Chapter 66 Chapter 66 - Against His Better Judgement
Chapter 66 - Confessions and Interruptions
Cedric's POV
"Dante," he started, and then had to clear his throat because his voice had come out sounding an octave higher than intended. "Right. Dante."
"Whenever you're ready," Gianni said impatiently, all of his full dark attention bearing down on Cedric, as he waited for the answer he was owed.
"I found him—" Cedric shifted, trying to create some distance between them, but that infuriating hand, he couldn’t get off Gianni’s lap.
He looked around the car, at the locked doors and tinted windows. It was soundproof in here, and even if he screamed, from pleasure or pain, no one would hear him. There was no escape.
Cedric swallowed “—in a fight. Or, he was the fight, technically. Someone was on the ground and Dante was beating the shit out of him" he gestured vaguely, “. I kept my distance, obviously because I didn't want to get caught in the crossfire."
"Smart," Gianni said.
Then he kissed him, and there was nothing gentle about it, it was claiming and furious, rough and relentless and Cedric barely had time to breathe before Gianni pulled back with the same composure he'd never lost, as if he hadn't just dismantled Cedric's entire nervous system.
"And then?" Gianni said.
Cedric blinked, he had to tread very carefully so he didn’t implicate Dante and make things worse for him. "And then, he noticed me. Dante. He…" Another shaky half-horny, half scared-for-his-life breath. "He kept trying to talk to me, asking me questions. He was persistent about it, kept finding reasons to.."
Gianni kissed him again, even harder this time, biting down on his lip, fucking his tongue into Cedric’s mouth. One hand finding the front of Cedric's shirt and undoing it, while the other stayed, maddening and still, on his thigh to keep him there.
When it broke, Cedric's shirt was being eased up and over his head with a firm, unhurried pace, and then it was simply gone, thrown away somewhere in the back seat, and the air in the car felt very different from it had a moment ago.
Is this wise? Some distant, responsible part of his mind offered helpfully. Shouldn't you be thinking about your mother? About your sister? About the sorry-I-disappeared gifts in the trunk of the car and how exactly you're going to explain that you now essentially belong to this man?
He looked at Gianni.
Gianni looked back at him, dark-eyed and entirely too present, and the responsible part of Cedric's mind packed its things and left.
No, he thought. Can't think about that. Not right now.
"He wasn't flirting with me," Cedric added, because he could feel a slight shift between them, the way Gianni's jaw had tightened almost imperceptibly.
By now he already knew that Gianni’s possessive streak was rising like a tide. "Don't go getting any ideas. He just… he looked at me like he knew me somehow. Like we had history that I wasn't aware of." He paused, then couldn't quite help himself. "Same as you did, actually. When we first…"
Gianni made a growling sound low in his throat and bit down on the curve of his neck.
Cedric's head dropped back against the seat, his eyes rolling back into his skull, letting out a gasp.
"Gianni… fuck…”
It wasn't a protest. They both knew it wasn't a protest. Gianni's mouth dragged across his collarbone, his jaw scraping deliberately, and Cedric felt the intention behind every point of contact; mine, marked, don't forget it.
"Basta," Gianni said against his skin, his voice a low rumble. "No one is like me. Especially not some low-level guard who doesn't have the rank to say your name."
"Oh, is that right," Cedric managed, breathless and grinning despite himself. "My big, strong Mafia Boss."
Gianni pulled back just far enough to look at him, and the expression on his face was so perfectly offended that Cedric laughed, like actually laughed, bright and helpless in the dark interior of the car.
"You think this is funny," Gianni said flatly.
"I think you're funny. I think you're genuinely jealous of a man who is currently tied to a chair somewhere in your basement… "
"Cedric."
"…which is a little unhinged, if you want my honest opinion, also you really have to let him go because…"
Gianni kissed him silently. This time it was less furious and more of a punishment, thorough and breathless and it went on long enough that Cedric forgot what word he'd been building toward.
"The note," Gianni said, pulling back. Back to being all business, unbothered and insufferable, the complete opposite of Cedric’s messy hair and practically naked body thrumming with need.
"Right." Cedric exhaled. "The note. He passed it to me… You saw that part. It was…" he sent a prayer up to the saints, hoping against hope that maybe this would be the lie that Gianni wouldn’ tsee right through and he wouldn’t be found out.
“—basically an introduction. He said to take care of myself and stay safe." A pause. "From Luca, apparently. Because Luca, for reasons I cannot fully explain, still hates my guts and wanted me warned."
Gianni was quiet for a moment.
Then his right hand moved and Cedric stopped breathing, leaning into Gianni’s touch as the bigger man marked his territory, mapping out what was his, down from his hair to his neck to his chest to his needy cock.
It was slow, delicious torture as Cedric moaned and writhed on top of him, desperately holding on to his pride to stop him begging for it.
There were red marks already blooming across Cedric's neck and shoulder, love bites that he would wear like a signature, and Gianni's eyes tracked them with quiet satisfaction before finding his face again.
Cedric looked down. At some point, he genuinely didn’t know when, his hands had found Gianni's belt fiddling with the buckle until it gave with a soft, metallic click.
Fuck, yes.
He could feel Gianni watching him as he worked, the intense weight of attention that always felt like standing under a heat lamp. He eased out of his grasp to kneel in front of Gianni, his face at crotch level.
Stroking himself lazily to keep his own lust at bay while he tried to get Gianni’s cock out of his briefs, holding steady eye contact with him while he did it, taking in every bit of that perfect want glazing over in his dark eyes and leaning into Gianni’s tight grip on his hair.
No one had ever matched his freak like that before, not once.
His mouth was practically watering at the thought of getting his mouth around Gianni’s thick, heavy cock, and the image of that in his head was so immediate and so vivid that he was practically…
"Signore."
The driver's quiet, professional voice came through the partition, as though he had not noticed a single thing going on in the back seat. Which he almost certainly had.
"We have arrived."
Cedric looked up through the tinted glass, blurred and ordinary and achingly familiar, was the street he'd grown up on.
The corner shop with the hand-painted sign, the fire escape on the third floor with the broken bracket his mother had been asking the landlord to fix for four years.
His house. His family, just a couple of floors above them, was entirely unaware that the prodigal son had made his way back.
He looked back at Gianni, biting his lip nervously and feeling a little foolish. He’d been sure that he was ready for this, but now that he was actually there, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
Gianni looked back at him, his expression perfectly composed, his belt half-undone.
Neither of them knew what was supposed to happen next.