His Virgin Stripper

36- Rules For a Possession

Marcello

I stared at the ceiling for hours, watching the shadows shift as the first weak rays of light filtered through the heavy curtains.

Sleep never came.

My body was heavy with the kind of exhaustion that settled deep into the bone, a consequence of running on pure adrenaline since the ambush.

Between handling the fallout, securing the safe house, and sorting out the grim message we had to send back to the Sicilian syndicate to mark our borders, I had managed maybe two hours of actual rest.

But the business wasn't what kept me awake. That was the problem.

It was pathetic. I was a man who ran an empire, yet I had spent the night restless over a girl who hadn't laid a finger on me. Even after jerking off under the freezing shower spray, the knot of need she left in my gut still refused to loosen.

The memory of her standing in my office, her body giving in while her mind fought me, stayed locked behind my eyelids. I hated myself for it. I hated that she had found a way to clog my thoughts without even trying.

I needed to reset the dynamic. I was going to lay down the remaining terms of her reality under my roof, strip away any illusions of leverage she thought she had, and put her in her place.

I got out of bed, threw on a red dress shirt and trousers, tied my hair up in a man bun and headed down to the dining room. Spotting one of my guys near the bottom of the stairs, I gave a short nod.

"Get Sienna down for breakfast," I told him, keeping my voice level and dry.

I told myself it was strictly about business. She had been too panicked to process the text of the contract last night, so she needed the rules spelled out clearly.

But the ugly truth pricked at the back of my mind. I wanted her in the room. The quietness of the house without her felt wrong, and the urge to see her face, to ensure she was exactly where I left her, was a demands-based itch I couldn't scratch.

I walked into the dining room and sat at the head of the table. A minute later, the kitchen door swung open and Ma Rosa walked out. Behind her, two guards carried in trays of black coffee, eggs, and toasted bread.

She set the plate in front of me, her eyes taking in the dark circles under my eyes and the tight set of my jaw.

"You look like a corpse, Marcello," she said softly, setting the coffee down. Her face lined with the kind of quiet concern only the woman who raised me could pull off. "You need to slow down. The world won't end if you take an hour to actually close your eyes."

"I have things to finish, Ma," I lifted the cup to my mouth. The bitter liquid burned my throat, a welcome shock to my system.

"The business is always there," she sighed, reaching out to brush a stray piece of lint off my shoulder. "But you're burning yourself out. Eat your food. Don't let the kitchen go to waste because you're too stubborn to take care of yourself."

Before I could answer her, the heavy double doors at the end of the room clicked open.

I forced my expression into a blank slate, freezing the muscles in my face as Sienna stepped into the room.

I looked at her, and for a second, my brain failed to find a grip.

She had on a floral dress that cut off mid-thigh, leaving her legs bare, and she’d applied a light touch of makeup that made her eyes look sharper, her lips softer.

Something hot flared in my chest, followed immediately by a surge of fury. She was trying to turn her appearance into a weapon to throw me off balance.

And the worst part? It worked. My pulse spiked. My eyes wanted to track the hem of that dress, and the realization that she could affect my body like this with just a change of clothes made me sick with irritation at myself.

I forced the reaction down, burying it under a wall of frost. If she wanted to seduce her way into leverage, she was going to hit a brick wall.

"Sit," my voice was flat and clipped.

Sienna pulled out a chair a few feet away from me, her movements smooth, though I noticed the slight tension in her shoulders as she sat.

Ma Rosa looked between the two of us, a quiet, knowing look passing over her face before she turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.

The silence that followed was suffocating. I picked up my fork, trying my best to ignore her.

After a few minutes, I set my cup down, the sound sharp against the stone tabletop. I leaned back, locking my eyes onto her.

"Since you were too frantic to actually comprehend the contract last night," I started, keeping my tone empty of any emotion, "we’re going to go over my rules now. Listen carefully. I don't repeat myself."

Sienna set her hands on her lap, squaring her shoulders. "Go ahead."

"Rule one," I said, watching her face for any slip. "My private quarters are off-limits. You don't enter my room at any time for any reason. If you need something, you tell the guards outside your door. You don't come looking for me unless I send for you."

Sienna tilted her head, her voice careful but steady. "And if there’s a genuine emergency? What if something happens to Roxy or me in the middle of the night?"

"The guards have radios," I cut her off before she could build an argument. "They get to me. You stay in your zone."

She bit the inside of her cheek, a small movement that drew my eyes to her lips before I forced myself to look away. "Fine. Next?"

"Rule two. You do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. If I give an order, it’s absolute. If you choose to ignore a directive, there will be consequences."

Her eyes flared, a flash of that defiance cutting through her makeup. She leaned forward slightly, her fingers gripping the edge of the table. "Whatever you ask? That's a pretty wide net, Marcello. What exactly does that entail?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like," my voice dropping an octave, becoming quieter. "I bought you, Sienna. That means your schedule belongs to me. If I tell you to stay in a room, you stay. If I tell you to go somewhere, you go."

The column of her throat moved, but she didn't break eye contact. She was holding her ground better than last night, and it irritated me how much I liked seeing that spark in her, even when I was trying to crush it.

"And the third?"

"Rule three. You don't question me. You don't ask my men about my business, you don't look into my affairs, and you don't challenge my decisions."

Sienna parted her lips, a retort ready to fly, her chest rising fast against the floral fabric.

She was clearly looking for a loophole, a way to push back against the weight of the leash without crossing the line into flat-out rebellion.

Before she could speak, the sharp buzz of my phone cut through the quiet room.

I pulled the device from my pocket. The screen showed a code from my head of security—something had just gone wrong with the payout layout at one of my major warehouses.

I stood up, scraping my chair back aggressively. The business couldn't wait for her to finish finding her words.

"We're done here," I said, not bothering to look at her as I turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone with the rules hanging in the air.