Hell, I’m stiff as a damn board. It’s been over two years since I slept with anyone, since I got pregnant with Olivia, and the thought of fucking Luke fills me with a confusing mixture of lust and fear and apprehension I can’t possibly put into words. “It’s… been a while,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “For me.”
Luke pauses, his hands still, and for a second, I think he’s going to change his mind and walk away. But instead, he just utters the word, “Fuck,” under his breath. Then he speaks low in his throat, his mouth near my ear. “I don’t know what the hell happened, Red, who the hell let you go, but he was a fucking moron, because I can’t get you out of my mind. I can’t get the taste of you off my lips, and I don’t want to.”
Before I can say anything, he’s kissing me again behind my ear, his lips on that place that has always been so sensitive. He sweeps my hair from my neck, pulling it to kiss the nape and arousal courses through my body.
There are a million reasons I should say no to this. There are a million reasons I should not sleep with him, a million reasons I should find someone my own age, someone responsible, someone appropriate, someone settled.
Someone who’s not Luke.
But Luke’s touch, his fingers running down my arms, his lips on my skin, his hands reaching around, palming my breasts… his touch makes me weak-kneed. It makes my head cloudy, my brain shut down, and my thoughts consumed with lust.
“I… want… you,” I choke out, my words stupid. As if it weren’t already apparent that I wanted him by the way my breath catches in my throat, by the way I practically pant with the anticipation of his hands on me, by the way I moan as he slips my shirt over my head.
He cups my breasts in his hands, kissing me, his lips on my neck, on my shoulders, and I’m practically drenched. I want him now – fast and hard, fucking me with abandon. I don’t want foreplay. I don’t want anything but him inside me.
“Fuck, Red,” he says, pushing his erection against my ass. “Do you feel that? Do you know how hard you make me? Shit, I’ve been thinking about my cock inside you since the day I first looked at you.”
A moan, louder than it should be, escapes my lips, and Luke growls again. He pulls my hair to the side, sending a shock of pain through me, intermingled with lust and desire. “Fuck me,” I beg, surprising myself with my own words. I’ve never said anything like that before to a man, never been so consumed with need and want.
Luke yanks my jeans over my hips, and I kick them across the floor, irritated by the fact that I’m still clothed. Standing behind me, he reaches between my legs with his fingers and slips inside me in one movement, filling me, but not the way I want to be filled.
“You’re soaking wet,” he says, his voice gravely.
“I want you now, Luke.”
“Shit. Do you know how hot it is, hearing you say that?”
I can’t think, not with what he’s doing with those fingers of his, stroking me inside, pressing against the textured wall inside me, sending waves of pleasure coursing through my body that threaten to completely undo me.
And I don’t want to be undone right now. I don’t want to come on his fingers, or on his tongue, like before.
I want him to fuck me. I want to come on his cock.
“Stop,” I say, the word barely audible, more of a moan than an actual word. “Stop.”
He pauses, slips his fingers from me, and I can feel his body stiffen behind me. Spinning me around, he looks at me, his brow furrowed. “This whole thing,” he says. “We can stop if you want to, Red.”
I laugh, unbuckling his belt and pulling his jeans open forcefully. I want to tear them open, rip the fabric like he ripped my panties from my hips earlier. When he pulls his shirt over his head, I run my palms over his chest and down his rippled abdomen, admiring him. He’s trim and muscled and so damn gorgeous I can hardly stand it.
“You,” he says, “standing there looking at me like that, is killing me, woman.”
“Get these stupid pants off,” I whisper as I try to pull his jeans down his hips, wanting him in a way that makes me feel clumsy and drunk and overwhelmed.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls me against him forcefully, his hand at the nape of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair, mouth on me as his tongue finds mine. He kisses me hard, rough, like he can’t get enough of me. He palms my breast with one hand, his finger rolling over my nipple until I’m so far gone I think I’m going to come from his touch.
Then he steps away from me, smiling. “Now I’ll take these stupid pants off,” he says, smiling as he strips.
And then he stands there, naked as a jaybird.
Naked and hot as sin, muscled from working the orchard and fighting fires and—oh shit, I can’t remember what the hell else he does. Oh my God, I realize, I don’t know a lick about the man standing buck naked in the middle of my kitchen, not really.
Buck naked with a raging hard-on.
A holy-shit, huge-as-hell erection.
I stand there gaping, watching as he runs his hand over his length all the way to the tip. “Well, Red?” he asks.