로그인She screamed into the blanket. He fucked her from behind with a deep, punishing rhythm, one hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, the other tangled in her hair. He pulled her head back. She felt his breath on her ear."Who made you come?""You.""Who's going to make you come again?""You, Damien. Only you.""Good girl."His hand slid around her hip and down between her thighs, and his fingers found her clit and rubbed, fast and rough. She shattered. It tore through her like a wave breaking, her whole body clenching around him, a long, high cry ripping from her throat. He groaned, low and raw, and kept thrusting through the grip of it, and she felt a second wave building right behind the first."Again," he said. "Come again. I want to feel it.""I can't, it's too much....""You can.""Damien....""Now."She came again, harder, sobbing, her hands fisting in the blanket. His rhythm faltered. His breath came ragged against her neck. He buried his face in her shoulder and swore, a l
"God," he said, hoarse. "Look at you.""Damien.""Let me look."She stood still against the wall. She felt his eyes like hands. Over her mouth, kiss-swollen. Over the flush on her chest and the dark, peaked nipples wet from his mouth. Down the soft curve of her stomach, to the black lace between her thighs, where she knew, without needing to look, there was a damp spot she couldn't hide."You're soaked," he said."You've been looking at me for ten seconds.""I know." A dark smile. "I'd like to see how soaked."He dropped to his knees.She had a second to see his face tilt up, the dark eyes glittering. Then he hooked his fingers into the lace and pulled it down her legs, and she stepped out of it, and he put his hands on her thighs and pushed them wide."Hold on to something.""What?""Anything."He put his mouth on her.Her whole body jerked. Her hands slapped against the timber and found nothing to grip, and she tangled them in his hair instead. His tongue was hot and flat and slow,
He was silent for a second. Then, slowly, a different expression came into his face. It wasn't gentle. It wasn't careful. It was the look he'd had on most of the days in Rome."The boathouse," he said."The what?""Down at the river. The old one. Dad's father built it. No one's used it in fifteen years." His voice had dropped. "It has a loft. A daybed. A stove. The roof leaks in one corner, but the rest is dry.""How far?""Ten minutes on foot.""Is it locked?""I have the key." A beat. "I've always had the key."She held his gaze."Then take me there," she said.***They didn't tell anyone.They went out through the kitchen garden, past the rows of cut-back herbs and the greenhouse with its fogged glass, and down the long slope toward the river. The drizzle had thinned to a fine mist. It beaded on Lyra's hair and her coat and the dark wool of Damien's jacket, which he'd pulled on at the door without a word. The grass was soaked. Her boots sank a little with each step.He didn't touch
"You asked me not to ask you anything." His voice was low and steady. "You didn't ask me to tell you everything I knew. I thought, if I told you, you'd feel I was pushing. I was trying to give you room.""That's the same thing you did before."He went very still."What do you mean?""Deciding what I can handle." She kept her eyes on him. "I said it in Rome. I asked you never to do it again. And you've done a smaller version of it, with the best intentions, but it is still the same thing."For a long moment, he didn't answer. She watched him take it in. She watched it land, and saw his face change by degrees, not hurt exactly, but something close."You're right," he said at last."I know I am.""I should have told you about Tyler. I should have said, I know there's a man, and I know who he is, and here's what Marcus found. And then asked what you wanted to do with it." He swallowed. "I'm sorry.""Thank you.""It's not enough.""It's a start." She put her hand on his chest, over his hea
And there was something else, underneath. Quieter. She'd been trying not to look at it all day.She didn't want to do this alone.It had taken her a long time to find that out. She had spent twenty-two years learning to handle things by herself, to take the weight and say I'm fine. She had left for Rome because she couldn't carry the truth of her life in the house where she'd grown up. And somewhere in these last weeks she had learned that there was someone who would carry it with her, if she let him.Let him, she thought. That's the hard part."Miss?" Marcus said gently. "Shall I tell him you're here?""No." She drew a breath. "Where is he?""In the library, I believe. He came home early.""Early?""At noon." Marcus's face was grave and a little warm. "I believe he found he could not concentrate."She almost smiled."Thank you, Marcus."She walked up the steps and pushed open the front door, and the warm, familiar smell of beeswax and woodsmoke closed around her. At the library door
"Not yet." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "Give me a minute.""Of course."He waited. He was very good at it. He didn't turn on the radio, or check the mirror, or say anything at all, and she was grateful for it.Fifty-two thousand dollars, she thought. My name. Someone used my name.It wasn't the money. She'd have given Karla money. She would have given her more than that if she'd asked, if she had come to her at the beginning with a plain request and a hard story. It was the other thing. The sly, patient, careful thing. The studio's oldest customer told she wasn't staying. The wool taken in the night. A dead address in a free mail service that received a report every Thursday.She has been doing for months, Lyra thought.She lowered her hands."Marcus," she said. "A man called Hartwell three weeks ago. The woman there said he was young and polite and American. Do you know who he might be?"His eyes met hers in the mirror, calm and unreadable."Why do you ask, miss?"Marcus
Lyra set her phone down with shaking hands and stood up.Her legs felt weak, her body hypersensitive. Every movement of fabric against her skin made her gasp.She walked to the full-length mirror in her room and looked at herself.Her hair was disheveled from the flight and the stress. Her face was
Lyra stared at her phone screen, her heart still racing from the encounter in the hallway.DarkVeil: Welcome home, little one. Did you miss me?Her fingers trembled as she typed back.LyraNight: How did you know I got to New York? I didn't tell you I was flying home.The three dots appeared immedia
"The Mercers. They were good people. Are good people." Karla's eyes filled with fresh tears. "They passed away six months ago. Car accident. That's when I did the DNA test. I had no one left and I just... I needed to know if there was anyone out there who shared my blood."Isabelle made a soft soun
LYRA POV:The plane touched down at JFK with a jolt that matched the anxiety thrumming through Lyra's veins.She'd barely slept during the flight, her mind spinning with questions her mother refused to answer over the phone. Urgent. Family matter. Need you home. The words had echoed through her hea







