Chapter 10 Kings Don’t Sleep Easy
TEN
KINGS DON'T SLEEP EASY
TROY
The Drake Hotel was the exact place Luka would choose. Expensive, discreet, the type of establishment where staff were paid well enough not to ask questions and guests came for privacy more than luxury.
I walked through the lobby trying not to look like I'd been beaten half to death.
The bruises on my face had faded slightly, turning from purple to a sickly yellow-green that somehow looked worse.
My ribs still screamed with every breath, but I'd wrapped them tight enough that moving didn't make me want to vomit anymore.
Progress came in increments I didn't celebrate.
The elevator ride to the fourteenth floor felt too long.
I stood there watching the numbers climb, trying to figure out what version of Luka I was about to get.
Concerned mentor. Calculating strategist. The man who'd taught me half of what I knew about surviving in this world.
All three at once, probably, because he had a talent for that.
The doors opened. I found room 1407, knocked twice.
The door swung open immediately.
Luka stood there looking exactly like he always did.
Perfectly tailored suit, dark hair styled with precision that came from years of making first impressions matter.
But his eyes were different. Sharper. Hungrier.
They tracked over the bruising on my face, the way I was holding myself slightly stiff around the ribs, all the evidence of what had happened written on my body like a report he was reading in silence.
“Get in here,” he said.
I stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind me, soft and final, and the room swallowed the sound of the city outside completely.
He didn't touch me at first. Didn't move.
Just stood there with his hands loose at his sides, eyes taking inventory.
His jaw tightened, a muscle there jumping once before going still.
Then he crossed the room and grabbed my jacket by the lapels, not yanking me forward, just holding it, fists tight in the fabric, eyes on my face from close enough that I could smell his cologne and the faint trace of whiskey underneath it.
He was looking at me like he was making a decision or winning an argument with himself.
Then he pushed the jacket off my shoulders.
The movement was slow and deliberate, letting it fall to the floor behind me rather than catching it.
He undid the first button of my shirt without breaking eye contact, then the second, then the third, fingers working with unhurried precision that was somehow more charged than if he'd just torn it open.
He got the fourth button, spread the shirt open with both hands, and looked at what the bruising had done to my ribs.
The muscle in his jaw jumped again, harder this time.
He pressed two fingers flat against the worst of it, not hard, just contact.
Then his hands slid up to my shoulders and pushed the shirt off to join the jacket.
I reached for his tie.
He let me take it. Watched me pull the knot loose and draw it through his collar and drop it on the floor, watched me work the buttons of his shirt the same way he'd worked mine, top to bottom, unhurried, because two could play at this.
His chest came into view by degrees, the lean hard muscle of him, the dark hair scattered across it, a scar along his left ribs that I knew the story behind.
I spread the shirt open and put both hands flat against his chest and felt his breathing shift under my palms.
“Still bossy,” he said.
“Always.” I pushed the shirt off his shoulders. “You love it.”
He grabbed my wrists. Not hard, just stopped my hands from moving, held them pinned against his chest while he leaned in and kissed me.
Not the crashing collision I'd been expecting.
This was slower than that, more deliberate, his mouth moving against mine with the particular patience of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and wanted me to know it too.
I bit his lower lip.
He pulled back half an inch, eyes dark. “Do that again.”
I did. Harder this time. Tasted the sting of it and felt his grip on my wrists go tighter.
“Fuck,” he said quietly, and then he was moving, walking me backward toward the wall with his hands releasing my wrists to find my belt instead, working the buckle open with practiced ease while I got my hands on his and did the same.
We stripped each other's belts simultaneously, a race with no winner, both of us shoving denim down and stepping out of it while mouths found throats and collarbones and the specific places we'd both spent years learning.
He bit my shoulder hard enough that I felt it in my spine. I grabbed the back of his neck and held him there.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like that.”
His hands got my underwear down. Mine got his. And then there was nothing between us except the charged air of a hotel room and six months of distance and all the things neither of us said out loud but communicated anyway in the particular language of hands and teeth and weight.
