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“No,” I agree. “It didn’t.”
He holds my gaze. He’d never show it on his face, but I can feel in hisaurathat he’s braced for my venom. He’d take it without shying away if that’s what I wanted. But…
“I didn’t hate you,” I tell him. “Even when I wanted to. You shoved me on my knees and… well, we both know what happened.” I trace the line of his jaw with my fingertip. “I was humiliated. But I neverhatedyou.”
“You should have.”
“Maybe.” I shrug one shoulder. “But I’m not very good at doing what I should.”
His mouth quirks. Not quite a smile, but close. The ghost of one, maybe. The promise of future smiles to come.
“That makes two of us,” he says.
He rolls onto his back and pulls me with him so I’m sprawled across his chest like a human blanket. His hand finds its familiar place in my hair.
“I’ll spend as long as you’ll let me making it up to you,” he promises.
“You can start by feeding me,” I say with a grin. “I’m pretty sure I burned more calories yesterday than I have in my entire life combined. I’m starving.”
He laughs and starts to move. I go to sit up with him, but that proves to be an immediate mistake.
Ouchie.
Pain lances through my core, sharp and immediate. It’s not bad pain, exactly. It’s more like a reminder. A deep, pleasant ache that radiates from muscles I didn’t know I had, cataloging every single thing he did to me yesterday in vivid, throbbing detail.
Lukas’s face darkens when he sees me wince. “Don’t move,.”
Out of pure, stubborn instinct, I start to protest—“I’m not made of glass, you know”—but he pushes me back down gently into the pillows with one broad hand against my sternum.
“Stay. I’ll bring it to you.”
He doesn’t wait for my agreement before he rises from the bed in all his naked glory and strides toward the door.
I watch him go. Because duh,obviously,I watch him go. The man is built like a Greek statue that someone forgot to put in a museum, all broad shoulders and scarred back and an ass that flexes in four dimensions. The scars on his back are almost glowing in the morning sun, and every muscle shifts under his silky skin as his stride carries him out of the room.
The door shuts behind him, and I flop back against the pillows with a dopey grin spreading across my face.
I just had sex with Lukas Lazarev.
Multiple times.
And now, he’s downstairs making me breakfast.
Booty.
Ass.
Naked.
I stare at the ceiling and try to imagine the scene I’m missing: him padding around that dusty kitchen in nothing but his birthday suit, muscles flexing as he reaches for a pan. Maybe he’ll burn himself on the stove and swear in Russian. A grunted, masculineBlyat’that will sound almost exactly like he sounded when I looked him in the eye yesterday afternoon and told him to cum inside me again.
I’m becoming a kept woman, and I wish I hated it more than I actually do. But that’s the problem: I don’t. My brain is officially empty. I am made up of nothing but happy static and easy warmth and the delightful ache between my thighs.
I could get used to this.
Soon, the door swings open and Lukas returns. He’s bearing a carved wooden tray, on which rests the most decadent feast anyone has ever assembled in fifteen minutes.
Eggs, scrambled to creamy perfection. Toast with butter pooling into golden lakes. Fruit—strawberries, blueberries, slices of mango—arranged in the shape of a flower. Like he watched a TikTok tutorial on five-star plating while the eggs were cooking.
