Taken by Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens #7)

by Melissa Foster

  “Being with you has me thinking about things, too.”

  They held each other’s gaze, the silence filled with unasked questions—What things are you thinking about? Do you want more with me? Should we talk about it? There were a million things Luke wanted to ask, and it was his fear of the answers that held him back. He knew what he wanted with Daisy—a future. Everything. And he could feel that she loved him. He didn’t doubt that one bit, but what she had at stake was her entire future, the career she’d worked toward for eleven long years.

  He saw questions and worry in her eyes, too. He loved her too much to force the issue. He held his tongue and let her lead their conversation in whatever direction she chose.

  “Janice,” she said quietly.

  Disappointment hung over him like a cloud, but he didn’t blame her for choosing that path. With Shaley hurt and their emotions so raw, she needed time.

  When she continued, her voice was stronger. “She showed up at my apartment and thanked me for helping her and apologized. It was weird, but I’m glad she came over. It was nice to actually sit down and talk instead of just reacting to crazy situations, you know? She’s staying with her mom, but she loves Darren. Gosh, I could see it in her eyes, Luke. She really loves him.”

  I know the feeling. “Hopefully, he’ll get some help.” Luke pulled her close. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, just tired, and I’m trying to figure out my job situation. You know.”

  Boy, do I ever. His stomach clenched. “Want me to give you a rubdown?”

  She narrowed her beautiful blue eyes. “Is that code for something dirty?”

  Luke rose to his feet. “It wasn’t, but I’ll have to keep that in mind. I’ll be right back.” He went into the tack room and came back with a blanket, which he spread on the ground outside Shaley’s stall. “Take your shirt off, lie on your stomach, and I’ll help you relax.”

  She hooked her finger in his jeans with a flirtatious smile. “My shirt? This is definitely something dirty.”

  “You keep doing that and it will be something dirty.” He lifted her shirt over her head, and the sight of her lacy pink bra drew a groan from him. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t a good idea.” He lowered his mouth to her bare shoulder and kissed his way to the crest of her breast.

  “Or maybe it was a very good idea.” She slid her hands beneath his shirt, and his body instantly reacted to her touch.

  He drew back. “Jesus, Daisy, you get me hard so fast. This is not where I was headed.” He guided her down to the blanket on her stomach. “You’re way too sexy. You make it hard for me to think.”

  She stretched her arms above her head and closed her eyes. “Then don’t think.”

  He came down on his knees beside her and kissed her cheek. “As much as I want to climb on top of you and love you until you scream out my name…” He kissed the back of her neck. He was so nervous about revealing his feelings that he was having trouble concentrating. “This is harder than I thought.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled. “Or you’re harder than you thought.”

  “I’m stumbling over my own feet, Dais. I was hoping we could talk about things.” He needed to talk to her, had to clear the air and see where they were heading. He forced himself to push aside his lust—if only for a little while. He placed his hands on her shoulders and her hot, silky skin had him even more befuddled.

  “Things?” She smiled. “Like the weather?” She wiggled her hips.

  “That is so unfair.” He massaged her shoulders. “Like us and where we’re headed.” He felt her shoulders tense beneath his touch.

  “Okay.”

  “That made you tense.” He drew a deep breath. Somehow, thinking about and talking about the future were very different. He thought it would be easy, but now fear trickled in. What if she was dead set on going to New York or Chicago?

  “Not tense, just nervous,” she admitted.

  “Me too.” Luke worked his way down each arm, squeezing the muscles and kneading the tension away. “Does that help?”

  “Tremendously.”

  She exhaled, and he felt her tension slip away, just as he had with the horses. Maybe he could connect on a deeper level. Wasn’t that what his emotions had been driving him toward all along? It wasn’t that he couldn’t connect, he was realizing. It was partly that his past was holding him back, but now he realized that it was so much bigger than that. How could he bond with anyone on a deep, meaningful level without the base of love? The love he felt for Daisy was pure and real. Nothing in his life had ever come close. Even his love for his family and his love for his horses—all of whom he thought he loved with his entire being—was different. They’d scratched a deep groove into his soul—Daisy ripped it open and slipped straight through.

