* * * * *
We were face-to-face, my hands pressed against his chest, my leg wrapped around his hip, his fingers stroking the back of my thigh.
I had my eyes closed and even though I’d come down from my post-getting what was between us orgasm, my heart hadn’t stopped beating too fast. In fact, it was pounding so hard I was certain Luke could hear it and feel it.
“You scared?” he murmured.
Yep, he could feel it.
“Yes,” I whispered and do not ask me why, I told him the truth.
I was scared. I was scared out of my mind.
“Of me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered honestly again and I actually started trembling.
He stopped stroking my leg, his fingers slid over my bottom, his arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me closer to the heat of him.
“Finally,” he muttered, “I’m gettin’ somewhere.”
I was so screwed.
He certainly is getting somewhere and I like where he’s getting! Good Ava said dreamily.
I don’t think your fuck buddies idea is working, Bad Ava told me on a huff.
I ignored Good Ava and Bad Ava and Luke held me tight until the tremors slid away.
Then I called, “Luke?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“What was with the handcuffs?”
His arm got even tighter. “If I had to, I was gonna cuff you to me again.” His head came up and he kissed my shoulder then he settled again and said softly, “I didn’t have to.”
Hell and damnation.
I just kept giving myself away.
Chapter Twenty
Straighter
It had been a long and emotional night so when I woke up, I still felt asleep and thought I was dreaming. Either that or I was in my pretend happy place. Those were my excuses for what I did and I was going with them.
See I woke up before Luke. I woke up happy (yes happy, it was morning, I hadn’t had the chance to put my defenses up yet), warm and post-night of mind-boggling life-altering sex relaxed, curled into his side and the first thing my eyes saw was the wall of his chest. There were a lot of things about Luke I liked (read: pretty much everything), but I liked his chest especially. So, since I liked it so much and I was living a dream, I leaned down and kissed it.
I decided I also liked his neck so once I was done kissing his chest I shifted up and kissed his neck. Since I was at his neck, I saw that I had, indeed, given him a hickey the night before and even though that was silly, juvenile and highly embarrassing, secretly I liked my mark on him so I kissed that too.
You also like his jaw, Good Ava reminded me.
She was right. I did like his jaw. Luke had a great, strong jaw.
So I kissed Luke’s jaw.
You also like his… Bad Ava started but Good Ava threw her halo at Bad Ava, it bonked off Bad Ava’s head so Bad Ava snapped at Good Ava, Hey!
“Babe,” Luke said softly, his voice husky with sleep, his arms coming around me.
I lifted my head to look at him, planting my hands on his chest, moving closer to his face and still in my dreamy, pretend happy place, I smiled and whispered, “Good morning.”
That’s when I noticed his face. It was soft and his eyes were sleepy, warm, inky and completely unguarded.
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stop right there.
Before I could react, retreat or even take the moment to memorize that look leveled at me, his hands came to my hair, pulling it off my shoulders to bunch it the back of my head. One hand shifted my hair to his other hand and the fingers of his free hand drifted down my back. His head came up and he brushed his lips against mine.
He settled back into the pillows and his warm, unguarded eyes roamed my face as I lay there frozen. Good Ava was twirling with delight, a la Maria in the mountains at the beginning of The Sound of Music while Bad Ava had her face in her hands and was shaking her head.
Luke’s eyes settled back on mine and, softly, he murmured, “Christ, you’re beautiful.”
At his words my blood turned to ice. The pretend happy place around me exploded and I found I was in the polar arctic, surrounded by snow and wasteland.
What was I doing? What, on earth, was I doing? How had I let it get this far?
No.
No, no, no.
This was wrong. It wasn’t right, it was very, very wrong.
What I was, and forever would be, was Fatty, Fatty, Four-Eyes.
What I was not was beautiful.
Without a word, I jerked away from him and rolled to a seated position on the side of the bed, nothing but escape on my mind. I had no idea where I was going but I was going there and fast. I almost had my feet on the floor when his arm sliced around my waist and I was yanked back, across his lap.
“Where are you…?” he started but I was struggling, out-of-control kicking and hitting, my fists connecting with his flesh.
I had struggled against Luke before but not like this. It was like it was life or death. And in a way it was life or death because what I just learned about Luke was just like dying and all I knew was I had to get away.
“What the fuck?” Luke clipped, getting hold of my wrists and forcing my back to the bed using his torso. My hips still in his lap and my legs useless, he half-pinned me, pressing my wrists against the bed at the sides of my head.
“Get off me!” I shrieked, desperate, panicked and out of my mind.
“Jesus,” he muttered, staring at my face.
I bucked and pushed against his hands at my wrists. “Get off!”
“Ava, talk to me,” Luke demanded. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Off!” I cried, my voice hitching as tears clogged my throat. I choked them down and started fighting again. Surprisingly, I got a wrist free and somehow slid away but he yanked me back, rolled full on top of me and caught my wrists again, jerking them over my head.
“Let me go,” I said.
“Talk to me.”
“Let… me… go!” I yelled and bucked viciously.
“Talk, damnit!” he barked in my face.
