Natalia
I looked at Nicholas after Giovanni had gone. His presence left a cold, sickly feeling crawling over my skin like spiders. I didn’t like the way he’d looked at me or the way he’d kept licking his lips. And I didn’t know what he meant when said he would see me soon.
“What was that?” I asked him. To be honest, he still scared me, too. The ice had been such a tender, unexpected move, but as the memories of the previous night flooded back, I remembered more and more of how I’d felt when he first entered—like a rat, cornered as a jungle cat approached me.
“Nothing,” he muttered. He swung his legs over the far edge of the bed and sat with his back to me. I saw the tattoos arcing across his muscles. Animals and abstract designs ranged from shoulder to shoulder and neck to waist. Scars swung in vicious sweeps between them. He struck a frightening profile.
“Please tell me,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder in surprise. He must have heard the desperation in my voice. After so many weeks, months, years—no, a whole lifetime—of being batted around by forces bigger and stronger than me, all I wanted was to know what was going on. I must have sounded so pitiful, but I couldn’t help it. I was sick of being at the whim of others.
“You want reassurance?” he asked after a long pause. His jaw was cut at such a rugged angle. The light beard covering his cheeks only made him look more intense, more icily handsome.
I nodded.
“Here it is: you belong to me. Completely and utterly. You will do what I say and go where I tell you to go. You will fuck when I want to fuck, eat when I want to eat, talk when I want to talk. There’s nothing you can do without my permission. You. Are. Mine.” His eyes flared.
I held my breath and waited for him to continue. He seemed like he had more to say.
“But I protect what’s mine,” he finished quietly. “As long as you’re with me, nothing bad will happen to you.” He turned back around away from me and let his words hang in the air.
I was confused. This man didn’t make any sense. He’d bought me from the stage. I didn’t know what he was doing at that place, if it were somewhere he went often or if he had bought others before me. So often, his words and actions matched those of a man who didn’t give a damn about me. You. Are. Mine. Like I was meat. Like I was nothing.
But there was always a twist. Each time I was certain of who he was, he surprised me with something else. He’d fucked me like a whore, then tended to my body like it was an act of worship. He told me I was his slave, then promised to keep me safe. When he was done, I was left just as lost as I was when he had started talking. Who was he? Why was he here? Why was I?
He stood up abruptly and started to walk towards the door. “Wait!” I called out. I needed more answers. Anything else to explain what would happen next. I couldn’t sit around in empty rooms and wait for people to tell me what to do anymore.
When he didn’t stop, I jumped and ran after him, holding the sheets gathered around my naked body. I reached out to tug on his bicep to stop him from leaving.
He stopped in his tracks and looked down at my hand on his arm. Then he turned to face me.
His chest was a rippling plateau of muscle. I could see individual fibers twitching and settling into place with his rising and falling breath. I had to resist the itch to lay my hand on his pecs. His expression was unreadable. A tingle of fear curled between my legs. Or was it something else? I couldn’t tell. Everything was too mashed up, each emotion indistinguishable from the next. Maybe it wasn’t fear; maybe it was desire.
He looked down at me. I was tiny in comparison to him. Were we even the same species? He was big, dark, broad in every direction, whereas I was fragile and petite. My pale skin looked unformed, untested when compared to the scars and calluses of his hard-earned tan.
“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked. My voice was tiny and afraid.
Instead of answering with words, he brought his mouth to mine. Our lips crushed together. I hadn’t kissed a male outside of my dreams in twelve years.
His tongue was thick and strong. The taste and smell of him crashed over me in waves as he wrapped an arm around my waist and drew me closer to him. I stood on the tips of my toes to reach up to his mouth as my lips parted and my tongue slipped through to clash with his.
My breasts were pressed flat against his chest. The kiss deepened. I put a hand on each of his shoulders. He plucked me up easily and wrapped my legs around his waist. This was what I needed. I could trust physical contact. Nicholas was solid and real underneath my hands. I smelled him and felt his heartbeat. For this moment, that was all I could trust. But at least it was something.
