Bender (Vegas Venom Book 4)

All my excitement from watching Madison walk the runway in her cleavage-hugging dress drains away as my principessa glares at me. I do not know why she is angry. I do not know what I have done, but I am terrified—because if I lose Madison, then I lose everything. She is the only thing keeping me together at this lowest point in my career.

I sweep her into my arms as if she weighs nothing and drag her back to her dressing room. With my foot, I slam the door shut, locking it behind us. Once I set her down, our gazes snap together. Her face is red, and her eyes are full of fire. The heaving breaths she takes rises her full breasts skyward. Her anger only makes her more beautiful and ethereal with that transparent dress swirling around her limbs, which is probably not the thing I should focus on right now.

“What is wrong, bellissima? Are you sick?” It worries me, how much she is shaking all over.

Madison reaches for my hand and rips the black fob from between my fingers, stabbing at some buttons. “This,” she growls. “This is the problem.”

I do not understand. “My car remote?”

She shakes her head, still breathing hard. “Check your pockets.”

I pat down my jeans, only to discover a lump in my front pocket. It is indeed my car key fob. My real car key. Confusion overtakes my brain for a second.

“So what is this, then?” I ask.

“This,” Madison pants, “is a remote control for the vibrating panties they gave us at the rep meeting a couple weeks ago.” She grabs one of my hands and pulls me toward her, pressing my palm to her fica. With her other hand, she presses the button on what I thought was my car key. Immediately, her underwear begins to vibrate, and Madison lets out the sexiest groan imaginable. Her eyes flutter shut, and she sways slightly, holding onto me for balance.

“Oh,” I breathe. “So every time I am clapping…”

Madison looks up at me with glassy, hooded eyes and pushes the button again. Her panties vibrate harder.

“I’m fucking dying.” Madison’s voice, usually so high and cheerful, sinks to a low, sexy growl. “You know how I feel about vibrators, Marco. I love them almost as much as I love that huge rod you have between your legs. This is killing me. Am I making myself clear enough?”

I do indeed. The memory of her farfallina fluttering around me as she shifted in my lap, panting my name, is as good for me as any pair of vibrating underwear. Before I can blink twice, I am already hard, aching for my principessa.

She is not sick, but her fica is. And you must take away her pain right now for you have caused it.

“I can fix this,” I tell her. I pluck the control back from her fingers and turn it up again. Madison cries out, but I kiss her until her exclamations are little more than a whimper in the back of her throat. I lift her against me, grinding myself between her thighs, pressing every inch of myself to every inch of her. She squirms against me, seeking relief.

There is a table in the dressing room, just the right height for us. It is made of sturdy wood, with a little vase of flowers set at the back of it, along with some of Madison’s things. I sweep everything to one side and lift her onto it.

In that beautiful dress that flows around her like the Arno at sunset, Madison looks full. Ripe. Like an apple growing on the tree with its perfect pink skin on display for all to see, but I am the only one allowed to take a bite.

I sink to my knees in front of her, kissing my way up her thighs, nipping at the skin with my teeth, turning the panties up again.

“Holy fuck, Marco!” Madison whines and wriggles. Her eyes squeeze shut, and I can already feel a hot bead of my own release gathering on the tip of my cazzo.

I need you. I need you. I need you. Perhaps, for once, she feels a fraction of my own desperation as the angsty thoughts echo through my upstairs head.

At last, I yank the panties aside, tossing them into a still-buzzing heap onto the floor behind me, fumbling with the remote in one hand as I press my mouth to her swollen entrance. Because of my ignorant clapping, my principessa has bloomed like a flower for me, so hot and wet that she scorches my tongue. I let the remote slip between my fingers in my haste to caress her. This is not like the first time, in that building off the strip. I am not slow and steady. Madison tugs at my hair, forcing my mouth against her, sweet as fine wine. She tastes as delicious as my first bite of tiramisu when I was barely old enough to eat it. And I can’t get enough of her. I will never be able to get enough. She lets out a strange, choked, guttural sound, and clenches down on my fingers as she arrives hard while pressing my face against her wet heat.