I stilled at the fury in his voice and, for some reason, talked. “This game… or whatever it is you’re playing with me… is bad enough but don’t you ever lie to me, Lucas Stark.” At that point, I was ignoring the fact that I lied freely to him.
But mine were fibs. This was huge.
His body went solid and his fingers tightened on my wrists. “Woman, you better fuckin’ explain yourself,” he warned and even though a chill went through me at his tone, I forged ahead.
“I know I’m a challenge, I know how you guys like that. You even told me last night you were enjoying this.” I closed my eyes tight at the memory, opened them again and then went on. “I am such a dork. I should have just given in right off so you could get your fill and get rid of me.” I stopped talking and shook my head in disbelief, at myself, too caught up in my own drama to feel the dangerous, angry electricity emanating from Luke and hitting the room. “You have what you want, Luke. You like to be straight, okay this is straight. We’ll stop playing this game. You win. You and I both know I’m not going anywhere, no matter how much I fight it. Take what you want and then leave me alone when you’re done with me but in the meantime, don’t fucking lie to me.”
When I was done, he spoke and his words came through his teeth. “We got a lot to go over here, babe. We’ll start with when you thought I lied to you.”
I didn’t make him wait for an answer. “You just called me beautiful. We both know that isn’t true. You want me to clue in? You clue in, Luke. Hello? I’ve had a crush on you since I first saw you. I wish it wasn’t true but the fact of the matter is, I’m a sure thing. You don’t have to lie and tell me I’m beautiful.”
“You’ve got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” he was still talking through his teeth.
“Oh yeah? And why’s that? Luke, you’ve seen me. You’ve known me since I was eight years old.
”
“Yeah, I have, and you’ve been beautiful since you were eight years old.”
My eyes went instantly wide and my mouth dropped open. Then I snapped it shut.
I couldn’t believe he was still playing that game.
“Fuck off!” I yelled and bucked again.
He didn’t go anywhere, he just stared at me.
If it was possible, he sounded even angrier when he said, “Shit, they really did a number on you, didn’t they?”
“Who?”
“That mother and those fuckin’ sisters of yours.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh please,” I said and then made a noise that sounded like “foof”.
“Do I have to drag you in front of a mirror?”
“I know what I look like, Luke,” I snapped.
“Doesn’t sound like it to me, babe.”
I bucked again. “Get off.”
Luke didn’t move. “My Ma said it, your Dad said it. Jesus, even my Dad said it. You were always the prettiest one of that fuckin’ cat’s den. Why do you think they were all so goddamn mean to you?”
“Hardly,” I snapped. “I was fat and ugly, I had bad hair and I wore glasses for God’s sake.”
“You were never more than chubby, babe, not until you grew older and they had plenty of time to get under your skin. And you had beautiful hair, fantastic eyes and the best fuckin’ smile I’d ever seen in my life. You still do.”
I stopped struggling and stared at him mainly because he sounded like he meant it and I couldn’t believe that. Even though I couldn’t believe it, nothing about him was suggesting he was feeding me a line.
He went on. “Worse for them, you were smarter, funnier and nicer. People liked to be around you.”
Ho-ly crap.
He sounded like he meant that too.
“My Dad used to say that the man who got you would be the luckiest and unluckiest man alive because he’d have you for a lifetime but he’d also have to put up with them.”
All of a sudden, I was finding it hard to breathe, like I’d been kicked in the gut.
“Your Dad said that about… about… me?” I asked breathlessly.
“It was the only thing he and I ever agreed about.”
Okay, it was then I totally forgot how to breathe.
“Now let’s talk about the rest of the shit that came out of your mouth,” Luke continued.
Uh-oh.
I wasn’t even finished dealing with all he’d just said. I didn’t want to get into me blurting out that I’d had a crush on him since forever, I was a sure thing and that he’d won.
I was such a fucking dork!
Immediately, I said, “I need to brush my teeth.”
His eyes narrowed.
“No fuckin’ way,” he clipped.
“I need quiet space,” I tried.
He shook his head.
“Luke, you told me any time I needed something –”
“Quiet, Ava.”
I decided, from his deathly tone, it was prudent that I be quiet.
Luke stared at me while I mentally zipped my lips and then he started talking. “I’ve been straight with you since the beginning, something, I might add, you haven’t been with me. But I’ll be even straighter ‘cause it’s obvious you are just not fuckin’ gettin’ it.”
Oh no, not this again. Luke being “straighter”.
Ee-yikes.
“I want this…” he said and he let go of my wrists. His finger touched me on the forehead then slid across it and down the side of my face. “And I want this…” he fell to the side, his hand moved down my body and I sucked in breath when he cupped me between my legs. His hand stayed there a second before it glided down the inside of my thigh, pushing it open so he could roll on top of me again, settling between my legs. “I’m not stupid, I know your heart’s involved in this and I’ve never, not once in all the time you’ve known me, given you the idea that I won’t handle it with care.”
Oh… my… God.
Someone, shoot me, kidnap me, cuff me to a sink, anyone! My mind screamed.
“Luke –” I interrupted.
“I’m talkin’,” he bit off.
I shut up.
