Chapter 21
chapter
twenty-one
“Don’t move.”
As if I could.
Cold metal nudged against my sternum.
Snick. Snick. Snick.
My limbs fell heavy and listless as Luka systematically destroyed the cable harness he’d taken such care to construct.
Once freed, I sat up and rolled my shoulders, the joints cracking like popcorn. Every inch of me ached. My hair clung to the back of my neck in damp ropes. My body felt like it had been through a cement mixer and poured out again, but the first full breath I took was bliss.
Luka knelt beside the table and took hold of my wrists.
Bright-red twin bands circled them where the zip tie had bitten down.
His touch was careful, almost reverent, as he traced the grooves and worked the circulation back into my hands.
He didn’t speak. He just eased the soreness from one wrist, then the other.
“Are we…done?” I asked.
“No.” Luka’s mouth tipped in a brief grin. “But if I don’t pace you, you’ll need a wheelchair to get on the plane tomorrow.”
I let my head fall back, eyes tracing the hairline cracks in his ceiling. “Don’t remind me.”
He finished rubbing the last trace of ache from my wrists and finally looked up. His expression had closed off again—a wall, the kind made to withstand sieges.
I pulled in a breath, determined not to let the moment slide past. I’d had enough of silence. Enough of letting things go unsaid. Of letting the world happen to me.
“So what happens now?” I asked. The words sounded too thin, too flimsy, in the room. But it was all I could come up with.
Luka sat back on his heels, hands loose on his thighs. “We fuck,” he said with a shrug. “Then I’ll take you to your hotel to pack. And then to the airport in the morning.”
I waited for more.
He didn’t add anything. The words settled and stayed there.
“That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed, the taste sharp at the back of my throat. “Do we just…call it a day? That’s it?”
He stood, slow and deliberate, and began gathering the cut lengths of cable, looping them methodically between his hands. “What do you want me to say?”
I hugged my knees to my chest, balancing on the edge of his coffee table. “I don’t know. That you don’t want me to go. That you’ll miss me. That you’re as pissed off about this whole thing as I am.”
He stopped and set the bundle of cable on the sofa. “Do you need to hear those things?”
I stared at him, waiting for the crack—for the shift, the hint of softness. But he just kept his eyes locked on me, unwavering. Heat crept up my neck. I felt exposed. Ridiculous.
I looked down at my knees. “Not if you don’t mean them.”
He crossed the space in two swift strides, took my jaw in his hand, and tipped my face up.
“I will miss you,” he said, blue eyes blazing.
“And I’m fucking pissed you have to go so soon.
But it is what it is. I can’t change it.
” He crouched and dipped his forehead to mine.
“We’ve got, what, twelve hours before I have to leave you at the airport? ”
I nodded, but it wasn’t really a question.
“Then we make the most of those hours.” His voice was quiet, steady. “The time to miss you is after you’re gone. Not before.”
I opened my mouth, but he touched a finger to my lips.
“Give me these hours. Completely. No long goodbyes.”
“Okay,” I said against his finger.
The world didn’t right itself. But it tilted into something I could live with.
He kissed me, slow and deep, his hand rough at the back of my neck, thumb circling the frantic pulse beneath my skin. I dropped my feet to the floor and molded myself to him. He pulled me off the table, steadied me, and steered me down the hall with a hand at my spine.
The bedroom door shut behind us.
Luka crossed to the bed and pulled his shirt over his head in one sharp motion. The sight of him—bare skin, old scars, tension held tight under muscle—hit like heat.
I climbed onto the mattress, but he caught my ankle and pulled me flat onto my back. The duvet cooled my skin. Luka hovered over me, braced on his hands, looking down. His face was still, but there was a tremor in his jaw.
He didn’t ask.
He didn’t need to.
Knees bracketing my hips, he trailed his palm down my throat, over my chest, to my stomach—claiming the space as he went. Then he bent down and bit the hollow above my collarbone. Hard.
