6. Thirty-Two
LUKA
T he suit. She was wearing a goddamn red bathing suit. At night. Under the fucking starry sky like a damn siren. Who wears a fucking bathing suit when the sun goes down?
“Amara.” My jaw clenched. So did my fist and in it the notice I had received from her office. Scrawled across the top in embossed gold were the words Carpe Noctem, LLC . “What is this?” I demanded.
Her eyes fell to my fist. It gave me a brief second to scan her breasts. To admire the way the dip between them made my mouth water. She’d always had the most beautiful skin. Skin that should be licked and tasted. Worshipped.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She tried to reach for the paper, but I recoiled. “If that’s from my accountant, it’s only a routine letter. You can throw it out. We’ll set up a new payment plan. I meant to tell him to extend the grace period since, well, since your father…”
My eyes narrowed. “The interest rates on these loans are absurd.”
She sighed. “Your father agreed to the terms. He was willing to pay the interest.”
“Well, I’m running things differently than he did. I can’t agree to this. I’m not going to pay you double what I should. No one should.”
She shrugged. “The contracts were signed. They aren’t renegotiable. No one in their right mind would redistribute that money at a lower interest rate. I have to abide by the original agreement.”
“You could tear them up. Or we could pull security from the docks and all your shipping ports.” I tried to keep my eyes on her face, but it didn’t help rein in my restraint once I had a full view of her legs. I’d always loved her legs. Long legs I had stood between. Kissed. Massaged. Felt the firmness of them in my palms.
“But I won’t,” she answered. How did I shake her? How did I knock logic into her?
I felt the electric charge at the end of my thumb before it even grazed her shoulder. She stared at the end of my hand. Was she daring me to touch her? Begging me? My thumb inched closer. I fought every instinct in my body to keep my hands off her.
I had stayed away to save her life, but she wasn’t in danger any longer. At least, not by my father’s doing or mine .
The instant my hand clasped around her, the heat surged between us. I’d lied to myself when I’d fucked other women. I said I could forget Amara. For years I had let the lie take over. For five years I had crafted and constructed the lie in Paris. London. Munich. The lie was layered with meaningless one-night stands. I never looked intp a woman’s eyes and felt devotion. Any of them could have been Venus, sprung from the sea—it didn’t matter. No one else was Amara. There were no emotions with the other women. Nothing and no one came close to what this woman did to me. What she used to do to me.
She was mine, alone.
The letter fell to the pool deck. “Luka.” Her voice was soft and sexy. A call to my primal side.
I cupped the side of her cheek. “Don’t say another fucking word,” I growled as I took her mouth against mine. It was a kiss that had been raging beneath the surface since the night I left New Orleans.
My lips burned for hers in a way I didn’t know was possible. I wanted to bruise her. Bite her. Leave a mark from this kiss she would never forget. She drew a ragged breath and tried to push off me, but I wrapped my arms around her, grazing her skin. Digging my fingers into her flesh.
Our tongues tangled as if we were each trying to sear the other one more cruelly. My heart pounded beneath my ribs. I’d opened the gate to a dangerous game. I couldn’t undo it. I’d wanted this woman when we met. Nothing had changed what her body did to me. My hand slid along the dip of her lower back until I gripped her ass firmly. She hissed, but the kiss raged on .
How long could we stand next to the pool this way? Groping. Desperate to crawl under each other’s skin.
“You hate me,” she whispered. I lowered my mouth to her neck. I kissed her throat, following the V the swimsuit made. “For what I’ve done.”
“No.” I hooked a finger beneath the strap, it was fastened with a figure-eight clasp. “I don’t hate you.”
“Only five minutes ago…”
I took a full handful of her ass in my palm. “Stop talking.” I kissed her roughly. She threw her arms around my neck.
I was drowning. Getting drunk on her lips.
“Luka, you left me. Alone. I had to do this.”
