I felt his mouth move and knew he was smiling against my neck. His hand cupped my ass and he pulled me against him but he didn’t respond.
I didn’t mind. I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight.
Then he started to make love to me and it was exactly that, slow and sweet and absolutely perfect. I forgot about everything: being taped in my basement in the pitch dark and Noah touching me while Luke was in the house.
It was perfect until Luke’s hand moved down my belly and between my legs. His fingers hit the target but instead of feeling the usual jolt of pure goodness, my body froze and I wrapped my hand around his wrist and pulled it away.
“No,” I whispered, my body came unfrozen and all of a sudden I was shaking and not the good kind of shaking. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I can’t.”
I tried to move away, feeling like an idiot, but Luke’s hand pulled free of mine. He rolled off me and held me close.
“Ava, hold on to me.”
His voice was rough but he didn’t sound angry that I stopped the action when it was really getting good.
“I can’t,” I told him. “I need –”
“Quiet, beautiful, just hold on.”
I did as I was told. I felt him hard against my belly and felt like a huge dork because I was the one who started it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and I was. I was so sorry that my voice broke in the middle of saying it.
“Quiet,” he replied softly.
“I got you all worked up and –”
“Babe, I’ll survive.”
“Luke.”
“Ava, I’m good. Just be quiet.”
I went quiet.
We lay there for awhile, silent, holding on. The shakes left me and I eventually felt nothing in the world, nothing but our bed at Hotel Monaco, Luke and me in it.
Then out of nowhere something hit me, a flashback.
Not of Noah beating me up and touching me where I didn’t want him to, but a flashback of Luke. It was a flashback of when Luke took me for a ride on his new motorcycle when he was seventeen and I was thirteen.
His Mom wasn’t happy about the motorcycle but she kept this to herself (outside of telling my Mom). His Dad hated it and he didn’t keep it to himself. As usual he tore into Luke about it.
I loved the motorcycle and after I heard Luke have a rip roarin’ with his Dad and Luke slammed out of the house heading to the garage, I ran over and caught him. In my thirteen-year-old-girl usual blathering, dorky way, I told Luke I loved his motorcycle and I told him exactly how much.
When I was done, Luke smiled at me, the dark look fading from his face. I’d always loved it when I used to do that for him. It didn’t happen a lot, but it happened. Then he told me to hop on and I was so excited I did, without even thinking twice.
We rode for at least an hour and I thought I’d never forget that ride.
When we got home they were waiting for us in Luke’s driveway, Mr. Stark and my Mom. Luke’s Dad yelled at him for taking a thirteen year old out on a motorcycle without asking. My Mom yelled at him because she was a bitch.
Calm as could be (something that always pissed Luke’s Dad off, I knew not because I saw it but because I heard Mrs. Stark tell my Mom about it), Luke just said to his Dad, “I would never let anything happen to Ava.” Then he turned to me, touched my nose and said using The Voice, “Precious cargo.”
Oh… my… God.
Why hadn’t I remembered that? How could I ever forget that?
Finally, realization dawned.
I belonged to Luke. I was Luke’s woman.
Hell, I had probably been born to be Luke’s woman (if you believed that kind of shit).
I wasn’t going to St. Croix and I didn’t care about Jules and Roxie and Luke trying it on with them. Just like Daisy said, I was using that as an excuse to guard my heart.
Crapity, crap, crap, crap.
Not only that, Luke didn’t go gonzo about Noah probably because I asked him not to. He took me to a hotel when I freaked out at his loft. He made sure I had the Triumph tee. Lastly, he didn’t have a hissy fit when I stopped the festivities right when they were getting to the point of no return and held me, just like I needed.
So, not only did I belong to Luke, he was most definitely a Good Guy.
The warm melty feeling in my stomach could no longer be denied.
Shit.
This time my hand slid down his belly and my fingers wrapped around him.
He sucked in breath then said, “Ava.”
“Quiet, Luke,” I replied, rolled into him until he was on his back, climbed on top, guided him inside me and settled.
God, he felt nice.
I was chest to chest with him, my face pressed to his neck. “I could sleep like this,” I whispered.
“I know,” he replied and there was humor in his voice and my head came up so I could smile at him in the dark.
His hands slid up my back, one stopped midway to wrap around and the other one kept going and went into my hair.
“You mind movin’?” he asked.
