And besides, I pushed him away at first. That’s why he left. That’s why he cut me off.
I’m angry with him. I want to punish him. I want to comfort him. I just plain want him, and I don’t know where to put those emotions any more than he does.
Luke’s gaze meets mine and I can feel the push of his probing stare, his desire to crawl inside my mind and read my thoughts. And yes, I can feel his anger, familiar and ripe, the way it was when I met him. He hid it beneath his burn for sex, his burn to push me, his need for me to trust him more than he trusted himself.
Because if I could trust him, maybe he could again, too. If we were somewhere else, alone, and without the pressure of a hitlist, with his Walker crew joining us, I know I’d be every which way with this man, as he pushed me, tested me, even tied me to a bed. He’d be tormenting me until he knew I trusted him again.
But we’re here, and we can’t escape those things. Time presses on us while the burn between us is scorching the very air we breathe.
Suddenly, the barriers between us are gone, wiped away, the war between us set aside, even if only in the darkness of our pain. His mouth crashes down on mine, and I taste the wildness in him, the hunger. I taste a man who knows only one thing. What he wants. And right now, that’s me.
It’s a contagious kind of feeling that has me tugging at his clothes with no reward. He’s in control when he’s like this, a little detail I learned I like far more than I expected when I first saw this side of him. Until that night, only a month into our relationship, he’d made love to me. But he was a man with darker needs, and once he properly fucked me, I wanted more. Like I want more now.
Luke’s fingers hook in the elastic of my baggy sweats, his palms pressing beneath, as he skims them down my legs, kneeling in front of me and Lord help me, he licks my clit. Tormenting me because he is not going to slow down enough to finish what he started. I’m right, of course. He cups my hips on either side and kisses my belly, but then he’s standing, his eyes raking over my naked breasts as he unzips himself and frees the jut of his rock-hard erection.
My nipples are puckered, my mouth is dry while my sex is slick, my thighs wet with my arousal. He steps to me, tangles rough fingers in my hair, and drags my mouth to his, kissing me even as he cups my ass and lifts me, sitting me on the edge of the counter. He presses my legs open, his hand sliding between my legs, his fingers testing me, sliding inside me. He groans, and that’s it. That’s all the wait he has in him. His hand presses to my thigh, and he impatiently brings me closer, a firm grip on his cock as he slides it along my sex. He presses into the wet heat of my aching body and then enters me, impossibly slow at first, until he’s there, all the way buried to my core.
And when he would normally go wild right then and there, he cups my face and drags my gaze to his. “You have no idea how much I missed being inside you.”
My teeth scrape my bottom lip at the intimate, erotic confession.
And for just a moment, there is only us and it’s as if we are a puzzle that is no longer missing pieces. We are those pieces. Luke lowers his mouth, his breath warm, lingering there a moment before he kisses me. It starts as a slow, luscious slide of his tongue and becomes a ravenous demand.
Control belongs to our bodies now.
My arms wrap around his neck and he drives into me, but the angle is off and he growls in frustration. Undeterred, he cups my backside and lifts me, holding my weight.
He thrusts and pulls me into him, several slow sultry sways of our bodies, a flame to fire yet to consume us. Luke’s hand slides between my shoulder blades, his cheek to my cheek as he whispers, “Lay back.”
It’s not a command no matter who it’s been spoken to. It’s a question, one I suspect he will ask me in every erotic way possible. Will I trust him to hold me and not let me fall, a question that is bigger than the physical moment. I don’t know if I trust him not to leave, but this man raced across a state line to save my life. I trust him. I trust him more than anyone else in my life now or in the past.