The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  The face Sawyer made yanked deep-seated laughter from Julian’s chest.

  Which only seemed to make the situation worse because she poked him in the back. “I probably shouldn’t judge him too harshly. We were both virgins, and it was high school, and clearly that—”

  “I’m a virgin, and I promise you, LeBlanc, the only thing I plan to be when I finally get you naked is thorough.”

  This time, he didn’t wait.

  Julian dragged her flush against him, framed her face with one palm, and slanted his mouth over hers.

  One taste.

  One touch.

  And it was all he needed to know that she was perfect.

  Sawyer melted against him, her nails scraping the back of his neck as she angled closer. Closer, like she’d crawl inside him, if he let her. Closer, like she wanted to be held tight by him, possessed by him.

  Done and done.

  He moved one hand to clutch her ass, then stood with her in his arms. A moan broke from her lips, and it had to be the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Sweet and sexy and his.

  “Hold onto me,” he whispered against her lips, turning them both until her ass was on the kitchen table and he was stepping between her legs.

  This wasn’t the time or the place, but fire was in his blood, and Julian already knew there’d be no stopping. Four years. He lowered her down with a gentle hand to her shoulder, leveraging her south until he had one hand fisted against the table, beside her head, and the other grazing the curve of her waist.

  “There’s no way you’re a virgin,” Sawyer gasped when he tore his mouth from hers to stamp a kiss on the underside of her chin. “You’re so . . . so—”

  Julian wrapped a hand around hers, pulling it from his shoulder to plant flat on the table, their fingers entwined. “Thorough?” he husked with a chuckle, kissing the base of her throat. “Maybe I care.”

  “O-of course you care.”

  “About you,” he said, pulling back to look down at her face. “Maybe I want you to come so hard, you shatter. Maybe I want you to know that with me, you always come first.”

  “The puns,” she uttered breathlessly, churning her hips restlessly beneath his, “oh, the puns.”

  He stretched her arm upward, forcing an arch to her spine that thrust her breasts into his chest. “It’s why you like me best, huh?” He dropped his mouth to her collarbone, dragging his lips over soft skin that tasted so damn sweet on his tongue. “The puns do it for you.”

  “The puns,” she gasped, “and you, Jules. You do it for me. I lo—”

  “I’m going to pretend this isn’t happening.”

  That voice.

  That voice.

  Like the hounds of hell were waiting to tear him to shreds, Julian slowly looked over his shoulder.

  Nathan Danvers stood in the doorway.

  To his left was Brady Taylor; to his right Gage Harvey.

  Behind them, he spotted Gage’s twin, Owen.

  The men who had treated him like one of their own from the very first time they’d all met.

  His uncles.

  And all of them were staring up at the ceiling, like if they looked at him and Sawyer, they worried their eyes might catch fire.

  “I’m scarred,” Danvers deadpanned, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

  “This scarred you?” said Owen in a tone that implied he seriously doubted the truth of that statement. “You have five girls, Danvers. Just think of what it’s going to be like when they start dating.”

  “Nope. Never going to happen.”

  “He’s delusional,” Brady said, eyes still trained on the ceiling while he elbowed Gage in the side. “We both know that he’s going to crack the second one of them asks to bring a boy to dinner.”

  “Oh, they can bring whoever they want,” Danvers said, “but you can bet your ass I’ll be sitting at the table, polishing a shotgun, when they do.”

  “Anyone else want to let him know that he’s fulfilling every father stereotype there is?” Gage asked.

  “Because you’ll be any better?” taunted Brady with a rough laugh.

  “Have you met my wife?” Gage said with a look over his shoulder. “Any guy who can get through the fortress that is Lizzie Harvey will be good in my book. She’s ferocious.”

  “So’s mine,” said Owen. “Granted, I’ve been blessed with two boys, so . . .”

  “Yeah because that’s so much better,” Danvers muttered, thrusting a finger toward Julian and Sawyer, as if Julian’s existence proved his point completely.

  As one, the group finally dropped their stares.

  Thankfully, Julian had already hustled Sawyer off the table, but that didn’t stop the jokes:

  “Your mom eats at that table, kid,” Brady tsked.

  “At least do the honorable thing and disinfectant it.”

  At Danvers’ comment, Gage nodded sagely. “And be grateful we walked in, and not your parents.”

  “Good news,” said Owen in a droll voice, “at least y’all didn’t break the table. Silver lining and all that.”

  “What silver lining are we talking about?” asked the sweet voice of his childhood.

  His mother.

  And, with that, Julian hoped the floor would just split wide and swallow him hole.

  10

  Sawyer couldn’t sleep.

  Oh, she tried.

  She tried sleeping on her back and on her stomach. At one point in the night, she even dragged a blanket onto the floor to camp out there, as if the hardwood floor would jolt her back into the present.

  But no matter where she sprawled, she couldn’t stop thinking about Julian.

  I haven’t even looked at anyone else since we met.

  God, his voice as he admitted those precious words.

  A deep, confident rumble that struck every one of her chords until she’d felt like she might just come apart. And the way he’d kissed her? Even now, her lips tingled with the memory of him, of them together. The blistering heat and the trembling tension, and the startling realization that Julian was kissing her.

