Lucia
It takes a long time for the panic inside me to quiet down. There might be guards inside Nico’s room tonight. One sitting quietly in the armchair by the window, another outside the door. But that doesn’t make me any calmer.
I should sleep. My body is wrecked. My nerves feel skinned raw. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the alarm again, see the red lights strobed across marble and art and money like blood.
But sleep won’t come. It never does after fear. I don’t go to the sitting room. Or the study. Or any of the places that feel like strategy and distance and control.
I go to his bedroom. It feels different the second I step inside.
Not softer. Just less defended. The lights are low.
One lamp on by the bed. The room smells like clean skin and soap and something warm underneath it.
He’s showered. Changed. Hair still damp at the nape of his neck.
Sleeves rolled up again like he forgot to finish dressing because his mind was already somewhere else.
He’s standing by the window, shirt untucked, hands braced on the sill like he’s holding the house together through sheer will. He turns when he hears me. We look at each other for a long moment. I close the door behind me. Deliberately. The click sounds loud in my chest.
Turo’s gaze drops to my hand on the handle. Then back to my face. Neither of us speaks right away. This isn’t urgency. Or panic. Or the aftermath of almost losing something. This is a choice.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say finally.
“I didn’t expect you to,” he replies.
His voice is calm. Too calm. The kind that tells me the adrenaline is still burning underneath.
I take a few steps into the room. Stop just short of him. He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t crowd me. He waits. That matters more than anything else he could do.
“I keep thinking,” I say, folding my arms like that might keep me upright, “that if I hadn’t come here… if I hadn’t let Nico get close to you… none of this…”
“Stop,” he says quietly.
I swallow. “I’m terrified,” I admit.
He doesn’t interrupt this time. “Of me?”
I shake my head immediately. Too fast. “No. Of losing this. Of losing you. Of Nico losing you.”
The words crack on the way out. Because saying them makes them real.
Turo moves then. He crosses the room in three strides and cups my face in both hands, thumbs warm against my cheekbones, fingers firm at my jaw like he’s anchoring me to the present.
“You won’t,” he says.
I search his eyes. The dark. The depth. The truth he never hides, even when it costs him.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I shake my head. “You can’t promise that,” I whisper. “Not in your world.”
His jaw sets. Something dangerous and devoted flashes behind his eyes. “Then I’ll burn the world down before I let it take you from me.”
The words should scare me. They don’t. They land somewhere deep and solid and terrifyingly convincing. I believe him. That’s what frightens me most.
Then he kisses me. My back hits the wall.
His mouth crashes into mine, hungry, sure, devastatingly confident.
But his hands… his hands are slow. Too slow.
They roam over me, deliberately withholding, mapping me inch by inch, memorizing the places I gasp, lingering everywhere except where I burn most.
He tugs my shirt up, and I help him strip it over my head, the hem tangling briefly in my hair before it lands somewhere on the floor.
A second later, his own shirt joins it, my fingers shoving it up and off just to feel his skin on mine.
I slide my hands over his bare stomach, dragging my fingertips across the ridges of muscle just because I can.
His breath stutters before a low, rough sound tears out of him.
“Careful,” he murmurs against my lips. “You touch me like that again, and I’m going to forget every intention I have of taking my time with you.”
I tug lightly on his shirt. “Who said I need you to take your time?”
His eyes go molten. “Oh, Lucia,” he murmurs. “You have no idea how badly you want me to.”
He tugs me away from the wall, toward the bed. The bedroom is silent around us, the muted city glow spilling through the windows as we move. He lays me on the bed. Not roughly, but with a kind of intense control that makes my breath catch.
He braces over me, studying me, deciding exactly how he wants to undo me.
His fingers find the button of my jeans, popping it open with infuriating patience, then sliding the zipper down.
He eases them, and my panties with them, down my legs, lifting my hips with one big palm until I’m bare under his gaze.
I hear the quiet rasp of his own belt and zipper, but he leaves his jeans hanging low on his hips, like he’s savoring every step.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “And I’m going to make you feel every second of that.”
Heat ripples through me. Turo lowers his mouth to my throat and kisses down, slow… slower… painfully slow. Every inch he travels is a tease, a promise, a denial.
His hands move over me—my waist, ribs, hips—firm touches that make my back arch but never quite land where I need them.
