Chapter 28 Lena
LENA
The bed hit the back of my knees and I fell, pulling him down with me.
His weight settled over me, solid and warm, pressing me into the mattress.
It felt right. Like he belonged there. The kiss broke just long enough for him to look at me, really look at me, his gray eyes searching my face in the firelight.
Looking for doubt. For hesitation. For any sign that I wanted to stop.
He wasn’t going to find one.
“Are you sure?” His hands trembled where they braced on either side of my head, and I could smell him and the violence he’d done tonight still clinging to his skin.
This man who’d beaten someone bloody hours ago, who’d walked in with death on his knuckles, was shaking because of me.
“Lena, I need you to be sure. Because if we do this, I don’t think I can stop. I don’t think I can let you go.”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
The words came out steadier than I felt. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, and my hands were unsteady as I reached for him, pulling him back down to me. But I meant it. Every syllable.
I’d spent my whole life being careful. Being good.
Being the daughter who didn’t make waves, who smiled through her father’s disappointments, who buried her own wants so deep she’d forgotten she had them.
And now, with this man’s body covering mine and his breath hot against my lips, I was done being careful.
I wanted. I wanted him. And for once in my life, I was going to take what I wanted.
He kissed me again, slower this time. Unhurried. His mouth moved over mine like he was memorizing the shape of it, the taste of it. Like he had all the time in the world when we both knew we didn’t. His tongue traced the seam of my lips and I opened for him, letting him in, letting him take.
His hands found the hem of my borrowed shirt, the one I’d pulled from his closet because it smelled like him.
He tugged it up slowly, his knuckles dragging against my stomach, my ribs, the undersides of my breasts.
I shivered at every inch of contact. The calluses on his fingers caught against my skin, rough and real.
When he pulled it over my head, the cool air hit my skin and I felt exposed in a way I never had before.
Not naked. Not yet. But seen.
“Beautiful.” He breathed the word against my collarbone, his lips trailing fire down toward my chest. His scent surrounded me now, warm and masculine, mixing with mine until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Lena. Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His mouth had found my nipple through the thin fabric of my bra, and the heat of it made my spine arch off the bed.
He sucked gently, then not so gently, his teeth grazing the sensitive peak, and I made a sound I’d never made before.
A moan. A plea. Something between the two.
His fingers found the clasp at my back. The bra fell away and then his mouth was on my bare skin, hot and wet and demanding.
He lavished attention on one breast, then the other, his tongue circling, his teeth grazing, until I was writhing beneath him, my fingers clutching at his shoulders like I might fly apart if I let go.
“Raphael.” His name came out heavier now. More important. “Please.”
“Please what?” He lifted his head, and his eyes were dark, the pupils blown so wide I could barely see the gray. “Tell me what you want.”
I wanted everything. I wanted him to never stop touching me. I wanted to feel him inside me, filling me, claiming me. I wanted to stop being the virgin who’d never been touched and become the woman who belonged to him.
But the words stuck in my throat, tangled up in years of being taught that good girls didn’t ask for things like this.
“I want you.” The words came out broken. “All of you. I want to know what it feels like to be yours.”
His breath caught. Just for a second. And then he was kissing me again, deeper and more desperate than before, his hands finding the waistband of the soft sweatpants I’d borrowed with the shirt.
I lifted my hips to help him, and they slid away easily, taking my underwear with them, and then I was naked beneath him.
Completely exposed. Completely vulnerable.
He sat back on his heels, just looking at me. I fought the urge to cover myself with my hands. To hide. But I didn’t want to hide from him anymore. I wanted him to see me. All of me.
“You’re trembling,” he said.
“I’m scared.” The honesty surprised us both.
His expression shifted. Not pitying. Tender, maybe.
Reverent. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my stomach, right below my navel.
The brush of his lips sent heat racing through me.
Another kiss to my hip. Another to the inside of my thigh, close enough that I could feel his breath against my center.
“I’m going to make it good for you, malyshka.
I promise. I’m going to take care of you. ”
The Russian endearment made me shiver.
