Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
We go to his bathroom since it has more mirrors.
Loads of them, actually. Standing in front of the main one, Luke adjusts the angle of the adjacent ones that hang above the vanity so our bodies replicate into infinity.
Multiple Lukes standing behind me. Multiple Ritas watching him over her shoulder.
His hands hover above the crisscrossing layers of straps at my back that do the good work of hoisting my breasts up and nipping my waist.
I feel like I belong on a chaise, garlanded in flowers, my womanhood blossoming in the middle of sprawling golden Renaissance fields. South Asian Ophelia.
“You must love to look at yourself,” I joke. “Vain, much?”
“These mirrors have many benefits. Should I demonstrate?”
I don’t meet his eyes in our reflection. I won’t match the huskiness of his voice with any expression on his face, because then I’ll read loads more into it than I should.
“Sorry,” I say. “I know it’s a complicated dress.”
Luke steps a bit closer to me. “It rather kicked me straight in the gut when I saw it.”
“ You are the one with the bowtie and diamond earring.”
“You don’t approve?”
I let out a gust of a sigh, again seeking anchorage by looking everywhere but his face. Not his hands, as they are similarly devastating. “Are you fishing for compliments, Mr. Abbot? That’s unlike you.”
“Only your honest review, Ms. Singh.”
“If you must know…your outfit stirred something inside me.” Hard, pebbled nipples, if I am being honest—but I’m not. “You look like a spy. Or a dangerous assassin who’s got clever tricks he’s hiding.”
I hear his breath of amusement. “I’ll keep it in rotation, then. Or wear it again tomorrow.”
My fingers play along the edge of the marbled counter. He’s not touching me, but my back feels warm. “Stop fueling my perversions.”
“Payback for fueling mine.”
“What has? This dress?”
“No.” His voice is above my ear, his mouth ghosting over skin. “You do.”
“I do?”
“By existing.”
“I—can’t very well stop that…” Understanding I’m close to either shivering with pleasure or pushing myself up against him, I try to focus on the task at hand. “The straps. They might take a while to understand. I don’t know how Sistine did them up.”
“I have you,” simply says Luke.
And he does. With his eyes lowered and focused on my back, I risk a look in the mirror to watch his expression of methodical focus. He takes a moment to study what is in front of him, and then, with deft hands, starts loosening the first strap.
Sexy. So sexy. His competence makes me want to groan.
The dress begins to droop, becoming slack at my shoulders. I’m not wearing a bra, so I hold on to the front while Luke continues undoing me. With the way it is constructed, he has to pull apart everything from my neck down to the curve above my bum for it to come off.
“You have a freckle here,” he notes. “In the middle of your back.”
His finger finds the spot, and I shiver.
“Sorry.” He pulls back and presses his fingers into his eyes.
“Don’t be. It felt good.”
That’s a critical understatement. Having his breath on my neck while his finger stroked a speck of a spot on my back is disproportionate bliss. Addicting. I want to feel it again.
“Do you want to touch it again?”
“We aren’t talking about what I want,” he growls.
He goes back to the straps, and I’m about to be crushed by disappointment when he does it again. He slowly touches the freckle and then slides his finger down a small length of my spine.
“You are tense,” is his explanation.
Desperate—actually.
His explorations get bolder. The heat of his hands smooth over the lines of my back. Death by sensual massage at the slowest pace, as if he wants to memorize and pay tender at the altar of every part of me he has been given access too. As if there will never be another chance again.
“So soft,” I think I hear him whisper. His voice is a ghost. And so is the rest of his body. He’s holding himself away. All he gives me are his hands.
“I have others,” I volunteer. “Freckles.”
“Where?”
“I…suppose a fiancé should know these things.”
Finishing the last of my straps, his hands slide down to hold me by the hips. I try to push back and make contact with the front of him, but he keeps me in place.
I won’t protest. Protesting will make it clear what I want.
Instead, I say, “I’ve got the kind of hips that make great handles. That’s what I’ve been told.”
His gaze lifts and finds mine in the mirror, sharpened into something predatory; something feral. “Darling, I don’t want to hear you talk about other men who have seen you naked. It would be too easy to get their names, get their social insurance numbers, and ruin their lives.”
