Chapter 18
chapter eighteen
LUCKY
How can everything be so perfect and so whacked out at the same time?
Willow’s things have colonized my penthouse—crystals by the rabbit’s pen, a chipped mug on the counter, a blanket slung carelessly over the couch—and the air feels different.
Softer. Charged. Lived in. I didn’t know how loud the emptiness was until she muffled it with her presence. And I couldn’t love it more.
But I’ve been exposed, maybe. And Phoenix knows we’re out for his blood, and every bit of me knows he’s going to retaliate after what we’ve done. I feel the anxiety and anticipation of it all like a vice around my throat.
Perfect. Fucked.
Two months ago, I never, ever would have predicted where I’d be on this day.
“You want to go get some lunch?” I ask, because lunch is normal. It feels controllable. Predictable.
Willow is stretched out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling like she’s been running through our murder plan over and over.
“I’m not really hungry,” she says as she looks over at me.
And dammit, how does she do this to me so easily?
One look with those blue eyes of hers, and my brain is in the gutter.
“I am,” I say without thinking.
“Why don’t you look like you’re talking about lunch, Lucky?” she says evenly, but a smirk is pulling at the corner of her mouth. I see something light in those pretty blue eyes of hers.
“Well, I was at first,” I say as I stalk across the room slowly. “But then you were there, just existing, and, well…”
And holy shit, I love my new life, murder bits and all, because Willow’s eyes darken. And she reaches down and pulls her shirt right up and off.
“Show me what you really meant, Lucky,” she says, and her tone is breathy and dead serious.
“Hell yes,” I growl as I cross the rest of the way to her. “Eyes on me, Dagger Kitten. I want you watching every second of this.”
I scoop her from the couch, and she gives a delighted squeal. I haul her onto the rug, looking back at the floor-to-ceiling window behind us. Perfect. There’s just the right amount of daylight right now. I can see every bit of us reflected in the window.
It might not be the mirror room, but it’s still pretty damn good.
“Lie back,” I tell Willow, even as I pull my own shirt off and yank my pants off.
Willow does as I ask, and I unbutton her pants.
And now, I take my time as I slowly work them down her hips.
Fuck. She has the most perfect little tummy.
The most perfect thighs. The best fucking calves.
I strip her pants off and toss them aside.
Next, I hook my fingers into her black thong and pull it down.
Down. Down. I look up, catching Willow’s eyes as I do it, and there’s nothing but molten heat and curiosity there.
Good. That was the worst feeling in the world when we’d kissed and she’d just froze.
The shame in her eyes is something I never, ever want to see again.
“You’re fucking perfect, Willow,” I say as I press a kiss to her knee. I brush a hand down her leg. “Open for me?” It’s a request, an ask. Because she is always, always in charge.
And slowly, she does. She lets one knee drop open to the side, and as I slide my hand along her thigh, she lets the other open as well.
Like the thirsty drunk I am, I take her in. Her pussy is the most exquisite thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. Pink. Puffy. She has a narrow trail of hair leading straight to the star of the damn show.
“Breathe, Willow,” I instruct when I realize she’s holding her breath. “You want the pillows to relax onto?”
She nods, and I whip a hand out to yank them from the couch. I prop them behind her head, and she finally relaxes into them. I settle onto the rug on my stomach, propped up on my forearms. My gaze once more fixes on the object of my obsession.
Unable to wait a second longer, my tongue laps out, and I get my first taste.
In the first second, I know it won’t be my last.
Good fuck, it won’t be my last.
She’s sweet and slick and she tastes like the rest of forever. I lap out again, dragging my tongue from slit to clit before giving it a hard, pulling suck.
A curse slips out of Willow’s lips as her head falls back against the pillows and her hands rise to fist in her hair.
“Eyes on me, Willow,” I remind her, vibrating the words against her clit. “I want you watching every second of this.”
With a sigh, she lifts her head again, meeting my eyes.
I go back to work. I lap her again. My hands come to frame her pussy, easing my palms over her smooth skin.
“Spank me,” she shocks me when she pants the request out.
“Yes, fucking ma’am,” I grin against her clit. I smack my right hand against her ass cheek, and she lets out a pleased groan. “Keep asking for anything else you want.”
“I don’t really know what I want,” she admits, panting now. “But I suddenly needed that.”
