Take Your Time (A Boston Love Story Book 4)

by Julie Johnson

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Luca, I said I’m fine. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “Too fucking bad.”

  “Luca…” My voice gets soft. “Please. I think the bleeding’s already stopped and—”

  “You a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Nurse?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you don’t get to have an opinion.”

  Anger sparks to life inside me. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful you just saved me from some seriously scary dudes, but that does not mean you get to order me around.”

  His eyes cut to mine in the darkness. Behind the rage, behind the unmistakable obstinance… I’m stunned to see fear in their depths.

  Luca Buchanan, who frequently steps into octagons and takes on actual giants without blinking twice, who grew up in foster homes and never lets anyone rattle him, who I’m damn near certain is half superhero… is afraid.

  For me.

  Because of me.

  It’s an awful sight. I hate seeing it in his eyes. It haunts me, even after he looks away.

  Shaking slightly, I reach out and place my hand on his thigh. The muscle is corded with tension.

  “Luca.”

  He looks over at me again.

  “Please, just take me home to your place. After Mimi…” I swallow. “I hate hospitals.”

  Something flashes in his eyes when I make that admission. The truck’s speed slows somewhat, and his thigh relaxes a tiny bit beneath my hand. He doesn’t speak until we stop at a red light a few moments later. I hear him suck in a steadying breath.

  “You’re mine, Delilah. I take care of what’s mine. That means, when you’re hurt, I do everything in my power to protect you. In this case, that means getting you checked out by a doctor. Even if you don’t want to. Even if dragging you there makes you pissed as hell at me.”

  “If the bleeding starts again, or I start feeling sick, I promise not to fight you. I promise I’ll go.” I hold his stare. “But I don’t need medicine. Right now, in this moment, what I really need are strong arms around me. A warm cup of tea. I need to feel safe. I need… you.”

  His eyes flare.

  “Luca.” My voice is pleading. “Please… take me home.”

  He pauses, considering. “You start to feel even the slightest bit dizzy…”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  He shakes his head as his hands tighten on the wheel. He doesn’t look happy about it, but at the next intersection he turns the truck around and heads toward the North End.

  We don’t speak for the rest of the ride, both caught up in our own thoughts. Fifteen minutes later, we pull up outside his building. He’s out of the cab, around my side before I even have time to remove my seatbelt. Taking Fenway from my arms, he slings the doggie bag over his shoulder, then helps me down to the sidewalk.

  “I can carry you,” he offers quietly.

  “I’m fine. I promise.”

  He slips his arm around my waist anyway, and supports most of my weight as we walk inside. I must admit, despite my brave face, I’m happy for the help. My head aches, along with my back and bruised tailbone. My lungs are sore from the strike to my chest. And, beyond that, I feel emotionally rattled. As if every shadow we walk by is concealing monsters, who’ll jump out and attack when I least expect it.

  As we step into his apartment the fear ebbs a bit, until my fists uncurl and I can breathe again. I feel infinitely safer here than I would staying alone in my apartment, tossing and turning on a leaky air mattress with nothing to defend myself should my attackers decide to pay another visit besides a puppy who hasn’t even figured out how to bark properly, yet.

  Luca flips on the light, dumps Fenway’s bag by the door, and unclips him from his leash. He promptly runs off to explore the apartment, sniffing every square inch of the place. I’m too tired to chase after him.

  Luca takes one look at my face and leads me through the French doors into his bedroom in total silence. My eyes sweep around — a large platform bed with a slate headboard dominates most of the space. The rest is pretty standard: dresser, mirror, closet. He doesn’t pause as he guides me into the adjacent master bathroom. There’s a gorgeous glass-doored shower with a ceiling-mounted rainfall fixture on the left, a long black granite sink vanity to the right, and a toilet mounted against the far wall.

