CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LUKE HADN’T TEXTED Olivia or called her that day, and he was starting to feel a little bit like an ass. But, he hadn’t wanted her to come spend the night at his place after that conversation about his mother. He had never told anyone about that. Had never talked about the money, the complex blame that he felt. The complex anger.
The way that he blamed his mother and himself for everything that had happened.
The way the money felt like more of a curse than a blessing, but a curse that he had to use to try and fashion it into something of a blessing, because if he didn’t, it would just be another failure as a son.
Then that encounter in the barn, which had been explosive as hell, Olivia dropping to her knees in front of him and taking him in her mouth.
Beautiful Olivia Logan, on her knees for him. Yeah, that was an image that was going to live in his mind until he was dead.
Maybe even after.
If you got to watch a reel of your greatest hits in the afterlife, he was pretty sure that one was going to be on his.
And then he slid inside of her and the whole world fell away. It had just been the two of them, and it had been so raw and focused that he hadn’t been able to handle the idea of going to sleep with her, too.
He had never thought of himself as a coward. But he was beginning to question that.
“You interested in going out drinking tonight?” Wyatt asked.
They had just wrapped up a long day out in the field, and it was only four o’clock. Still, Luke could barely walk after a whole day spent riding, and then fixing the fence, which was worse than a day of squats in the gym. He assumed. He’d never had a need to go to the gym, since he spent all day, every day, doing hard labor.
“Not particularly.”
“I talked Grant into going out,” Wyatt said.
Damn. Luke could hardly turn his friend down in that case. And he ignored the part of himself that whispered in his ear that he was rationalizing, that he was trying to get out of doing the right thing, which was making contact with Olivia, by pretending that he needed to be there to hold Grant’s hand.
But, in fairness to him, Grant hadn’t gotten out there and done a night out in a while. And the guy needed to get out.
Having known Grant for the past eight years, he knew that he wasn’t as mired in his grief as he had been back in the beginning. But it was bad enough.
“How did you do that?”
“He just said that he wanted to. So, far be it from me not to oblige him.”
“Hell, no,” Luke agreed.
“You might have to play designated driver,” Wyatt said.
“Oh, come on,” Luke said. “You’re gonna do that designated driver crap on me?”
“We can draw straws, but I think we have to let Grant drink. He can’t go out for the first time in who knows how long and have to be DD.”
“That really is bull pucky,” Luke said.
“I’m a bad friend,” Wyatt said, shrugging.
“You really are.” Luke took a deep breath, looking around the property. At the guest cabins that were coming together nicely, at the flower beds that had been prepared, the wood chips that had been laid down to create clean, easy walkways between the various outbuildings.
This place was getting ready for a whole new life. One that didn’t require him. It was a good thing. Especially all things considered. But it was strange, too. The end of an era in his life.
The first time that had happened the choice had been made for him. His mom had killed herself and there had been no other decision for him to make. Nothing that he had a say in. He simply had to do something. Anything. Had to move on, because there was no place to stay.
But this was his decision, and it was twenty years in the making.
“I got the property,” he said. “Cole Logan agreed to sell.”
“Really?” Wyatt looked at him in surprise. “Well... Congratulations. Really. I’m not psyched about losing you around here. But, I’m happy for you.”
“You don’t sound that happy.”
“I figured we would do this together,” Wyatt said, looking around the spread. “Make this place new again. Because I know that you love it as much as I do. Because I know that you...” Wyatt cleared his throat. “You put so much into this place, Luke. You’re right. I left. I left, and I didn’t spend hours working the land. I didn’t spend all my time working with Dad. You did. Grant got married. Bennett went off to school. You’re right. This places is in your bones. And if you really hate what I’m doing with it...”
“I don’t,” Luke said. “I don’t hate it. It’s just not me. I need a place of my own. And it was more than kind of your dad, of you, to make this place feel like home to me for as long as you did. But I just need to move on to something else. I need something that’s mine.”
“Then I’m glad you have it.”
“It doesn’t mean I’m dying. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to visit.”
Wyatt looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Glad to hear that. Anyway, if you weren’t planning on visiting, we’d hog-tie your ass and drag you back for family barbecues even if you didn’t want to come.”
Luke barked out a laugh. “Good to know.”
“We love you,” Wyatt said, his voice getting sincere. Just for a moment. “But not so much that we’d respect your wishes if they were in opposition to ours. Our wishes that we get to see you still.”
Luke laughed. “That is very good to know. So, should we go get that drink?”
“Well, you get to have soda.”
“You’re an awful friend.”
Wyatt clapped his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I’m really more of a brother.”
