Abby nestled closer like a little cub. Luke began stroking her wavy chestnut hair in rhythmic strokes, breathing in the scent of her, of their lovemaking. Wondering again if he was a fool to have given in to the temptation of taking their relationship to this intense level of intimacy even if it was only for a week. He had always kept his distance from her—from anyone when it came to that. Whenever Ella had visited him with her in tow he had been formal and yes, a little gruff on occasion, but the way Abby’s big brown eyes lit up when she smiled had done something to him—something he’d found immensely threatening.
She was open and he was closed. She was warm and he was cold. She was fresh and funny and optimistic and he was stale and moribund and staunchly, immovably pessimistic.
But somehow Abby had melted his resolve like a blowtorch blasted at butter. His body was drawn to her by an irresistible force, like lightning was drawn to metal, and his pleasure had been just as earth-shattering. Had he ever felt satisfaction like it? Or had it been too long between drinks to tell with any certainty? It was like making love for the first time and yet so much better, because his first time had been rushed and clumsy and over all too soon.
This time, his pleasure had lasted for ages inside his body. He could still feel the slight hum of it lingering in his flesh like the rumble of distant thunder.
Abby moved against him again, stirring his blood into a deep throb of longing. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. ‘Hey, did that just happen or am I dreaming?’
Luke brushed an imaginary hair away from her face, keeping his own expression a little less open, stilling each facial muscle as if he was folding down the four top sections of a box. ‘It happened.’
A frown flickered across her brow. ‘You already regret it, don’t you?’
He traced a fingertip over her bottom lip. ‘I’m concerned you’re going to think this is more than what it is.’
‘You mean more than just sex?’
‘A week-long fling is a week-long fling, it’s not for ever,’ Luke said, carefully gauging her reaction to his words.
She gave a soft laugh. ‘Who are you really worried about losing perspective on our one-week fling? Me or you?’
That was exactly what he was worried about. He had already blurred the boundaries he had maintained for so long. Crossed a line he couldn’t uncross. He had given in to the desire he had long suppressed or ignored or been too busy to allow to become a priority.
He could not undo their lovemaking.
It would always be something they had shared. Something unique and special, something she would never experience with anyone else and, he suspected, nor would he. The uniqueness of it encased it in an impermeable membrane of memory.
‘Cute theory, but no,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m capable of and commitment is not something I’m interested in.’
‘But we’re going to be exclusive, right? While we’re together this week?’
Luke was faintly annoyed she felt the need to ask. Did she think he was the type of man like his father? That it was a case of like father like son? He lived by very different principles from his father, who had worked his way through several partners since his initial affair. ‘Of course we’ll be exclusive. You have my word on that.’
‘You have mine too,’ Abby said with a smile. ‘I think it’s cowardly to cheat on someone. Why not be honest and say you’re not happy with how the relationship is going? It seems only fair, in my opinion.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Luke said. ‘When my father cheated on my mother she had no idea. No inkling anything was wrong. Only the month before, he had taken her to a nice restaurant to celebrate their seventeenth anniversary. He’d even bought her flowers the week before.’
Abby’s frowning expression showed her disgust at his father’s behaviour. ‘That’s nothing short of cruel. What type of man is he? A sadist?’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t have too much to do with him these days,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear listening to him bragging about his latest conquest, especially when I know another couple of his exes took it badly when he dumped them.’
She stroked his cheek, her soft hand catching on his stubble, her eyes luminous. ‘You’re a nice man, Luke Shelverton. A decent man with standards that put other men like your father and mine to shame.’
Luke’s ears pricked up at the mention of her father. What she’d told him about her mother had shocked him to the core. She had seemed reluctant to discuss either of her parents with him the day before. He couldn’t help feeling touched she had let him in on such a painful secret. ‘He’s alive then? Do you ever see him?’
She looked down at his chest, where her fingertip was following the line of his right collarbone. It was as if she was mentally preparing herself—each stroke and glide of her finger against his collarbone was somehow building up her courage. ‘I haven’t seen him since I was five and a half.’ Her gaze climbed back up to his. ‘Family Services thought it would be good for me to have a connection with him after my mother died, even though they’d split up and he hadn’t had anything to do with me for months.’
Five and a half years old. Luke couldn’t get his head around it. What despair and fear had she felt to see her mother lying lifeless on the floor. And how terrifying to be handed to the father who hadn’t been there for her for months on end.
His gut churned with anguish for her. For the senseless suffering she had endured because of the incompetent adults who should have been loving and protecting her.
Luke gently cradled her cheek, his eyes meshing with hers. ‘I’m so sorry you went through that. I can’t imagine how terrified you must have been.’
She gave him a flickering smile that seemed sad around the edges. ‘I don’t think about it much now. It was a long time ago and in some ways it feels like it happened to someone else, not me.’
‘Is that why you’ve not told Ella? Because you’ve rewritten your history to make it less painful?’