I cannot wait. I am all out of slowness and patience. I find my wallet in my pocket and dump everything out in my desperation to find the condom I carry with me. Madison reaches for me as I clumsily roll it onto myself, and then she rips it off me and throws it aside.

My heart blips like I have been struck by lightning. “Uh… I am confused, principessa. Do you not want me inside you?”

A strangled moan escapes her lips. “I’m on birth control, Marco. Are you clean?”

It takes me a few moments to work through what she is actually asking of me. I shake my head and then I nod. I have not been with anyone before her in over a year. “Si, Madison. I am only for you.”

Her hand finds my cock and guides me toward her slick heat. “Then I want you to fuck me bare. And hard. Fuck me until I don’t even know my own name.”

I grunt and drive for home. It is heaven. It is everything. I am inside my cara mia. For the first time, there is nothing between me and the woman I hold dear, and, ah, there is no feeling in the world as lovely as this one as I have never felt it before.

“Harder,” she says, digging her fingers into my shoulder. “Marco, harder, I need… I need to come again… ohmyfuckingGodMarco…!” She presses her mouth to my throat and shudders harder this time. I am close, I am so close, and she is so soft against me, her skin like silk and the core of her an inferno.

I am hers.

She is mine.

Madison digs her fingers into the back of my neck. “Harder,” she gasps because my principessa is demanding. And pleasing her is my greatest wish. “You started this, dammit. I want you to fuck me raw.”

When I finish, I nearly collapse with the relief of it. With this woman who accepts me as I am, I feel whole. Because with Madison, when I give her everything I have, when I do my best, she does not look at me like I am a disappointment. Non, she inspires me to do better. To be better. And for now, that is enough to soothe my soul.

* * *

The minute that we walk through the door of her apartment, Madison shoves me onto the couch.

“We need to do damage control,” she tells me. “Right now. My phone is blowing up—there are already videos of me stumbling around on the runway. Then of you literally sweeping me off my feet. People are freaking out. It’s…” She pushes her hair out of her face and squints at the screen. “It’s kind of sweet, actually? Like, people are legit worried. But I want to get out in front of this and let people know I’m fine.”

“Only fine?” I kiss her temple. “Perhaps next time we use the vibrating panties, I will need to lick harder. Fuck harder. Make you rawer with nothing between you and me.”

Madison’s cheeks blush bright. “I’m not going to say that I was catatonically horny and I needed a dose of that good, good Vitamin D. We’ll tell people that I had low blood sugar or something.”

“Vitamin D?” I repeat.

She points to my crotch with a smirk. “Dick. She wants the D. Vitamin D. Get it?”

“I am not so sure, but if you say so.” I nuzzle her neck. “Maybe after we are controlling the damage, I can write you a, hmm. What is the word? A subscription. For the vitamin. After today, I think you might still be deficient.”

“A prescription.” She cranes her neck to plant a kiss on my throat, and I shiver all over again. I used to think that my whole world was on the ice, where it is always clean and cold, where nothing can reach me. How can it be that I am falling so hard for a woman who is the opposite?

My principessa, she is fire.

We take a few photos from different angles before Madison opens TikTok and starts recording.

“Hey, fam!” She blows a kiss at the camera, and for a silly moment, I feel jealous. I want all her kisses to be for me. “I’ve gotten a ton of messages already about the fashion show this afternoon. Thanks for your support, especially about the amazing dress I was modeling, but there’s nothing to worry about. It was just a low blood-sugar issue. I didn’t eat anything before the show… Marco is taking care of me, isn’t that right, baby?”

“Si, si.” I nod feverishly. “I am taking very good care. I am feeding my principessa all the juice.”

Madison squeezes my knee out of sight of the camera, but I do not need her warning. After my many mistakes with my words over the years, I understand wanting to be private. I shake my finger at the camera and say, “Always be remembering to eat breakfast and stay hydrated, fans! This rule, it is number one for all people who are working it like Madison! Protein is important.”

“Working it?” Madison asks, giggling in that way that says she thinks I have spoken incorrectly.

“Si!” I jump up from the couch and run around behind it, down the hall. “Let me show you all! Camera over here, please.” I return to the living room, swaying my hips and flexing the muscles in my butt the way Madison does when she walks. Madison bursts out laughing and points the camera at me as I stop, pose, and blow the viewers a kiss.

