Just One More Night

by Caitlin Crews

  He could see what she thought of that. Not much at all. Her cheeks were almost as red as her butt as she shifted around on the sofa. She shoved her hair back from her face, then stared at him as if she didn’t have the slightest idea how to find her own pleasure.

  That was no problem. Stefan was happy to tell her.

  “I want you kneeling,” he said. “Right there on that sofa. Thighs apart, breasts thrust toward me, and your hands between your legs. Go on, Indiana. I won’t ask again.”

  She shivered, and he knew her too well now. He knew she wanted to fight him. He knew she was even now weighing whether the punishment might well be more delicious than the obedience. And he saw the precise moment she decided not to test his will.

  Not then, anyway.

  Indy knelt up on the couch, arranging herself just as he’d ordered. He heard her breath leave her in a little sigh as she ran her hands down her thighs, then tracked her way up again. Then, holding his gaze again, she trailed her fingers up the length of her torso until she found her own nipples.

  He expected her to say something. Something racy, no doubt, but all she did was hold his gaze.

  Just as he’d demanded.

  Then she played with herself, her hair tumbled all around her and her eyes big, wide, and hot on his.

  And Stefan was hard. He was always hard when she was around, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The worst was his heart. This last month had made it grow in ways he would have thought impossible had he not lived through it.

  Now it beat, didn’t it. For her.

  Only and ever for her.

  And she was still the most perfect thing he had ever beheld. There wasn’t a single part of her he hadn’t tasted, touched, studied, and made his own. She was his in every possible way. He’d seen to that.

  But she was the only one who didn’t seem to know it.

  Slowly, still obediently holding his gaze, she let her hands move down her body again, settling them between her thighs.

  And then, slowly, she began to rock. She thrust her hips into her own palms, again and again. Stefan thought it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. He saw as she stopped worrying about him and tuned into her own need.

  Because she began to pant, her hands moving faster and her hips thrusting, while her wide brown eyes became glassy.

  But still she worked, until her skin began to glow from her exertion, and it took everything in him to stay where he was. To stay seated, watching her put on a show.

  A show just for him.

  Stefan knew that in the days to come, this is what he would hold on to. Indy, so wild and so abandoned, doing as he asked because he’d asked it. Because she wanted to do it. His beautiful Indiana, finding her own heat. He loved the flush on her cheeks and, as she got closer and closer, the way that same flush rolled down her neck until even her breasts looked rosy.

  He loved the unmarred perfection of her flesh, when, if asked, he would have said that not only did he generally prefer a woman with tattoos but that Indy seemed the type to have a vast selection of them.

  But she didn’t. As if she knew, somehow, that no matter how depraved or debauched she might become of an evening, she would always look untouched.

  It was mouthwatering.

  He loved the way her hair moved with her, and his fingers itched to bury themselves in all that dark silk.

  His beautiful girl. His perfect match.

  And when she came, she tilted her head back, letting her scream come out like a song.

  He let her sob. He fought to catch his own breath. And when she lifted her hands, still shaking everywhere, he crooked his finger at her.

  She was still gasping for breath as she moved, coming over to stand before him, shuddering again when he pulled her into his lap.

  Stefan was painfully hard, but he did nothing about it. He only held her there, licking her fingers clean as she nestled into him.

  And then trying to control the thunderstorm where his heart should be as she drifted off into sleep.

  He knew, intellectually, that the day was no longer or shorter than any other. It was a day; that was all. Yet still he would have sworn that this one was the fastest that had ever been.

  He cooked as night fell, because it was the only thing he could do. He fed her, then fucked her, but as the night wore on he took her upstairs, spread her out on his bed, and held her to him.

  She fell asleep almost instantly. But he refused to give in to any slumber. Not tonight.

  He knew that he could have woken her at any point, and that they were so attuned to each other by this time that no matter how tired she was, her body would answer his. With that same joy that marked each and every time they’d come together.

  His cock was hard and ready, and more than willing.

  But still, Stefan only held her close. And stayed awake, because he wanted to remember every breath. Every small little noise she made as she burrowed deeper into him.

  He thought of all things he’d lost, one after the next. His mother and grandmother. The father he should have had, who he’d seen glimpses of now and then, which it only made the reality of his father he actually had worse.

  He thought of the things he’d given away, and more, the many things that had been taken from him.

  All of it, all the things he’d considered his whole life before her seemed to fade away. He would live without her, because he would have no choice.

  But he didn’t fucking want to.

  Stefan knew that living without her, waiting for her, was the only possible way to win her in the end. Because he knew her now.

  And because he knew her, it wasn’t surprising in the least that she’d decided she needed to pursue whatever passion she wanted. Or that she would use that passion, whatever it was, as a way to put space between them. The truth was, he’d expected her to fight more against the intimacy he’d asked for here.

  Instead, in true Indy style, she’d given him everything.

