“I’m followin’ you,” he says at last.
Chapter Eighteen
Gracie
I’ve barely closed my door and locked it before Luke is reaching for me.
It’s dark in my condo. But he somehow finds my hand, wrapping his palm around mine as he pulls me to him.
Not another minute, the movement says. I cannot wait another fucking minute.
The memory of his earlier hesitation evaporates.
I can only make out the shape of his head. He tilts it, taking a breath through parted lips before they come down on mine. He pulls at me with open mouth and hot tongue. Nose catching on mine. Surrounds me with the bulk of his body, arms curling tightly around my waist as my body rises to meet his kiss.
His mouth roves over mine. Hungry and ardent. Hard and sweet. I just stand there, stunned, softening with need, head falling back against the onslaught, as he pulls and pulls and pulls. Scruff scraping my skin. Tongue in my mouth. Stealing. Conquering. My breath and my soul and my careful careful careful.
He’s got me. So tight and so close. I don’t know if I can withstand the enormity of his need.
Ah, shit, my legs are shaking. Heart scrambling, I grab at him. Grab his face, my fingers digging into his scruff. He groans. A sound I can feel reverberate in his throat and chest.
Luke is an A-plus kisser. Has been since the beginning. But this kiss—it’s different. Deeper. A little desperate, even. Like he needs to convince me of something.
I wait for the questions, the qualms to arrive.
Qualms are still there. Maybe they always will be.
But I surrender to the kiss anyway. Because I’m learning there is no perfect—time, person, place. Just the truth—my gut.
Truth is, I want to be kissed like this.
I want to be kissed like this by Luke more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.
His mouth moves to my neck. Sending a spike of electricity through my center. I moan. He sinks his teeth into my skin, and now my head is falling all the way back.
I am lost.
And I feel him. The way he’s completely present. Completely focused on plundering every corner of my being.
I moan again, clutching at his chest now. Grabbing at him.
“I’m gonna,” he pants, breath hot on my throat, “make a mess of you yet.”
Luke’s been to my condo before. But I’m still surprised when he manages to guide me into my bedroom a few steps from the door—it’s at the front of my condo, kitchen and living area in the back.
The backs of my legs meet with my mattress. I slide off my glasses and set them on the nightstand.
He’s kissing my mouth again. Stroke after stroke, deep and gutting. His hands move up my sides. Searching for my zipper. I’m about to tell him where it is when his fingers catch on it in the middle of my back. They follow it up to my neck, hand trailing a line of fire up my spine.
And then he’s pulling my zipper down. Slow, just like always. The sound of the teeth working free of the zipper making my pussy tingle. Almost like he’s unzipping me there. Opening me so he can take what he wants.
Zipper meets its end just above my ass. Luke pulls back. Our noses still touching, he meets my eyes and works the straps of my dress off my shoulders.
Him looking down at me like this—so sure in his control, in his desire for me, so cocky in his right to claim—I am helpless.
Luke guides the dress over my hips. It falls to the floor. He makes a sound—a pained growl—when he sees I’m not wearing underwear.
“I’mma lay you down.” He digs my breast out of my strapless bra. Holds it in his hand. The gentleness of his touch a stark contrast to the hard-edged need in his eyes. “I’m gonna play with your pussy. I’ll tease your ass. And then—” His lips flutter against mine. “Then you’re gonna give me what I want.”
It’s yours, I think wildly.
His eyes dart between mine. “Lay down.”
My legs still shake as I step out of my dress. I sit on the edge of the bed and unstrap my sandals. Unhook my bra and put it on the nightstand.
My nipples pebble when they meet the air conditioning. Sucking a breath through my teeth, I pull back the covers and lie down.
Light from a streetlamp streams through the slats of the shutters. Painting the room in alternating stripes of blue and darker blue.
I watch as Luke undresses. He reaches his arms behind him to take off his blazer, one sleeve at a time. Folding it in half and draping it over the back of the armchair beside my closet.
My condo is small. Bedroom the smallest room. Luke looks enormous in it. He turns, his shoulders and torso blocking the light from the window as he unbuttons his shirt. My God he is huge.
He could really hurt me if he wanted.
Luke turns back to me when he’s stripped down to his boxers. His eyes glint.
He shucks off the boxers. I let out a breath when I see his dick is hard and standing straight up. His pubic hair a dark mass in the low light.
My pussy pulses. Once, twice.
“Where’s the lube you bought?” he asks.
My pulse skips.
I swallow. Blindly reach for the nightstand beside me. “He—here. I have it.”
I dig it out of the drawer.
Luke crosses the room in half a stride to come stand beside my side of the bed. He takes the box from me and opens it, putting the box on the nightstand while keeping the bottle that was inside it in his hand.
His thighs legitimately are the size of—of—I don’t know what. But they’re big. And hairy. Pale compared to the rest of him.
I reach out and touch the one closest to me. Run my hand up toward his groin.
The muscle in his ass—the one to the side, just underneath his hip—flexes, creating this marvelous little hollow.
I want to stick my face in it.
But before I can do that, Luke takes my hand and guides it up to his cock. Wraps my fingers around him.
