First Comes Blood by Lilith Vincent

17

Cassius

If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t…

Then you need to go and get it.

Three days after Scava stole Chiara away from my apartment, I finish my meetings early and head home. Chiara’s reading on the sofa when I stride out of the elevator, her hair in a messy bun on the top of her head and crop top baring her midriff.

Fuck, she’s cute. Whenever I look at her, I feel pain and pleasure in equal amounts. I swore I’d never let myself get attached to another person after Evelina was killed, and Chiara being younger and just so fucking adorable makes me think of her more than I have in years.

I hate it. I crave it. My moods swing unpredictably and I know that’s not fair on her. I don’t know if I can get past the impulse to shove Chiara away.

But I’m trying.

I lean over the back of the sofa and gaze at her. “I missed you today, bambina.”

She blinks, seeming surprised that I’ve spoken from the heart. “Where’s everyone been? I haven’t seen the others in days. I’ve barely seen you.”

“We thought you might like some space.” Actually, I told the other two to back off for a little while, for Chiara’s sake, but maybe for selfish reasons, too. I want to share her, I want to see her with the others, but right now I feel like I’m lagging far behind. Scava was the first one to get her into his bed.

Scava. For fuck’s sake.

Between him snarling at Chiara and Vinicius trying to sneak his way into her panties, Mio Dio, I thought I had more time to get over my…problems. I shouldn’t have underestimated Scava’s need to win at any cost, and just how much he’s attracted to our sweet little blonde.

She rubs her hands over her face. “I’ve done nothing but think. I’m exhausted.”

I come around the sofa and sit down beside her. “Can I ask what you’ve been thinking about?”

Chiara sighs and plucks at a cushion. “Mom. I think about her all the time and the fact that Dad murdered her and suffered no consequences whatsoever.” She clenches her head in her hand and moans. “I’m so angry all the time. I don’t know what to do.”

I wish I could give her advice, but when it comes to the pain and anger of loss, I’m as stuck as she is.

“You know, I asked…you-know-who to kill Dad. He wouldn’t do it, though.”

Salvatore. He wouldn’t kill the mayor. That doesn’t surprise me. “You want your father dead?”

She thinks about this for a long time. “I was brought up Catholic. Mom took her faith seriously. Love thy neighbor. Forgive those who trespass against you.” Chiara stares straight ahead, her eyes burning. “If the choice is between Dad facing no consequences for what he’s done or some vigilante justice, then he should be murdered in a back alley.”

I sense a question on the tip of her tongue.

But she doesn’t ask it, and so I scoop her up in my arms.

Her blue eyes open wide and she wraps her arms around my neck. “Where are we going?”

“My bed. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

A pink flush blooms across Chiara’s cheeks as I set her on her feet at the end of my bed. “Three men in about as many days,” she whispers. “I’ve imagined explaining to my old friend Nicole what’s been happening since I came here. We haven’t been friends in a long time but I still talk to her in my head sometimes. You know those friends you’re just not ready to give up on?”

“Yes. I know.”

Chiara strokes the collar of my shirt. “She’s the most level-headed and traditional person, and no matter how I go about pretend-telling her that three men are touching me and undressing me and making me come, she disapproves utterly.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

In answer, Chiara comes up on her tiptoes and presses her lips against mine. I freeze, and my hands lock on her wrists.

“Sorry. Do you not like that?” When I don’t reply, she presses her lips to mine again, soft, fluttering kisses like the brush of butterfly wings. Each one burns through me like an ache.

“You’re killing me, bambina.”

“Do you want me to stop?” she echoes.

I take her face in my hands. “Never.”

I slant my mouth over hers and kiss her hard. I take the kiss that I’ve been thinking about for a year. Her lips are plush and yield to mine, and she opens her mouth for my tongue. While she undoes the buttons of my shirt, I pull the clothes from her body and take greedy handfuls of her. Her plump little ass. Her breasts. All mine, I think selfishly. I’m happy to share, I love to watch, but just sometimes, I want her to be all mine.

I pull her up onto the bed and her naked thighs slip around my hips as I nudge at her entrance with the tip of my cock. She gets wet so fast, and my resolution to take this slow flies out the window as she gazes up at me with needy eyes.

I grasp the base of my cock and sink into her.

Chiara breathes in sharply. “Cassius, oh my fucking god.”

“You want me to stop?”

“Stop and I’ll kill you. But do you have to be so much?”

I look at her small hands pressed against the dark hair on my chest. Her slender thighs wrapped around my hips as I thrust into her. “This is as much as I am. Relax, bambina, and let me fuck you like I need to.”

I ease up a little, not pushing quite so deep for a few strokes so she can take deep breaths and let her body go supple.

“That’s it,” I murmur coaxingly. “Good girl. Aren’t you pretty stuffed full of my cock?”

Chiara moans and rolls her hips. “You have the cutest dirty talk.”

I laugh softly. “It’s just what you inspire, bambina. I’ve been aching to touch you like this for a year. I’ve watched you with the others and it’s been making me crazy.”

“Jealous crazy?” she asks.

Jealousy is when someone is stealing what you believe should belong to you, but never did. Chiara belongs to all of us, and we could never take her away from each other. Even when she’s in here with me, in my bed, she’s still ours, not mine.

“I felt impatient. And envious as hell when I saw Scava balls deep in you. You were both insanely hot for each other. That moment looked perfect.”

“He had a gun to my head,” she points out with a moan, as I thrust deeper, her head tipping back.

“Maybe you like that, too. You like me pushing your limits, don’t you, bambina? Look.” I cradle her head and lift it so she can see how much of me is buried inside her.

