Including one possibility I wanted to pursue tonight.
Either Luke wasn’t on the same page with me, or he was doing that not rushing me gentlemanly crap. Not that I didn’t appreciate it. I’d been pushed and coerced into the directions other people wanted, but I needed this as much as he did. And I was starting to believe him about looking for long term. After seeing his brother with Emerson, I suspected it was a Malloy family trait that they saw what they desired and went for it. And Luke wanted me.
I wasn’t so sure about the whole forever thing, but I sure wanted him, too.
The penthouse was eerily still as we walked through it, and though we had a magnificent view of the Strip through the expanse of glass on the far side of the great room, we couldn’t hear any of it. Luke didn’t turn on the lights as we entered, the outside illuminating the room well enough for us to navigate it. It was as if we were enclosed in our own little cocoon. Just Luke and me and enough sexual tension that I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through another lonely night alone.
“Well…” Luke said, his deep quiet, voice matching the silence as we stopped at my room. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” I repeated. My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I gazed up at him. My heart slammed against my chest wall as I contemplated the coming kiss and what I wanted to say to him.
His hands slid into my hair, cupping my throat, while his thumbs caressed the sensitive skin near my ear. My breathing stuttered as my anticipation grew. Fear twined with it as I imagined him shooting me down.
“This was the best day of my life,” he told me. “Being able to spend time with you, live life with you. I want that forever.”
“Luke…” I whispered. “You don’t know—”
“I do know. I knew it the second I saw you.”
He started to lean in, and I wrapped my arms around him, going to my toes and pulling him closer. “You felt it?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too, Luke. I… I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” I whispered against his lips. “I want you.”
“You’re sure?”
“You’re sure I’m yours?”
“More than I have been about anything else in my life.”
“Then take me to bed.”
Luke moved so fast that if I’d changed my mind, there wouldn’t have been time. Not that I would have. I knew what I wanted here, and that was to be with Luke and have him be my first.
He swung me up in his arms and headed for his room in long strides. A cloud of bedding surrounded me as he dropped me, yes dropped me, on the mattress then climbed over me. His arms and legs caged me in as he stared down at me through the shadows, his eyes almost glinting as they picked up the lights coming in through the windows.
“If I take you, if I claim you, you’re mine. All mine. I’m not sharing you, and I’m not letting you go. Do you understand?”
My tongue skimmed over my bottom lip. That should scare me. Shouldn’t I be frightened of a man claiming he’d own me? Wasn’t that what I’d been running from? But Luke didn’t scare me. Instead, a flutter went off in my belly at the idea of belonging to him forever.
One side of my mouth lifted. “Like you would give me up or share me now? Like I don’t already belong to you?”
“I see we’re on the same page,” he growled. His fingers went to the buttons of my shirt. I covered his hands, stopping him.
“But…if I give over to you, you’re mine, too, and I don’t share. Do you understand that? I don’t do double standards, Malloy.”
“I would never cheat on you,” he rasped. “I can’t even imagine anything or anyone that would take my attention from you. Even while we’ve been apart, you’ve consumed me. And besides that… I don’t know what kind of men have been in your life, but I’m not like them. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and that’s it.” He kissed my neck, making a path from my collarbone up to my ear, while he deftly released the buttons on my blouse.
Other men? Did he think I’d had other lovers? I thought we were already clear on that.
I covered his hands again, and he lifted up to stare at me once more. His brows drew together.
“Luke, I’m… I haven’t been with any other men. I thought you knew that.” My teeth sank into my lip, worried. Maybe, he didn’t want a virgin. Somehow, that didn’t ring true.
He chuckled. “Trust me, I know. I’ve had a hard-on ever since you spewed it out at me.”
Oh.
“Oh. So, what about afterward, when I’m not anymore? Then it goes away?”
He scoffed. “Hardly,” he laughed. “Afterward, you’ll be mine. And you’ll be lucky if we aren’t fucking on every accommodating surface we can find, flat or not, as often as possible.”
Oh. Oh! My body went all soft and wet at his assertion—well, softer and wetter.
The things he said just fried my brain, sizzled all circuits and sent me scrambling for new connections. My lips moved, trying to form words while he finished unbuttoning me and shoved the shirt down my shoulders. At the same time, he kissed all the exposed flesh he found along the way.
“I think I like that idea,” I gasped.
“Good,” he chuckled against my skin. He flicked open the front release on my bra, shoved aside a cup then drew his tongue over the puckered peak. “Then we have a plan. I claim you, you’re mine, I’m yours, and we fuck like proverbial bunnies from now until the end of time.”
“Uh-huh,” I cried out as he sucked on that nipple, sending ribbons of white-hot
