been nervous with you.’
It was true. Around him she was not nervous. How could she be scared? Sophie briefly pondered when the mouth that made her shiver returned to hers.
They kissed naked and long and then he left her mouth and blazed a hot, wet trail down her neck and then to her breasts, where he licked the warm skin, avoiding her aching nipples till her hands guided his head. It was Sophie who moaned as his mouth captured her and sucked deeply, not once, not twice, but over and over till she twitched and writhed. How could she be nervous when her body just came alive to him?
She loved how he gave the same attention to the other breast and yet she was almost pleading for him to stop because he had lifted just a fraction of the lid and she was greedy for the treasure he would bring.
Luka knew it.
He knelt up for a moment and looked down at her.
Her mouth was swollen from his kisses, her breasts were wet and her nipples erect, and there was a small purple bruise on her perfect skin that his mouth had made.
‘Luka...’ Sophie liked the warmth of his eyes and the affection of his gaze yet she was on fire. He was intimately stroking himself against her as he had downstairs, but there was no holding back as there had been then—this was just a moment of pure decadent indulgence.
She felt like his instrument, tuned purely for him to play to perfection, and he did. She looked down and this time watched him disappear further in.
‘It might hurt,’ Luka said.
‘It had better.’
He laughed and toppled onto her. His weight was half on her and yet not enough; she liked the feeling of being lost beneath him—how the sight of the ocean from his window no longer existed, how the bark of a dog in the distance receded, how it was late in the afternoon and she welcomed the light just to see his closed eyes as he kissed her. Sophie’s friends had needed wine, or long dances, some had demanded the promises of a love that would never die before this.
All Sophie needed was Luka, for this was just how it was supposed to be.
Luka was torn. He wanted to taste her breasts again, he wanted to kiss and make moist every inch of her skin, he wanted the musk of her sex on his tongue, not just his fingers. Badly he wanted her to come to his mouth, but he was as impatient to be inside as Sophie was to be taken.
Later, he told himself.
There would be time for that later.
Like a chip to his skull, somewhere he refuted that, because they ended today, this was it.
Yet there, in that second, Luka knew he would take her again, that this was not the end.
And, yes, he could feel her impatience. Her hips kept lifting, her mouth was more demanding and then there was almost anger as he removed his kiss.
‘Luka.’ She was breathless.
‘Now!’ Luka said, that one word taking such effort to deliver.
‘Yes, now,’ she said, but then she saw his slow, teasing smile.
‘I mean now is when you can get anything you want from a man.’ He was referring to her earlier innocent thinking. ‘Not after...’
‘I’ll remember that for the future.’
She did not understand the flare of possession in his eyes as she spoke of others, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it for he took her then. Luka seared into her and swallowed her sob with his mouth.
It hurt, far more than she had expected it to, far better than she had ever dared dream. He filled her and stretched her and, when she thought she knew what it was to be his lover, still further he went tearing at virgin flesh and then stilling as her body fought to acclimatise to him.
She forgot how to breathe until he gathered her right into him and hooked his arm beneath the small of her back.
‘Luka...’ Sophie didn’t even know what she wanted or what it was she was trying to say, but as he started to move any pain was forgotten because with each thrust he made her more his. His mouth was by her ear now, and he spoke as he did in her dreams. ‘I won’t hurt you...’ he said, when she now knew that he would.
The pain of being taken by him was receding. It was the pain of being left by him that was now starting to make itself known.
She wished that her body didn’t love him so completely. She wished that he would take her deeper, harder, faster, rather than deliver, as he was now, the slow torture of his love, because that was exactly what this felt like.
As her legs coiled around him, even as she urged him on, Sophie was frantically trying to hold back.
How do I let you leave? she wanted to sob as her orgasm gathered.
‘Luka...’ She said it again as she started to come and the intensity scared her.
‘Let it happen...’ Luka said, and his rapid thrust gave her no choice but to do as his body commanded.
Inwardly he beat her to match his rhythm but it wasn’t that that had her toppling over the edge, it was Luka, and the feel of his shoulders tense beneath her hands. It was the last look at the world without fully having the other, this strange brink they both found themselves on. Luka was in that beat before coming, past the point of no return when he felt her pulse to him and he just unleashed. Nothing could ever top this, he knew. Her intimate pulses beckoned and he gave in to the tight, soft warmth of her endless caress.
For Sophie it was the sensation of falling but not a gentle one.
Every bump, every sob, every fear seemed enacted in slow motion. She wanted to curl up in protection but his hands held down her arms. She hoped for a moment of clarity but he was pounding her senses again. Kissing her hard as his climax receded and then thrusting again, giving up the very last of himself as she lay there, knowing she had nothing left to give.
She had been taken.
‘SO THAT’S WHAT it feels like,’ Sophie said.
‘Not usually.’
They were lying in his bed and watching the evening sun over the ocean.
Sophie’s head was resting on his chest and she watched a cruise liner glint in the distance.
‘Not usually?’ she checked.
‘Truth?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘There is usually a knot of disquiet.’ He took her hand and he placed it just beneath where his ribs joined, and he pushed her fingers in. ‘Just there.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
He moved his hand to the same place on her. ‘Do you have it?’
‘No,’ Sophie admitted. ‘No knots, no disquiet.’
She knew what he meant, though, as she tried to imagine a moment where the man lying there wasn’t Luka.
It felt written in her DNA that this time belonged to him.
‘You really want to work on them?’ Luka asked, and they must have both been looking at the same thing because he voiced her thoughts.
‘No, I really want to be a guest on one of them.’ Sophie smiled. ‘But for now working on one would be wonderful.’
‘What would your father say?’ Luka asked.
‘What will my father say?’ Sophie corrected, because it was going to happen, she was determined, but she answered his question. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to react,’ she said, listening to the thud of Luka’s heart as he stroked her hair. So much had changed now. ‘I guess