Page 86 of Deep End

“I know, baby.” His voice is taut, like beingthathard and taking itthatslow is difficult for him, too. He bends down to kiss me, open mouthed and dirty. “What did I say, Scarlett? Deep breaths.”

I don’t think he ever gets all the way in, but he starts thrusting anyway, and I’m not sure what I like best about it. His exhale, loud in my ear. The tinge of hurt that makes the pleasure that much sharper. The rhythm, unhurried but purposeful.

I want to touch him, bury my nails in his shoulders, but he’s holding my wrists above my head, and all I can do is feel him move inside me, feet limply bouncing with every thrust, blindly biting into his jaw as I feel a surge of heat low in my belly.

I come once, like that, slow contractions that are so good, they almost hurt. If he, we,thiswas normal, I’d assume that this would be it. Faster thrusts, a choked grunt, Lukas’s orgasm, the end. But he likes to dictate when things start and when they end. He kisses, then licks the tear spilling out of my eye, tells me how tight and good my cunt feels to him. He throbs inside me but doesn’t yet come. Instead he tells me, “A little more. You have to take a little more, okay?” and then he’s impossibly deeper and I’m arching my chest and coming again, so hard that on the tail end of it I hear music in my head. Voices. Bells.

Except they’re not in my head.

“Abysmal timing,” Lukas groans before closing his teeth around my collarbone. “Coming home while I’m having the best fuck of my life.”

His roommates. They’re back from the party.

Are we going to stop? God,no. I want to whine. Idowhine.

“Can you be quiet?”

He wouldn’t believe a lie, so I shake my head.

His smile twitches. “We’re gonna have to train you to come a bit more silently, Scarlett. In the meantime.” His hand wraps aroundmy mouth like last time, and my brain swims. Yes.Yes. Is it sick that I like it this much, knowing he controls my ability to breathe and scream? “I’m going to fuck you for real now, okay? All the way?”

I nod, my eyes a supplicatingyes, and that’s when I realize how little it would have taken him to just shove in through my muscles from the very start. He lets out a hiss of pure, undiluted pleasure, so deep my legs tremble. I feel invaded beyond comprehension, and wish I could tell him the truth, that this is something I’ve wanted since before I could put my desires into words.

“I knew you could do it,” he growls in my ear, and that’s enough for me to come again, his praise and his fingers wrapped around my cheeks and the sound of him bottoming out, hips slapping against mine.Lukas, I try to say against his palm, but I’m lightheaded and I cannot think about anything but him, him,him.

One thrust forward and his muscles tense aggressively, like he’s fighting his own orgasm, but he freezes. His face twists. When he comes, he lets go of my wrists and scoops me up, holds me even closer, and none of the rough things he chants in my ear are in English—except for my name.

It takes centuries for my heart to go back to normal. Hasan and Kyle talk as they make their way upstairs. Doors opening and shutting, a hushed phone call, running water mark the passage of time. I burrow under Lukas, his arms that won’t unwrap, my cooling sweat and labored breath mirrored in him. Blood that beats steadily against mine. I could fall asleep. I could stay here forever.

When he finally rises on his palms, he looks like I feel: wobbly, shell-shocked. A little humbled. We look at each other with the vague surprise of two people who have had sex before,goodsex. And yet.

“Okay?” he asks me, deep, raspy. I should say something witty—That’smyline—because he looks undone. But what feels natural isreaching up, cupping his face, lingering until he turns his head to press a hot kiss against my palm.

It hurts a little when he pulls out. Lukas notices in the frown of my brows, the twist of my face, but this time he soothes me, checks my wrists for bruises, runs his mouth along them. “Relax.” He folds over to kiss my abdomen, once, sweet. One of his hands finds mine, palm to palm. “Deep breaths.”

There is a bathroom attached to his room. I lie on the bed while he disappears inside. The faucet runs, and he comes back with a washcloth that he wipes across my cheeks. They feel ravaged, sticky with tears, and the warmth is a balm.

He spreads my legs gently, but I wince anyway. He comforts me with a hushed, foreign word, but what he finds there has him breathing deeper and putting the washcloth aside, mostly unused.

He stares and stares, and I try to imagine what he’s seeing. When he’s looked his fill, he closes my legs together again, as if to trap it there. “Will you spend the night?” A hoarse rumble—a request, this time. How easy it is, to transition from the animals we can be into the frequency of civilization. From hierarchy to equals.

“I would like to, yes.”

He almost smiles. I almost do, too. It’s so easy, slipping under the duvet, burying my face into his neck, savoring his sigh of relief as I settle in his arms. He surrounds me, contains me, presses me into himself, like he needs to hold me as much as I need to be held.

I should pee. Bathroom’s right there. It’s just so warm, here with Lukas, and there’s so little peer-reviewed evidence supporting a link between peeing after sex and UTIs. There should be more studies investigating the matter.Icould do a study.

And a few minutes later, in the middle of plotting it, I fall asleep.

CHAPTER 36

SOMETHING WAKES ME UP—NOT SURE WHAT, BUT IT MUST BEoutside my own head, because the second I open my eyes, I feel Lukas stir behind me, and the slow glide of his warm body against mine under the covers.

I’m tucked into him, his heavy body wrapped around mine like I’m a pillow or a beloved stuffed animal, something for him to use, a means to a better rest. One of his legs is thrown over both of mine, and his chest is hot against my spine, pressing the right half of me into the mattress. Even in sleep, his arm is clinched around my waist, making deep breaths impossible. I can’t recall ever being thiscloseto anyone. Objectively, I am uncomfortable, overheated, and held within an inch of my life.

Iloveit.

So much so that my first coherent thought is for Pen: When, how,whywas she okay with giving Lukas up?

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