Page 162
“Their leader thought he’d found leverage.You.He said your name and I… snapped.” Lukas’s jaw locks down.
Panic rises in my throat at the thought of violent strangers knowing who I am, but I swallow it down, because this isn’t about me right now. “What happened?”
His gray eyes lift to mine. “I put my boot on his throat and carved a reminder in his face that I am not a man to be fucked with. Rae… I almost killed everyone in that room.”
My jaw hits the floor. Lukas sees it and nods sadly.
“I’ve done terrible things, Rae. Worse than you could ever know. I’ve ordered men killed without a second thought. Sometimes, I’ve done the killing myself. But I’ve never—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “I’ve never lost control like that. Not once.”
He sets his glass down and leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, fixing me with a pale-eyed stare.
“You’re the only thing I’ve wanted in eighteen years that I haven’t taken by force, Rae Everett. Do you understand how much restraint that requires?”
I gulp. What’s coming out of my mouth next will change everything for good, but I couldn’t stop it even if my life depended on it.
“Then take me.”
Lukas goes still.
“I mean it,” I say, doubling down. “I’m tired of being careful. I’m so sick of being afraid of what I want.”
He’s on his feet before I can blink, crossing over to me. His hands close around my waist and he pulls me up, takes my place, then drags me onto his lap, so that I’m straddling him in that dusty armchair while ghosts watch from the shadows.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he rasps against my throat, “without breaking you.”
“Fuck it then.” I curl my fingers into the silver hair at his nape and tilt his face up to mine. “Maybe I don’t want to stay intact.”
54
RAE
[HANDWRITTEN & TAPED TO BEDROOM DOOR]
Do not enter.
Do not knock.
Do not interrupt.
What happens in this room tonight belongs to us.
— LL
Lukas rises and lifts me with him, cradling me to his chest. My arms wind around his neck. I can feel his heartbeat against my cheek.
Neither of us dares to speak as he carries me through the darkened brownstone. My nostrils are full of him. Mint and aquamarine. The tinge of cigarette smoke. His musk, his heat.
The stairs creak beneath his weight as he climbs. Each step feels like a countdown to something inevitable. We’ve been hurtling toward it since the night he found me in the office with my heart in my throat and Kir’s hand in my shirt.
When he reaches the second-floor landing, Lukas pauses outside a closed door. His jaw clenches. He’s weighing something—I can see it in the way his gray eyes go distant for just a moment.
Then, decision reached, he pushes the door open and carries me inside.
The bedroom is cemented in time. Disturbed dust skitters through slivers of dying light. More white sheets cover everything, except for one item.
The bed.
It commands the center of the room like an altar to a love that rotted a long time ago. It’s a towering four-poster with the veils drawn back. Dark wood columns are carved into fantastical shapes I can’t quite make out in the shadows.
