Luca
The sight of Sasha lounging on that sofa, all feigned nonchalance and flashing eyes, sent a molten spike of awareness lancing through my blood. For a fleeting moment, I allowed my gaze to openly rake over the feminine curves hugged by those sinfully tight trousers, committing every goddamn inch of her to memory.
She was a force of nature, this fiery woman with her defiant tilt of the chin and seductive lips curved in a perpetual challenge. Having her under my roof, confined to these plush quarters, should have been a balm against the potential threat she posed.
But with every heated look, every soft cadence of her dulcet voice as she sparred with words as skillfully as any blade, an unsettling tension flourished between us. Tension that strummed my nerves like the plucked strings of a finely tuned instrument, thrumming with dark promise.
I knew the foolhardiness of dwelling on it—lusting after a woman who so clearly despised me and everything I stood for. An adversary housed under my own roof, no less. The notion reeked of idiocy and vulnerability, two things a man of my stature and position could ill afford.
And yet, I couldn't seem to halt the slow descent into madness her very presence inspired in me.
Sasha's gaze met mine over the maid's shoulder, those emerald eyes glittering with a thousand unspoken taunts. Like a hypnotic siren beseeching me to drift ever closer to the razor-sharp rocks that would soon dash my ship upon them.
"Miss Ivanov," I greeted, the gruff undercurrent in my tone betraying the molten awareness swirling through my veins. "I trust your needs are being...attended to?"
Her lips parted, a whisper of a sound escaping that may well have been a breathy scoff. With studied nonchalance, she rose from her reclined position, back straight and chin defiantly angled as she stared me down.
"To the letter," she drawled, one corner of that lush mouth curving in a derisive smirk. "Such...hospitality is hardly necessary, however. I scarcely require coddling."
The maid shuffled backwards, seeming to sense the ratcheting tension and desiring no part in the fray. Smart girl—because something primal and ravenous was awakening inside me, clawing with increasing ferocity at the thinning veneer of my restraint.
Before I could fully process my own actions, I was crossing the threshold with predatory intent, my large frame forcing the fragile maid out of the way as I stalked closer to my defiant captive.
"No?" I rumbled, allowing my penetrating stare to roam over Sasha's form with naked appreciation and seeing a flush creep into her cheeks at the undisguised hunger she no doubt witnessed in my gaze. "A caged songbird requires the utmostattention and care, does she not?" I was close enough now to smell the spice of her perfume and feel the heat radiating from her body. "Lest she lose her voice entirely..."
We stared at each other, the sexual tension sprawling between us as rank and potent as a living thing. One dark brow winged upward, her gaze flickering over my face in a silent assessment. Then, inch by torturous inch, that wicked mouth curved in a sultry smile that punched straight through me like a vicious gut shot.
"That all depends on whether she wishes to sing, doesn't it?" Sasha murmured, voice turned low and throaty in a way that shaved every last ounce of higher sense from my mind.
The world narrowed to that point, to the sight of her lush lips forming each husky syllable, to the challenge that crackled in the very air surrounding us. My hands clenched with the overwhelming urge to yank her against me, to drink in every last drop of defiance until I drowned in her glorious insolence.
Instead, I allowed my own smile to take on a lupine edge, sharpened by the demand roaring through my veins. "Is that an invitation, Miss Ivanov?"
Her teeth sank into that plump lower lip, so briefly I might have imagined the gesture if not for the exquisite torture it sparked behind my tightening breeches.
"The real question," she said after a weighted pause, "is whether you're prepared to make her sing..."
Sasha's blatant challenge hung between us, a gauntlet thrown down with devastating precision. I could feel the weight of it wrapping around my windpipe, squeezing with tantalizing promise even as it threatened to steal my very breath.
Perhaps it was madness giving her such a foothold over me, allowing this temptress to lure me down a path that could only lead to one place—oblivion. The rational part of my mind screamed that this was a game, one she was playing with masterful expertise to unsettle me and gain an advantage.
But as my gaze became inexorably mired in the blazing depths of hers, any thought of logic or self-preservation was ruthlessly battered aside by the rising tide of something far more primal. An insatiable hunger clawed its way up from the darkest recesses of my soul, rendering me powerless to do anything but devour every arch of her body with a look of rapacious yearning.
One second stretched into an eternity, the air between us thickening into an impenetrable haze of spiraling tension and unspoken challenges. Then, with the slow burn of a fuse being inexorably lit, I propelled myself forward until the searing brand of my body caged hers against the wall.
A sharp exhalation, more a hiss of shock than anything, escaped Sasha's parted lips as her back collided with the unforgiving surface. But those blazing eyes remained defiantly locked on mine, daring me to go further even as her quickened breaths fanned against my heated skin in a maddening caress.
"You play a very dangerous game," I growled, allowing one hand to splay against the wall beside her head as I leaned my weight into the hard line of my hips, pinning her in place. "Do you have any idea what you're provoking?"
She was trembling, I realized with a rush of feral satisfaction. For all her bravado, her artificially steadied breaths and controlled expression, the slightest quiver ran through those glorious curves pressed so intimately against me. The lioness may have her claws bared, but she most certainly felt the full weight of the predator looming before her.
"I think you'll find," she countered, every syllable articulated with careful precision as if to prove her composure wasn't as shaken as I suspected, "that I'm not so easily cowed, Luca."
That delicious shiver of yearning cascaded through me at the sound of my name murmured in that dulcet tone. I leaned fractionally closer until our mouths were a hairsbreadth apart, our mingled breaths coming harder now, ragged with undisguised need.
"No," I agreed in a rough rasp, allowing my free hand to feather up her side until my thumb grazed the swell of one lush breast. "That's precisely what makes you so goddamn irresistible."
Sasha's pupils blew wide at my words, her perfectly sculpted mask fracturing to reveal a glimpse of the molten lust simmering beneath. Time seemed to still entirely, the world narrowing to the exquisite agony of our mingled breaths, the tantalizing promise of capitulating to this smoldering want.
Then I was surging forward, crushing my mouth against hers in a searing, demanding kiss.
And all semblance of higher reasoning promptly shattered in the wake of our explosive joining.
Her soft moan was swallowed by the ravenous sweep of my tongue, stoking the raging inferno blazing through my veins. Sasha's nails scored lines of delicious agony down my back as she arched into my bruising embrace, all hesitance banished by sheer, primal desire.
Rational thought was a distant notion as my hands roamed with grasping fervency, mapping every lush curve and committing her glorious form to memory. Nothing existed beyond the scalding heat of her mouth and the slick slide of our bodies writhing in a punishing duel for dominance.
This woman was my undoing, sent to torment me in all the most profane ways imaginable. And in that moment of unleashed passion, I knew with bone-deep certainty that I would never be able to resist her ruinous temptation.
No matter how catastrophic the consequences might ultimately prove.