The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  He burst into laughter, drawing her forward to plant a quick kiss on her mouth. “Jesus, sweetheart, how many names do you have for it?”

  “If you gave me some time, an endless list.”

  “Anna—” Shaking his head, he offered up a soft grin that spoke to her soul. His hands drifted to the back of her head, which he cupped gently. “You don’t have to apologize to me.”

  Her gaze dropped to his body, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say that he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Seeing him like this, sprawled out on the couch with his hard chest on display and his even harder cock thrust up against his ribbed abdomen, made her mouth water. Her knees tightened alongside his. Could she do this? Could she have sex with Luke and not worry about the after?

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She went for honesty: “That I don’t want you to regret having sex with me, when you’re so much more experienced than I am.”

  There. She’d said it.

  She braced herself for the worst, knowing that she’d never been more vulnerable than in this moment, naked and perched on his lap. Her body was exposed, her emotions equally so.

  When he finally spoke, Luke’s voice was dark, insistent. “C’mere, sweetheart.” He urged her to lean into him with a palm to the center of her spine. The backs of her thighs scraped across the tops of his, and they both groaned when his erection brushed the most sensitive part of her. “Hold on,” he said raggedly, “wait.”

  “Why?”

  Green eyes met blue. “I just want you to know that having you in my arms would never be a letdown or a disappointment. Never.”

  After that, there was no more talking. It was as if a light switched off and the only thing they understood was need. A need for more. A need to taste. Their lips crashed together in a tangle of tongue and teeth, and Anna’s hands landed on Luke’s shoulders to steady her weight.

  But she wanted more.

  Her hips slid forward, until she could feel the entire length of him against her clit—she couldn’t help it. She undulated against him, smiling against his mouth when he cursed and clutched her hips and demanded that she do it again. So, she did. Again and again, until his grip switched its pressure and he was no longer pulling her closer but pushing her away.

  “You’re going to make me come and I’m not even inside of you yet. You gotta—hell, we need to slow down.” He sounded winded, like he’d just run a marathon.

  Anna moved back into place. “I don’t want to slow down.”

  He dropped his head against the back of the couch. “You’re going to kill me.”

  She fluttered her lashes theatrically. “Isn’t that why the French call orgasms ‘le petit morte’—the ‘little death’? Seems like a relatively good way to go to me.”

  Dark brows furrowing, he slowly asked, “Is that a theory you want to test?”

  “Umm . . .” She had no words. Not a single one. Did she want to try an orgasm game? Absolutely. Did she want to say so? Embarrassment tied her tongue and kept her mouth shut.

  Luke studied her, watching until he nodded once to himself and said, “Yep, we’re doing this.” He patted her hip. “Lift your foot—here. Put it on my shoulder.”

  Put her foot on his shoulder? “I’m not athletic. My leg is not going to”—she waved her hand at him—“just lift like that.”

  Another pat to her hip, though this one veered closer to her butt. “That’s why you’ve got to stand up. Do it, sweetheart. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  What did she have to lose? Hadn’t she wanted everything that he had to give her? What would she think of herself if she told him no? Bolstered by this, Anna climbed to her feet on the couch, her heels sinking into the soft cushions, as she settled one knee on the back of the couch. Her crotch was eye level with his face, and she swallowed. Heat swept up her chest, over her shoulders, and across her face. If she’d felt exposed before . . . it was nothing compared to now.

  Nothing like having your girl parts on open display for a hot, experienced soldier.

  The look on Luke’s face when she’d did as he told her, though, was . . . reverent. His palms landed low on her belly, and then he looked up at her, his green eyes dark with desire. “You’re fucking gorgeous, Anna. I can’t wait to taste you.”

  She gathered her courage to murmur, “Then what are you waiting for?”

  His gaze flashed with surprise, then satisfaction, and he hooked one hand around her knee and spread her wider. His first touch wasn’t where she wanted him. He laid a kiss on the inside of her upraised thigh, on the curve of her other knee. A shiver worked its way down her spine. The need to beg him to get to the main course nearly overwhelmed her.

