CHAPTER NINE
Damian’s words were punctuated by two of his fingers finding heaven and home inside Lily’s hot, tight pussy. He was right. She was drenched, slick with her arousal and it wet his fingers beautifully. Her body took his fingers in without a lick of tension. She opened for him, her sex flexing around his digits as he spread them wide on the withdrawal and then plunged them right back in again.
“Mine,” he repeated strongly. “This is mine, how wet you are is all mine, and everything I do to you is mine, Lily. Only I get to do this, see you like this, and feel you like this. The next man who touches you in a way that is anything less than innocent will get the pleasure of feeling a bullet rip through his skull.”
“Jesus,” Lily breathed.
“Say it,” Damian said, keeping the rhythm of his fingers fucking her at a tempo just fast enough to get her need to come rising. “Tell me what you know, what you know you want to say, and I’ll give you everything you need.”
“B-but …” Lily trailed off, canting her hips into his palm with every thrust. Damian fucked Lily a little harder, curling his fingers to learn the inside of her pussy so he would know the right spot to get her raining all over his hand.
“There are no buts, Lily,” Damian said lowly. “I intend for you to be my wife, that makes you mine, and every time I touch you like this, I expect you to know it, too. Tell me that you know, sweet girl. Every inch of your body is mine to taste, fuck, and have. None other but me.”
“You,” Lily echoed.
Damian grinned in satisfaction, watching Lily’s eyes flutter closed as her sex began to shudder around his fingers. “My name in your mouth, Lily. That’s what I want to hear every time you come tonight.”
Lily whimpered. “Every single time?”
“Oh, I can guarantee there will be more than just the once.”
“God, Damian.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to hear.” When her body released around his fingers, Damian kissed in the inside of Lily’s thigh before he bit the same spot. The tartly sweet smell of her arousal soaked into his lungs as her come trickled down his palm. The second cry of his name came out louder, breathless. “Fuck yeah, Lily, just like that.”
The tremors rocking her from top to toe satisfied Damian like nothing fucking else. He withdrew his hand from between her legs and stood, yanking her dress up with him in fistfuls until he could pull it over her head. Lily didn’t shy away from the roughness in his actions as she worked at undoing the buttons of his dress shirt and loosening his tie. She pushed the silk shirt over his shoulders and down his arms. Damian only let go of her long enough to let the shirt hit the floor along with his tie.
“Christ, leave it,” Damian ordered when Lily tugged at his belt.
Her wide eyes lit up with confusion. “But—”
“Not important,” he said before his mouth crushed down on hers. Lily’s plump lips parted to let his tongue strike into her mouth. She tasted of him and heat as his teeth scraped along her bottom lip and down her chin. Damian explored the expanse of her creamy, silky skin with his hands and mouth, licking a wet line down her throbbing pulse point and then nipping a path at her collarbones. “What do you sound like when you’re being fucked, Lily? Are you wild and loud or soft and quiet?”
“I …” Her words drifted off into a low, aching moan when Damian pushed her back against the door. He caught her wrists in his hands and lifted them high above her head, pinning them to the wood. Her chest and breasts, still stained with the red wine from earlier, arched against his body. “Depends on how you fuck me, Damian.”
“Raw.” He forced the word out through gritted teeth and caught her wild gaze with his own. “Raw, Lily.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m going to fuck you raw. Until every inch of you feels me everywhere. Until I know all the sounds you make and how all of you tastes. Fucking raw, sweetheart.”
Lily’s lip disappeared under her top teeth. “Yes, please.”
Damian jerked her away from the door, spinning her fast so he could push her along the hallway with his hand at her back. Lily didn’t stumble as he moved in closer, caught the ends of her hair in his fist, and tugged her back into his chest.
“You’re not a goddamn china doll.”
“No,” she whimpered.
“I am not going to treat you like one, Lily.”
“Good.”
“Bedroom,” he said.
Lily turned left at the end of the hallway and Damian let her go the moment she stepped into his bedroom. He flicked the light on, illuminating the space and her gorgeous figure to his eyes. She spun to face him as she walked backward until her legs hit the edge of his bed.