“I don’t put up with the shit you’ve handed me the last week because you’re some fuckin’ piece I want to conquer. I put up with it because I’ve liked you since you were eight years old. You made me laugh. You understood me. You looked out for me when no one else fuckin’ bothered and you acted like you thought I could move mountains and I needed someone who thought that about me because my Dad sure as fuck didn’t.”
“Please, stop,” I whispered because now I really needed quiet space in order to process this latest episode with Luke from waking to now, all of it.
He ignored me. “I never expected I’d want you in my bed but I always knew I wanted you in my life. The fuckin’ second you looked at my mouth in the office, though, I knew I would stop at nothin’ to get you in my bed. And I thought then too that for the first time in my life I might do somethin’ both my Dad and I would be proud of, and that’s bein’ with you.”
My throat went so tight, the breath I sucked in sounded ragged.
He didn’t just say that. Did he?
“Get this into your head Ava, I’m not gonna do anything to fuck it up between us but I’m also not gonna let you do anything to fuck it up either.”
“Luke, I have to get out of here,” I said in a quiet voice and it sounded like a desperate plea mainly because it was one.
“I told you once, you’re not goin’ anywhere. And now I’ll tell you the rest too.”
Oh shit.
There was more. I didn’t want to know the rest.
Unfortunately, Luke was on a roll. “This is the way it is for us right now. I know you fixed this place up but I’m not givin’ up the loft so we’re gonna have to work somethin’ out about where we live, eat, sleep and fuck. We last, you’re gonna have to give up the Range Rover, they’re dangerous because they roll easy and I don’t like you drivin’ it. We go the distance, we’re havin’ a small wedding, I’m not fuckin’ dancin’ and I want three kids, all boys, but if we have a girl she’s not datin’ until she’s twenty-five, especially if she looks like you, got me?”
I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, I’d lost the ability to speak.
His face got closer. “Do you still think I’m playin’ games?”
I shook my head. One thing was for certain, Luke was not playing games.
And now I didn’t know how to feel about that.
Great, like I needed something new to worry about.
He rolled off of me and onto his back, putting one hand to his forehead. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered to the ceiling. “All those times I sat in the office laughing my ass off at stories of Lee, Eddie, Hank and Vance. They should have fuckin’ medals.”
I thought that was kind of insulting, not only to me but to my friends. However, I thought it best at that juncture not to share that opinion. Instead, I pulled the comforter around my naked body, got up on an elbow to look at him and decided, since he seemed to be done, to find some quiet space as soon as possible.
In order to do that, I asked softly, “Can I brush my teeth now?”
His eyes cut to me.
Eek!
Maybe he wasn’t done.
“No, Ava, you can’t fuckin’ brush your teeth.”
All righty then. There you go, he wasn’t done.
I shouldn’t have had to ask permission to brush my teeth but I was going to give in on that considering the air hadn’t yet lost any of its dangerous electricity. Not to mention, Luke just announced he was already deciding where we were going to live, what car was safe for me to drive, what kind of wedding and how many children we were going to have.
And all of this, I had to admit, made my stomach feel melty.
“Come here,” he ordered, voice gruff and still pissed off.
That made my stomach feel even more melty.
&n
bsp; Even so, I hesitated. “Are you still mad at me?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah,” he answered.
“Maybe I should give you some quiet space,” I told him, trying to be helpful but with the ulterior motive that quiet space for Luke meant quiet space for me.
His hand shot out and grabbed my forearm, giving it a yank. I toppled onto him and he rolled, taking me with him so I was on the bottom. Then he shifted his hips until my legs opened and he fell between.
It was at that moment, all hope of quiet space died.
“You caused it, you’re gonna help me work it out and that’s what I intend to do, by fuckin’ you so hard you’ll still feel me inside you even when I’m gone.”
“Wow,” I whispered, yes, out loud.
His head bent, his lips came to mine and he muttered, “You better fuckin’ believe it.”
And he did exactly what he said he would do.
And when he was done, it was so good I thought if we “went the distance” (as Luke put it) pissing him off every morning might be the way to go.
* * * * *
I was sitting on my wicker loveseat on my porch, my heels on the edge, finishing up a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese, drinking a diet and trying (and failing) to get my head together.
This was partly because everything that happened last night and this morning was too much to get together and partly because, between my legs, I could still feel Luke even though he was gone (and, let me tell you, it was a nice feeling).
There was a chill in the air but I had a space heater going. I’d also thrown on some fleecy sweatpants, wooly socks and a hoodie so I was comfy, snugly warm even though I was feeling thoroughly fucked (both literally and figuratively).
Oo, I’m happy, Good Ava sighed.
What I want to know is, Bad Ava asked. Does this mean we’re not going to get to sleep with Ren?
Oh for crap’s sake.
Bad Ava was such a slut.
Luke was upstairs taking a shower while I was on the porch freaking out. I was freaking out because I believed everything Luke said. He was too brutally honest to be lying. Which meant I had to rethink everything about my life and who I was and that was an impossible task without cookies and Sissy.
What I did know was that I was someone special to Luke and I always had been, just like he was and always had been to me. And that knowledge made my word tilt so much, I was certain I was going to fall off.
Rock Chick Revenge Page 33