Lying and Kissing (15 page)

The penthouse had cream carpets, the pile so deep that my feet almost disappeared. I squelched across them, wincing. First I’d probably ruined his car’s upholstery, now his penthouse. But he had stranded me without a towel...possibly deliberately. A deep, hot throb went through me.

As I rounded the corner, I saw him. He was standing by an enormous fireplace in which a fire was blazing, the logs stacked as high as my hip. The scale of it would have dwarfed any other man, but not Luka. He was still in his black shirt and black jeans and yet, despite the fine clothes, he looked...
rugged.
The fire was lighting up his high cheekbones and solid jaw in reds and oranges and I couldn’t remember ever seeing anything more beautiful. He was like a statue to male power, cast in granite.

And then he turned and saw me and I saw his eyes gleam in the darkness. I felt his gaze rake down my naked, dripping body and I swear half the water just evaporated right there, my whole body going warm under his eyes. I felt my core dissolve into liquid heat.

He beckoned with his finger.

I stepped towards him and, as I passed a framed photo on the wall, I saw my reflection in the glass. My pale skin was gleaming wetly, still beaded with moisture. My hair was a twisted, wet rope down my back. My nipples had already hardened from the sudden transition from hot shower to cold air. But I was just...me.
Why does he want me?! This should be Svetlana or Natalia or...hell, Nancy, stalking around in their high heels with their perfect make-up. Why me?

I started walking towards him and, with every step, I could feel that charge in the air between us, tingling and sparkling against every inch of exposed skin. I wasn’t sure how much he could see but I knew I was still mostly veiled in shadow. Every step brought me closer to the firelight and put more of me on display. I started to breathe faster.

When I was still ten feet away, I could feel the heat of the fire. I looked down and saw that the warm light was hitting my calves, now, allowing him to see them. Another step, and it was over my knees. Another, and it was all the way up my thighs. The room was so quiet that I could hear my own ragged breathing.

His eyes ran down and then up my body and he gave
that
smile, the one that seemed to mean he approved, and the heat started to build faster and faster, as if a switch had been thrown. How could just a smile, just the knowledge that he wanted me, do that to me? God, I was completely at his mercy.

This time, he didn’t beckon me. He said, “Come here,” and I could hear the thick layer of lust under his words.

My legs seemed to move of their own accord. I closed the remaining distance between us, the last shadows retreating up my thighs, stomach, and breasts until they disappeared completely and my whole body was wrapped in flickering orange light. It made the soft curls of brown hair between my thighs gleam. As I neared him, I stepped right in front of the fireplace and the heat was like a furnace.

I stopped. There were no more than a few feet between us, now, but he didn’t reach for me or tell me to come closer. I felt the fire beginning to dry the water from my body, the heat of it almost too much to bear on the side of me that was closest. And Luka was just as close—
how is he not hot?
But he just stood there as if made of rock and I didn’t doubt that he could stand there all night if he wanted to.

His own comfort didn’t seem to bother him at all. He was only interested in one thing, at that moment, and that was me. His gaze traced every line of my body: my cheekbone, the curve of my lip, the shape of my neck. It went lower and I felt it like a touch on my breasts, the nipples puckering even more as his eyes swept over them. Down over my stomach, down between my thighs—

I swallowed. The heat inside me coiled and tightened.

His gaze moved down my legs, all the way to my toes, and I shifted my weight from foot to foot. It felt as if he was consuming me, savoring each piece.

His eyes rose to mine and locked there and he made the tiniest circling motion with one finger. I realized he wanted me to turn and dry myself. And, at the same time, show off my entire body to him.

I lifted my arms out to the sides and began to turn. The blazing hot skin on one side of me went blessedly cool as it rotated away from the fire. Then my back and ass were facing the fireplace, the violent heat of it vaporizing every drop of moisture. I kept turning, because I knew that if I stopped, I might not have the courage to start again.

I turned until my ass was towards Luka and my other side was towards the fire. I felt his eyes sweeping over my back and down the curve of my spine, following it down between the cheeks of my ass, and I tensed.

Then I was rotating again, my front towards the fire, and the heat was so intense that I had to close my eyes. I felt the fire blasting my eyelids, my cheeks, my breasts. The heat soaked into me and I swear I felt my breasts swell as they warmed. My nipples had been hard because of the chill; now, they stayed hard thanks to the heat inside me. I felt my sex absorbing the heat, too, swelling,
aching,
the heat inside and out melting me, my arousal turning to slick moisture.

I faced him again and opened my eyes. He was staring right at me and he was breathing hard, that massive chest moving in ragged heaves, as if he was having to hold himself back.

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Say something, Arianna, say something or it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen right now, say something SAY SOMETHING—
“I—”

Too late.

All in one movement, he stepped forward, put his hand under my chin, and tilted my face up. His lips were on me instantly, crushing against mine, the kiss open-mouthed and hungry, and it was less than a second before my own lips flowered open and let him in. His chest pushed up against my naked breasts, the soft cloth of his shirt rasping against my nipples, and I groaned into his mouth.

