The bucket she pulled the bottle from is filled with ice, so when I take the first bubbly sip, its sweet and cool going down my throat. It might be the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. Except Luke, nothing is as delicious as that hot piece of man candy.
“You’re making a lot of really sexy noisy over there, Little Minx,” Luke chuckles, reaching his hand across the table to rest atop mine. “What were you thinking about?”
I try to give him a coy smile, but let’s face it, I suck at being sexy. And then giving him a wink I say, “I was thinking about how delicious you and the champagne are.”
“Cheesy,” he laughs.
Taking another sip of my drink, Emily approaches with our plates, and oh my God, I love this man. As she sets my plate in front of me, I see it isn’t some fancy food I couldn’t even pronounce, it isn’t even cohesive, instead it’s a hodgepodge of all my favorite foods. Bacon, lots of bacon, half a grilled cheese sandwich cut diagonally, apple slices that have been tossed in cinnamon and sugar, and then beautiful plump yeast rolls. I might be crying again.
I don’t waste any time digging in and Luke does the same. We eat in companionable silence until I’m satisfied my stomach won’t be growling anymore, and then we both engage in small talk before Luke changes the subject.
“So, I remember you asked me something a while back, and we were very rudely interrupted.” I’m not sure what he’s talking about so raising an eyebrow I just wait. “You said you were a horrible girlfriend, which is false by the way, and said you needed to know more about me, and I want to tell you.”
I rub my palms together as if we are finally getting to the good stuff, and then I nod for him to continue. For over an hour he tells me everything he can possibly think of about himself, his past, everything. He tells me about his parents, and how he never knew his father, but his mother was an amazing woman. He talks about how he grew up with his mother and several cousins inside the Diablo gang, and then one day his mother went out on a supply run and was attacked. She was badly injured and didn’t make it. That was when he was seventeen, and when Mateo really took him under his wing. He told me his favorite color is navy blue, which I thought was a weird favorite color, but who I am to judge. He also told me two of his three cousins that he grew up with had both been killed in attacks by the church on supply runs in the last two years. I felt an immense amount of guilt about that, like somehow I was responsible having been a member of the Church of The Way, but he’d brushed it off and told me that was ridiculous. He’d told me how when he was eight a lightning bolt struck near him in a field behind The Castle and he couldn’t hear for two days. They thought he would never hear again, and then suddenly it returned. He told me everything, and then when he couldn’t think of another thing, he asked me to do the same, and I did.
Another hour later, Luke had walked me back to the carriage before escorting me inside. The ride back was peaceful, and we might have made out a little. When we got back, we’d walked upstairs to our room before changing into sleep clothes and then climbing into bed. We laid there, cuddling late into the night, and at no point did Luke pressure me to get more intimate than that. I know he couldn’t know how much I appreciated that, but I did. I’d grown up in a church where every other Sunday the Vater would preach about the purpose of sex, and how important it was to God that it only be between husband and wife. So while I wasn’t certain if that was true, part of me did want to wait. Part of me wanted him right this second don’t get me wrong, but the other part of me couldn’t stop thinking about how special it would be if we waited.
And that’s exactly what I fell asleep thinking, and it brought about some very special dreams.
chapter 20 - A Few Tricks Up Our Sleeves
ANNA
A week had passed since Vater Henry woke up and he seemed to be doing much better. His voice was officially working, and he had answered all our questions. Well, he’d answered all Mateo and Lord Paul’s questions. I hadn’t been there because no one saw fit to come get me, but whatever. I’m not bitter or anything.
When I had gone to speak to the Vater, it was just me and Luke in the room, relieving Tommy so he could go grab some dinner. I had asked him everything that had weighed heavily on my mind, and his responses had not reassured me. Mostly I think he just wants revenge. He wants to see David removed from his position and destroyed in front of everyone. Not very Christian like if you ask me, but who I am to talk.
Nothing much had happened since then until this morning, when the Osage had paraded into town. We had all been sitting at breakfast when their Chief, Dakota, had come strolling in as if he had been here this whole time. He’d apologized for his previous actions, and said we had his and his tribes full support. Well full support to the extent that he’d brought one hundred of his best fighters. Which was great, because that brought our total to just over four hundred. That’s more than David has, at least trained, and assuming the rest of the members of the ,hurch don’t take up arms against us. There’s
