by K Carothers
“Erin. God, Erin,” Luke whispered, savoring the exquisite pleasure of her body moving on his, around his, with only the ground underneath them and the stars above, and the enticing smell of her and the wildflowers filling the air.
“Oh…Luke…” Erin managed to get out, her face contorting in ecstasy. “How…how is this even—possible?”
A smile briefly tugged at Luke’s mouth. “Do you need a biology lesson, honey?”
“I just can’t believe,” she began, having to pause and gulp air as she felt her body drown even deeper in sweet sensation. “I can’t believe…this can feel—so good.”
“Now that’s chemistry,” he said, drawing her head back down for another kiss. “Pure chemistry.”
Their lips met with the same wild passion as their bodies, both demanding more, and more, and more…
Erin finally tore her mouth from his and leaned back, feeling pleasure start to reach its glorious peak. And when it burst inside her she looked up into the star-studded sky, crying out her release, and no longer felt like she was on the ground. The fireflies all around her were stars, and the stars were fireflies. She was part of Luke, and he was part of her. She was still herself, and yet they were all one…And at that moment she knew what it felt like to be in harmony with the universe.
Afterward, she fell on top of Luke, fulfilled in a way she’d never been before, and they lay there in the field of wildflowers, basking in the warm afterglow of passion under the moon and stars.
Luke eventually pressed a kiss on her ear and teasingly murmured into it, “So was I any good, or do you need to get drunk again?”
“No, I don’t need to get drunk again. Not when I have you to get me high.” Erin nuzzled her face against his neck with a satisfied purr. “You definitely took me to the moon, Neal Armstrong. And you helped me touch the stars.”
“It was my pleasure, Sally Ride.”
Erin lifted her head and gazed into his eyes, shining such a deep, dark blue in the light of the moon, and so many emotions flooded her. She couldn’t believe this man could make her feel so much, that he could make her love so much. And she wanted to tell him. “Luke,” she whispered. “Luke, I—I…” But the words caught in her throat again.
He knew what she was trying to say, though. He saw it in her eyes. “I love you too,” he whispered back.
Erin lowered her mouth to his, telling him in her kiss what she couldn’t express in words.
“Keep doing that instead,” Luke told her when the kiss ended, “and I’ll forbid you to ever say you love me.”
Erin knew he was teasing, but she still couldn’t make light of it. “Luke, I want to—”
“It’s okay, Erin,” he interrupted. “I would rather have you show me in a thousand ways that you love me than to ever hear it even once in words alone—which sounds like something Jenna would say.”
Erin immediately smiled. “Actually, you probably have heard her say something like that before. I’ve heard it many times myself: ‘An ounce of action carries far more weight than a ton of empty words.’”
Luke chuckled. “Ah, yes. That is where my inspiration came from.”
“And I remember she said her inspiration for the quote came from Ralph Waldo Emerson—a friend of Thoreau’s, not surprisingly—who once said, ‘An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.’”
“You’re just spitting out the quotes now, aren’t you?”
Erin grinned. “Oh, you should have heard me let them fly earlier today when I saw you with Lexi and decided to take action.”
“You took more than an ounce of action there, that’s for sure,” Luke teased. Then a devilish smile crossed his face. “But speaking of taking action, I have another thing in mind for you to do with me.”
“I’m guessing it’s something quite indecent by the look on your face,” Erin said in amusement. “It just better not be illegal. I won’t be the one stealing batteries from a hotel this time.”
Luke’s expression turned sheepish. “That’s right. I still have to replace those.”
“Don’t worry about it, Detective. I’ll cover for you and get them some new ones tomorrow.”
“That would be much appreciated, Sally Ride. And then you can get your deposit back, too.”
“I forgot about that,” Erin said ruefully. “I was supposed to get it back the next morning. But I doubt I can now.”
“Because you lost your Sally Ride ID?”
“Very funny,” she responded with a grudging laugh. “But let’s get back to the question at hand. What is it you really want me to do—if I dare ask?”
Luke gave her another devilish grin. “It’s something that’s always been on my bucket list. I want you to go skinny dipping with me.”
Erin raised a brow at him. “Skinny dipping with me has always been on your bucket list?”
“Skinny dipping has. With you would be a bonus beyond my wildest dreams.” Luke slowly ran his fingers through her hair, and his expression sobered. “But it’s just a thought. We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
Erin was surprised that the very idea of swimming naked in the pond at night didn’t give her a full-blown panic attack right then and there. But what surprised her more was the realization that she could do it. And even more shocking was that she really wanted to do it. Not just for him, but for her, too. “Okay, take me to the pond, Neal Armstrong, and I’ll help you live out your wildest bucket list dream.” She slid off him and got up to gather her clothes. “And we’d better hurry before I have too much time to think about it.”
Luke didn’t move, though. Instead he lay there with his hands behind his head, smiling up at her appreciatively as she stood in the moonlight. “I think I am dreaming. Either that or I just died and went to Heaven, and they sent their most beautiful naked angel to greet me.”
“Well, I’m going to turn into a real angel if you don’t come with me and I drown trying to skinny dip alone.” Erin flashed him a grin and took off running toward the pond.