He turned to the wall and smashed me between him and it to support my weight. With one hand, he pulled the sheet from where I held it against me. It puddled to the floor, leaving me bare while his fingertips roved from my knee along my outer thigh to cup my ass in his strong hands.
He kissed me hungrily. I gave back as good as I got, my energy feeding off his and his off mine, winding upwards and upwards like a tornado of fire. It was sore to spread my legs so wide after the savage sex in the cell below the club, but I ignored the ache and started to grind myself against his rock-hard abs. Shimmers of a warm tingle spread from my clit outwards like ripples in a pond.
He spun back around and dropped onto the bed. I landed on my back with a soft “Oh!” He didn’t hesitate to break my kiss and slither down my body, biting and sucking as he moved across my jaw and down the curve of my neck, to take the tip of one breast in his mouth. He suckled gently on my nipple while his left hand kneaded the other. His free hand slipped between my legs, parted my lips, and begin to probe timidly at my opening.
He switched breasts, putting the other nipple in his mouth. The feeling of his lips on my skin was amazing. I wanted more, everywhere. As if he heard my thoughts, he moved his mouth down. His beard was rough on my stomach, but when he put his tongue along my slit, I forgot everything except for that.
The hot, wet feeling of his lips brushing against my pussy wiped away the soreness like a sponge. In its place was a liquid warmth that radiated through me, teasing me from the inside. He lowered his tongue to the bottom of my slit and licked all the way up, taking his time and touching every sensitive stretch of skin, not missing a single bit.
At the top, he wound the tip of his tongue in slow circles around my clit, then put his fingers back inside me. This time, he curled them around and stroked the upper wall of my tunnel. A whole new throb stole across me, unlike anything else I’d ever felt. I moaned loudly.
He kept at it for several long minutes, licking faster and pushing his fingers deep into my core. A bizarre gravity intensified beneath Nicholas’s mouth, like a pressure that spun on a tight orbit that grew smaller and smaller but heavier at the same time. When he retreated and let loose a hot breath directly on my mound, the pressure exploded outwards.
I started to buck and writhe as rainbows of an unbelievable feeling rocketed from the top of my head to the bottom of my curling toes. The second he felt me coming beneath him, Nico pulled out his fingers and pressed the heel of his hand hard against my mound, giving me a solid point of contact to hold onto while I thrashed around the bed. My fingers grappled for purchase and found Nico’s shaved head. I clung tight to him with my locked thighs and tight hands, eyes wrenched shut, while the sensations flowed through me in shockwaves.
After they finally subsided, I opened my eyes. The orgasm had left me hungrier than ever for him. Coming wasn’t enough; now I needed to be filled. I pulled him toward me and fastened my mouth against his. I wanted to taste my juices on his tongue. I opened my lips wide to take it in. His body was hard and heavy on top of me. I felt the insistent bulge of his yearning cock, pressing against the inside of his jeans. I wanted that, too.
Nicholas shoved me back onto the bed and whipped off his jeans in one quick motion. I admired his bulk even more in the bright light of the room than I had in the dim dungeon last night. Every muscle was perfectly etched. Each of his abs cast a little shadow in the valleys surrounding it. I ran my fingertips between them, savoring the solidity.
He took his cock in one hand and stroked it to full hardness. I watched, fascinated, as it grew back to its monstrous length. I wanted him inside me, but I was scared again. He pulled my legs over his shoulders and pressed the head of his cock against my dripping wet pussy. Just as he started to shove himself forward, I reached out to put a hand on his chest.
“Nicholas,” I said with fear in my voice and painted across my face. He looked at me. “Please go slow.”
