by Emilia Finn
Strangely, this piques my interest far more than his explanation on single moms, and I really didn’t think that would happen. “Explain it to me. Altruism, from Luke Hart’s point of view.”
Grinning, he takes another drink and prepares for his speech. “I’m saying, a man can give a tenner to a homeless guy sitting outside the local gas station.”
“Altruism in its most basic form.”
“No!” he argues instantly. “You cannot tell me the first guy didn’t get something from that transaction. It might not be tangible, and maybe no one else can see it, but the first guy – even without the selfie and social media posts many make in those situations – he still got a dopamine hit. He did something nice, he handed over a little cash, and perhaps the homeless guy smiled and thanked him. Altruism gone, he got the dopamine hit. And he’ll probably do it again the next day to replicate that feel-good hormone.”
“But if this guy isn’t posting for social proof, and he’s not telling everyone he meets about it, if he’s not looking for a pat on the back, nor is he making the homeless beg or perform for it, then where’s the harm?”
“I never said there was harm. I said he got a dopamine hit. Once he gets the hit, he’s received payment for his good deed, thus rendering the deed anti-altruistic.”
“That was a big word.”
Laughing, we each turn when our server arrives to take our orders, and though I don’t know the server personally, it seems Luke does.
“How’s it going, Laura?” Luke turns to her and gives her all of his attention the way he does for most everyone. “How’s Carter?”
“He’s so good,” Laura smiles. She’s beautiful, curvy, and has a baby face that means I don’t know if she’s twenty-one or twelve. “He’s happy now that the chicken pox have gone away. Thanks for asking.”
Once we order our meals, and Laura meanders away to pass the message on to the chef, Luke turns back to me and grins.
“Who was that?” I ask innocently.
He bounces his brows suggestively, but I don’t react. He wants me to, but I’m too stubborn for that.
“That was Laura Grey,” he concedes after a moment. “She’s our age, she was in my classes all the way through school since kindergarten. She’s also a single mom, and has been since she was seventeen and finishing high school.” He flashes a wide smile and picks up his glass of wine. “I bet Carter’s kiddie hands wanted to scratch the shit out of those pox.”
Pasta, chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, wine. The food is delicious, the wine is dizzying, especially when Luke stops after his single glass – designated driver – and I manage to have a glass or two more. Then we’re up and racing toward the restaurant doors.
“Your place or mine?” Luke jams the keys into the ignition and turns the engine over with a painful scrape that says he’s pushing the old truck harder than it can handle. But neither of us care, because I forgo my seatbelt and instead slide right across the bench seat until one of my legs straddles his.
My stomach is hot and swirling as alcohol and lust pulse through my veins. My heart hammers in my chest, my hands turn clammy from nerves, but Luke still pushes the truck into reverse, then into first as we pull out of the parking lot.
“Ally?” He places his hand in my lap, my open legs, and inches higher so my skin turns to fire. “My place or yours?”
“Mine is closer.”
I forget my manners, or, you know, being a lady, and open my legs wider. It would take just a touch, I’m certain, a single touch to my clitoris, and I would explode. So I guide his hand where it needs to go, and we settle for driving in second gear the whole way from the restaurant to my hotel.
My breath comes out in shallow pants. My chest lifts and falls in the darkness. And then Luke’s fingers make contact with my wet heat, and just like that, I fill his hand with something that makes us both groan.
“Fuckkkkk,” he bites out and aims the truck for my parking lot.
We move slow, torturously slow, but I’m already lost to everything but the sensations tearing through my blood. Luke doesn’t slide his fingers inside; he doesn’t have to. He merely circles my clit and gnaws on his bottom lip like that helps him keep himself under control. Then the second he pulls into a space outside my hotel, he removes his hand from between my legs and pulls me out his door and onto jelly legs.
“I don’t know that I can walk.”
He barks out a shaking laugh. “I can’t carry you in.” He wraps an arm around my hips and takes most of my weight. “It’s not that I can’t, and it’s not like I haven’t dreamt of carrying you to my cave barbarian-style a million times. But the second I pick you up, hotel staff are gonna get panicky, thinking I hurt you. So you need to stay the fuck up and walk.”
“I think my orgasm let my soul leak out. Now I’m just a bag of bones. Nothing of substance.”
He leads me through the hotel front doors with a hand on my hip, so tight that it stings a little, but the sting only lends to the pleasure that burns through my blood. It’s the kind of pleasure that demands I ask him to smack me, to hurt me, and then to make me come until my throat is raw from crying out.
“Whatever the fuck you’re thinking about,” he growls and leads me onto the staircase. “Save it till we’re alone.”
“How could you possibly know I’m thinking about you choking me?”
“Fuckkkkk.” He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “I can feel you in the air, Ally. I can feel you literally pulsing in the air.”
“For real?”
“So fucking real that dogs are gonna start howling soon. Lock it in.”
We crest the first floor, and continue on to the next.
“Twenty seconds,” he coaches, and catches me when I stumble on the steps.
I’m not drunk. My brain fires off exactly as fast as it should. The problem with my body is that I’m mid-orgasm, mid-explosion, and the stopping partway thing practically renders me useless.