Then one of his huge hands landed hard on my ass, pulling me powerfully up, and I yelped as my feet left the ground. I grabbed for his neck instinctively and my legs went either side of his. My naked sex bumped against his jeans and I went weak, squirming and then clinging to him, my legs wrapping around him to hold me up. His tongue was exploring my mouth while the hand under my ass squeezed and fondled each cheek in turn, every press of his fingers making me gasp. His other hand played up and down my spine, each sweep of it drawing the fire inside higher and higher—

Suddenly he spun around and pushed me away from him, almost throwing me down. I staggered and almost fell. He turned his back on me, staring at the fire. He was between me and it, now, silhouetted against the flames. “Luka?” I asked, worried. “What—”

“You shouldn’t be with me,” he said. “You’re a good person.”

I’d like to say that I pretended to be naive. That I played the part of the American tourist who didn’t know what he did for a living. “You are too, I’m sure,” I said.

But the truth is, I said it because I wanted it so badly to be true. I wanted it all to be a huge mistake, and for him to turn out to be the good guy after all.

He shook his head, his back still turned. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not.”

I had my way out. I could just ask for my clothes and leave and never see him again. Tell Adam I’d done my best and go home to a hero’s welcome for having tried.

But I didn’t want to go. I wanted to be with him so badly it hurt. I stepped forward and put my hand on his arm.

His hand came down on my hand, trapping it there. He slowly turned to face me and I almost gasped when I saw the pain in his eyes, the debate that was raging there. “Don’t start what you can’t finish,” he told me.

I swallowed. And nodded.

His eyes were stroking over me, hotter even than the fire had been. “I don’t know what you’re used to,” he said. “But you won’t be used to me.”

Something deep inside me, something I hadn’t even known existed until the party in New York, twisted and throbbed, releasing a dark, dark heat.
He’s not going to be like one of your boyfriends,
Roberta had warned me.

I didn’t want him to be. I felt a rush of shame as I admitted it, but...part of me wanted to welcome that darkness into me.

I nodded. And instantly, I saw the change in his eyes as he slipped over the edge and out of control. I felt as if I’d just cut the rope tethering a balloon to the ground and now it was surging skyward, dragging me with it. He grabbed my hand in a death-grip—

OhGodwhathaveIdone?

—and pulled me towards the bedroom.

I had to run to keep up. If I’d stumbled, I honestly believe he would have dragged me along the carpet.

We burst through a door into his bedroom. A huge room, with a bed that looked bigger than king size, covered in a dark red satiny comforter that gleamed in the low lighting. Luka heaved on my hand and I squealed as my feet left the floor and I flew headfirst through the air —

I landed on my back on the bed, the air knocked out of me. I lay there gasping, looking up at him, trying to come to terms with the reality that
he just threw me onto his bed.

He was undressing. He didn’t rush, despite the headlong dash through the apartment. It was as if he wanted to savor this part. His fingers worked the buttons of his shirt, his bare chest gradually appearing. I lay there panting, staring up at him. He was a huge man anyway but, looking up at him like that, he looked like a giant.

The smooth expanse of his pecs slowly came into view and, with it, the first of his tattoos. The spider at the center of its web, picked out in black against the smooth tan flesh. His chest was so wide, so solidly hewn that I wanted to run my hands over it in wonder. Then, as the shirt loosened around his shoulders, I saw the tattooed stars there, the ranking that lifted him above the others. What had he done, to earn those? How many men had he beaten or shot to rise up the chain of command? I should have been terrified—
was
terrified—but I imagined leaning around him from behind and softly kissing every point of each star, telling him that I knew what he was...and that I wanted him so much I didn’t care.

His broad chest gave way to a tight midsection, the muscles hard ridges beneath the skin. As he slid the shirt down his arms, my eyes locked on the Bratva tattoo of a rose on his bicep. It wasn’t just him who would kill me, if he found out what I was. The entire weight of the organization could be turned, with one phone call, into an apparatus for tracking me down and putting me in a shallow grave. I was on their turf, where the games were played by their rules.

The thought made me close my eyes for a second in fear but, when I opened them again and took in the whole of his naked torso, I knew I wasn’t going to run. The sight of him was short-circuiting my brain, going straight past every bit of common sense I possessed. I was acting on instinct and need.  His body was sheer power, shaped not through vanity but through brutality. The ink was the final evidence, if I needed any: this man was as bad as they came. And he was staring right between my thighs.

I closed my legs, out of instinct.

He smiled, as if that was amusing.

What have I done?!

He kicked off his shoes and unfastened his expensive leather belt. When he pulled it through the loops, it whistled and snapped. There was something about the way he did it that made me go weak inside.
God, does he use that on his women? Does he tie them up and—

He lazily pushed his jeans down, taking his jockey shorts with them. I got my first look at his cock. Big. Thick. And already—God, already hard and primed in his fist as he climbed onto the bed—

I moved away from him, my ass scooching up the bed. I don’t know why—primal instinct at the sheer size of him, I think. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it.

And it didn’t make any difference. His hand seized my ankle and dragged me back down the bed. I let out a kind of strangled groan.

He looked meaningfully down at my pressed-together thighs.

I swallowed, the air rattling in my nostrils I was breathing so hard. And I opened my legs for him. I felt cool air hit my delicate flesh and I could feel myself throbbing, wet with need for him.
God!
I’d never felt like this, ever.