Dark Soul, Vol. 1 Page 3

  Stefano inched closer, electrified when Spadaro’s hip brushed against his own groin.

  Spadaro’s lips quirked into a small smile, and his eyes slid shut. Long mascara-black lashes. It made him look even more feminine. But no, not quite. Not with those hard, sharp features and light-defying eyes.

  Stefano pulled the knife again and cut Silvio’s belt.

  Silvio gasped, toneless, the sound so small, so secret, so forbidden that Stefano felt himself harden. More. The visceral snap of the belt made him suddenly aware of his sweaty palms, and he changed his grip on the knife.

  Silvio inhaled sharply again, and even Stefano felt the scrape of knife against skin. He glanced down and watched a scratch fill with blood, a horizontal line low across the groin.

  Silvio’s trousers had slipped far enough to show some pubes and no trace of underwear. His eyes, if anything, turned even more intense. He was getting off on it, and fuck but it was hard not to stare at that erection visible between the torn trousers and the taut skin. Nothing feminine about that.

  He should leave. He should beat the shit out of him.

  So why was he using the gun to pull Spadaro’s trousers down more?

  “Jesus,” Vince muttered, eyes wide.

  Stefano glanced at Vince. “Fucking faggot gets off on it.”

  And what about me?

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about hands and lips and teeth on that pale skin.

  Steel, then. The gun. Violent, hard.

  He grabbed a handful of cloth and pulled the rent trousers down almost to Spadaro’s knees. Neatly kept patch of hair, the cock so hard it pointed toward his belly, not enormous, just perfectly in proportion to the rest of him. The legs, the ass, everywhere else—hairless. Not really surprising. Spadaro seemed to enjoy pain, so why not a wax job? Feminine again. Or boyish? Silvio looked mid-twenties, but with so little body hair—even his armpits were smooth—he looked about seventeen. Eighteen at a stretch.

  Stefano struggled to clear his throat in a way that Vince wouldn’t hear. He had to stay in control, if only for Vince’s sake.

  Silvio’s eyes were firmly closed, throat stretched, muscles taut. He looked liberated, welcoming, completely absorbed in the moment. God only knew what he thought was coming next.

  Only one way to kick him out of it. On impulse, Stefano hit his cock with the pistol. That got Silvio’s attention, and made Vince hiss. But Silvio’s erection didn’t deflate, and fuck him anyway for disappearing inside his own head like that. Maybe Stefano didn’t want to break him, or take his fill of him, but he sure as fuck intended to deny him that escape.

  “Oh, cazzo,” Silvio breathed, hissing when Stefano slapped his cock again, harder for the insult. But Silvio’s eyes were burning now, a fire like madness. Or desire. Stefano had slapped Donata often enough, playfully, during sex, had spread her legs and slapped her pussy until she begged him. But what he saw in Silvio’s face was a feral hunger for more, for pain, that looked exactly like desire. He imagined opening his own trousers and breaching Silvio, fucking him so hard the man screamed.

  Instead he hit him again.

  “You’re going to talk.” Weak. Lame. As if any of this still mattered in the roar of adrenaline. Of power. He hit him again. Again.

  He was breathless when he finally managed to stop, to rein himself in, Silvio flushed and gritting his teeth. Yet that erection was still straining toward his stomach, toward Stefano’s gun. If anything, he seemed more aroused than before.

  “Vince.” He had to clear his throat, try again. “Vince.”

  Vince stepped closer, looking uncomfortable but guileless. Likely not suspecting a thing. Or if he did, if it turned him on, he was hiding it much better than Silvio. “Your gun.” Stefano flicked the butterfly knife shut and put it down on the table. Silvio’s gun, too.

  Vince pulled his pistol, a chrome-plated Desert Eagle.

  Laughter, raw and thirsty. Silvio was actually laughing. “You compensating for something, Vince?”

  “Shut up, bitch,” Vince hissed.

  Stefano gripped the heavy pistol tight. He much preferred a smaller gun, like Silvio’s 9 mm. At least that one he could point for a while and fire a few times without wrists of steel.

  He stepped behind Silvio and popped the magazine and the chambered bullet from the Desert Eagle. Much more manageable now. His eyes drifted from the gun to Silvio’s ass. Athletic and small, genderless, the sort of thing most men only ever saw in wet dreams. The kind he could practically grip in one hand. Like a woman’s.