  He drew the tension away from her spine, massaging outward with a firm, loving touch. He contemplated not revealing his feelings. Maybe she’d feel pressure to stay if he did, and that wouldn’t be good. He took another deep breath.

  “If you take one of those other jobs, when would you leave?” His stomach took a funky, nervous dive. He felt her holding her breath, which caused him to hold his, anticipating and fearing her answer. He moved his hands down to her leg and massaged her thigh.

  “I’m not sure I can think with you doing that,” Daisy said in a seductive voice.

  “If I can think, and I’m the one touching you, then you can at least try.” His thumb grazed the crease of her ass. He grit his teeth against the urge to follow that curve right up between her legs.

  “I’ll try.” She exhaled loudly. “Trusty is the last place I wanted to settle down, but now that I’m here, it’s hard to ignore how badly they need a doctor.”

  He was afraid to get his hopes up. He squeezed her leg as he moved down toward her calf. “And?”

  “I don’t know.” She sucked in a breath when he moved his hands to the other leg. “If I was rubbing you like this, there’s no way you’d be able to think.”

  “I can barely think now, Dais.”

  “Or you’re trying to relax me into submission.” She turned over onto her back. “Does this help relax you into submission?”

  Luke’s eyes took a slow stroll down her body, drinking in taut nipples pressed against her lacy bra and the swell of her hips above the waist of her low-riding cutoffs. His chest constricted so tight, he thought it might clamp down and his lungs would stop functioning if he didn’t get it out right then.

  “Daisy, I…” Love you. Want to touch you. Need to touch you. What he felt for her was so much bigger than three simple words. “You make my head spin.” He inhaled deeply, trying to concentrate—which was becoming more and more difficult with every breath he took. He lay down beside her and brought his thigh over hers, then draped his arm across her stomach and leaned on one elbow. Daisy lay on her back, gazing up at him with so much love in her eyes it felt like an embrace.

  “I’ve been restless my whole life, and I couldn’t, or maybe I wouldn’t, connect with anyone. I don’t know why that was, but I’ve never felt anything like what I feel when I’m with you. When I think about sharing my thoughts, or sharing my bed, there’s only you, Daisy.” He cupped her cheek and gazed into her eyes. “I love who you are, and I want to be with you—when you want me and when you need me. I want to feel your body melt against me at the end of a hard day, and I want to help you hold down bloody, drunken guys in bathtubs.”

  “Luke,” she said in a breathy whisper. She reached for him, and he took her hand in his and pressed a kiss to it.

  “Let me finish.” His pulse raced. He was powerless to stop the words from tumbling out. “I know you might not feel as strongly, and I know you have big plans for your career, and that you might leave Trusty and go to New York or Chicago, or someplace else altogether. I get that, and if that’s where you’re headed, then it is. I support whatever you want to do. But I want you to know that I want to be with you, Daisy.” He brushed her hair from her face and cuppe
d her cheeks. “I feel like I can’t think beyond being with you.”

  Daisy put her hands on his wrists, and for a minute—which felt like a lifetime—she didn’t say anything. Her eyes searched his; her luscious lips parted. He wanted to lean down and kiss her, but he was struck numb. Had he made a mistake? Had he totally misread her? He lowered his hands from her cheeks, and she blinked several times, as if she’d been struck as numb as he had.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was a jagged thread. “I do feel just as strongly. I…” She lifted up on her elbow; her lips were a breath away.

  “You do?” He could barely breathe.

  “Yes. I love everything about you. I love the way you look at me and how when another guy walks by, you tighten your grip on me.”

  “I tighten my grip?”

  She nodded, smiled. “Yeah. Just a little.”

  “I didn’t even realize it.”

  “I know. I figured. But you don’t do it around Kevin.”