In reply, he leaned forward to kiss me deeply at the same time that he slid within. My knees were pressed close to my ears, stretching me to my widest. I whimpered, but the pain was quick to evaporate this time. My body wanted this much man in me. Despite the pain I’d felt before, it wouldn’t have it any other way.
His first few dozen strokes were slow and shallow, giving me time to settle into the rhythm. I started to rock with him. Our kiss met and broke apart over and over again. When my lips were not pressed against his, I gazed into his eyes. Their blueness was startling. It didn’t seem real.
Nicholas slid a hand down my body and tapped carefully at my clit in time with his strokes. As he did, I felt the gravity circling within me again, beginning the arduous climb back to another climax. His thrusting started to go deeper and deeper, until he was almost all the way inside me, our hips merely inches away from meeting.
I wasn’t ready yet for his whole cock. I couldn’t imagine what that would feel like. This was so much already.
He paused for a moment, then withdrew himself from me and rolled onto his back. He pulled my legs across so I sat straddling him, my knees on the bed. His manhood stood pointing towards the ceiling. I lined it up against my abdomen. It stretched past my belly button. I marveled at the thing, wondering how I could ever manage to take it all. I wanted to, so badly, as if it would prove something to him. Like doing so would make me worthy of him.
Rising forward onto my knees, I aimed his tip towards my entrance and started to settle down. Inch by slow inch, I took him inside. My body hugged tight around his girth as my hips descended. I closed my eyes and bit my lip. Just like before, there was a brief flash of pain followed by a resounding satisfaction.
I started to rock my hips back and forth. My hands were planted on his chest for balance, while his rested on the upper curve of my ass. I could feel my breasts swaying with the motion, but I kept my eyes riveted on Nicholas’s as I bounced. He groaned, a low, grating noise that sounded like a lion purring or some powerful engine revving up for a race.
I bounced faster. He helped me up and down with his hands, raising me up to the point that he almost fell from me, then bringing me back down as far as I could handle. When he lifted one hand and slapped hard across my ass, I yelped and stopped for a moment.
“What was that?” I demanded.
He looked at me fiercely. “You’re mine.” Then he jerked his hips upwards, driving into me hard, just a tiny bit deeper than he’d ever gone before. I moaned in agonized surprise.
He wasn’t done yet, though. He sat up on one elbow, wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled me off him. I fell with a thump on my side, facing away. I started to scramble around to look at him again, but before I could get my bearings, he had wrapped one leg over and through mine and hooked his arm around my throat. I lay on my right side facing the wall with him behind me, pinning me to the mattress and putting soft pressure on my airway.
“Nico…” I protested weakly, but we both knew it was futile.
He used his left hand to push himself back into my cunt and started thrusting again. As he did, he put his mouth against my ear and whispered. His tone was gritty and low. “Don’t ever ask me a question like that again,” he ordered.
Thump. Thump. The thrusting was hard, fast, furious. His left hand moved down to start stroking my clit at a high tempo.
“You’re mine and I’ll do whatever I want with you. Do you understand that?”
Thump. I groaned. His cock was a blur, slamming into me, increasing the pressure of my budding orgasm with every plunge deeper. I felt the last of my resistance slipping away. I couldn’t turn him aside. When I knew he could do this to me, I was utterly his.
“You’re mine, Natalia, can’t you see that? Swear to me you’ll obey my every word. Swear it to me now.”
“Nico…” I moaned again. This time, it was an act of submission.
He pushed his hips as hard as he could. I couldn’t move; he had me locked up. But I didn’t want to go anywhere. The colors in the room had started to run as my eyes fluttered open and shut. I was choking but it was beautiful and I wanted it. I wanted to be trapped beneath this man while he fucked me and made this pressure mount so much higher than I thought I could take. Words were impossible, or so I thought.
“Swear it, Natalia! Now!”
“I swear, I swear,” I mumbled. The bubble broke. I came; he came; hot cum filled me as I tumbled in the throes of an orgasm stronger than any tide in this world or the next. I felt myself falling for him already, despite all the voices in my head crying for me to run for the door as fast as I could.
