Chapter 3 #2
The fire blooms over my skin, heat pulsing. He follows each smack with the drag of his palm, and tingles spread over my skin. Then the press of his fingers, gripping my hot curves, the flood between my thighs that the quiet possession of his touch creates.
My body betrays me with every breath. Lucian notices.
Of course he does.
His hand stills on me. “You like this.”
My cheeks burn. “I hate this.”
“No,” he says, and hooks two fingers into the waistband of my panties. “You don’t.”
He waits. The pause is everything. He wants my shame without even having to ask for it.
I turn my face against the quilt and whisper, “Don’t stop.”
His breath changes.
Then he draws my panties down slowly, over the heated curve of my ass, down my thighs, leaving me bare to the warmth of the room and the weight of his stare.
I feel exposed.
Claimed.
Wanted so badly I could cry from it.
His palm smooths over my skin now, nothing between us. The contact is softer than before, which somehow makes it worse. Better. Every nerve wakes for him.
“Still green?” he asks quietly.
My throat tightens. “Yes.”
The next smack lands bare.
I jolt, a sound breaking from me before I can catch it. The sting is brighter now, sharper, blooming fast beneath his palm. He rubs it away, slow circles, then grips me with both hands like he’s holding himself back from devouring me whole.
“Beautiful,” he says, voice rough.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Another. Then another.
Each one sends heat rippling through me, pain melting almost instantly into pleasure because it’s him. Because I trust the hand that punishes me to soothe me. Because I know he would stop the second I asked.
But I don’t ask. I push back into his touch.
Lucian goes still.
“Careful, Erin.”
I turn my head just enough to look at him over my shoulder. “Or what?”
His eyes darken. Then his palm comes down again, harder this time, and I gasp his name into the quilt. He bends over me, chest against my back, one hand sliding around my waist to hold me steady.
“Or I’ll remember exactly how much you like being punished,” he says against my ear.
My whole body shivers.
His mouth presses to my shoulder, tender after all that heat.
“There she is,” he murmurs. “My brave, reckless girl.”
And for one breathless moment, with his hand warm against my stinging skin and his body curved over mine like a shield, there is no Isobel.
No fire.
No ghosts.
Only Lucian.
Only me.
Only the terrible, beautiful truth that I am safe enough with him to fall apart.
He slides a strong arm under my belly, turning me over onto my back. I stare up at him, sliding my arms around his neck.
“Your turn,” I say.
His mouth curves. “You wanna spank me?”
“Your shirt.” A smile stretches across my face.
His eyes lighten. He stands and unbuttons his shirt slowly. Unfairly slowly. Each button reveals more of him. The warm, tanned skin. The hard plane of his chest. The brutal history of scars etched into his skin.
I remember the first time I saw the damage; I didn’t flinch. I remember that. I remember the way he watched me, waiting for disgust, and how something changed between us when I gave him none. I stroked them like the cheek of a newborn baby.
Tender. Loving. How I felt for him.
Still do.
I could never be afraid of his scars. It is the wounds I can’t see, the ones he won’t share with me, that frighten me. He lets the shirt fall open but doesn’t remove it.
“Now,” he says after staring at me a beat. “You can ask a question.”
My fingers twist together. I hate that my next question sounds small. “If she hadn’t died, would you still be with her?”
He won’t look at me. Silence. My heart begins to pound.
Lucian closes the distance between us, removing my bra and tossing it to the side. His warm, bare chest presses against my naked breasts. He lifts one hand and wraps it gently around the back of my neck, his thumb resting under my chin, cradling me in his cage.
He forces me to lock eyes with him. “I was a different man.”
“That’s not an answer.” I shake my head.
“It is the only honest one.” His voice is low. His hand drops. “The man who loved Isobel burned. I don’t know what he would have done because he no longer exists.”
I swallow. “And this man?”
“This man bought you for one night.” His eyes drop to my mouth. He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me toward him. The heat of our skin presses together. “And I’ll be damned if I haven’t been paying for it ever since.”
A laugh breaks from me before I can stop it. “That’s very romantic.”
“This man does not do romance well.”
“No,” I whisper. “He doesn’t.”
Lucian’s face is inches from mine. “But he knows what he needs. And he needs you. Like air.”
The words strike me.
Severe. Beautiful. Damaged.
Is he mine? Still? Even with her sniffing around?
“I need you, Erin. I need you when you run, when you defy me in front of dangerous men with loaded weapons. When you cross boundaries to eavesdrop on conversations that would have been explained to you if you had trusted me. If you’d had the patience to wait ten minutes.”
