Page 46 of The Beast Who Begged Me

His hand slides down to my chest, pressing flat over my sternum. His other hand comes up to grip the back of my neck, pulling me down until our foreheads are pressed together. “I want you to take what’s yours.”

My dick jumps to life, stabbing into his stomach.

“You really think that letter changed anything between us?” he breathes. “I liked belonging to you before I ever read that letter, and I liked it after. I still belong to you, Dami. I’ll always be yours. Maybe it makes me sick in the head, but I don’t care anymore. I want it back, what we had before.”

His lips brush against my jawline. And then his gaze drops to where my cock is now an angry-red spear thrusting against his belly.

“Looks like you want it back, too,” he says.

When my hand goes into his hair this time, it’s not gentle. He lets out a grunt of pain as I yank his head to the side and run my tongue up his neck. His eyes flutter shut as my other hand finds its way between the slick globes of his ass. I press a fingertip against his tight hole, and he moans, a long, shuddering sound that vibrates through me.

I pull my hands away. “I’ll do whatever you want. You knew that already. But I want to know one thing—and I want you to tell me the truth.”

His brows tug together. “What is it?”

“Did you really mean it when you said you’d still help me find my father’s killer?”

Caligula’s eyes widen. “Of course I meant it. And I still need your help, too, to find whoever it is that’s been thinning out my bloodline.” He reaches out to turn off the water, then opens the shower door. Cooler air rushes in, making us both shiver. He grabs two big, fluffy towels from the warming rack and wraps one around my hips before securing his own. “Our deal still stands. An alliance to avenge our blood.”

He looks so earnest standing there, dripping on the bathmat.

“What about your coronation?” I ask.

He scrubs his hair with the towel. “Strike has the preparations under control, doesn’t he?” He stops rubbing his hair. “Strike knows something,” he says. “About our fathers.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was about to tell me, that first day we met him. When you came back, he clammed up again. I can order him to tell me what he knows. And if that still gets us nowhere, I suppose I can try my mother. See if she knows anything.”

“I thought you didn’t know where she was.”

His mouth twists. “There’s someone else who might. And he might also know something about our fathers.”

“The ideas are just falling out of you,” I say. “Well? Spit it out.”

“Uncle Tony.” He wraps the towel around his waist, finished drying, and now I wish he’d taken longer.

“That fucker?” I snort. “What does he know that we haven’t scared out of him already?”

“He was my dad’s best friend,” he points out. “Except you keep telling me your father was his best friend. So which of them was it?”

I throw my arms out. “Your dad was popular. Everyone says it.” I have to work hard not to let the usual contempt into my voice when I talk about Cesario Clemenza. “He had a lot of friends.”

But Caligula just shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense. And anything that doesn’t make sense, we need to follow up.”

I pull my own towel from around my waist and start drying down, very aware of Caligula’s eyes on me as I do. My dick has died down at last, and he seems disappointed.

“Okay, Don Clemenza,” I tell him. “Whatever you say.”

CHAPTER 17

CALIGULA

Dami disappears after our shower, sliding out of the room as soon as he’s dressed and ignoring me when I call him back. God knows where he’s gone.

Maybe he just wants to get away from me.

The D’Amatos are both absent from dinner, and so is Vito, which means that wherever Dami has gone, Vito is driving him. So it’s just Sammy and Rosa and me, and Sammy talks the whole way through the meal: MoMA, top to bottom, with Riccardo Benedetti. The Morellis sent a guard along with them, but from the sound of things, they had the sense to hang well back and let them do their thing.