I nodded, eager to strip her bare. I looked around for a place to take her that wasn’t the damn cabana. I lifted her in my arms and her legs eagerly slipped around my waist. I carried to a room off the courtyard, kicking the door open.
She moaned when I spun around, pressing her back against the door. She held on tightly, while my hand slid between our bodies, lower, until I had shimmied the side of her bathing suit off her center. I strummed her clit, urgently. I didn’t have enough fucking patience.
“Fuck,” she whimpered.
“I told you years ago, you were mine, Amara.”
She nodded. My finger thrust inside her. She clenched around me, squeezing forcefully. Oh shit, she was everything I had remembered. Our mouths collided again. I spun her away from the door and toward the bed in the center of the room .
I pulled the swimsuit down over her hips and gazed over her body. Her tits perked. I lowered to suck one viciously between my teeth. The arch of her back was a beautiful bow. My hand eased between her thighs again. She writhed beneath me. I had her. What I had wanted for five years. I had Amara back under my control. In my hands.
Her eyes glimmered. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“Is this what you want?” I circled her clit, coaxing her hips to flex and move.
“Yes.”
“Then beg me, Amara.” My fingers thrust inside her. My thumb pressed hard against her clit.
“I don’t beg, anyone,” she struggled to form the words.
My eyes bore into hers. “I’m not any of those other boys you’ve been with.” I curled one finger against her walls. She whimpered at the impact. “I’m back now, my kotyonok. I want to hear you say the words.”
She shook her head. “You’ll just leave me, Luka. How do I trust this isn’t a power play?”
I stopped what I was doing. I slid my fingers from inside her. I saw the pain. The bottomless pools of sadness. Fuck. She had been so alone. I had done this to her, and I still couldn’t tell her the truth.
She would hate me. Forever.
I climbed on the bed, cupping the side of her face. I placed a kiss on her forehead, followed by one on her temple. I kissed her throat and behind her ear. She sighed, her arms wrapping against my neck bringing my mouth to hers .
“Shh,” I soothed her. “Never again. I wouldn’t hurt you like that again. You know I was trying to protect you from that offer your father made. You wanted your freedom even then.”
She nodded. “I know. It’s why I wanted to see you at Marguerite’s before you left for Europe. You should have told me though. I had a right to know he tried to trade me for the tunnels.”
I swallowed. She had no idea, I did it to keep her alive. I cared about her feelings—but her life meant everything to me.
“We were younger then. Our destinies controlled by others. That’s not so anymore, is it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“You’ve grown up.” I grinned.
“I’ve had to protect myself,” she whispered. “I had no one.”
I still couldn’t wrap my head around the girl she had been had transformed into this powerful woman. The chemistry between us was strong, not chipped or cracked from time apart. No matter who either of us had become we were still tied together. Vendettas, power struggles, families. It didn’t fucking matter.
“There was no other way.” I stared into her eyes. The murder and the kidnapping were poisonous demons that dared to split us into fragments.
“It made me this woman. You made me this woman.”
Fuck me. I wanted to know everything about her now.
I brushed her lips with my thumb. “I won’t hurt you again. Say it.” My hand slid over her breast, teasing her nipple with pressure as I glided along her waist and hips. “Beg me. Only me. No other man. No other has this control over you.”
I saw the power struggle playing out in her mind. She had to relent. To release herself to me. It was the only way this would work. My thumb ran over her lips before I moved her knee wider.
“Tell me you didn’t dream of this. Tell me you didn’t think about that day.”
“Always,” she whispered.
“Then say it. And it can be like that again. The way it always should have been. We have so much time to make up for.”
I made a path against the silky skin on her inner thigh. She shivered. My fingers clawed against the softness of her leg.
“It destroyed me, Luka.” Her voice cracked. I knew this was a vulnerable side of her she never revealed. A queen couldn’t be vulnerable.
