Chapter Text
Romeo Scorpius Lucci did his walkthroughs like one might navigate mass.
Same time, same pattern, same pace. Every night. He knew every step of the casino floor better than his own pulse. That wasn't melodrama—it was logistics. A floor that glittered in sin and luxury didn't stay clean on charm alone. Not when the rats kept coming in with slick suits and sticky fingers.
So when Romeo's patent leather-heeled silence crossed the mirrored mezzanine at 9:47 p.m., he wasn't expecting anything new.
And then he saw him. His boss. His captain. His BTH.
His Taiga Hoshibami.
Leaning over the chips table like a fucking parody of temptation. One hand braced on the green felt, the other?
The other was not where it should have been. It was wrapped around the waist of a young dealer—mid-20s, clearly new, clearly flustered. Romeo's eyes zeroed in on the way Taiga's fingers curved just under the hem of the man's vest, fingertips brushing skin like he owned it.
And then Taiga laughed. Low. Velvet. Dripping honey and absinthe.
Romeo didn't remember coming down the stairs.
Didn't remember grabbing Taiga by the collar.
Didn't remember snapping at the dealer to get the fuck out unless he wanted to be found dead behind the stockroom.
What he did remember was the way Taiga's eyes lit up. That glint. That spark of recognition. Like he'd been waiting for this.
"You jealous, Lulu?"
Romeo's voice was sandpaper and satin. "You think I'll let you touch anyone else in this building and live to keep your fucking hand?"
Taiga grinned. "That's not a no."
The door slammed shut behind them like the crack of a judge's gavel. Romeo didn't hesitate—he turned the deadbolt with a snap, shoved Taiga back against the splintering wood, and pinned him there with one hand tight around his throat.
Not choking. Not yet. Just… holding. A warning dressed up as affection.
"You think I won't fucking kill you?" Romeo's voice was low, velvet-draped steel, his breath brushing the shell of Taiga's ear. "You think I'll let you paw at some discount pretty boy on my floor?"
Taiga exhaled a shaky laugh, lips curling into a grin like the devil on trial. "You mad?"
"I'm possessed."
Romeo's hand slid up, tilting Taiga's jaw. His teeth sank into his throat—just enough to mark. Not enough to satisfy. Not nearly enough.
Taiga shivered.
The room they were in was technically condemned. One of the casino's old side wings, locked up and forgotten after a rebranding. Dust clung to the deep-red velvet of unused chairs. Broken chandeliers leaned drunkenly against the walls. A baccarat table stood crooked in the center like the altar of some forgotten chapel.
Romeo shoved him toward it with no ceremony.
Taiga blinked. "Oh, so rough Lulu…"
Romeo laughed, sharp and humorless, then dragged a satin table runner off a nearby shelf. "Hands. Now."
He didn't wait.
The table runner looped around Taiga's wrists with cruel precision, a knot behind his back that pulled his shoulders taut. Romeo pressed a hand to his chest and pushed, guiding—forcing—him back onto the baccarat table, one leg hiked and braced against the edge. Exposed. Ready.
Taiga's breath hitched. "You gonna keep pretending you don't want this as bad as I do?"
"I don't want this." Romeo's hand snaked between Taiga's legs, his palm unforgiving. "I want to own it."
Without a further word, his roving touch found the zipper and button of Taiga's trousers. With hands quite practiced at the given task, Taiga soon found himself with a pool of fabric restraining his thighs.
Romeo reached into his blazer pocket—still perfectly pressed despite everything—and pulled out a handful of poker chips. Flicked one up. Let it kiss Taiga's lips.
"Open."
Taiga hesitated. Romeo slapped him. Not hard. Just enough to stun.
"I said open."
He did. The chip slid between his lips. Romeo leaned in. Kissed him slow. Gentle. Then shoved a second chip past his teeth.
Another kiss. A third.
By the fourth, Taiga was moaning around them, hips twitching upward, arms straining against silk ties. Romeo bit at his neck, his jaw, his shoulder—anywhere he could reach. His voice was wrecked silk.
"You like acting out?" Another chip, pressed against Taiga's tongue. "You like making me jealous? Want me to break you in a room full of trash, is that it? Want me to leave you trembling, used, dripping, while the whole casino keeps running without you?"
Taiga tried to nod. The chips clinked in his mouth.
The fifth chip was halfway to Taiga's lips when Romeo stopped. Paused.
He held it there, fingers pressed against Taiga's spit-glossed mouth, and stared down at him with something unreadable flickering behind his magenta eyes. Lust, yes. Fury, absolutely. But something colder, something calculating, something dangerous.