My brain starts to unravel. He pushes my thighs apart with a sure, commanding touch, but instead of giving me what I’m silently begging for, he drags his mouth along the sensitive inside of my thigh.
Just breath. Just heat. Just torment.
“Turo…” I choke out.
He looks up at me, pupils blown wide, lips glistening from the trail he’s left on my skin. “That’s right,” he murmurs. “Say my name.”
His thumb strokes slowly up my thigh, stopping just shy of where I’m shaking for him.
“Say it again, when I make you come apart without even touching you the way you think you want.”
The shock of it steals my breath. Then he lowers his mouth to me, but even then he takes his time, teasing around the edges of sensation, finding every nerve that lights me up without giving me the direct pressure I’m desperate for.
Heat floods through me in dizzying waves. My hands twist in his hair, helpless. He reacts instantly, pressing my hips down into the mattress with one arm, pinning me so I can’t chase more.
“Uh-uh,” he growls, dark with satisfaction. “You don’t get to run. You take what I give you.”
I gasp. I can’t help it. It comes out of me like a tremor, that hot crackle of humiliation and need. He finds it delicious. I can see it in the glint of his eyes as he looks up from between my legs, lips parted, tongue glancing against his teeth.
He’s not going to let me win. Not one bit.
Every flick of his tongue is calculated, a careful study in just enough to tip me over but never let me go under.
My body starts to buck, but he’s strong, pressing me down, holding me still.
He circles, circles, almost a touch too light at first, until I think I’ll scream, then suddenly the pressure deepens and I do scream, the sound bright and shattering in the quiet room.
Every slow stroke, every soft flick of sensation, drives me higher. He adjusts constantly, reading me, timing me, keeping me dangling right at the edge. My breath breaks. My thighs tremble. My voice is a mess of pleading sounds I can’t control.
“That’s it,” Turo murmurs against my skin. “Feel it. Don’t rush it.”
I’m shaking so hard, I can’t think. He gives me one sharper movement, one powerful stroke, and the world snaps open.
I shatter, helpless and shaking, his name ripped from my throat. Turo holds me through it, gripping my waist, anchoring me, kissing the inside of my thigh, calming the wild he intentionally unleashed.
When the tremors finally ease, he kisses his way back up, slow, intentional, savoring. He hovers above me, brushing his thumb along my cheek.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I nod, breathless. “Better than okay.”
“Good,” he murmurs, smiling wickedly. “Because I’m not done teasing you yet.”
His mouth trails up my ribs, my chest, my throat, then captures my lips in a slow, consuming kiss. I kiss him back, fingers in his hair, pulling him down harder. He groans, a raw, uncontrollable sound.
“Careful,” he breathes. “You grab me like that again, and I’ll pin your wrists above your head and drag you through another one until you beg.”
My breath stutters. “I didn’t beg.”
He laughs softly, darkly. “Lucia, you begged with every part of you.” He catches my jaw, tilting my face toward his. “Look at me.”
I do. I can’t not.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, rougher now. “You want more.”
Not a question. “Yes,” I whisper.
A curse rips out of him. “Then I’m going to build you up slow this time. So slow, you won’t know if you want to climb into my arms or crawl out of your skin.”
He straightens just enough to shove his jeans and boxers down and kick them away, the mattress dipping with the movement.
When he settles between my thighs again, there’s nothing left between us but heat and the thin thread of his control.
His hand slides beneath me, angling me where he wants me, guiding my body exactly how he chooses.
He hovers at my entrance, his thick, throbbing erection nudging me.
He rocks forward, just enough to test a fraction of me, hips rolling subtle and sure.
His eyes never leave my face, scanning every twitch, every bit lip, every panicked drag of breath as I fight not to clench and whimper right away.
I realize, blushing, that he’s right. I am already begging, and all I can do about it is swallow hard and let his name tumble out rough and desperate.
He doesn’t give it to me, not at first. He takes his time, tracing circles with the hand braced at my hip, the other bracketing my jaw, holding me open, keeping me exactly where I am so I feel every careful inch as he presses inside.
It’s maddening how slow he goes, how meticulously he resists until I can’t tell if the ache in my chest is want or need or some hybrid that burns hotter than both.
“Fuck,” he grits out. “You feel…”