A/N: Okay soooo this is likely not the post that the majority of my lovely followers would prefer, but I have a valid reason for posting this as opposed to a long-awaited TDDUP update, promise :p Tonight I'm checking into the hospital to be induced, so tomorrow I'll be having my new little baby! I wanted to post SOMETHING partially just so that I could update you all on what was going on and to provide an explanation for my absence, the truth of which is just that while this pregnancy has not been a difficult one, it and life in general has wrecked my focus and ability to write the way that I normally am able to. I began writing the next TDDUP chapter weeks and weeks ago but I just couldn't get anywhere substantial with it and it was horrifyingly frustrating, and I apologize profusely for leaving you all hanging the way that I have. I will definitely NOT, however, abandon the story, and it will be updated in time, but of course now that the baby is arriving VERY soon, it's gonna be awhile longer. I don't really have a timetable for when I'll realistically get back to writing, so I'm just gonna have to ask you guys to be even more patient with me than you already have been. We WILL get there. We absolutely will. Besides, midnightwings96 wouldn't allow me to abandon the story even if I tried to :p

Now as for THIS little nugget that I present you guys with today, I wrote this awhile back one night where I needed to reassure myself that I was still capable of writing at all, and this was what happened as a result. In an earlier chapter of TDDUP, Aemilia told Summer about her and Lukas' days as secret lovers and how he once pulled her away at a party she attended with her gross fiancé (who is now her stepdad, blech poor Aemilia) and ah... ravished her and told her in excruciating detail what he'd do with her if she was his. This is that scene :) Just a little glimpse into the early, angsty days of Lukas and Aemilia's relationship, which will eventually be told in far more detail when I get Lukas' backstory finished. Whenever the heck I manage that. LOL.

Anyway I hope you guys enjoy this, and this will definitely be the last you all hear from me for awhile. Send me a PM and I'll do my best to get back to you if you have questions or just want to check in, I suck at answering them but I'll try my best LOL, and I just want to thank you guys again for being wonderful and supportive and, as I mentioned before, VERY patient. I appreciate it so very much :D also my thanks to midnightwings96 for her patience as well, God knows I've tried it these last few months lol, and just... my apologies all around lol. But stay tuned! Not disappearing for good, just taking a baby break :D

Only for me

For once in her still-short, young life, Aemilia wished that she knew how to turn off her humanity and become a lifeless, numb shell just half as unfeeling and barely human as her own mother.

She was dressed to the nines in a rich violet evening gown, her hair styled in an immaculate and elegant chignon and her makeup a true work of art worthy of every single compliment she had received thus far and more. She was sipping some of the world's finest champagne amid a small sea of disgustingly wealthy men and women, smack dab in the middle of a high society party thrown by some of her fiance's pals. She looked as if she belonged with them and was one of them, carried herself like she had all the confidence in the world and enough poise to last a lifetime, but inside she might as well have been the Titanic, sinking slowly into icy waters that would soon overtake her.

She hated it all. She hated her mother for dragging her into this mess. She hated her fiancé for his interest in her, for the skin-crawlingly uncomfortable way that he looked at her and spoke of her when he introduced her to others. She hated herself for not running away, for letting herself be intimidated and threatened and controlled to the point where she was here, dolled up like a trophy and expected to be exactly that and nothing more.

Most of all, she hated that she could see no way out of it that didn't come at a price too high to pay. She was trapped and no matter how much she drank, how much she tried to accept her fate, she felt like she couldn't breathe and she couldn't numb herself to any of it. She hid it all carefully underneath her seemingly calm and collected surface, but one person at the party could see through her as if she were made of glass.

She had felt his eyes upon her nearly all night long, from the very moment that she had arrived. She'd suspected that he would be there, and in a very real and painful way, he made it all so, so immeasurably worse.

Taking a fresh glass of champagne off of a tray as a server walked past her, she raised the glass to her lips and cast her eyes across the room to where he stood. He was smirking slightly and conversing with a man older than himself, dressed as finely as she had ever seen him in an all-black suit and as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. As if he could sense her as well as she could sense him, his piercing green eyes shifted her way and met her hazel ones, and it felt like the floor nearly fell out from beneath her feet.

Sometimes she wanted to hate him. Sometimes she wished that she had never met him. But most of the time, she craved him with a passion that both terrified her and excited her in ways that she never believed possible before. Just one look from him and she was ready to surrender, to fall to her knees before him and do anything he asked of her.

But she did not belong to him. He was just another member of the family that she was being forcibly married into, and he couldn't change that anymore than she could. Her fiancé, Ivan, was more powerful and more influential and had already claimed Aemilia for himself. Lukas Orlov, younger and considered by some to be the lesser son of his (dead) adopted father's two heirs, was not her way out of the mess that she was in.