All of me. Every inch.

“Wow,” she whispers. “That’s so much cock. Where did you go?”

I feel myself smile again. And I’m the one who’s supposed to have the cute dirty talk.

I roll over onto my back until she’s straddling me, hungry to watch her ride me. Slowly, tentatively, she rocks her hips against me, gaining speed and confidence with every stroke. Soon she’s biting her lip and her head’s falling back, and then she comes with a cry, her inner muscles ripping along my length.

Before she can finish coming, I grasp her hips and pound up hard into her, selfish hard thrusts that have my orgasm rushing up. At the last second, I pull out and hold Chiara tight against my chest as I finish in my fist.

I slump back against the pillows and groan with my girl laying on me. Better. Much fucking better.

She sits up and rolls onto the sheets beside me. “You’re all careful about not coming inside me. It should have occurred to me earlier.”

“We will keep being careful, and we’re all clean. Scava made sure of that before we brought you here.”

“Oh yeah, the doctor,” Chiara mutters with a wrinkle of her nose.

I reach out and stroke her cheek. “I know he terrorized you, and he can be frightening, but he’d be the first one to protect you if you were threatened.”

Chiara doesn’t agree, or even nod. Scava is going to have to work hard to prove himself to her.

“You could have won,” she whispers, tracing her fingers through my chest hair.

The bet between Vinicius, Scava and me. The morning after she slept in my bed, Chiara would have walked into my arms if I’d held them open for her.

“Let me tell you a secret, bambina. I barely thought about the bet. I was too busy obsessing about you.”

Her face breaks into a smile and she wraps her arms around my neck. “That’s why I like you, Cassius.”

I sit up in bed and scoop Chiara into my lap, holding her against my heart. I like you, Cassius. Fuck, that’s too much, and at the same time, just perfect.

“I taught my baby sister to read like this,” I say, trailing my fingers through her hair. “Sitting on my lap with her favorite books. She was such a little angel.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She’s dead.”

Chiara winces. “I’m sorry. Is this who you meant when you said you lost someone?”

I nod, focusing on Chiara’s hair slipping through my fingers.

“Ginevra Fiore told me that her sister was killed, too. You all lost family members?”

“The four of us lost little sisters. We knew they were in danger and we tried to protect them by ourselves. We failed, one after the other, until they were all dead.”

Chiara reaches up and touches my face. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry. And you never found out who did it?”

“Bambina, we barely even know why.” The ache in my chest is as fierce as it was the day I discovered Evelina was dead, and how brutal the end had been for her. I gather Chiara closer to me and whisper into her sweet-smelling hair. “It’s never felt right to hold a woman like this because I wouldn’t know if I could promise to keep her safe. We all promise. Vinicius and Scava will lay down their lives for you, as will I.”

“It can never be just you and me?”

“No, bambina. It can never be like that. Not for me.” Their pain is my pain. Their happiness means as much to me as Chiara’s does.

“But the three of you can’t be that bonded if Sal…” She bites her lip. “I want to be able to talk about him without you going to crazy town on my ass.”

I know what she’s going to ask. How can the three of us be so sure that we want to do this when recently we were just as certain it would work with four?

I am sure. One day, Chiara will understand.

“We’ll talk about Salvatore. But not now. For your sake, not his.”

“My sake? But—”

I brush my lips over hers. “Trust me. Not now.”

“I wish you’d just tell me. I can’t take any more shocks.”

I run my fingers through her hair, remembering the jolt I felt when she reached out to me for help in the minutes after her mother was killed. Looking over at the traffic lights and seeing her sitting in a car with a Geak. Listening to her berate the four of us for the way we treated her on her seventeenth birthday.

The envy and triumph at seeing her hands lovingly caressing Scava as he fucked her with a gun to her head.

The press of her lips against mine for the first time, so pure and sweet. A litany of surprises as devastating as nuclear bombs. “I sometimes think the same, bambina. But don’t ever stop, will you?”

“Silly,” she mutters with a smile, and puts her head down on my chest.

I hold Chiara in my arms until she falls asleep, and then I tuck her beneath the bedclothes and send a text to Vinicius and Scava.

Then I go to the kitchen and grab three glasses and a bottle of vodka. We’re going to need it.

When they step out of the elevator, Scava looks around right away. “Where’s our princess?”

“Asleep in my bed.”

Vinicius raises one eyebrow and smiles. “Did you…?”

I nod. “She’s…” Words fail me, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen her with Vinicius and Scava. They already know. “It’s not going to work like this.”

“It’s not going to work at all,” Scava growls.

Vinicius takes a sip of vodka and shakes his head. “Great attitude, Lorenzo.”

“I’m right. There’s no point in trying to make her ours when she hates our fucking guts.”

“Your guts,” Vinicius counters. “Maybe this would have worked if you hadn’t taken things too far just so you could fuck her first.”

Scava’s lips press into a white, angry line. He knows when his brothers are right.

“She doesn’t hate us,” I say. The other two turn to look at me. My lips are still tingling from Chiara’s soft kisses. “Not even you, Scava. She’s told me she’s been having arguments with an old friend inside her head about us and what we’re doing with her. She’s conflicted and, most of all, she’s still stuck on the night of her seventeenth birthday, watching her mother die.”

“Yeah, that’ll fuck you up,” Scava mutters.

Vinicius nods. “She’s as damaged as the rest of us. That’s actually the reason I don’t want to give her up.”

Which is exactly what I’ve been thinking.

Scava rubs his eyes with his thumb and fingers, muttering to himself.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Neither. Do. I,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Good. We’re agreed. So, what are we going to do about it?”