Forgiven

by Garrett Leigh

  “Maybe.” But it caught in my throat. Luke was as flawed as any man, but he was far from selfish. It had been easy to hate him for so long, but I’d come to realise in recent weeks that it was the pain he’d caused I couldn’t bear. Him? He was... Damn, I didn’t know what he was. Couldn’t articulate how he made me feel. All I knew was I was going to combust if he didn’t get the hell away from me.

  I put my hands on his chest to push him away. The warmth of his body hit my palms, and a bolt of heat channelled down my arms, sluicing through my veins with such ferocity that I gasped.

  Luke put two fingers under my chin, forcing me to look at him. “I want to kiss you.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to lift you up on that counter, push your dress up your legs, and fuck your brains out.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Do you?” Luke leaned impossibly closer. “What would you do if I did it?”

  I stretched up so our faces were a hairsbreadth apart. “Come like a—”

  His lips cut me off, claiming my mouth in a frantic kiss that poured petrol on our smouldering flames.

  I gasped as his tongue slid between my lips, and my body arched against him of its own volition. Don’t do this. But the warning voice in my head faded to black. I wanted this—him—even if it was the last time.

  Groaning, I clutched at his suit jacket, barely resisting the desperate need to push it off his shoulders, to tear at his shirt and unbuckle his belt. Luke was going to fuck me. He had to, or I’d die. But getting naked was out of the question.

  Irony had become my constant companion in recent weeks, and it hit me again now, drawing a breathless chuckle from my heaving chest. Was I really worried about taking our clothes off when we were already going at it in the town hall?

  Luke gripped my thighs and lifted me onto the counter like I was made of feathers. He drew back from me, his beautiful mouth already ruined. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No... God, no. Don’t stop.”

  He kissed me again, and a second laugh died in my throat as reality hit home. Don’t you dare kiss me. Oh what a fool I’d been to utter those words that very first night. To deny myself the magic of his mouth on mine, his lips, his tongue, the scrape of his teeth.

  I tilted my head to grant him better access. He responded with a grunt, and his hands found their way to my hair, tugging just enough to send shocks of pleasure-pain rippling through me. God, I’d missed this. How his rough touch sent me into overdrive, and my awareness of anything but him melted like butter. How he spun me so dizzy I was sure I’d fall, even with his strong hands holding me up.

  He made me crazy. Frantic. Desperate.

  I went for his belt buckle, ripping it free, and pushing his trousers down his hips. His underwear went the same way, and I closed my fingers around his length, squeezing, absorbing his gravelly moan, letting it merge with the coil of arousal throbbing between my own legs.

  He was still kissing me like I was the only woman he’d ever desired. With Herculean effort, I broke away and leaned back, steadying myself on the countertop, and widening my legs in a silent, smirking invitation for him to claim what he wanted.

  Taking his cue, Luke shoved my dress up my legs and found my underwear with expert precision. He eased long fingers past the silky scrap of material—the only physical barrier left between us—and teased my slit with a feather-light touch.

  I shivered. We were really doing this, hooking up in a bathroom like horny teenagers, even though we’d never done anything like this when we were young—our tent in Sandgrove Park had been as private as any bedroom.

  Luke reclaimed a hand from under my dress and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. A condom seemed to appear like magic, and I spread my legs wider, grinding with his fingers, searching for friction. God, I needed this. How had I survived a decade without it?

  Without him.

  Luke withdrew to roll the condom on. I moaned at the loss and bit my lip, squirming on the cool countertop until he was between my legs again. He angled his cock and slid into me with harsh thrust.

  A high-pitched sound escaped me. Luke pressed his hand over my mouth, breathing hard. “You gotta be quiet,” he whispered. “We can’t get caught.”

  Another shudder passed through me. I ran my tongue across his palm. He smirked and drove into me again, and the air shifted.

  I slumped backwards, barely keeping myself out of the sink as he fucked me, going from naught to sixty in a handful of perfectly aimed strokes. Hard and fast, his strong grip keeping me safe, while his mouth was busy at my neck, Luke turned me inside out. My mouth hung open in a silent scream, building with every drive of him inside me, as I got high on his natural clean cotton and pine scent. Laurent had doused himself in cologne every morning, and the cloud that followed him had often left me wanting to puke. Luke didn’t need that kind of help. He smelt like heaven.

  Delirious, I wound my legs around his waist, hooking him tighter, and gripped his shoulders. My nails dug into his unyielding muscle, and the pain seemed to spur him on. His ragged moans got louder, his thrusts wilder. He caught my chin in his hand and tilted my face to look at me. His eyes were molten sex, his lips curled in a snarl. He was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

  A rush of emotion I wasn’t ready for sluiced through me. “Luke, I—”

  He kissed me. Once. Twice. Three times. “Don’t,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just this, Mia. Just this.”

  Contemplating what he meant was too much. Coherent thought slipped away and I gave myself up to the mind-bending pleasure of him moving inside me. My toes curled, and my thighs shook.

  “Yeah.” Luke slid his fingers up the back of my neck, his palm cradling my head. “Like that, baby. Come for me.”