  Lifting me by the waist, Luca sets me on the vanity countertop and examines me with intent eyes. His hands run down my arms and legs, searching for scrapes and gashes. Finding none, he steps to my side and gently turns my chin to examine the back of my head. I feel his fingers parting my hair with care as he leans close to look at the wound.

  “It’s pretty shallow. Already closing.” He moves to stand directly in front of me. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot.”

  “Got sick of the strawberry blonde, figured I’d go for a redder shade,” I joke.

  He doesn’t laugh. Leaning in, he rests his forehead against mine. His breaths are labored. I can see the muscle jumping in his cheek, can feel the tension still holding his every atom hostage.

  “Luca,” I whisper, lifting my hands to his neck, where his pulse thunders beneath the skin. “I’m fine. Really. You were there. You stopped them.”

  “Not fast enough.” His words are low. “Never should’ve let you walk alone.”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  His jaw ticks. “If something had happened to you…”

  “It didn’t.” I lean a shade closer, until our lips are parallel. “I’m right here.”

  “We should probably call the police. File an official report, even though I can track them down faster with Knox Investigations’ resources.”

  “Maybe,” I hedge.

  “Delilah.”

  “Not now, okay? Right now, I need to think about something that isn’t scary. Something good.”

  Something like you.

  He stares at me, eyes swimming with words he’ll never say. I have quite a few of my own unutterable thoughts spinning through my head. Things like…

  I need you.

  I want you.

  I don’t know how I ever got by before you.

  I’m not sure who moves first. I’m not sure it matters.

  My knees part, he steps between them, and our mouths meet in an all-consuming kiss that reverberates through me like a mallet on a drum. I feel desire thrumming inside my bloodstream, a steady beat of rising passion rushing from my heart outward, until every vein, every vessel, is bursting with it.

  Luca’s mouth explores mine as his hands slide slowly down my body. It’s different than it was earlier, when we were so full of haste, so fueled by lust we couldn’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off, couldn’t even make it out of his truck without a taste of each other. We’ve exchanged lust for longing, desire for need.

  I don’t want to be with him; I need to be. I need it with every fiber of my being.

  There’s a newfound tenderness in the way he touches me, a novel desperation in the way his lips slide over my skin — as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear at any moment. As if he has to memorize the feeling of me beneath his hands while he still has a chance.

  His fingers tremble as they pull off my heels, as they find the bottom hem of my dress. It stuns me that such a strong man could be made weak, brought to his knees, just by touching me.

  Inch by inch, he slides the dress up my body, revealing my curves in slow increments before finally pulling it over my head and tossing it to the floor in a glittering pile. His eyes rove over my bare skin, taking in every detail with such intense heat, it makes me shiver. The look on his face when he sees I’m completely naked beneath the dress is enough to make my heart skip a beat.

  Pure, unadulterated hunger.

  “You get the answer you were hoping for in regard to my underwear?” I whisper against his lips, reaching for his belt buckle. I feel his grin a second before he kisses me.

&n
bsp; With impatient fingers, I pull his belt from the loops and push his pants to the floor. He tears out of his shirt, buttons sent flying in his haste, and I can’t help laughing as I watch them ping across the room like tiny plastic bullets. My amusement is short lived — when my eyes land on his muscular chest and work their way down from his pecks to his abs to the trail of hair that leads straight to his…

  Holy.

  Shit.

  His eyes glitter as my ankles lock around his waist and my arms wind around his neck, bringing our bodies together. Skin on skin. I gasp a bit at the sensation.

  His hands slide beneath my thighs as he lifts me off the countertop and carries me into the walk-in shower, his steps never faltering, his mouth claiming mine without reprieve. Pinning me against the wall with his hips, he reaches over to turn a handle that brings a warm torrent pouring straight down on us from the ceiling like a tropical waterfall.

  Beneath the stream, I stare into his half-lidded eyes as his hands move down my wet body, never looking away as he adjusts his stance. I inhale sharply when I feel him there, poised at my entrance, a millimeter away from wrecking me. One tiny shift, and I’ll be lost forever.

