by Christa Wick
Meeting Luke's gaze, I offer him my absolute trust. "I'm not afraid."
His eyes drift shut. His tongue pushes between his lips to wet the bottom center. Inhaling, he slowly sucks his lip and holds it between his teeth. I look from his face to the fat head of his cock.
I felt the brush of his erection when I was standing spread in the center of the room, felt it again on the chair, and again as he carried me to the bed. He’s been in a state of full arousal for more than half an hour, his hands and mouth consumed with his attending to my pleasure.
Pre-cum oozes from the slit at the top and runs down his cock like the stream of a single tear. My chest constricts painfully at the sight. Reciprocated or not, I love this man.
I look back to his face, my gaze hooked and my heart waiting for him to open his eyes. When he does, it’s my face he first looks at. He nods faintly, as if we’re both agreeing to something that hasn't been discussed. I don't know what it is, but I nod back.
Luke moves one step to his right and the crop begins to strike lightly against my thighs. Although the area struck by the crop is more confined than the flogger, my skin heats and tingles more quickly from the rapid tapping of it against my flesh.
I want to squirm and wiggle as my pussy begins to knot, but I force myself to remain still. Luke moves with precision, heating both my thighs. Not missing a beat, the first strike against my breast lands. The impact is lighter but the strikes come faster as he moves toward my areola. With his attention and the crop focused on my breasts, my hips grow restless.
My ass presses hard against the mattress. My thighs flex and relax in time to the taps from the leather-bound strikes. I moan when he stops, moan louder when he bends at the waist and sucks one sore, swollen nipple into his mouth.
Putting the riding crop aside for the moment, he lavishes attention on my sensitive clit as he tongues the other nipple. His fingers fuck into me fast and hard in rough contrast to the gentle licks and bites around my breast. I arch, all four limbs straining against their bindings.
"Not yet, baby." His fingers take one last stroke against my clit before he grabs the crop once again.
Moving to the foot of the bed, Luke climbs onto the mattress and kneels between my spread legs. He stares at my pussy, intently examining his handiwork, his hot gaze tracing over the sight of my pussy lips held back by the rubbery clamps attached to the straps around my thighs, both wet from my arousal and the lube he used to finger deep inside my pussy.
My clit bobs with the contractions running through me. Luke lightly drags the tip of the leather down the length of my clit until he reaches the hood. He pushes the dangle left, then right. The strike lands before I realize it has begun. I jerk, my body electrified by the contact of the hard leather surface against my highly sensitive flesh.
He strikes again, the hits targeting my thick labia and along the hard ridge of my clit. When I’m moaning and bouncing against the mattress with fresh arousal, he returns to my nipples, the force a little harder than when he first brought them to swollen peaks.
All the while, he fingers my pussy. My hands curl into fists. I try to draw my knees up as the tension keeps folding inward, like a star collapsing under its own density.
He brings the crop back down on my pussy in a fast dance of hard leather meeting flesh.
"Please!" I beg him to let me come, the faint, flashing pain the leather crop brings just enough to push me back from the edge of my release each time it approaches.
Luke tosses the riding crop aside. He palms my mound, his thumb pressing and wiggling against my clit as he fucks three fingers from the other hand deep into my pussy.
I’m close, so close that I’m screaming my need when he withdraws his fingers.
He covers me, his chest pushing against my breasts as he holds his cock steady with one hand and sinks its full length into my core. I’m swollen inside, the tissue and muscles battered from his earlier invasions.
Thrusting into me a second time, Luke buries his face against my throat. He kisses, bites and licks from shoulder to ear as he uses his entire body to fuck in and out of my pussy.
The broad tip of his cock drags through me, hitting new pleasure centers. With my pussy lips still held open by the clips, I can feel the hard rub of his lower abdominals against my clit. I want to wrap my arms around him and dig my nails into his flesh, securing him to me until we’re both locked in the spasm of release. But I’m bound and at his mercy.
I come first, jerking and crying. No words, just guttural polysyllables twisted and bent by my orgasm. I squirt, making my already drenched pussy even wetter.
Luke moans, grinds, and then his teeth are denting the skin along my jawline as he freezes. His cock jerks inside me, hard upward recoils as semen shoots through his shaft.
Only when the last spurt releases does the bite turn to a kiss.
Panting, he pushes up on his elbows, but doesn’t say a word.
His legs shift so that his weight is on his knees and his torso is off me. His hands caress my sides as he slowly backs off the bed. He kisses me as he goes, a breast, the swell of my stomach, the top of my mound.
And avoids my eyes the entire time.
I can tell something’s different, something’s changed between us. When he told me to stay, he didn’t say indefinitely.