  Don’t.

  Wasn’t that the point of the way she’d been living her life? Always ready for the next great thing, whether it was a TV deal or a spread in a new magazine or the latest shipment of lingerie apparel. Did she ever stop to just enjoy? No, she didn’t.

  But at the first touch of his lips to her clit, Anna’s need to go slow and steady went straight out the window along with her pride. She clutched his head, his name a litany on her lips, as he nibbled, sucked, and licked with expert precision. Dampness flooded between her legs, and she cried out when he slid a finger into her heat, and then another, and pumped in tandem with his tongue flicking out against her.

  It was lovely and it was hot, and the masculine groan he released when she came against his mouth was a sound she would never forget for as long as she lived.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered in a daze.

  Luke gave one last lick down her center before he pulled back. “If you can still speak, then I didn’t do a good enough job.”

  “You did,” Anna said bluntly. “You really, really did.”

  Smugness turned his lips up into a smirk. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let it get to your head.”

  They both glanced down at where his “head” bobbed against his stomach. “Might be too late,” he said, and then wrapped a hand around his erection. He pumped his fist once, twice, and a bead of come coated the thick top. “There’s a condom in my wallet, in the pocket of my jeans—will you get it?”

  She read between the request to the strained lines of his face. He wasn’t sure his hip would make it. Without a word, she did as he asked, sticking her hand into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieving his wallet. Condom packet in hand, she returned to him on the couch and straddled his lap.

  “Give it here.”

  “Nope.” She eased the rejection with a wink, and then tore open the wrapper and tossed it over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do this for a guy.” Anna waited until his gaze met hers before rolling the latex down his rigid length. “Now I can tick that box off.”

  He bit out, “you’re about to check another box off right now,” and then guided her so that she was poised over him. He met her gaze, and she nodded, once. With an indrawn breath, he clutched her hips and thrust upward into her. Oh. Oh. It was a tight fit, tighter than she’d expected. Tighter maybe then he’d expected, because one of his favorite curse words exploded from his mouth and he dug his fingers into her side.

  “Good?” she worked out, hating the thought that maybe she wasn’t meant to like sex. It was uncomfortable, the same way it had always been when she’d been eighteen and hooking up with Julian’s father, and the same way five years ago during her last sexual encounter.

  “Fuck, yeah, it’s good,” Luke grunted, his voice thick like he’d drunk one too many whiskeys. “You feel amazing, sweetheart, so goddamn amazing. Like I’m walking on clouds. Cotton candy. Fuck, I don’t even know except that I never want you to leave.”

  Anna shifted and barely withheld a wince. “That’s . . . good.”

  God, she was such a failure. A failure who didn’t like sex, no matter how many times she gave it a go.

  “Anna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it good for you?”

 
“I . . . It’s—you’re big.”

  “Just what every guy likes to hear,” he said wryly. “Give me the ‘but’ that I already know is coming.”

  Well, he’d asked for it. “You might be too big, if such a thing exists. Or maybe I’m too small. I don’t really know. It’s just that it kind of hurts, and it doesn’t really feel that great right now, and I’m pretty sure you are regretting everything and I am so, so sorry.”

  He didn’t even pause. “What’d we say about apologizing?”

  Her hair fell in front of her face. She didn’t bother to move it. “Well, I know, but still—”

  Luke made a bzzzt sound. “Wrong answer. Trust me, sweetheart. I’m not too big—though I thank you for telling me so—and you’re not too small either. We fit perfectly, me and you.”

  “It doesn’t really feel that way right now.”

  “Trust test,” he said, throwing her words back in her face from earlier in the night. “I dare you to trust me.”

  She studied him, noting the earnest look in his beautiful green eyes and the tick in his jaw that signaled that he was doing his damn best to hold back. “Okay.”

