by Jan Irving
Sian looked at him gravely. “No.”
His chest was tight. He was scared—scared she’d turn away from him again. Jesus, this first date was like a walk through a fun house.
“I feel like we’re on an obstacle course.”
“You feel it too?”
“It’s like getting pelted by stones. Maybe we should have just kept to ourselves.”
“Would have been easier,” he agreed.
“But that’s not what you needed.” She bent her head and he couldn’t resist reaching out and touching the wisps of hair. “Not after I called what happened between us…wrong.”
It still ached. “What’s wrong is me not being allowed to touch you,” he said. “What’s wrong is being alone in my bed while you tried man after man.”
They reached the top of the hill and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I was afraid I couldn’t ever have what I wanted. It had to be wrong.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because Mr Henry was my father. He wasn’t exactly a great relationship model.” She reached out and touched Luke’s cheek. “And you’re my deepest dream.”
“I don’t have the shine for you,” he said. “I don’t have the class.”
She shook her head and her eyes welled. “How can you say that? When you moved in, I had someone to bake chocolate chip cookies for. It really helped.”
“I’ll suck it up and eat your cookies anytime,” he said, teasing her. “Look, I’m not going to say that people won’t look at us different now we’re seeing each other. We have to break out of the brother-sister mould.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“I hate that you’ll face disapproval. I know you’re…things like that get to you.”
“You too.”
“I don’t care.” He opened the car door for her. When they were both inside, he yanked off the tie. “If we were related by blood… I’d still feel this way. I mean…if we’d grown up and never known or somethin’.”
Now he’d done it. She’d see how sick and wrong he really was.
What she did was reach out and touch him. “Me too. Oh, God. I’ve always wanted you. I used to watch you swimming in the mornings and want to touch your shoulders. I saw you naked in the beach shower once and I just stood there and stood there. I had to make myself walk away, make myself forget how beautiful you are.”
He was feeling moody and pissed off and possessive as fuck. He lifted her so she was facing him. “Take your panties off,” he ordered.
Her pupils expanded, huge in the semi-darkness. Colour flushed her cheeks. “Luke…”
After a moment she obeyed, silk sliding down long legs before tangling awkwardly on one high heel.
“Leave it.” He stared at her, watching her breasts rise and fall hard with the force of her breath. “You’re already wet, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Chapter Twelve
“Don’t worry, baby. The windows are tinted,” Luke said.
Sian could only laugh, because she hadn’t given a thought to that while caught in the molten spell he cast. She was all about his fingers inside her, stroking her like she was his pet.
Then Luke laughed, the harsh lines of his face softening as they only did for her.
“I hadn’t thought of it,” she confessed. It felt as intimate in the car as if they were alone in the house on a windswept, rainy winter night, alone with candles and low voices and the smell of something simmering on her stove.
Why hadn’t she seen they’d been lovers for years? “We lived together,” she said. “The only thing missing was the sex. That’s what Dharma meant when she pointed out you never moved out.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said ruefully. “Thank the penis genie you had a faulty zipper that night.”
“The penis genie? You are so making that up.” She grinned, even as he teased her with long smooth strokes of his callused fingers, lighting her up so that if her aura were visible, she’d see hot rainbow colour emanating from her body.
“Hey, if Santa Claus can get play, why not the penis genie? I would have given him gifts if I’d known he’d bring you around.” He loomed over her, watching her face as avidly as if she were a gripping movie. “That’s it, darlin’, moan for me. You like my fingers inside you, almost as much as you like my cock.”
“I loved that first time.” She had to tell him. “I got knotted up in the forbidden, in thinking I shouldn’t be that happy, but it was perfect. I needed it.”
“You did go off like a rocket.” He sounded smug and she knew she’d given him something back for the hurt she’d made between them.
“I wasn’t the only…ah…one.” She closed her eyes, wanting to savour her rise to climax. Each touch was a push up the ladder. She could smell herself, damp and earthy, heard the succulent sounds of his fingers inside her.
“Jesus, you get so wet for me, so fast. How could you think I could stay away from you?”
She looked at him, aware of her skirt around her waist, of her body open and pink and gleaming like an oyster. He undid the knot at her shoulder and her dress fell, baring her breasts for him.
“You look like a goddess in this dress, but now you’re a woman, my woman,” Luke breathed. “I’m gonna make you sing for me.”
He reached into the glove compartment of the expensive car and pulled out a little black bag. Sian bit her lip, wishing he’d put his hands back on her. Her eyes widened when she saw the oblong black wand in his hand—a tiny, sleek vibrator.
“I want you to take note that this is as far from Hello Kitty! as you can possibly get,” he said as he switched it on.
A toy in the car. She’d never thought he’d use a toy here of all places.
He caressed her with it, running it over her slick, open folds and Sian cried out, digging her nails into his thigh.
“Oh, kitty likes that.”
“Stop.” How could he make her laugh even when he was killing her? That was her Luke.
“Open wider, baby,” he urged her.
