3. Luna
LUNA
Hugo’s near the cake now, standing with Olga, a photographer, and two people who are probably her parents. Hugo has his hand on Olga’s waist and is smiling for the camera.
It’s his fake smile. I know it anywhere.
The photographer’s flash goes off. Hugo blinks, and in the half-second before he reassembles the smile, I see the falter. The glance in our direction. The readjustment he thinks no one else notices. The return of that dental billboard smile.
The orchestra shifts to something slower, and Ivan puts down his glass.
He offers his hand, and I look at it for a moment—this large, scarred, tattooed hand that has been at the small of my back all evening like it belongs there—and take it.
The floor is fuller now, couples moving in close, the lights dimmed another degree from wherever they were before.
He draws me in, and I go, one hand in his, the other at his shoulder, and we are—closer than the fast song, close enough I can feel the warmth coming off him through his shirt and smell the leather of him that I’ve been failing to not notice since the coat closet.
He moves controlled. Everything about him is controlled, which makes me wonder what he’s like when he loses control.
Strangely, Hugo has become the last thing on my mind. I was here for revenge against him, but he’s on the periphery at most.
Let him watch. Let him try to work out what this is, what I’m to his stepbrother, and why I’m here in a dress that cost too much, slow-dancing with his stepbrother like I was always going to end up here.
Honestly, I’d like to know the answer to that last one myself. Ivan, for all his rough edges, is a magnet. I like being next to him. Or better yet, in his arms.
“You’re not thinking about him anymore,” Ivan says, his arm around my waist.
“I’m allowed to take a break from my revenge.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t ‘ mm’ me. It’s been a long night.”
“It has,” he agrees, his hand shifting slightly at my back.
I lose my train of thought.
We finish the dance without talking. That’s fine. It’s better than fine—I’m not, generally speaking, someone who needs to fill silence, and Ivan clearly isn’t built for small talk.
What he is built for, I’m not sure. But I’d like to find out.
Pressed up against this wall of a man, there are all kinds of things I’d like to know about him. Something deep inside me melts when I’m in his arms, and I don’t know how to pretend otherwise. Ever since he stole me away into a coat closet, I’ve felt this thing I don’t really understand.
I’ve never had a one-night stand before, but I think I get the appeal now.
When the song ends, Ivan doesn’t step back immediately. There’s a beat—half a second, maybe less—where we’re still close, and the next song hasn’t started, the room moving around us without noticing we’ve stopped.
His head tips down at the same time mine tips up. His sinister eyes narrow to my lips as he crosses the invisible border between us.
I meet him there, pulse throbbing in my ears, my chest, and lower.
When our lips brush, there’s a spark. I grip his collar and pull him close to me so I can ignite it. His mouth parts, and his tongue glides over mine, all vodka and questionable choices.
This. This is what I need.
We don’t say goodbye to Hugo. We don’t say goodbye to anyone. The reception continues behind us. The cake will be cut, the bouquet thrown, the band will play another two hours of songs for people who’ve had enough champagne to dance badly and not mind.
But none of it matters.
The elevator doors close, and Ivan Fedorov kisses me as though he’s already decided how this ends.
His hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face to his, and the other finds the small of my back and pulls, and I go—because what else would I do, what possible argument exists against this. The marble wall of the elevator is cold through my silk dress, but he’s not cold at all.
Sure, I’ve been kissed before. I’m on fire now.
His mouth is certain in the same way the rest of him is certain, like he’s never done anything without full commitment once in his life, and I feel it from my jaw to my knees, which have become unreliable. My hands find the lapels of his jacket and hold on, mostly for structural support.
He pulls back just far enough to look at me. His thumb traces my lower lip, unhurried, studying the effect of what he just did with the calm attention of a man taking inventory.
“Camera,” I say, because my brain has produced this word and I’m not sure why, but it turns out to be correct. There is, in fact, a small camera mounted in the upper corner of the elevator, its red light patient and unblinking.
Ivan looks at it. Then he shrugs off his jacket in one motion and drapes it over the camera mount with the ease of a man who’s done exactly this before or is simply constitutionally unbothered by improvisation.
The red light disappears.
“No camera,” he says, and comes back to me.