  He rewarded her with a brilliant grin, then twisted their bodies so that she sat on top of him with her back to his chest. She felt his cock nudge at her entrance again, and this time she didn’t wait for him to lead the way. Anna sank down on him, taking him all the way to the hilt, and sucked in a breath. His low groan was music to her ears.

  With an arm wrapped around her stomach like a band and the other guiding her hips, he slowly began to move her up and down his length. It was . . . interesting.

  Then Luke tugged her back, bringing them flush together, so that her back collided with his slick chest, while his palm drifted over her belly button and down, down, down. To there. Oh, God. He applied pressure, circling his finger in tight motions—moved his hand away to play with her breasts, before heading back south to tease her again.

  All the while, his hips pistoned in and out of her, and yes, yes, there was that spine-tingling sensation. It started in her toes, which she curled into the hardwood floor. Worked its way up her legs, to the apex between her thighs. Was this it? Was it—?

  He did something with his fingers, and Anna didn’t even have time to think about the ramifications of what sex with Luke might mean before her eyes squeezed shut and the light burst behind her eyelids.

  She came shuddering in his arms, his name her favorite prayer.

  His fingers didn’t stop teasing her clit until the spasms stopped. Then, he gripped her hips, leaned forward and nipped her shoulder, and pumped two hard times into her before erupting with a groan and a curse.

  Then, in the silence, he said one more word: “Hooah.”

  25

  “You didn’t have to buy me pizza.”

  Luke slid a slice of pie onto his plate and glanced at the woman decked out in one of his T-shirts. The gray cotton shirt fell to just above her knees, and if he hadn’t already seen her naked, then he would have said that Anna Bryce in a basic T was the hottest sight he’d ever seen.

  “You were hungry,” he replied, tossing a pepperoni over to Sassy, who caught it mid-air like a champ. “I could hear your stomach grumbling from a mile away.”

  Her pretty blue eyes looked to the ceiling. “Such a gentleman to point out my faults.”

  “Hey, a woman who scarfs down an entire pizza by herself? I need to meet this girl.”

  Luke watched in pleasure as a blush stained her cheeks.

  “You’ve already met this girl,” she muttered.

  “Then obviously I need to keep her around. See what else I can do to convince her to get naked again with me.” He winked, just to show that he was kidding, even though he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to have sex with her again. Sex with Anna had been the best damn experience of his life. And it wasn’t just that she was beautiful. No, it had been her honesty that had stolen his breath, and the vivacious glint in her blue eyes that had got him, hook, line, and sinker.

  He wanted her again, this time stretched out beneath him. He wanted to discover what turned her on and to return to those secret places that no one but him knew existed. He wanted—well, fuck. Luke blinked down at his pizza. He wanted way too much, most of it which he knew was unlikely to become a reality.

  Her voice broke the silence. “Having regrets?”

  The only regret circulating in his brain was that he had no regrets. He ripped his crust in thirds and tossed up the smallest piece for Sassy to catch. “Nah,” he said, hoping that she didn’t dare peer closer, “no regrets. You?”

  His gaze cut to her face, and he didn’t miss the way she hesitated in bringing the pizza up for a bite. Then, she primly lowered the pizza to her plate and said, “Why would I regret a one-time thing?”

  Hold on now. A one-time thing?

  Without giving him time to jump in, Anna added, “I know you don’t do relationships. You’ve said so yourself about a thousand and one times—”

  Annoyance tightened his muscles. “Now I wouldn’t say a thousand and one times exactly.”

  “Okay,” she amended with a flick of her hand, “just a thousand times. At least. Anyway, I knew what I was getting into when I pulled my dress over my head. You don’t want a relationship and I do. Thus, a one-time deal. I’m okay with that.”

  But was she really? After listening to her spell it all out so cut and dry, Luke wasn’t even sure he was okay with the situation. Here he’d been, planning out his strategy to get her onto a bed this time, and she’d already wrapped up their relationship with a bow and put it on a shelf like a goddamned picture frame. A picture frame that maybe she’d pick up in twenty years, glance at fondly, and then never look at it again.

