I don’t bother answering. Instead, I pull him down harder, kiss him until we’re both breathless, until he has no choice but to let himself fall.

He lifts me without effort, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carries me across the room, like he’s carried me a thousand times before. When he lays me down on the bed, there’s no hesitation—no pause to ask permission or wonder what this means.

He strips me, tugging my pants down with single-minded focus, his gaze dragging over every inch of me like he’s committing me to memory. And when his eyes meet mine again, there’s something dark and hungry in them, something dangerous.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” he mutters, and it sounds more like a threat than a confession.

I meet his gaze without flinching, my voice sharp and breathless all at once. “Show me.”

His mouth crashes back over mine, and this time, his hands are everywhere—greedy, possessive, tracing down the line of my body like he’s been starved for this. He spreads my thighs without ceremony, his fingers slipping between them like he already knows how I’ll come apart beneath him.

The first stroke of his fingers is maddening, slow and sure, his thumb circling over my clit with practiced ease. When he slides two fingers inside me without warning, it’s deliberate, deep, filling me in a way that has my hips jerking up toward him instinctively.

“Always so fucking wet for me,” he growls against my throat, the words rough, almost angry.

I arch into him without shame, my fingers digging into his shoulders, my mouth falling open as he curls his fingers just right, driving me higher with ruthless precision. He knows exactly how to touch me—where to press, how to make me shatter. And he does it without mercy.

The orgasm hits fast and hard, tearing through me in sharp, ragged waves before I can even brace for it. My body clenches around his fingers, my breath catching in my throat as I ride it out, every nerve in me sparking like live wire.

Before the aftershocks have even begun to fade, he’s pulling his hand away, cursing low under his breath as he shoves his pants down, his cock hard and heavy between us. His movements are sharp, rough, like he’s fighting himself even now.

And then he’s back over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his mouth grazing my jaw, my throat, like he’s afraid to stop touching me for even a second.

“Luna,” he says, my name rough and reverent on his tongue, like it’s a curse he’s dying to speak.

I meet his gaze, my legs already wrapping around him again, dragging him closer because I don’t want distance. I want him inside me. I want to feel him lose himself.

“Don’t hold back,” I murmur, my voice wrecked and breathless. “I don’t want soft.”

The second the words leave my mouth, he’s there, thrusting into me in one sharp, brutal stroke that knocks the breath from my lungs. He doesn’t ease in, doesn’t take his time. He fills me completely, his body pressing me down, claiming me in the way he never says out loud.

It’s filthy. Messy. Desperate.

Lucien fucks me like he hates me and loves me in the same breath—like he doesn’t know how to do one without the other. He fucks me like he’s angry at himself, like he wants to carve himself out of his own skin and bury himself inside me instead. His pace is relentless, every hard snap of his hips driving me deeper into the mattress, rattling the bed frame against the wall.

I meet him thrust for thrust, my nails scoring down his back, my mouth dragging over his throat, biting at his skin because I want to mark him the way he marks me.

There’s nothing careful about this. It’s brutal and consuming and inevitable.

He drives me over the edge again before I can catch my breath, his hand slipping between us, fingers circling over my clit with ruthless precision until I’m falling apart beneath him for the second time, my body clenching hard around him as I cry out his name.

He fucks me through it, chasing his own release like it’s the only thing left keeping him sane. His breath stutters against my mouth, sharp and ragged, and when he finally comes, it’s with a groan torn from deep in his chest, his body shuddering hard as he spills inside me.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the rasp of our breathing, the wild, uneven rhythm of two people who have no idea how to stop destroying each other.

Lucien doesn’t move right away. His weight is heavy over me, grounding and devastating all at once. His face buried in the crook of my neck, his breath hot against my skin like he’s trying to memorize me from the inside out.

For a long moment, neither of us move. Our breathing is rough, sharp, tangled together.

And then he shifts, his weight still heavy against me, his mouth dragging over my neck, soft now, almost reverent—but not sweet. Never sweet.

I don’t ask what this means.

And he doesn’t offer.

Because this was never about words.

It’s about this—the sharp, messy, inescapable thing between us neither of us can name. And when he finally settles beside me, I know tomorrow he’ll go back to pretending.