Page 6 of Owning Nicci

“You talked back to me last night.” I meet her gaze coolly. “And now you’re doing it again. Do you think I’m the kind of man you can speak to that way,principessa?”

I see her flinch at the endearment, at the way my accent thickens as I say it. She swallows hard, setting down the water bottle, and I see tension ripple through every inch of her slender body.

‘Slender’ is almost an overstatement. She’s waifishly thin, to the point that I can see her hip bones pressing against the edge of her short black skirt. I’d guess the small, rounded edges of her cleavage are from a push-up bra; I can’t imagine her breasts are that large. And yet, she’s arousing to me all the same. I imagine stripping her clothes away—ripping off that tiny skirt, the ridiculous black fishnet shirt that she has on, and tearing off that bra to reveal her breasts to me. Small or not, I can imagine her on her knees with her nipples pinched by clamps, tears in her eyes as I tug on the chain and drag her to my waiting cock. The surge of lust that rushes through me is dizzying.

“Clean the couch,” I tell her flatly, and she nods with a jerky motion, walking towards it. I watch impassively as she gets a wet wipe and slides it over the leather, enjoying the sight of her bending over, the peek of the curve of her ass beneath the skirt.She’s only wearing a thong, a tiny one at that, and I get a glimpse of the bare, smooth folds of her pussy as she bends over fully, at the edges of the thong.

My cock leaps again, and I grit my teeth. In tormenting her, in drawing this out, I’m clearly also torturing myself. But if it’s this difficult to maintain my control, then I need to do exactly that. I need to remind myself of who is in charge here. Not her, and not my cock.

When the couch is cleaned and dry, I sit down, sprawling back on it with my legs wide. Nicci’s gaze covertly sweeps over me, and I can see her taking me in. The look on her face tells me that she recognizes wealth and power, but that’s nothing that I didn’t already know about her.

Her gaze drops to my groin, and I see her looking at the thick ridge of my cock, pressed against my zipper. I reach down, a smirk on my lips as I adjust it.

“You’ll have to earn this cock,principessa,” I tell her, rubbing my thumb over the tip through the fabric before pulling my hand away. “Change the music. Something less abrasive. This shit is giving me a headache. Dance for me.”

She narrows her eyes. “That’s all you want? A dance? You can get that out on the floor. Or are you just going to jerk off while you watch me?”

A dry chuckle slips out at that. “Don’t worry about what I plan to do. Learn to follow instructions,principessa. Dance.”

I see her jaw tighten, anger flaring in her eyes. She wants to fight back, to spit vitriol at me, to tell me exactly where I can shove myinstructions. She’s biting back all of that with the greatest of effort, and I wonder if she’ll continue to hold back when it’s just the two of us, alone in my playroom.

A part of me hopes that she doesn’t. That she fights. The surge of blood that races to my cock tells me that every part of me is on board with that thought.

She starts to move to the music, though anyone could see that her heart isn’t in it. Her movements are practiced, rote—as if she’s trying to detach herself from what’s happening—and a growl rises in my throat, one that I barely manage to bite back.

The last thing in the fucking world that I want is for Nicci to see that she affects me in any way.

“Focus,” I snap. “Eyes on me. Watch me as you dance for me. Don’t go off somewhere else.”

I see bitterness rise up in her expression. “What do you care, as long as you get off?” she snaps, and I feel my muscles bunch under my suit. I have the urge to get up and close the distance between us, to grab her by the back of her neck and drag her down over my knee for a spanking.

Instead, I stay where I am. “Do you see me getting off?” I ask her coolly, and she presses her lips together, her hips still moving to the music.

“I don’t know what you’re doing here, honestly. You paid all of that money just to come back here and watch me dance alone?”

“Aren’t you happy to not have a cock shoved in you?” I chuckle drily, and I see her face pale a little. Her jaw tightens, and while I have some idea that she should be closer to me by this point in the song, dancing on me, she keeps her distance.

That’s fine with me. I ignore my raging erection, watching her as she moves to the music until the song ends, and then I get up, fishing a twenty out of my pocket and flicking it to the floor at her feet. When she’s mine, I won’t be paying her for what I’m owed, but for now, I can play their game—I got back here for free, after all.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her, my voice inflectionless.

And then I turn and leave.

—

I’d plannedto wait a week to take her, to draw it out. But by the time night falls the following evening and I’m shrugging on my suit jacket, I know that’s not going to happen.

I barely slept last night, my dreams feverish and full of her. I woke halfway through the night, so hard that I had to jerk off just to get back to sleep. Even now, I can feel the throbbing pulse of arousal, tempting me to take the time to get off again before I leave.

I spent the day scouting. I tried to get some idea of her routines again, but there was nothing to see. She doesn’t leave the Armand estate until it’s time to go to work, and even then, I haven’t seenher. All I ever saw, in the days leading up to the first night that I visited the Gilded Lily, was a blacked-out SUV leaving at about the time that Nicci would be headed to work. She’s a ghost until she’s there. But that doesn’t matter to me so much any longer. After tonight, I’ve decided, I’ll know what she does regardless—because she’ll be under my roof.

Instead, I spend most of my afternoon looking for information and scouting the perimeter of the estate of the don of the Italian mafia here in New York City. Antony Gallo is a man that I once knew well, and I once knew his property well, too. But a lot can change in the number of years that I’ve been gone, and I have no intentions of underestimating my enemy.

Or his allies.

I spent time looking into the Yashkov family, too, and the Gallaghers, to find out what they’ve been doing in these past years. The Yashkov family, especially, seems to be a mess—in considerable upheaval recently. Thepakhanis dead. His eldest son has taken over after marrying a woman with no family connections. The younger son returned and married a disgracedsenator’s daughter. It’s clear that they’ve lost touch with the old ways, and I wonder if I can use that to my benefit.

After all, what I want to do isn’t in line with theold waysany longer, either. I have no rightful claim to what I plan to take, and yet, I don’t give a fuck.

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