Chapter 26 Aliénor
ALIéNOR
Dominic and I went out to the bar, had one too many drinks and a great time. I got more attention from the men than he did, but because they were all gay, it was welcome. They complimented my hair and my heels and made me feel like a pretty princess.
Dominic didn’t seal the deal with anyone, and instead of going our separate ways home, he walked me to my apartment.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door.”
“Come on, it’s almost midnight,” he said. “I’m walking you to the door like a gentleman.”
I’d forgotten about Luca with all the drinks and the music, so I pulled out my phone and texted when we got into the elevator.
“Luca?” Dominic asked.
“Yeah, he wanted to come over. But it’s late, and I’ve got work in the morning.”
We rode the little elevator to my floor.
“I don’t care how late it is. I would never turn that down.” He laughed a little harder than he normally would. “Dick of a god…”
I laughed a little harder than normal too.
He walked me right to the door and watched me make it inside. “See you later, beautiful.”
“Bye, babe.”
He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek then walked down the hallway.
I shut the door and locked it before I hung up my coat on the coatrack. I set my purse on the counter, and I pulled out my phone to see what Luca had said.
Nothing.
I sighed and set it down, and the moment I looked up, I stilled.
Luca was sitting in the armchair in the dark—like a shadow of the night.
“Oh Jesus, you scared me.”
He rose to his feet and walked toward me, and I could tell there was something different about him. Nothing overt like a glare, but something internal. His eyes flicked past me to the door and then back to me.
Maybe I’d drunk too much, but all I could do was stare at him.
“This is the part where you explain what the fuck is going on.”
There was a fog in my mind, a storm of clouds that circled my head and suppressed my ability to think. In that moment, all I felt was confusion. “Explain what? Dominic—”
“We agreed that it’s just the two of us,” he snapped. “I see his name on your phone all the time, and I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now I see you’re going out with him and he’s calling you beautiful—”
“Whoa, Luca—”
“I told you I’m not good at this.” Now, his voice rose.
He was actually angry, a version of him I’d never seen before.
“You’re mine. How can I be any fucking clearer?
A committed fucking relationship. You and me.
That’s it. I don’t want anyone else in my mind, my bed, or my heart. I thought you felt the same way.”
“I do.”
“This is not casual. This is fucking real, alright?”
I almost didn’t want to interrupt him because everything he said gave me a rush. That maybe I wasn’t the only person slipping under the haze. That maybe he felt all the heavy and complicated shit I felt too.
He raised his voice louder, the volume piercing the walls into the apartments of my neighbors. “Then are you in this with me or not?”
“Luca…” My hands moved to his arms, and I gently applied pressure in an attempt to calm him.
But he breathed hard like he’d run all the way across Paris to get here.
My hand moved to his chest next as I came closer.
If he’d been anyone else, I’d probably have a different reaction, but I understood that Luca had never ventured into domesticity before and simply didn’t understand how to conduct himself.
How to do anything else but yell and make demands like I was in the gangs he policed. “He’s just a friend.”
He grabbed my wrists and gently pulled me off him, but he trembled like it took a bout of strength not to handle me aggressively. “Don’t insult me.”
“Luca, he’s gay. We met working together at Septime and kept in touch.”
He paused as his eyes hardened. The anger was still packed inside, but it slowly started to deflate.
Maybe I was just blinded by the way he made my heart ache, but I gave him a free pass. I would have held another guy to a higher standard, but with Luca, I just pitied him. I understood that I was really his first relationship and he didn’t know how to handle it. “You’re the only man I want.”
He was quiet for a while, processing the situation from a different perspective. “When I saw his name on your phone…I thought he was some guy you were seeing before me, and he couldn’t take no for an answer.”
At least he didn’t go through my phone.
“I tried not to let it bother me.”
I could tell it bothered him a lot. “I wish you’d just asked me.”
“I’m trying really hard not to fuck this up.” His eyes were elsewhere as he spoke. “And I ended up fucking it up anyway.”
“You did not fuck it up, Luca.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “When you said you were going out, I wondered if he was who you were going out with, but I didn’t want to ask. But then I also assumed that was the case, and I came here wondering what I would see… I should have just called Bastien.”
