Page 56 of Cardinal

Luciano chuckled deeply with a growl. "You can do it, baby, come for me. Be my good girl and come from your spanking." He encouraged me in a voice laced heavily with lust and excitement.

The force of the impacts picked up slightly, just enough to send me over the edge fully. My body shook with pleasure from the knot in my stomach snapping, sending—what felt like—endless waves of pleasure throughout me.

Slowly, the spanks came to a stop as my body shook from the aftershocks of my orgasm.

"Luciano." I whimpered needily, reaching back and grabbing at him just as he released me fully.

My crash was coming; I could feel it.

"Shh, shh, I got you." Luciano soothed me after he pulled me up fully into his arms.

Holding my trembling body tightly, he showered my face in kisses while whispering sweet nothings in Italian for a good moment before switching back to English. "You did so amazing, amorina. I am so proud. Just breathe. You are okay. I am here. You are safe."

Chapter 29

Luciano

"My ass hurts."

Peering up from my phone, I looked at Juliet with an amused and satisfied smirk. "Well, I wonder whose fault that is," I remarked sarcastically with a hidden chuckle bubbling in my chest.

Unable to reply, Juliet narrowed her eyes at me and stuck her tongue out while flipping me the middle finger. "Asshole." She pouted at me before bundling herself back up in her blanket and turning her body away from me on the couch.

No, her ass didn't hurt from testing her limits. She was fine this morning when we woke. The reason for her perky little behind hurting right now was that she decided to throw a little fit after breakfast when I told her to be patient about the matter last night. I had every intention of keeping my word to her last night about filling her in on everything, just not right after breakfast because I had meetings to attend.

So, here we were in my office, her grumbling away on my office couch while I busied myself with work behind my desk. "Juliet, please leave. I have a video meeting."

"No." She bit back defiantly with a pouting glare.

"Juliet, this is an important meeting, so please—"

God damn it!

The ringing of the call and the popup on the computer screen prevented me from furthering my persistence with Juliet to leave.

"Don't think you're going to get away with this. You better be prepared to cry tonight while you apologize over my knee." I growled at her before straightening myself out and picking up the group call.

"Hey everyone, Leah's gonna be a few moments late. She's wrapping up a patient right now." My friend and fellow Syndicate member said after popping into the group call with everyone else.

"That's fine. She's a busy woman. She already has to put up with enough shit as it is with her work as a doctor and us, so give her a break. We can handle the rest of the nitty gritty shit." Ares, another friend and member, spoke up with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Hate how we even have to have these meetings in the first place because of stupid people." Aidan groaned in complaint, sighing heavily at the end.

"It's unfortunate, but we all knew times like these were bound to happen when we took over and stomped over the old cockroaches." Ares brought up the silent problem that had been stewing in the pot for way too long. "It's also unfortunate that it has gone on this far because of our own comfort and trust in the old farts. We should have been more diligent and vigilant. If we had, then Luciano's girl probably never would have ended up in that deplorable place, and other victims like her wouldn't have had to suffer because their assailants went on free as a bird."

Sighing heavily, I ran a hand through my hair and leaned back in my chair. "I hate to agree with Ares, but we have gotten a little too comfortable with our power. And I am afraid we are not being taken as seriously as we should be. How we operate things works for us in this day and age, but a lot of people are starting to mistake that as a weakness."

"What's wrong with agreeing with me?" Ares retorted in an offended but playful voice.

"Because you're not the brightest of the bunch," Aidan remarked with a laugh, causing the rest of us to join him. "I swear, they should call you The Hippo instead of The Shark as you are just a mindless idiot with too much rage at the world, and you're the biggest out of the five of us." He added with a snicker and shit-eating grin.

"Excuse you! What I got is pure love and buff muscles. I am a fucking tank, not a cushion. How dare you compare me to such a homicidal beast." Ares argued with a soft scoff. "And as if you're one to talk about size, you walking stick bug. Honestly, how do you pull girls with a dick the size of a twig." He shot back at Aidan, who rolled his eyes in return.

"Because I ain't built like a stick down there." Aidan guffawed. "Ask Evie, she'll be happy to tell—" A pillow flew at Aidan's face, hitting him with a rather loud thwump.

"DO NOT BRING OUR SEX LIFE TO YOUR FRIENDS!" Evie's voice shouted somewhere off-screen.

Chuckling, Sebastian lightly slapped his table to regain control of our rowdy group. "We can bust out the measuring tape after the meeting, even though we already know who would win that contest by a mile."

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