  Baby. It had annoyed me the first few times he’d said it way back when, but I’d grown to love it. To revel in the affection he rarely showed anyone else. And it did something to me now. Pushed me over the edge. I came hard, pleasure seeping from every pore, and spilling from my lips in breathless gasps. My vision whited out, but I fought oblivion, too captivated by Luke falling apart to miss a moment. The drive of his cock became erratic, then stilled as he seized up. He pressed his forehead to mine, and came with a low, throaty groan.

  I was entranced, captivated by every part of him, from his sex-mussed hair to his shaking arms and ruined expression. We were nothing alike, but in this rare, heated moment, we had everything in common.

  We were both wrecked, and so so so fucked.

  Luke buried his face in my neck and slumped against me, breathing hard. I wrapped my trembling arms around him and held him tight. “Come home with me?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Luke

  It took me six months to get used to waking up in the same big bed every morning. Then, on the rare occasions I didn’t make it back to my house, coming to somewhere else entirely scared the shit out of me. I’d jump awake, heart pounding, and leg it home before I lost my bloody mind.

  Waking up in Mia’s bed was different, perhaps because it was Gus’s house. Before she’d come home, I’d been a regular visitor.

  Or maybe it was the silky, sweet-scented pillow I’d apparently made for myself on her abdomen.

  Fuck. I started to push myself upright.

  Soft, unyielding hands pushed me down. “Shh, baby.”

  I looked up at her.

  She smiled and wove her fingers into my hair. “It’s early.”

  I lay back down, waiting for weirdness to hit me, but it didn’t, and the combination of her gentle hands and a vague hangover sent me back to sleep.

  * * *

  Sometime later I woke again, spooned up to her from behind, naked, morning wood pressed against her thigh, and my face buried in her hair.

  We’d slept like lovers.

  Perturbed, I rolled onto my back
and stared at the ceiling I’d helped Gus replace a few weeks before Mia had returned. He’d never told me the rush to complete the final room in his house was for her, but when we’d got stuck into the decorating, perhaps I should’ve guessed. Green and pink—damn, I was such a fool.

  I sighed and closed my eyes again, willing myself back to sleep so I didn’t have to admit defeat and sneak out of her bed, but rest wouldn’t come and anxiety crept up on me.

  “Stop.”

  “Hmm?” I opened my eyes.

  Mia was lying on her side, propped up on one hand, watching me. “Stop,” she repeated. “I can hear your mind going a thousand miles an hour even in my sleep.”

  “Sorry. Did I disturb you?”

  “No more than usual.”

  Her impish grin made her seem seventeen all over again, and lightened the cloud I’d been unable to fight on my own.

  I reached for her, couldn’t help it, and pulled her down on top of me, wrapping my arms around her so tight, but never tight enough.

  She let me, and pressed her face into my neck briefly before running her nose along my jaw. The gesture was intimate, familiar, and one I had never forgotten. I opened my mouth to speak, but she tapped a finger to my lips. “Shh. Stop thinking.”

  It was the third time she’d told me to stop and it was barely past dawn, so I did as I was told and lay quietly while she wriggled out of my hold and set to work driving me slowly mad—as if I hadn’t been halfway there already. Light touches, kisses, bites. The bed sheets fell away, and she took me in her mouth until I couldn’t take a moment more without being inside her.

  I hooked my hands under her shoulders and pulled her up the bed.

  She gazed wickedly at me from behind her thick lashes. “What do you want?”

  “Ride me,” I ground out through laboured breaths. “The way you used to.”

  Her smirk deepened to something more. She leaned down and kissed me, and as she lowered herself onto my dick, new heat sparked between us. This wasn’t just sex anymore, if it ever had been.

  Mia gripped the bed frame and owned me, fucking me, as she stared down, her gaze a riot of arousal and affection. It had a been a lifetime since she’d last looked at me that way. It was too much and not enough, and my head was in bits.

  Except it wasn’t. My thoughts were fragments of half-finished epiphanies and aborted panic, but my mind was clear. This was her. This was me. And as long as I was at her mercy, nothing else mattered.

  Mia caught my chin, forcing me to keep my eyes on her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to—she was as caught up in this as I was. Her moans grew louder, and a beautiful flush stole over her alabaster skin. She ground down on me harder, and dug her nails into my jaw, her chest heaving. “Oh God, Luke. Why is it only you?”

  Her incoherence went straight to my dick...and my heart, ’cause fuck if I didn’t know exactly how she felt. There’d been other women, but never like this. No one had ever tapped into every facet of me.

  No one had ever tried.

  Release rushed up on me. I grasped Mia’s thigh and her shoulder and thrust up into her, chasing something I hadn’t been ready for until this moment.

  It hit me, and my world narrowed to the white-hot shocks of pleasure roaring through my veins. I jerked, and my body seized, and beyond my own ecstasy, I was drowning in her high-pitched gasps and shuddery moans...her sweat melding with mine as she dropped to my chest, and her trembling thighs as she clutched me between her legs.

  Mia slumped on me, panting. I held her tight and snagged the duvet with my foot, dragging it up the bed enough to keep her warm when the heat finally faded. My heart pounded and spots danced in front of my eyes. I was wrecked but somehow felt free. “Mia.”

