“Come for me. Let go, Evelyn. I want to feel you fall apart around me.”
His words are all it takes to push me over the edge. A sob escapes my lips as I shatter around him, my body convulsing with the strength of my orgasm. Waves of pleasure crash over me, leaving me trembling and gasping for air as Lucian continues to thrust into me, chasing his release.
With a guttural groan, he finally lets go, his body shuddering as he spills inside me. His grip on me tightens, holding me close as we ride out the waves of our shared pleasure.
We stay like that, tangled together in the aftermath, neither of us willing to break the spell. Lucian’s forehead rests against mine, our breaths mingling as we come down from the high. His hands stroke my back gently, soothingly.
The tenderness in his touch gives me the courage to ask,“Are you in love with me?”
His lips curve into a slow, devastating smile as his fingers run down my spine. “Love doesn’t even begin to cover it. My every thought, every breath, every fucking heartbeat—it’s all tied to you. I’ve spent years building walls to keep the world out. But you? You walked right through them like they were made of paper. And now I don’t want them back. I don’t want anything but you.”
My chest tightens at the raw honesty in his voice. There’s no mask now, no carefully constructed facade. Just Lucian, stripped bare before me in every way that matters.
“And if I told you that I love you too?”
His eyes darken, and his hand slides from my cheek to my hair as he pulls me closer. “Then I’d say you’re finally starting to see what’s been in front of you all along.”
I look into his eyes and all I can think, with a feverish and desperate sincerity, is:please don’t change your mind when you find out the truth about me. Please never let me go.
I want to tell him everything, to lay myself bare the way he has with me. But fear holds me back, a gnawing dread that whispers he’ll see me differently if he knows.
This fragile, intoxicating thing between us might shatter under the weight of my secret.
His hand is still in my hair, his breath mingling with mine as he waits for me to speak. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Instead, I lean into him, pressing my forehead against his, and let the silence stretch between us.
Lucian’s thumb brushes over my cheekbone, his touch impossibly gentle. “You’re thinking too hard again. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
I close my eyes. “What if I’m not who you think I am?”
His hand stills for a moment, then resumes its slow caress. “Evelyn, you’re exactly who I think you are. There’s nothing you could tell me that would change that.”
I push him onto the bed, my hands shaking as I straddle him. My lips find his in a frantic kiss, trying to distract him and myself from how I almost let the truth slip.
You say that now, I think, deepening the kiss.But you don’t know what I’ve done.
My body molds against his as I try to fuse us together through sheer will. The urgency in my movements is fear, a need tooutrun the words that threaten to spill from my lips if I pause too long.
Tonight, in this room, in this bed, I can pretend that devotion and obsession are enough to absolve all sins.
Chapter 23
Lucian
The jet’s engines hum softly as I watch Manhattan’s skyline materialize through the fog. Evelyn sleeps against my shoulder, her breathing deep and even, the weight of her body a familiar anchor after two days in the mountains. The fading bruises along her collarbone catch the cabin lights. Violets and yellows bloom across porcelain skin. My marks. My claim.
I let her sleep.
She’s exhausted from christening every surface of the estate, from the library’s leather couch to the kitchen counter. Her body has been mine to explore, to worship, to love in ways that leave her trembling and breathless. But it’s more than that. She started looking at me as if I were her salvation and her ruin all at once. She’s finally starting to see the truth of what I’ve known for years: we were made for each other.
I locate my phone after two days of neglect and power it on. The screen lights up with a flurry of notifications—missed calls from my father, texts from Tobias, and a few urgent emails from the firm. I ignore them all. For now, my focus is solely on the woman curled against me. Her hair spills over my arm, the scent of vanilla still lingering from the bath we shared this morning.
The plane begins its descent, and I brace myself for the chaos waiting on the ground. Tobias won’t let this go quietly, and my father will undoubtedly have something to say about the scandal brewing in the tabloids. But none of that matters as long as Evelyn is by my side.
She stirs as the wheels touch down. Her lashes flutter open to reveal those hazel eyes that have haunted me for years. “We’re here?” she murmurs, her voice thick with sleep.
I brush a strand of hair from her face. “We’re here.”
“Welcome back to the slaughterhouse,” she says, stretching like a cat. The movement pulls her blouse taut across her breasts, revealing the outline of my teeth through the silk.
