by Ada Stone
Like me and Luke.
I sat up on the bed, using my arms as support behind me. That was when I saw that Luke was actually staring at me. He’d stripped out of his shirt and boots, leaving me to marvel at his sculpted chest and the rose tattoo that wound around his arm.
“Thank you,” I said after a breathless moment of just staring at him. “For coming to get me.”
He smiled at me, a cocky smile that made me want to lay down and let him do dirty things to my body. “What else could I do? I couldn’t just leave you there.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but held back.
I returned his smile. “Yeah, of course. The baby.” I stroked over my only slightly bulged stomach. “Thank you for that. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. My father’s a powerful man and he was never going to let me keep it.”
He nodded. “Your father can’t control you anymore. I won’t let him.”
His look turned fierce and protective, sending a thrill through my body. I wanted to see that look every day for the rest of my life if he’d let me. It sent heat through my body and I didn’t know if it was the heat of everything that had happened, the adrenaline of adventure, or if it was the hormones, but I wanted things from him. I wanted to be fucked senseless until I cried out his name and lay boneless beneath him.
Letting out a huff of breath, I brought my focus back to the conversation. “Thank you for everything. I…” I broke off and let the silence hang between us.
After a moment of that silence, he spoke again, sighing. “Don’t thank me yet.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I’m not sure you really understand what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
I raised a single, defiant eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we may never be able to go back to Mount Rose,” he told me. He hesitated, then continued. “There’s a possibility that they could drop the charges, but fact is I’m not exactly innocent of what they got me for. Maybe they’ll drop the assault charges since I only punched the mayor after being provoked, but the rest? The drug charges? Technically, they aren’t wrong. My only chance would be if their case falls apart. And if it does, I still have the charges that will come up since I broke out of prison.”
He stopped and just stared at me, letting his words sink in. And I admitted to myself they did take a moment before they fully hit me. Never come back to Mount Rose? Before that thought never would have bothered me much, but then it was also not likely to ever happen. And even I did get the hell out of there, the option to come back would have always been available to me.
But not now.
Not so long as I stayed with Luke.
I thoughtfully caressed my stomach, then looked up at Luke. I had made my decision and now that I had more time to think about it, I realized something. I would make it again. Offering him a smile, I stood up and went over to him. I put my hands against his bare chest, the skin warm and hard beneath my fingertips. I felt him tense, the muscles contracting at my touch, and I felt that familiar tendril of desire weave itself through me.
“I know,” I whispered to him. “I know that things won’t always be easy. I know that maybe I can never go home. And I know that my life is changing with you, but my life needed to change. If I had the chance to make this decision all over again, I’d choose just the same. I’d choose to be with you.”
I felt his heart beneath my hands as it skipped a beat at my words. I reached up on my tiptoes and placed my lips against him in a sweet, comforting kiss. When I pulled away I saw that his eyes had closed and it looked as though he were almost savoring that moment when our mouths touched.
When his eyes finally opened he looked down at me and said, “I want this to work between us. I want all of this to work out, and I promise that I will do my best to make sure it does. If there’s a way to clear up this stuff in Mount Rose, I’ll do it. And if there isn’t, then I’ll make you a home wherever you want. I promise you.”
I smiled and nodded, grateful for his words even if they were still lacking those three little ones that I wanted so very much.
When he bent forward to kiss me again, I didn’t resist. I let my own eyes close this time and fell against him, letting him turn the initially chaste kiss into something much, much more. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me tightly against him. Our tongues dueled and battled as we tasted and explored. His hands traveled up my shirt, flattening against the smooth expanse of my bare skin beneath the fabric. He felt all along my back, his hands ever rising, until they reached the clasp of my bra. He hesitated a moment, long enough to pull away and meet my eyes.
“You sure?” he asked.
I nodded breathlessly and he kissed me again. I felt him pop open my bra. Then he continued to push the fabric of my shirt up. He got it to my shoulders and then we had to break apart for a moment so he could get it the rest of the way off. When he tossed it to the floor of the hotel room, his hands quickly went back to my bra and tugged it down off my arms. When that was discarded, too, he pulled me back against him. Our bare chests pressed together, hot skin against hot skin.
His mouth kissed my lips again, then traveled. He moved his lips down my neck and along my collarbone, placing hot, open mouthed kisses there. My skin was on fire as he moved lower. His hands gripped my hips and pulled me up so that he had more access to my chest. Automatically, my legs wrapped around his middle, holding me in place as his hands moved around my hips to grip my backside tightly.
I moaned as his mouth encased my nipple, letting my head fall back as my hands wandered into his thick hair. I tugged at it and urged him to continue. He licked and suckled at my breasts, which had grown bigger with the hormones from the pregnancy. They were more sensitive, too, so even his lightest touches sent ripples through me.