But I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t. I was his.
# # #
“So where are you from?” I asked as we laid on our backs, facing the ceiling, our chests rising and falling slowly as the breath gradually came back to us.
“Here. Everywhere. Nowhere. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to answer that question.”
“Hmm.”
“It doesn’t matter. I grew up by myself. My parents died when I was young. There was just me.”
“That’s awful.”
He shrugged. “It is what it is. I got past it.”
“Maybe you were lucky, though. Sometimes I wish I’d grown up without parents.”
“Hated your folks?”
“I only had one. Just Daddy. But yes, I hated him. Or, at least, I think I did. It’s hard to tell. My life’s been so jumbled up from the start that I don’t really know how I feel about things a lot of the time.”
It was his turn to make a wordless murmur. “Ah.”
“Sorry. I know you don’t care about that.”
Suddenly, he sat up and turned to me. His expression was fierce and focused. “Of course I do. When I said you were mine, I meant all of you. That means your past, your old man. It means I want all your scars and your nightmares. All of you, Natalia. There’s nothing about you I don’t want.”
I shivered, startled by the abrupt intensity. It was as if all the sound had been sucked out of the room and all I could hear was his steady breathing, the air whistling through his nostrils. The brightest color was his eyes, bluer than anything else I’d ever seen, staring at me and repeating silently all the words he had just said.
I’d never heard anyone talk like him before. No one talked like that, as a matter of fact. It was ridiculous, downright insane…and yet, it struck a nerve somewhere deep in me. A part of me heard what he said and held it tight. I didn’t want to let it go.
But what did it mean to give everything to this man? I hardly knew him. He was brutal and savage. Dark. Cold. He might be a monster, interspersing his aggression with little acts of kindness to keep me off balance. Maybe I should run, before I found out how deep this rabbit hole really went.
After all, I’d tried so hard to stand up for myself before. With Daddy, with Alessandra, I’d told myself a thousand times that this, this next thing—the next insult or command, the next degrading slap—would be the one that pushed me over the edge, the one that would spur me to lash back. Marco had told me to stand up for myself. A little boy had, too, a long time ago. I was on the verge of finally understanding what that meant, right on the cusp of actually doing it.
And then Nicholas entered the picture. I knew there would be no standing up against him. He was iron through and through, and he would break me if I even dared to try. What did it mean that I felt a deep longing towards him? How should I interpret this desire? I didn’t even want to stand up to him. I wanted to fall on my back and let him take me. Again and again and again.
I heard an electronic beeping as the floorboards on Nicholas’s side of the bed vibrated. He reached over and picked up a cell phone. It was the one Giovanni had given him. He flipped it open, thumbed through the menus, and selected the text message that had just come in. I could see the first few words from where I sat.
<Come to 1432 Poplar Street. Now. – Cosimo.>
Nicholas stood up instantly. “I have to go,” he muttered. He picked up his clothes from the floor and started to dress himself again. I felt a pang of regret as his body disappeared behind the layers of fabric. It was such a beautiful thing; it deserved to be exposed at all times.
“When will you be back?” I asked. I had nothing to do and nowhere to go.
“I don’t know. But, Natalia,” he said, turning to me and turning the wattage in his eyes on full blast, “stay put. Don’t even think about going anywhere. Do you understand?”
I swallowed and hesitated before giving him the tiniest of nods. “I understand,” I said quietly.
“Good.” Satisfied, he turned back to tugging on his boots. When he had dressed, he walked over to the closet. There was a small chest of drawers on the floor in there. He opened one and took something out of it, then strode back to me.
“Here,” he said, handing me a small cell phone. “There’s only one number in here—mine. You answer only if my name shows up on there. Otherwise, don’t touch the thing. Got it?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he treaded out of the room. I heard the door creak, then slam shut.
And then I was alone.