Chapter 5
Chapter Five
EDIE
I think about the pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the tiny fridge back at the dorm. It’s my prize for the end of the night, and if Odetta eats it, I will go ballistic.
Don’t make a scene, Bender warned. Don’t draw attention.
I’ve resisted looking at Luka—his tattoo and his arms and hands and angel-devil eyes—for at least thirty minutes, a record I’m feeling proud of, considering he’s a darkly glittering black hole that sucks you in.
Why did I say all that stuff? I’m supposed to blend in, but I couldn’t be chill. Anyway, there’s no law against prostitutes reading old books.
And then I can’t help it again. I look up at him, and both Luka and Dardan catch it.
Dardan’s hand is still on my thigh, and his hand is not happy. He’s squeezing—hard.
Don’t make a scene.
I grit my teeth and try to push his hand off without making said scene, but then he squeezes harder. It starts to really hurt, so I turn to him and find him scowling at me. I push at his hand under the table, but it only squeezes harder .
Like somebody actually put a metal vise on my thigh.
“Stop,” I whisper.
He doesn’t stop.
Suddenly, Luka stands up.
Everybody scrambles to follow suit, just like before, and Dardan is forced to lay off and clamber out of the booth with the rest of them.
I follow along, standing next to Dardan but not too near. What’s happening? Are people leaving? I smooth down my skirt, unsure how to handle this. Will Dardan expect me to go somewhere with him now? Bender said they’d be in the bar all night!
The waiter comes, and Luka asks him to see if some suite is open.
Are they going to meet in private to talk about super-secret things? Bender won’t be happy, but that’s not my problem. I’m holding up my end of the agreement; that’s what counts.
The waiter returns. The suite is available.
The men exchange discreet glances. Like me, they’re waiting to see what the new king does next.
Luka’s dark gaze pins me in place with an almost supernatural power.
And then he’s coming around to me, the group parting with ease.
It seems surreal that he’s coming to me.
My blood runs cold and then hot and then icy hot when he stops in front of me and sets a finger under my chin. “She any good?”
“Don’t know yet,” Dardan growls beside me.
Luka shifts his molten brown gaze to Dardan. He says nothing. Just a look.
Dardan stiffens. “With all due respect?—”
“With all due respect, what ?”
Dardan goes pale. “W-with all due respect,” he bites out, “I want to pay for her. For your time with her. As a gift. ”
Luka keeps his finger on my chin, but his dark angel eyes are fixed on Dardan.
The finger is gone, and Luka Zogaj moves to stand in front of Dardan.
One of the women catches my gaze. She points to her eyes and then points at the floor. She’s telling me not to watch. What does she think is going to happen, exactly?
I avert my eyes all the same. I’m buzzing with so much fear I can barely feel my face.
“Please,” Dardan begs. “Let me pay for the whole night for you. For your time with her. As a tribute.” He reaches into his pocket and peels off two five-hundred-dollar bills. He shoves them at me, and I fumble to take them.
“B-but I actually can’t stay,” I say, handing the money back to Dardan. “I have to go.”
Dardan does not take the money.
“Really have to go.” I may as well be talking to the wind.
Luka throws a few bills on the table. “Have another round, guys. Don’t wait up.”
Luka sets a hand on the small of my back. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Now.” He urges me forward through the open doorway toward the hotel lobby.
“I really do have to go,” I say, knees shaking as I walk, money clasped in my fist.
We head through the lobby to a dark elevator alcove. He hits the up button on the elevator.
“I have to go,” I whisper.
“You gonna turn into a pumpkin?”
“N-no.”
“Are you working or not?” he asks.
My mouth goes dry.
“I was working, but now I’m not… ”
He touches my cheek, leaving a trail of electric shivers. “Is this your game?”
I’m a rabbit, frozen in the spotlight of his dangerous beauty.
My breath comes too fast.
My sex fills with a dark ache.
No, no, no, no. This man can’t be turning me on. He is not turning me on. He’s just a dirty criminal. A bad person.
“Well?”
“It’s not a game,” I manage. “I might have a family emergency...”
“Might?”
“I—I...”
He grabs my hair. Heat blasts through my core.
No man has ever grabbed my hair like this. Possessive. Hard.
It’s wrong. So wrong.
But, God, the feeling of it. Some wicked part of me wants it tighter. And I want to keep the money, too.
He turns my head so I have to look up into his eyes.
Here in the empty, elegant little alcove next to the elevators, I’m getting lost in a bad man’s beauty.
He’d probably stop if I told him, but my skin buzzes all over like my blood has transformed into pure lightning.
I’ve never felt like this before. And I want more.
“Yes or no?” he asks.
“Y-yes,” I hear myself say.
He tightens his hold on my hair, twisting it like he knows what I need, and brings his warm lips close to the tender shell of my ear. “The reluctant nubile. Innocent. Scornful. It’s good.”
My core goes melty.