He began to walk us back as I whispered his name, then he tossed me down onto the bed. I let out a little cry of surprise, but it was followed by a breathless laugh. Then I saw his hands begin to unbuckle his belt and undo his jeans. The laugh died on my throat and I watched with rapt attention as he slipped his pants down his hips, revealing his hardened manhood to my hungry gaze.
Delicious.
Wonderful.
I wanted him desperately.
He came to me then and took his time. He took off my shoes and then my socks. Then he crawled up my legs to my waist where he undid my jeans. He kissed at my navel as my now open jeans revealed the skin there, then he began to tug them down over my hips and my thighs. Each spot of new skin revealed, he placed a hot kiss.
Heat flooded my body. I was gasping and begging for more, undulating and writhing as he continued to undress me and kiss the exposed skin at the same time. Finally, he got my pants down, and it was a good thing because I was a hot mess.
I needed him. Now.
He went back up to my panties and I groaned at the idea that he would once more take his sweet, sweet time drawing them down. He would drive me absolutely nuts if he did that. Thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he pulled them to the side and allowed himself enough room to slide one finger into my wet folds. I let out a cry at the insertion and arched my back.
“Oh, Luke!” I cried.
He began to caress the inside of me, curling his finger in a come hither motion until I was a pathetic mess of a woman, putty in his hands. Still he continued. He added a second finger and then I felt his tongue sliding along my little nub of pleasure.
Intense, insane.
He had me writhing beneath me as I felt my orgasm build. I was panting, my heart beating erratically. The feeling of his tongue against my clit and his fingers buried to the knuckles in my warm, wet center was more than any woman ought to be able to deal with.
I was begging him, for what I wasn’t even sure, but I wanted it and I needed it. As soon as possible.
He placed a gentle kiss right above my bundle of nerves, then pulled away. My eyes snapped open. “Why’d you stop?” I demanded, then I saw him grinning at me as he slid the length
of his body along mine. “Oh,” I said.
He laughed a little, husky and low, as he positioned himself between my legs. His hands were bracing himself above me so that he didn’t crush me, so I used my own hands to guide him towards my waiting core. He groaned as soon as my fingers touched his erection.
“That’s it,” he murmured as I positioned the head of his cock at my entrance. “That’s it, baby. God, you’re wet.”
When the head of him was just beginning to press into me, I pulled my hand away and placed it on his hip instead. “Please, Luke, I need you. It’s been forever.”
He nodded once, then thrust himself inside me as deeply as he could, bottoming out within me. I cried out, noting that there was the slightest pinch of pain since it had been so long since the last time, but it died almost instantly. It was replaced with a heated lust that swept over my entire body and pushed me over the already precarious edge. I was rocked by an orgasm, since I’d already been so close before.
I clung to him, holding him within me, as I rode it out. When I finally came back to my senses, I found that he was patiently kissing at my cheeks and my forehead and my neck. Anywhere he could reach. They were sweet, almost chaste kisses, and when he pulled back I noticed a tender look across his features.
He smiled sweetly at me, then leaned down to press a soft kiss to my mouth. “I love you, too,” he murmured against my lips, and my eyes widened in surprise.
“Did I…I mean, I shouldn’t have…” I stuttered, realizing that I must have not only cried out as I came, but told him the truth that had been in my heart for a long time now. That I loved him.
He shook his head, shushing me. “Shh, it’s okay. I should have told you a while ago. There was just so much going on. But I’m saying it now. And I’ll say it tomorrow when I’m not achingly buried inside your sweet pussy.” He groaned, letting me know that it was the best kind of torture he could ask for. “And I’ll tell you the day after. And the day the baby’s born. And the day after that. I’ll tell you every day, Lia, that I am in love with you.”
He kissed me again and then he couldn’t hold back. He began to move. My body was still sensitive from my orgasm and I groaned at the movements. They became rhythmic, like a heartbeat, and then faster. His easy, measured thrusts became urgent, fast and hard. I was moaning all over again, little ripples of pleasure still washing through me. Above me, he began to chant my name.
“Lia, Lia, Lia,” over and over again.
I clutched at his shoulders and brought him to me. He panted above me, muttering and moaning as he pounded into me. The rhythm was gone and all that was left in its place was need. Pure, unadulterated need.
Then he cried out.
He thrust into me once, twice more, and then spilled himself inside of me as he cried out my name.
He collapsed beside me, sweaty and spent, but pulled me close just the same. His hand found my stomach and stroked it gently. “Thank you for keeping the baby,” he murmured. “I promise you, I will be a good father.”