“I guess I could do that,” I answered and I started moving, slowly, savoring it, letting it build. I would kiss him, he would kiss me, our hands would roam but it was as if we had all the time in the world. Luke let me control it completely, didn’t even try to take over. When I was close, I slid my hand down his arm and took his in mine then guided it between our bodies, straight to the target.
“Ava,” his voice was back to sounding rough and my name in that voice made my stomach turn (more) melty mixed with a shiver going through my body. His fingers pressed and rolled which made the melty stomach and shivery body intensify significantly.
“Yes,” I breathed.
I kept moving, he kept pressing and rolling, we kept kissing (in between panting) and eventually it hit me and when it did it was slow, long and nice. Seconds after mine was over, his hands went to my hips, holding me down on him tight, and it hit him.
He kept me where I was by wrapping his arms around me.
I pressed my face in his neck. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Babe, I’d do just about anything for you but you gotta know, that was no sacrifice.”
Wow.
He would do just about anything for me?
Ho-ly crap.
After he said that, I couldn’t help myself, I nuzzled into him.
Then because he said that, I took a huge risk and told him, “I’ve decided you’re a good guy.”
He pulled my hair away from my neck and replied, “About fuckin’ time.”
* * * * *
I woke up and it was just dawn. The sunlight was still weak and I woke because I felt I was alone in bed.
I sat up and looked around the room to find Luke sitting in an armchair wearing his black cargos, shirtless (as usual), leaned forward with elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
I could tell this was an unhappy position of masculine reflection.
For a second I got scared. Then I got out of bed, found the Triumph tee and tugged it on. He watched me move toward him and when I got close he pulled me into his lap and sat back in the chair. I felt a moment of relief that his unhappy masculine reflection didn’t include something that would mean he would never pull me into his lap again so I let my body relax and settled into him.
“Do you want to share what’s on your mind?” I asked.
“Don’t you have to brush your teeth?” he responded.
I smiled at him before I wrapped an arm around his abs, stuffing my face in his neck.
“I’d rather know what’s on your mind,” I said softly.
One of his arms was curled around my back, hand resting on my hip. The fingers of his other hand slid back and forth, from knee to tee, on my thigh. My only thought was that I could wake up like this every morning of my life.
Then Luke spoke. “What’s on my mind is that I’m responsible for what happened to you.”
All morning dewy softness fle
w out the window, my head jerked up and I stared at him.
“What?” I asked, somewhat loudly.
“I’m responsible,” he repeated.
I narrowed my eyes, not because I was angry, but because I didn’t have my contacts in or glasses on and I was trying to focus so I could read his face (this didn’t work).
“How on earth are you responsible?” I asked.
“I went after him, he retaliated. That’s how I’m responsible.”
Oh for goodness sakes.
“Luke, that’s just crazy.”
“It isn’t, Ava. I should have seen it coming and prepared, especially when the info started to come in on him.”
Uh-oh.
This didn’t sound good.
“What info?”
Luke didn’t hesitate before sharing. “His name isn’t Noah Dexter, he’s got a record, he’s wanted in two states and he’s been connin’ women, like he conned you, for a long time.”
I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I was surprised by it.
“I still don’t see how that makes you responsible,” I said.
“You didn’t tell me about the jewelry.” Was Luke’s strange reply.
“What about it?”
“It was worth over sixty-five K.”
I sucked in breath at another demonstration of his freaky ability to know everything.
“How did you find that out?” I asked.
“Your aunt’s will. The jewelry was worth over sixty-five K when appraised for the will, seven years ago.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Dexter didn’t steal five grand, he stole over seventy grand. That’s a big difference. You were a larger mark than I first thought. This guy isn’t a small time con man. Far as we could tell, he was running two cons simultaneously. The one with you and some other woman, much older, disabled, in her early seventies. He got her jewelry, stole her car and wiped out her retirement account. Between the two of you, he pulled in over three hundred large.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed, incapable of wrapping my mind around this news. I was, however, able to septuple my vow of revenge against Noah.
A disabled lady in her seventies? What a jerk!
“I underestimated him,” Luke went on, interrupting my mental tirade. “He gets caught, his picture hits the news, women come forward who didn’t report him and he’s fucked even more than he was fucked. He’s not gonna let that happen and he would be desperate enough to do about anything to make certain it doesn’t. Including fuckin’ with my woman, somethin’ not a lot of people in Denver would have the balls to do.”