My back flattens against the wall as he presses his thigh between my legs. Everything in me flares to life. He’s hitting a place nobody has ever hit before.
“It’s good. Got it?”
I blink. Was that a question? An order? I always know the answer. My study skills are impeccable. My color-coded organizational skills are second to none.
But now I can’t even think.
“Got it?” he asks again.
“Got it,” I whisper.
His hard thigh against my sex feels better than all the vibrators in the world because a vibrator can’t twist my hair and fill me with aliveness. A vibrator can’t be so dark and wrong as to take my breath away.
A vibrator can’t pierce me with pure, delicious, sparkling lust.
He presses in harder, watching my face as he does it like he’s learning me, analyzing me.
If he does it again, I swear, I’ll come.
“Keep it up.”
“Okay,” I breathe.
He twists my hair a touch tighter. He kisses my neck and presses higher and harder between my legs.
“Right. There,” he whispers warmly in my ear.
Right there.
And the horrible thing is that he’s right. Right there. He found my spot.
I don’t know if I hate it or love it.
He’s a criminal, a killer.
I’m near to coming now. Thirty seconds with this guy, and he’s able to do something that a good-hearted college boy couldn’t achieve with an hour of toil between my legs.
Even a vibrator and my roomie gone for thirty minutes is no guarantee I’ll get off.
He pulls back, watching me with an evil glint. He’s compelling me like a vampire or something.
He’s the kind of man I despise. The kind of man who corrupted my sister.
I try to get back to the place where I hate men like this. He’s a killer, of that I have no doubt, and you have to be deranged to kill another human.
“The scorn written all over your face is delicious,” he says, owning my clit with his hard-cut thigh. “I’m going to take you up there and fuck it right out of you.”
I want to tell him that he’s wrong. He’ll never change my opinion of him, and the badness of his character is an objective fact, but I don’t want him to stop what he’s doing.
What’s wrong with me?
A rumble sounds behind me. He yanks me away as the elevator door opens, and then he walks me in backward, eyes hard on mine.
His hands are between my legs, stroking me.
I gasp, flooded with heat.
“Jesus... fuck... so fucking wet...”
I want to deny it, but my body’s responding to him like he flipped some forbidden switch.
“I need you wet for how hard I’m going to use you up there.”
So... arrogant... I think as I melt against the elevator wall.
He watches my eyes with that insufferable smirk, like he already knew this would happen. Like my reaction is just another victory for him to claim.
“You think I can’t own you with one finger, baby? You’re gonna spread those legs and take everything I give you.”
“Whatever,” I spit out, even as my hips betray me by pressing against his hand. “You don’t own anything.”
“I own you right now,” he whispers against my ear, breath hot on my skin.
Well, that shouldn’t be hot. Why is it hot? It’s outrageous—the sheer arrogance of this man thinking he can claim ownership over me. But it’s like some primal part of me craves his raw, brutal dominance.
He kicks my legs wider, and I let him. Good god, it’s maddeningly hot.
He jerks me higher against the wall, positioning me like I’m his personal plaything to arrange however he wants. His finger is strong and precise between my legs, creating spirals of sensation that radiate through my core and make my knees weak.
“Everything,” he says, his voice a dark promise that sends shivers down my spine.
“We’ll see about that,” I say with all the contempt I can muster, but my voice trembles.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes dark with triumph. His fingers work relentlessly, each stroke leaving a wake of unwanted pleasure. “There we go.”
I realize here that he thinks I’m coming.
Where could he have gotten such an idea? Does he think he knows me better than...
Something swells inside my belly—airy and bright. My vision is pinpoints of light, and a hurricane of feeling builds inside me.
I clench my muscles, fighting it. He doesn’t get to do this. He doesn’t get to be the one.
I cry out, and an explosion of sensation quakes through me.
“That’s it,” he says as I shiver to pieces.
If he wasn’t holding me up with his body, I’d fall.
He made me come.
A horrible criminal.
In an elevator.
A bell. Doors.
I’m gasping as he picks me up and puts me over his shoulder, firefighter-style.
My mind reels. I’m jelly. Another door. A lavish room.
He plops me down onto the bed. He’s the lion, and I’m the dead antelope that he’s going to feast on.
I stare up at him, stunned. A wild tremor goes through me because how dare he treat me like that?
He gazes down at me like he feels my angry thoughts and maybe even likes them. He’s perverse.
But I feel so weirdly alive .
He turns away and pours himself a drink. “If you have to pee, you better go now.”
“I don’t have to pee,” I say.
His voice is a low rumble. “You sure?”
Deep down, I know this is my opening, my chance to tell him I’m not really down for this.
He’s the kind of person I hate. But I’m desperate for more of him. In school, we’d call this a paradox.
“I should know.”
He shoots back his drink. Downstairs, he was sipping like he didn’t care for alcohol, but everything’s different up here—for both of us, maybe.