Lily DeLuca was a beautiful creature—wide, clear eyes, bitten red lips, mussed hair, and a body begging to be fucked by him. Her chest heaved with her ragged breaths and all he could think about was being buried nine inches inside her pussy and fucking her until he couldn’t think.
Her arms fell to her sides and her palms turned up in his direction like she was inviting him in. It looked almost innocent in nature, submissive even in the way her gaze flitted downward so she could stare at him through her lashes. The girl had no idea the effect a simple look could have.
Damian was so hard his cock fucking hurt. The thick ridge of his erection strained against his slacks, the line of the zipper biting through his boxer-briefs into his dick. He reached down and unbuckled his belt before pulling it slowly from the loops. He didn’t look away from her once as he unbuttoned the slacks, opened the zipper and pushed his pants down until he could step out of them.
She came to him willingly. Just like he wanted.
Damian had thought it might take a little more because Lily was so goddamn stubborn when she wanted to be, but he wasn’t about to complain that it worked out this way.
She needed to be safe; to be taken care of; to be cared for. Dino wanted a certain type of man providing those things. That was Damian’s promise—the deal. He planned on keeping it.
A life for a life.
His cock sprung free from the confines of his boxer-briefs as he slipped his thumbs around the waistband and tugged them down. Lily tried stepping backward again when he stepped forward, but she had already hit the bed. Instead, her ass hit his sheets and a blink later, Damian was on her.
Lily moved further onto the bed with Damian’s urging. His lips touched down over and over to her fevered, pebbling skin. She tasted like woman, sex, and sin already. When his hands fisted into her hair, she tilted her head back with a loud groan, giving him perfect access to her throat. He took the chance to mark her there, wanting to see as much of him covering her body as he could.
Before the night was over, she’d be feeling him everywhere.
“Fuck me,” Lily said, the words a soft whisper.
“I will. Soon.”
He wanted to learn her first like he promised to. Gliding the tip of his tongue around the swell of her breast, he listened for the hitching of her breaths and the quiet mewls she released when he found her sensitive spots. Damian sucked and licked the red wine stains on her skin until all he could taste was her flesh and want in his mouth.
Lily’s legs tightened around his waist and she grinded her hips into his dick. The slickness of her arousal glided along his shaft with every slide of her body. Damian traveled further down her body, kissing a path around her navel before roaming lower. Her thighs opened wider the moment he buried his face into her pussy and got the first real taste of this woman and her sin on his tongue. Her flavor was tart and heady, so fucking good. Her juices flooded his taste buds and Damian only wanted more.
She hadn’t been expecting it if her loud shout was any indication. Lily jerked away from his tongue diving into her clenching core, but he pressed a hand flat to her stomach and pinned her to the bed. He fucked her harder with this tongue, thrusting it as deep as it would go until her sex was clamping down around him with every plunge.
“Holy shit,” Lily stuttered out, her cries turning louder and more desperate.
“Amazing, sweetheart,” Damian murmured before teasing her swollen clit with his tongue. “That’s how you taste. Scream for me, Lily.”
Damian drew her tiny clit in between his lips and sucked hard. Lily’s air rushed out of her chest along with a broken cry of his name. He practically felt the orgasm tear through her nervous system as her arousal seeped from her sex. Damian took his sweet fucking time lapping at her come until she was clean, shaking, and begging him for more.
He kissed a quick path back up her toned stomach, feeling her legs tremble around him as her heels dug into his lower back.
“Tell me you’re safe,” Damian said, pressing his lips to hers gently. “Because I don’t keep condoms here, sweetheart. Women haven’t been invited into my home to fuck.”
It was the truth. Damian kept this space to himself and he’d never had a reason to need protection in his apartment. In his car, sure. Brand new pack of condoms in the dashboard. But he wasn’t interested in going down six flights of stairs to grab them.
Lily grinned a sexy sight. “I am. Four shots a year since I was sixteen. I’ve never fucked without a condom, either.”