  “No? I guess coming from a big family, I understand that no one person can be everything to the person they love. Friends have a valuable place in everyone’s life.” Luke’s siblings had always filled the roles that friends filled for others. “Kevin was there for you when you needed him most, and I expect he’ll be there for you forever. Or at least I hope so. That’s a good thing, Dais. I’m glad you have him. He loves you and cares about you like you’re his sister…or at least that’s how it seems to me.”

  She shook her head. “I love that about you. Some boyfriends would be jealous of Kevin.”

  Boyfriend. He loved that.

  “Know what else I love about you?” She continued. “That you care enough about people to step in and stand up for them when they’re too weak to stand up for themselves. I love that you wanted to stay with Shaley tonight. I love that you’re close to your family and that you care enough about me to help my dad. But mostly, I just love being with you. It doesn’t matter if we’re kissing, talking, cutting hay, or holding down a drunken, bloody guy in a bathtub. My heart is full when we’re together, and when we’re not, it’s the emptiest feeling in the world.”

  Luke’s world stilled as her words sank in, and when he lowered his mouth to kiss her, more words tumbled free.

  “I love you, Daisy.”

  Her eyes dampened. “Oh, Luke. I was afraid to say it, because it’s all so fast, and I thought I must have been fooling myself or something, but I trust my feelings, and I love you, too.”

  Their lips met with a tender, loving kiss that sealed their words.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THEY SPENT THE night wrapped in each other’s arms on the blanket in the barn. Daisy had awoken several times to find Luke checking on Shaley. She loved how attentive he was toward her. She’d seen the pain in his eyes and the tension in his jaw and mouth, similar to what she’d seen on the faces of parents of ailing children. When her phone alarm went off, Luke was out in the pasture with the other horses. She’d joined him for a few minutes, and Chelsea and Rose had nuzzled right into her chest and followed along the fence line as she’d headed into the house. She could see why Luke bonded so easily with the horses—especially his horses. They were so easy to fall in love with, and she found herself recognizing certain identifying sounds of each of them, like how Chelsea’s whinnying was an octave higher than Rose’s and how Rose walked a little slower, remaining closer to the younger horses as they came to greet them.

  She turned on the shower, watching Luke walk shirtless up the hill toward the house. The sun glistened off of his tanned, hard muscles. She could still feel those muscles wrapped around her body like they were last night as he buried himself deep inside her and loved her until she could barely think. The same powerful muscles that had worked to help her father and had stood sentinel between Darren and Janice.

  God, she loved him.

  She heard the back door open, then close. The bathroom filled with steam, and she stepped into the shower, hoping, praying, he’d join her. She heard his footsteps in the bedroom, and her nipples hardened in anticipation.

  He loved her. He loved her! Her head was still spinning with their admission. It was so right, so real and true. She could feel it down to her core. She never would have believed she’d find love in Trusty, Colorado, and here she was, watching the man she’d fallen for slither out of his jeans and step into the shower with the most alluring look in his dark eyes.

  Thoughts of the job offers skittered through her mind. How could she ever consider leaving him? Luke placed his hands on her hips beneath the warm spray of the shower, and thoughts of her job offers slid from her mind and followed the trail of water right down the drain.

  “Hi,” he whispered as he drew her close and kissed her.

  Oh Lord. She had no idea that Luke’s kisses, which made her knees weak and her belly shift and flutter, could be even more delicious with water seeping between their hungry lips. When he drew back, she was panting—literally. She needed him. He had become her drug of choice.

  He gathered her hair over one shoulder and pressed his stubbly cheek to hers. “Do you expect me to behave?”

  Hell no. Please, no. Hearing the insinuation in his gravelly voice made her quiver. She shook her head, and a slow smile spread his delicious, full lips as he took her breasts in his hands and lowered his mouth to her neck. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples; then he slid one hand between her legs, and—Oh God—she was already halfway to the moon. He met her gaze, and his eyes were nearly black.