  Was that worse or better, in the end? He couldn’t tell. Maybe he would be better suited to handle her departure now if he didn’t know how perfectly they fit together.

  “I will remember this,” he promised her sleeping form. “I will remember everything.”

  She had not merely become a part of him, as the overwrought Romanian phrase would have it. She was far more than that.

  Because if he knew anything, it was this. A man was not meant to hold on too tight to a vision. The vision itself was the gift.

  He had made this house of his beautiful. Inviting. A place where a woman like Indy could be comfortable, and stay a while. But she had made it home.

  Stefan had already changed the way his world revolved for her. What was waiting a little longer?

  Because he knew that chasing this woman of his, filled as she was with wanderlust and that stubborn streak, would only chase her away.

  So he held her close as the dawn crept ever closer, settled in, and talked himself into setting her free.

  Because that was the only way she would ever come back.

  For good.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  INDY SHOULDN’T HAVE been surprised to wake up the next morning to find Stefan gone from their bed.

  He had taken intensity to whole new levels yesterday. She sat up carefully, and could feel her body, tight here and a twinge there, in case she’d forgotten. She hadn’t.

  Good thing it made her feel a little too hot all over again.

  She made her way into the shower and stood there a long while, letting the hot water revive her. When she got out and toweled off, she realized that everything inside of her was clear. At last.

  Their month was over. He had chosen to end things with that endless, sensual-intensity marathon that made her feel shivery and molten just thinking about it.

 
She could picture his face, looking somehow more cruel as the day wore on. Even as those hard hands of his took such care with her, though they were the same hands that had spanked her. They’d moved over her body, coaxing her to just one more peak.

  Then one more after that.

  The man was a sorcerer.

  But the thing about his kind of magic was that, here on this most momentous morning after, Indy finally felt swept clean.

  All the muddling around, all the wondering, was all gone. Everything clicked into place.

  She felt it hum through her, like awareness. Like attraction.

  Like certainty.

  Like fate, a voice inside her whispered.

  She let her hair do what it liked, shoving it behind her ears as she walked back into the bedroom and slipped on her flowy dress. The one she’d been wearing when she’d tried for symmetry in that alleyway, only to have Stefan teach her a lesson about intensity.

  A lesson he kept teaching her.

  But because she’d learned that lesson, maybe too well, she knew what he’d been doing yesterday. It had been different from what had come before. She’d understood that while it was happening, but it made even more sense now.

  Stefan had been saying goodbye.

  She padded her way down the grand stairs, running her fingers along the smooth length of the banister as she moved, as if she needed the sensory input. When, maybe for the first time in her whole life, she felt full up.

  Indy never liked to think of herself as having a wound that needed healing, or an empty hole inside her, as she’d been accused of more than once. But she couldn’t help noticing how different she felt here on the other side of a month of intense intimacy with Stefan.

  Her whole life there’d been a kind of edginess in her that skittered over her skin and made her bones feel itchy in her limbs. The urge to keep going. The need to always leave where she was and find something new. But no more.

  She’d always been preoccupied with seeing and being seen, but not because she had anything to prove. Indy had discovered early on that when she was feeling lonely—or feeling anything, really—the best cure was to go out somewhere and pretend she was happy.

  Until she was.

  And when that wasn’t on offer, there was always social media, which could amount to the same thing.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she slipped her mobile out of the dress’s deep pocket, and pulled up her favorite personal account. She took a quick scroll through, on the off chance she’d forgotten what was there. Because she hadn’t posted anything since she’d come to Prague.

  But the evidence was there before her. It was curated joy.

  It wasn’t that it was fake. She’d taken all those pictures and had posted them, too. But she understood, in a way she wouldn’t have month ago, that while she might not have been trying to prove anything to anyone—the account existed so that any time she felt any emotion she didn’t like, she could scroll a little bit and feel like herself again. Fun, first and foremost. She collected pictures of the fun she had so in less fun moments she could look at it, remember it, and get back into that space.

  And then somewhere along the line, she’d decided fun was happiness, and had built her life around it accordingly.

  But happiness wasn’t a screen of pretty pictures.

  Happiness was what happened when there were no screens around to record it.

  Indy shoved her phone back into her pocket and wandered toward the kitchen, her feet bare against the smooth floor. It was another bit of input, all of it like whispers next to a shout when she walked into the kitchen and found Stefan there at the counter where he’d once spread her out like a dessert, then feasted.

  He didn’t seem to move or acknowledge her presence. He was looking down at his laptop, but she knew. Indy knew full well that he knew she was there.

  That it was possible he’d heard the moment she sat up in bed upstairs.

  She wouldn’t put it past him.

  “Am I allowed to speak today?” she asked, coming to stand on the opposite side of the counter, as if they were facing off with each other.

  Stefan closed his laptop with a decisive click. His blue gaze pierced through her, lighting her up and leaving scorch marks.

