“I don’t belong to anyone,” I say, and I want it to be true.
He lifts our joined hands and kisses the inside of my wrist. The breath leaves me in a soft sound that belongs to the girl in the cove, not to the heir I’m supposed to be.
“Then come upstairs,” he says.
I follow.
His suite opens onto night air and sea, the curtains lifting and falling like a slow breath. He kisses me just inside the door, his hands warm and certain as they map me, as if learning rather than conquering. The red dress I chose to feel dangerous becomes a ribbon at my feet, and when he sees there is nothing beneath it, something dark and intent flickers in his eyes.
He turns me toward the balcony doors where the glass throws us back in the dark. In the reflection, he lifts a white curtain sash, shows it to me like a dare.
“My pace,” he says, his voice absolute without being cruel. “One word stops me.”
“A word?” I ask, buying time. “A safe word?”
“A word you’d never use otherwise.”
“Amore,” I whisper as I let the feeling consume me anyway.
Sera’s silly like that.
“Amore?” he repeats. “Let me guess, you don’t do love?”
“I don’t do amore,” I say, raising my chin.
Luca gathers my wrists, wraps the sash twice, snug, then ties off to the door handle so I’m stretched and smiling in the reflection. His hand settles at mythroat like a warm collar. Breathing starts out easy, then gets tough. I lean into it.
It should scare me. It does. That’s the point. The danger is orderly because it’s chosen, because he asked for a word and built a door into the threat.
“Look at you,” he says to the glass. “I didn’t think you could be more beautiful. And then you give me your neck.”
My stomach flips at the praise. Not sweet. Not romantic. Like he’s rewarding a private kind of honesty I didn’t mean to show.
He kisses me down my throat, hitting that soft spot near my pulse. The sea lifts the curtain like it wants a better view.
He unzips. My eyes lower on the glass, and my brows lift. A smirk plays on my lips as I observe his more than ample endowment. He can deliver on his swagger. I watch as he takes a long stroke up to the fleshy head that’s beading with anticipation. I feel my own impatience flow down my thigh.
He retrieves a foil packet from his wallet and rolls it on.
His pace commences.
No waiting. No foreplay. Like he’s decided my body is an answer and he’s done pretending he doesn’t know the question.
Spreading me, he grinds my hips to the glass, pushing his cock in inch by inch until my mouth falls open in the reflection. His thumb strokes my lower lip. My bound hands flex and the silk holds.
“Good girl,” he praises, heat in the words as he enters me.
The words should make me snap. I’m not anyone’s good anything.
But my body doesn’t care what my pride thinks it is. My body wants what his voice does to me. My body wants the proof of him there, inside me, the proof that I can want a stranger and still be in control because I can end it with one word.
He sets a rhythm that starts reverent and turns disastrous. The glass fogs where my breath lands. His fingers tighten around my throat, then ease, then tighten again like he’s learning what I’ll take and making it a game we both keep winning.
He slides his free hand down and circles my clit slow, worship that makes my knees want to give. I ask for more and he gives it, driving deeper, steady, hand at my throat easing when I lift my chin.
“Say please,” he murmurs.
“Please,” I say, feeling reckless.