Instead, the more that she saw him and the more that she felt for him, the more she feared that he could be her ruin.

Eventually, she tore her eyes away when his became too much to bear. She downed most of her glass and then stiffened when Ivan resurfaced at her side, sliding his arm around her waist and muttering something about meeting another one of his comrades. She nodded obediently and walked with him across the room, plastering a smile on her face as she endured being introduced to yet another mobster that eyed her like a particularly ripe piece of fruit dangling from a most desirable tree.

Not far away from her, Aemilia's mother was laughing it up with her own new friends and having the time of her life. Meanwhile, Aemilia was losing herself, one piece at a time.

As Ivan and his friend shifted their conversation to Russian, Aemilia's chest began to tighten and constrict, making her breaths start to come shorter and harder. She glanced over her shoulder and, as if magnets drew them together, locked eyes with Lukas once again and lost her breath completely. She quickly looked away, feeling her cheeks and the tips of her ears growing hot, and suddenly she knew that she had to get away from it all for a moment. She was sure that she'd suffocate where she stood if she spent another moment on Ivan's arm in that godforsaken room with those intolerable people.

She quickly made her excuses to Ivan, saying she needed some air and would return soon. He barely spared her a glance in reply, and she wasted no time in getting away from him and out of the room, down the hallway and around two corners and towards any place she could get a moment alone and in peace.

She was still trying to catch her breath when the shock of someone grabbing her from behind stole it away completely. She gasped and almost screamed before a strong, warm arm wrapped around her and pulled her into a room through a hastily thrown open door. Before she could process any of it, the door was slammed shut and she was pressed against a cool wall and trapped there by a tall and deliciously familiar body.

"There you are, Little One."

She closed her eyes and, despite her racing heart and the adrenaline coursing through every vein in her body, she suddenly felt like she could breathe again. The weight on her chest was gone, if only for the moment, and the world outside fell away and left her in a temporary paradise.

Long fingers sliding down her sides to her hips, he was close enough that she could feel his warm scotch-tinged breath wash over her parted lips. Afraid to open her eyes and look into his, she kept them shut and breathed, "Lukas, we can't."

He groaned and leaned his forehead against hers, one hand sliding gently into her hair behind her ear. "We can."

"We shouldn't," she nearly whimpered, turning her face away from his. All this did was expose her lovely neck to him, which he took advantage of by dropping his face down lower and brushing his lips incredibly faintly over the sensitive skin there. She shuddered and realized that she was clinging to him when her hands tightened into fistfuls of his suit jacket behind his shoulders.

"Do you have any idea," he nearly whispered, his voice like velvet and sin and impending disaster all rolled into one, "how hard it is to watch you with him? How much it makes me want to rip his head from his pathetic shoulders with my bare hands?"

She shivered and, to her slight horror, felt an enormous wave of arousal crash through her as a result of those words. What was happening to her? "Lukas..."

He raised his head back up and nudged her to do the same. "Look at me, Aemilia."

She opened her eyes in an instant and finally allowed herself to do as he said. The empty guest room was dark, lit only by moonlight filtering through large curtained windows across the room, and it made the atmosphere seem almost otherworldly as she gazed up into his unsettlingly intense, beautiful, dangerous eyes.

He traced her lips with his fingertips, touching her like she was something to be treasured, something real and valuable and not merely a decorated doll to be displayed as a prize. This was not the first time that they had been this close, and she was almost positive that it wouldn't be the last. But with each handful of forbidden moments that they dared to steal away from time to time, the more addicting those times became and the more that she craved him with every fiber of her body.

He consumed her like fire every time he touched her, and she knew that he knew it. How could he not?

"I cannot put you out of my mind," he confessed, now caressing her cheekbone as she leaned into the touch, eyes still locked on his. "I've tried and I can't. I can hardly sleep at night. What have you done to me, woman?"

Her mouth fell open a little more and she audibly sucked in a shaky breath of air, shaking her head. "What have you done to me?"

He smirked devilishly, and she barely withheld another whimper. "Oh, the things I could do to you, you vexing little creature."

She gasped as he pressed her harder against the wall for emphasis. His thigh was suddenly snaking between hers through her dress, pressing against her increasingly swollen and pulsing center, and his lips came within a centimeter of hers. "Lukas -"

"I've had many lovers," he told her, both hands cradling her head as his nose brushed hers and his lips stayed a breath away from hers. "Men, women - anything and anyone I've ever wanted. Yet almost none of them ever meant a damn thing to me. But then along comes you, darling, and suddenly I feel as if I am nothing more than a slave at your mercy."

