Chapter 23 Natalia #2
His expression is focused in that terrifying, steady way of his.
His fingers slide under the lace and find me already wet.
The corner of his mouth shifts.
I glare at him. “Don’t.”
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His thumb strokes over me once, lazy and devastating.
Whatever snappish thing I planned to say dies in my throat.
He keeps it slow at first. A soft, maddening pressure that coaxes instead of takes.
The hum of the plane fills my ears. The leather seat is cool beneath me.
His hand is warm. The curtain stays closed.
The whole cabin feels suspended outside normal life, as if we have climbed high enough to leave consequences behind on the ground.
That thought is dangerous.
So is trusting the man sitting beside me.
When he pushes one finger inside me, I bite down hard on my bottom lip. A muffled little whimper escapes anyway.
His gaze flicks to my mouth. “Quiet.”
The command sends a hard pulse straight between my legs.
I hate how much I like that.
He adds a second finger and curls them with deliberate pressure. I jolt. My hand flies to his wrist. Not to stop him. To anchor myself.
“There you are,” he murmurs.
I should resent the satisfaction in his voice.
Instead I cling to his wrist harder as he keeps moving, patient and ruthless in the way only patience can be ruthless.
The panic loosens by degrees. Not because anything is fixed. Just because he is giving my body something else to drown in.
My head tips back against the seat. The window is a blur of white clouds and impossible blue sky. My breathing turns uneven. My thighs tremble around his hand.
He watches every bit of it.
That is the darker part now. Not the rough claiming of last night. This cool, concentrated attention. The certainty that he could push harder, take more, ruin me faster, and is choosing not to because watching me come apart slowly is doing something to him, too.
I can see it in his eyes.
“Luca.”
His thumb brushes my clit and I go still.
“Come for me, Princess.”
The words drop low and hard into my stomach.
My orgasm hits before I can brace for it.
My back arches. The sound I make gets trapped behind my teeth.
His free hand comes up just long enough to cover my mouth, not forceful, just enough to muffle me while the wave tears through me.
Then he’s easing me through it, fingers still inside me, still moving, dragging out every last pulse until I’m shaking.
When he finally pulls his fingers free, I sit there stunned and breathless, my whole body humming.
His gaze never leaves mine as he sucks them clean, slow and deliberate, like he has all the time in the world, like he knows exactly what that sight is doing to me.
It is such a small thing, really. Two fingers. The slow drag of his tongue. The slick pull of his mouth.
But when he tastes me, something in his expression shifts.
The control is still there, but I catch a glimpse of what lives underneath it for one dangerous second, hot and hungry and barely contained.
The heat that flashes through me is so sharp, it makes my skin feel too tight. My pulse is everywhere.
I stare at him, still trembling, while he settles back into that maddening composure. Like he isn’t the reason my nerves are still sparking. The imbalance of it gets under my skin. I want to see him wrecked. I want to be the reason.
Before I can think better of it, I unfasten my seat belt.
Luca watches me, a faint line appearing between his brows, but he doesn’t say anything. Not until I slide off the seat and onto the carpet between his knees.
Then his whole body goes still.
“Natalia.”
The space is tight, his legs framing me the second I settle there, one hand braced on the edge of his seat, the other on his thigh.
His hands come down to my shoulders, holding me there.
“Nat,” he says, voice rougher now. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.” I tip my face up to his. “I want to.”
He swallows hard.
“But you have to teach me.”
The words hit him hard enough that I see it in the brief hitch of his breath. His hand slides into my hair, gathering it gently at the back of my head.
“Okay,” he says, the words sounding strangled.
He undoes his pants and frees himself, already hard, a drop of pre-cum glistening at the tip, and my breath stalls.
Luca watches my face and strokes his thumb once behind my ear. “Relax. You don’t have to take all of me.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks. “Right. Okay.”
A rough little laugh leaves him.
His hand shifts to my chin, tilting it up. “Open for me.”
I do.
He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip first, then guides the head of his cock to my mouth. “Start slow,” he says. “Just this.”
I take him in carefully, only the tip, and the sound he makes is low and immediate.
“That’s it.” His fingers tighten in my hair. “Use your tongue.”
I do, clumsy and curious and very aware of the way his whole body reacts to the smallest thing. The taste of him hits my tongue, familiar now in a way that sends heat curling low in my stomach.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Again.”
I take a little more this time. His head tips back against the seat with a breath that sounds dragged out of him.
“Fuck.”
I pull back just enough to breathe, and his heated gaze drops to my mouth.
“Take what feels comfortable,” he says, voice rough. “Use your hand on the rest.”
I wrap my fingers around what I can’t fit and try again, slower now, finding a rhythm between my mouth and my hand. Luca watches me with a look that makes my skin feel too tight all over again.
“There you go,” he growls. “Just like that.”
I take him deeper, greedy for the sound it drags out of him, and the moment I push too far my throat spasms around him in a gag.
Luca’s whole body locks. The look he gives me is pure feral heat for one sharp, dangerous second. Then he’s guiding me back with a hand at my jaw, breathing hard enough to shake.
“Easy, baby,” he says, voice shredded around the edges. “You don’t have to take more than you want.”
I pull back, cheeks burning, but he tips my chin up again.
“You’re doing good, Nat.”
The praise lands low and hot in my core.
He guides me from there with small adjustments, a murmur to slow down, a tilt of my chin, a helpless sound when I get it right. It should feel awkward. It doesn’t. Not with the way he looks at me, and not with the effort it’s costing him not to take over.
I start paying attention to the little things. The way his stomach tightens under my palm. The way his breathing changes when I hollow my cheeks. The way his fingers spread against the back of my head when I find something he likes.
“That,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Don’t stop.”
Satisfaction sparks hot and bright inside me.
I keep going, slower now, enjoying the way each drag of my mouth strips a little more of that impossible composure off him. He still isn’t pushing. Still isn’t taking over. But the strain of holding back is right there in every rough breath.
His head drops back against the leather. “Fuck.”
Barely a whisper. Still enough to make me ache.
Then he looks down at me again, and whatever he sees on my face makes something in him snap taut. His hand tightens in my hair, not forcing, just holding on. His other hand catches my chin, thumb pressing into the soft skin there until I look up at him fully.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m done.”
I smile around him.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is.”
Good.
I take him back into my mouth and keep my eyes on his.
That does it.
His hand tightens in my hair. His head drops back.
A broken sound catches in his throat, and then he’s coming, pulse after pulse, his whole body taut and shaking under my hands.
I take all of it, every shudder and ragged breath, savoring the hot, vicious little thrill that goes through at seeing him so undone.
The taste is new, saltier and stranger than I expect, intimate in a way that almost hits harder than the act itself. But I swallow anyway, my pulse kicking at the look on his face when I do.
After, he pulls me up into his lap and holds me so tight I can feel his heartbeat hammering against mine. His face buries in my neck and he breathes me in. His arms are shaking, and I don’t think it has to do with the orgasm.
I press my lips to his temple. He doesn’t let go.
The cabin hums. Outside the windows, the world slides by far below, small enough to feel unreal, and somewhere ahead of us, Anna is waiting for me.
I rest my cheek against Luca’s chest and let my eyes trace the cabin. The jet he produced from nothing. The uncle whose face he sketched like he was trying to decode himself.
The way he apologized in the dark last night for something I still don’t understand.
I don’t know what it all adds up to. Not yet.
But Anna first. Anna and the forms and the imaging and the doctors who need my signature to help the only person who ever loved me without conditions.
I’ll hold these questions. Feel their weight and their edges.
And I’ll set them down for now. Not because I trust blindly.
Because I love Anna more than I fear the answers.