“Ten seconds. There’s your door, give me the key.”
I fumble the small keychain in my tingling hands, pass the key to Luke, and just a second after that, I find myself stepping from shitty hallway carpet onto something much more lush and clean. A second after that, the door slams shut, and a squeal tears up my throat when Luke picks me up and tosses me over his shoulder.
“Luke!”
Smack! His hand comes down on the bare skin where my dress leaves me exposed because of the way he holds me.
“Oh god,” I grunt and try to grind forward. At this point, I don’t care what touches my clit – his fingers, his tongue, his friggin’ collarbone – just give me something. Anything. “Luke.”
Smack! “Groan like that again, Ally. Then say my name. It’s like a fucking shot to my balls.”
He stops at the end of the bed and gives me no time to react as he tosses me down so I land with an oomph. He leaves no room between us, no time lost. I’m still bouncing on the mattress when his broad hands shove my dress up to my stomach. He grabs on to my panties and tears those down my legs until the straps scrape my skin and sting, then he buries his face in my pussy and laps up everything I have.
I scramble along the bed, but he follows and makes it so I grab a pillow and bring it down over my face to smother my screams as his coarse stubble does things to my hypersensitive thighs. His tongue circles my clit and draws me closer, closer to the edge, and when I think I might die from spontaneous combustion, he pushes thick fingers deep inside and curls them back until my brain seizes, and I can do nothing but feel.
My orgasm tears through my system, it’s like fire in my blood, but Luke pushes, pushes, pushes me for more. He doesn’t take the one release and consider his job done. Rather, his fingers move faster, harder. They drag me back up to the ledge, and over. Back up, and over. My body rejects the idea of coming again, but he doesn’t much care as he grinds against the mattress and tries to satiate the need that burns through his veins.
“Fuck, Ally. Fuck.”
If anyone is walking the halls, they know what’s going on in this room. But for right now, right this second, as Luke does magical things to my body, and his cock strains against the zipper on his jeans, beckoning me to touch, to taste, I can’t muster the energy to care about these unknown people in the hall.
My arms are weak, shaking, and barely able to support my weight, but still, I push up and brace myself on one hand, then I use the other to unsnap his jeans and push the zipper down. I’m fully exposed to him, sitting on him, grinding down to use up every single millimeter of space between us; meanwhile, he’s fully dressed. And that’s on me. My fault.
I push the zipper all the way down so his cock, covered in black boxer shorts, springs free, then I push the silk down to reveal a purpling head and moisture beading on the tip. I don’t study it for long. I care not that it pulses with need, or that when I try to wrap my hand around its girth, I struggle to get a decent grip. Instead, I close my eyes and swallow him down until he hits the back of my throat, and when he does, he groans and bites down on my clit until I come again and make a mess of… well… everything. His face, his shirt, my bed.
A small part of my brain insists I should be embarrassed. But then Luke’s fingers come around to touch my anus, and my brain jumps ship.
Fuck it. We’re here to feel. Not to think.
Tears escape past my lashes, but I squeeze his cock in my mouth and swallow him down in search of his cries of pleasure. I circle his dick with my hand, and use that to guide my mouth, but my own pleasure doesn’t escape me. My search for more, my hunger for something that explodes. So when Luke’s fingertips feather around my anus, teasing, testing, I sit back and force him inside until my pain and pleasure war with each other and end with a wash of orgasmic insanity.
“Fuck, Ally.” Luke breaks away from my pussy merely to say my name. To let me know I’m wanted, I’m coveted, and in answer, I suck harder and draw him toward his own breaking point.
I ride his face with no shame. My thighs burn, and my entire bottom half is exposed to the world. Or, well, to Luke. Which is basically the same thing.
But just as his body tenses up, and his toes curl, he picks me up again and tosses me over to my back. I scream out in surprise, land with a gasp, then I groan when he climbs over me and lifts my legs up so my knees press to my chest. My shoes remain on, my sexy high heels resting on his shoulders. With my pleasure on his chin, and his on mine, our eyes meet, and then he starts pushing inside my wet heat.
Fingers can’t prepare me for the whole of what Luke is. It’s not even comparable.
I groan out and absorb the feeling of him sliding deep inside me. He moves slow, but it’s not about being careful. Rather, it’s about feeling every single inch. Every single ridge and bump and shot of electricity.
We can’t kiss. My legs make that impossible. But our eyes lock, his on mine, his heart pounding against my legs, my heart pounding the same rhythm. He continues his slow trek inside, inch by torturous inch, and when he’s fully seated to the hilt, his lips quirk up into a grin.
“You remember that first thing I ever said to you?” he pants out. “That day in the bakery?”
I think about it for a second. I war with the fact my brain wants to shut down and melt into this bed with Luke, but I’m able to think back. To standing in line for coffee. To speaking on the phone. And then to the sexy guy who stopped and smiled for me.
I love you too, he said. I don’t usually jump this fast, but sometimes the stars align, and bam. It’s all over.
Swallowing, I nod to let him know I remember.