This time she did whimper. She looked down at his lips and then back into his eyes before letting her hands relax and move into his soft, slightly long raven locks, her thumbs tracing his sharply defined jawline as she whispered, "You could never be a slave to anyone." She might not have known him for long as of yet, but she was sure of that much, at least.

"You're wrong," he replied softly, maintaining that unbearably hot eye contact. "Shall I tell you all the ways in which I would ruin you for all other men on this earth if I had you in my bed for merely one night?"

He rocked his thigh between hers, and she moaned softly as a result of the contact and from his words. He took her hands from his hair and pressed them to the wall on either side of her head, continuing to move his thigh in a maddeningly slow rhythm as lips kissed softly underneath her jaw towards her neck. She closed her eyes and gulped, giving in and holding on for the ride.

He knew her boundaries. She had communicated them before, multiple times, and she trusted him to continue to respect them. She would not sleep with him while she was engaged to another, even to a swine like Ivan. But that didn't mean that she was strong enough or willing to deny him - or herself - entirely.

"You are such a strong, curious little creature," he began, kissing her pulse point on her neck and then licking over it gently. "Such fire rages behind your eyes. I suspect my imagination could never capture what you are truly capable of, though that hardly keeps me from trying."

She wriggled against him, looking for more friction and finding it. She bit her lip to keep from moaning, so sensitive and responsive to his pressure between her legs, and he grinned at her expression and went on, "There is no pleasure that I would deny you. I would spend hours touching you, kissing every inch of your body, finding out what you like and what you crave, what makes you gasp and what makes you want to beg for more. I would let no part of you go ignored or unappreciated. I'd touch you, taste you - drink you until both of our thirsts were sated. Just the thought of having your sweetness on my tongue... dripping down my chin and making a mess as you ride my face... it keeps me up at night."

Blushing brightly and all but riding his thigh, Aemilia struggled against his hold on her wrists and he let them free. She immediately grabbed him and yanked him forward, and their lips crashed together in a spectacular, rough, passionate kiss that Lukas instantly moaned into. Everything he said, she could picture so vividly and beautifully, and God she needed it. She needed all of it. She needed him. She might die if she couldn't have him.

He kissed her like no man - or woman - ever had before. She'd had good kisses, bad kisses, and even some great kisses, but she'd never experienced anything like kissing Lukas. It wasn't just his considerable, incredible skill with his tongue, nor the hungry sounds he made. It was more than that. More than she could ever explain or even fathom. He made her feel alive, like she was free when they both knew full well that she wasn't, like she was powerful and fearless rather than terrified and powerless.

They kissed like mad until they both needed air, breaking apart and gazing at each other as they panted softly and quietly within the darkness of the room.

"I must confess," he murmured, focus shifting to her lips, "I don't only think of bringing you pleasure. Sometimes, I admit, I can't help but to be consumed with thoughts of you on your knees in front of me... these beautiful lips of yours wrapped tightly around my cock, smearing your lipstick as I watch it disappear within your mouth... over and over again until I come down your pretty little throat and you swallow all that I have to give you."

"Fuck," Aemilia gasped, her mouth suddenly watering hungrily and her knees begging to hit the floor and make his fantasy a reality. She'd never wanted to perform that particular act on a man so badly before in her life.

He grinned at her curse and reached down with both hands, starting to hastily yank up the skirt of her dress from the floor as he removed his thigh from between both of hers. "Like that idea, do you?"

Once he'd gotten the bottom of her dress up around her thighs, he then swiftly picked her up and her legs locked tightly around his waist, her heels digging pleasantly into his ass through his pants. He rather liked it. He rocked against her, his hardness against her undeniable wetness, and she moaned, "Lukas, you are killing me."

He moaned too, shaky and needy as his eyes fell closed and he kissed her once more. She sunk into the kiss and returned it with the ferocity and passion that he adored so much in her, until she broke away and pled breathily, "Put me down, let me give you what you want. I want it too. Let me..." She blushed and licked her lips, a hint of shyness in her voice contrasting the boldness in her eyes as she added, "Let me suck you off."

Her words made him nearly snarl with uncontrollable desire, but he shook his head and gently kissed her lips. "Not tonight, Little One. Not here. Not when we both have to go back to the party."

She opened her mouth to protest but fell silent when he unexpectedly spun them around and, carrying her as she clung to him with her legs still wrapped around him, took her to a table of some kind and set her down. He then kissed her with a dizzying passion before murmuring, "And as much as I would love to bury my face between your legs and feast upon you... I won't do that here, either. The first time I taste you, it will be in my bed, on a night where I can take my time and savor every last inch of you. And it will happen, Aemilia. One way or another... I will have you."

She wished that she could believe that. She wanted it so badly that it hurt. "Are you only teasing me, then?"