I smiled at him and snuggled close. “I know you will. And I wanted to say…I didn’t mean to say that, but I’m glad I did. I don’t think I would have had the courage to just tell you, but now that I have it’s easier. I love you, Jean-Luc. With all my heart.”
He returned my smile and held me against his sweaty, hot body. “I love you, too, Amelia. And I’ll love our baby.”
Epilogue
Luke
Six months later, Lia gave birth. It was a girl and we named her after both of our mothers. Caroline Daniella Canter. She took my name rather than Lia’s, who didn’t want the baby so closely tied to her father. I couldn’t say that I disagreed.
We had to settle somewhere out of Mount Rose. A larger town called Blue Mountain that was near the larger city of Alberta. That was where I worked out of mostly, still running the Road Roses. We didn’t want that life to too heavily impact raising Caroline, so we lived in the town and worked in the city and did our best to keep those two lives separate.
The Road Roses had followed us up there only a couple of months after the whole incident with Lia’s father. It had taken a bit, but we established a new tattoo shop—Blue Rose—and started all over again.
Lia mostly remained as a stay at home mom, though we’d been discussing her going back to school for a while. She wanted to go to nursing school and I wanted her to follow her passions. So we talked about it and agreed that she would go to school part-time and I would work part-time. We’d alternate so that someone was watching the baby and when there was overlap, I’d have one of the boys watch little Caroline. She was a big hit with everyone.
When Caroline was a year old, that was exactly what we did. And after Lia’s first semester at nursing school, she received word from Mount Rose. Her father had had a heart attack and passed away.
She didn’t know how to feel about it, and neither did I. I knew that I wasn’t sorry the bastard was gone, but I knew that whether he’d been a terrible father or not, he had been her father. We agreed that she should go to the funeral. I had offered to go as well, but she insisted I not. I was still a wanted man in Mount Rose and it didn’t seem right to tempt fate.
She went to the funeral and was surprised that, despite his threats, her father hadn’t written her out of the will. She had a large inheritance waiting for her.
Uncomfortable with taking the money, she ended up giving most of it to charity and putting the rest in a collage fund for Caroline. It would gain interest until Lia was ready to take it out.
When Lia came back, she dealt with it better than I anticipated. She seemed to have been able to make peace with all that had happened and acknowledged that some part of her dad had loved her, even if he hadn’t been right about any of it. She couldn’t have forgiven him in life, because they never would have been able to talk about any of it, but in his death he’d finally shown her by leaving her that money that he had, in fact, loved her, even if he was never good at showing it.
I waited another six months, then finally proposed to her. It was something I’d been trying to do for a while now, but wasn’t sure how. I finally just did it at a Road Roses cookout. She threw herself into my arms, kissed me until the guys were whooping and hollering, then told me yes a thousand times.
We set a date for the coming fall.
THE END
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Chapter One
Susanna
The alarm was red and bleary, or maybe that was just my vision. It was early, too early for my alarm, which meant I was losing valuable sleep instead of rejuvenating for the exam I had in just two hours in Renaissance Paintings of Europe—a boring, “easy” class for most who were naïve and picking based on nothing more than the category it fell under, art in this case, but it was part of my major. There was a lingering image in my mind, something about a dream and a man and something dark and hot. I blushed at the thought that maybe it was a wet dream, but then I felt my forehead and decided my blushing had nothing to do with the dream.
I felt sick. Bad sick.
When my stomach roiled and gurgled, angry for being woken, yet doing the waking itself, I knew that I had only moments to get to the bathroom. I tumbled from the bed, which was so close to the hardwood floor anyway that I couldn’t stick a textbook under there, much less anything else. The sheets tangled around my legs, but I scrambled away from them, half crawling and half running for the little bathroom that was stuck between my bedroom—which was really just curtained off from the rest of the living room and kitchen—and the open living space. I ducked into it, not bothering with the door.
It was hanging off its hinges, leaning against the doorjamb at an odd angle, precarious enough that I thought more than once that I’d knock it over and have it fall on top of me while I was trying to pee.
Today I didn’t worry about it though. All I cared about was getting to the toilet.
When I reached the porcelain bowl, I got
my face over it just in time to retch up anything that might have been lingering in my stomach. I ached and burned, flushed with what was probably a nasty fever as my body tried to expel whatever toxins were in my system. I had enough forethought to hold my long blonde hair away from my face, keeping it mostly out of the bowl. When I thought the throwing up portion of my morning was finished, I flushed the toilet, but I didn’t get up right away.
I felt awful. And not just a little bit.
Leaning against the wall beside the door, I sat on the cool tiles and tried to calm my still queasy insides.
Maybe it’s just nerves, a very stupid part of my brain tried to convince me.