Chapter Twenty-One
Chiara
After Ethan left, I sat on the couch for what felt like hours before I moved at last. I showered and went through the familiar motions on autopilot, mind numb and heart aching.
Even though I felt relieved about him ending our relationship, I couldn’t help the guilt from making my heart squeeze as I sat there, waiting for my pulse to slow down.
Now, I am lying in bed in the dark and starting to fall into a restless slumber when I suddenly jolt awake. Awareness is crawling over my skin, making it tingle with alertness.
Someone is in the room with me!
I’m about to jump up when a big hand covers my mouth and another one grabs my wrists to pin them over my head while heavy legs crush mine under their weight. I scream in terror, the sound muffled by the palm over my mouth.
“Shhh, love. It’s me,” comes Lucas’ low rasp in the dark.
I blink in shock. He lifts his hand from my mouth, and the bedside lamp goes on.
“Lucas!” I screech as my eyes try to adjust to the sudden glare. “What are you doing here?”
As a reply, he smiles down at me, and a chill runs down my spine from the unholy glow darkening his eyes.
I start to struggle, but he has me pinned under the covers, under his hard body. “You can’t just break in...” I pant, struggling harder.
He chuckles. “Technically, I didn’t break anything, I got the key.”
I freeze, my blood turning to ice. “Did…did you hurt Edna?” No, he wouldn’t. Would he?
“What, the landlady? Of course not,” he scoffs. “I’m not upsetting you over something so trivial. Relax, cara mia, I borrowed the key, she doesn’t even know it’s gone.”
“What do you want? Let me go.” I glare at him despite the panic clawing at my throat.
His eyes flash, wild and intense. “Let you go?” he repeats with a rough voice, and a bitter laugh spills out of him. “Sweetheart, that’s the problem. You already left me once. You slipped through my fucking fingers. Do you know what that did to me?”
I slowly shake my head, my throat tightening, but he doesn’t wait for an answer.
“I tore the city apart looking for you. Weeks, months, every day, every night—” He cuts himself off, grinding his teeth and breathing hard, his hold tightening on me.
His voice drops to a ragged whisper. “I drowned without you.” His body presses harder against mine, suffocating and assertive.
“So no, I’m not letting you go. Not now, not ever. You belong with me, to me.”
Fear claws at my chest, but underneath it there’s a sharp pang of something else, something I don’t want to name. “You don’t get to decide that,” I hiss, bucking against him, but he only pins me down harder.
His grin is all teeth and madness. “Don’t I?
You think I’m giving you a choice?” His breathing is harsh, uneven, like he’s wrestling with himself for control, but losing the battle.
His face dips closer, his lips brushing mine when he growls, “I’m done losing you.
From now on, you are mine, even if I have to chain you to me. ”
His words coil around me like a vise, suffocating, terrifying, but the most dangerous thing of all is the way a tiny part of me reacts, like my body hasn’t caught up to the fact that my mind is screaming no. I thrash under him, desperate, but he is too strong. I’m trapped.
“Stop fighting me,” he rasps, his voice thick with something feral. His hips press down into mine, pushing me deeper into the mattress as he wraps his other hand around my throat, forcing me to tilt my head back. “You think I can’t feel how you tremble? You think I don’t know what it means?”
My breath hitches. “You’re insane.”
His eyes darken further, the black pupils swallowing the ice as he chuckles, low and unhinged.
“Maybe I am. Or maybe I’ve just stopped pretending I’m not.
Six months, cara mia. Six fucking months of hell without you.
And now you’re right here—” Without warning, he slams his mouth over mine in a rough claiming.
I cry out into the kiss, jerking my head, but he only growls, his teeth catching my lower lip. Pain sparks as he bites down, followed by acute and confusing heat, and I hate myself for the way my body arches instinctively against his. I can feel how hard he is as he grinds his hips into me.
“You don’t get to run anymore,” he whispers against my mouth, breath hot against my lips. “You don’t get to hide from this, from me.”
I shake my head furiously, trying to buck him off, but every movement only rubs me against his hard cock, and his low, satisfied groan makes my pulse shatter.
“Fuck, I’ve dreamed of this,” he mutters, burying his face into my throat, inhaling me like I’m the last breath of oxygen left on earth, “...dreamed of you. You’ll learn to accept me, sweetheart. I’m never letting you go.”
His intoxicating scent wraps around me, stealing the air from my lungs. I turn my face away, but he only chuckles ominously under his breath, and the vibration of it rolls through his chest into my body.
“You can fight me all you want,” he says, his thumb brushing against the inside of my wrist. “But I’ll make you understand that you’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”
Something inside me spirals and splinters. I’m torn between fear, fury and the terrifying buzz of awareness of his hard body plastered against mine.
He lifts himself up and without letting go of my wrists, grabs the sheet covering me and rips it away, exposing me to his gaze. Heat creeps up my face. As usual, I’m only wearing panties in bed, and now I wish I had at least put on a tank top.
His hungry gaze rakes over me, burning and wild. “So fucking beautiful,” he rumbles.
“Lucas, let’s talk this out.” My voice sounds desperate, pleading, and my breath comes out in short, shallow huffs.
“Now you wanna talk?” The broken laugh that comes out of him chills me to the bone. “I don’t think so. I’ve tried to talk, to explain. Guess what, cara mia, I’m done talking. Now let me show you.”
His lips crash over mine again, controlling and hard.
I try to twist my face away, but he releases my wrists to grab my jaw and hold me in place while his tongue plunders my mouth in hard, dominating strokes.
I struggle harder, but it only seems to push him on.
He breaks the kiss and slides lower down my body while one hand circles my throat to pin me in place.
He closes his mouth around one of my nipples in a hot kiss and the sensation of his tongue swirling around the peak makes my breath stutter.
My mind is fractured, I know I should fight him, but I am paralyzed.
This side of him terrifies me, but it also calls to something deep within me.
I am lost in the sensation of his lips, of his tongue gliding over my skin and his hands holding me in a death grip.
His mouth trails lower, as he is kissing his way down to—
No…
“Please,” I whimper. “Lucas, not like this.”
But he seems beyond hearing me, beyond any sane reasoning.
He releases my throat and when I try to wriggle away, he grabs my hips to pin me to the mattress so hard I know I’ll bruise.
His mouth reaches my panties and he flicks his tongue over the fabric with an animalistic groan.
Then he hooks his hand under the fabric and tears the cloth away in one swift motion.
“Lucas—” I try again, but my voice breaks off when his mouth descends on me, hot and hungry.
I buck and cry out from the sensation, from the scorching heat building in my belly.
He drags his tongue all the way up to my clit, while his hands are wrapped around my thighs to pin me right there, open and offered to him.
He is feral now, sucking and licking at my core until I writhe under him, not knowing if I want to escape him or rub myself harder against his mouth.
I fist my hands into the sheets so hard my fingers are numb.
“Fucking delicious,” he growls against me, then he flicks his tongue over my pussy from bottom to top. Suddenly he is sucking my clit into his mouth in a hot and hungry kiss and a surge of blinding pleasure slams into me.
“Oh god, Lucas.” I pant. My mind deserts me and all I can think of is this heat coursing through my veins as his mouth and tongue circle and lick over my clit.
Then he inserts two fingers into me, syncing the thrusts with his sucking.
It’s all too much, my mind splinters and my body coils tight as a wave of pleasure drags me under, ripping the breath from my lungs.
And I shatter. The orgasm crashes through me, ineluctable and brutal, so intense I see spots of light behind my lids.
I shudder on and on, faintly hearing a voice, my voice, crying out his name in broken sobs.