Chapter Fourteen
Ana
Luke is doing what he always does to me, what he did from the moment we met: taking me by storm, backing me into a corner—this time quite literally—and forcing me to see him. This matters because he knows what most don’t know. I had a wall the size of Texas up when he met me. No one got past it, except Luke.
He did.
It’s that storm called Luke.
And I like it as much as I hate it. Damn him and the way he has me pressed against this wall, his cock hard as a rock between us, pressed against my hip. He is the definition of a dominant, alpha male—arrogant, hardheaded, confident, talented both with and without his clothes on—but there has always been a depth of character beyond that persona. A man who cares about everyone and everything more than he lets most discover.
But he did me.
As for me controlling him, I do so when he allows me to do so. He knows when that’s what I need or even when that’s what I demand and I mean business. He understands the right and wrong times to play those power games, the right time always being when we’re naked. And I like it. I’ve always liked it. All the men in my world, walking around with their dicks in their hands, telling me how big and powerful they are, weren’t either of those things. And if they were, I didn’t want to know.
But Luke was different. He dragged me to him that first night, kissed me, and left me weak in the knees and panting for more. Falling in love with him was inevitable. Falling out of love with him was impossible. Resisting him now, while we’re both naked and he’s touching me, is a mighty feat, that far greater women would fail to achieve. But those women didn’t just have him stab them in the heart like he did me, either.
“Say what you came to say,” I order, the pain of those words prickling sharply.
“I love you,” he dares reply, his hands scooping my backside, my breasts squeezed between us, my nipples puckered and aching. As if he, too, is aware of that fact, his gaze lowers, inspecting my nipples, before his eyes meet mine and he adds, “God, you’re beautiful.”
“You mean you love my breasts,” I accuse because no man who loves a woman leaves her like he did me. No man who loves a woman replies like he did to me downstairs. We aren’t married, Ana. No. No, we are not married. And he’s an asshole with a perfect body and a perfect tongue that he intends to use on me.
But that won’t change anything.
We are broken, two people who joined together, only to shatter like glass that dropped to the ground, and splintered into a million pieces. The kind of complete breakage and destruction that ensures you can never be pieced back together.
“Hell yes, I love your breasts,” he replies unapologetically. “I love every part of you, baby. That I won’t apologize for.” His voice lowers, roughens up. “I always have. Always will.”
Already he wears me down, stirs a longing in me for what we once were, what we once had together. And why am I aware of his cock at my hip when I’m feeling sentimental and angry at the same time?
“Say what you came to say,” I repeat.
“I love you,” he repeats. “All the rest is just white noise.”
“Stop saying that.”
“The only way I’m going to do that is to have something else to do with my mouth.”
“You couldn’t even talk about the sweeter side of our past. It was just a memory of a restaurant, Luke. You couldn’t even comment.”
He cups my face and stares down at me. “It wasn’t just a restaurant, Ana. The first time we went there, we walked the Cherry Creek sidewalks and you smiled up at me with that glorious fucking smile of yours. And I fell in love. That night, Ana. That’s when I knew.”
Emotions swirl inside me. “And yet you didn’t—”
“Want to talk about it?” he challenges. “No. No, I do not want to talk about the night I fell in love with you. Not now, when it reminds me that I can never have that kind of pure, untouched, untainted perfection with you again. But I forgot something important. We forgot something important. Sometimes when things break, they grow back stronger, Ana.”
Tears burn my eyes, and already he’s on the verge of tearing down my walls. “No,” I say. “We can never go back. You’re not wrong.”
“Maybe we don’t want to, Ana,” he says, dragging his hand over my scalp and tilting my head back, my gaze to his. My mouth exposed for his taking. “Like I said. Maybe we’re better because we crashed and burned and survived.”
“We didn’t survive, Luke.”
“We’re here right now, and baby, you’re the only reason the sun rises for me. It’s been dark as hell without you. Don’t expect me to go away this time without a fight. God, woman,” he murmurs, cradling my body to his, “you are my everything. I don’t know how to make you see that, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying if you let me.”