  She raised her head and gazed at me, opening her beautiful mouth to speak, just as Gus burst through her bedroom door.

  “Whoa. What the actual fuck?”

  * * *

  Gus was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, glowering at the kettle like it had killed his dog.

  I faced the music and slipped into the space beside him. “Sorry, man.”

  “What for? Boning my sister, or lying about it?”

  “I never lied.”

  He sighed. “No, I guess you didn’t. But you could’ve told me. You think I want to see your dick before breakfast?”

  “You didn’t see my dick.” I reached around him and flicked the kettle on. “But for what it’s worth, I am sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  He finally looked at me, his face unreadable. “What wasn’t? Being with her, or me finding out?”

  “Neither. I meant fucking around in your house. I was drunk last night. I wouldn’t have come back here otherwise.”

  “But you still would’ve hooked up with her?”

  “I didn’t hook up with her, you fucking goon. You think I could ever see her that way?”

  Gus’s expression softened. “I guess not... Shit, I’m not used to defending her honour. This is weird.”

  And then some. Gus had backed out of Mia’s bedroom so fast I wasn’t entirely convinced he’d seen me, but creeping out the back door felt all wrong. Gus was my friend...my best friend, when I let him be. It wasn’t his fault I was in love with his sister. “I should probably go.”

  “Where’s Mia?”

  “Shower.”

  “She knows you’re leaving?”

  “Of course. You think I’d run out—” The words died on my lips and I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know what is going down between us, but I won’t hurt her again, I promise. Whatever this is, I’m in it for as long as she lets me, okay?”

  Gus opened the cupboard next to my head. Stared at the contents and shut it again. “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course. I’m a flaky arsehole, but I don’t lie. You know that.”

  “You’re not flaky. Just fucked up.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gus shrugged. “It’s true, and I don’t blame you for that, but I need you to help me take care of her, even when she doesn’t want us to. Don’t let her push you away.”

  “I can’t force her to love me.”

  “I don’t think that’s ever been the issue, but I’m not even talking about that, I’m talking about everything else. We’ve got to look out for her, okay? Just promise me you’ve got my back on this.”

  A million questions exploded in my brain, but Mia breezed into the kitchen before I could speak, and instinct warned me to keep quiet as she kissed her brother’s cheek and smirked at me over his shoulder, as though she remembered how hot I’d always been for her with long, wet hair.

  “Sorry about that, frère. I didn’t think you were home.”

  Gus scowled. “Liar.”

  “Am not.”

  He snorted and I took my cue to leave, shooting Mia a glance to let her know I was far from done with her before heading for the door.

  I was halfway there when Gus called me back.

  “Wait,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something else before you go.”

  “Something else?” Mia said. “What else have you two been gossiping about?”

  Gus ignored her and shifted uncomfortably. “It’s kinda personal, actually, and I wasn’t going to bring it up, but someone mentioned it in the pub last night, so I want you to hear it from me.”

  I frowned. “Hear what?”

  “Um...maybe you should sit down.”

  “Gus.” My voice lowered an octave. “Don’t fuck me about.”

  Mia seemed mystified. She shot her brother a searching gaze and took a seat at the table.

  I didn’t follow her. I couldn’t imagine what Gus had to tell me that warranted his clear discomfort, but I was willing to bet it was something fucking awful. It had to be, because my life was just like that these days.


  “It’s about Billy,” Gus said. “I—um—had kind of a thing with him a few years ago...before both of you came back.”

  “A thing? What, like a fight?” Like I would get up in his face about that. Billy had fought pretty much every dude in Rushmere at some point. I’d grown out of defending him long before I’d joined the Navy.

  “Not a fight. The opposite.”

  I glanced at Mia for clarification, but she was suddenly fascinated by her nails. “The opposite. You mean—” The penny dropped. I stared at Gus, my head shaking slightly of its own accord. “I don’t understand. He’s not gay.”

  Gus shrugged. “He doesn’t have to be. Bisexuals exist, remember? And everything in between. He doesn’t have to be anything at all. But that’s beside the point. I’m only telling you because I’m not the only bloke he’s ever been with, so someone else might tell you before he does.”

  “Someone else?”

  “Yeah.” Gus ran both hands through his hair, clearly exasperated by my apparent inability to grasp what he was saying. “Look, it’s not a big deal, okay? It was years ago, so don’t get into a Daley existential crisis about it. I just wanted you to hear it from me before some clown down the boozer told you.”

  “How does anyone in the boozer know you hooked up with my brother?”

  “I didn’t hook up with him. It was a drunken snog in an alleyway that half the world probably saw. I half wondered if you already knew. If he’d told you himself.”

  Of course he hadn’t. And why the fuck would he? I’d given up my right to know what went down in Billy’s life when I’d walked out of it ten years ago.

  “Luke?”

  I focussed. Gus and Mia were both staring at me, though I couldn’t work out who’d said my name. “What?”

  Gus frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Mia said before I could speak. “You just blindsided him. Let him go.”

  I shot her a grateful half-smile and backed my way to the door. I wanted to tell her—tell them both—that I loved them.