Sordid (28 page)

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.”

I jerked in Luka’s hold, a physical reaction to his horrifying words. All of his hatred toward his father made terrible sense now and disgust roiled in my belly. Dimitrije had chosen his brother over his own wife, the mother of his children.

I knew the answer, but asked anyway. “When did you find out?”

“Two years ago. After my cousin’s trial, when he was celebrating his last night of freedom before going to prison, he got drunk, and high, and it all came out.” Luka’s hand twitched against my bare skin. “He doesn’t remember telling me.”

“What about Vasilije?”

“He doesn’t know. No one knows I’ve been told the truth.”

I swallowed hard. “Except me now.”

His guarded eyes peered into mine, and he looked sort of pleased to share the secret. Relieved, even.

“And who would you tell?” He’d spoken it like a half-joke, but it was too serious to hear anything but the real question.

Who would I tell?
“No one.”

“I can’t tell Vasilije. He idolizes my father, but he loved our mother even more. It’d destroy him.”

So, even though the relationship was strained between the brothers, there was still love there. Luka was trying to protect his younger brother emotionally.

“You asked if I’d ever killed someone.” He settled down so his head was beside mine on the pillow, and his arm on my waist tightened. He was
holding
me.

My pulse sped. “You said you came very, very close once.”

“I blamed him for her death, even before I knew all of it. And after, I wanted to kill him like I’d never wanted anything in my whole goddamn life.”

The air in the room went thin. Luka took what he wanted, didn’t he? I barely squeaked out the words. “Then why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” His uneven breathing ghosted over my skin. “I had the gun, and he didn’t know I was behind him. I thought I was ready, but I . . . I don’t know,” he repeated. “I hesitated. He’s my father.”

I turned my head toward him, and a lock of hair fell in my eyes. He brushed it back, his fingers skimming over my forehead and tucking the hair behind my ear.

“Don’t get any delusions about me being soft,” he said quietly. “I could change my mind and pull that trigger tomorrow.”

I gazed at him. The sharp angles of his sculpted face and serious eyes were beautiful. “No,” I whispered. “Soft isn’t a word I’d use to describe you.”

As if to emphasize my statement, thunder cracked and rumbled, making me jump while he remained unfazed. His gaze was heavy. It trapped me as he closed the tiny space between us and pressed his lips to mine in a slow, seductive kiss.

“Shit,” he whispered. “It’s so fucking late.” His mouth moved against mine lazily. “I need to get some sleep.”

It sounded like a dismissal. I blinked, and pulled back. “Oh. I’ll go.”

He looked pissed at the idea. “No, you won’t. That’s not what I meant.” He curled his arm around my shoulders, but looked uncomfortable with the embrace. It probably felt as foreign to him as it did to me. “You’ll sleep here tonight.”

I wasn’t supposed to want this. I certainly wasn’t supposed to have nervous flutters of excitement about it. He was my captor, controlling all aspects of my life, and had admitted he might be a murderer someday. But as he shifted closer and found a position that was more comfortable for both of us, I couldn’t ignore how I felt. Over the course of one week, my perception of Luka had changed dramatically. We were so similar in other aspects of our lives. Would I have turned out the same as he had if I’d lived his life?

Chapter

Nineteen

Last night had a powerful
effect
on me, and I was aware I was falling deeper under Luka’s spell. The good news was it seemed to have an impact on him as well. Luka was nearly late for work. When his alarm had woken us both, we’d blinked our sleepy eyes at each other. It was followed immediately by our mutual realization that my arm was around his waist and my leg thrown over one of his.

“You’re really warm,” I said on a hurried breath, scrambling across the sheets to put distance between us. I could claim I was just using him for body heat, but it was a lie.

He chased me across the bed and pinned me down, burying his lips against the side of my neck. He must have known what he did to me, and kissed me that way on purpose. A shiver shook my shoulders.

When he took me all the way to the edge and made me crazy for him to do more than just kissing, when the plea was on my lips, he commanded me to get up and follow him to the shower.

He’d wrapped his hands around my throat while we were soaked by the rainfall shower head. “Repeat it.”

There wasn’t a belt around my neck, and I was confident we had enough trust, so he was only making me repeat the mantra to exert his power. My voice was steady. “You get pleasure or I get choked.”

I knelt on the tile and sucked his dick while he twined his hands in my drenched hair. His deep moans of pleasure created a dark craving in me, and I was only half satisfied when he reached his end. He sensed it, of course.

“Don’t use any of my time to touch yourself today. I want you aching for it tonight.”

After the shower, he’d had to hurry to get out the door, and left me feeling restless and needy.

I was still sitting at the kitchen table eating a late breakfast when Jennifer appeared, garment bags draped over each arm.

“Oh, you’re eating,” she said without giving me a greeting. “I’ll go get these ready for you to try on.”

Jennifer had unwrapped several dresses by the time I plodded upstairs to my room. She noticed my appearance in the doorway and waved me in.

“Let’s start with these,” she said, pointing to the clothes laid out on the bed.

I gathered them up in my arms and went into the bathroom, feeling uncomfortable changing in front of her. I tugged on the outfits, one after the other, and paraded out into the bedroom like it was a bizarre fashion show for one. Two, really. Jennifer snapped pictures with her phone, and texted them to Luka.

The clothes were nice—they looked expensive and well-made. They weren’t things I would have picked out for myself. Some were a tighter fit than I was used to, and some were low-cut, but overall she’d done a good job.

“What’s Goran’s party like?” I asked her as she passed me a green dress on a hanger.

She hesitated. “It’s nice. Good food and good booze, and an excuse to dress up.”

The dress was slinky and much too sexy for me. As soon as I stepped out in it, Jennifer pursed her lips to one side. “No, that won’t work. Let’s do this one.”

It was navy blue, simple and elegant in the front, but backless, plunging all the way to the base of my spine. Lace trimmed the edges where it gave way to skin, and the dress fit me perfectly.

I tried to pry more information from Jennifer, but she gave tight, short answers to every question.
Where is the party? Goran’s estate. How many people will be there? A lot.
When there were no more clothes for me to try on, she hung what I was keeping in the closet and took back the others.

She glanced at the text message that popped up on her screen. “Luka’s downstairs.”

It was already lunchtime. I grabbed my iPad and followed her out of the room. Luka waited at the base of the stairs, his attention fixated on me, but his expression was unreadable. “The blue dress,” he said to Jennifer. “Does Addison have everything she needs for it?”

“Yeah.” She adjusted the strap of her purse, fidgeting.

“Good, thanks for your help.” The corner of his mouth pulled up into a smile. “She’ll look
perfect
.”

He used the word specifically to get under my skin. Why did I allow one innocuous adjective to hold so much power? It was a compliment and it made me feel warm and proud, but it also felt like a lie, too.

He held out his hand, wordlessly asking for my iPad, which I passed to him. He said goodbye to Jennifer and then we went into the office. I watched as he hooked the iPad up to the computer so he could download the new videos while we ate.

Did he notice the change between us during lunch as much as I did? The conversation flowed seamlessly for the first time as he asked about my family’s holiday traditions, and told me about his. Then, he dropped the bomb that if I wanted to go home for Thanksgiving break, I could, but it’d be with him in tow. He was my new boyfriend, after all.

“I don’t know if our relationship is serious enough,” I said, “to introduce you to my parents yet.”

He blinked slowly. “Is that a joke?”

“Maybe,” I whispered. “The truth is, I don’t know if I can prepare my parents for you. You’re . . . pretty intense.”