He opens the door almost straightaway and my legs wobble a little when he comes into view. My man never fails to make me swoon and tonight is no different. I step forward to move closer, but my damn heel causes me to stumble. Or maybe it’s the alcohol. Either way, I end up falling against him.
His arms stop my fall and a moment later, I’m in those arms with his eyes focused intently on mine. “You’ve had a good night,” he murmurs.
“Bloody heels,” I mutter.
“I thought you were going back to my house?” No smile. No sexy voice. He almost sounds mad, which just confuses me.
“Why are you cranky with me?”
“I’m not.”
Gah, still no smile.
He’s giving me nothing to go on here and my alcohol-muddled mind can’t work fast enough to figure him out.
“Luke, you’re being weird. Please tell me what I’ve done. Unless of course you’re still mad at me for this afternoon. I’m sorry I upset you, bu—”
He places a finger to my lips. “Stop thinking, Callie, because you’re adding two plus two and getting five. All I said was that I thought you’d be at my place now.”
“Yes, but you didn’t use your Luke voice.” God, now I sound like a whinger.
“What the fuck is my Luke voice?”
I push against his chest to move out of his hold. He doesn’t let me go. Doesn’t even loosen his grip on me. I do the only thing I can—I kind of smack his chest. Well, you couldn’t really call it a smack, because he’s not giving me much space between us for that to happen. “Don’t use that tone on me!”
His eyes flash with frustration. “Jesus, what tone am I using?”
My brain still hasn’t kicked in fully, so I struggle to explain myself. “It’s the one you used to use on me all the time. Your frustrated one.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair. “That’s because I am frustrated with you. I asked you one question, which you still haven’t answered, and we’ve ended up discussing voices and tones.”
“Let me go,” I demand.
“No.”
“Oh, my God, Luke, you are so infuriating sometimes!” I want to stamp my feet like a petulant child, but I refrain.
“I’m infuriating?”
“Yes! I came here so you could drive me to your house. So we could have some time together. And you just stand here arguing with me.”
“If you’d just said that we could have avoided all this.”
I frown as my brain begins to put shit together. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back to your house?”
“I wasn’t sure what to think.” His voice is still tinged with that hard tone from a moment ago.
“Luke… of course I’m coming back to your house. You don’t get it, do you? I love you and I crave time with you. I’ll never say no when you ask me to sleep over or come for dinner or hang out with you and Sean. I’ll never say no to you for anything.” The words just tumble out of my mouth and I’m helpless to stop my declaration of love slipping in there.
His hold on me tightens so much I’m pressed hard against his body right before his mouth claims mine in a kiss that marks me as his.
It’s fierce and rough and demanding.
It’s everything.
I surrender to him completely.
And although he doesn’t tell me he loves me back, I know from this kiss that he feels it.
A little over two hours later, he spoons me after we’ve had sex. His arms are firm around me and I’m pretty sure I won’t be shifting from this position for the entire time I’m asleep.
Exactly how I like it.
“I’m not great at discussing my feelings, Callie,” he says into the darkness.
“Yeah, you kinda suck at it, but I feel like you’re improving.”
“Well, it’s hard not to improve when the woman I love keeps fucking pushing me.”
My heart soars.
I turn in his embrace, which he must have anticipated because he loosens his hold enough for me to do it. Kissing him, I say, “You do?”
He doesn’t say anything, just watches me so intensely that it sends a shiver along my skin. He then catches my lips again. And he kisses the hell out of me.
It’s the kind of kiss that goes on and on and on.
I could live in this kiss forever.
I could die in this kiss and never regret a moment in my life.
When his lips finally leave mine, he says, “I love you. I’m a stubborn bastard, though, so I’ll probably fuck this up along the way. Don’t give up on me, baby.”
I’m breathless and my mind is stumbling its way back to reality after that kiss, but I don’t mistake what I hear in those words. Luke might not have agreed with me that he needed to let his anger go, but he sure as hell heard me.
And he loves me.
26
Luke
I eye the old woman in front of me. She’s a firecracker; that’s for sure. The other thing I know for sure? She loves Callie as if she were her own daughter.