  Before his uncles burst into the kitchen, that is.

  “Go to sleep,” she hissed at herself.

  Instead, she reached for her cell phone, her fingers grasping through the dark room to fumble for the phone.

  One peek at the illuminated screen revealed the time (way too late to still be awake), and her screensaver. A picture of her and Julian at the Lincoln Memorial during their road trip down to New Orleans. Their smiles were identical—wide and brimming with happiness—and Julian had his arms wrapped around Sawyer’s middle.

  He’d been in the process of hauling her up into the air, just to mess with her, but the tourist they’d asked to take the picture hadn’t waited.

  The result was a candid moment where she’d playfully protested, and Jules had snuck her into his arms anyway, and it was love.

  It was love Sawyer read on her face and on his.

  It was love in her heart and, if she wasn’t reading everything way off base, it was love that had prompted Julian’s game of Truth or Truth today.

  Without allowing herself the chance to second guess anything, she typed in her password and tapped into her messages. Julian was, as always, her most recent conversation thread, and she sent him a brief message: Are you awake?

  Their bedrooms shared a wall, and seconds later, she heard the answering ding! that sent her pulse scattering.

  Would he answer?

  Was he passed out, whereas she couldn’t stop reliving every moment from earlier in the afternoon?

  Her breath caught when she heard the creak of a mattress.

  She stared at her phone, waiting for the incoming text.

  It didn’t come.

  But there—

  Another creak of the mattress, and it was definitely not coming from her bedroom.

  She really should go back to faking sleep, or staring up at the ceiling, or whatever it was that she’d been doing
for the last three hours.

  Except that she didn’t do any of that.

  Sawyer left her room on silent feet, and then slid down the hallway until she stood outside Julian’s bedroom door.

  Did she knock?

  Did she just waltz inside unannounced?

  They did that frequently to each other, never stopping to say a word. But that was always during the day . . . and never, ever once nighttime hit.

  It took her eyes a second to adjust to the darkness permeating the rest of the house, and when they did, she realized that his door was slightly ajar.

  The tiny gap beckoned her to cross the threshold.

  Temptation, that’s what it was, friggin’ temptation.

  She heard a rasp from within.

  Not the bedsheets or the mattress.

  It was him, Julian, who made that sound. Throaty. Harsh. Sexy.

  Without her permission, her fingers touched the door and she slid it open another inch. Just enough to peer inside. Just enough to spy his large body sprawled out on the bed, and—

  Oh. My. God.

  Sawyer clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from gasping out loud.

  That rasping groan came again, and there was no stopping herself this time: she stared.

  At his hand, which was clamped tightly around his thick erection. At the sheets, which were shoved out of the way to tangle with his muscular thigh and spill over the side of the bed. At his throat, which stretched erotically as he bit down on his bottom lip and fucked his fist like the world was on the verge of ending.

  This time, the desperate, needy sound came from her—or maybe it came from them both.

  She didn’t know.

  She might never know.

  But she would always, always, remember the ragged heat that accompanied his drawled, “Showtime is over, LeBlanc.”

  Crap, crap, crap.

  “Jules, I shouldn’t have—”

  “Come here.”

  She couldn’t say no. Hell, not a single part of her even wanted that two letter word to ever cross her lips again. Not with him.

  So, she left the embarrassment at the door, and she gathered every bit of confidence that she could muster, and she strolled inside his room like watching him jerk off was a regular activity for them both. If only.

  Unbidden, her gaze shifted to where he still lazily stroked himself.

  It was all she could not to whimper.

  “Truth,” he said, as she came to stand next to the bed.

  Sawyer pressed her palms over her sleep shorts, just to rid herself of the nervous clamminess. “I want to know if you were thinking of me when you . . .”

  “Touched myself?” he echoed, his voice a rumble in the near dark.

  But it wasn’t dark enough to ignore the heat in his expression or the perpetual upward tick of his mouth. Like always, he toyed with her. Like always, he baited her to play with him, whether it was a random day trip or a game of The Legend of Zelda, his favorite, or an entire evening watching Friends.

  And, like always, Sawyer met him step for step.

  “Were you thinking of me,” she repeated softly, for him only, “when you touched yourself?”

  A tight groan reverberated in his chest, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed his hand pick up speed around his hard-on. Faster and faster, until he breathed, “I only ever think of you,” and then he moved before she could even blink.

  He snagged her about the waist and drew her onto the bed, rolling them over until she was tucked beneath the expanse of his body. She felt him everywhere. His elbows clamped down on either side of her head. His long legs tangled with hers. His erection—the size fifteen shoe definitely matched him where it counted—pressed like a hot brand against her stomach, where her tank top had ridden up.

  “Truth,” he whispered against her forehead, his mouth warm and teasing, “I’m five seconds away from kissing you, and if you have any problem with that, you’re gonna have to—”

  Sawyer sank her fingers into his blond hair and yanked his mouth down to hers.

  So damn good.

  He tasted like sin and he felt like temptation, and when he cupped her jaw and angled her to deepen the kiss, it was all she could do not to moan.