Pain sparked. He closed his mouth over it immediately, sucking until a bruise bloomed beneath his lips.
I whimpered. Maybe I even begged.
He moved lower and did it again. And again. Branding a constellation along my breastbone.
He caught my wrists and pinned them above my head with one hand. Then he pressed his mouth to the mark he’d just left, as though he could drink the pain back out of my skin.
I arched under the cage of his body, every nerve raw, oversensitive, the ache and pull of his mouth blurring together. Each mark felt deliberate—his claim, his registry, his refusal to let me forget the hours we had left.
He released my wrists, hooked his hands beneath my knees, and opened me.
I shuddered—surprise and invitation tangled together.
No hesitation. He lowered his mouth to me.
The first touch stole the breath from my lungs.
He worked without rhythm, changing pressure, angle, pace.
Never letting me settle into anything predictable.
My body stayed on edge, every nerve lit, my thighs tightening around his head until he pushed them wider again.
There was urgency in it. Not cruelty. Not control.
Hunger.
Like he was trying to take everything he could before the clock ran out.
I wanted him to.
I came once, hard and fast.
The second time broke through more slowly, the tension collapsing out of me as my hands slid into his hair and held him there. He didn’t ease up. He stayed with me through it, drawing the sensation out until my legs trembled and my whole body went loose.
Only then did he lift his head. His mouth was wet.
His eyes unfocused, darker than before. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand, then caught my jaw and pulled me up.
The kiss was immediate and rough, his mouth hard on mine.
I tasted myself on his tongue, felt the edge of his teeth as he pressed closer, closer, until we both had to break apart to breathe.
Luka shoved his jeans and briefs down just enough, rolled on a condom, and guided himself between my legs. No ceremony, no words. Just the blunt, inevitable press of him—and then he was inside me.
He filled me in one hard thrust and stayed there, hands locked on my hips, his forehead dropping to mine. His breath came rough and uneven.
I cried out, the sharp stretch of already sensitive flesh, and wrapped my ankles around him, pulling him closer.
Then he moved.
Hard. Fast. No rhythm yet—just impact and friction and need.
I clung to his shoulders, my nails sinking in, and met him thrust for thrust.
He braced one hand beside my head. The other clamped my hip, fingers biting in.
I wanted the bruises. I wanted to leave here with his marks, to peel away my clothes and still find him there.
He pulled out, slow and shuddering, and for a second I felt empty—drained of everything but need.
Then his hands were on my hips, turning me, guiding me down the bed.
Face down. Pulled over the edge. Hips lifted. Thighs pushed wider.
Cool air hit the sensitive stripes across my skin, every nerve waking.
He pressed one palm to the back of my neck—not rough but immovable—pinning me to the mattress.
Then he thrust back into me. The force knocked the breath from my lungs. I cried out, muffled by the sheets, as he drove deep and held, stretching me again, right to the edge of too much.
My legs kicked instinctively, but he pinned them with his knees, controlling my every angle, as if he could carve the rhythm into both of us before morning came.
He slid a hand up, winding my hair into a fist at the base of my skull, then yanked, arching my back until my spine screamed and my throat was exposed.
I moaned, helpless, as he drove into me with single-minded fury, every stroke erasing the day, the week—erasing Richard and Atlanta and the coming loss.
There was only this.
He fucked me like it was the last thing he’d ever do—like he could burn me into his memory if he just fucked me hard enough.
I felt the violence in it, the desperation.
Felt it in the way he split me, the way his hands bruised my flesh, the way he bit the curve of my shoulder as if he could taste the hours running out between us.
But underneath the brutality was a panic, a kind of animal dread that I recognized only because it echoed my own: a knowledge that every second was being spent, never to be returned.
He yanked my hair, not to hurt but to hold me still, to keep me from slipping away. I moaned for him. He pressed his hand to my throat—not choking, just holding me there—anchored to the mattress, to the city, to him.
My body came apart around him. Again and again. Until time, for us, no longer existed.