“Good girl,” I growl as I bite my teeth into her clit, dragging them over her most tender place. “Now take a breath for me.”
She does, and I slide two fingers inside her. She still gasps, even with the preparation. But she takes me easily with how slick she is.
Fuck. She’s so damn wet, and it’s only been a few minutes. And she’s so fucking tight. When we had sex in the mirror room, I thought she was going to cut my dick clean off with how tight she is, and it was the best feeling in the world.
It’s no different now. I’m dying to bury myself in her again, but not until I make her come with my mouth first.
She pants again, and I pump my fingers in and out, careful to keep the right angle, the right movement.
Her legs fall open wider, and her head falls back against the pillow again for just a moment before she remembers she’s supposed to be watching.
Her eyes lock back on me as she watches me suck her pussy.
I suck harder, longer. I run my tongue through her entrance before increasing its pressure as I drag it over her clit. I curl my fingers just slightly, stimulating her walls.
I cock my free hand back, and I smack her other ass cheek. She lets out an approving sound and fists her fingers in my hair. I see her eyes shift to the window where she can see everything that’s happening, granting her a different angle.
Her breathing picks up. Her legs start to shake.
“Don’t hold back, baby,” I pant against her pussy. “I want you to fucking scream as you come.”
She whimpers, and I suck harder. My fingers piston faster. I growl against her clit, sending vibrations through it.
And she clenches around my fingers like a vice as she comes undone. A scream rips from her lips. She pulls at my hair as she presses my face harder into her pussy. Her entire body tenses as the orgasm rips through her from head to toe.
“Lucky!” she screams, and I can die a fucking happy man, hearing my name on her lips as she breaks apart.
As she reaches the end of her orgasm, I pull her forward and lie on my back.
And she instantly seems to know what I want.
She climbs right on top of me, and I almost instantly lose it when she slips down on my cock.
My hands grip her hips as I thrust inside her and she rides me like I’m a damn horse.
“I want you to come in me, Lucky,” Willow huffs as she rides me ragged. “Right. Now.”
“Fucking good girl,” I grunt as I piston in and out of her, loving every loud, wet sound that echoes off the walls.
And I lose it. Right then. At her command. I come with a roar, my fingers digging into her skin. I grip her so damn hard, she falls forward onto me, chest to chest. Her fingers dig into my pecs, and it just makes me come harder as she claims me, flesh and bone.
We stay there for a good sixty seconds, each of us breathing like we just ran a 5K. I press my forehead into her temple as she tries to get it back under control.
“Hey,” I say softly into her hair. “You with me?”
“Mhm.” I realize she’s smiling at her reflection in the window, and it just makes me feel like a damn genius for setting us up over here. She’s wearing the lazy kind of grin that looks like she’s solved a problem the rest of the world can’t even name. “I like the windows.”
“Me too,” I admit, staring at the two of us lying chest to chest. “For what they show you, for how you get to see what I see. But it’s also like they’re proof. That you’re real. That I didn’t make you up because I was lonely.”
She turns in my arms and kisses me, slow and grateful and ruinous. “You didn’t make me up.”
I cup her face. I don’t say I love you because I’ve already said it three hundred different ways in the last ten minutes. Instead, I kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw, her pulse, and whisper the only truth that isn’t a repeat: “I will always talk you through anything you want.”
“Thank you, Lucky,” she says in a whisper. “It’s exactly what I needed.”
Some nights, the theater breathes with me. Tonight, it inhales when I rise and exhales when I drop, and the whole room hums in that low voltage way that means I’ve got them—every eye, every held breath, every nervous laugh I can pull like a thread.
Marco’s voice is a whisper in my ear—“smooth on the deck, Shade, smoke in three, pyro on your mark”—and the timing is obscene, crisp as a card edge.
Toby’s new trap chest slides like a secret.
Sasha’s counts sit in my bones so clean I don’t even have to think; the beat lives in my wrists, in the way I pivot, in the way my stomach flexes so I can climb in the way I do.
But I’m not performing for five thousand. I’m performing for one.
She’s five rows back, aisle seat, black hair like a sin and eyes like a dare, legs crossed, mouth tilted in that smirk that says she knows exactly how unhinged I am about her.
Every time I turn, I catch her. And every time I catch her, the act sharpens—more danger, more control, more “watch me, baby.”