Luka let me have the silence—just watched, his eyes on my mouth until I set the empty glass down.
The vodka sought out every hollowed channel in me, spreading heat, unlocking doors I’d kept chained. I became acutely aware of the scarf—his scarf—cinched around my neck. With each passing moment, the wool pressed in tighter, a noose of heat and want.
I reached up to loosen it, but Luka closed his hand around my wrist. His touch was gentler than it should have been, but there was no mistaking the grip.
“Leave it.”
“I’m burning up,” I protested, my voice threading between a laugh and a gasp.
His eyes lingered on my mouth, then drifted downward, slow as a drip of honey. “You can take it off…” He skimmed his fingertips along my knee, then up the outside of my thigh. “If you uncross your legs.”
My body went still, muscles and nerves crystallized around that one line. His voice reverberated in my bones. He didn’t lookaway. Didn’t back down. Everything in me recoiled at the idea of giving in so easily—and yet the urge to comply, to see what would happen if I did, nearly undid me.
I stared at him, pulse wild, until the silence made the room tilt. Then, as if pulled by a wire in his voice, I slid my right knee over my left and let my thighs part under the table. The fabric of my skirt shifted just enough to tell him what he needed to know.
His lips barely moved, but the corners lifted in a small, private smile. Approval. Or perhaps satisfaction at my surrender.
He let the moment bloom, the jazz-drowned bar focused to a point between our knees. Then he sat back, arms loose against the banquette, and nodded toward the scarf at my throat. “Now take it off.”
The wool was already damp at the nape of my neck. I lifted my hands, fingers slow, and unwound it with deliberate care. His stare tracked every movement. I laid it across the seat beside me, hands trembling.
He didn’t touch it—didn’t even glance down. Just watched me.
My breath came shallow. The vodka made me lighter—hollowed. My pulse thrummed behind my ears and between my thighs.
“Good,” he said, voice low, letting the word hang like condensation on a glass. He leaned in, so close I could feel the exhale of his breath curl along my jaw. “But I wasn’t talking about the scarf.”
The world narrowed to the table’s edge, the leather booth, his gaze pinning me in place. Sound dulled, as if I’d slipped underwater.
“What were you talking about?” My voice sounded thin and unfamiliar.
He hooked the inside of my knee, this time with a possessive certainty. “Take off your underwear.”
Heat crashed over me, sudden and feverish. It was such a ridiculous, cinematic command that I nearly laughed. “Here?” The word squeaked. I blinked. “Are you out of your mind?”
He didn’t laugh. His mouth twitched, but his eyes held me, flat and glacial. “Either here…” His hand flexed over my knee, thumb circling just above the hem of my skirt. “Or in your room. Your choice.”
The air thickened, every cubic inch charged as if the city’s power grid ran through the booth. I swallowed, tasting the vodka, the wool, the metallic edge of my own nerves. He waited, so still it made me want to tear something just to see if he’d flinch.
“You’re serious,” I managed.
He slid his hand higher. “Completely.”
I looked around. The bar was a blur of silhouettes, laughter, and glass. The businessmen at the end of the counter were arguing about rugby, the couple by the fire exit had graduated to silent mutual disdain, and the barman’s eyes never rose above his own hands. No one cared. No one watched.
Except Luka.
He brushed his lips against my ear.
“Choose now.”
chapter
three
The door had barely shut before Luka had me pinned flat against it—one palm caging my temple, the other trapping my waist. He pressed his hips in, hard, his chest a barricade that left nowhere to breathe but into the sharp angle of his jaw.
The heat was instant. Total. And for one suspended moment, I thought he might devour me like this—upright, clothed, against my hotel room door.