Chapter Six
Ana
When I was a little girl, before my mother died, she used to bake chocolate chip cookies. I was allowed one per night after dinner, but I was addicted, and naughty me, would sneak out of my room and steal a cookie. I’d hunker down by the kitchen island, out of the sight of the door, and nibble away.
My behavior was oh so bad, but the cookie was oh so good.
That’s how I feel about Luke.
Addicted.
Naughty.
Oh so right, and somehow oh so wrong.
I could demand we make the wrong right by talking through the past, by talking about why he can’t even share a memory of a restaurant with me. The problem is we are more complicated than those minor topics.
Parker is dead.
His guilt is alive.
I helped create his self-blame with how I handled Kasey’s death.
I’m back to we should talk, but his kiss—God, his kiss—undoes me, destroys my objections. How can it not? His hands are under his coat I’m still wearing and he’s all over me, my senses on fire with his touch. The truth is that I didn’t think I’d ever feel him touch me again. I didn’t want anyone else. I never got over him. I never even tried.
And the truth is, the physical side of our renewed connection is far easier to navigate than the emotional side. In other words, I want just what he wants right now. To drown out everything else, to forget about the blood that was all over me, the death that clings to the night and our lives.
I lean into him, press my body against his hard, hot body, the feel of him next to me, weakening my knees, and awakening nerve endings. I’m tingling all over, wet and wanting, my breasts heavy, my nipples puckered little balls. His lips part mine, lingering a breath from another kiss, the taste of him alive on my tongue, a heady mix of dominance and desire that speaks to me and overwhelms me in every possible way.
He wants to fuck me now. I know because I know him, because I feel the same, because in those lusty moments the things that divide us disappear, if only for a short while. When we are naked and he’s pressing me for more this or more that, pressing me even beyond my comfort zone, he’s asking for trust.
He doesn’t understand that trust was never the issue.
Heartache and loss were, and when those two monsters bare their teeth, they always bite, and do so fiercely and with an intensity felt to the soul. They aim to latch onto everything you hold dear and gnaw at it until there is nothing left but a skeleton of what once existed.
But no monster could destroy what I feel for Luke, and while it hurts that he thinks otherwise, I also know I deserve that doubt. So, if he needs to push me, to test me, to try to understand who I am with him and who he is with me, I’m all in.
He drags the jacket, his jacket, down my arms, his teeth scraping my bottom lip, that raw primal side of Luke I know all too well is present right now. This is the side of Luke that knew nothing but death when he met me. He lost his parents. He lost everyone close to him when he was serving his country. And those losses created the side of him that shut down emotionally, to the point that his duty included doing what others could not. He took risks when he flew, killed when he had to kill, and dared anyone to tell him he couldn’t do whatever the hell he needed to do to get his job done.
He saw blood and death.
He created blood and death.
And then he met me.
Suddenly he was awake emotionally again and that wasn’t easy for Luke. Because you can’t choose to wake up and feel only some things and not others. And he was wide awake when he shot Kasey. He has dealt with that alone.
Guilt stabs at me, a sword that he knows all too well, and I can’t bear the idea of hiding from my role in that truth. I tear my mouth from his, my fingers digging into his arms. “Luke—”
“You of all people should be calling me Lucifer, Ana,” he says, his hands settling on my arms, his touch warm on my skin. I missed this man’s hands on my body far too much to believe I made it without him.
“Only when you’re naked and teasing me.”
He doesn’t need further encouragement, not when he’s like this. By the time I’ve tossed it away, he’s dragging the front of my top down, taking my bra with it. His eyes rake over my breasts, his fingers catching my nipples. My sex clenches, dampness pooling slick and hot between my thighs.
He scoops my backside and gives it a squeeze. “Damn, your ass is perfect.” His fingers slide low and reach intimately, teasing my sex. “And you’re so fucking wet.”
I don’t know why, but I suddenly want him to come back from this dark place. I want him to talk to me. “We’re avoiding—”
“Nothing,” he assures me. “I’m avoiding nothing.”
I’d reject his words as surely as I would his claim that he’s never going to leave again, but there is a raw, tormented quality to his voice that reminds me that he’s in that dark place in his head. The place that doesn’t listen to reason because it doesn’t come from a place of reason. It’s about emotions, about his past and now our past, about everything bad that has ever stolen what he thinks is the good in his life.
That’s when I realize I’m the one who stole all that was good in his life, at least in his mind. And that’s when I realize just how much Luke hates me.