  I’ll be his.

  Arching my back, I murmur my challenge through kiss-swollen lips.

  “You claim I’m yours, Luca Buchanan? Prove it.”

  His smile is dark with anticipation as he pushes inside me, setting my nerve endings on fire with a single stroke. I swear, despite the water coursing down all around us, my whole body bursts into flames.

  And prove it he does.

  Twice.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Curious whether a guy is checking you out?

  Yawn.

  That shit is contagious.

  Delilah Sinclair, decoding the male sex.

  I wake tangled in Luca’s sheets in the middle of the night. My hand searches the space beside me, but he’s not there. The blankets are cold beneath my fingertips.

  I sit up, wincing a bit — because damn getting attacked by thugs and then fucked within an inch of your life really takes a lot out of a girl.

  My pulse picks up speed as I look around for Luca. Climbing out of bed, I ignore my screaming leg muscles and pull one of his t-shirts over my head. I see a thin line of illumination coming from the crack around the French doors, so I head into the kitchen. The track lights are on their lowest setting, casting everything in shadow.

  He’s not here, either.

  I’m starting to worry when I finally spot him out on the balcony. He’s stiller than a statue, leaning against the railing in the full dark. Eyes on the water, Fenway bundled in his arms.

  When I slide open the glass door and step out, I watch his shoulders go tense and immediately know that something is wrong. Something has changed, in the hours since my eyes slipped closed, lying in the circle of his arms. Our hearts pounding the same staccato rhythm.

  Mine.

  Mine.

  Mine.

  “Luca?” It’s so quiet in the star-studded night, my whisper sounds like a scream.

  He turns to me with an unreadable expression on his face. He sets Fenway down, so the dog can run to me, but otherwise doesn’t move. Hell, he barely seems to be breathing.

  Not exactly the reaction I was expecting, after our passionate night together in the shower… and then in his bed… and then in the shower again…

  I take a cautious step toward him, shivering as a cool breeze off the water blows across the deck. Or maybe that cold is coming from his eyes, which seem to be full of ice as they watch me closing the distance.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, feeling tears build in my throat.

  Ever look back at a moment in your life and wonder how you didn’t see a storm coming until it was already making landfall, blowing out your windows with hurricane force winds?

  “What’s wrong?” He laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. “Are you fucking kidding?”

  Anger rushes into me. “No I’m not fucking kidding. Are you going to glare me to death, or fill me in on why you’re suddenly acting like a career tribute from District 1 of The Hunger Games?” I tilt my head. “Pegged you for more of a Finnick than a Cato, but I’ve been wrong about guys before…”

  He lurches forward, as if battling the urge to physically shake some sense into me, but reins himself in before making contact. I blink at him soundlessly, waiting for him to locate his standard sense of unflappable control. Waiting for him to tell me what inspired this radical shift from adoration to anger.

  His expression is thunderous — full of so much fury, it makes me take a step back. I don’t know how he shifted gears so fast from the tender man who made me see stars to this seething Spartan glaring at me across a narrow balcony, and I’m not sure I want to know. As I hold his gaze, his hands curl into fists at his sides.

  I jerk my chin up, temper rising.

  “I don’t understand what possibly could’ve happened between the moment I fell asleep in your arms and now,” I snap, hating the way my voice breaks. “What did I do?”

  Maybe I forgot, watching him in dad-mode with the twins, seeing him do battle for me in the streets, letting him make slow love to me with a level of intimacy I’ve never let myself succumb to before, that this man is not gentle.

  Maybe seeing him in a new light lulled me into a certain sort of complacency, until I let down my guard, neglected fortifying those shields I always keep around myself.

  Maybe I was so caught up chasing that pulse-pounding, heart-in-my-throat feeling being with him inspires, I lost track of all the reasons I why I should never get involved with someone like Luca Buchanan.

  Why I should never get involved with anyone.

