“No, but I forgot about dinner. I’m sorry. I was thinking about work.”
“Hmm. Should I take my beer and go?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d give me a minute to shower so I could take you out.”
She dragged her gaze down his body, then back up again. “All right. But only if you promise to put out later. Can you do that, Detective?”
“What kind of boy do you think I am?”
Tessa leaned so close that her lips brushed his ear when she spoke. “The kind who got on his knees for me last night. And this morning.”
“Ah. That kind.”
“Go on.” She gave him a tiny shove. “I’ll put the beer in the fridge. You shower.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
But the minute he was gone, Tessa regretted sending him away. Now that she was alone, it was too easy to replay Luke’s conversation with Simone over and over in her head. Something about it niggled at her brain, though Tessa couldn’t say why. It didn’t contradict anything Luke had told her. Not really.
But Jamie’s words hung over her, haunting like a brotherly ghost. Don’t be one of those girls.
Tessa heard Luke’s shower start up as she put the bottles in his fridge. She thought of the way he’d asked to help Simone…and her baby.
He couldn’t be the father, could he? Surely if Simone were carrying Luke’s child, she wouldn’t be so wel coming of Tessa. But even if he wasn’t the dad, did he care too much about his partner?
She paced the kitchen for a few seconds, pressing her fingers against her lips. “No,” she murmured. That couldn’t be it. The dynamic wasn’t strange enough, was it?
Tessa tried to shake her brother’s words from her head. She didn’t want them there, not tonight. Tonight was her reward. She’d earned it.
But just as she managed to put it from her mind, Tessa wandered back to Luke’s bedroom, and her eye was drawn immediately to the books on his desk. Her stomach dropped, and for a moment she felt the whole evening slip away from her.
But no. She wouldn’t let it. She might be stupid. She might be delusional, but she wasn’t weak. Luke was what she’d come here for, and goddamn it, Luke was what she’d get.
The books seemed to glow against the dark desktop, so Tessa took steps to rectify the problem. She took off her jeans and shirt and laid them over the books. Then she took off her underwear, grabbed a condom from the bedside table and headed for the shower. This moment was not going to get away from her, even if she had to force herself on Luke. Once his hands were on her, she’d forget everything else.
So Tessa left the questions and complications behind and stepped into the clouds of steam that hid Luke Asher’s body. The rest of the world fell away as soon as the glass door snapped shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HE JUMPED WHEN the door closed, twisting around with a speed that made her heart flutter in admiration.
“Oh,” he said, his eyes quickly transitioning from alarm to appreciation. He started to smile, started to make a witty remark, but Tessa pressed herself against him before he could speak.
The feel of his body shocked the breath from hers. He was hot and solid, but his skin slid over hers with such liquid heat that her pulse swelled to immediat
e arousal. The shower hit her back in a tingling spray as her breasts flattened into his chest, slipping against him with delicious pressure.
Whatever he’d been about to say, he let the water wash it away. Instead of speaking, he molded his hands to her back, shaping her ribs, her hips, her spine. He explored her in one unbroken touch that seemed like creation, as if she’d been formless before she stepped into him.
She touched him as well, echoing his movements, closing her eyes so she could concentrate on the feel of him. His skin was slick with water and soap, his muscles barely yielding beneath the push of her hands. Then he would tense as he shifted or moved, and those muscles would push back against her fingers like flexing steel. She opened her mouth against his shoulder, drinking the water that flowed from his skin to her tongue.
His cock stirred against her belly. She felt it swell against her, felt it rise up and press into her flesh. She pressed tighter, loving the way it slipped against her, relishing the pleasure he must feel at even the smallest shift of their bodies. Putting her teeth to his shoulder, she pushed her hips harder, sighing at the way his shaft slid along sensitive skin.
His fingers dug into her back with a force close to pain. She licked water from his shoulder, his collarbone, wishing she could swallow him inside her. Her own urgency frightened her. She’d never felt anything like this desperation.
When her mouth found a trickle of water, she followed it down to his chest, licking her way over his nipple and down to his ribs beneath. She bit the muscles of his stomach, making them twitch in shock before she went to her knees before him.
Blinking water from her eyes, she looked at him, at his thick, straight cock, at the rivulets of hot water that snaked down his stomach…and finally at his face as he watched her. His eyes glittered as his jaw bunched with tension. Water dripped from his wet hair. He put one hand to her head, and the other against the wall.