Page 60 of Captive Vows
The fantasies of performing for an audience like that still played like a movie in my mind.
I had to incorporate new dreams. Luka dominated my thoughts, and I couldn’t deny how he’d been slowly but surelytransforming my desires and wishes to center on him and him alone.
But what is the point?
What’s the endgame now?
Those questions were the only thoughts I could count on to keep my head on straight. Being here was like a nightmare that had corrected its course. I felt like I was swimming beneath the surface, suspended in a fantasy. A delusion, even, that this could be my life.
I’d given up my fierce insistence to escape or get out of here. I was outnumbered. Too many guards remained at posts. Locks held me inside. Now, though, it was more than the hardware on the doors and windows that had me trapped. It was more than the Dubinin security force always watching for anyone coming in or out.
It was Luka.
My desire for him was enslaving me to stay. My lust for him never abated, always simmering my hunger for him and his touches. And my enjoyment of this exploration we shared ensured that I’d be a fool to ever voluntarily leave.
He was keeping me here.
I spun through a move, focusing on staying engaged physically as I danced into the night while my mind was preoccupied on the heavy thoughts that I might’ve finally succumbed to him. That he’d won my submission after how valiantly I'd said he wouldn’t ever have it.
It’s not like it would be safe to leave now.
That was a fraction of my survivalist instinct. The one time I’d left the safety of this house, members of the Viper Cartel came to kill me. If I were to try to take off, to just leave and start my life over like I’d wished I could when I felt so stuck in my life with my dad, I would be hunted. Luka’s enemies would target me. They’d try to kill me. Why, I still didn’t know. The best thatI could understand of it after a discussion with Emil was that I was now collateral damage. Others viewed me as Luka’s prized possession. Maybe they assumed I was his official partner and not his plaything of the moment. And for that, they’d attack me and use me as leverage against Luka.
In essence, I wasstilla pawn.
When it was just me and Luka, though, I wasn’t a thing to place somewhere and lock up for security. I wasn’t a pawn or transaction. I was the other half of a different sort of dance, one where we’d come together like one. I couldn’t tell where I started and where I ended.
As I turned back from the wall of windows in the studio, segueing into a lower position that would lead up to a jump, I stopped short.
I didn’t understand how I'd missed feeling his stare on me. But there he was.
Luka had returned. I never knew his schedule and I realized that his “job” wasn’t conventional or traditional like a nine-to-five. And I knew better than to ever ask about it.
He stood there now.
Haggard but stern. Exhaustion oozed from him as he leaned against the doorframe. That suit, one like all the other finely tailored ones he wore day in and out, was ripped, dirtied up, and showing blood stains. His face was swollen in spots, like he’d taken more than a couple of hits in a fight. Small but visible, a thin cut showed on his lip where it had been split.
It was the severe intensity in his eyes that captured me and had me furrowing my brow.
He stared at me like I was the drink he needed in the desert.
He watched me hungrily like I was the only decadent nourishment he wished to devour.
As he stalked further into the room, limping slightly like he’d been wounded in his left leg, he gazed at me with that addictiveenergy I could only hope to match. Like he’d been made for me, and I for him. As though we were the only two souls that could matter when we were pulled and drawn together with this sizzling chemistry that had yet to fade.
Even now.
Now, as he looked filthy and injured, tired and mad, I wanted him. Istillcraved him, and I wondered if the allure of being the object of his affection would ever cease or wither away.
“Luka, what?—”
He held up his hand, quieting me. Reaching me, he lowered his fingers toward my elbow until he could smooth his touch all the way up my arm, then higher yet, caressing my neck with a rough grip. At last, he threaded his dirty fingers up into my messy bun, coiling the strands tightly so I’d feel a sting on my scalp.
Possessive. That was the mood he gave off right now.
And I was all for it.
Falling against him as he hauled me toward him, I sighed and braced for the perfection of his famished lips against mine. That hard and brutal press of his mouth was a kiss that would leave me weak in the knees.