“Feel that?” he says.
He’s hot to the touch and very, very hard. His velvety foreskin pulled back to reveal his head.
“You keep touchin’ me, and I’m gonna want to put this in your ass.”
I swallow. “Why don’t you?”
“Why don’t I fuck you in the ass with my cock?” His nostrils flare. “Oh, baby, you ain’t ready for that. I’ll show you why.”
Luke climbs onto the bed. Climbs on top of me, really. Kneeling, my legs trapped between his thighs.
He leans down to take my tit in his mouth. Gives it a savage suck—“Oh. Oh.”—before straightening.
He opens the bottle of lube.
Eyes on mine as he brings a knee between my legs and pushes them apart. No preamble. No asking. He kneels between them, squeezing a drop of lube onto the long, blunt fingers of his right hand.
He works the lube down his first two fingers. Forearm rippling as his hand moves.
He knows.
He knows.
The motherfucker knows what he’s doing.
My pulse forces its way through my skin. Pound pound pound, a pounding I can feel in my pussy.
As if he can read my body—hell, maybe he can—Luke reaches down and gently swipes his thumb across my clit.
He hisses. A sinew popping in his shoulder.
“Baby, you’re soaked,” he says, gravel in his voice. “Tell me I’m the only one who gets you wet like this.”
Now he’s drawing his thumb down my slit and back up again. Sinking into my softness.
“You’re the only one,” I breathe. “I mean that. It’s true.”
“I know.” He hits my clit again.
My hips buck. His other hand comes down on my belly. Those long fingers splayed between my hips, pinning me to the mattress.
I don’t understand why. But this makes me feel safe. Secure, almost.
“Stay with me,” he bites out.
His hand moves a little lower. I hold my breath, waiting. Pressing up agai
nst his palm as I try to writhe in anticipation.
Then his fingertip—the middle one, lubed up—is on my asshole.
I look down to see. He’s there.
I suck in a breath as a new wave of arousal washes through me, settling just inside my skin.
I feel like we’re doing something wrong. Something obscene and literally dirty.
It turns me on so bad.
Pressure builds as Luke circles his finger against me. Caressing. Then pressing.
I glance up at Luke. His eyes are searching my face. How the fuck is he staying so cool right now? How the fuck does he not…not…well, fuck me here?
“What do you feel?” he asks.
I let out a breath. “Pressure. I like it. Keep going.”
Luke presses the tip of his finger inside me. The lube makes him slip in easily enough. But the pressure—
It makes me gasp. It’s sharp. Intense. Uncomfortably so.
I like it. So much.
His eyes blaze. “Now?”
I look back down. I like watching.
“A little pain. Keep going.”
He pushes his finger a little further inside me. I feel my body resisting the intrusion.
I feel myself getting wetter and wetter.
The beat between my legs sounds in my ears. More. Pain. Please.
His finger sinks deeper. I grab onto his wrist—the hand that’s on my belly—and he stops moving.
“Keep. Going,” I say through gritted teeth.
My hips buck up when he presses his thumb to my clit at the same time he slips his broad finger all the way inside me.
A searing hit of pain slices through me. I sputter. Feeling my body clamp around him.
For a heartbeat, then another, he lingers there, until I feel myself loosening.
And then he starts moving his finger. Tiny little thrusts. I keep loosening. Accepting his intrusion. Each time, his finger goes in a little easier. A little more smoothly.
He’s hitting all new nerves. Ones I didn’t even know existed.
His finger makes this lewd, wet noise as it goes in and out.
A tremor moves between my legs. I think—
No, I’m going to come just from this.
I see stars when his first finger joins his middle at my pucker. I want more. I want him to hurt me. I like this, and I want this, and I never want him to stop.
I look up at him.
At the same moment, he presses that second finger inside me.
More pain.
A lot more. Pressure that feels like a knife.
My body retreats, hips pulling up and back, but because Luke is holding me down, I can’t go very far.
“Watermelon,” I pant.
Immediately he pulls both fingers out of me.
“Hey,” he soothes. Curling and uncurling the fingers on my belly, brushing them softly against my skin. “Hey, baby girl, you all right?”
“Whew,” I say. “That was…a lot.”
Luke nods. “You see how me going straight to putting myself in there isn’t a good idea? We gotta work you up to that. Go slow.”
How this guy gives a shit—how careful he is, and how thorough, how he takes his time with me—it’s cute.
Can you refer to butt stuff as “cute”?
I don’t know. But right now, Luke is being so cute it’s kinda making my throat close in.
At the same moment, something in my chest squeezes.
Oh, God.
Oh, God, this man—I am totally, definitely falling for him. He’s slipped his fingers inside me. Slipped through my defenses, too, and now—
Well. It’s too late to go back now.
Now I’m starting to see that Luke was right. That I’d been trying to force a round peg into a square hole when I was with all the guys I’ve been with before. They weren’t right for me. I didn’t feel comfortable with them. So I hid.
But I don’t feel the need to hide with Luke. Not at all. I don’t feel smothered with him. Even after we talked about the potential for a relationship—I don’t feel any need to try harder or change who I am. What I want.
