grunts that signaled his release.

That had been the soundtrack to my nightmares for years. Revulsion nauseated me from the memories of him touching himself while others inflicted pain or pleasure on me as he saw fit, teaching me what sounds to make, how to move, when to climax, while making sure I understood the consequences of failure.

The noise of him wiping himself clean with his handkerchief scraped against my eardrums. Rustling expensive fabric accompanied him tucking himself away. Metal clinked as he fastened his belt buckle. Satisfaction escaped him in a contented sigh. Every sound contributed to a symphony of degradation I’d endured for years.

Only Renato’s voice pulled me back from the edge of panic. His gaze held mine, blocking my view of Salvatore, creating a momentary bubble where only we existed. “I bet you’re never going to forget me now.”