‘Less painful and less shameful,’ she said. ‘My father is in jail and has been since I was six. He almost killed someone on a drug deal that went sour. He was the one who got my mother on heroin, I’m sure of it. It came out much later he was the leader of a drug gang. But back then he made everyone think she was the one with the problem. He painted himself as the poor pushed-aside father of his child. And the authorities fell for it, for a time.’
‘Did you feel any connection with him when you went to live with him?’
Abby shook her head. ‘I hated him. He was bad-tempered and treated the new woman he was with like a slave. And he made her do most of the looking after of me, which of course she resented and took out on me. He only wanted me because he thought it would whitewash his reputation with the social worker who used to do visits. I felt uncomfortable with him and would always end up in floods of tears when the social worker came. He made it sound to the social worker that I was crying because I was upset at the thought of being taken away from him and put into permanent care. I was too frightened to tell them the truth because I was worried they mightn’t believe me over my father. He could be so convincing. And then, if they didn’t believe me and left me with him after I’d said something, I knew he would punish me for speaking out. I felt so powerless.’
Luke pulled her close as if he could somehow make up for the shocking way she had been treated. He might have some issues with his own father, but at least he had never been passed like a parcel between foster carers. He had always had his mother and felt secure in her love. He had his sister, who always did her best to make their fragmented family work as well as it possibly could.
But Abby had suffered for most, if not all, of her childhood. How could she have turned out to be such an open and warm and positive person? She deserved much better than she had received. Could he in some small way make up for all the heartache and despair she’d endured?
The thought started as a seed in his mind and then started to spread its roots, tunnelling its way into e
very closed-off corner of his brain like a rampant vine. He could take her on the island holiday. He could spoil her and treat her like a princess for a week. He hadn’t had a holiday in ages and it would be a good way of getting to know her even better. Besides, her flat was still uninhabitable and was likely to be for a few more days. This was a perfect solution.
A faint alarm bell sounded in the back of his mind, but he disregarded it. It was only for a week and they had both agreed on that. He wasn’t promising a future with her.
He couldn’t promise a future with anyone.
Luke picked up one of her wayward curls and wound it round his finger, holding her warm toffee-brown gaze. ‘It would be a shame to forfeit that holiday I won.’
A light came on in her eyes. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
He gave her a slow smile. ‘I quite fancy a week in the sun. I’ll have to juggle a few things in my diary but—’
‘Oh, Luke, thank you, thank you, thank you.’ She pressed her mouth to his in a series of kisses, making his lips swell and tingle for more. ‘It’ll be so much fun. A whole island to ourselves.’
‘How soon can you pack?’
Her face suddenly fell. ‘But what about my flat? I can’t get to my clothes and I don’t feel comfortable wearing—’
‘No problem,’ Luke said. ‘I’ll go and buy you something you can wear so we can go and get the rest. My treat.’
Her teeth worried her bottom lip and her eyes didn’t quite meet his. ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you buying me stuff.’
He tipped up her chin so she met his gaze. ‘Listen to me. I want to spoil you. I’ll probably enjoy it more than you, so why not allow me this little bit of pleasure in my boring and stuffy workaholic life?’
Her eyes had a spark of wickedness. ‘I’m all for giving you pleasure.’ She wriggled closer and linked her arms around his neck, bringing her mouth within touching distance of his.
Luke closed the tiny gap between their mouths, his senses on fire at the way her lips moulded themselves to his. He stroked for entry and she opened to him on a sigh that made the base of his spine grow warm. Warmth that spread its way through the rest of his body, sending his blood on a fevered flood to his groin.
He caressed her breast, cupping it and then stroking his thumb over its peaking nipple. He took his mouth off hers to attend to her breast, licking around her areola and gently grazing the nub of her nipple with his teeth. She made a breathless sound of appreciation and moved restlessly against him, searching for him with her hand beneath the fabric of his sleepwear and finding him fully erect. The feel of her fingers wrapping around him made him even harder, the need pulsing through him in electrifying waves.
She kissed her way from his neck in hot little presses of her lips against his skin, all the way down past his abs.
Luke sucked in a breath and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘You don’t have to do that—’
Abby glanced up at him with doubt flickering in her eyes. ‘But you did it to me. Don’t you want me to—?’
‘Abby.’ He cradled her cheek in his hand. ‘I don’t want you to do things with me because you think you have to. I want you to be comfortable with every part of what we do together.’
‘But I am comfortable. I’m more comfortable with you than anyone I’ve ever met. Talking about my childhood... Well, I’ve only ever told you that stuff. That’s how comfortable I feel with you.’
Luke was touched she felt that way. Deeply touched. And so turned-on he was holding on to his self-control like someone trying to control a wild stallion with a silken thread. His thumb stroked the curve of her cheek, holding her shining earnest gaze. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
She reached for him again, caressing him just the way he liked it as if she had some secret way of reading his body. ‘I want to make you feel the way I did when you did it to me.’
A part of Luke insisted he stop right there, but another part—the caged part that was primitive and primal—wanted her mouth. Wanted her tongue. Wanted. Wanted. Wanted until he was throbbing with it.
