Chapter 2
CLARA
His mouth crashes into mine.
It is not a gentle test. It is a warning, a claim, a hard, punishing press of heat that makes me ache before he bothers to soften it.
Then his hand fists in my hair, his fingers tightening just enough to steal my breath, and he kisses me like he has been starving for years and I am the first thing he has allowed himself to devour.
I gasp against his mouth.
He takes the sound like it belongs to him.
His tongue pushes past my lips and the kiss turns deep and consuming and filthy in the best possible way.
His other hand clamps around my waist, dragging me closer, pinning me in place with nothing but his body and his will. My muscles go loose for him in a way that should frighten me.
It does not.
It lights me up.
He bites my lower lip, then soothes it with his tongue. He kisses down my jaw, my throat, the bare edge of skin above my corset like he is following a path only he can see.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin. His voice comes out rough and pleased.
The word lands like it has been looking for a place to live inside me and finally found one.
His hand slides over my waist, then my hip, fingers digging in just enough that I know I will feel it tomorrow. Possessive and reverent at the same time.
“This body,” he says, voice darker now. His thumb presses into the soft flesh of my hip. “You walked into my room dressed like temptation and expected me to be civilized.”
My breath shudders.
There was a time when words about my body sounded like criticism. Concern that came with rules. Too much here. Too noticeable there.
This man handles me like my softness is the point. Like every inch of me was built to be dragged closer, held down, worshipped, and ruined.
“You do not know anything about me,” I say.
“I know you are trying not to tremble.”
“That could be fear.”
“It could be,” he agrees, calm and certain. “It is not.”
His mouth claims mine again and I stop pretending I want to argue.
He does not rush.
That is the first thing I learn about him.
He guides me through the penthouse with his hand locked around mine, the quiet sound of our footsteps swallowed by carpet and distance.
When he eases me down onto the edge of the bed I feel cool silk under my thighs and the solid, dangerous weight of him in front of me.
It hits me with perfect clarity that I am completely at his mercy in the dark.
I should find that terrifying.
Instead, my body relaxes like it has finally arrived where it was meant to be.
“Lie back,” he says.
I lie back.
His hands find my waist first. Not fumbling. Not tentative. They settle on me like they belong there. Steady. Unhurried. The grip sends a sharp, low clench through my stomach.
“You are trembling,” he says.
“I am not.”
“Clara.”
Just my name. The way he keeps saying it. Flat and sure. Like a verdict.
“Fine,” I breathe. “A little.”
“Good.” His thumb draws a slow circle against my hip through the silk of my costume. My breath stutters. “I want you to feel everything.”
The blindfold makes it worse and better at once. Every touch lands harder. The warmth of his breath at my collarbone. The deliberate drag of his fingertips up my side. The way he takes his time like my undoing is a process he intends to enjoy.
His mouth finds my throat.
I make a sound I did not mean to make.
“There,” he murmurs against my skin. “That is what I want.”
“What?” I manage.
“You. Unguarded.” His lips move to the curve of my shoulder. “You have been braced since the moment you walked through my door. I felt it. That careful, controlled thing you do.” He pulls back just enough to speak against my collarbone. “Tonight I am going to take all of that apart.”
My fingers curl in his shirt.
“You sound very confident,” I say.
“I am very confident.”
He kisses down the center of my chest and my back arches off the bed before I can stop it.
“You respond to me,” he says, as if he is noting down a result he predicted. “Every time I touch you, your body answers before you decide to let it.”
“That is just biology,” I say.
A low sound rumbles through him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a growl.
“Take the costume off,” he says.
“I thought you were doing that.”
“I want to see you do it.”
I could say no. I could stop this. The thought appears and then dissolves under the heat of his voice and the weight of my own wanting.
Heat floods my face, but my hands go to the laces anyway. I work them loose with fingers that are not entirely steady. The corset loosens and slides away. Cool air hits my bare skin. He goes still in a way that is louder than any sound.
“Beautiful,” he says quietly. This time there is something raw in it.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.” His hands find my waist again, then my hips, his thumbs pressing in as he drags his palms over my skin like he is claiming territory. “Every curve of you. I want my mouth on all of it.”
He keeps that promise.
He takes his time in a way that borders on cruel.
He learns me with his mouth and hands as if thorough is the only acceptable setting.
When he finds places that make me gasp he goes back to them.
When I try to pull him up he does not move.
He holds me down with that quiet, absolute authority that makes me want to scream.
“Please,” I say. I have never said that word like that to anyone in my life.
“Please what.” Not a question. A command that expects detail.
“I need more.”
“More of what, specifically.” His breath fans against my inner thigh. The word “specifically” in that accent at that distance scrambles my brain. “I want to hear you say it.”
I say it. Clearly. Without softening. Without apology.
No bargaining. No checking his reaction first. No calculating how small I have to make myself to be acceptable. Just the thing I want, laid bare.
He makes a sound against my skin that I feel all the way up my spine.
“Good girl,” he says. Quiet and private and satisfied. Something in my chest detonates as surely as anything lower.
What follows does not fit inside language.
He is patient and relentless. He is dominant in the way only a man completely certain of himself can be. No bluster. No ego. Only focused, unhurried intent that makes me feel like the only thing in the room that matters.
When the first orgasm hits I claw at the bedding with both hands. His name, the name I do not even know, almost tears out of my throat and dissolves into a broken sound that earns a low, pleased noise from him.
“That is one,” he says, smug and satisfied.
“One,” I echo, still shaking.
“I am not finished with you.”
The mattress dips as he rises, then the bed shifts again when he comes over me, all heat and weight and intention.
He moves over me and his weight settles against me. Solid. Heavy. Inescapable. The full reality of how much he wants me presses into me until my thoughts scatter.
His mouth finds my ear.
“I have been thinking about you since you walked through that door. Standing there with your ridiculous parchment and your spine straight and your voice giving nothing away.” His lips graze my jaw.
“Underneath all of that, there is this. All of this softness. All of this heat.” His hand moves and I hiss in a breath.
“You were made to be taken apart, Clara. I was patient while the wrong men wasted your time.”
“That is an extremely arrogant thing to say,” I whisper.
“Tell me I am wrong.”
I cannot.
“Tell me what you want,” he says.
I tell him. Every part of it. The words come easier than they ever have. No shame. No hedging. No shrinking to make it easier for someone else.
I tell him exactly what I want.
He gives it to me.
He is merciless in all the ways I want him to be.
When he moves I lose the ability to track anything except sensation and the sound of his voice in the dark.
Rough. Low. Sliding between English and Russian in a way I feel in my blood.
He tells me I am beautiful. He tells me to let go.
He tells me I have been holding on to things that were never worth holding and that tonight I am going to put all of it down.
I believe him.
The second time I come apart, something that should have been his name tears out of me. But I still do not know what to call him.
“Again,” he says.
“I cannot,” I breathe.
“You can. And you will.”
His certainty should irritate me. Instead, I reach for it, clinging to it, like he is pulling something out of me I have never been allowed to touch. My hips tilt in answer before I can think better of it.
My body answers before my mouth does. And I let it.
This was not a mistake.
It was a choice.
And I have no idea how to live with it.