Page 8 of Beautifully Savage Butterfly

“I wasn’t going to shoot him,” I mutter, dropping my gaze and feeling like a child being scolded. Not that that stops my cock from stiffening, aching for more of Orion’s harsh words.

He makes another half-amused, largely dismissive sound, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink.

“What are you even doing here? What the fuck do you want? Are you here to make sure I pay up? Is that it?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a roll of bills. “It’s not like I’ve missed a payment yet, but sure, whatever. Fucking take it.” He whips the roll at me, and it bounces off of the center of my chest. I catch it on the rebound, wrapping my fingers around it and licking my lips.

“Not my department.” I toss the money back to him. He doesn’t make a move to grab it though, letting it hit the ground near his feet without so much as blinking at it, his gaze still fixed on me.

Something hot dances behind his eyes. Rage and adrenaline, the kind of violence I would drown myself in if he let me.

“What then?” he demands through clenched teeth, blood still flowing freely from the wound on his face, trickling down onto the collar of his shirt and streaking across his throat. “Every time I turn around, you’re there. You’re the goddamn shadow I can’t stop seeing in the corner of my eye everywhere I go. What do you want from me?”

He pushes off the sink and steps into my space, bringing his face close to mine the same way he did last night, every exhaled breath bathing my face. My insides buzz and vibrate, heat churning in my gut as my cock pulses so hard it makes my knees tremble. My breaths come out in embarrassing little pants.

“You,” I answer.

ORION

I’m sure I heard him wrong. Or maybe I just don’t understand the meaning of the single, whispered word, even if it seems like it should be obvious.

You.

My nostrils flare, my pulse still beating at a frantic pace, the thrill of the fight pumping in my veins, leaving me drunk with unspent violence and frustration. And now he’s here, fucking with me, taunting me. Maybe this is some kind of homophobic bullshit. He heard I was gay and made it his pet cause to mess with my head, to throw me off balance and take the little bit of control I manage to cling to in my life.

Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe he thinks that since I owe his family money, he’s entitled to whatever he wants from me. He thinks he can make me his powerless plaything and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Does he think he’s getting back at me for getting in his face last night?

A dark, humorless laugh rumbles in my throat and I take another step towards him, kicking the roll of bills out of the way in the process. Elio’s throat bobs with a heavy swallow, but he holds his ground, his dark eyes burning into mine, his lips parted with heavy breaths. Whichever one of those possibilities is true, whatever his reason for fucking with me is, it’s not going to go down the way he thinks it is. I can guaran-fucking-tee that much.

If he wants to play, I’ll fucking play. But it’s going to be on my terms, not his.

I dart a hand out and wrap it around his throat. There’s a voice in the back of my head making a valiant attempt to save me from myself, trying to remind me that Elio can pull out his gun and shoot me if he wants to. He can make my life miserable in a million other ways too. Ways I’m sure I couldn’t even fathom if I tried. But the feeling of his Adam’s apple moving under my palm, the quiet, almost inaudible whimper that falls from his lips, the way his eyes widen with a hint of fear and arousal, all tap into the primal things inside of me that I struggle to control on my best days.

I tighten my grip and take another step towards him, shoving him backward until his back hits the wall. We’re roughly the same height, but the way he shrinks under me makes it feel like I’m towering over him, overpowering him. His hands slide up my belly, bunching up my shirt as he drags his uncalloused fingers over my skin. Elio’s eyelashes flutter, his lids drooping, the hard, thick shape of his arousal jerking eagerly against my thigh.

“You’re here because you want me?” My voice is rough as gravel, my fingers flexing around his throat again, not pressing quite hard enough to cut off his air, but enough to let him know I could if I wanted to.

“Yes.” The word comes out as a hungry, gut-deep moan, stroking my cock to life and heating my skin from head to toe.

I’m still not sure what he’s playing at. Calling my bluff? Or maybe this unhinged Mafia prince gets off on being roughed up a little. Maybe he’s gotten tired of convincing the quivering yes-men in his life to push him around in bed and pretend to hate him, and now he wants the real thing. He wants to know what it’s like to be used and discarded by someone who actually fucking hates him.

“You’re a spoiled, pathetic brat,” I spit, bringing my face so close to his that our noses touch, the smell of his expensive cologne filling my lungs and lingering on my tongue.

Elio’s eyes roll back and his whole body convulses, trapped between me and the wall. He lets loose another one of those rattling moans, a sound that’s pure sex.

“Get on your knees.” I release my grip on his throat and take a step back so quickly that he stumbles, his eyes flying open as he sways forward, then immediately hits his knees right there on the filthy bathroom floor.

I look down at him, taking in the once-in-a-lifetime sight of a man like Elio Moretti kneeling in a suit that would pay for at least a month of Jack’s care. His face is flushed and his tie is loose, askew. His normally perfect hair is rumpled, and his chest is heaving with rapid, shallow breaths. He tilts his face up, meeting my gaze again with a desperate, almost helpless expression. Pleading written all over him.

I could walk away right now, leave him here on his knees, off balance and confused. The power in that is satisfying all on its own.

I reach down and palm my cock through my shorts, feeling the heat of my throbbing erection through two layers of clothing. It’s been too damn long since I’ve seen any action that didn’t come from my own right hand. Even longer since I’ve had a man willing to crawl for me. And the lingering adrenaline from the fight is making every twitch of his muscles, every bitten-off whimper he tries to swallow feel more intense, more exciting, more fucking necessary.

The fact that it’s Elio fucking Moretti making my balls tighten and my heart thunder only pisses me off more. People like him think they own the rest of us. He struts around this city like it’s his own little kingdom, waving his gun around wherever he pleases. Robbing people, killing people, taking anything he likes without a second thought about the consequences because he’s never had any. What he needs is to learn a lesson. Forget teaching him manners. He needs to know that he doesn’t own me.

I hook my fingers in the elastic waistband of my shorts and the jockstrap underneath, shoving them both down around my thighs. My cock springs free, bobbing in front of Elio’s face, hard and thick, flushed with the blood that’s pumping through it at the same frantic pace as my heartbeat. I tangle my fingers savagely in his hair, taking pleasure in messing it up even more, destroying the pristine image of him as a man with a five-hundred-dollar haircut. He can live in my world for a few minutes, hair wild and tangled.

I grip the base of my cock and press the tip against his soft, parted lips. He darts his tongue out, catching it on the loose, sensitive skin of my foreskin. I hiss, and a fat droplet of clear, slick precum oozes from my slit. Elio laps that up too, gasping quietly like he just fucking tasted his favorite dessert. I clench my jaw and tighten my fingers around my cock, making the tip swell even more.

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