* * *
WHEN THEY WALKED into the bar, it was full of people. Crowded because it was Friday night and half the town was there to drink off the long workweek. Head into the weekend in style. Or, they were ranchers who had to get up early the next day no matter what, which was an even better reason to drink, as far as Luke was concerned. And certainly the reason they were all there drinking.
Wyatt was scanning the room, probably looking for his type of woman. Buckle bunnies who wanted to ride a cowboy and nothing more. Grant looked grim, his hat pulled down low over his face, his eyes fixed firmly on the bar, and on Laz.
Obviously Grant had been more interested in alcohol than sex.
Luke didn’t have an interest in alcohol, not really. And he didn’t have an interest in generic sex at all. He wanted Olivia. Wanted to be in Olivia’s quiet house with her, or in his cabin. Or on the floor of a barn.
Again, guilt tugged at him for not making contact with Olivia. He should have. But then, she hadn’t texted him, either.
Probably because you told her that you didn’t want her to spend the night.
Maybe. But he’d also told her that he would see her today. And, he had kissed her good-night.
Still, she hadn’t contacted him. So, maybe she really did need her space, like he’d suggested to her last night.
He’d made his decision. He’d gone out with Wyatt and Grant, and if nothing else, that promised to be interesting. So he was going to focus on that, and not on the fact he had to spend a sober evening away from the one person he wanted.
He walked across the distressed barn wood floor, passed a few vacant high round tables toward the back of the room where people were gathered around the pool table, the TVs and the dartboard.
And that was where he saw Olivia. For a second, he thought he was hallucinating because he couldn’t figure out why the hell Olivia would be there. But she was. Leaning up against the wall with Bennett right in front of her, his face scant inches from hers.
Then Bennett raised his hand and brushed a piece of Olivia’s glossy brown hair back from her face.
And Luke saw red.
There was no rational thought. There was nothing but pure male rage that drove him forward. He grabbed Bennett by the back of the shoulder and pulled him back. “What the hell is going on here?”
Olivia’s eyes flew wide. “Luke.”
“What the hell is this?” Luke asked.
“I’m sorry,” Bennett said, “you don’t have any right to come in here and question my actions with her.”
“I sure as hell do,” Luke said.
“Why is that? Were you her boyfriend for a year? Did you plan on marrying her?”
Luke grabbed hold of Bennett’s shirt and slammed him up against the wall. “I’m her lover, asshole,” Luke said. “And you wanted to know what I would throw a punch for? You’re about to find out.”
Bennett shoved him back and Olivia screeched. “Luke,” she said. “Stop it. We were talking.”
“Then he should’ve said that,” Luke said. “But he’s been spoiling for a fight for weeks now, so maybe this is a good time.”
“Why should he have to say it?” Olivia said. “I said it. I don’t need you to act like a posturing ape. You should listen to me.”
But he couldn’t listen, because the ring in his ears was so loud. Because the anger so far surpassed anything he had ever felt. The possessiveness. She had been his. Finally. And now to see her standing there with Bennett—Bennett, who he had already taken her from... He couldn’t handle it.
She was his. Olivia Logan was his.
Finally.
And he wasn’t going to lose her to another man.
“Olivia can speak for herself,” Bennett said, “and you need to back off.”
He was torn then. Between throwing that punch he promised and hauling Olivia out of there. He figured that since Wyatt was there, he probably shouldn’t start a bar fight with his younger brother. Because that was going to be weighted decidedly in Bennett’s favor. Wyatt and Grant might be his friends, but they were going to have to stand with their brother in a fistfight. That was just how it was. Luke didn’t even begrudge them that.
He also didn’t want to be in the middle of it.
So, he did the only logical thing there was.
He picked Olivia up, like he was Kevin Costner to her Whitney, and carried her toward the bathroom.
“You’ve lost your mind,” she squeaked, clinging to his shoulders as they crossed the bar.
“Maybe I have,” he said. “But I’m starting to think I didn’t lose it soon enough.”
He opened the bathroom door and carried her in, then slammed it behind them before locking it and setting her on her feet.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, facing him with furious brown eyes, her hands on her hips.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him. “Maybe they’ll carve your name up there, next to mine, what do you think?”
“Luke Hollister, I swear.” She was looking at him angrily, but she didn’t push him away.
There was a heavy knock on the door, and he had a feeling that it was Bennett.
“Hang on,” Olivia said. She whirled around, unlocking the door and cracking it. “We’re busy.”
He heard a muffled male voice. Definitely Bennett.
“No, I don’t need you to come in. We’re fine.” She slammed the door and locked it again, turning her focus back to Luke.
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“Because I don’t want to,” she said. “You are the stupidest man, Luke. Seriously, the stupidest one.”
