Chapter Twenty-Two
NATALIA
I wake to a fresh whiteout beyond my hotel window, the world erased to nothing but drifting snow and a pale strip of light leaking through the glass.
A heavy arm is draped over my waist. I shift, and his hand tightens instinctively—like it’s been doing that all night every time I tried to roll away for air.
He’s still here.
Luka’s chest presses against my back, solid and hot.
His breath is warm at my neck. One arm is hooked around me like he fell asleep holding on, and my body answers with a slow, satisfied throb that makes last night come back in fragments—his mouth, my gasp into the pillow, the way he dragged me closer every time I thought we were done.
We weren’t.
There were breaks—water, laughter that didn’t sound like either of us, the brief, hazy drift of sleep before he shifted behind me and I felt him hard again, like his body had made a decision and refused to back down.
My thighs ache. My hips are sore. I can still feel the shape of him everywhere, like the night never really ended, just paused long enough to fool the sunrise.
Luka isn’t the kind of man who clings. Which means he did it unconsciously.
I bite back a squeal of happiness, my cheeks burning with a grin I’m glad he won’t witness.
"I can feel you spiraling already," he murmurs, voice rough with sleep. "If you’re about to start problem-solving, at least open your eyes."
So much for him being asleep.
I roll slightly in his arms, tilting my chin up.
He’s already watching me. Hair tousled. Perfect jawline. Eyes clearer than I expected this early.
He didn’t run.
"Good morning," I say carefully.
He studies my face like he’s trying to memorize something.
"Morning."
There’s no awkwardness. No post-sex retreat. No subtle shifting toward the edge of the bed.
"And you’re wrong," I add. "I’m not problem-solving anything."
"Then you’re plotting something."
I let out a quiet laugh, unable to suppress the smile spreading across my face—and that’s when I see it.
A grin.
Not a smirk. Not a half-amused curl of his mouth.
An honest-to-God smile, eyes crinkling at the corners.
He brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek.
"Stay here with me for a second," he says. "Don’t go into your head yet."
I nod.
"Are you hungry?"
I blink. "That’s what you’re going with?"
"You burned a lot of energy last night."
Heat climbs up my neck. "You seem very confident about that assessment."
His mouth curves—not cocky, not arrogant. Soft in a way I’ve never seen on Luka before.
"I made sure to be thorough," he says.
His arm tightens around me, pulling me flush against him, and he kisses me without hesitation—morning breath be damned.
God help me.
He slides out of bed before I can respond, completely naked, and I have exactly three seconds to pretend I’m not watching before he catches me staring.
"Are you coming?" he asks casually.
"Coming where?"
"To the shower." His eyes drag slowly over me. "I need to get my hands on that body and wash you before I take you out to feed you. Otherwise I won’t be able to keep them off you long enough for us to eat."
My cheeks burn. Heat pools low in my belly.
"You’re going to wash me?" I ask, lifting a brow.
His expression turns wicked—controlled, deliberate.
"Come on, Nattie. Before I carry you there myself."
"No more Bunny Hill?" I tease.
"You let me touch you again. You get Nattie when you’re a good girl. Now come on," he adds, already turning toward the bathroom. "I’m not a patient man when it comes to you."
Then he disappears behind the door, and the sound of running water fills the room.
He didn’t leave. And I don’t know why that feels more dangerous than if he had. Maybe because I can’t hide the fact that I’m falling for him, and I know I shouldn’t be. I should keep a professional distance, but we’re too far past professional distance. I’m not missing any of this with him.
I throw the covers back and head straight for the shower.
Steam curls through the bathroom when I step inside.
The mirrors are already fogging. The scent of the hotel provided soap filling the room.
He’s standing under the spray, water sliding down broad shoulders, dark hair slicked back. Completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like my own personal fantasy–created only for me.
His vision glides down my bare body–painfully slowly and completely unhurried. Then reaches out his hand and I take it as he helps me into the shower so that I don’t slip.
The water is hot when he pulls me under with him, my breath catching as it hits my skin. He doesn’t rush. He just looks at me. Like everything in this moment is deliberate… like it matters.
His fingers slide up my arms first, pushing my hair back from my shoulders so it won’t cling. Then his hands trace down my sides, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
"You trust me?" he asks quietly over the sound of water.
The question feels bigger than a shower.
"Yes."
His eyes soften at that, and then he reaches for the soap.
There's something almost disarming about the way he does it. There’s no urgency, just intention. Something that I’m learning is how Luka does everything.
He starts at my shoulders, working the soap in with both hands, thumbs pressing into muscle. The water streams down my back. He watches his own hands like the task requires his full attention.
He rinses my shoulders with the showerhead, slow and deliberate, then he follows the water with his mouth.
A kiss pressed to the curve of my shoulder.
Another at the base of my neck.
Lips dragging along my skin like he's tasting something he intends to memorize.
I make a sound I didn't plan to make.
His hands move lower, down my spine, spreading soap in long, careful strokes, following each section with a rinse and then his mouth. The curve of my back. My shoulder blade. The dip above my hips. He’s patient and thorough, like he told me he would be and meant it.
I grip the tile in front of me.
He crouches behind me, washing down the backs of my thighs with both hands, slow enough that my breath starts coming in pants.
Behind my knees…down my calves. He works with the same focus he probably brings to everything, and I am coming completely undone from the careful attention of it.
I don't know what to do with tenderness from him.
My legs are trembling. Not from the cold–but from him.