Okay, so, it was safe to say this was not good news. I felt like an even bigger idiot now than I felt when Noah took off with my money.
Time to focus and not on me being an idiot.
“Luke, you aren’t responsible,” I said. “I’m responsible. I let him in my life in the first place.”
“Lotta women do.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Probably not but it’s the truth.”
There you go.
Time for a different tack.
“Okay then you want to know how I felt when you first said you were going to go after him?”
Luke just looked at me.
“I felt happy,” I shared. “My stomach got melty. I was glad someone wanted to take care of me.”
Silence.
I persevered even though doing so scared the shit out of me. We were in vulnerable territory here, way vulnerable.
“Last night, you were preparing to go gonzo. You didn’t because I needed you. Last night you also said you can’t say no to me. If I pushed it, that I didn’t want you to go after him, really pushed it, would you have?”
More silence.
Shit.
It was going to have to be all or nothing.
I put my hands to his neck and moved so I was facing him.
Do it, say it, the time is right, Good Ava urged.
Don’t! The time will NEVER be right! Bad Ava yelled.
For once I listened to Good Ava, took a breath and bared it all.
Quietly, I said, “Yesterday, when I was in my freak out about Jules, Daisy said to me that I was trying to find ways to protect my heart but I was doing it wrong. She told me the best way to protect my heart was to trust it to someone who will protect it for me.”
More silence but his body went completely still.
“That’s you. It’s always been you,” I whispered, my heart racing, I was scared as hell but I forged ahead. “Please don’t take responsibility for Noah being an asshole. I couldn’t bear it if you did that.”
I’d barely stopped talking when, without a word, Luke got up, taking me with him. He carried me to the bed and put me in it, coming down on top of me.
“You belong to me,” he stated, his voice soft, his tone firm, his hands starting to roam.
I was pretty fucking happy he seemed to be delighted (in a Luke way, of course) with the news that I’d trusted him with my heart.
Still I wasn’t ready to go there just yet.
“Take it back that you feel responsible,” I said instead.
“Tell me you belong to me,” he demanded.
“Take it back first,” I countered.
The roaming hands were getting serious so mine started to roam too just because I didn’t want to be left out.
He kissed me gently then against my mouth he said, “I’ll wait. You can say it when I’m inside you.”
“Seriously, you can be so annoying,” I told him.
“Babe,” he said as he smiled against my mouth.
For your information a lot later, when he was deep inside me, I gave him what he wanted.
I mean, this was Luke. I was his woman.
And I did belong to him.
For as long as I could remember.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gonzo
Luke and I walked into the Nightingale Investigations offices and everyone was in the reception area waiting for us.
When I said everyone, I mean everyone.
Lee and Indy, Jet and Eddie, Hank and Roxie, Vance and Jules, Sissy, Ally, Daisy with a tall, dark-haired, handsome man I did not know standing at her side, Shirleen, May, Tod and Stevie, Mace, Matt, Hector, Darius, Tex, Duke, and some big black dude I’d never seen before in my life.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Luke’s mouth got tight.
Everyone stared at me and I knew why. I didn’t look good. I got a good look at myself in the hotel mirror that morning, my lip was torn and my eye was bruised and blackened (and that didn’t count what they couldn’t see and that was the headache to end all headaches). Not to mention, these people talked, no way to keep a secret in this group, news spread like wildfire.
Shirleen was the first to break out of the Group Stare. She walked up to me and pulled me into tight hug.
“Child,” she said low, a tremor running through her voice, a tremor that communicated itself to my body.
“I’m fine,” I told her, putting my arms around her and giving her a reassuring squeeze.
She just held on tight.
After a few beats she leaned back and looked at my face close up. As I watched, sweet, soft, gentle Shirleen morphed into hard, angry, pissed-off Shirleen.
“No one messes with my girl,” she said quietly, eyes still scanning my face. She stepped back, let me go and looked towards the male contingent of our audience. Then she repeated, “No one messes with my girl.” This time she said it louder, angrier, it sounded like an order and the tension in the room, already high, climbed higher. Nobody seemed prepared to do a thing about it, in fact they all seemed to be feeding off it.
Not good.
Before I could intervene, Shirleen looked at Darius. “You got me, son?” she asked.
“I got you, Aunt Shirleen,” Darius said and my surprised gaze swung between Shirleen and Darius. I didn’t know they wer
e related.
Then Shirleen, not quite done, looked at Lee. “Do you got me?” she repeated.
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