“I’m not used to being an overachiever,” he said. “So I’ll take that.”
“You shouldn’t be proud of it. What did you think was happening when you came in?”
“He was touching you,” Luke said.
“Yes,” Olivia said, “but not... It doesn’t mean anything with him. It doesn’t even feel like anything.”
“You’re in love with him.” He didn’t even believe that, but he was angry, and he was looking for ways to justify that anger. Anger he could see now was just pure jealousy. Like he’d never felt before. Oh yeah, he’d felt twinges of envy when he’d seen Bennett with Olivia, but that had been different. This was an all-out testosterone-fueled jealous rage.
“I don’t love him,” she said. “I never did. Luke, I chose you. I chose to sleep with you. I... After last night how can you doubt that?”
Because he doubted everything. Something about her made him feel more certain of things than he had ever felt his entire life, and more unsure about other things. The kinds of things he was usually confident as hell in. Like his ability to hold on to a woman as long as he wanted to. And the fact that he would be fine if she walked away.
He had no idea who in the hell he was, or what in the hell was going on with him. Except that she was in his blood, and she was some kind of crazy madness that he couldn’t reason out.
He didn’t have anything to say, so he just kissed her. Because he didn’t have the right words, and he didn’t think he ever would. He kissed her until the ringing in his ears stopped. Until the anger was replaced by desire. Until he forgot that Bennett—or a whole bar full of people—was on the other side of that door.
It didn’t take long for her to wrap her arms around his neck, for her to push her fingers through his hair and kiss him back. Hard and deep and with all the anger he knew she felt. The anger and the desire.
“You’re a fool,” she hissed when they parted. “How could you think that I wanted him? Did you think this was just a game? That it was advanced-level Make Bennett Jealous stuff?”
“You’ve been convinced that you loved him for a long time,” Luke said. “And convinced that you didn’t like me very much for even longer.”
Her expression softened then, those dark eyes going liquid and touching something inside him that he wished wasn’t touched at all. “I do like you, you idiot.”
“Is that a term of affection now?”
“It is when the man that you...” She cleared her throat. “The man that you’re sleeping with is being an idiot.” She softened her words, then pressed her fingers against his lips and traced the outline of them. “I didn’t know what it meant to want somebody until you. That matters. You matter.”
“That’s it,” he said. “We have to go now.”
“We do?”
He picked her up, and she squeaked again. He unlocked the bathroom door and held her against his chest while they stood there in front of it. “Unless you want to do it in here.”
“Not especially.”
He cracked open the bathroom door and she held on to him more tightly. “Luke,” she whispered. “Everyone will know.”
He looked at her, and out at the room full of people. People who knew them. Knew him and that he was from nowhere, knew her and that she was town royalty. And he was fine with that. “Good.”
And then he took them out of the bathroom, and carried her across the saloon. People were craning their necks watching them, and a few men stood up from their chairs like they were thinking of rescuing her. But he didn’t stop. He took her straight out the front door.
“My parents are going to get phone calls,” she said, throwing her arm over her eyes.
“Good,” he said again.
She uncovered her face. Their eyes clashed. Then held. And it was like something broke between them. She kissed him then, on the street, where anyone could see them. Where everyone in the bar most certainly saw them, as they were definitely looking.
Then he carried her to his truck and deposited her in the passenger seat. “We’ll get your car tomorrow.”
She didn’t even argue. He started the engine and began to drive out toward her place. “Why are you at the bar in the first place?”
She ducked her head. “I was upset with you. I was trying not to be. I figured that you needed space.”
“I was giving you space,” he said.
She waved a hand. “Sure. But that was crap. You knew I didn’t need space. You needed space.”
Her words, her confidence, hit him like a slap. “I never need space.”
“You need all the space, all the time,” she said, scoffing. “And you know it.”
“What exactly does that mean, Liv?”
“Your entire life is you building space between yourself and others. With that ridiculous, smart-ass smile of yours. That one that makes my stomach flip over. Because it makes me want to jump on you and slap you in the face all at the same time.”
“You could try slapping me in the face while you jump on me,” he said, keeping his tone light. “It might be fun. I might like it. Maybe I’m kinky.”
“That. That kind of thing,” she said. “You were so upset just a few minutes ago, and now you’re joking.”
“What do you want from me? You want me to keep raging? Do you want me to tell you how I about put my fist through your ex-boyfriend’s face just for talking to you? You make me feel like a caveman? Like someone I don’t even know?”
“Yes,” she responded. “I would like you to tell me that. Tell me that you almost put your fist through his face. Because let me tell you, Luke, no man has ever wanted me like that before.”
“Olivia...” He shook his head. “You make me crazy, do you know that?”