  He placed the cold steel barrel against the small of Silvio’s back, and the man curved his spine—moving his back away, but pushing his ass out.

  Stefano trailed the gun lower, changed the angle and pushed the barrel lengthwise into Silvio’s ass crack. A full-body shiver raced through Silvio and didn’t stop.

  Stefano couldn’t tear his eyes from the contrast of skin and metal, the skin glowing with sweat, the chrome of the gun a colder, more brilliant shine. Both shaped to perfection. He traced the line of Silvio’s ass, angled the gun so the muzzle was pushing against his hole.

  “God,” Silvio breathed. Sweat was beading between his shoulder blades, a single drop running down the curve of his spine.

  Stefano pushed the muzzle harder against his opening, reveling in Silvio’s sudden brittleness. The man’s hands—red and bluish and swollen—were clenched tight around the rope.

  Impressive, that play of muscle under Silvio’s skin. He nudged the gun deeper, harder, felt it almost breach him, but then Silvio took a half step forward, shaking his head as if dazed, leaning into the restraints. Stefano stepped closer, pulled Silvio back with an arm around that narrow waist. The smell of Silvio’s sweat went straight to his cock, fresh and healthy.

  And male.

  “No, io . . . non posso.” Soft, pleading, yet terribly affectionate. Was Silvio even aware anymore of who was doing this to him? He looked gone, eyes closed, elsewhere again.

  “You can’t what?” Stefano kept his voice low, no longer wishing to tear Silvio away from wherever he was. Maybe to Vince it sounded like teasing, like cruelty, but Silvio’s yielding was a heady drug, and Stefano couldn’t bring himself to shatter the delusion this time.

  “It’s . . . it’s too big. Battista, ti prego.”

  So Falchi had taught Spadaro more than shooting and killing. Stefano shivered down to his toes at the thought of them together. Silvio begging like he was now. The cultured mid-fifties Mafioso and the harsh young killer locked in desire. Il barracuda e il gentiluomo.

  He could picture it too well. Could even imagine Silvio breaking.

  Silvio. When had he stopped thinking of him as Spadaro? That way lay madness. He couldn’t allow himself to do this, couldn’t allow himself to feel this.

  Part of him wanted to break the hold Silvio had over him by making him bleed, forcing the gun into his body and raping him with it. Forcing him to snap out of whatever state he was in, making him choke on his own tears and misery—making him beg with his name on those pretty lips. But holding Silvio close like this, every breath, every shudder of that lean body echoed in his own, close enough to smell and almost taste, to feel Silvio’s body heat radiating into his own bones.

  He caught Vince’s gaze: narrowed eyes, head pulled between his shoulders like he was expecting something very unpleasant to happen.

  “Get me oil,” Stefano ordered.

  Vince, looking grateful for the diversion, rushed off into the connecting room. Just a few precious moments alone, and Stefano allowed himself to grind against Silvio, push his erection against the man’s glutes. He wanted to be inside him, feel him tighten and push back like Donata did when he fucked her from behind. No, not like her at all. No love or tenderness in any of this.

  He allowed himself to touch Silvio’s cock, the silky skin sliding over a much harder core. Just once. He hadn’t thought he could do that. It should have felt enormous, wrong. But it seemed natural, and even more ast
onishing, Silvio was still hard.

  He splayed his fingers on Silvio’s sweaty skin, feeling the man’s heart thunder beneath his palm, the harsh breaths. They slowed in the stillness, evened out, until Silvio seemed almost serene in his arm. Trusting?

  But he doesn’t trust me. He trusts Falchi.

  Vince returned. “Stefano . . . are you sure?” he asked, even as he handed over a tube of gun oil.

  “Can’t watch it?” Stefano challenged.

  Big mistake. He might have been able to get Vince out of the room otherwise.

  “Yeah, but that’s my weapon—” that you’re about to stick up a faggot’s ass, Vince’s expression clearly said.

  “I’ll buy you a new one,” Stefano snapped, pulling the gun back and placing it on the table. “Faggot gets what he deserves for attacking you. For sneaking into my room like that. Bitch was about to kill you, and likely me.”

  “Yeah.” Vince still looked dubious, but those doubts likely concerned his weapon.

  “I wasn’t,” Silvio whispered, so softly Stefano barely heard. He sounded drowsy, lost in a dream.