Luke grabbed his own clothes and followed her at a more leisurely pace, laughing softly as he watched her run, with the moon highlighting the voluptuous shape of her bottom. She’d probably never mooned anyone in her entire life, and now she was taking it to a whole new level.
Down at the beach Erin didn’t let herself think twice, the exhilaration of the night driving away all inhibition. She dropped her clothes in the sand and raced full tilt into the water.
Luke’s amusement instantly faded when he realized she wasn’t going to stop. “Hold up, Erin!” he yelled. And throwing down his own clothes, he sprinted the rest of the way to the pond and splashed in after her, urgently closing the rest of the distance between them and swooping her up into his arms. “Christ, have you been drinking after all?”
Erin laughed and slid her arms around his neck, dizzy with a different kind of intoxication—and just a touch of nerves. “This is all your fault, Detective, after what you did to me in the Jacuzzi the other night.”
“Then I think I’ve created a monster,” Luke said dryly, willing his own nerves to settle down after watching her jump into the water like that.
“I’m not an angel anymore?” Erin teased, nipping his ear.
“No, you’re a monster. A very beautiful monster.” Luke lightly brushing his lips over hers as he carried her farther into the pond. “One that tastes really, really good.”
“Mmmm, so do you.” Erin deepened the kiss and shifted in his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and pressing her body closer to his, skin against skin.
Luke finally drew back when they were almost chest-deep in the water. “How are you feeling?”
“Really, really good,” Erin responded in a sultry whisper. The heat of his body made her forget all about the coolness of the water, and she was getting hotter by the minute. She rubbed her breasts against
his chest like she’d wanted to do the first time he’d taken her into the water, and softly moaned as pleasure, raw and yet deliciously sweet, rippled through her. “I would say I’m feeling with my fingers, but I’m definitely feeling with a lot more than my fingers right now.”
Luke chuckled. “I really have created a monster.” Then he eased her down to stand in the water and held her at arm’s length. “But we’d better do some swimming before I drag you out of here and we have sex on the beach instead—which is on my bucket list too, by the way.”
Erin gave him her devilish grin. “I think we’ve been in the pond long enough to check skinny dipping off the list.” She stepped toward him. “I am so ready to hit sex on the beach.”
Before she could get her hands on him again, though, he dove to the side and swam away from her a ways, then stood up and faced her with a devilish smile of his own. “Catch me first.”
Erin let out a laugh. “Oh, I will.” But as she gazed at him her amusement quickly turned to wonder, and for a moment she couldn’t move. He stood in a pool of shimmering liquid light, and the moon cast a soft glow over his features. The stars sparkled in the background, and the fireflies flickered all around him. He looked…magical, and it took her breath away.
“Come on,” Luke urged, holding his arms out to her.
Erin slowly waded toward him, enjoying the feel of the water against her skin now that the fear was gone. She leaned forward a little, fanning her arms out and pushing off with her feet, letting the buoyancy of the water propel her faster toward him. And in the next instant a memory clicked in her head…
Her mother stood in the water, giving her an encouraging smile. “You can do it.”
Erin smiled back and started paddling toward her, emboldened by all the love she saw on her mother’s face.
“That’s it, baby,” her mother said, holding her arms out. “Come to me…”
Erin looked up at Luke and lunged ahead. She allowed her feet to lose contact with the sandy bottom of the pond and floated on her chest, using her arms to crawl forward while she kicked her legs up and down.
Luke caught her when she reached him. “You were swimming,” he said in astonishment.
Erin smiled up at him. “I’m pretty sure I’ve done that before.”
“Well, you did an awesome job, honey.”
He gathered her into his arms for a hug, and Erin lifted her gaze up to the stars and silently said, Thank you, Mom.
Luke let her go and waded backward. “Do it again.”
Erin laughed and swam toward him, but he kept moving away, staying just out of her reach. And for a while they played a game of cat and mouse, though she felt more like a mouse trying to catch the cat.
Then he finally stopped, and she jumped on him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. “Caught you,” she said gleefully.
“You did,” he responded with an affectionate smile. “A long, long time ago.”
Erin slid one of her arms from around his neck and ran her fingers slowly over his cheek, his lips, the dimple in his chin. Then she lifted her eyes to his and told him once again with her look that she loved him.
Luke tenderly brushed his lips over hers, saying it back in his kiss.
More kisses followed, and tenderness soon turned to passion. Erin felt his arousal tease the sensitive skin of her bottom, and she restlessly moved against him, murmuring, “I think it’s time you dragged me to shore, Neal Armstrong.”
Luke laughed softly and carried her toward the beach. But he stopped in the shallow water. “I want you right here,” he said, sinking down into the sandy bottom of the pond with her straddling his lap. Then he captured her mouth with his in another torrid kiss, guiding her over him to join their bodies as well.
Erin broke the kiss with a low moan and tried to thrust against him when he was fully sheathed inside her. But he wouldn’t let her move, holding her hips firmly in his grip.
“Let’s take it slow this time,” Luke whispered, and leisurely traced her lips with his tongue.
“Luke,” Erin groaned in protest and tried to move anyway, her body throbbing with too much need to hold still.