She shuffled forward, one leg high against the car seat as she let herself fall back. She caught a look at her reflection in the mirror, utterly wanton, a woman she wouldn’t even have recognised before Luke had first touched her.
He slid the vibrator into her body, making her jerk as intense sensation filled her. She moaned, arching like a cat to take more, beyond caring now how she looked.
He played with her, merciless, thrusting the device in and out, circling the top of her sex. She heard the scratch of her nails against the leather, raw, wanting cries burning out of her throat.
“Beg me. Beg me to come, Sian,” Luke whispered, his voice as dark and seductive as a sorcerer’s.
“Luke, please.” If it would give her relief, she’d do anything. She braced her legs and moved up and down on the toy, taking her pleasure.
He watched her and she knew he got off on watching her body undulate, the sweat between her breasts, the heavy fall of her hair, her lips parting to take one of his fingers and suck on it as he plunged the vibrator inside her.
She bit down on his finger, screaming her release, her body tightening around a metal toy.
She collapsed, panting hard, her body trembling aftershocks.
She held Luke’s heavy eyes, her gaze running down his body to the thick bulge at his crotch. As she stared, he undid his leather belt and unzipped his pants, shoving them down and mounting her.
The idea of pedestrians walking right by where they were mating heated her.
“Soft and wet and spent,” Luke said as he lifted her on him, using her body for his own pleasure now.
She was sensitive, stuffed full of him. She put her hands on his straining shoulders to steady herself.
He kissed her, open, carnal, taking her as much with his mouth as with his cock. “I want you to want me,” he growled. “I want you to know it’s me, always.”
“How could I not know?” she gave a choked laugh. “It’s not l
ike I’ve ever—”
“I know.” Satisfaction burned in his eyes. “Just me.”
She had never come so quickly, one climax on top of another. Wet and spent, he’d said, but the character of the experience changed—long, drawn-out contractions. She felt as if she’d died and then lived again. Spent, she lay against Luke, feeling his seed warm inside her.
If they had a child, it would be the most natural thing. That big, expensive house wouldn’t be so full of the past, full of her broken heart and Luke’s loneliness.
He rearranged her clothing, gave her a handkerchief and then they were sitting in the car, driving as sedately as if they hadn’t just had explosive and messy sex.
“I want to take you somewhere.”
For some reason, her heart started to drum again. His voice was too casual.
“Where?”
He looked at her and his face was tight.
“We got through two obstacles tonight. Taz’s trap and our neighbour,” she reminded him.
“You don’t really know me.” His face was shadowed as bars of light on the freeway moved through the windshield, throwing his profile into relief. “Not really.”
“Luke.” She did, she did know him. But then she remembered how she’d rejected him, how she’d called it wrong. He was still hurting…because she alone was allowed to be close to him, was his family.
Her throat burned with the need to try to make it up to him, but they drove in silence, Sian forcing herself not to ask him where they were going.
The houses grew closer together. They passed strip malls with stores that were out of business, with the sharp teeth of broken windows. Broken asphalt and crowded apartment buildings.
He grimaced when he parked the car next to cracked sidewalk. “I shouldn’t have brought the damn fancy car. Fred will kill me if anything happens to it. Hang on.” He got out and walked straight into an alley. When he returned his cuffs were rolled to his elbows and he looked rumpled and dangerous.
Sian got out of the car, raising her brows.
“I asked Creed to watch the car. This is his turf,” Luke said.
Sian glimpsed a tall thin man with a tattoo snaking up his neck and onto his right cheekbone. Fierce hazel eyes burned hers. “He’s…” She shivered.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “But he owes me a favour.”
Luke put his arm around her. In her dress, still flushed from their encounter, she felt vulnerable and very female.
Luke stayed close to her, his clothing brushing hers as he led her into the closest apartment building, through a door overlapped with multiple graffiti.
“Grand Central Station for art-teists,” Luke said.
The foyer smelt of piss, with carpet the consistency of fur balls. The walls were the same yellowish as the single hanging bulb.
She could hear shouts, sobs and singing, smelt spicy tacos and sour garbage.
“This is where my Mom and I lived, until I came to live with you,” Luke said.
She nodded. “I figured. But if I’m supposed to push you away from me because of your humble beginnings—”
Luke hesitated on the stairs and then reached out and covered a hand print on the wall. It looked like something one of the graffiti artists had done until Sian understood it had been made with dried blood.
Her throat closed. She looked at Luke.
“My blood. Mine,” he said. “One of Mom’s boyfriends spilled some.”
Sian covered Luke’s hand with her own.
“I hope you punched the bastard out,” she said.
Luke gave her a shy look. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
He took her hand and they returned to the car, Luke holding the door for her and treating her with the courtesy he’d always shown her, as if he’d grown up a gentleman. But hadn’t he? At root, a gentleman protected people he cared about.
This time they drove towards the home they shared and Sian let her head fall against the cushion.
“I have this fantasy,” Luke said.
“Ummm?”