Abby didn’t wait for him to talk her out of it even if that sensible and civilised part of him had been on active duty. She reached across him for a condom and unpeeled it from its packet. She wriggled down and pushed away his sleepwear but, before she put on the condom, she breathed her warm breath over his engorged length. It was like being caressed by the breeze of a moth’s wing and intensely, spine-tinglingly arousing.
‘Give me the condom.’ Was that his voice? That husky croak that sounded as if it came from the middle of a frog pond.
She held it just out of reach. ‘I can do it. I did this once in Sex Ed. But I have to tell you, you don’t look anything like a courgette.’
‘Good to know.’
Once the condom was on, she brought her tongue to him in soft little licks like a kitten lapping milk, making him shudder with fizzing pleasure that spiralled through his body. She opened her mouth over him, moving up and down his shaft with varying degrees of suction, and he groaned and groaned and fought to stay in control, wanting to prolong the thrill of watching her pleasure him.
Fight it or fly? Fight it or fly?
The mental chant was in time with his pounding blood.
And then he flew...
CHAPTER SEVEN
ABBY HAD NEVER seen anything so erotic as Luke totally at her mercy. His guttural groans and whole body shudders made her feel a wave of deep pleasure as if his orgasm was somehow tuned to a sensitive radar in her body. Triggering little electric shocks deep in her core at the realisation of her sensual power as a woman.
Luke was lying on his back, his breathing not quite back to normal, and he took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing each fingertip in turn, his eyes holding hers. ‘That must have been quite some Sex Ed class,’ he said with a wry smile.
Abby laughed and lay across his body, toying with the short and fine whorls of his dark brown hair at the sides of his neck. ‘I like seeing you smile.’ She traced her finger around his mouth, her skin catching on his stubble like silk on an emery board. ‘You’re really funny behind that stern façade you put up.’
He gave her a mock frown and rolled her on to her back and pinned her with his weight, his dark blue eyes gleaming. ‘Stern? Is that how you see me?’
Abby shivered with delight at the hard press of his erection against her thigh, so close to where she ached and pulsed with longing. She traced each of his ink-black eyebrows, smoothing out the semi-permanent frown line that was etched into his forehead. ‘I like it when you smile instead of frown. It makes you more approachable.’
He smiled and leaned across to get another condom. ‘I am going to have to restock soon or we’re going to have a problem.’
The only problem Abby could see was that she was going to get too emotionally involved in this fling. It was a risk she had been prepared to take, but had it been foolish to think she could keep her emotions separate? Making love with Luke was not a simple matter of two bodies joining for mutual release. There was so much more to it. A bond of intimacy developed and grew with each and every encounter.
She could feel it happening.
Each kiss, each stroke, each caress bonded her to him in a way she could never bond with anyone else. He was her first lover. The man who had taught her about receiving and giving pleasure. The man who responded to her as if her touch and her touch alone could unlock the primal desires he had suppressed for so long.
Luke leaned on one elbow to apply the condom, giving Abby a perfect opportunity to stroke her hand down his chest and sexily toned abdomen. He eased her back down and brought his mouth to each of her breasts, tending to them with licks and strokes and grazes of his gentle teeth that made every cell of her body hum with delight.
Abby was so ready, so full of need she couldn’t stop a pleading whimper from escaping. ‘You’re taking too long. I want you now.’
He gently parted her folds
and entered her with a groan that seemed to come from deep inside him. Abby welcomed him into her body, wrapping her legs around his hips so he could deepen his thrusts. The smooth, slick glide of his body within hers set off sparks in her nerves that swelled and sensitised her clitoris. But it wasn’t quite enough friction to trigger the orgasm she could feel building like a rampaging storm in her female flesh.
Luke reached down between their joined bodies, caressing her with an expert touch like a maestro handling a Stradivarius. She soared off into the stratosphere, her mind partially blanking out as the ripples and shudders ricocheted through her body.
Abby floated back to reality just as he started to increase his pace, the faster, deeper thrusts triggering his own release. He gave a choked-off sound and then emptied in a series of pumps, finally collapsing over her, his head buried next to her neck.
She played with his hair in little lifts and tugs of the thick dark brown strands, listening to his breathing steadying, the rise and fall of his chest against hers making her feel closer to him than she had felt to anyone.
Luke turned his head to nibble at the sensitive area below her ear, making her shiver all over. ‘You’re amazing. You know that, don’t you?’
Abby turned her head so she was eye to eye with him, his breath mingling with hers. ‘I was just thinking the same, but about you. My theory was right then.’
He sent his finger on a slow journey around her mouth. ‘Which theory was that?’
‘The dancing one,’ Abby said. ‘If a couple are good on the dance floor together, then they’re likely to be good in bed together. We’ve just proven it.’
His smile did strange things to her insides, making them gooey and soft like melted marshmallows. ‘Do you have any more theories you want to run past my sceptical scientific brain?’
Abby squinted her gaze. ‘You think I’m nuts, don’t you?’
He captured her mouth and pressed a hot, hard kiss to her lips. ‘I think you’re beautiful and funny and I’m going to make love to you all over again. That is, unless you’d rather dance?’
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