  “Oh, baby, you’re so ready.”

  She closed her eyes as he stroked her, teasing her until she felt herself swell with desire. He pressed his cheek to hers again. His hot breath sent a shiver of heat through her.

  “I love how you want me.” He pressed his body against her. “Do you feel how much I want you?”

  She couldn’t have answered if her life depended on it.

  Luke backed her gently against the cold tile wall and spread her legs with his feet. She closed her eyes again, feeling his tongue drag down her shivering stomach. He grabbed her hip with one hand, his other still working its magic, taking her right to the edge. She could feel the taunt of an orgasm, just out of reach. Then his hot breath spread across her thigh. His tongue blazed a path to her center, and he hovered above her sex, breathing. Teasing.

  Take me. Touch me.

  He used his hands to spread her legs further, then licked the insides of her thighs, her hips, above her wet curls. Every goddamn place except where she needed him most, driving her out of her ever-loving mind.

  Oh God. Please. She tangled her hands in his hair, unable to hear past the stream of the water and the rush of blood in her ears. He slid his fingers deep inside her, and she moaned at the blissful sensation. He stroked her, licked her, then rose to his full height. She could feel his breath on her mouth, smell her arousal on his lips. She opened her eyes, and he pressed one hand to the wall and leaned his chest in to her; his other hand glistened with her juices. He sucked his fingers, and her entire body flamed with heat. She closed her eyes and he pressed his mouth to hers again, taking her tongue into his mouth and sucking, then laving it with his before he dropped back down to his knees, his hands on her thighs, drawing her trembling legs apart again. He licked, loved, devoured her, using his fingers and tongue to bring her to the edge again. She slammed her palms against the tiles and flexed her thighs, grasping for the orgasm that was still just beyond her reach.

  “Luke. Please, Luke.”

  He thrust his tongue into her and—Oh God—expertly took her over the edge, filling her body with heat and ice at the same time. She panted, trying to bring her brain back to some modicum of functionality, but her eyes wouldn’t open. Couldn’t open, and when he used his hand to bring her up, up, up again, she cried out his name, and he captured it in his mouth and kissed her as her body pulsed with need.

  “I love when you come apart.”

  Oh dear God. Hearing him talk like that made her legs w
eaken. When she opened her eyes, his were filled with desire, his body swollen and ready. She looked down at his erection, and she wanted him. She wanted it. She splayed her hands on his chest, dragged them down his hot, wet body, and then took his hard length in her mouth beneath the warm spray of the shower pounding her shoulders and back.

  “Daisy, you don’t…Jesus…”

  She couldn’t get enough of him, and as she stroked and sucked, he swelled within her hands.

  “Daisy…I’m gonna…” He picked her up effortlessly and slid her down upon his hard shaft, then kissed her as his muscles flexed, and he thrust inside her again and again, taking her up over the edge again. She felt every pulse of his carnal release as he filled her with his love.

  He drew back, panting. “Holy…Christ.”

  He took her in another mind-blowing kiss, breathing air into her lungs, and when he drew back again, his lips grazed hers. “I want everything with you, Daisy. I want you in my life.”

  She was the luckiest girl on the planet—almost. Her job offers still loomed like the apple in Snow White. They looked almost too enticing to forgo, held so many promises of greatness, but from what she’d seen and heard about the impersonal gap between doctors in larger practices and their patients, Daisy was beginning to sense the poison within those offers.

  EVEN THE CHAOTIC afternoon at the clinic hadn’t been able to distract Daisy from what Luke had said in the shower. She wasn’t one of those girls who dreamed about her wedding or who planned her looks around catching a man. She was focused, determined. She knew what she wanted—a medical career—and she’d known she’d wanted to leave Trusty since she was fourteen years old. How could her heart betray her carefully constructed career plan?

  “Hey, lover girl.” Kevin handed her another chart. “Last one before you leave. It’s Mr. Mace, room four.”