Page 10 of The Beast Who Begged Me

He can take it. I know he can. Because his hand keeps moving on me, and it’s a terrible combination of shame and pride to think he learned how to do this from me. That I taught him how to make me groan for it. How to unmake me.

I’m close. So close. And I’m thinking of how satisfying it’ll be to see him splattered in my spunk when he makes a pitiful, hoarse sound that sends guilt sliding through me. He’s spasming dry, softening in my grip, so I let myself shoot with a grunt, burying my face in his neck, spurting in thick ropes across his stomach.

And God, the relief is so much more than physical. It’s a release that goes all the way to my soul, being able to paint him like this. The water is already washing away the evidence, but it’s still there, binding us together.

It will always be there.

I hold him tight as I ride out the last few aftershocks. But then he slumps against me, completely wrung out, and I wrap both my arms around him, holding him close.

There’s a knock at the door. “Is everything alright in there, Mr. Orsini?”

It’s that fucking nurse, the one who kept making eyes at Caligula.

“Fuck off,” I growl.

There’s a silence, then footsteps retreating. Fast.

Caligula makes a choking, wheezing noise, and I grab him hard. “What’s wrong?” He just shakes his head, grinning, and I get it. “Oh. You’re laughing. Christ’s sake, that nurse was fuckin’ desperate to get his hands on you,” I grumble, helping him off my lap and to his feet.

I make sure I’m steady before I turn off the shower and lead him out to the mat. I grab a towel—even that I won’t let him do for himself, not right now. “Arms up,” I order.

For the first time, he flinches. And in his eyes I see darkness.

I see the basement.

I dried him down just like this the morning after I bought him. Made him hard in the cage still locked on his cock. And when he tried a clumsy version of seduction, I told him that one day he’d understand how foolish he was to think he could control me.

“Never mind,” I say softly. “I’ll start down here.” I kneel down on the hard tile and start toweling off his calves instead. When I glance up, his eyes are honey-colored again, but I have no idea what he’s thinking.

I imagine seeing those eyes from deep in an inferno. He could have burned up along with everything else.

“How did you get out?” I ask, pausing with the towel. “From the basement? Rosa said the electricity died when the fire started.”

He flinches again, and I wish I hadn’t asked. “Climbed up the shaft of the dumbwaiter,” he says.

And now I really wish I hadn’t asked.

I get back to drying him off. Nick Fontana was right; he doesn’t deserve my bullshit. Only my best.

“I should’ve been there with you,” I mutter. “I should’ve been protecting you like I said I would.”

He catches my face in his hands, his thumb pressing too hard against the swollen mess around my eye, but I don’t wince. I’m glad for the pain.

I deserve it.

And all that steam must have helped, or maybe it was the orgasm, because for the first time since he woke up, his voice comes out whole. Clear and strong and every inch Lou Clemenza’s grandson.

“Tell me what happened.”

CHAPTER 5

CALIGULA

He tells me all of it. That someone named Pardini lured him with the hope of finding Sammy. He tells me that Sebastiano Conti is dead, and I can barely believe it. Where Dami is a grizzly bear, Seb Conti was a goddamn Kodiak. It doesn’t seem possible that a man that size could be reduced to nothing but a scrap of skin.

Dami shows me that, too, when I ask. He asked for a small cooler from the hospital, and he’s packed it in there, keeping it cold. He says he’s not sure what to do with it.

He tells me how Sammy said he changed his mind and came back to the house, only to find it on fire. He helped Rosa and Vito out and then came back in for me.