Damian kissed her again, more forcefully the second time. “Perfect. This will be a first for us both, then.”
“Yeah?”
Something soft and unsure in the lilt of her tone caught his attention.
“Yeah,” he confirmed honestly. “But what did I say earlier, huh?”
“Yours,” she swore quietly.
“Mine, Lily.”
“You better hurry the hell up and get a start on making that a fact, Damian.”
His smirk matched hers. “Demanding girl.”
“Shut up and fuck me.”
That was what he wanted to hear.
Damian leaned up and flipped Lily over onto her stomach at the same time. Her hair blew out in waves around her face as he wrapped an arm around her stomach and lifted her to her knees so her beautiful, rounded ass was on display for him. He took the chance to admire her backside with his hand, grabbing the flesh to make it pink under his handling.
“Here, too,” Damian said, dragging two fingers down the crack of her ass.
“Hmm?”
“I want you here, too. Everywhere I can have you, Lily.”
She stilled.
“Not tonight,” he added, using his other hand to grab the base of his cock. He rolled the tip of his dick along her wet slit, loving the silk feeling of her juices on his bare length. “But soon.”
“Good God.”
“No, Damian, I said.”
Lily laughed. It faded into a sharp gasp the moment he entered her. Like earlier with his fingers, Lily’s body opened so well for him. She took his cock in with three swift thrusts until he was balls deep and unable to breathe.
“Shit, you’re tight,” Damian ground out.
She was, crazily so. She was also a hot, blazing paradise, searing him straight down to his blood and bones.
Lily muttered something completely unintelligible. Her hands fisted the bedsheets as she tossed him a heated look over her shoulder. He wanted to hold her like that for a moment, feel her walls flex around him while her juices dribbled down to his balls, but he couldn’t.
Damian grasped her hips firmly, pulled out to the tip, and yanked her body back into his groin. Lily sighed, the sound full of content and pleasure. He didn’t give her a break between the second thrust and the third. The fourth and fifth came harder and faster. With each slap of skin and every shout of his name, something crawled over his skin and twisted in his stomach. It promised release and bliss. Damian’s balls tightened, the sensation of fucking Lily bare as he rammed into her over and over driving him insane.
He wouldn’t last long like this—not with her pussy holding him strong and contracting around him like she was already on the edge of her third orgasm.
“Christ, there … like that,” Lily said, her teeth cutting into her lip.
“Get your hand down there and play,” he demanded. “Feel how fucking wet you are for me, Lily.”
Damian didn’t need to tell her a second time. He felt the tips of her fingers graze his throbbing dick. Her wetness smeared as her fingers explored and teased. Her inner walls crushed around his cock so snug it nearly fucking blinded him. Ecstasy swept over his senses as he came hard, marking her in an entirely different way. When Lily’s back arched inward and her muffled scream cut through the air, he was gone.
So gone.
“Yeah, I got it,” Damian said, pressing the pads of his fingers into his temples. “Noon, Carmela’s joint. I’ll be there.”
With a frustrated sigh, Damian hung up the phone call and tossed the cell onto the table. It was going to be a long fucking day if that call was any indication.
“Who’s Carmela?” Lily asked from the kitchen entryway.
There wasn’t a hint of jealousy in her voice, but her pretty brown eyes lit up with something unknown and a sassy grin split her lips.
“A place, not a person,” Damian said.
He took his sweet time taking the sight of her in first thing in the morning after spending a proper night in his bed—one that included him being in there with her. Lily’s hair was a tousled mess, but it looked damn good all the same. She wore one of his dress shirts with only two buttons done up in the middle and nothing else. Barefoot, wide-eyed, and smiling.
It was a much better sight than the night before.
“What kind of place?” Lily asked.
“Bar,” Damian answered. “Partly.”
Lily lifted a brow and without saying a thing, Damian caved.
“A strip joint.”
“Oh,” Lily muttered, her smile fading.
“A lot of business goes on there, meetings and whatnot.”