He smiles in return, and slowly inches out of me. Then he slams home and grunts as I move up the bed. “Yeah,” he pulls out again, then slams in. “Sometimes the stars align, Ally, and a guy falls in love.” He pulls back and releases my legs to eliminate the space between his chest and mine, then he dives in and kisses me until I feel drunk. “It’s okay to be impulsive if it feels this good. And fuck, you feel good, Ally.”
My heart jumps, both pain and bubbling pleasure. Terror, and elation. I didn’t come here to develop feelings, for Luke or for anyone else. I came to this small town to meet my family, and to study basic human behavior. But then we met, and something scary began.
I want to return his words, his feelings, but they catch in my throat and refuse to be freed. So I close my eyes instead, and I let myself feel. It’s okay to catch feelings, right? Even when they’re for someone as crazy and wild as Luke Hart. It’s okay to have feelings, full stop. Because whatever happens now, it’s going to happen whether I run away or stay.
But still… I can’t say the words.
But I dive in with him right now. I squeeze my eyes shut and kiss him back. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and open my legs wider to give him room to move. And while he brings me back to peak, I think it. In my mind, and for the first time in my life, to a man, to a lover.
I love you too.
Luke pulls back to catch my gaze. I feel his movement, his hitched glides, and the space between his chest and mine. But I keep my eyes closed and clench my core tight to draw his attention back down.
He groans in response, grins the way a small boy might look at a candy bar, then he starts moving again, and rides us both to completion.
Luke
Slow Study
“What’s this one for?”
I lay on my stomach in the middle of Ally’s bed, and Ally sits on the backs of my thighs, naked and warm, trailing her fingers along the lines of ink on my shoulder blades. I don’t have to ask what she’s pointing at. I don’t need to stretch my neck around for clarification.
“That one’s for my mom.” But then I do twist and try to catch her eye. “Tease me about being a mommy’s boy. Dare you.”
Snickering, she shakes her head and continues to study my skin. “I talk to my mom for an hour every single day. I’m not taking that dare. This one for your dad?” She points at a small patch right beside the ink I have for my mom.
“No, that’s for the baby they had before they had us. It never happened, the baby never got to live, but that doesn’t mean he never existed, right? Cells still joined, and love made a baby, and if things were different, that baby would be my big brother or sister.” I smile and lay my head back down again. “If I can get ink for a favorite car, or a favorite poem, then I sure as shit can get something for my big brother or sister.”
“I think that’s sweet.” In the quiet, she leans forward and presses a gentle kiss over the design I had made up for that child. A heartbeat. A Hart. “So that must mean your dad is on the other side. To make a team with your mom.”
“Right. He’s there. He’d be offended as fuck if I got everyone except him.” I pause for a moment, frown, and consider before venturing, “I’m not sure we’ve ever talked about your dad.”
“Mm.” Ally is lazy like a sleepy cat, languid and warm as she strokes my skin. “I told you,” she murmurs. “He and Mom were teen parents.”
“Right, but she stuck. Where’s he?”
Shrugging, she continues to trail gentle fingertips along the column of my spine. “It all went down before I was born, so honestly, I don’t know where he is. They were young, and Mom was kicked out of home… whether the guy couldn’t help her out or chose not to, I don’t know. They went their separate ways, and years later, she married again, rendering the first guy unneeded and unwanted.”
“And you?”
I turn over wh
en the energy in the room changes. From lazy satisfaction and undemanding chit-chat, to furrowed brows.
I settle on my back, and leave Ally exactly where she was, on my thighs. But now I take her hands and twine our fingers together so the unicorn bracelet on her wrist twinkles. “Ally?”
“And me what?” she asks. “I don’t understand your question.”
Smiling, though it’s small and subtle, I push up to sit so our chests press together. Turning around might have been a bad move for me, because despite the heavy topic floating in the air, my body has other ideas. My cock thickens when her breasts rest against my chest, and when I’m sitting tall and my dick touches her thigh, I think we both realize what I’ve done. “Quick answers.”
She nods. “Yeah. Then this other thing.”
“Deal.” I bark out a loud laugh. “I meant, and you… you didn’t want him? You didn’t need him?”
“Nope. My mom was always enough. We’re fiercely independent women, and we love it that way. We done?”
“Yup.” I grab her hips and flip her over to her back, and just a second later, I glide inside her warmth, and groan at how good it feels to be inside her like this. “Hey, Ally?”
Her eyes are shut, her hair fanned out on the pillow beneath her head, but her lips quirk up. “Mm?”
Chuckling, I continue to ride her and pepper kisses along her jaw. “Love you.”
Morning sunlight filters through the curtains and onto the side of my face, while I try to remain in the half-asleep, half-awake, dreamlike state where everything feels warm and perfect. The bed feels extra soft, the sheets particularly smooth. The air is the perfect temperature, and though there’s no sexy lady-body laying here beside me, I hear her. I smell her.
“He slept over last night, Mom. I can see his butt right now.”
I smile as Ally’s voice echoes from the bathroom. Slitting my eyes open, I look in that direction and groan at the sight of her standing buck-ass naked in front of the mirror while she styles her hair.