  Which suited Stefano just fine. He opened the squeeze-tube of oil and placed it upon the swell of Silvio’s ass, dribbled the liquid into his crack. Vince couldn’t possibly see what he was doing, standing on the other side as he was, Silvio’s body between them. Unlike him, Vince wasn’t willing to get close enough to touch.

  Stefano traced two fingers into Silvio’s crack and breached the muscle there. Silvio started in his arm again, jerking so hard in the restraints it had to hurt. The muscle yielded, though, and Stefano pushed more oil inside. He watched his fingers as he pulled out again, and the tight flesh around them . . . Jesus, what the fuck had happened to the man? There were scars unlike anything he’d ever seen. Certainly not with Donata.

  “Somebody tore you,” he whispered near Silvio’s ear.

  Another violent shudder, almost as if Silvio were making a bid to escape. But the fight never really materialized. He looked down at the scars again, wondering if Silvio had yielded without a fight then, too. What terrible violence that must have been, likely with a sharp object and the desire to inflict as much damage and pain as possible. But he found the scars touching somehow, like Silvio’s old bullet wound. Testament to how vulnerable—even mortal—the sicario was.

  Stefano picked up the Desert Eagle and pushed the muzzle against Silvio’s opening. Reasonably sure there would be no tearing. Somebody had torn Silvio, made him suffer, and while part of him was appalled by that, another part of him admired the fact that Silvio not only suffered as sensuously as he did, but also that he’d won out. Survived. So much softness and strength in one human being seemed amazing and precious.

  Silvio made a choked sound as he struggled to take it. And if this wasn’t the stuff of fantasies until he was gray and senile . . . Just watching that enormous sleek chrome barrel pushing inside the man almost made him come. Mind-blowing to feel the body yield, to feel Silvio very gradually accept what Stefano was forcing inside him, even as gun screamed danger and horror, overloading him with a desire he’d held in check most of his life.

  Silvio took it, arching against Stefano’s grip as if to have more and escape at the same time, making small sounds of wordless pleading and discomfort. God, Stefano wanted to fuck him, take him, feel that surrender through his own flesh and blood.

  But this would do. He pushed the gun in deeper. Another choked sound, not so much pain as pleasure. Silvio was a million miles away. Or maybe just a few thousand, back in an Italian villa with Falchi. Stefano pushed and withdrew the gun again, actually fucking Silvio with the thick barrel, and—

  Holy shit, Silvio pushed back.

  With every motion, the urge to replace the gun with his cock grew stronger, but he couldn’t even hint at that, not with Vince here. Silvio began to tremble, muscles standing in stark relief from his thighs and calves to his back and glutes. His groan was that of a dying animal, but no—the sicario had climaxed.

  And what a thrill to have forced him to it.

  He pulled the gun out and turned toward the table, blocking out the rest of the world for a moment, trying to will his erection to fade. The Desert Eagle was oily and shiny, body-warm in his hand as he put it down.

  He turned back to find Silvio trembling ever so softly, flicked Vince’s knife open and placed the blade against Silvio’s throat from behind. How easy it would be to push his own cock into that oiled, abused ass. Except of course for Vince, his reputation, and the fact that Silvio was Gianbattista Falchi’s boy.

  “And how pathetic is that,” he murmured close enough to Silvio’s ear for him to feel the touch like a kiss. “You done, faggot?”

  Silvio swallowed hard and nodded carefully. He might have been done, but Stefano wasn’t. He left the knife at Silvio’s throat, his chest pressed to Silvio’s bare back. If Vince weren’t in the room, he’d fuck Silvio right now, or maybe force the sicario to suck him off at gunpoint.

  But that could never be more than a fantasy. He reached up and cut the rope instead, allowing himself to steady Silvio by the arm as the sicario sagged and staggered. But Silvio didn’t fall, just lowered his hands, dusky and swollen, to cover his groin.

  A strange modesty after all that.

  Stefano grabbed the plastic restraints and slipped the knife between them. A moment’s resistance, and Silvio was free. Stefano, expecting an attack, stepped away and to the side.

  But Silvio was in no state to fight. He stood there, blinking and swaying, then reached down to pull up his trousers. A thoughtful gesture, unhurried, like he was alone in the room, simply getting dressed.

  His gaze went to the table. “Can I take my gun?”