Madison bellows with laughter.

I flutter my eyelashes at the phone. I do not care what the fans think, so long as she keeps laughing like that. “Whether you are working the runway or the ice, you must take care of yourself always!” I strut back toward Madison’s room. “You only have one body in this life. You must treat it like a precious gem.”

“Okay, okay, you can come back out.” Madison is still laughing and wiping tears from her eyes when I emerge. She taps something on her phone, then sets it on the side table. “You’re outrageous. Now get over here and write me a prescription for some sexual healing.”

I bend over the back of the couch to kiss her. “You are still sick? Ah, this is a very serious case. You will need a very, very large dose.”

Madison licks her lips. “Do I have to take my medicine orally?”

I was spent not so long ago, but I can go again, no problem. I am always ready for her. I cannot imagine that I will ever be too tired to give her anything she asks for.

She deepens the kiss, and something in my pants responds. Two things, in fact, although it takes me a moment to register the vibration in my pocket.

“Don’t tell me that you put on the panties,” Madison teases.

“It is my phone.” I straighten up and reach into my pocket to fish out my cell. My heart and my cazzo both droop when I recognize the number.

Dante Giovanetti is calling me on my day off. This cannot be a good thing.

“Sorry, I must take this,” I tell Madison just before I hit the green answer button. “Ah, ciao, Mr. Giovanetti. What can I do for you this day?”

“Marco.” Dante’s voice is as smooth and cold as a freshly-scraped rink. “I saw your performance during the last game, and Coach Brenig and I are noticing a pattern.”

I swallow hard. “Si. I will train harder, signore. I will do better next time—”

“Breathe,” Dante says. “You’re babbling. Do you remember when I called you the first time?”

I force a swallow down my throat. “Si, signore.”

“Do you remember how I asked you how quickly you could be packed to come here?”

The breath stalls in my lungs. “Si, signore.”

Something rustles in the background, and I can picture him in one of his tailored suits, shuffling through papers, only half paying attention to our conversation. “How quickly can you be packed this time?”

My thoughts are tumbling all over each other. “Y—I mean, what, signore?”

“I’m releasing you from the team, Marco. I’ve had enough of looking like an idiot because of you. You’re fucking up my image by fucking up my team. Coach Brenig and I have talked it over. You’re out of chances. You’re done. Finito.”

If my hand was not already on the back of the couch, I would collapse to the floor. “Non, signore, per favore. Per favore. I will do better, I swear.”

“Yes, and good luck with that.” There is no mercy in his tone at all. “You’ve embarrassed me on national television. I don’t care if you’re Italian. No one does that to me without paying the price.”

My skin feels too hot, too tight. “But—”

“Good luck, Mr. Rossi. Julie will email you about the logistics of collecting your things and leaving the country. I’ll even pay you your entire year’s salary as a severance.” With that, he hangs up. I am left standing with my phone to my ear, staring at Madison’s bookshelf, where a potted plant with heart-shaped leaves trails down in front of a mismatched assortment of paperbacks.

This cannot be happening. Not now. It would have crushed me a few months ago when hockey was all I had to live for—but now I have more to love, which means more to lose.

Losing my job means losing my visa, which means losing my principessa. How am I ever going to tell her?

“Hey.” Madison’s hand settles over the one that I am using to keep myself upright. I feel like I have been sliced open with a filet knife and my innards are falling out. “Marco, talk to me.”

My other hand shakes so badly that I almost drop the phone. I know that I need to explain things to her, but the words will not come. Not in English. Not in Italian. Not in any language I have ever heard.

My knees finally fail me, and I sink into a crouch behind the sofa, my phone pressed to my chest. I should have practiced more. I should have pushed myself harder. I knew exactly how much I had to lose, and I cannot even blame Dante, not really. It is my fault for not being good enough.

A sob rattles up the back of my throat but I choke it back down. I will not cry in front of her.

It is so terrible, how the man who gave me everything I ever wanted could and did, in a single phone call, take it all away.

This is the moment that destroys my entire life.