My eyes closed. Fuck. The guilt hammered hard. “I know. It destroyed me too to leave you.” I lapped against her nipple, taking the bud into my mouth. My tongue swirled and flicked. I was relentless. I wouldn’t stop until she knew this was one act of atonement. One moment I could give her pleasure. One tiny stitch over the scar I had made.
Her hips wiggled and bucked, inching my fingers closer, but I wasn’t going to satisfy her until I knew it was exactly what she wanted. Never again would I hurt her the way I had. I wanted her to say the words. To make the world right side up again.
We needed for me to be buried inside her. We needed a release of the pent-up frustration. The years of longing. The years of yearning. Of not being satisfied by other lovers. But before I coaxed the most important words from her lips there was a loud banging on the door.
“Amara!” The loud voice boomed.
Fuck. I hung my head.
“It’s ok, Ciro. I’m busy.” Our eyes met. “I’ll make him leave.”
“No, you have an urgent call. You’re needed,” he yelled through the door.
She looked at the door and then at me. “I’m sorry. I’m expecting a call. It’s important. He knows not to interrupt me. I have to take it.”
She wrangled herself free and dove on the floor for her swimsuit. She wriggled it back up over her body, covering her breasts.
“Go ahead,” I groaned. “I’ll wait.”
I rubbed the side of my jaw, watching her walk out of the guestroom. I sat at the end of the bed, trying to get my cock to calm the fuck down.
Minutes later, she padded inside in her bare feet. “I’m sorry, but I have a long night ahead of me.”
“Everything all right?” I stood from the bed, towering over her.
“No. It’s not. But I’ll handle it.” She smiled. “I always do.”
“You won’t tell me what it is?” I asked.
“No.”
I studied her, wondering where this unfazed version of her had come from. Viktor told me she had been trained. But the woman in front of me had instincts. She had confidence and command. I was starting to understand why they called her a queen. It wasn’t an exaggeration or an honorary title. She had the kind of fire in her eyes that would put men’s heads on spikes.
I had her in my hands, pinned beneath me, panting, quivering and now she was ready to walk out of this room.
“I’ll call my accountant tomorrow about that letter you received,” she explained. “I am sorry about the mix-up.”
“I’ll make the payments. I don’t agree with the contracts, but money’s not an issue. Not with me running the organization now.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Ciro walked into the doorway. She hadn’t bothered to close it when she returned. “Do you need me?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine. Mr. Novikov is leaving. Can you set up my office, please? Tell Bella I’ll need dinner served there tonight. I just have to run upstairs and change.”
He nodded, but his eyes were on me. Hounding me like they always did. As if Amara was still a kid and not a powerful woman.
“Ciro,” she pressed.
“I’ll take care of it.” He was hesitant to leave us. “The office will be ready.”
Amara touched the side of my arm. “I’m sorry about this. All of it.” She looked up at me. “But I appreciate the reminder of what was so good about us.” She smiled. Her cheeks were still flushed .
“That’s not how this is going to work.” My fingers grasped her waist. “We have more to discuss, and we weren’t finished. Far from it. I expect to see you tomorrow for dinner.”
“Are you summoning me?” she asked.
“I’m not asking again, Amara.” I kissed her cheek. “With me, you must remember you do as you’re told.”
I saw the way her eyes lit. It was only a second, but the flame was there. It excited her. It was real.
She scrolled through her phone to check her schedule. “Any time after six,” she reported.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Where are we going?”
I chuckled. “It’s a surprise.”
“You always liked to surprise me.” She grinned.
“Maybe I still do.”
My hands tangled in her hair, and I drew her to me with a rough kiss. Our mouths moved with urgency and fire. I wanted her to think about this until she was in my bed tomorrow night. I wanted her to long for and need my lips and hands on her body.
I was back in New Orleans. Everything was about to change.
I walked with her to the foyer.
“Good night.”
By the time I was done with her, Amara Amato wouldn’t know what hit her, and I would have everything that belonged to me.