Page 56 of The Beast Who Begged Me

The thing is, it’s not that bad. It’s healing up pretty fucking good, in fact, and that’s what makes it worse. It’s like my body is betraying me by rebuilding that brand, searing it into me once more.

Caligula trails his fingers over it gingerly. “Does it hurt?”

I shake my head.

His fingers continue up my wrist, my forearm.

My bicep.

“Caligula,” I say in warning.

“Dami,” he says, as his fingers reach my face. He leans in to press his lips to mine, and I’m lost.

I’m lost.

I kiss him back.

He deepens it, presses up against me, but his arm brushes against my still-sensitive hand, jarring me back to reality. I grab him and push him away. His lips are already rosy, his cheeks flushed, his eyes pools of honey I could happily drown in.

But I can’t do this anymore. Ferraro told me straight out, and I should have listened to him. I can’t swear to Caligula, even if he’d accept it—which he shouldn’t.

I’m still a Gee, and I always will be. I can’t escape the past. I can’t escape what I’ve done to him. “Don’t,” I say again, soft. “We can’t do this.”

He watches me for a moment. “My father wanted to leave with yours because of me. He wanted a different life for me.” His hand drops from my face. “If that’s what got your father killed, then it was my fault.”

“No.” The word comes out hard enough to make him blink. “You were a fucking baby.”

“But if I hadn’t existed⁠—”

“Don’t.” I catch his wrist with my good hand. “You didn’t choose any of it. Whoever gave the order, and whoever did the deed—they’re the ones to blame. You don’t get to take that on yourself.”

“Then neither of us gets to use it against the other.”

“I chose what I did to you,” I tell him. “That’s on me.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “It is.”

He regards me with those eyes, trying to read my mind. So I save him the trouble.

“You should’ve let me die,” I tell him. “You should’ve let me put a bullet in my skull and end it.”

His face changes slowly but unmistakably. Hardens into Don Clemenza’s mask. “You don’t get to do that, Dami. You belong to me, now. And I still have use for you.”

We end up back in the bed, and he wraps himself around me like a goddamn octopus, like he’s trying to fuse our bodies together. And he just holds me like that.

All night long.

CHAPTER 19

CALIGULA

Dinner with the Commission members is held in the formal dining room, the same room where the D’Amatos murdered my grandfather, and the same room Dami and I left covered in a different kind of DNA. But those facts are nothing but faint shadows in my mind as I enter it this evening, with Dami close behind me.

We’ve already suffered through cocktails. Dami was silent and glowering, and I did my best to make it seem as though he was just quiet. In fact, I don’t think Dami has said a single word since the night before last, when he asked me to let him die.

I was so terrified at his request that I could barely re-dress his hand. And that was a disappointment, too—a dark part of me had hoped the “G” would be illegible after having a knife taken to it.

But there it was, black ink against olive skin. A little askew from the stitches, but still clear.