Page 27 of Burned

A body is terrible. A grave is terrible. But when there is no body? No grave? That leaves a door in the mind that never fully closes. I whisper, “Lucian.”

“I heard her scream,” he says. “That was the last thing I heard before the roof began to cave in.”

I cup his face in my hands. He lets me. “I’m sorry,” I say. The words are too small.

The confession slips out before I can stop it. Selfish. Stupid. “I hate that she has that piece of you.”

Lucian goes still, only for a beat. He picks me up and throws me onto the bed. Not gently. I land with a gasp, bouncing once on the mattress. Before I can rise, he is over me, one knee on the bed, one hand braced beside my head, the other wrapped around my ankle.

He drags me down until I am perfectly beneath him. My heart races. He stares down at me. “You hate that she has a piece of me?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

Our eyes lock. “Then take the rest.”

Damn.

I pull at his belt, at his trousers, needing him bare, needing skin, needing proof, needing too much. Then his body is against mine, hot and hard and real. The scars on his chest brush my breasts. His mouth finds my neck, then my jaw, then my lips again.

I’m nothing but his weight and his heat and his voice hot in my ear. “You’re in my bed. In my arms. And under my skin so deep Icouldn’t claw you out even if I wanted to.” He pulls back to stare. “Which I don’t.”

My throat burns. “That sounds…unhealthy.”

He leans down, and his laugh is rough against my mouth. “It is.” Then he kisses me until I cannot think.

When he enters me, it is slow, my skin burning as it stretches to let him in. He fills me with heat, hardness, friction. He stares at me. The need quadruples as he pushes into me inch by inch, and the intimacy of it is almost unbearable.

I grab his shoulders, nails digging in. He does not look away. Not once.

The stretch is familiar now and still overwhelming, my body opening for him, taking him, remembering him in ways that feel less like memory and more like surrender.

His forehead lowers to mine. “Breathe,” he orders softly. I do. He moves. Slow.

Too slow.

“Lucian,” it’s more a whine than a request.

“I know. I told you, bad girls don’t get what they want.”

I groan in frustration, and he smiles like a villain. “This is my punishment?”

“This is me teaching you patience, naughty girl,” he laughs. “For spying where you shouldn’t.

I’m going to make you wait.”

“I hate waiting,” I moan.

“I know that. I know everything about you.”

I still at his words; he doesn’t know everything about my past. Like I don't know everything about his.

I think of my own secrets. Maybe it's better we don’t.

Still, I know I’ll ask more questions.

He knows that, too.

He thrusts deeper. I make a sound I don’t love. Can’t help it. He brings out the feral in me.