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I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. Every cell in my body is tuned to the two inches of wood separating us.
Silence follows.
Long, agonizing silence.
And then?—
The handle moves.
In the dark, it’s almost imperceptible. Just the faintest twitch of metal, a hint of movement in the darkness. But I see it. The brass lever dips a fraction of an inch, catches on nothing—because, obviously, there’s no lock for it to catch on—and then stops and reverses.
He’s testing it.
He’s standing right there, on the other side of that door, testing to see if he has the strength to resist.
My fingers curl into the sheets. Every nerve ending is screaming at me to call out, to say something,anything…
Open it. Please, for the love of God, just open it…
I will the thought at him with everything I have. I imagine it passing through the wood in a telepathic beam, wrapping around him, urging him forward.
Open the door, Lukas. I’m right here. I’m waiting. I’vebeenwaiting.
But the handle doesn’t move again.
One second passes.
Two seconds.
One minute.
Two.
And then I hear a low, tortured breath, like it’s being dragged out of him against his will.
At first, I think he’s just standing there, wrestling with himself, caught between what he wants and what he thinks is right.
But then there’s another sound. A shuffling. Fabric against fabric. The creak of floorboards shifting under redistributed weight.
My breath catches as the realization plows into me all at once.
Oh my God.
He’s not just standing there.
He’smasturbating.
In the dead of night, when all bad ideas are at their most potent, with only a door between us, Lukas Lazarev is touching himself. His hand wrapped around his cock and pumping while he thinks about…
Me?!
My thighs press together instinctively. So many things run through me all at once that it’s a miracle I survive the onslaught. Horror, disgust, outrage—all of them come and go so quickly they might as well not have even bothered.
Because the things that follow them are far, far more powerful.
Lust.
Craving.