He leaned in—not to kiss this time—but to whisper, lips brushing the corner of Taiga's mouth, where drool had begun to pool.
"You're too warm."
Taiga blinked. His skin was flushed, sweat beading at the hollow of his throat, breath harsh against the poker chips stuffed behind his teeth. Romeo clicked his tongue and stepped back, letting the chip fall to the dusty ground.
"Don't go anywhere."
He turned, adjusted his blazer like they weren't in the middle of something feral, and left the room. Just like that.
Taiga lay there—tied, trembling, one leg hooked up like an offering, pants around his thighs, mouth full of fucking chips—with no sound but the ticking of an old neon sign flickering and an old air cooling unit humming through a dusty vent.
Two minutes. Five. He almost laughed.
By the time Romeo returned, Taiga had started to think he'd been left there as punishment. But the door creaked open.
Romeo stepped in with a dented champagne bucket in one gloved hand, filled to the brim with ice chips. The kind meant for fancy drinks and rolled wrists. And his eyes were lit up like he'd just made the winning bid on a vintage pair of Manolo Blahniks.
"Miss me?"
Taiga made a noise around the chips.
Romeo set the bucket on the table next to him, leaned down, and finally slid the poker chips out one by one with two fingers and a kiss for each. He left one chip under his tongue as a reminder that they could all be replaced if Taiga got mouthy again.
"You've been such a good little mouthpiece," he murmured. "But I need your tongue."
Taiga sucked in a sharp breath, freed, jaw aching.
Romeo dipped his fingers into the bucket, pulled out a piece of ice, and traced it slowly down Taiga's throat. Over his chest. Let it melt over a nipple. Through his buttoned shirt. Taiga gasped.
"You wanna touch people on my floor?" he hissed, dragging another chip of ice down, lower, lower, across the curve of his thigh. "Then I get to decide who touches you after."
And he pressed the ice right against the seam of his balls.
Taiga howled.
Romeo's grin was wicked. "Quiet, Taiga. Or I'll have to gag you again."
He reached into the bucket and pulled another.
Romeo's glove was soaked. Ice melt dripped down his wrist, trailing cold rivers over the gold-plated buttons of his cuff. But his expression didn't falter—if anything, the cruelty in his gaze deepened with every breath Taiga took.
"Flip over."
Taiga groaned, too boneless to move fast, too hard to pretend he didn't know what was coming. Romeo helped him—manhandled him—like he was rearranging something he owned, dragging him until his knees dug into the felt of the baccarat table, chest down, ass up, silk ties still tight.
"Keep that leg on the table," Romeo said, lifting one of Taiga's thighs back into place with just enough force to bruise. "I want you open for this."
And then came the first cube. Cold. Unforgiving. Pushed in slow.
So fucking cold it made Taiga jerk and yelp into the crook of his arm.
Romeo's voice dripped into the air like poison slipped into champagne.
"One for the way you laughed at him."
A second cube, pressed in after the first with brutal precision.
"One for letting him touch your waist."
Another, this one making Taiga whimper, his back arching.
Romeo didn't stop.
His free hand gripped the base of Taiga's spine, holding him still like he was lining up a shot. The next cube slid in slowly, deliberately, followed by the softest murmur:
"One for that look you gave him. That grin you think I don't recognize. The same one you give me when you want to be fucked stupid."
Taiga's whole body shook.
Another cube.
"One for standing too close. One for letting his hand linger. One for not looking away fast enough when he said you were handsome."
Romeo's tone had gone quiet—dangerously quiet—each accusation delivered like a scalpel instead of a slap.
"You want attention so bad you'll take it from anyone, huh?"
He pressed the next cube in harder—shoving the already-melting stack deeper with gloved fingers slick from meltwater and slicker still with cruel intent.
"You like being full?"
Taiga whimpered.
"You like knowing your body's keeping score for me?"
A pause. Then, in a low whisper:
"You're not going to be able to sit for a week."
He added one more cube.
"For making me see it."
And then he leaned down, mouth at the base of Taiga's spine, breath warm, voice no longer cruel—worse. Soft. Intimate.
"You should know by now, Taiga. I'm generous to a fault when properly motivated."
A kiss.
"And I don't share."
Taiga had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
Romeo was standing over him now, admiring the sight—his mess, his chaos. The baccarat table creaked beneath Taiga's weight, his leg still propped, back arched, hole stuffed full of melting ice cubes, breath coming in ragged little sobs that made Romeo's cock throb behind his zipper.