Instead, I feel set free. Every conversation we have, every orgasm we give each other—it all continues to push me that much closer to something that feels really, really good.
Something that feels like the truth.
The beauty of that takes my breath away.
That. Or maybe it’s Luke’s hand between my legs that’s got me breathless, curling his thumb over my clit again. I roll into his touch, sensation gathering and winding and blaring. My body draws taut, begging for the release.
But it suddenly seems selfish to come without him. We’ve worked on my list. Now it’s his turn.
I want to give. As much as he’s given me.
“What do you want?” I whisper, trailing my hand up his arm.
His eyes are soft when they lock on mine.
“I wanna make love to you,” he says.
My stomach dips.
That’s one hell of a truth right there.
I squeeze his bicep. “That sounds serious.”
He recognizes the line—he used it on me the day I ran into him at The Pearl.
One side of his mouth kicks up. His eyes soften.
I love it when his eyes get all soft and serious like this.
“It is,” he replies, trailing the hand on my belly up to my breasts. He cups one, kneading it. Sensation darts from my nipple to my clit.
My lips part on the word.
“Yes.”
Chapter Nineteen
Luke
Gracie’s pussy is spread open in front of me, sweet and small. Tits upright, soft in my hand.
Looking down at her, I got no fucking clue if this is the right call.
Am I a shameless piece of shit for making love to her tonight?
Am I making this call because I’m scared and desperate?
Or am I doing it because I’m fucking wild for her and I wanna give her everything I got? Because I wanna tell her my truth in the hope she’ll see it and love it the way I love hers, and then she’ll ride with me on my tractor off into the sunset?
I just—
I don’t know.
All I know is this feeling keeps catching. Of Gracie slipping through my fingers. One breath, one minute, one night at a time.
Which does and doesn’t make sense.
Tonight, I saw firsthand just how different our worlds are.
But then Gracie spoke about the possibility of an us. Not only that—of an us that worked out.
That’s a big ass step for her.
And then she just said yes. She’s gonna let me make love to her.
Another big step.
Maybe right now, a couple of steps are enough. She’s trying.
Which makes me think—if and when the time comes—she’ll help me try to make those circles in my mental Venn diagram overlap a little more.
“Talk to me, Luke,” she says, moving her nails up the back of my arm. That feels—Jesus, real nice. “You’re pensive tonight. Which I don’t mind. I just want to know what’s going on inside your head.”
See? See how fucking great she is?
I take a breath. Let it out.
“A lot,” I say. “You’re doing a real good job of keepin’ an open mind, Gracie girl. So good you’re gettin’ my hopes up. Might be my turn to be a little scared.”
She nods. “I don’t want you to be scared. But I understand why you are. I mean, hell, I’m afraid, too. This—I think this is moving a lot faster than either of us anticipated. Totally normal to be feeling a little whiplash.”
Whiplash.
Don’t I wish that’s all this was. A simple mind-body discombobulation from too much anal play. Too many smiles.
“What would Lady Jane do?” I tease. At a loss for what else to say.
The corners of her eyes crinkle. “She’d screw her courage to the sticking place and let you bone her.”
“Make love to
her,” I correct. “Important difference.”
Gracie laughs. Her eyes—they’re different tonight. There’s this new softness in them. This trust.
I ain’t gonna waste it.
I lean down, caging her head between my arms. Still on my knees.
“How does their story end?” I ask, pressing a kiss to the corner of her lips.
She leans up to grab my mouth with hers. “I don’t know. Haven’t finished it yet.”
“But it’s a happy ending, right?”
Gracie looks me in the eye. “Always.”
I rest my forehead on hers. Same as ours will be.
Tightening my ab muscles, I slowly straighten my legs, sliding back on my knees. I’m still between Gracie’s legs, so as I go down, I melt my groin into hers.
I cover her with my body. So much skin and warmth and closeness.
It’s sweet. Everything feels sweeter tonight.
I lick her lips. Open them. Lick inside.
She moans, her hands gliding up my sides. Then clinging. Nails biting into my skin.
I start to roll my body. Leading with my shoulders. My dick is trapped between us, head nestled against her belly button. I lift my hips, then swivel them. Working myself down. She moans into my mouth, her knees curling around my hips. Spreading her wider.
“We using condoms?” I kiss her mouth, hot and quick. “Or you gonna let me do this bare?”
I always use condoms. Without question. Don’t want my dick falling off.
But with Gracie—I hate the idea of anything separating us. There’s a commitment in raw. A promise. That you can trust each other.
That there’s no one else.
I want this to be my last first time. My every time from here on out.
I want this to be the memory we have of our first time. A good memory we can go back to when things get hard. Because they will.
Tonight showed me they will.
Her eyes move between mine. The brown liquid with warmth and want.
“I’m—it’s safe. Without one. Unless you want—”
“I don’t.”
I duck my head. Trailing my nose along her jaw, I put my lips on the underside. Her skin is smooth and soft. I can taste her perfume here.
Southern Player: A Charleston Heat Novel Page 16
