His hip bones dug into the insides of my thighs as I locked my ankles behind his back, and my arms draped around his shoulders. Even though I wore only panties and a thin tank top, I wasn’t cold anymore. I couldn’t feel anything but his heat.
His lips branded me with kisses of fire. They seared across my mouth and throat, and abruptly we were moving. He took a knee on the bed and lowered me onto my back, letting my head sink into a soft pillow. His mouth erased all thoughts from my mind. He’d told me I was his, and when he kissed me, it was never truer.
His erection was growing between my legs and pressed into me, sliding cotton against cotton. It was a wicked, delicious tease of what I knew was to come. When his tongue surged into my mouth, I answered, showing him I wanted what he was going to give me, and my body told him how ready I was. Surely he could feel how soaked my underwear had become.
His hands worked up under my shirt as more lighting flooded the room. God, he looked intense. I knew it was going to happen, but I still jumped at the delayed boom of thunder. I was nervous. I thought I wanted this, but being in his bed threw me off balance.
“Christ,” he mumbled, presumably about the storm. His hand slid over my breasts, his fingers gliding from one to the other, moving under the fabric of my shirt. My nipples tightened uncomfortably, aching for more attention. I subtly arched beneath him to encourage it. Could he tell? I’d given up on feeling guilty. He was going to take whatever he wanted, so I’d might as well enjoy it.
“I can’t believe the storm didn’t wake me, too,” I said.
His hand continued to skim across my breasts, circling and tracing patterns. “It didn’t wake me, I couldn’t sleep.”
I tensed. “Because of your meeting?”
His hand stilled. “No.” It drew hesitantly away, and I felt the shift go through him. “My mother died on a night like this.”
I controlled my intake of air so it didn’t sound like a gasp. He rolled onto a hip and stayed to one side of me, propped up on an elbow. Someone else was in command of my body, not me, because my hand lifted and touched his face, cupping his jaw. It was a tender, reassuring gesture, and I thought myself incapable. When someone else got emotional, I usually felt awkward and inept. But with him . . .
“What happened?” It was just loud enough over the driving rain. I wanted him to tell me about the event which had clearly shaped the man.
His chest expanded as he took a deep breath. It was dark in the room, but I could still see him. He looked reluctant, but not angry that I’d pried.
“My parents . . . fought a lot,” he said. “She knew he was screwing other women behind her back, but she let it happen as long as my father kept it discreet.” His gaze drifted away from mine and lingered on the pillow beside me, staring vacantly. “My mom came home to find him fucking the whore in their bed.”
The whore, not a whore. “Tori?”
He nodded slowly. “She was just nineteen. My mother loved my father but she wouldn’t stand for it. They fought like I hadn’t heard them before. Screaming, and breaking shit, and saying things a nine-year-old shouldn’t have to hear.”
My heart twisted.
But his expression turned to stone. “She said she was going to the cops and would tell them everything about my uncle’s business. It was storming like this, but she got in her car and took off. It was the last time I saw her.” His hand glided over my waist, holding me. It felt possessive and imprisoning, but I didn’t mind being his prisoner right now. “She only made it halfway there before she lost control and hit a tree. My father said she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and died on impact.”
I covered my mouth with a hand for a moment, catching my breath. I didn’t know what to say, but there was a desperate need to say something. Anything. I was filled with sadness. “Luka.”
“That was the story I believed.” His voice was cold and detached. “I believed it because I was a stupid kid and that’s what everyone told me.”
The pieces began to come together, and my stomach dropped out. Story implied fiction. She hadn’t been killed in a car accident? “What really happened?”
“My father couldn’t have her talking, so when he told his brother what happened, my uncle sent someone to kill her.” There was so much contempt on Luka’s face, I could see the words tasted vile to him. “My father knew what was going to happen, and he didn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. He may not have put the bullet in her, but he killed my mother.”