“You wouldn’t?—”
“There is little I wouldn’t do when it comes to you.” Violent arousal spikes through me at his next blatant declaration. “I’m your fiancé.”
His jaw rolls as he holds my gaze. He’s waiting for me to be terrified.
To scurry out of here. To stop this from going any further.
My hands clutching the front of my dress ease their grip.
The material drops, exposing the tops of my breasts.
He hisses. I keep going. A bit lower. More. The flash of a nipple.
Luke lunges his hands forward, trapping me in between his arms and chest and the counter. His head drops down onto the back of my neck. “ Fuck , Rita. You need to leave. I can’t. Don’t. My control isn’t good right now. I want to?— ”
“Want to what?” Is that my voice? Such a whine. “What happens if I stay? What do you want to do?” Tell me I’m not alone.
His head lifts, and the eyes are all pupil. “Taste.”
I turn and see the front of his trousers.
He’s hard. The thick ridge is painfully big.
My dress pools at my hips because I’ve let go, my hands reaching up into his hair.
Luke reaches around and grips the back of my bum.
His mouth latches onto my nipple, sucking hungrily like a man starved.
That groan I’ve been holding in? It fills the room.
His mouth laves at my breast and an answering beat throbs between my legs. Once, twice, three times—I lose count of how long and hard he sucks on me. When he drags his mouth to the other breast, he glances up at me. “Is this okay?” he asks, mouth hovered above the other nipple.
“Don’t stop,” I beg. “Please.”
His tongue circles it slowly. “Are you sure? Tell me to leave you. Tell me I’m not allowed to touch you.”
I can’t. I won’t. It’s not true.
“How can I when I’m soaked? I’ve been soaked. And feeling empty. I need—I need?—”
“Tell me what you need.”
At the brush of my hand against his erection, he pulls away. He lifts me by the waist to rest on the counter, slowly takes off the rest of my dress, underwear included, and spreads my knees wider to accommodate himself in between.
Before going further, he looks at me. Just looks at me and swallows roughly.
I—can’t handle it. I tug on his hand until he finally brushes against the warm, wet, insistent part of me, lightly circling the hood of my clit.
“More. Inside,” I beg.
“So impatient,” he purrs, a smile now on his lips.
“My Rita wants this, does she?” He circles me again, again, and again—and then his finger slides in, pumping lightly until I clench down.
Experimentally, another finger joins in, steel eyes watching my reactions as if all that matters is the tremble in my knees, the kind of stroke that makes my head drop back, and how to keep the whimpering going that comes out of my mouth.
Every swipe, swirl, and flick of his thumb on my clit is thorough and punishing, and I can’t believe I’m already building up to orgasm.
I claw at his shoulders, but Luke has no care.
His rhythm is built, and he is the maestro going in and out, kissing my mouth whenever a particularly broken groan comes out as if he owns my noises too.
He seems to especially enjoy the low keen I release when he curls his forefinger inside me, dragging against the flesh of my g-spot.
Luke seeks to keep it going the way he incessantly repeats the movement.
“Please, don’t stop—I’m so close—I’m close—God ? —”
The brush of a thumb breaks me, and I’m gushing and clamping down on his fingers.
He waits until my shudders die down before finally pulling out and licking his hand clean. When my ears have stopped ringing and my heart rate has gotten marginally slower, I raise my head and see. He’s still hard. And large. A blunt angle straining his trousers.
When he sees me looking, Luke steps back. He covers his cock with his hand, squeezing. The muscles in his neck stand out. “My control—I’ll be in control again. I need time.”
No. I don’t want that. I come off the counter and drop to my knees in front of him. It’s only for a second, because the moment I feel tiles on my skin is the moment Luke grabs me and lifts me into the air.
“Not like this.”
He is adamant. He carries me to the bed and places me down gently against the pillows. His eyes go on a greedy journey, looking at everything: my shoulders, arms, stomach, thighs, knees, breasts, the V between my legs. Every dimple and stretch mark and soft edge.
“Those are my stretch marks,” I say in a neutral tone.
In past situations, when I’ve undressed before a man, these stripes of mine have either been skipped over by the eye as if they don’t exist or extra fetishized in combination with the way my skin folds at my hips or how my stomach has a non-flat personality.
I wait for him to react.