This kiss is different—deeper, unhurried now that the variables have been managed, his hand sliding from my jaw into my hair.
He finds the pins holding it up and removes two of them with a patience that’s somehow more devastating than urgency would have been.
The dark mass of it falls partially loose, and he makes a low sound against my mouth.
Then his hands move. The silk of my dress is thin enough that it isn’t much of a barrier, and he seems aware of this in a very specific way—palms against my waist and then my hips.
The vengeful side of my mind speaks. “If Hugo could see you now…”
The thought arrives and dissolves just as fast, because Ivan’s mouth has moved to my jaw, my throat, and I lose the thread entirely.
“We should discuss what you like,” he says against my neck. Low and even, like we’re having a perfectly normal conversation, and his hands aren’t doing what his hands are doing up my dress.
I lean my head back against the wall. “Now?”
“Before we go further. Yes.”
This is, I recognize dimly, both considerate and tactically efficient, but also really inconvenient to my libido. The man’s asking me to think after he took away my thoughts.
Bad timing. But probably necessary.
I’ve done research. I’ve had late nights on the internet and one very illuminating conversation with Cherry that she swore to take to her grave.
I know what I want to try . The question has always been opportunity, and opportunity is currently looking at me in an elevator, his jacket on the camera, his full and undivided attention on my answer.
“I don’t know what I like.”
He straightens and frowns. “You were with Hugo for three years—you’re not a virgin somehow, are you?”
“Not since Evan Grimes’ basement in tenth grade.
What I mean is, I don’t know what I like because I’ve never had the chance to figure it out.
A lot of guys… they don’t know what they’re doing, or they don’t want to experiment, because they know what gets them off, and they think that should be good enough for the girl they’re doing it to?—”
“Don’t you mean, doing it with ?”
I laugh. Cackle, really. My energy is all over the place, and that’s such an innocent question for someone who looks like him.
“No. I meant doing it to . Most guys don’t see a woman as a participant.
They see her as the person they won or the person they get to fuck… if they see her as a person at all.”
He considers this. “Then it sounds like you wish to experiment.”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“In what realm do you mean?”
I did not drive across the city in four-inch heels to be coy about it now. “Kink. Bondage, spanking, blindfolds, all that stuff.”
His eyebrow goes up. A quarter of an inch, maybe less, but I catch it.
He looks at me for a moment with something that isn’t quite a smile but is the closest relative of one.
Then he leans closer, pressing his forehead to mine.
His fingers slide beneath the edge of my underwear. “I accept your proposal.”
I stop thinking about his eyebrow.
His fingers are as certain as the rest of him, unhurried, reading me with a focus that makes the rest of the world—the elevator, the hotel, the wedding we just left, Hugo and his fuming and his terrible face—reduce to a very faint signal behind a very loud frequency.
I press back against the wall and grip his forearm. He watches my face the entire time, which should feel like too much, but instead feels like exactly the right amount of everything.
The elevator stops.
We both go still. His hand doesn’t move. The doors open onto an empty corridor, and we look out, and the doors slide shut again.
He hits the button for the penthouse.
“You live on the top floor?” My voice is impressively level, given everything.
“I do.”
“How many floors up?”
“Several.”
His fingers resume their work on my clit, and I begin to shake. His mouth devours mine, and I’m not sure which way is up anymore. All I know is this man. This mouth. Those fingers.
I’m on the edge when the elevator opens onto his private landing.
My fingers grip his arm so tightly that it’s an effort to pry them loose.
He unlocks the door with the ease of a man who’s not remotely affected, which is either composure or an extremely effective illusion of it, and I have not yet decided which.
The penthouse is large, dark-toned, expensive, with the whole of Chicago glittering through floor-to-ceiling windows as if arranged there specifically for the view. It smells like him. Leather.
I get approximately four seconds of impression before his hands find me again.
He walks me backward through it, unhurried, mouth at my temple, my cheek, the corner of my jaw, while his hand find the zipper at the back of my dress.
The dress hits the floor somewhere near the living room.
His shirt follows, and I finally get my hands on him properly, discovering the scars on his face and hands are not the only ones.
His body is a map of a life I know almost nothing about, and I trace the edge of a scar along his ribs and feel him go still beneath my fingers.
