Chapter 54 Rae
RAE
[HANDWRITTEN & TAPED TO BEDROOM DOOR]
Do not enter.
Do not knock.
Do not interrupt.
What happens in this room tonight belongs to us.
— LL
Lukas rises and lifts me with him, cradling me to his chest. My arms wind around his neck. I can feel his heartbeat against my cheek.
Neither of us dares to speak as he carries me through the darkened brownstone. My nostrils are full of him. Mint and aquamarine. The tinge of cigarette smoke. His musk, his heat.
The stairs creak beneath his weight as he climbs. Each step feels like a countdown to something inevitable. We’ve been hurtling toward it since the night he found me in the office with my heart in my throat and Kir’s hand in my shirt.
When he reaches the second-floor landing, Lukas pauses outside a closed door. His jaw clenches. He’s weighing something—I can see it in the way his gray eyes go distant for just a moment.
Then, decision reached, he pushes the door open and carries me inside.
The bedroom is cemented in time. Disturbed dust skitters through slivers of dying light. More white sheets cover everything, except for one item.
The bed.
It commands the center of the room like an altar to a love that rotted a long time ago. It’s a towering four-poster with the veils drawn back. Dark wood columns are carved into fantastical shapes I can’t quite make out in the shadows.
My breath catches as understanding dawns: This is where he slept with Elena.
This is the bed they shared. The room where his wife once lived, once laughed, once loved him… I feel like an intruder here. The air itself feels bottled up, containing memories I have no right to witness.
He hasn’t set foot in here in eighteen years.
And he’s chosen to bring me.
Here of all places.
Now of all times.
Lukas lowers me tenderly onto the mattress. The bed sighs beneath us, old springs groaning softly at being disturbed after so long.
I look up at him. This must mean something to him, but his eyes are dark and unreadable.
“Lukas,” I whisper, “this room—”
“I know,” he whispers back. “I know what it is.”
He hovers above me, one knee braced on the mattress, the other foot still planted on the floor. Like he’s not quite committed. Some part of him is still deciding whether to stay or flee.
“Then why?” I reach up and follow the hard line of his jaw, feeling the rasp of his silver beard against my fingertips. “Why bring me here?”
Lukas turns his face into my palm and presses a kiss there. “Because I’m done running from phantoms.”
He kneels between my thighs. Even when crouched like that, he still towers over me, fearsome in every way.
“May I?” He touches the top button of my blouse.
After a beat of hesitation, I nod silently.
He works the button free, then pauses. Waits. His eyes find mine again, asking permission for the next one.
I nod again.
Button by button, question by question, he undresses me. Each time, he asks, May I unhook this? May I slide this down?, and each time, he waits for my nod before continuing.
My shirt falls away. My bra. Then my skirt. Then everything else.
When I’m finally bare beneath him, he’s still fully clothed. The contrast makes me shiver. It’s his suit against my naked skin, his control against my vulnerability. His everything against my nothing.
He lays me back on the bed, then settles his weight over me, bracing himself on his forearms so he doesn’t crush me. One hand comes up to cradle my face.
“Are you certain you’re ready?” he asks.
In answer, I arch up and kiss him as hard as I can.
With that, Lukas’s careful restraint shatters.
His tongue claims my mouth while one massive hand tangles in my hair and the other manhandles my hip. It’s a war, lips to lips, clashing and clanging, messy and hopeful all at once. When he finally pulls back, we’re both gasping.
“I’ve got you now,” he whispers against my lips. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Just breathe.”
He kisses away tears I didn’t know I was crying. When did that happen? I’m a mess beneath him, shaking, wet-cheeked, and desperate, and he’s looking at me like nothing has ever been less pathetic or more beautiful.
“We’re going to go slow,” he tells me. “I’m going to learn every inch of you first. Teach your body what pleasure feels like before I take anything from you. Do you understand?”
I nod, still trembling.
He rewards me with a kiss so tender I could die.
Then his mouth begins its descent. He starts at my throat, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to where my heart pumps.
“So soft,” he whispers. “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I saw you in Kir’s office, you know. I’ve fucking dreamed of it.”
He moves lower, tasting the hollow of my collarbone with his tongue.
When he reaches my breasts, time stops. His tongue circles one nipple slowly for a few tortured laps before his lips close around it.
The gentle suction makes me gasp. Then his teeth scrape lightly and I nearly spring off the mattress.
