And the worst part was that some broken part of me wanted it to happen again.
TEN
KINGS DON'T SLEEP EASY
TROY
The Drake Hotel was the exact place Luka would choose. Expensive, discreet, the type of establishment where staff were paid well enough not to ask questions and guests came for privacy more than luxury.
I walked through the lobby trying not to look like I'd been beaten half to death. The bruises on my face had faded slightly, turning from purple to a sickly yellow-green that somehow looked worse. My ribs still screamed with every breath, but I'd wrapped them tight enough that moving didn't make me want to vomit anymore. Progress came in increments I didn't celebrate.
The elevator ride to the fourteenth floor felt too long. I stood there watching the numbers climb, trying to figure out what version of Luka I was about to get. Concerned mentor. Calculating strategist. The man who'd taught me half of what Iknew about surviving in this world. All three at once, probably, because he had a talent for that.
The doors opened. I found room 1407, knocked twice.
The door swung open immediately.
Luka stood there looking exactly like he always did. Perfectly tailored suit, dark hair styled with precision that came from years of making first impressions matter. But his eyes were different. Sharper. Hungrier. They tracked over the bruising on my face, the way I was holding myself slightly stiff around the ribs, all the evidence of what had happened written on my body like a report he was reading in silence.
“Get in here,” he said.
I stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind me, soft and final, and the room swallowed the sound of the city outside completely.
He didn't touch me at first. Didn't move. Just stood there with his hands loose at his sides, eyes taking inventory. His jaw tightened, a muscle there jumping once before going still. Then he crossed the room and grabbed my jacket by the lapels, not yanking me forward, just holding it, fists tight in the fabric, eyes on my face from close enough that I could smell his cologne and the faint trace of whiskey underneath it. He was looking at me like he was making a decision or winning an argument with himself.
Then he pushed the jacket off my shoulders.
The movement was slow and deliberate, letting it fall to the floor behind me rather than catching it. He undid the first button of my shirt without breaking eye contact, then the second, then the third, fingers working with unhurried precision that was somehow more charged than if he'd just torn it open.
He got the fourth button, spread the shirt open with both hands, and looked at what the bruising had done to my ribs. The muscle in his jaw jumped again, harder this time. He pressedtwo fingers flat against the worst of it, not hard, just contact. Then his hands slid up to my shoulders and pushed the shirt off to join the jacket.
I reached for his tie.
He let me take it. Watched me pull the knot loose and draw it through his collar and drop it on the floor, watched me work the buttons of his shirt the same way he'd worked mine, top to bottom, unhurried, because two could play at this. His chest came into view by degrees, the lean hard muscle of him, the dark hair scattered across it, a scar along his left ribs that I knew the story behind. I spread the shirt open and put both hands flat against his chest and felt his breathing shift under my palms.
“Still bossy,” he said.
“Always.” I pushed the shirt off his shoulders. “You love it.”
He grabbed my wrists. Not hard, just stopped my hands from moving, held them pinned against his chest while he leaned in and kissed me. Not the crashing collision I'd been expecting. This was slower than that, more deliberate, his mouth moving against mine with the particular patience of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and wanted me to know it too.
I bit his lower lip.
He pulled back half an inch, eyes dark. “Do that again.”
I did. Harder this time. Tasted the sting of it and felt his grip on my wrists go tighter.
“Fuck,” he said quietly, and then he was moving, walking me backward toward the wall with his hands releasing my wrists to find my belt instead, working the buckle open with practiced ease while I got my hands on his and did the same. We stripped each other's belts simultaneously, a race with no winner, both of us shoving denim down and stepping out of it while mouths found throats and collarbones and the specific places we'd both spent years learning.
He bit my shoulder hard enough that I felt it in my spine. I grabbed the back of his neck and held him there.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like that.”
His hands got my underwear down. Mine got his. And then there was nothing between us except the charged air of a hotel room and six months of distance and all the things neither of us said out loud but communicated anyway in the particular language of hands and teeth and weight.
His cock was hard against my hip. I wrapped a hand around him and he made a sound against my shoulder that was low and rough and involuntary, his hips pressing forward into my grip.
“You missed me,” I said.