  Julian O’Connor was her best friend, the other half of her soul, and she just—

  His tore his mouth from hers, a heavy breath listing off his lips before she felt the press of his thighs on the outside of her legs as he shifted downward. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” he rasped, sitting back on his heels, his cock unapologetically hard, his blue eyes devouring her everywhere, “and I don’t know where to start.”

  It was a vow, she thought, and a warning.

  He was giving her an out, if she wanted it.

  Her fingers danced over the hem of her shirt. “If I had less clothes on,” she said, “that might help with the decision.”

  Though his body remained stiff as steel, his mouth curved in a beautiful smile. “Don’t let me stop you.” He dipped his chin. “Strip it off for me.”

  Hadn’t he said the same thing about her stilettos on the night of speed dating?

  He’d baited her then, too, played with her.

  She loved it then and now.

  Sawyer sat up, wrestling the thin tank top over the top of her head.

  Cool air brushed over her naked breasts, and then it wasn’t just cool air but the brush of his palm cupping the weight. Pulse thudding with lust, she watched his face as his thumb crested her pebbled nipple. Desire shone in his blue eyes and his jaw clamped tight, as if he was on the verge of splintered control.

  “Fuck,” he groaned, “you’re perfect.”

  Under his gaze, Sawyer felt downright beautiful.

  And that was before he leaned down and tasted her. His tongue swirled and her heart stuttered, and heat gathered in her core. When she jolted at the sensations spearing through her, he clasped a hand to the center of her spine and held her in place.

  Mine, that hand placement said.

  Mine to thoroughly devour, his tongue promised as he nipped and licked, bit and sucked.

  “Jules,” she begged.

  He pulled away only long enough to utter, “Truth.”

  The game. The dare.

  It was honesty and vulnerability that he wanted, and she gave it to him on her next ragged breath: “I moved here for you.”

  His big body drifted south, his tongue dipping into the slight hollow of her abdomen. “I know,” was all he said, just before his fingers found the waistband of her sleep shorts, and underwear, and began tugging them down the length of her legs.

  “I don’t care if that makes me pathetic.” A gasp tore from her throat as she heard the soft rasp of material hitting the floor. She was naked. Naked. She wanted to blame the ceiling fan for the tremble that gathered in her limbs, but nope, it was definitely all Julian’s fault. She trembled because she wanted—the anticipation, the reality, the heat of his body over hers. “I don’t care,” she whispered, as he spread her legs wide and stared down at her, like she was a buffet open to him alone, “if anyone judges me for it.”

  His reply was the softest caress of his fingers trailing a path up her inner thigh. And then, “You know what I think?”

  She swallowed, hard. “Tell me.”

  “I think we always knew,” he said, lowering his big frame until his knees were on the floor and he’d tugged her to the edge of the bed, “that we were meant to be, and it doesn’t really matter what anyone else says.”

  “You’re a romantic,” she breathed.

  “Says the woman who moved across the country to keep us together.”

  Whatever she’d been about to say died somewhere between her brain and her mouth because he . . . because he . . .

  Oh, God.

  He devoured her. His tongue swirled around her clit, alternating between a heady pull of his lips that threatened to short circuit her brain and a gentle flutter of his tongue that had Sawyer gripping the sh
eets and chanting his name.

  When she tried to sit up, he pressed a palm to her belly and lowered her back down.

  He’d promised thorough, and he was apparently determined to deliver in every single way.

  Sawyer tossed her head back, her fingers finding his, still resting on her stomach. She clutched his hand in hers, a rock of stability in the throw of chaos that he created with every swipe of his tongue. But if she thought he’d take it easy on her, she was poorly mistaken.

  When she melted, he took advantage, sucking on her clit and driving a broad finger deep inside her.

  When she cried out, he laughed, the jerk, this deep, gravelly sound that lit her on fire.

  And when she begged him to do something, he crooked his finger within her, and hit a spot that had her moaning into the back of her arm as an orgasm swept over her.

  She was broken.

  He’d straight up broken her.

  “I think I’m dead,” she whispered into the night.

  He had the gall to press his mouth to a vein on the inside of her leg, and quip, “I don’t know, you still feel alive to me.”

  A laugh boiled deep in her gut, as she climbed onto her knees and crawled toward him. “I’m willing to feel more alive if you are too.”

  It was a subtle offer, but one that he read clearly, the way he always did.

  “Are you going to thoroughly tack advantage of me?” he asked, a teasing glint in his husky voice.

  “Depends, I guess, if you have a condom.”

  He cupped her face and dragged her in for a short, desperate kiss. “I’m a virgin,” he growled against her lips, “but I’m not completely hopeless.”

  In three short strides, he was at the nightstand. The drawer pulled open with a yawning creak and, chin tipped down, his broad fingers fumbled with a sealed package. A small smile graced his face as he shot her a quick look. “Okay, just a little hopeless,” he admitted with a wink and a smile.

  Maybe it was the vulnerable, boyish look he sent her or the shudder of anticipation that worked its way down his back when he finally rolled the condom down over his hard-on, but Sawyer whispered the words that had been caged inside her heart for too damn long: