"Haven't been home in a year or more..."
I love how I have this sudden burst of creativity right before I have to go back to school. I think the Universe is out to get me. Anywho, this one has more smut and takes place in the same universe as the last one.
WHEEL IN THE SKY
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She stared out the window, blinking in the sunlight that streamed in, transfixed. She stopped at the big window every day and just stares, like she’s never seen anything like it before. Luka supposed that she hasn’t.
The first time he caught her standing in the window, he’d opened his mouth to yell at her. He wasn’t known to be a very patient man-Luka was known to be short with his mother-and he wasn’t about to tolerate any hired help-especially some little slum rat-screwing off. Then he caught sight of her face: lips parted slightly in awe, eyes wide and childlike, chest rising and falling. She looked exhilarated. She looked afraid. She looked beautiful, standing there afraid of the world above the plate. So, Luka said nothing and kept walking by. The next time he saw her she was mopping the floors in the front hall; if her only distraction was looking out the window, then he’d give her that.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
Luka turned to regard his companion, lips quirking in a smirk. “It’s not in my nature to hire ugly help. If I have to look at them all day, then I would prefer it if they were lovely. But you know how that is, don’t you, Varrant?”
The older man smiled, the expression more of a leer as he fixed his attention on the girl. “I am an admirer of female beauty, what can I say? And doesn’t every woman love to be appreciated? I’m merely satisfying my needs as well as their own.” He turned back to Luka. “Where did you say that you found her again?”
“The slums.” Luka left out the part about finding her crouched down in the ruins of some run-down, burnt-out building, idly petting a mangy, tortoise shell cat. He didn’t mention that she had been wearing an oversized, threadbare t-shirt that hung off of her shoulders, or that Luka had been able to see her nipples through the shirt. He also didn’t mention that her dish-water blonde curls had hung in disarray around her dirty face. There was no point in telling Varrant that she was probably the dirtiest slum rat that he had ever seen, and yet, all the dirt caked on her face hadn’t been able to hide her beauty.
“Ah, charity case, eh?”
“Something like that.” Never mind the fact that she had most certainly not wanted to go, that she had scratched his face when he had come to get her. “Not like I’m taking her in and transforming her into society’s darling. She’s cleaning my floors.”
“Still, it surprises me. Something that lovely was in the slums? And here I’ve been wasting my time with the ladies from the Lilac Sunrise.” The girl dropped her wash cloth-having gone from gazing out the window to washing it-and she bent down to retrieve it. “My, but isn’t she lovely?” Varrant’s lips curled into a predatory grin, “Such a pretty little thing would look lovely bouncing on my cock.”
Luka’s head snapped back to look at him with such ferocity that it ached almost immediately afterwards. He was used to Varrrant’s lewd comments-Luka was fairly certain that sex was the only thing that Varrant was able to talk about-and while he couldn’t deny that he hadn’t entertained similar thoughts about the girl, he didn’t want to listen to him talk about her like that. And the thought of her under Varrant… Luka had to refrain from hitting Varrant. Instead he settled for, “Yes, well, it’s a pity then that I don’t loan out the help.” He smiled tightly.
Varrant looked away, startled, chuckling awkwardly. “Yes, of course. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to share something so pretty. I should just go out and get one for myself then, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes,” Luka agreed, no longer looking at Varrant but at the girl. She fixed him with a hard, smooth stare. The brow remained smooth, her lips slightly parted and relaxed, but the eyes smoldered. And he knew that she had heard every single word. She had always been smarter than he had given her credit for. Everyone from below the plate was. “Yes, perhaps you should.”
Clarissa DeWinters was a lovely woman: luminous hazel eyes, framed by long, fluttering lashes; plump, luscious lips; facial features reminiscent of statue, everything evenly proportioned; firm breasts, just enough to cup in a man’s hands; silken skin; and dirty blonde hair. She had a sweet, serene smile, and when she laughed it sounded like bells. She was from a good family, well-bred and well-mannered.
She was also a wanton slut in bed.