He gave just a little, and she slowly rocked against him, letting out soft murmurs of pleasure. He sucked her lower lip in and out of his mouth at the same time, and then her tongue, intensifying the exquisite sensations that were already building inside her. Soft murmurs turned into deep moans, and she tried once again to go faster. But he held firm, continuing the torturously slow pace.
“Be patient, honey,” Luke said with amusement in his tone, and lowered his head to her chest, making love to her breasts as leisurely as he had her mouth.
“Oh God, Luke, please,” Erin begged, digging her fingers into the back of his shoulders. It felt like every nerve ending in her body was charged beyond capacity, all her circuits overloaded, smoking and ready to explode.
Then he gave a little more, and it was just enough. She threw her head back and cried out as pleasure splintered into sweet spasms of release, rocketing her up to the moon and stars, and taking him along for the ride.
When they finally came back to earth, Luke regarded her with a mixture of satisfaction and wonder on his face. “I don’t care if it turns out you’re an Olympic swimmer, honey. I see a lot more swimming lessons in your future.”
Erin chuckled. “I have a long way to go before I’m an Olympic swimmer, so I’ll need a lot more lessons for sure. And who knows? Maybe after enough of them we can do one of those cliff dives into the ocean—although the day I do that we’ll probably see pigs flying with us. But maybe that can happen too. Jenna did say two-headed cows exist.”
Luke shook his head in bemusement. “Two-headed cows? I’m not even going to ask about that. And I don’t need to do any cliff diving when we can have midnight lessons here in the pond.” His lips curved up into a wolfish grin. “Watching you howl at the moon when you climax is spectacular enough for me.”
“I can’t help it.” Erin lightly sank her teeth into his neck. “You make me wild. So beware.”
Luke let out a tortured groan. “Okay, we need to get out of this pond before you eat me alive.”
Erin gave his shoulder an enthusiastic love bite, and he hauled her up with another groan and led her out of the water.
They used a blanket draped on the back porch swing to dry off, then got dressed and sat down. Luke wrapped an arm around her, and Erin laid her head on his shoulder. The fireflies were still playing in the yard, and she smiled as she watched them. It had truly been a magical night, one she wouldn’t forget for the rest of her life.
Luke gently rocked the swing, and they continued to sit in companionable silence for a while. Then he eventually pressed a kiss on her head. “I hate to say this, but I’ll have to head home soon. We have a meeting with the DA about the murder case first thing in the morning, and I still need to prepare a few things.”
Erin buried her face against his shoulder with a soft murmur of protest. She didn’t want to return to reality quite yet. “I wish you could stay all night.”
“Ah, honey, I wish I could too. But I’ve got to get ready for this meeting.”
Erin lifted her head after a moment and tentatively asked, “Do you…do you have any idea who did it?”
Luke knew what she was really asking. “No, not for sure. I still haven’t had a chance to question your father, but at this point there’s no evidence that he was involved.”
He didn’t mention the barbed wire. So far they’d managed to keep some of the gorier details of the crime out of the press, and he couldn’t discuss them with her or anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the case. Not that he wanted to anyway.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about your father,” he said in a tone filled with deep regret. “I was going to, but I knew you’d be pretty upset about it, and I kept putting it off.”
> Erin nodded. “Jenna said basically the same thing the other day. But yesterday she also told me this: ‘Sometimes the things we do to protect those we love end up being the things that hurt them the most.’ It’s something we’ve all been guilty of.”
Luke took her hands, kissing the back of each one. “The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you. There are a lot of things I can’t talk about with respect to my job, just like you can’t with yours. But outside of that I’ll always be honest with you from now on, no matter what. And I need the same thing from you.”
“Yes, I promise,” Erin vowed, squeezing his hands. And with a grin she added, “Apparently I’m a bad liar anyway, according to Jenna.”
Luke chuckled. “That’s good to know.” Then he reluctantly stood up. “But I guess the time has come. I’ve got to get going.”
He helped her up, and they walked hand-in-hand back around the house to the front door.
“Make sure you lock everything up when I leave,” Luke said, pulling her close.
Erin slid her arms around his neck. “Yes, Detective.”
He gazed down at her with tenderness in his eyes. “Can I come over tomorrow night?”
“Mmmm, yes,” she purred, drawing his mouth to hers for a kiss. And then another. And another.
Luke groaned. “I really have to go.” But he didn’t move.
Erin heard the conflict in his voice and knew she had to make the decision for them. “Okay, I guess you should head home, Detective Mathis.” She brushed one last kiss on his lips. “Sweet dreams.”
She slipped into the house, resisting the urge to look back at him, and locked the door. Then she turned and leaned against it with a contented smile. Something tickled her ear, and she reached up. The wild purple petunia was still in her hair.
Laughing softly, she plucked it out and went to go put it in a glass of water.
* * *
Erin tossed restlessly in bed that night, unable to sleep. She finally threw off the blanket, feeling too hot to have the covers on, and turned onto her back. The ceiling was softly illuminated by the light of the nearby lamp, and images of Luke came to mind as she stared up at it: those deep blue eyes, the way he smiled, that hard body…