  Whatever the case, it’s clear I’ve made a miscalculation; failed to see the time bomb ticking down the seconds until it’s already exploded in my face.

  “Just tell me. What the hell did I do?” I repeat, voice stronger this time.

  “It’s what you didn’t do, Delilah.”

  What?

  My face drains of all color. He watches it happen, running a hand through his hair as his eyes thaw a bit.

  “It’s what you didn’t tell me,” he amends.

  Oh.

  “The loan sharks,” I murmur, biting my inner cheek.

  “The fucking loan sharks,” he agrees, anger rattling his chest. “Was so concerned getting you to safety, I didn’t even put together why those guys looked familiar until about an hour ago, after you fell asleep. That’s when I remembered the picture from the park. The tan sedan.”

  My teeth clench harder.

  “Christ, Delilah, how could you not tell me about this?”

  “I didn’t want to take the focus off Phoebe’s wedding.” I swallow roughly. “I didn’t want to ruin things.”

  “It’s a fucking wedding! I think your life is a bit more vital than centerpieces and tulle!”

  “Have you met Phoebe?” I joke weakly.

  He is not amused.

  “Okay, I realize it may’ve been… unwise… to keep this a secret.”

  “Unwise?” he practically roars.

  “I made a judgment call, okay?” My pulse is pounding. “Maybe not a perfect one, but—”

  “Perfect? No. Not a word I’d use.” He steps closer to me. “You don’t get to conceal the fact that loan sharks are after your shithead brother and, as a byproduct, have placed you on their radar as well. Not from me, not when it concerns your safety. And you certainly don’t get to make cutesy little jokes after I find out about it, and expect me to laugh.”

  “For the record, I knew you wouldn’t laugh.”

  His glare intensifies.

  I cross my arms over my chest. “You know, this brooding, brutish act is knocking some serious hotness points off your overall score. Maybe we should go back inside, talk things through. Possibly get back in that shower of yours because, honestly, it’s very hard to worry about anything under that waterfall—”

  “Fucking Chri
st, Delilah!” Luca swears colorfully. “Not everything is a goddamn joke!”

  “I wasn’t joking.” I sigh. “I know you’re pissed, but I really don’t understand why you’re at DEFCON 1 right now. I mean, DEFCON 5, maybe I could understand. Even DEFCON 3. But to jump straight to the highest level—”

  “You want to know why I’m so pissed?” He takes a stride closer, voice vibrating with anger. “You knew, from the moment we saw those guys at the park the other day, that they were after you. Yet you still didn’t tell me.” His eyes flash. “If I’d known, I would’ve been prepared. I could’ve prevented you from getting hurt. But you’re so fucking determined to push me away, to do everything on your goddamned own, you nearly got yourself killed tonight.”

  “I—”

  He cuts me off. “I spoke with Nate. Had him run that license plate through the Knox Investigations database. Got an ID on the guys who attacked you. Justin Scarpetta and Tyrell Grafton — they work for one shadiest loan sharks on the entire West Coast. Worst kind of criminals you can find. Rap sheets longer than my arm, the both of them. Assault, battery, attempted rape, vandalism, extortion. The list goes on.”

  I blanch.

  His jaw clenches. “You still think your judgment call was right? Still think it was a good choice not to tell me? Because, babe, if I hadn’t been there tonight to stop them… there’s a very good chance you wouldn’t be alive right now. Worse, there’s a chance you’d wish you weren’t alive, after the things they’d do to you.”

  Tears begin to gather behind my eyes.

  He leans down, so his face is a few inches from mine. “So, you see why I might be a little pissed when you act like being attacked is nothing but a blip on your radar, something to laugh about now that it’s over, some fun little anecdote you whip out at cocktail parties.” He’s breathing hard. “That’s not my idea of fun. Your safety is not a fucking joke. Not to me.”

  “Luca, I didn’t…” My voice breaks. “I’m…”

  When he sees how scared I am, some of the anger clears from his face. I hold his stare, trying desperately not to panic.