Falling: A Sexy Alpha Romance Collection

I drink my coffee and try my best not to show how much I love what he just said. Thai is my favourite. I fail epically, though, and a moment later I have coffee all down my front.

“Shit! It’s hot,” I mutter and shove the cup at him on my way into the bathroom. My babydoll is soaked, and the hot liquid is burning my skin. I rip it off and proceed to splash cold water on my chest and stomach.

“Fuck, Callie, you’re burnt.”

I glance up and find Luke standing behind me, staring at my body in the mirror in front of us. “It’s not too bad.” The fact I’m standing in front of him, practically naked hasn’t escaped me, but my focus is completely on my skin.

As I madly splash water on myself, he reaches for a washcloth. After he soaks it in cold water, he spins me to face him and presses it to my skin. One of his hands is on my waist while the other holds the washcloth to my chest.

I meet his gaze.

It’s weird how you can be with someone and know every intricacy of their body and be completely at home with them naked, to then experience this awkwardness I’m feeling between us now.

His heated gaze drops to my chest, and he moves the cloth to soak it in cold water aga

in before placing it against my skin again. His eyes travel the length of my body. When he finally looks up at me, I can see how affected he is.

I place my hand over the cloth. “Thank you. I can take over from here.”

He nods, but he doesn’t say a word. Instead, he turns and exits the bathroom, closing the door after him. After I watch him leave, I drop the cloth in the sink and place my hands down. Curling my fingers over the edge of the counter, I drop my head and exhale a long breath.

Damn, this is hard.

I wish I knew exactly where he stood.

Does he want me back in his life or does he just want a hook up?

I realise I’m not against a hook up, but what I really want is Luke.

I want him back.

The Thai restaurant he takes me to for lunch is god-awful. It’s the worst Thai I’ve ever had the bad fortune of tasting. But it leads us to the bar again and after a few drinks, the tension I’ve felt around him has disappeared.

We’ve just spent the last twenty minutes reminiscing over some of the good times we’ve shared when he raises the first meal I tried to cook him.

“Remember that roast you cooked me?”

“Oh, you mean the one I burnt? That you had to resurrect.”

He laughs. “Yeah, baby, that one. You were so damn cute that night.” He leans forward, and his voice drops. “That was the night I realised I really wanted you to choose me.”

I frown. “Choose you?”

He nods. “Yeah, I wanted to be the man you chose to spend your life with.”

I still. “You gave me the Ron Pope album that night, Luke. And you rattled off all the things you knew about me. To say I was sold is an understatement. You owned my heart from that night.”

“And you bought me Fat Yak and roast you couldn’t afford. And told me about your swoon cave, that for the record I still don’t understand. You showed me you were exactly the woman for me—more real than I’d ever known.”

My head spins.

He remembers all that?

Even about the damn swoon cave?

I gulp some vodka down. “For the record, that swoon cave was some bullshit that just fell out of my mouth in my nervous state.”

“I know.”