His cock was hard against my hip. I wrapped a hand around him and he made a sound against my shoulder that was low and rough and involuntary, his hips pressing forward into my grip.
“You missed me,” I said.
“Shut up.” But he thrust into my hand, which answered the question better than words would have.
I stroked him slowly and deliberately, just watching his face while I did it, watching the careful control he always wore crack slightly at the edges. His jaw went tight. His eyes stayed on mine, fixed and intent.
“You really want to play this game right now,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
He grabbed my wrist and stopped my hand moving and walked me the remaining two steps to the wall, pressed me into it with his bodyweight, both wrists pinned above my head in one hand while the other ran down the length of me, unhurried, from my chest to my stomach to my cock where he wrapped his fist around me and did exactly what I'd done to him.
He leaned in, but not to kiss my mouth.
His face dropped to the inside of my raised arm, and I felt the flat of his tongue drag slow and hot through the hair there, right into the hollow of my armpit, and the sound I made was not dignified in any way.
My hips pushed forward against nothing. His fist on my cock had stopped moving entirely, just holding, and the contrast between that stillness and what his mouth was doing to my armpit was making my legs unreliable.
The wet heat of his tongue was obscene, deliberate, licking into the hair and pressing his lips there like he was savoring it.
Then he bit the muscle of my inner arm just above the hollow and I pulled hard against his grip on my wrists and he held it without effort, pinning me there while he went back to his work.
Licking into the hair, pressing his lips there, making low sounds of appreciation against my skin that vibrated all the way down to my cock.
He was taking his time, mapping the territory, and I could feel myself leaking against his still hand, pre-come sliding down the underside in a steady drip.
He worked the left one until it was raw and oversensitive, then crossed to the right and did the same, his hands flat on my ribs the whole time, thumbs pressing into the muscle on either side while his mouth did what it wanted.
I had my hands in his hair by now, not directing, just holding, needing a place to grip while he took his time turning me inside out.
He dropped lower. His mouth traced the line down my sternum, the ridge of my abs, pausing to dig his tongue into the dip of my navel in a way that made my stomach muscles clench hard.
Then lower still, following the trail of hair that ran south, his hands tracking the same path down my sides, my hips, the jut of my hip bones.
He didn't touch my cock.
Just breathed against it, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his mouth, and then moved his mouth to the crease of my hip and bit down hard enough to leave a mark.
“Luka.” His name came out rough and cracked at the edges.
“What.” He pressed his lips to the bite mark, gentle now, contrasting pressure that made the sting worse somehow.
“Stop making a point and put your mouth on me.”
He looked up from where he was crouched. Dark eyes, jaw tight, expression that said he found this deeply amusing and wasn't done torturing me yet.
He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of my thigh, high up, close enough to be cruel.
Then he stood, all the way up, and turned me toward the wall with both hands on my shoulders and pressed his chest against my back, his cock hard and hot against the curve of my ass.
I could feel every inch of him there, the weight and heat of it pressing into the cleft, and my cock was dripping steadily against the wall now, leaving a wet smear on the paint.
His mouth found the back of my neck. Bit the skin there hard enough to pull a gasp out of me.
His hands came around to my chest, finding my nipples, rolling them between his fingers while his cock pressed against me from behind.
The dual sensation of his teeth on my neck and his fingers on my nipples made my hips cant back instinctively, pushing my ass harder against his cock.
“Tell me what you want,” he said into the back of my neck.
I let him work me for another ten seconds.
Let his fingers do what they were doing and his cock press into the cleft of my ass and his mouth drag wet and hot across my shoulder blade.
Let it build until my spine was tight and my cock was leaking against the wall in a steady stream and I'd had exactly enough of being patient.
“Your mouth,” I said. “On my cock. Now.”
He went still behind me, and I could feel him smiling against my skin.
“Please?” he said, and there was amusement threaded through it, genuine warmth underneath the edge.
“Don't push it.”