“No, you should have called me.”
His eyes remained on the window, the curtains still open. “I apologize.” His eyes dropped, the shame closing over his face like the curtains that should be drawn across the window.
I felt no anger whatsoever toward him. “It’s okay, Luca.”
He shook his head slightly, like he wouldn’t forgive himself so easily. “It’s late.” He turned to the door and stepped around me. “I should go.”
I grabbed him by the arm and tugged him back toward me.
“No.” I was already in my highest pair of heels, so I could kiss him so much easier.
I hooked my arm around his neck, and I pulled him close.
He was reluctant and uncooperative until I said, “I want you to stay.” I pulled away slightly to look at him, to see the way he slowly shed his self-loathing as he looked at me.
“I’ve missed you…so fucking much.” Every day since we’d been apart.
And I felt like I could say that out loud, say just about everything, because he seemed to be as deeply invested in this as I was.
He gave me a look, brief and hard, a sharpening of his gaze.
And then his hand was deep in my hair, and he kissed me the way I wanted, literally swept me off my feet and pulled me into him like I weighed nothing.
Ravenous and hungry, he made me his, his hand on my ass, his fingers gripping my hair like the reins of a horse.
Then I was lifted from the floor entirely.
He scooped his big arms underneath my thighs and carried me into the little bedroom off the hall.
He rolled me onto the bed rather than threw me like he had before and slipped off both stilettos without pausing his kiss, like he’d done this so many times with so many other women.
But I somehow felt like the only one.
He reached under my dress, grabbed the fabric of my thong, and pulled it free from my legs before he stood fully upright, his head almost touching the ceiling of my loft, and tugged his long-sleeved shirt over his head to reveal his perfection.
I would never tire of it.
He moved to his jeans and loosened them quickly. Boots were kicked off, and then he was naked before me, his massive dick ready to play.
Dominic would be so jealous right now…
Luca moved over me and tugged up my dress, choosing to leave it on because it was too much work to get it off.
He was in too much of a rush. One moment, he wanted to leave, and the next, he couldn’t burrow himself in me quick enough.
He gently tugged on my hips and bent me into position, and then he shoved himself inside like he already knew I was wet.
He guessed right.
He forced his way inside with a thrust or two, a shovel digging for treasure in the earth, and then he smoothly sank the rest of the way.
This was our usual position when we fucked, him on top of my folded body, our eyes locked together in the fires of passion.
“You’re mine.” He didn’t say it the way he had earlier, with anger that nearly exploded like a volcano.
Now, he said it quietly, almost gently. “My woman.”
I didn’t know what to say, paralyzed by the fat dick inside me, the hardness of his stare.
The way our relationship had evolved to a deeper level that neither one of us expected.
My mind still couldn’t accept what my heart so desperately wanted to believe—that this drop-dead gorgeous man was actually mine.
“Say it.” He was buried deep, but he hadn’t begun to move. “Now.”
It was a side to Luca I didn’t know. He was so rough and indifferent on the surface, even to his friends sometimes, but now he was different. We were different. “I’m yours.”
I’d barely finished the sentence when he rammed into me like a wrecking ball, giving me the pounding of a lifetime that made me want to come almost instantly.
So much dick in so little time. He wasn’t kind with his length, giving it all to me even if it hurt, like he really wanted to mark me as his—from the inside out.
I jerked awake in a panic.
Slick with sweat, boiling hot, breathing so hard it was as if I’d run a marathon in my sleep. My eyes flicked around the apartment as I tried to search for my enemy. For the man who’d killed my family. The man who had come to kill me.
But as I continued to breathe in the dark, I realized I was alone in my apartment. No one was there to kill me. The man who had executed my entire family had never been in this apartment, but he would forever be seared in my mind.
The discomfort was painful in my chest. The nightmare had been so vivid that it poisoned all my organs. My body just didn’t work correctly anymore. My phone was on the nightstand, so I reached for it and called Luca.
I never would have called him before that fight we had the other night, when he thought I was fooling around on him with Dominic. But now, whatever barriers that had been between us had fallen. He was accessible to me in a way he hadn’t been before, so I didn’t hesitate before I made the call.