His voice rumbles there. “I want you naked.”
I gulp and look up at the mountain, taking in the full view of him. I like touching him, but the view is something to be memorized. Beneath the scars and tattoos are muscles in all directions, like his muscles have their own muscles, but there’s a thin layer of padding over all of it, too.
He looks sturdy. I never knew I liked sturdy before now, but I do.
I unclip my bra and move to take off my underwear, but he gently pushes my hand aside and pinches them at the waist before slowly lowering them. His eyes remain on my face the entire time until he kisses his way back up my naked body.
When he gets to my mouth, his hands slide over my skin until they reach my ass and lift.
I gasp as he pulls me upward, and I wrap my legs around his waist for balance. He carries me to his bedroom that way, his mouth still on mine, his hands beneath my ass. I’m not sure how he doesn’t stumble at his size with me in his arms, but the man is far more graceful than he should be.
He lays me on his bed, and I lean on my elbows to watch him remove his trousers. But I can’t take my eyes off his. “You have evil eyes.”
He laughs once, sharply. “Do they offend? Should I pluck them out?”
I snort. “No. I like it.”
“Good.” He grabs my ankles. “I want to know what you taste like. Any reason I shouldn’t find out?”
“You mean like, do I have a condition or something?”
“Yes.”
“No. All my blood tests are always clear. You?”
“Clear.” He pulls me so my ass is almost hanging off the foot of the bed, and I yelp. It makes him smile as he spreads my legs wide and kneels. “You want to try bondage, you said?”
I swallow hard. “Yes, but?—”
“The safe word is pineapple.” And then I feel it—something definitely not his hand is around my left ankle. Then the right one. I couldn’t close my legs if I tried. The surge of panic is licked away the moment his tongue collides with my clit.
“Oh, oh God,” I mutter as I lie back. I’m spread wide open for this man, completely on display, and he uses the access to tour every bit, every fold. He’s thorough until he settles on my clit, and my brain lights up. He’s in total control now, keeping me exactly where he wants me.
And I like it.
I dig my fingers into his hair, but it’s so short that I can’t grab onto anything. So, I settle for my nails planting into his scalp. He groans into me, and a finger dips inside my pussy over and over again. Not deep enough to count, but enough to fry my brain.
No thoughts. Just pleasure. And one word left to my mouth.
“More.”
The finger goes all the way in, and I might break if he doesn’t— oh, fuck . The orgasm steals my breath, my core tightens on him, I can’t see straight. I don’t know if I’m speaking words or gibberish as bliss floods me.
He climbs over me, loops an arm under my back, and carries us up the bed, all while I’m still coming. He pulls one of my legs up to split me open, and then his thick cock presses into me, filling me.
And I’m still coming. Only now, I’m coming on him.
I claw at him—his arms, his chest, his back. Bite him, wherever I can. Whatever I can reach. I need contact.
I need this massive man.
When he’s finally seated, he takes full control, pinning my wrists with one hand while the other keeps me split open for him.
He nuzzles up to my ear in the pillows. “You can’t move, babydoll.
” He thrusts deep, bottoming out. “All you can do is lie here and take me. And you take me so good.” He rocks in my depths, and my eyes roll back.
“Feel that? Feel me pulse in you? You did that. You taste so fucking good that I almost came the moment my tongue touched your sweet pussy.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
“Gods don’t have evil eyes.” He releases my leg and pulls me against him, so there’s nowhere to go, no room to maneuver. His thrusts shorten, making his cock grind into my G-spot without any effort.
And then I feel him thicken inside of me. That pulse he mentioned now throbs against my G-spot like a living vibrator.
“You’re going to come for me again.”
I’m almost there. “Yes?—”
He lets go of my wrists, pulls out and flips me onto my stomach, re-entering me from behind. I’m pressed face down on the mattress, flattened by his weight. One of his hands snakes beneath my hip, and those deft fingers are on my clit again as he fucks me.
An embarrassing sound comes out of me as my core winds tight around his thickness. I grip the sheets, and everything goes black as I come again, breathless.
His hands clamp around my wrists to hold me down as he slams into my body, and his howl echoes on the walls as he comes, too.
What the fuck did I just do?