Clarissa moaned, broken sobs and harsh gasps, as she raised her hips to brush them against Luka’s, the desire for friction driving her absolutely insane. “Luka,” she breathed, “Luka, please. Please…”
He just smirked from above her, moving down her body so that he could lavish each breast with the attention that the deserved, lightly teasing the nipple between his teeth. Her finger nails dug into scalp, fingers entwining in his thick, brown hair. With a finishing lick to each breast, he continued down her body, kissing along the curves of her stomach, her hips. With each kiss, with each lick, Clarissa’s moans reached a higher frequency. His eyes flickered back up to her face-taking in the way her eyes were fluttering closed, the way her lips trembled-before he took the flat of his tongue to the base of her legs in a slow, teasing lick. The effect was instantaneous; Clarissa sobbed, thighs tightening around him, hips undulating into his mouth.
Luka was a predator when it came to foreplay, absolutely relentless and usually leaving his lady fair in a state of delicious delirium. But when it came to actual sex, his demeanor changed. Gone was the animal, instead replaced by a gentle, passionate lover. Any woman who had ever been in his bed would whisper about it, gush about the affectionate and loving smile he would give them with the initial, fluid thrust. They would giggle about how his rhythm was smooth and slow, every motion a sensual ride, how he would kiss along the base of their throat, their lips, their eyelids. And every single one of those women-especially Clarissa, seeing as how she had graced his bed so many times-believed that the passion, the tenderness was for them.
He would never tell them any differently-arrogant as he was, Luka was still a firm believer in pleasuring his partner, and if that’s what they wanted to believe then that was fine by him-but the passion was not any of them. As he moved against-moved within-Clarissa, he pressed his lips to the crown of her head, curling a finger in her dishwater blonde hair. Hair that he asked Clarissa to curl before she came over because “it looked so beautiful.” Clarissa had blushed, all too happy to comply, never even questioning it. And while Clarissa did look beautiful with her hair slightly curled, he was not thinking about her. The eyes that rolled with pleasure were not hazel, rather they were indigo. The hands that gripped his shoulders were rougher, and when her finger nails raked across his back, they were blunter. The skin he imagined was not as smooth, and the lips were not so plump.
And when the friction became too much, Luka had to bury his face in Clarissa’s neck because it was not her name on his lips.
In the morning, when Clarissa gone-after promises that he would see her again soon and many deep kisses-Luka found the girl in front of the windows again, sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest. Her head was titled slightly and lips were parted in wonder; a typical expression for her.
“You’re up early,” he commented, unable to from smiling when her shoulders hunched in surprise. Luka couldn’t remember the last time that he had spoken to her; the other staff members often passed along orders for her, and she was smart enough to know that needed to be done without having to be told in the first place. Orders aside, he had nothing else to say to her. He didn’t know what else to say to her.
“I wanted to see the sun,” she said after a moment, not looking at him. “I like to watch the sun rise.”
“Doesn’t it hurt your eyes?”
She did look over at him then, fixing him with another hard stare. “I did not grow up in a cave. Believe it or not, people who live below the plate have decent eyesight as well. Just because we can’t see the sky doesn’t mean that we’ve never been exposed to the light.”
“Right. My apologies,” he said. He wanted to tell her that she looked lovely sitting in front of the window, wanted to tell her that she was probably the most beautiful woman that he had ever met before. He wanted to tell her that he would never let Varrant touch her, that he hadn’t brought her to the plate to be his whore. Luka wanted to assure her that he did not think of her as an object, that he didn’t think that she was some sub-creature. And if it wouldn’t make her hate him even more than she already did, he wanted to tell her that Clarissa DeWinter meant nothing to him, that she was just a replacement for her. He wanted to tell her that he dreamt of her, imagined her sleeping and waking next to him. Imagined loving her in every sense of the word.
But he held his tongue and settled for apologizing. He had no way of making her believe him; to her he was just another man from the plate, a rich playboy who went down into the slums to collect women and bring them into his household. And the company he kept certainly didn’t make him seem any better.
“It’s a wheel.”
“What?”
The hard gaze was gone, her indigo eyes softened. “The sun. It looks like a wheel,” she breathed, so childlike. “Sometimes, when you can see the rays, it looks like spokes on a wheel.” The girl laughed, and then murmured to herself, “But what sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”
Luka looked at the sun, then down at the girl. “No, Lila. In fact, I think it looks very much like a wheel.” And when Lila looked at him, there was no mocking in his face.