I want to tell him he already showed me he’ll leave, he’ll leave again, but when we’re close like this, his naked body pressed to my naked body, I want to live in this moment.
The rush of heady emotion between us steals my breath, and before I can recover, his mouth closes down on mine and you might as well say he had me at hello. I moan with the lick of his tongue, with the way he lets me taste his hunger, with the way he kisses me as if I’m his next breath.
I’m lost in him, lost in his mouth as it moves from my lips to my neck, his hand on my breast, fingers teasing my nipple. I moan again, a soft whimper of a sound, that leaves no doubt how much I love his hands on my body.
He presses his cheek to my cheek, his lips at my ear, as he says, “I love those sounds. You have no idea how much I fucking love those sounds.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, reveling in the low rumble of his voice, in the tight pinch of his fingers on my nipple. Of his teeth nipping my earlobe. I think I might come just from the feel of him next to me, the touch of his hands. His fingers catch my jaw almost roughly and he drags my gaze to his, his mouth hovering, his breath a warm tease. His lips brush mine, and then his hands are pressing my breasts together before he’s suckling my nipple. More of those sounds slide from my lips and I don’t even try to hold back.
I have not felt this good since the last time he made me feel this good.
His tongue laves my nipple, and my sex clenches with the anticipation that his tongue will soon slide lower, and lower, to that intimate place that craves his mouth.
But he’s not done with my nipples, mercilessly moving from one to the other, licking, nipping, teasing, and I can take no more.
“Luke,” I whisper when I can take it no more. “Please.”
It’s his favorite word. If I say please, he gives me what I want. I remember all too well.
He kisses me, hard and fast, a curve to his lips as he says, “Well, you did say please.”
He lowers to one knee, pressing his lips to my belly, kissing me delicately, his eyes on my face. I swallow hard with the tenderness of the moment, with the look in his eyes, the way he lingers there, savoring me.
My teeth scrape my lip and he laves my belly button, his mouth traveling to my hipbone. He nips the sensitive flesh there, soothing it with his tongue.
When I think I can take no more, his mouth travels lower and lower, fingers sliding into the wet, slick heat of my sex, right where I want his mouth. His fingers slide inside me, his thumb rubbing over my clit. My fingers find the wet strands of his hair and I hold on, preparing myself for what comes next.
He licks my clit, and when I gasp, his mouth closes down on my nub, and already he’s suckling me, driving me wild. His fingers stroke, pump, my hips rocking with the movement. And his tongue, his incredibly talented tongue, is sandpaper one moment and silk the next, stroking me to the edge, then brilliantly soothing the ache. He licks me, strokes me, teases me, taking me to the edge, and then pulling me back, but my body has found its limit. He suckles me just right, and there’s no warning. I’m just there, in that sweet spot, quaking with the most intense orgasm of my life. He takes me all the way there, too—straight to the heart of the moment—before he slows his tongue and fingers, and eases me to a place where I’m done. So done my knees start to buckle.
Luke catches my waist, his powerful arm wrapping around me, holding onto me, preventing my fall. The way I thought he’d hold onto me for the rest of our lives. It’s a dirty thought, the wrong kind of dirty, the kind that muddies up clear waters with muck and misery. I shove it aside and do so easily when Luke pushes to his feet, cupping my face and kissing me, the salty-sweet taste of me on his tongue.
It’s his way of telling me he owns me, and he does. He always has, but it’s a good kind of owning me, the kind he reserves for those times when we’re alone and naked. The kind that is all about making me moan, making me cry out his name, making me want him more every second of every day. I stole his control earlier. He’ll take it back now. He’ll turn me around and fuck me from behind, take me in every way possible, and I’ll like it. Because I’m confident enough in me as a woman and him as a man, to know there’s a line, and we both draw it. And because the only place I can be anything but in control is with Luke.
The only time I can forget, really forget, things like Darius dying right in front of me, is when Luke presses me to get out of my head and in the moment. So now he’ll fuck me and fuck me properly. And I’ll forget. Until it’s over and I can’t forget anymore.