He stripped off his own shirt, and I forgot how to breathe.
I’d seen him shirtless before. During our evening rituals, in the half-light of his bedroom. But this was different. This was him offering himself to me the way I’d offered myself to him, and I couldn’t look away.
His chest was a map of violence and survival.
Scars I’d only glimpsed before stood out in the firelight, pale lines against tanned skin.
Old wounds, long healed, that spoke of a childhood I couldn’t imagine.
Some were thin and surgical. Others were jagged, brutal.
Stories written in his skin that I didn’t know how to read.
The tattoos I’d glimpsed before now drew my eye, intricate black patterns covering his arms and climbing over his shoulders, though my gaze kept drifting lower.
To the hard planes of his stomach. To the V of muscle at his hips.
To the dark trail of hair that disappeared beneath his waistband.
To the obvious bulge straining against his zipper.
His skin radiated heat. I could feel it from here, more warmth than seemed normal, like he was running a fever. But his eyes were clear, his gaze steady. Just naturally hotter, then. I filed the observation away without examining it too closely.
“See something you like?” There was a smile in his voice, but his eyes were serious. Watching me watch him.
“Take them off.” The words came out breathier than I intended. “I want to see you too.”
He obliged. The pants came off, and the underwear with them, and then he was as naked as I was, and I couldn’t stop staring.
His cock stood thick and hard against his stomach, the head flushed and already glistening with moisture, and a bolt of nervous anticipation shot through me. That was going to be inside me. That was going to take something from me that I could never get back.
No. Not take. I was giving it. There was a difference.
“We don’t have to.” He read the flash of fear on my face, and his voice gentled. “We can stop. We can do something else. I don’t need—”
“I want to.” I reached for him, pulling him back down over me. Skin against skin. Heat against heat. His cock pressed against my hip, hot and hard. “I want you, Raphael. I want this. I’m just nervous.”
“I know.” He settled between my thighs, the weight of him familiar now, comforting. His cock pressed against my center but he didn’t push inside. Just let me feel him there, heavy and waiting. “We’ll go slow. As slow as you need.”
Slow was the last thing I wanted, but I didn’t say that. I just kissed him, trying to pour everything I couldn’t say into the press of my lips against his.
His hand slid between us. Fingers finding where I was already wet, already aching for him. He knew my body by now, knew exactly where to touch, exactly how much pressure I needed. But tonight felt different. Tonight his fingers weren’t the destination. They were preparation for something more.
“That’s it,” he murmured against my throat. His fingers slid through my slick folds, circling but not entering. “Just feel. Just let me make you feel good.”
One finger slipped inside me. Then two. A familiar stretch now, but tonight it only made me ache for more. When he crooked them just right, pressing against that spot he’d found so many times before, I saw stars.
“Oh.” The word came out broken. “Oh, that’s—”
“I know.” He was smiling against my skin, I could feel it. “You’re so wet for me, malyshka. So ready. You’re going to take my cock so well.”
The crude word made me clench around his fingers. He noticed, because of course he did, and his smile turned wicked against my throat.
“You like that? You like when I tell you what I’m going to do to you?”
I nodded, beyond words, beyond thought. His fingers were still moving, still stroking that spot inside me, and the pressure was building like a storm about to break.
“I’m going to slide inside you so slowly.
” His voice was sin itself, low and rough and promising things I couldn’t imagine.
“You’re going to stretch around me until it feels like you’ll break and you’ll take every inch.
And then I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name.
Until the only word left in your head is my name. ”
The orgasm hit me without warning. My back arched, my toes curled, and I cried out his name as pleasure crashed through me in waves. He worked me through it, his fingers gentling but not stopping, drawing out every last tremor until I was boneless and gasping beneath him.
“Beautiful.” The word sounded different now. Rougher. Hungrier. “Now you’re ready.”
I felt the head of his cock press against my entrance. Hot and thick and impossibly large. I tensed despite myself, and he paused, waiting.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. His eyes caught the firelight, and for a second they seemed to glow, amber instead of gray. A trick of the light. Must have been a trick of the light.