Vittorio didn't just rest his hands on her hips. He claimed them. He gripped her with a force that went beyond mere touch, as if he wanted to leave his prints directly on her bones.
"Elena, I don't like it."
She tilted her head, challenging the pressure of his fingers. "What?"
"This." He pulled her close, eliminating the air between them. "What you do to me. The control you have over me."
His eyes weren't just dark. They were a burning abyss.
"I have never been like this, Elena. Never."
She didn't pull away. She raised a hand, her cool palm against the feverish heat of his jaw.
"I know," she said. "And it scares you."
No answer was needed. His terror vibrated against her skin, mixed with a desire so acute it hurt. Like a dying plant straining toward the light, hating the sun that kept it alive.
A deep, even breath from the sofa broke the silence.
Luca. Collapsed into sleep.
Elena turned slightly. "We are alone."
Two words that changed the gravity in the room.
Vittorio's jealousy mutated instantly.
"Good," he growled.
He pushed her against the corridor wall, away from the living room.
"You spent the last hour taking care of him," he murmured against her ear, hands moving up impatient, possessive. "Now I have to erase his scent from you."
She tilted her head back, offering her throat.
"Then do it."
There was no sweetness, no prelude.
Their mouths crashed like two predators on the same territory. He didn't kiss her. He devoured her, trying to obliterate every taste that wasn't his. Elena responded with the same ferocity, dragging him down into the dark with her.
When he lifted her, her legs wrapped around his waist by instinct, by necessity. The journey to the room was a blur of heavy footsteps and broken breaths, until the kick to the door sealed their universe.
Bam.
The thud locked out the world. Locked out Luca.
Vittorio pressed her against the wood of the door, his body hard, unyielding, a cage she didn't want to leave. But Elena was no prisoner.
She grabbed his face between her hands, stopping him an inch from her mouth.
"Say it," she ordered against his lips, denying him the kiss. "Who took your control? Who owns you?"
He squeezed her hips until it hurt, but didn't look away.
"You," he admitted, his voice rasping. "Only you."
The kiss became cannibalism.
The taste of iron. Of him.
His hands didn't undress, they tore. Buttons flew like bullets, fabric surrendered with a dry rip. Elena clawed at his shirt, opening it with an urgency that left red marks on the skin of his chest. She wanted skin on skin. She wanted to feel his heart beating furiously against her own.
He pulled away for just a second, chest heaving, eyes fixed on her as if he had never seen anything else.
His fingers went to the tie. The last piece of armor left.
He slid it off slowly. A ribbon of dark silk in the darkness of the room.
"Wrists," he said.
His voice was gravel.
Elena didn't hesitate. She raised her arms above her head, wrists together. An offering. Or maybe a trap.
He wrapped the tie, tightening. The silk bit into the delicate skin.
"Too tight?" he asked, but it wasn't a question. It was a challenge.
"Not enough," she answered.
He tightened it more. The knot closed, final.
With her arms locked high, exposed and vulnerable, she became pure sensation. But not helpless.
Her legs snapped around his waist, anchoring him, pulling him against her pelvis with a violence that made him stagger. She arched her back, pressing herself against the steel of his body, making him physically feel the hunger consuming her.
"Mine," she gasped against his ear. "My God. My monster. My everything."
He didn't seek her lips. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and his teeth closed.
It was a sharp, immediate pain. A brand. The skin broke under the pressure, sucked and marked in a spot anyone could see.
Elena moaned. The sound wasn't pain. It was the confirmation of belonging.
"So you can feel me even when I'm not there," he growled against the marked skin. "So you don't forget."
The pain pulsed, acute and exquisite. She welcomed it, letting it set her blood on fire. But the certainty in his voice, that arrogant conviction of having tamed her, was the real fuse.
The game had barely begun.
But Elena wasn't willing to be just the canvas he wrote on.
Submission was a trap. She took advantage of that moment of blindness, while he was lost in her neck, to yank her wrists with a rage-filled snap. The knot, made in the haste of hunger, gave way just enough.
Her hands were free.
And in a second, the silk changed masters.
Before he could react, she wrapped the fabric around his throat.
And tightened.
His eyes went wide, dilated. Surprise melted immediately into dark excitement.
"Now it's my turn," she whispered, pulling the tie until it sank into his flesh.
The shirt collar scraped against his Adam's apple, leaving a visible red abrasion.
"Even."
A sweet whisper, almost a caress in contrast to the chokehold. There was no arrogance, only the absolute calm of inevitability.
Vittorio looked at her. Short breath, tight throat, control completely lost in her hands.
And he smiled.
A disarmed smile, sincere as blood.
"There you are," he said.
He pushed her toward the bed, and she dragged him with her.
They fell together, a tangle of limbs and hunger and desperation.
Elena's nails scratched his back, leaving deep furrows that would bleed. His hands gripped her hips with a force that would leave purple bruises.
Every gesture was urgency. Every touch was a demand.
There was only the brutal necessity to possess each other, to consume each other, to destroy themselves to rebuild within the other.
When he entered her, Elena's breath broke into a hoarse moan.
The world reduced to that instant. Everything became physical, immediate, absolute.
Every thrust was a claim, every touch a burn. They moved together with a rhythm that was struggle and surrender at the same time, trying to fuse until they forgot where one's skin ended and the other's began.
He branded her with a blind voracity. His mouth sank into her flesh, leaving a map of marks screaming ownership.
They came together.
Time dissolved. The boundaries between their bodies collapsed and for an eternal instant there remained only a single creature made of hunger, violence, and life.
Afterwards, they remained motionless.
Breath slowed. Hearts returned to beating human rhythms. Bodies cooled, entwined like ivy.
She traced the scratches she had left on his back with her fingers. He caressed the bruises he had left on her hips.
Silence filled the room, heavy and perfect.
It was only then, as her pulse slowed, that Elena felt it.
For the first time in her fragmented life, the peace was total.
The voices had gone quiet. The Clicks had vanished.
The Tightrope Walker, the Black Widow, the Pendulum... all masks had fallen along with the clothes, leaving her whole.
Naked. True.
Vittorio held her tighter.
Sleep took them like that.