A Desire He Buried

The penthouse office was too quiet, the kind of silence that amplified every ragged breath Dominic took. He stood motionless at the floor-to-ceiling window, city lights bleeding across the glass like spilled blood, but he saw none of it. All he saw was her.

Elena.

Twenty-two years old, trembling in that warehouse, dress clinging to every soft, unforgivable curve. The memory slammed into him again: the way her lower lip had quivered under the slow drag of his gloved thumb, parting just enough for him to feel the wet heat of her exhale. How her pulse had raced beneath the thin skin of her throat, frantic and alive. How her nipples had peaked hard against the flimsy fabric, begging for a mouth, for teeth, for something she was old enough to understand and still too young to handle.

His cock throbbed, heavy and insistent against the seam of his trousers. He didn’t bother hiding it anymore. No one was here to see the way he pressed the heel of his palm against the ache, a brutal, useless pressure that only made him harder.

He should kill her.

The thought came cold and clean, the way all his decisions usually did. One call. One bullet. Her body was found in an alley, those wide hazel eyes finally empty. The threat was erased.

But the image twisted violently into something else: her blood on his hands, warm and slick, her throat torn open by someone else’s blade. The idea of another man touching her even to end her ignited a fury so black it stole his breath. No. No one else would ever put their hands on her. No one else would ever feel that soft skin yield.

He turned from the window, stalking to the bar cart. Whiskey splashed into the glass, too much, amber liquid trembling with the barely leashed violence in his grip. He drank it in one burning pull, then poured another.

In the dark reflection of the bottle, he saw himself: forty-two, scarred, a man who had buried desire years ago under layers of control and blood. And now this woman, twenty-two, old enough to know better, young enough to make him feel like a predator twice over, had cracked him wide open with nothing more than a terrified gasp and the sway of her hips.

He set the glass down and let the fantasy take him.

Her on her knees right here, on the thick Persian rug. Dress shoved up to her waist, panties torn aside. Those full lips stretched around his cock while he fed himself into her mouth inch by slow inch, teaching her how to take him, how to swallow every drop of the darkness he’d never unleashed on anyone. Her hands clutching his thighs, tears streaking her cheeks, not from fear but from the sheer overwhelming size of him. And when she finally looked up, eyes glassy, mouth swollen and wet, he’d fist that dark hair and fuck her throat until she sobbed his name.

A low growl tore from his chest. He gripped the edge of the desk, knuckles white, wood creaking under the strain. His hips rolled forward involuntarily, seeking friction that wasn’t there. Precome dampened the inside of his boxers, a humiliating betrayal from a body he’d always commanded.

He wanted to ruin her.

Wanted to pin her beneath him and spread those thighs until she felt empty without him inside her. Wanted to lick the sweat from the hollow of her throat while he drove into her so deep she’d feel him for days. Wanted to watch that fierce, reckless fire in her eyes shatter around his cock as she came screaming, clenching, begging for more even as she realized there was no going back.

And he hated himself for it.

Hated the way his heart pounded like a boy’s. Hated the way his hands shook with the need to touch, to claim, to protect. She was twenty years old... old enough to consent, young enough to make every filthy thought feel like a sin. She deserved someone who hadn’t built an empire on corpses.

But the thought of letting her walk away of some other man discovering how tight, how wet, how responsive she would be made him want to burn the city down.

His phone felt like lead in his hand when he dialed.

“Vito.”

“Boss.”

“The girl. Elena Ramirez.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw. “Full coverage. Every second. Every breath. Two teams, no gaps.”

A beat of silence. “Are we eliminating her?”

“No.” The word cracked like a whip. “She’s under my protection. Mine. If anyone so much as breathes too close to her, I’ll gut them myself. Slowly. Eyes first.”

“Understood.”

He killed the call and hurled the phone across the room. It shattered against the wall, plastic and glass raining down like his control.

Across the city, Elena curled on her side in the dark, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold the pieces together. Her lips still burned where his thumb had been. She kept touching them, hating the way her fingertips trembled, hating the slick heat building between her thighs every time she remembered his voice.

Low. Lethal. Possessive.

Your silence ties you to me now, little one.

She pressed her thighs together, a helpless whimper escaping as the ache sharpened. She was twenty-two, not some naïve teenager she knew desire when it hit her. But this was something darker. This was terror braided so tightly with want that she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

Outside, the black sedan never moved. Inside it, Vito’s man watched her bedroom light flick off, watched the faint silhouette of her body curling tighter under the thin sheet.

And thirty stories above the city, Dominic stood in the wreckage of his office, cock straining, chest heaving, every muscle locked against the urge to drive across town, kick down her door, and take what his body was screaming was already his.

He didn’t sleep that night.

Neither did she.