I cup her head and kiss her, molding her close, holding onto her a little too hard, but I don’t care. She needs to be held right now.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Luke
I slant my mouth over Ana’s, deepening the kiss, the sweet honey taste of her on my tongue along with a hell of a lot of resistance. She’s stiff, fighting me, because she really wants to fight a battle she cannot win, not now, not in the mountains in the middle of a snowstorm. Maybe not ever, not if the secrets revealed destroy all she knew of the only father she really ever knew. My hands travel up and down her back and she moans.
“Luke,” she pants out. “We can’t do this right now.”
But she doesn’t push me away. Her fingers twisting around the cotton of my T-shirt, her body softening against me.
“We can’t do anything else but this right now,” I assure her, my fingers curling around her neck to lift her gaze to mine. “Let it go for now.”
“I want to, but—”
My lips brush her lips. “Let it go, baby. And you owe me. You said if I started a fire, you’d let me get you naked. Remember?” I catch the hem of her shirt.
“What if Kurt was involved, Luke?”
I drag her shirt over her head and toss it aside. “There’s nothing you can do to change anything he did or did not do.” I run my hands around her back and unhook her bra, and when I would drag it away, she catches it to her.
“What if someone was watching us earlier?”
“If I die naked and inside you, Ana, I’ll die a happy man.”
She laughs, a distinct shift in her mood, a hint of the intensity sliding away. “You’re crazy.”
“For you, baby,” I assure her, easing her hands down and dragging her bra away, my mouth trailing her jawline, her neck, her nipple.
Her fingers dive into my hair. “You’re not listening to me.”
I am listening, I think. Which is exactly why I’m forcing her to be here, to be present in the moment and thinking about me, not Darius, not Kurt, not Mike or any of those fools. But I don’t say that. Instead, I kiss her again, smiling against her lips. “Your naked breast is in my hand, baby. I’m only capable of so many words.” I thumb her nipple.
“Hmmm,” she murmurs.
It’s the sound of submission, of her letting go of everything but me, and us, this moment.
If I wasn’t already hot and hard, that sound would get me there.
It’s also me submitting to the absolute control she has over me, even in those moments when she thinks she does not.
I turn her with me and sit on the couch, my hands gripping her hips. My lips press to her soft skin, tongue laving her belly button. Her hands are back in my hair, finger curling around random stands, the tug of her grip all about encouragement and her need for my mouth to move lower.
My gaze lifts while hers lowers, the heat between us seared by emotion, and I can feel the rise of possessiveness in me. No one will hurt her. No one will ever hurt her again. Not with me in the picture. I will kill for her. I will cause pain for her. And I will tell the world, and even the devil himself, to back the fuck off.
I reach for her zipper. She catches my hand. “Together.”
There were times in the past, many in fact, when Ana and I played games, where I demand control, and she wants to relax into the comfort of not having to be in control. But Ana always knew in those times that she was ultimately in control, that she chose to use those games to allow herself a break from everything around her. But a break isn’t what she needs right now. Control is what she needs, which is exactly why she wanted to run out of the cabin and charge through the snow to return to the city. Right now, if I push her, she’ll suffocate.
Right now is about us on the most intimate of levels.
I push to my feet and we undress together. There is a familiar comfort in the two of us, a bond that has never faded. I can feel the threads of our two separate lives melding together, unbreakable, when we once were not. That strength will be how we survive, not just what is ahead of us, but all the bullshit that all but destroyed us. I catch Ana to me and sit down, dragging her onto my lap. Her hands settle on my arms, her naked breasts between us, my erection pressed to her belly.
My fingers slide under her hair to her neck and I drag her mouth to mine. “Better together, right, baby?”