What if he only meant for me to stay tonight?
I want to believe this is the way he’s choosing to say goodbye, but I just don’t know, don’t understand where it is we stand.
Not meeting my questioning gaze, he pauses to remove the clips then he’s off the bed. The ankle cuffs come off. Still looking anywhere but at my face, he massages the joints and my feet until he’s certain that the blood flow is fully restored.
Climbing back onto the bed, Luke straddles me, his cock and balls heavy as they rest against my chest so he can lean forward and free my hands. He moves backwards until he’s straddling my hips as he massages each arm.
I close my eyes. There’s no point keeping them open—he won't look at me.
"Luke…" I whisper his name, my pain audible.
His weight pushes down at me again. His hands roam my body. He strokes a shoulder, nuzzles my neck, kisses just below my ear. Each gesture hurts more than any of his toys ever could.
He must’ve sensed the depth of my feelings somehow while we made love. I got attached, even though I went in to all this knowing there was an end date to our arrangement.
And now he’s pulling away.
I don’t consciously move a muscle but every inch of me is moving all the same. I’m shaking as I try to hold the tears back.
"Love, you're not listening to a word I’m saying are you?"
He’s right. My spiraling thoughts were drowning out the rich timbre of his voice. If this is the last night I’ll get with him, I want to hear his voice, even if the words end up breaking my heart.
I suck a sobbing breath in and hold it until I can shape the words without my emotions jackhammering them into something incomprehensible. "I-I’m sorry, could you start again? I must have phased out there for a bit."
He rubs his nose against mine. "I said, I love you, baby."
He loves me?
Several long seconds pass while I repeat the phrase inside my head. It’s monumental, thought-erasing—and such a foreign phrase in my vocabulary, in my life to this point that I'm not sure I’m even experiencing it correctly.
Luke Masters loves me…
"Do you need me to repeat it again?" he asks with a light chuckle but I can hear the tension in his laugh.
Right—he just professed his feelings and I haven't said anything in return.
Wrapping my arms around his head, I speak the words I’ve been feeling for longer than I realized, “I-I love you so much, I can hardly comprehend it. The way I feel about you…I don’t know that I ever really believed my heart was capable of anything like this.”
Luke cups my face tenderly, his gaze and expression both moved and solemn
. "You weren't really going to leave me tomorrow, were you?"
Crying, I nod. "You never mentioned anything beyond our thirty days.”
For a long minute, he says nothing.
Then finally, his mouth presses against my neck, sucking above the line of a vein, as he slowly pushes into me. My tears now flowing for an entirely different reason, I fall into his arms and allow myself to hope.
When he’s fully embedded, he braces his hands against the sides of my face and looks at me, finally saying the words in no unclear terms, "Stay with me, love. Stay forever.”
He seals my whispered promise to do just that with a kiss—softer and less intense than his usual kisses, it’s the kind of kiss you see two people sharing spontaneously for no reason at all.
And for the first time ever, I can actually see a life, a future, that truly could last as close to forever as I could hope for.
Epilogue
Luke
-- One Year Later --
All but standing with my nose pressed up against the mirror, I swear at the bowtie I'm trying to twist into submission.
"At least a hundred times," Mikhael says, his big frame suddenly filling the doorway as he watches me with a certain sartorial smugness. "The first few months the casino was open, you always came to the tables in fancy dress. Did you get someone to help you tie it then?"
Unclenching my hands, I rub one across my face in an attempt to erase the irritation that makes my skin itch.
"I've strapped on tactical gear easier to secure than this," I grouse. "And it wasn't a hundred times going full-on formal. More like a dozen."
Abandoning my attempt at making any kind of bow from the elusive band of silk, I cross to the door and pull the big Russian to me in a bear hug. It's been six months since I've seen him. He wouldn't admit it then or now, but I think all the damn happiness surrounding me got to him.
All Mikhael would say was that he needed to mix things up and that he wanted to do more about the crime in his home country. That had taken him to a government security contractor out in Virginia. He’s back in Vegas for the weekend to stand in as my best man.
"How are the new bosses treating you?"
He nods. "Very good—except it's mostly signal intelligence and analysis."
I give his shoulder a soft slug. "If you start feeling like you're getting soft, your seat here is always waiting for you."
Nodding, he straightens the lines I just put in his suit.
My gaze lands on his immaculate tie. I jerk my head for him to help me.
"Sorry," he tells me with a sheepish grin. "Tommy did mine."
I growl, swipe my phone off the dresser and send Tommy a request to come to my dressing room ASAP.
He shoots back a reply.
Isn't that bad luck?
Remembering the smart aleck is the baby brother of my bride-to-be, I suppress my worst possible replies before typing an answer.
