The air was thick—blueish-grey clouds of smoke swirling lazily through the dim night, dancing like wicked spirits in the dark. Sweat and tobacco clung to the atmosphere, suffocating, heady, sinful. The faint glow of your forbidden lover's cigarette barely cut through the dark, just enough to watch the hypnotic trail of smoke twist and sway.

The old hotel bed groaned beneath him as he shifted, sprawling across a pile of plush pillows like the arrogant bastard he was. One arm rested lazily on the mattress, the other wrapped tightly around your bare body, pressing you flush against the solid heat of him.

The guilt clawed at your chest, whispering cruel reminders of what you were doing—what you’d been doing for weeks now.

Because this wasn’t just some reckless fling. No… the man holding you was an enemy. Your family’s enemy. The very devil who took your brother John from you. The man responsible for every shard of grief your family now bled from.

Luca fucking Changretta.

Still… you couldn’t pull away. Not when his rough palm dragged slow, deliberate strokes down your spine, sending shivers over your skin. Not when being here—naked, exposed, claimed—felt so damn good it made you want to weep.

"Luce della mia vita," Luca’s voice shattered the silence, low, rough, hungry. His hazel eyes raked over your naked body like a starving man staring down his last meal. "Fuoco dei miei lombi," he rasped, the burn of his breath—cigarettes and sin—ghosting against your lips as he leaned in. His mouth a whisper away, his gaze promising things that would ruin you.

"Be a good baby for me, won't ya?" he purred, the playful tone barely masking the weight behind his words—heavy, demanding, dangerous.

And in that moment, you knew… this was going to be something more than you had bargained for when you had first jumped into the sheets with Luca Changretta.