I stare, breathless.
“He chooses you when ghosts come back,” Lucian continues, his voice roughening. “And every instinct tells him to lock you somewhere safe and stand guard at the door until the world ends.”
“Not the last part, though,” my voice catches.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, that last part, too.”
My heart does something painful. It hopes. Hopes that we will make it through like we have so far—on a wing and a prayer.
Then his hand tightens slightly in my hair. “But you still crossed the boundary.”
His mouth closes over mine before I can argue.
Heat drops to me so fast my knees nearly forget their job and buckle beneath me. He kisses me slowly, taking me inch by inch like he has all the time in the world to prove his point. He owns me, and I’ll let him do anything he wants.
His hand slides from my neck to my waist, fingers digging in just enough to make my body arch toward him. I make a sound I would deny in court, and he catches it with his mouth.
I love that he knows exactly how rough I need it. His other hand comes to my hip, turning me, guiding me down until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.
“She won’t come between us.” His voice is certain. His eyes tell another story.
I lift my chin. “Prove it.”
Then Lucian drops to his knees in front of me.
My breath stops.
The sight of him there — this man feared by everyone, this man who commands rooms and ruins lives with a word — kneeling at my feet with firelight over his scars and possession in his eyes, does something catastrophic to my insides.
“Hands on my shoulders,” he says. I obey before thinking.
His gaze flicks up. The corner of his mouth curves. “Good girl.”
The praise hits low and hot. My fingers dig into his shoulders. One hand wraps around the back of my calf, thumb stroking a slow line that makes my breath uneven.
His hand tightens on my calf. “Eyes on me.”
I look at him.
“I won’t punish you for being hurt,” he says.
My chest tightens. “But?”
His gaze holds mine. “But I will punish you for risking yourself because of it.”
My pulse trips. My dark place. My terrible shelter. The things I let him do to me that other women would find unthinkable.
The man who makes sin feel like safety.
“What about you?” I whisper. “Who punishes you?”
His hand slides higher, over my knee, up the outside of my thigh.
“You do.”
The answer is too honest.
“Every time you step outside the safety of my control. Every time I think I’ve lost you. Every time I feel the doubt that creeps in on you because of the way we met that first night.”
Before I can find words, he leans in and presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh.
I jolt.
His hand grips my hip, holding me steady. “Lucian.”
“Still angry?”
“Yes.”
His mouth moves higher.
My fingers clench in his hair.
“Still jealous?”
I breathe out a sound that is not quite a word.
He looks up. “Answer me.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
He kisses me again, closer to the place already aching for him. “Good.”
I glare down at him through a haze of need. “Good?”
“Yes.” His breath warms my skin. “I like knowing you want me badly enough to hate the idea of sharing even my ghosts.”
That should not make me hotter.
It does.
“You’re twisted,” I say.
“Twisted for you.” His smile is brief and wicked.
Then his mouth is on me. Heat, wetness, cool air as he pushes my thighs apart to taste me. My head falls back.
The room tilts. He takes his time, the tip of his tongue circling, teasing, which is cruel.
Which is perfect. He knows how to weaken my knees and fill me with shame.
Each pass of his mouth drags me deeper underwater.
I grip his hair, and he makes a rough sound against me, as if my desperation feeds his.
My body trembles. He stops. I lift my head. “Don’t you dare.”
His eyes flash. “There’s my girl.”
“Don’t stop—”
“Bad girls don’t get what they want.”
I tremble.
He rises, slow and powerful, until he towers over me again. His mouth glistens with me. More shame.
He reaches out and grips my chin, forcing me to stare at him. Victorious, he smiles.
“Ask your next question.”
“Huh?” I’m caught somewhere between heaven and hell, confused.
“You wanted answers.” His thumb drags over my lower lip. “Ask.”
I stare at him.
He waits. He’s the patient one in this relationship. Which isn’t saying much.
I’m shaking. My skin is hot. I’m wet between my legs, slick with me and his mouth, and I’m painfully aware that he is still half-dressed and entirely in control.
Somehow, I get it together enough to think. I ask, voice unsteady. “Did you ever see her after the fire? Inside the building, or out?” Lucian’s expression darkens. I press on anyway. “Dead, alive, or otherwise?”
His jaw flexes. “No.”
A body is terrible. A grave is terrible. But when there is no body? No grave? That leaves a door in the mind that never fully closes. I whisper, “Lucian.”
“I heard her scream,” he says. “That was the last thing I heard before the roof began to cave in.”