Chapter 22 Lena #3
His cock was thick and flushed dark with arousal, curving up toward his stomach, a bead of moisture already gathering at the tip.
I’d touched him before, gripped him through his clothes, felt him hot and hard against my belly when he’d pulled me close.
But I’d never really looked. Never studied him the way he’d studied me.
He was beautiful. Dangerous and beautiful, like everything else about him.
I wrapped my hand around him, felt him pulse against my palm, velvet skin over iron hardness.
“Is this okay?”
“More than okay.” His voice had gone rough, strained, losing some of that perfect control. “Your hand feels so good. Tighter. Just like that.”
I stroked him experimentally, watching his face for guidance.
His eyes fluttered closed. His hips shifted, pushing into my grip.
A bead of moisture appeared at the tip, and I swiped my thumb across it, spreading the slickness over the head.
He made a sound low in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl.
“Can I use my mouth?” The question came out smaller than I intended, shy in a way I hadn’t been even when he’d spread my legs and put his face between them. “I’ve never… I don’t know if I’ll be any good.”
His eyes opened, dark and hot, pupils blown wide with arousal. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” I slid down his body before I could lose my nerve, positioning myself between his thighs the way he’d positioned himself between mine.
Up close, his cock was intimidating. Larger than I’d imagined, larger than the clinical diagrams from health class had prepared me for.
But I wanted this. Wanted to taste him, to learn him, to make him feel even a fraction of what he’d just made me feel. “Tell me if I do something wrong.”
“You won’t.” His voice was strained, barely controlled. “Whatever you do, I promise you won’t.”
I took him in my mouth.
The taste was salt and musk and something uniquely him, not unpleasant, just foreign.
Intimate in a way I hadn’t expected. I took as much of him as I could, which wasn’t much, my lips stretching around his girth while my hand covered what my mouth couldn’t reach.
His hips twitched, and I heard his breath hitch, felt his whole body go tense beneath me.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Lena.”
The sound of my name in that broken voice sent a thrill through me.
I was doing this. I was making him feel good, making his control slip, making the most powerful man I’d ever met gasp and twitch beneath my inexperienced mouth.
There was power in this. Power I hadn’t expected.
Power that had nothing to do with contracts or obligations and everything to do with choice.
I found a rhythm. Up and down, my tongue swirling around the head on each upstroke, my hand following the motion of my lips.
I watched his face, learning what made him groan, what made his hands fist in the sheets, what made his hips buck up involuntarily.
His fingers tangled in my hair, not pushing, just holding.
Like he needed to touch me. Like he couldn’t bear not to.
“I’m going to come down your throat.” His voice was raw through gritted teeth. “You’ll take all of it. Every drop. That’s not a request.” A pause, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Pull off now if you don’t want to swallow.”
I didn’t pull off.
His hand shifted from where it had been resting in my hair, fingers tightening, cupping the back of my skull.
Holding me in place. His hips bucked up, driving himself deeper into my mouth, and for one panicked heartbeat I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but feel him hitting the back of my throat.
I should pull off. I should push against his thighs and gasp for air and tell him that was too much, too fast, too deep.
But a darker part of me didn’t want to. A part of me I hadn’t known existed until this moment wanted this. Wanted to feel him lose control. Wanted to be the reason the most powerful man I’d ever met came apart with a groan that sounded like it was ripped from somewhere deep inside him.
His whole body tensed, every muscle going rigid beneath me.
His hand held me steady as he pulsed against my tongue, hot spurts of his release flooding my mouth.
I swallowed around him, taking everything he gave me, and felt a surge of fierce, feminine triumph.
I had done this. I had broken his iron control.
I had made him shake and groan and hold me like he’d die if I pulled away.
The taste was bitter, unfamiliar, but the power of it made me feel invincible.
When he finally released my hair, I pulled back slowly, letting him slip from my mouth. A drop of his release had escaped past the corners of my lips. I held his gaze as I caught it with my tongue, licking it clean, watching his eyes go dark with something like awe.
“Good girl.” His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. “You’re learning who you belong to.”
He pulled me up his body and kissed me hard, tasting himself on my mouth, not seeming to care.
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the fading golden light, my head on his chest, his arm curled around me like he was afraid I might disappear.
His heartbeat was slowing against my ear, settling into a steady rhythm that matched the peace spreading through my own body.
The sheets were cool against my overheated skin.
His scent surrounded me, mixed now with sweat and sex and satisfaction.
“Stay,” he said quietly, his lips moving against my hair. “Don’t go back to your room tonight.”
I should have hesitated. Should have preserved some distance, some self-protection, some barrier between us.
But I was warm and sated and more relaxed than I’d been in weeks, maybe months, and the thought of leaving his arms to sleep alone in that cold guest room felt unbearable.
The thought of not touching him, not breathing in his scent, not feeling his heartbeat under my cheek, seemed like the worst kind of punishment.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
His arm tightened around me. His lips pressed against my hair, a kiss so tender my throat tightened.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift, finally allowing my exhausted body the rest it had been denied for days.
His warmth seeped into me, his breathing deep and steady beneath my ear.
I felt safe. I felt wanted. I felt like I belonged somewhere, for the first time since my father’s stroke had upended everything I thought I knew about my life.
But just before sleep took me, a thought surfaced through the haze of pleasure and contentment and bone-deep fatigue. A thought that I’d been running from for weeks, that I’d buried under resentment and fear and the absolute certainty that nothing good could come from this arrangement.
I was falling for him.
Not just attraction. Not just physical desire.
Not just the complicated tangle of gratitude and resentment that had defined our arrangement from the start.
This was something else. Something terrifying and inevitable, like a wave pulling me under, like gravity drawing me toward something I couldn’t escape.
I was falling for Raphael Antonov. The man who held my family’s debt. The man who had bought a year of my life. The man who had just touched me like I was precious and looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And I had no idea how to stop.