Only if you’re wearing a wedding dress, wise guy.
Get over here. Now.
Waiting for Tommy's arrival, I start to pace. Mikhael grabs hold of my shoulders and stops me. Studying the abandoned strands of the tie, he shakes his head and makes a clucking sound.
"You've mangled the fabric."
I grab him by the throat, but not to strangle him. Not that the urge isn't there, but I have something else in mind.
With two sharp tugs, I relieve him of his matching tie. I toss him mine.
"Okay, best man, fix it."
He heads off in search of an iron, preferably one attached to the hand of a maid because he hasn't done his own ironing since I hired him.
Alone, I pace, my quick steps and long stride turning me into a ping pong ball bouncing between walls. Doesn't help that the dressing room is small.
Hell, the entire wedding party is small.
Financially, I could afford bigger. I could have closed the casino down for the day and decked every floor with white roses. But security remains tight. Marie has been cautious in forming new friendships. And I won't compromise her safety by opening up the event to my business associates, former teammates and all their significant others.
So the least I can do is get my damn bowtie properly set!
Pulling my cellphone out again, I start smashing at the screen a second before Tommy pokes his head into the room.
"You summoned me, m'lord?"
The tie now a black ribbon of surrender, I wave it at him.
"Mikhael said you did him."
Tommy cocks a scandalized brow.
"His tie," I growl. "In the name of all that is holy, I'm about to marry the woman I love. Don't make me say my vows looking like I spent the entire morning dumpster diving!"
Showing a small measure of mercy, Tommy takes the tie from me. His smirk quickly evaporates as he sees the material's tortured state.
Fuck! I crumpled it into a ball as I paced.
Seeing me eye his pristine bowtie, Tommy backpedals toward the door. Once there, he bumps into Mikhael.
The big Russian is holding a freshly ironed tie. My tie, the one I gave to him. I swipe at it.
"It's mine," I rumble, chasing him into the hall where we come face-to-face with Marie. Pivoting away so I can't see her, I lodge a formal protest.
"Baby, I'm not supposed to see you. It's bad luck."
Her fingers stroke at the back of my neck, her touch cool and calming.
"You're the House, love. You don't have to worry about luck."
That's right. Rule number 1, the House always wins.
Grinning, I turn back to Marie.
She’s so damn beautiful it takes my breath away to see her.
I'm not the only one distracted by this vision of loveliness. Before Mikhael can realize it, Marie has taken the tie from him and is threading the material beneath my collar. When she finishes, the bow is perfect.
Just like her.
Mikhael tugs lightly at Marie's sleeve.
"Are you sure you want to marry this joker?" he asks when she turns her gaze on him. "He's falling to bits over a piece of string."
With a straight face, she softly admonishes him.
"Still trying to get rid of me?"
A moment of tension freezes my chest muscles. Then Mikhael's eyes mist and he shakes his head.
"No, Marie. I'm sorry I ever approached you with anything other than an open heart." Pausing, he looks at Tommy. "You're not awful, either."
Grinning, the kid smooths a hand through his hair like he’s the slickest game in town. "Wish I could say the same, Nazarov."
Wrapping my arm around Marie's shoulder, I lead her down the hall before any other distractions overtake us.
"Where are we going?" she laughs. "It's a little premature for the bridal suite."
Judging by the sudden rush of blood to my cock, it's never too early or too late for the bridal suite.
"We're finding the minister," I answer. "We should have done this months and months ago."
Marie digs her heels into the carpet, forcing me to stop and look at her. Her brown gaze sparkles like polished agate. Grabbing me by my lapels, she pulls me close.
"I'm glad we waited," she says.
I have always been certain of my feelings for Marie. But I understand why she needed time to be certain of them. Cupping her face, I kiss one cheek, then the other. My lips are hungry for her mouth, but I finish with a soft peck against her forehead before releasing her.
"You deserve a giant wedding, love."
"Family is here," she answers with a fond glance down the hall to where Mikhael and Tommy jostle one another. "That's what matters."
Holding her gaze, I study all the changes a year has made. She’s matured from a confidence woman to a confident woman. She’s learned to count on more than herself.
"What about Rule 8?" I ask.
"There are no fathers and sons at the table…" she murmurs before tilting her head back. Aiming at an invisible dust particle, she releases a small puff of air. "Erased and r
eplaced."
"Replaced with what?"
"New rule number 8," she answers. "Family is everything."
Then she guides my hand so that the palm rests lightly on her softly rounded stomach I now know I’m going to cherish twice as reverently now.
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Also by C.M. Wick
[available now]
with more coming this fall
the Far Too Tempting collection
Tempted Beyond Reason (Wake & Lacey)