She still didn’t appear particularly pleased. Damian didn’t want to be the one to explain that a great deal of business went down in places like those. They were the best ones to funnel illegal funds in from. Restaurants happened to be another one. Anything where cash could be hidden, the Outfit had a leg and an arm in.
“Are you jealous?” Damian asked.
Lily snorted. “Of strippers, Damian?”
Point taken.
“Good, you shouldn’t be anyway,” he said. “But I do have to head over there after we get something to chow down on.”
“About the shooting yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
Lily hummed, sadness dimming her pretty features. “Back to life, right?”
Damian nodded. “Back to life.”
“I thought you were going to take me to Eve?” she asked.
“Still will. Her parents’ place is on the way.”
“Parent,” Lily reminded him gently.
Damian flinched. “Yeah. That’s where she is, anyway. I got that info before you woke up. She’s not … doing well.”
Understatement. Evelina Conti was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, a lot like her father and brother. Questions were being asked. Answers were wanted. No one had any. This was going to be messy.
“She’ll appreciate you coming, though,” Damian said.
“What are we doing now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me,” Lily said quietly. “What are we?”
“Whatever you want to be.”
Lily laughed drily. “That’s not entirely true, Damian. We’re still getting married and I still didn’t choose it.”
“I don’t know what you expect to hear from me, Lily, but my stance remains the same as it did before last night. Besides, what is the problem with being able to stand one another, huh? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Is that all it’ll ever be?” she asked.
“I’m not asking for you to fall in love with me.”
Lily didn’t bat a lash. “Touché.”
“The car was white, I don’t give a fuck what anybody says,” Tommas said sharply. “You weren’t facing the window, Joel.”
“How fast did that drive-by happen, huh?” Joel demanded. “Three seconds, maybe four if we were lucky. It was silver—grey, even.”
“It was white!”
Damian leaned against the wall beside Dino, watching the scene unfold. Why the fuck the color of the car that had been involved with the shooting was important, Damian didn’t know. He supposed they were trying to discern who had been driving, but since everyone who had seen the car agreed the windows were tinted dark, no one knew the shooter.
“What do you think?” Damian asked Dino.
“I think we’re going to have a problem on our hands,” Dino replied.
Damian chuckled. “Theirs, anyway.”
“Something like that.”
“Could have been the East Side gang,” someone put in. “We’ve had a lot of issues with them.”
“No,” Dino said, jumping to the main conversation. “It wouldn’t be them. They’re the type of thugs that enjoy bragging about the shit they’ve done. We would have known already if they were the problem.”
“Very true,” Terrance said, his gaze on the tumbler glass of whiskey in his hand. The boss was another man in the place that seemed to be taking the entire scene in silence. He always had liked to observe more than participate. “We’ve cleared out a lot of those little problem gangs, anyway. I don’t think that’s where we should be looking.”
“It was white,” came a whisper from the far, shadowed corner.
Damian cringed at the pain in the man’s voice. Riley Conti didn’t even look away from the glass of rum in his hand as he spoke the words. He was still shaking and Damian had been counting. That was the man’s fourth glass in an hour. Riley was shitfaced and thoroughly working on forgetting what had happened.
It was going to hurt a hell of a lot more when he was sober again.
It always fucking did.
“The car was white,” Riley spat. “It’s not a fucking gang. This is … personal, right? I mean, if they wanted to go after the boss, why not just damn well do that, huh? S’not about the boss, you goddamn idiots.”
Terrance’s brow rose but for once, the Outfit’s leader didn’t correct his front boss’s ignorance and rudeness. Your wife getting killed was a pass on that shit, obviously.
“What, inside job, then?” Ben DeLuca asked.
Dino stiffened beside Damian.
“I didn’t say that,” Riley said, his words slurring at the end. “I said it’s personal, meaning someone pissed someone else off and they’re making a point.”
The thirty or so men chatting quietly in the strip club silenced instantly with that suggestion. While they had all been discussing back and forth for a good hour about possibilities and what needed to be done, the very whisper of an inside job stopped them all. Immediately, men glanced between one another in a hushed state, tension climbing higher with every passing second. Damian could see the unspoken questions, accusations, and suspicion in their eyes.
Terrance leaned back in his chair. “That’s a bold statement, Riley.”
“Makes better sense than a fucking gang,” the front boss replied in his drunken stupor. “Who’d you piss off, Terrance?”
The boss waved it off. “Laurent?”
“Yeah, Boss?” Laurent asked from where he sat at a booth with five other men. The bullet he took in his shoulder the day before didn’t seem to be causing him any issues. Then again, Damian’s uncle always did hide things well.
“I didn’t get the chance to say something what with the bullets and blood, but make damn sure your wife understands we’re not to have a repeat of yesterday.”
“Got it,” Damian’s uncle said quickly.
“What was that all about, anyway?” Dino asked Damian too low for anyone else to hear.
“I told you, she had a fucking spell,” Damian said, unaffected.
His cheek still hurt something awful, too. The nice row of scratches on his back that Lily had given him in the shower after their first round made up for that, though.
“About what?” Dino asked.
“Lily.”
Dino scowled. “Our father?”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking bitch. I suppose she forgets her father was the dirtiest cop that ever lived.”
Damian laughed darkly. “I know.”
“Doesn’t apply to her, right?”
“He was dirty, maybe that’s why she overlooks it,” Damian suggested.
“Probably.”
The conversation still happening drew in Damian’s attention again.
“They drew blood first,” Joel said. “I want to know who it was and soon.”
“Patience comes in handy for times like these,” Terrance replied. “You’ll do well to remember that.”
“He has a point, Terrance,” Ben said. “Doing nothing feels like we’re sitting ducks waiting for the next bullet to hit one of us. Perhaps Mia was just an accident, maybe whoever it was had been aiming for you.”
Riley choked out a pained sound in the corner. No one paid him any mind.
Ben continued like he hadn’t been interrupted. “Who’s to say? What if the next mistake is one of your granddaughters, hmm? You’ve always got them around and close. The next stray bullet might just have their blood all over it, Terrance.”
The boss barely reacted to the idea of Abriella or Alessa being caught in the crossfire of another shooting, but Damian knew better. Terrance’s gaze narrowed and his lips twitched, fighting to pull into a sneer. Anyone else probably overlooked the small ticks, but not Damian.
Terrance was worried.
As he should be, Damian mused.
“What about the Poletti kid?” Theo asked as he took a seat across from Terrance.
Damian froze in place. How in the hell did Theo know about the Poletti hit? Theo asked his boss about it like he knew Terrance had been the one to make the call. But that was impossible. Damian hadn’t said a word to his friend about the hit.
Dino knew …
Damian passed Dino a questioning stare.
Dino simply shrugged and lifted his beer to his lips without a word.
“What about the Poletti kid?” Terrance asked.
“Are we looking at a situation of retaliation here?” Theo asked back.
Joel’s stare snapped to his grandfather. “What in the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Terrance muttered with a wave of his hand to dismiss the concerns.
Theo didn’t relent. “You put that hit out on him, didn’t you, Boss?”
“What did you just say?” Joel asked, his tone taking on a threatening edge.
“Just what I fucking said,” Theo said without any heat to his words. “You’re not deaf or stupid so clean out your ears. Boss decided to cull that issue before you got a big head and invited the enemy in. Shit like that happens when you think you make all the calls and you don’t, Joel. Welcome to the big boy world where you are not the most important person in the room. I imagine that must be hard for you, but grin and bear it, yeah? God knows we’ve done it enough for you.”
Ouch.
“Damn,” Dino whispered like he was fucking proud or something.
Damian figured it out then. Terrance had told Joel of the hit on James Poletti, but he obviously hadn’t explained to his grandson that he was the one who made the call for it.
Terrance opened his mouth to speak. “I—”
“Did you kill James?” Joel demanded, cutting in on the boss.
Terrance heaved a sigh. “Joel, you are one more word away from getting my boot in your teeth.”
Riley stumbled out from the corner, waving his glass wildly as he pointed at the boss. “You did this?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You … you did this!” Riley shouted. “My Mia—she died because of you?”
“Somebody needs to stop him before he does something he regrets,” Dino said.
“I think you’ve had quite enough,” Terrance said calmly to his front boss. He gestured at one of the enforcers leaning against a chair behind him. “Ruck, take him home or—”
“I will not go home!” Riley took another stumbling step forward before his glass fell from his trembling hand. It shattered across the floor, the rum slipping along the lines in the tiles. Everyone else in the room seemed too frozen to speak or move. “Did you do this, Terrance? Tell me.”
“I wasn’t the one holding the gun, Riley.”
“You didn’t have to be,” Riley said. “Isn’t that what you always said, Boss? The man who orders the gun is just as bloody as the one who pulls the trigger.”
“Take him home,” Terrance repeated to the enforcer, still unruffled by the threatening tone Riley had taken on. “Sober him up and get him thinking clearly.”
Riley cackled with a drunken laugh as the enforcer stepped forward to shuffle him out of the strip joint. The rest of the men who had gathered for the meeting stayed quiet until the front boss for the Outfit was out of the building and it was safe to speak again.
“He’ll be fine once he cleans up,” Ben said to Terrance.
The boss didn’t look like he believed a word of it.
“It could be retaliation,” Terrance said instead. He subtly passed a glance in Damian’s direction before going back to the conversation at hand. “The hit wasn’t entirely clean when it was followed through. There might have been someone who saw something, figured out the hit came from the Outfit, and didn’t come forward to the police.”
No one turned to Damian for answers.
This was exactly why he liked being on the boss’s payroll and not anyone else’s. The only person he needed to answer to for his fuck up was Terrance. Even so, he didn’t think the boss was blaming him for it.
“You fucking bastard,” Joel hissed. “And for what, to teach me a goddamn lesson?”
Terrance shrugged his thick shoulders like it didn’t make a difference either way. “You will learn my lessons one way or another, Joel.”
Joel gawked with his jaw wide open and hatred brimming. “Who did the hit, then?”
“I want enforcers on all the women,” Terrance said instead of answering his grandson.
Another lesson Joel needed to learn was to never expect answers from a boss. Terrance wasn’t required to explain his decisions.
Terrance ticked his chin in Chris’s direction, an enforcer that tended to work a lot with the Conti crew. “Chris, stick close to Adriano and Evelina. I’m sure Riley will agree with me once he’s clear-headed.”
Laurent spoke up, too. “I have a couple of men from my crew keeping an eye on my wife.”
“Already.” Terrance didn’t even pose the word as a question. It felt loaded with something Damian couldn’t place. “Why is that, Laurent? You had no reason to believe this was a situation of retaliation on anyone’s part.”
“Being safe, Boss.”
Even Damian had to wonder about that.
“Sure, sure,” the boss drawled before giving his right-hand his attention. “Ben, I’m sure you’ll figure something out for the DeLuca side.”
“Of course,” Ben replied.
“And Damian,” Terrance added.
Damian perked, but barely. “Yeah?”
“I know your time is well-spent with the Rossi crew lately, but you’ll be drawing back on that until this mess has blown over.”
“Oh?”
“Lily seems to like spending time with my granddaughter. I’m sure over the next little while they’ll be together a lot, given Abriella is in the wedding. I’ll have an extra guard on Abriella. But otherwise, I expect you to be their shadow at every point when they are together.”
Joel scoffed, obviously still pissed and reeling over the information he learned today. “And he’s so fucking good at being in those, right?”
Damian acted like Joel didn’t say a thing. “Will do, Boss.”
“Good,” Terrance said.
Tribute went forward as it always did every month. The men paid their seventy-percent due to the boss without question. No one was short. No one ever was. All the while, Damian couldn’t help but notice how the mood had changed between the men. Where some would chat away in comfortable groups usually, most were off by themselves.
The paranoia had set in already.
All it took was a suggestion of something that nobody had even confirmed: inside job.