Then he moved.
Hard. Fast. No rhythm yet—just impact and friction and need.
I clung to his shoulders, my nails sinking in, and met him thrust for thrust.
He braced one hand beside my head. The other clamped my hip, fingers biting in.
I wanted the bruises. I wanted to leave here with his marks, to peel away my clothes and still find him there.
He pulled out, slow and shuddering, and for a second I felt empty—drained of everything but need.
Then his hands were on my hips, turning me, guiding me down the bed.
Face down. Pulled over the edge. Hips lifted. Thighs pushed wider.
Cool air hit the sensitive stripes across my skin, every nerve waking.
He pressed one palm to the back of my neck—not rough but immovable—pinning me to the mattress.
Then he thrust back into me. The force knocked the breath from my lungs. I cried out, muffled by the sheets, as he drovedeep and held, stretching me again, right to the edge of too much.
My legs kicked instinctively, but he pinned them with his knees, controlling my every angle, as if he could carve the rhythm into both of us before morning came.
He slid a hand up, winding my hair into a fist at the base of my skull, then yanked, arching my back until my spine screamed and my throat was exposed. I moaned, helpless, as he drove into me with single-minded fury, every stroke erasing the day, the week—erasing Richard and Atlanta and the coming loss.
There was only this.
He fucked me like it was the last thing he’d ever do—like he could burn me into his memory if he just fucked me hard enough. I felt the violence in it, the desperation. Felt it in the way he split me, the way his hands bruised my flesh, the way he bit the curve of my shoulder as if he could taste the hours running out between us.
But underneath the brutality was a panic, a kind of animal dread that I recognized only because it echoed my own: a knowledge that every second was being spent, never to be returned.
He yanked my hair, not to hurt but to hold me still, to keep me from slipping away. I moaned for him. He pressed his hand to my throat—not choking, just holding me there—anchored to the mattress, to the city, to him.
My body came apart around him. Again and again. Until time, for us, no longer existed.
chapter
twenty-two
My hotel room smelled faintly of detergent and a lingering note of designer cologne. Vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I rolled my clothes with mechanical precision, fitting cotton, denim, and wool together like a puzzle with only one correct solution. Shirt, trousers, underwear. Repeat. My hands knew what to do even if the rest of me didn’t.
Every muscle protested when I bent, when I twisted, when I reached for the corner of the suitcase. My body catalogued the night in dull aches and tender places I refused to inventory.
The clock on the nightstand glowed 4:23 a.m.
Luka’s reflection flickered in the window, a double-exposed ghost. He sat in a padded leather armchair, leg slung over his knee in a figure-four, dressed head to toe in black, motionless. He hadn’t said a word since we’d come in.
Though he tried to hide it, exhaustion radiated from him—a gray cast beneath his cheekbones, the fine tremor in his knuckles gripping the chair arms, his eyes rimmed red.
Once I’d packed away my final items, I zipped the suitcase and slid it to the floor. I perched on the edge of the bed. The silence was as thick as the duvet. I looked at Luka, then atthe three feet between us, then at my hands, which were busy twisting the hem of my sweater into a rope.
“All done,” I finally said, desperate for something to fill the silence.
He looked up, but his face was like a statue. “Did you remember everything?”
I checked the drawers, the bathroom, the outlets, every shadowed corner. Nothing of mine left behind.
Then my eyes snagged on a folded sheet of paper on the nightstand, half tucked beneath the lamp base. I walked over and picked it up. My name—ALEX—was printed on the outside. I unfolded it, the cloying scent of cologne heavy on the paper. Neat, felt-tip block letters marched down the page.