And then, like the world wasn't still spinning from everything Romeo had done—
Clink.
That final poker chip, the one Romeo had left tucked beneath Taiga's tongue just in case, hit the table with a wet little tap and rolled off onto the floor.
Taiga coughed and muttered, voice hoarse and cocky,
"You done lecturing me, Lulu, or you still got more feelings to work through?"
The silence was instant. Dangerous. Romeo's smile didn't twitch, but something in him snapped.
"...Oh, you think we're done?"
He reached down and rummaged through the pockets of Taiga's trousers—no ceremony, no hesitation, though a bit difficult given they way they were bunched around his thighs. His fingers closed around something hard, something familiar.
Click. The blade sprang open with a sound that seemed to silence even the creaking table.
Romeo held up Taiga's folding knife, turning it over in the dim light like it was some kind of relic. "So you still keep this sharp?"
Taiga, still panting into the velvet, glanced back with a slow, wicked grin. "Probably. Might wanna wipe it. Used it last week. Or was that Tuesday?"
Romeo's jaw twitched.
"Of course it's fucking dirty."
He let out a sharp huff through his nose, then strode across the room like a man on a mission. In one corner, half-buried under a moth-eaten tuxedo jacket and a shattered lamp, sat an old bottle of liquor—label faded, half-full, sealed in grime.
He picked it up. Uncapped it. Poured a generous splash directly over the knife. The alcohol seared on contact with the metal, scent instantly sharp and volatile.
Then—without warning—he walked back to Taiga, flipped him back over onto his back and splashed some of the liquor onto him.
Taiga flinched violently, gasping as the cold hit his fevered skin and the alcohol slid into bruises and bites and the faint, raw skin left by too-tight restraints.
Romeo sneered, all teeth.
"Consider that your baptism."
He lifted the knife and kissed the flat of the blade, slow and obscene, before lowering it.
"You want to be mouthy?"
He pressed the now-clean blade to the inside of Taiga's thigh, not cutting—just threatening, a whisper of metal across tender skin.
"Then you're going to earn it."
Another splash of liquor over Taiga's lower abdomen. Romeo smeared it in with his gloved hand, just to hear him writhe.
"Say something else clever, Hoshibami," Romeo purred. "See what gets carved first. Tallies for every infraction? Or your debts."
Romeo was a vision of ruinous restraint—blazer flared open, gloves soaked through with meltwater and sweat and amber liquor. The cleaned knife glinted in his grip as he stepped closer to the table, eyes drinking in the wreck he'd made of Taiga.
His other hand—cruel and unrelenting—closed around Taiga's cock with no preamble, no mercy.
Taiga choked on a moan, hips bucking forward instinctively, only to be shoved back down by the hand on his throat.
No—Not just his throat.
The knife.
Romeo pressed the flat of the blade gently against the long line of Taiga's neck, right under his jaw. Cold. Smooth. Lethal.
"Still feeling clever?" Romeo whispered, voice almost tender. Mockingly so.
Taiga opened his mouth. Closed it.
The blade kissed his pulse point. Romeo smiled.
"Didn't think so."
He tightened his grip on Taiga's cock, stroking him slow—too slow. Just enough to tease the heat up again, even with the lingering shock of the ice melting deep inside him. He used the full length of his gloved palm, dragging it from base to tip with precision, pressure, rhythm. And no relief.
Every time Taiga gasped, Romeo leaned in. Every twitch, every desperate buck of his hips earned him more pressure from the blade.
"Tell me," Romeo said against the shell of his ear, breath heavy with possessiveness. "Was he going to touch you like this? Was he going to bend you over the fucking tables and milk you till you sobbed?"
A brutal twist of his hand. A sharp gasp.
Romeo chuckled.
"No. He wouldn't know how. He wouldn't know when to slow down. When to stop. When to ruin you just enough without breaking you."
His strokes picked up—still calculated, still merciless, but now faster. Rougher. Punishing. The sound of it filled the room: skin, breath, the wet slap of gloved friction, the slide of the blade against Taiga's skin when Romeo tilted it ever so slightly.
"I want you to remember this every time someone flirts with you."
Taiga whimpered, trembling.
"I want you to feel this every time someone looks at you."
Another gasp.
"And I want you to come when I say you can, not a fucking second before."
Romeo pressed the blade harder against Taiga's neck—not enough to cut, but enough to make the message crystal.
"Beg."
Taiga was shaking—whether from the ice, from the overstimulation, or from Romeo's hand still wrapped around his cock, no one could say.