Chapter 9
chapter
nine
“Bite,” Luka said, holding out a wedge of apple balanced on the edge of a kitchen knife.
I hesitated, reaching for it with my fingers, but he drew the blade back a fraction, eyes flicking up in quiet warning.
“I said bite.”
He brought the apple to my mouth. I leaned in carefully, aware of the razor-sharp blade inches from my lips, and closed my teeth around the slice. The knife’s cold breath ghosted against my chin as he withdrew it. Crisp sweetness burst across my tongue.
I chewed, swallowed, then asked, “So this is your idea of aftercare? Fruit and sharp objects?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He turned back to the counter, slicing the rest of the apple into perfect, even wedges. The knife’s rhythm—metal against wood—was steady, almost hypnotic, the only sound in the dim kitchen.
“You need sugar.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “You lost electrolytes.” He balanced another slice on the knife’s edge. “Fruit. Water. Sleep. In that order.”
I snorted, but I took the next wedge between my teeth, letting him feed it to me. Cold juice overflowed, sweet and astringent.
The evening’s events replayed in fragments—pain and pleasure, submission, surrender, the ache in my hips, the taste of his skin lingering in my mouth—but there was a calm in my limbs. Stripped-out and hollow in the best possible way.
He wiped the knife, set it aside, and poured two glasses of mineral water from a green glass bottle. The fizz crackled against the sides. He slid one across the counter toward me.
I took it and drank, the glass trembling in my hands. I wore one of Luka’s T-shirts—plain black, sleeves rolled, his cologne ground into the cotton. It barely covered my thighs, and my hair was a haystack, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“I don’t have much else to offer you, clothing-wise,” he said. “I don’t have…guests.”
I smiled into my glass. “I find that hard to believe.”
Luka set his drink down and leaned forward on the counter, the muscles in his forearms flexing under the skin. His smile was slow, almost lazy. “I fuck women all the time, Alex. But never here.” The flat’s hush made the statement more savage, more intimate.
“Should I be honored?” I asked. “Or a little insulted?”
He tipped his head, considering, then shrugged. “You can feel whatever you like. It’s just how I am.”
“So…you always go to them? Have sex in the back of your car? What?”
“At the club, mostly.”
“The club? What, on the dance floor?”
“Not that kind of club.”
Realization hit. “Oh.”
“I play, I fuck. No names, no faces. It works.” The admission was stark, matter-of-fact. “Then I leave. I always go home alone.”
I finished my water and set the glass down, the fizz chasing a thread of adrenaline through my veins. “Then why did you bring me here?”
“I told you. It would have taken too long to get to your hotel in five o’clock traffic.”
I shook my head and stepped between him and the counter—firmly inside his space—and locked eyes with him. “I’m not buying that. Try again.”
He drew in a breath but didn’t look away. “You intrigued me,” he said, a slow confession, as if it mattered to him whether I believed it. “That is rare.”
I’d expected another swerve—a quip, a brush-off. Instead, he just held my gaze. There was something in his expression I hadn’t seen before. Not softness or vulnerability. Just the same brutal honesty he’d shown earlier—when his hands were on my throat and he made me beg.
“So,” I said, voice unexpectedly soft, “am I still fascinating now that you’ve fucked me raw and fed me half an apple?”
He grinned. “More.”
The word landed with an intimacy that felt illegal.
“Most women who want this”—he gestured, vague, encompassing everything from the delicious ache between my thighs to the power dynamic bristling in the air—“they want an escape. To turn themselves off.” His eyes settled back on mine.
“You don’t.” A pause, then a sly smile. “You want to set yourself on fire and see what survives.”
“That’s quite a diagnosis. And a CV. I didn’t realize you were a psychologist too.”
“I see people,” he said, his gaze raking my body. “Better than most.”
“And yourself?” I pressed, watching the way his jaw set, the ripple in his forearm as he braced against the counter.
He barked a short laugh. “I see myself better than I see anyone.”
“Do you?” I tilted my head. “You crave power. Total control. Over people, information, your environment. Why?”
For an instant, the blue of his eyes went glacial. Not anger, not surprise. Just the quiet shift of something locking down. “I thought you worked in marketing,” he said evenly. “Are you a psychologist too?”
“Marketing is psychology. With better shoes. Answer the question.”
He held the pause, eyes on a spot just past my shoulder.
“When you’ve seen how fast the world can turn against you,” he said, voice low, “you learn not to rely on mercy. Or luck. Or anyone’s better nature.
” He stood there, arms crossed. “You plan. You control. You make damn sure you’re holding all the cards and are three moves ahead.
” He locked me with a chilling stare. “You learn people better than they know themselves, so they never get the chance to betray you.”
“Wow.” A small laugh gusted out before I could stop it. “That was deep.”
He pressed in, crowding me against the counter, his hips pinning me in place. “You like deep.”
I braced my palms behind me and pushed myself up onto the counter, the cold stone biting through the thin fabric of Luka’s T-shirt. “Are you bucking for round two, cowboy?” I aimed for insolence, but the hopeful edge in my voice gave me away.
“You’re not ready for that.”
My hackles rose. “That’s pretty presump—”
He snatched up an apple wedge and shoved it between my teeth. I had to bite down or risk juice running down my chin.
“I said you’re not ready,” Luka repeated, voice pitched low, every syllable iron.
He let the moment hang, then dragged his thumb across my jaw, smearing a trace of sticky sweetness under my lip.
“I’d like to fuck you again,” he said. “But I’m not an animal.
” He tipped my chin up and considered me, as if weighing the next move on a chessboard.
“Eat. Drink. Recover.” A beat. “Trust me, it will be worth it.”