“So responsive,” he chuckles against my skin. “My perfect girl.”
I reach for him, but he catches my wrists and pins them gently above my head.
“No,” he scolds. “Tonight is about you. Let me take care of you.”
Lukas releases my wrists and floats one hand down my body. He goes deliberately slow, giving me time to stop him and change my mind if I wanted to.
Joke’s on him: I’ll kill him if he does stop.
His rough palm skims past my ribs, over the dip of my waist, across the soft swell of my hip. Every inch of skin he touches feels like it’s sizzling.
When he reaches the apex of my thighs, he pauses. “May I?”
It’s such a marvel to hear those words in his mouth. This brutal mountain of a man, who takes, takes, takes, is choosing to ask instead? Unthinkable.
When I nod, he spreads my knees and settles between them. He gazes at where my thighs meet and exhales softly.
“Your pussy is so fucking beautiful, Rae.”
Then he extends a hand and, so carefully, strokes around my clit.
I jolt at first and he uses his free hand to soothe me, palm splayed warm and steady across my lower belly.
“Easy. I’ve got you. Just feel.”
His finger slides inside me and I cry out at the intrusion. Even this is a stretch. I’m suddenly terrified that I’m not ready for what’s coming.
“Shh,” he coaxes. “Breathe through it. Your body knows what to do.”
I force myself to exhale, to unclench and trust him. When I relax fractionally, he begins to move in shallow strokes, his thumb still working my clit. When he adds a second finger, I whimper.
He kisses my hip bone in apology. “I know it’s a lot,” he murmurs against my skin. “But I need to prepare you, sweetheart. I have to make sure you can take me.”
He crooks his fingers inside me and his thumb starts to blur as he passes over my clit faster and faster. I’m being wound up like a child’s toy, every gear and ratchet in me tightening, tightening, until—
“Mm. There it is,” he growls with dark satisfaction. “Let go. Cum on my fingers, Rae. Show me what you look like when you break.”
I do. I grab his wrist as I spasm hard, bucking and moaning his name. It feels like I’m being pushed through a meat grinder and coming out as disconnected little bits on the other side.
Eventually, the force eases. As I flop back and recover from the aftershocks, Lukas withdraws his fingers and brings them to his mouth to suck them clean without ever looking away from me.
“Delicious,” he rasps. “Like nectar.”
Then he lowers his head between my thighs.
“Lukas!” I cry, suddenly ashamed.
Between my legs, I feel him smile. “No one’s ever tasted you before, hm?” he asks. “Good. That means this belongs to me, too.”
He seals his mouth over my clit and sucks as his silver beard rasps against my inner thighs, and the combination of sensations is too much. When I try to close my legs reflexively, he forces them wider with his broad shoulders, pinning me open and vulnerable.
“Stay still and stay open,” he growls. “Let me worship you properly.”
Two of his thick fingers slide back inside me while his mouth stays suctioned over my clit.
I’m sobbing now, hands fisted in his silver hair, torn between pulling him closer and pushing him away because it’s too much.
My inexperienced body doesn’t know how to process this level of pleasure.
Every nerve ending is screaming, overloaded, shorting out.
“I can’t,” I gasp. “Lukas, I can’t—!”
“You can,” he tells me, his voice muffled against my flesh. “You will. Cum for me again, sweetheart. I want to taste your honey.”
This orgasm is even more intense than the first. My entire body seizes, vision going white, and for a moment, I actually black out.
When I come back to myself, he’s pressing kisses to my inner thighs and murmuring praise in Russian and English. “Takaya krasivaya, so perfect, you did so well, I’m so proud of you.”
His beard is dripping wet with my arousal.
It might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
Lukas crawls back up my body and gathers me into his arms. His palm strokes my hair while I tremble uncontrollably against his chest.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispers against my temple. “So brave. So perfect.”
I can’t form words yet. Thoughts are mostly out of the question as well. My entire nervous system has been rewired in the span of fifteen minutes, and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.
We’re also nowhere close to finished.
When I’ve finally caught my breath, he pulls back to look at my face. Those gray eyes search mine with an intensity that snatches right back whatever air I’d managed to reclaim.
“Do you want to stop?”
I blink at him, sure that I heard wrong.
Do I want to stop? I look down at my body in confusion, sure that I’m going to find something that’s silently communicating some sort of distress. But what I see is the exact opposite of “hold your horses.”