Page 41 of The Beast Who Begged Me

His head snaps up and he stares at me, and for the first time since that goddamn letter came out, I think I see the real him. Or the Caligula Clemenza that I thought I was getting to know, before everything blew up.

Burned down.

I let my hands drop from the wall behind him. “We’re done.”

He holds on. “No,” he says. “We’re not.”

He tugs me to the side, puts his hand on my hip, and pushes me backward. Our roles are reversed, so now I’m the one with his back against the wall.

The camera is watching. The steady red light glares in disapproval. He’s pressing up against me and I want him.

“Do you know what I do when I’m cornered, Dami?” he murmurs. “I fight dirty.”

Then he takes my hand, the one without the bandage, and brings it down between us. Places it on the hard line of his cock.

“That’s what you do to me,” he says, voice husky. “Even after everything.” He rocks against my hand. “Is this what you wanted to teach me down here? How to turn your own weapon against you?”

I can’t answer. My throat is tight, my cock aching, my hand itching to close around the solid warmth of him, pressing into my palm.

He leans back, considering, and then pulls my hand away from him. I relax for a moment, relief battling disappointment as I realize it’s over. He’ll walk away now.

But instead, he sinks to his knees.

CHAPTER 15

CALIGULA

I look up at Dami from my knees. Victory is humming through my veins, a high more potent than any drug.

Because I beat him.

Not with my fists—I never could—but with this. This filthy, undeniable connection that coils between us like the ouroboros sigil of my Family, each of us devouring the other. Damiano Orsini built a fortress of guilt around himself, but I found the weak spot, and I wriggled my way into it.

I see the battle raging on his face. Self-loathing warring with desperate, starving need. But I want him to choose this. To choose me.

And so I wait, perfectly still on my knees before him. A supplicant. A sacrifice.

A king surveying his conquered territory.

He wants to retreat back into that silent, walled-off prison he’s been building for himself. But he wants this too much. Wants me too much. And that’s something, right? That’s the one bond we have left. I want him. He wants me.

So eventually, I reach up slowly to the waistband of his sweatpants and hook my fingers in. I pull them down, inch by excruciating inch, revealing the trail of hair, the thicker thatch above my goal…

And then the full, hard length of him.

His cock bobs just beyond my lips, thick and veined and flushed red in what should be a warning sign to me. But I’m not afraid. I want this. Want the proof that I can still get under his skin.

Want to know that the hate and the guilt and the horror haven’t completely destroyed this one perfect, harrowing thing between us.

He doesn’t move. Just stands there while I pull his pants down to his knees, exposing him not only to my gaze, but to the hungry red eye of the camera in the corner.

The first time we had sexual contact in a basement was when I crawled across the floor and sucked his dick to save my grandfather’s townhouse. It was a different basement. And I was a different person.

This time, I’m not crawling. Not begging for his favor. This time, I’m claiming it.

His hands are pressed flat on the wall. I make it my personal mission then and there to make those hands slide into my hair, to make him lose that iron control, to simply grab me and take what he wants.

I lean in and nuzzle my face into the dark, tangled hair, breathing in fresh sweat and salt. His dick twitches, a hot, heavy bar against my cheek.