He stands, turns me gently to face him, and I see his face for the first time since he started—eyes dark, a muscle working in his jaw. He is not unaffected. He's choosing this pace, and that’s the difference.
He washes my chest slowly, his hands cup my breasts and I stop pretending this is just bathing. His thumbs drag over my nipples and I inhale sharply and something almost like a smile crosses his mouth.
"You're trying to kill me," I manage.
"I'm washing you," he says.
"Luka."
"Natalia."
He rinses me, following the water down with his mouth again.
Open-mouthed against my collarbone, slow and warm against my breast, tongue tracing where the water runs, and I press the back of my hand to my mouth to keep whatever sound that is from leaving my body.
He takes his time. He always takes his time, and I thought I understood what that meant until right now, in this shower, with his mouth on my skin.
He kisses down my stomach.
The curve of my hip.
And then he sinks to his knees.
I look down at him and something cracks open in my chest. This enormous, controlled, careful man, on his knees in front of me looking up at me once before he pressed my back gently against the tile.
"Hold on," he says quietly.
I grip his shoulder with one hand as he finds me with his mouth and I stop thinking.
His mouth is devastation. He swirls and sucks completely without mercy.
He takes his time learning what makes my breath hitch, and once he learns it he does it again, and again, and then he eases back just enough that I make a sound that is embarrassing and reaching and I don't care.
My fingers curl into his hair. He lets me hold him there.
He goes back to it like he has nowhere else to be, like this is the only thing, like he has decided I am going to fall apart under his hands and he is simply waiting for me to agree.
He edges me close and pulls back.
Edges me close and pulls back.
I let out a desperate whimper.
His name falling from my lips. A question and an answer and a desperate, undignified plea all at once.
He gives me what I'm asking for.
I come apart with my hand pressed over my mouth and his name caught behind my teeth, thighs shaking against his shoulders, fingers twisting in his wet hair.
He holds me through it, one hand flat on my hip like an anchor, until the last of it rolls through me and I'm left barely standing against the tile.
He rises slowly, watching me. I am completely wrecked. Flushed and unsteady, and he takes that in with the same unnerving steadiness he takes in everything, except his chest is rising and falling harder than usual.
"I want more," I tell him. "I want you."
"All you ever have to do is ask."
He reaches past me and turns off the shower.
Then his hands find the backs of my thighs and he lifts me, and I'm not prepared—I grab his shoulders on instinct, legs wrapping around his waist, and he presses me back against the tile and the cool ceramic against my shoulders is a shock and then he is there, pressing into me slowly, giving me every inch to feel.
I gasp.
He stills.
His forehead drops to mine. Both of us breathing heavily, the shower dripping quiet around us, the world contracted down to this — the tile, his skin, the stretch and fullness of him, wet skin on wet skin.
"Are you okay?" he murmurs.
"I’m so far past okay," I breathe.
He starts to move.
Deep and slow. The same pace as everything else, like he has decided the only way this happens is all the way or not at all. His hand finds the space between our bodies, thumb circling slow, and I feel it everywhere, my body coating him in my arousal as he advances inside of me, deeper and deeper.
I muffle out words I barely recognize. A plea or praise, I’m not sure which.
"I've got you." His voice is low and rough at the edges now. His perfectly placed control finally fraying. I feel it in his grip, the way his fingers press harder into my thigh. "Come for me, Nattie."
I do.
The second time is slower, deeper, and pulls something out of me I didn't know was there.
A sob or a sigh or something between them rips from my throat, hands gripping his shoulders, face pressed to his neck.
He follows me, staying deep and still as he finishes, a rough exhale against my hair, his whole body going momentarily undone.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
I can feel his heartbeat.
Eventually he lowers my feet back to the floor with the same careful attention he has given everything else tonight, making sure I'm steady before he lets go. I'm not entirely sure I am. He checks my face anyway, like he can read it.
He reaches into the shower and turns the water back on. He rinses us both off without ceremony, practical and easy, like it's just washing now. And something about the ordinariness of it after all of that makes me laugh… helpless and a little shaky, surprises me by the sound of it.
He looks at me. His mouth curves.
"What?"
"Nothing." I shake my head. "I didn’t know this side of you existed."
He brushes my wet hair back from my face with both hands, slow, smoothing it away from my forehead and my cheeks.
His thumbs drag gently across my skin. He looks at me for a long moment without saying anything, and there is something in his face that I don't have words for yet — something that has moved past the controlled and deliberate and landed somewhere quieter.
"I didn’t either. Not until I met you. You do something to me Natalia…
something I still don’t quite understand," he says.
"Letting you stay at the chalet, wanting to be the only one to teach you to ski, sitting and talking over lunch, craving you more after each time I have you, instead of less… washing you in a shower."
"You’ve never washed a woman in a shower before?"
He shakes his head. "Or chased a woman down after she left and demanded to talk to her, and then fucked in the hallway of a yoga studio because no matter how many times I have her, it won’t ever be enough. No, none of that."
I know what I should feel. I know the version of me that would already be calculating the exit, cataloguing the reasons this is complicated and professionally catastrophic.
But I'm standing in a shower with Luka Popovich's hands in my hair and water running warm over both of us, and I find that I can't locate the part of myself that wants to leave.
"So what do we do now?" I ask.
He smiles and then kisses me.
"You let me take you on a date to get breakfast and then we figure it out from there."
"A date?" I ask.
He nods. "A date."
"Have you ever done one of those?"
"You’re my first."
Then he grabs towels for both of us and we dry off and get dressed.