He struggled against my hold, but I kept him there easily. “Let me go.”
I shook my head. “Not yet. You’re going to hear me out first.”
“Fuck off.”
“Do you understand how serious your position is?”
“Seriously, what do you plan to do if I can’t pay?”
His voice rose at the end going from angry to desperate, but I refused to let him get to me. I would not feel sorry for him. He never felt sorry for me. “My family and I have ways of getting what we want. None of them are pleasant. The nicest thing I could do is give you a chance to clear out of here and let you walk away without losing anything other than your business.”
“This bakery is mine. It was my grandparents’ and my great-grandparents’ before that. It belongs in my family.”
“Why didn’t you come back here and run it when they died then instead of letting your father nearly destroy it?”
“I… I couldn’t do that.”
“Then I guess it’s really not that important to you after all.”
He snarled, anger returning. “You have no fucking idea why I’ve made the choices I have.”
He had me there. I knew most of us had stories we didn’t want to share, reasons we did things others wouldn’t understand. “I’ll give you that. And I’ll also give you one more chance to hear me out about how you can pay your debt.”
He held my gaze, looking stubborn and determined as fuck. I would break him, and he would love it almost as much as I did.
“What do you want from me, Angelo?”
“So we’re back to my full name? No more Angel now?”
“You’re no angel.”
“Fuck right I’m not. And what I want from you is nothing any angel would ever ask for.”
“I’m not working for your family.”
“This isn’t about my family.” I leaned in until our bodies were nearly touching. I waited for the length of a breath. Cameron licked his lips, leaving them shiny and parted. He wanted me. He hated it, but he did. There’d been a few times in high school when I’d caught him watching me and thought I saw desire in his gaze. I wondered if he used to get hard for me the way I did for him, but there’d been no way in hell I would have risked anyone finding out I liked men, especially not smart, arrogant men like Cameron back then. “You know what I want, don’t you?”
“I won’t do that.”
“Oh, but you will. Because it’s really your only choice.”
“I’m not sleeping with you, Angelo.”
“I wasn’t intending on us doing any sleeping.”
Cameron made an exasperated sound. “I’m not fucking you.”
“That’s right. You’re not.”
I loved the confused expression on his face. Playing with him would be so fun. “I’ll be the one fucking you. Deep and hard and rough. I’ll own you. Your mouth, your ass, every fucking inch of your body will be mine. You’ll run this bakery during the day, but when you’re done, you’ll come to me, and you’ll serve me. You’ll give me whatever I crave, and if you do a good job, I’ll wipe away your debt.”
Cameron swallowed hard before he shook his head. “No. No fucking way.”
“I get that you’d rather be a thief than be mine, but no amount of petty thievery will ever give you the amount you need. You’re trapped, Cameron, and I’m your only way out.”
I nipped his earlobe, then pulled back and let him go.
He was breathing hard, and his pupils were blown. He might be scared, he might be furious as fuck, but there was part of him that wanted to find out exactly how it would be between us.
“How long?”
“You’ll have to wait and find out when I fuck you.”
He made a strangled sound I wanted to hear again. “How long to pay off the debt with you?”
I considered. How long would it take me to get tired of him?
Forever.
I ignored that thought. “Three months, and you’ve got forty-eight hours to make a decision. Give me your body, or give me the bakery. It’s your choice.”
“You said I had until the end of the week.”
I smiled at him. “I changed my mind.”
“Fuck you, Angelo.”
“Forty-eight hours.” I turned and walked away.
5
Cameron
I stared after Angelo as he left. Stunned, furious with him, and even more angry with myself for noticing how fucking perfect his ass looked in his jeans. I’d spent way too much time in high school fantasizing about him, but in those fantasies, I was never his fucking property. No way was I going to agree to that, no matter how much my dick liked his hot breath against my neck and the filthy words he’d said. So maybe I had a thing for dominant men. I wasn’t a whore or a plaything, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to belong to Angelo Marchesi.