  She liked it that way.

  Even if his expression was about as closed off as she’d ever seen it.

  “You can do as you please,” he told her, his voice perfectly even. “You kept your promise. The month is over. The world is yours, Indiana.”

  “I do love when the world is mine.” She smiled. “But surely I can get a little coffee first.”

  To her delight, or maybe that wasn’t the right word for the way her heart leapt in her chest, she saw a muscle move in his lean jaw.

  Very much as if Stefan Romanescu was not as in control of himself as he usually was.

  As if maybe, just maybe, he was finding this as overwhelming as she did.

  She really hoped he did.

  He stalked over to the stove, and set about making her the Turkish coffee she was pretty sure she was addicted to now. There were spices, fine coffee, a bit of sugar, and then the boiling. Three times, and all the while, she stood on her side of the counter and took the opportunity to study him.

  Because maybe he was the real addiction.

  She’d spent two years imagining and reimagining the little bit of time they’d spent together in Budapest. Now she’d had a month and two days. She knew him far better. The sex seemed to get more fantastic every time he touched her. She hadn’t been anything like bored.

  And it still wasn’t enough.

  There wasn’t a single part of his powerful body she hadn’t explored. Her mouth watered just thinking about it. Today he wore jeans and T-shirt, and as usual, elevated both to the kind of art he liked to hang on his walls. A study of a powerful man, she might call it, though the only kind of painting she wanted to do involved her fingers on his skin.

  He turned back when the coffee was done, sliding the thick brew into place before her. And his eyes were still poet’s eyes, brooding and emotional and all the things he acted as if he wasn’t. His mouth was still sensual, and she knew how it felt at her breast, and all the other places he liked to put it.

  He was a dream come true, but he was real.

  This was real.

  And she reminded herself that she got to decide what she made of this. Of them. Of her life and what was in it.

  She picked up the delicate little cup and sipped at it, sighing a little bit at the first taste of the coffee she never could seem to get enough of.

  “Stefan,” she began.

  But a flash of blue cut her off again.

  “Stop,” he ordered her. “I know already how this will go.”

  Indy put her cup down on the counter between them. “Do you?”

  “I changed my whole life after that night in the alley,” he told her, not sounding quite so even any longer. “This is not figurative speech. I am not exaggerating. I was one thing, then I saw you and I became another. There are some parts of some countries that will remain forever closed to me because of this. I accept it.”

  “Will people come after you?” she asked, momentarily diverted from the fact this was the end of the month they agreed upon, and he was acting...the way he was acting. “Are you safe?”

  Something glittered there in all that blue. “I would never have risked meeting you here if I was not.” She saw that muscle in his jaw again. “I would never have risked you. That part of my life is over. It is not merely a closed door, you understand. I set it on fire. It is better that way.”

  “Stefan, I really want—”

  “You will listen to me, Indiana.”

  His voice was a command, but she could see he wasn’t as in control of himself as he usually was. And the longer she looked at him,
the more she began to suspect that this—that hectic glitter in his gaze and that muscle flexing in his jaw—was Stefan’s version of messy.

  Of wild.

  Once again, she felt her heart swell to three times its size. All the parts of her that had been knotted tight loosened in a rush.

  But she was still holding her breath.

  “I have never worried about emotion,” he told her, his eyes too bright and his voice too dark. “It is not a factor. I like sex. I like women. I like them when they come to me and I do not miss them when they go. Then there was you.” He shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it. As if he was the one muddled now. “Nothing about that night made sense. Why were you there? Why weren’t you afraid? How was it possible that I could meet a creature such as you over the barrel of a gun?”

  “I asked myself a great many of the same questions.”

  “There is only one thing that makes sense,” he continued, his voice gruff. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, Indiana. It was that fast, and that mad. This isn’t intense between us because I’m an intense person. I never was before. Not with any other woman. It’s only you.”

  Indy understood, then, that this was him stripped naked. That she could see so much in his gaze, he was telling her these things—this was how Stefan Romanescu ripped himself wide open.

  “I love you,” he said in the same way, as if he was delivering terrible news. “And I will tell you, I did not want to.”

  She smiled, though her heart was thumping at her. “How flattering.”

  “I wanted nothing to do with any of this,” he growled at her. “What place is there in a life such as mine for a creature as soft as you are? You are too little, too breakable. You clearly have no sense of your own peril. You are American, of all things. And yet I knew that you were it for me. Instantly.”

  She blew out a breath, shuddery and long. “Why are you telling me this as if you’re saying goodbye?”

  And the way he smiled then changed him. He made her want to cry.

  Maybe she did.

  “I fell in love with you, Indy,” he told her, almost hoarsely. “And I don’t want to change you. I don’t want to tie you down. I threw out my entire world so that I might try to deserve an angel in an alleyway. How could I pluck off your wings?”