  Luke was not okay with the hottest sex of his life being relegated to a memory. That was the very last thing he wanted.

  In the face of his silence, Anna shifted uncomfortably on the couch, tugging at the T-shirt’s hem so that it covered more of her legs. “You said you didn’t regret us having sex,” she said slowly, still tugging on his shirt. “And you bought me pizza.”

  Shit. Luke put his plate on the coffee table, pointed a warning do not touch finger at Sassy and did the same with Anna’s. She put up a small protest when he had to practically tear the plate from her hands, which made him grin like an idiot.

  “I don’t regret us having sex,” he finally said. “And I bought you pizza because you like pizza and you were hungry.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ on its way . . .”

  “But,” Luke interjected, proving her right, “I hate that I gave you the impression that I don’t want a relationship.”

  “Except that you don’t.” She said this bluntly, but without any underlying heat.

  If someone had asked him three months ago if he saw himself in a relationship anytime soon, the answer would have been fuck no. But this thing with Anna—this whatever it was that had been growing since she’d literally collided into him—had swooped in from left field and taken a sledgehammer to his heart. He didn’t know what the hell he wanted. Luke just knew that he couldn’t let her walk away.

  Reaching out, Anna placed a hand on his right knee and squeezed. Her voice was gentle, and frustratingly understanding, when she said, “Again, Luke, it’s okay. You made it abundantly clear that you aren’t the marrying kind of guy. And it’s not like we’ve talked kids, but I get the sense that you aren’t the stroller kind of guy either.”

  Luke froze. Every thought slammed to a halt, and he would have sworn that his heart stopped beating had it not been for the thundering pulsing in his head.

  She doesn’t know.

  How could she? Still, the fact that she hadn’t meant to take a knife and jab it into his heart didn’t mean that he didn’t now feel the phantom twist of the handle. And what the fuck was wrong with him anyway? Luke had known since the age of twenty that he couldn’t have kids. That was eleven long years of looking at babies in car seats or toddl
ers in strollers and rationally comprehending that the baby-diaper days and the let’s-play-house-dad days were not his future.

  Rationally, he knew all of that.

  For the most part, Luke had never felt a sense of loss over his inability to father children. The army had swallowed up his focus for over a decade, limiting the possibility of actual relationships—aside from random flings here and there while on leave—and any real desire to do anything but be a soldier.

  He shouldn’t care. He didn’t care.

  But that didn’t stop the sensation that he was drowning.

  He opened his mouth. Clamped it shut. Swallowed a healthy dose of dread and roughly asked, “Is that what you want? Another kid?”

  Anna recommenced with the shirt tugging. Double shit. He’d made her nervous. Her blue eyes shot toward Sassy, who’d opted to sprawl on his back on the floor, his naughty bits exposed for all who cared to take notice. Laughing nervously, she said, “Yes. I mean, I’ve always sort of wanted the family package, you know?”

  He didn’t, but he nodded anyway for the sake of her continuing. It was necessary that he hear this. Get it through his thick skull that he and Anna Bryce did not belong together.

  Taking encouragement from his slight response, she settled in to the couch, folding her legs beneath her and wrapping her arms around her knees. She wasn’t wearing any panties, and though he was mightily tempted to sneak a peek, he kept his gaze above her shoulders. On her face, so that he could hear as well as see why this one-time thing was all it would ever be between them.

  “You know that I gave birth to Jules when I was eighteen,” she was saying, her cheeks flushed pink with nervousness, “but I don’t think I explained how everything played out.”

  Despite himself, Luke murmured, “Tell me now, sweetheart.”

  She shot him a surprised look. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

  He deserved that, especially after the way their initial meetings had gone down. “I don’t,” he said by way of maintaining the image of devil-may-care playboy, “but tell me anyway.”