“I take you to this private club Taz introduced me to a while back.” Luke glanced at her, his gaze moving over her kiss-swollen lips to the tangle of her hair, loosed from the neat arrangement, wild from his hands. “When we enter, you take off your clothing.”
She tensed a little at the idea, even though a tingle shot through her pussy, still swollen from sex.
He gave one of his careful smiles. “I know you aren’t ready for that kind of scene now.”
“Especially if Taz would be there.”
He caught the subtext. His face hardened. “I’ll never share you with him or any man. But I don’t say if we ever go to that place he wouldn’t see you.”
See her without her clothes, he meant, as Luke’s submissive lover.
“You’re right, I’d have to be ready for something like that.”
He reached out casually and cupped a hand over her damp pussy, squeezing gently. She inhaled sharply and automatically separated her legs so he had access.
“You’re closer than you think to your submission.”
“Yes.” No point in denying it. “What do you envision happening at this club?”
Luke’s eyes were hot as he looked at her, taking in her excitement. “When you were naked, wearing nothing but some peridot drops from your nipple clamps, I’d lead you into a room with a spanking bench.”
He flicked up the dress and began to caress her throbbing body. She moaned, pushing into his tormenting fingers.
“I’d cuff you to the bench and then I’d sit down in a leather armchair. You’d be slick and nervous, your beautiful body fully exposed to anyone who entered the room.”
And he was evil because the thought stimulated her as much as his fingers playing with her.
“There’s a house slave there, a pretty woman. I’d have her paddle your ass and then she’d kneel under you and lick your pussy while I watched.”
Sian sucked in her breath. God! She’d never pictured something like that. “I’m not into women,” she said.
“You’d discover that a warm mouth on your cunt would make you hot regardless of it being a woman.” His voice hardened. “I won’t let another man touch what’s mine. They can watch—oh, that turns you on, doesn’t it, kitty?”
After feeling so uncertain with men, so unattractive, with him she knew she’d never feel that way, with Luke she’d be safe and wanted…and beautiful.
“Lift those knees,” he ordered, reaching into the glove compartment for the vibrator. He switched it on and drove it ruthlessly into her. She shifted her legs open even wider, kept on the edge.
“If you come, I’ll spank you,” Luke said. “And not in my bed this time. I’ll take you to the club and put you over my knee and do it in front of an appreciative audience.”
The thought of that both scared her and aroused her, so her legs trembled as the excess energy in her body overcame her. She was on the verge and he was her delicious master, forcing her to hold back until he gave the word or touch of approval.
He drove at a deliberately sedate pace, glancing at her from time to time, taking in how desperate she was, how beyond caring about how wanton she must appear.
When they finally arrived at the house he undid both their safety belts and then came around and lifted her from the car, placing her on the engine hood, the toy still inside her, whirring busily.
“Come.” He tapped her bare ass.
“Yes!” She clenched around the vibrator, warm contractions working through her deliciously.
After, she lay gasping against the sleek car. Luke pulled out the vibrator slowly, teasing her with it again so she clenched, moaning in the aftershocks of pleasure.
He unzipped himself and pushed inside, fucking her at a leisurely pace, plastering her body against the hood, wrapping his fist in her hair possessively. The slow drag and slide of his penis worked on her again, so she was hot and wanting, tightening around him with every stroke.
“What do you say?” he asked.
“Thank you…” she managed in a drowsy voice, focused on her neediness. “Thank you for letting me come.”
“Good girl.”
How could she ever deny herself this pleasure, this man who mastered her in a way she’d never imagined she’d ever crave?
“I’m…” His voice broke. “I’m going to ask you to marry me. Uh, in a certain, special, as-yet forbidden location.”
“What?”
But he just went on, not explaining himself. “I’m going to give you a little time to think about it, but I’m going to be family with you.”
He filled her and she rode the scalding wash of another climax, given to her by him, his body, his control.
Chapter Thirteen
“The big ‘M’,” Dharma said, taking a gulp of her coconut latte as if it were whisky. “Luke pushed for that? Wow.”
“Not all men are commitment shy,” Sian said.
“Apparently.”
“So what did you tell him?”
“I, uh, didn’t speak for a long time. Not in coherent sentences.”
Dharma’s lips curved. “Uh-huh.”
Sian was impressed with how much meaning her best friend could load into one facial expression.
“All right, let’s regroup.”
“I’m not sure I can do that. I think I may be past the point of no return,” Sian said. “Maybe it was the moment I saw him trying to play a piano when we were both still kids.”
Dharma’s eyes misted for a moment, but then snapped back like a rubber band a second later. She was a romantic, but not a push-over romantic. “You’ve dealt with being his cougar.”
Sian tugged her hair. The word…embarrassed her. “Please.”
“Sorry, still a tender spot.”
“Yep.” She decided that this conversation needed two things—chocolate and caffeine, so she grabbed an espresso brownie, cut it in half and shared it.
“And wow,” Dharma said around her bite of brownie, “you even faced down that dragon of a neighbour. I bet she’s spread it all over your posh neighbourhood, how you and cute boy are brother and sister, living in sin.”