He grinned. "Teasing you? Oh, my sweet Little One... open your legs wider."

She did as he said, without a hint of hesitance or shame. He then kissed her again as he slid his hand from her leg to her inner thigh, teasingly brushing his fingertips against her soaked panties and making her jerk involuntarily into the touch. He decided that he really couldn't bear to tease her, letting out a groan and slipping his fingers down the front of her panties and finally finding her wet, slippery flesh and wasting no time in giving her the attention she so desperately needed.

She cried out almost immediately, rocking shakily against his hand and holding him close, so worked up and wound up that she thought she might just spring any minute. He worked her slowly but with increasing speed, kissing her neck and chest as her head fell back and she bit her lip to try to stay quiet. He smirked and noted, "You are gushing on my fingers, Aemilia. Do you gush like this when you touch yourself? Tell me."

She moaned and shook her head. "Not like this. Only for you."

"Only for me," he repeated, stealing another kiss from her. Then he slid two fingers a bit lower and pressed them inside of her, making her eyes open and hips falter, and he grinned and brought his free hand to her increasingly messed-up hair as he told her, "You are even tighter than I imagined. You feel like perfection, Aemilia. I'm not sure I could survive a night inside of you."

Crazed with pleasure, arousal, and bewildering emotions being stoked by Lukas and his words, Aemilia panted, "I want that. I want you. Want you inside me."

He groaned and stole another kiss, dropping his forehead against hers. "I will be inside you, Little One. I will be your first, I swear it. God," he all but roared before pushing her down on her back and moving his fingers quicker, harder, better, lips hovering above hers. "Say my name, Aemilia."

"Lukas," she complied without pause, whimpering his name like something between a prayer and a curse. "Please, Lukas."

"Yes," he groaned, kissing her hard and quick, "beg for it. I promise I'll beg in return someday."

She moaned and moved her hips in rhythm with his hand, fucking his fingers as much as they were fucking her. "Please, Lukas, please - fuck, I -"

"I love it when you curse," he groaned, noting how her movements were growing more and more erratic and how close she was getting. "Say it again. Fuck me, Lukas. Say it, darling."

One hand curled in a fist in his hair, pulling it just the right side of painfully while her other hand held on to his back for dear life, she obeyed with a moan and a broke, "Fuck me, Lukas, God - fuck, I'm -"

"Yes, Aemilia, that's it," he praised, his voice trembling and wrist aching as he propelled her to the edge. "Let go. Come for me. Only for me."

Only for him. Giving herself over to him in that moment, belonging to him if only for that too-short time that they had stolen away from the world, she let her mouth drop open and back arch as she followed his command and came harder than she ever had by mere fingers before in her life, including her own. The intensity of it rushed over her, leaving her momentarily forgetful of her surroundings and moaning so loud that others were sure to hear. He clamped his free hand over her mouth just in time to save them both, watching her come undone and finding that it was possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It terrified him how much he wanted her, craved her, needed her. But he could no longer even pretend to deny it, especially after this particular night.

Aemilia was in no rush to come back down to earth and return to her wretched reality. Her body was light and loose and her brain pleasantly fuzzy, her hair a mess and her lipstick smeared and thighs as wet as they were weak. His fingers were still there, stroking sweetly and comfortingly, like he couldn't bear to part with her yet.

He pulled his other hand away from her mouth, and she opened her eyes and smiled a bit hazily up at him. He smiled back and finally carefully removed his fingers, and she was surprised how instantly empty she felt as a result.

He leaned down and kissed her gently, far more tenderly than he had all night... or ever had. Her heart thumped painfully as she kissed him back, and when he drew away, she opened her eyes and asked quietly, "Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?"

"All of it," she replied.

He paused. "Do you want me to?"

She didn't know what to say. What could she say? They were both so incredibly screwed if they kept this up, and yet... "Yes," she nodded.

"Good," he murmured, leaning down for one more kiss. "Because I meant every word, Little One."

And that meant only one thing, she realized within an instant. She was still screwed. She was still trapped. She still didn't have a way out. She still couldn't breathe, especially now that reality was coming back and she would have to go back to the party within a few moments. But one very, very important thing had changed, if he was indeed telling the truth. And she thought that he was.

She wasn't alone anymore. Whatever she had with Lukas, it was real and it would either be her downfall or it would be her salvation - there was nothing in between. She could neither run nor hide from it, and she no longer wanted to.

What the future held, she couldn't know. He couldn't either. She just had to hold on, keep surviving, be smart, and play what few cards remained in her possession. Maybe she wasn't doomed just yet. Maybe there was still hope somewhere on the horizon. Maybe her life wasn't quite over yet.

And maybe, just maybe... Aemilia had fallen in love for the first time in her life, at the absolute worst time imaginable.