  Stefano picked up the Beretta, popped the magazine and the chambered bullet, and passed it to Silvio. Silvio accepted that without protest. Any sicario worth his salt would have plenty of extra clips.

  Silvio retrieved his holster and then bent to gather up his shredded top. He seemed to be having trouble with fine coordination in his hands, the tightness around his lips betraying pain, or frustration at the lack of control, or both.

  When he straightened up again, the impassive, dangerous mask was back in place.

  A shame, that.

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Silvio murmured. “Lesson learned.”

  Stefano glanced at Vince, who looked as edgy as a goon at the OK Corral, then back at Silvio. “Go.”

  Stay.

  Silvio tossed him an ironic salute and walked—stiffly—to the door. When he was gone, Stefano’s head spun, exhaustion tamping down his desire. He glanced at Vince’s gun, still on the table. Vince clearly didn’t want to touch it anymore. “I’ll get you a new one.”

  “I have a spare,” Vince said, flatly, as if shocked that the barracuda hadn’t attacked either of them.

  Of course, much yet depended on whether Silvio had indeed “learned his lesson”—whether he would tell Falchi or not. But Silvio was a made man himself. He wouldn’t go running to his superior. And even if he did, the first transgression lay with him, not Stefano. Still, Stefano didn’t want to have to explain to a man like Gianbattista Falchi what he’d done to his lover.

  And what, exactly, had he done?

  Under the shower, nothing seemed particularly clear. Had he misread Silvio? Indulged in the dirtiest, most aggressive fantasy he’d ever had? He couldn’t flaunt it like Silvio and Falchi did, but he could—and did—imagine those lips around him as he jerked off.

  It wasn’t satisfaction; it actually felt pretty fucking miserable just after the spray had washed the semen away. Silvio at least could lose himself in all that degradation and discomfort, could embrace what Stefano had forced him to accept.

  Lesson learned.

  Whatever Silvio had meant by that, Stefano knew it’d really been himself who’d learned the lesson tonight.

  “It’s just a social call, Donata,” Stefano lied, hoping his wife would join him. Whatever he’d encounter onc
e he left the car and entered the villa beyond the gate, he might want to have her around. But whether to protect or distract him, he didn’t know. Nothing about the family was purely social. Or about the killer with the black eyes.

  She finished pouring her Perrier from the minibar and leaned back in the leather seat, crossing her legs. “I’m meeting a friend in Milan. I can’t cancel on her now, much as I’d prefer to be with you.”

  Stefano glanced out the window at the wrought-iron gates. Vince had buzzed in, but so far, the gates hadn’t opened, nor had anybody shown up to grant access. Whoever was admitting guests was taking his sweet time.

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “Don’t worry about me, baby; Vince’ll take good care of me.” She leaned in close and kissed him. He breathed deep as he kissed her back; he’d miss the scents of her makeup, her perfume, her hair the moment he stepped outside.

  “All right. Just leave enough room in the car to pick me up again?”

  “If I buy too much, I’ll have it couriered.” She sounded a little mocking, playful. Nothing like a little teasing to get him worked up, get him rough and possessive with her.

  He stroked her cheek and pulled back, glancing at the gate again. “I might end up having to climb this.”

  “Just don’t break your neck,” she said.

  “Never.” He nodded to Vince, who got out of the car and opened the door for him, then fetched his small suitcase from the trunk. Vince met his eyes for a long moment, and Stefano smiled. “You take care of my wife.”

  “Nobody’s going to get close enough to touch her.”

  Stefano patted Vince’s shoulder and dismissed him with a nod. “Go. The gates are bound to open at some point.”

  Vince got back in the car and reversed out of the private street back to the main road, leaving Stefano standing outside a big locked gate somewhere in godforsaken Tuscany, armed only with a cell phone and a suitcase, waiting for someone to let him in.

  He turned toward the gate at the sound of a motorcycle, one of those Japanese engines that emitted nothing more than an aggressive buzz. Moments later, the motorcycle rolled into view at an easy pace. Familiar. Mostly black with white highlights. It gave the rider away: young, black hair, black eyes. Silvio Spadaro. No biking leathers this time, just a light shirt with a pair of sunglasses tucked into the collar; tight, well-cut jeans; and leather slippers on his feet. Shit. Not unexpected, but he wasn’t quite ready to face the sicario again so soon.