“Good.”
“Not good,” he said. “It’s very unenlightened.”
“I didn’t ask you for enlightenment. I’m sick of obligations and doing the right thing, Luke. I don’t want to be a thing you’re protecting. I would rather have feelings.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You’ve got ’em, babe.”
They drove on in silence, and Luke sighed heavily, feeling the tension in the cab of the truck like a band across his chest.
“Olivia...”
“We don’t have to talk,” she said, reaching across and brushing her fingertips against his thigh. He liked that. There was something almost routine about this. Her riding in his truck. Touching his leg. Like there was real intimacy between them. Like maybe she owned part of him, and he owned her, too.
He didn’t understand this thing inside of him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He just wanted to be in it. That was how he liked to do things. To jump right in with both feet, to just revel in it. It was better than thinking ahead. When things would inevitably fall apart. To when they would end. He didn’t want to think about those things, so he didn’t.
He looked out at the highway and focused on the way the road cut a winding path through the thick trees, focused on the way her fingertips felt against his thigh. If the world was only this, it wouldn’t be so bad.
When they arrived at the house, they got out of the truck and he took her hand, and they walked into her house together.
“Aren’t you worried that your mom is going to see?” he asked.
“I’m much more worried my mom is going to come over, having heard that some Neanderthal carried her daughter out of the Gold Valley Saloon. Possibly after shagging her senseless in the bathroom.”
“Darlin’, I haven’t begun to shag you senseless.”
“I hope you begin soon,” she said, treating him to a smile that was vixenish, but still every inch Olivia. She was such a funny creature, his girl. It was the thing about her that had captivated him from the beginning.
That she was so utterly unique. Not like anyone or anything else. There was no peer pressuring Olivia Logan. She was who she was. She did absolutely everything the way that she wanted it done. Except for him. He seemed to be the one thing that ruffled her. That disrupted her calm. And damned if he didn’t like that. He liked it a hell of a lot.
He took a moment to look around Olivia’s house, which he hadn’t done yet. It was very her. White and pristine, neatly in order. As if the various knickknacks on the shelves would never dare to collect dust, not as long as Olivia Logan was present.
There was a little cupboard with plates on display, plates that looked like they had never been used, which was exactly the kind of thing he expected to see in a little cottage like this. There were doilies and frilly things laid across every surface, blankets on each couch and chair.
Imagining her curled up beneath those made him smile. Maybe on a rainy day, with her legs curled up to her chest, with a cup of coffee. He wanted to see her like that, but somehow wanted also to not be there, so he wouldn’t interrupt the moment. The moment that wasn’t even real. He’d lost his mind, and he wasn’t sure he cared.
He walked through the living area and into her little kitchen, compelled to see more of the place. More of Olivia.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking around,” he responded. Then he looked at the counter and saw a metal tin with a plastic lid over the top. He took a step closer. “Cinnamon rolls.”
“I had a craving,” she said, sounding defensive.
There were two cinnamon rolls gone, and he assumed that she had eaten them. In the middle of the day.
“Cinnamon rolls without me,” he said, making his tone faintly disapproving. “That’s no good, honey.”
“You corrupted me,” she admonished.
“I wish I could say I was sorry,” he said.
“No you don’t,” she said.
“No I don’t,” he returned cheerfully.
He didn’t wait for her to come to him. Instead, he closed the distance between them, kissed her, pressed her back against the edge of her counter and braced his hands on the surface of it, taking the kiss deep, hard. He needed her. It was more than want. It was more than anything he had ever experienced in his whole life. In his mind, he replayed every moment that he had seen Olivia with Bennett over the course of the past year.
What shocked him the most was that so many images of the two of them were burned into his brain. That he remembered them so clearly. And what stood out the most was his own position in those memories. Him standing there watching them, hands curled into fists. Because he had cared. He had cared even then. Had wanted to wrench her out of Bennett’s arms and take her in his. What had happened today was just him letting that come forward.
She was everything. Absolutely everything.
His life had revolved around places for years. When he’d come to Gold Valley and made it his home it had been about the place. About Get Out of Dodge. About land and livestock. About work.
The first sixteen years of his life had been different. It had revolved around a person.
But apparently, it revolved around one again. Olivia.
How had this happened? How long had it been her?
The answer was suddenly clear.
Always.
From the moment he had first seen her as a woman. Always.
He kissed her with that word on repeat in the back of his mind. Joining the one that had echoed there from the first moment her lips had touched his. Finally. Finally Olivia. Always Olivia.
She looped her arms around his neck, held on to him tightly and kissed him back. It was sweet, like always. But there was more bite to the kiss this time. More intensity. He was already changing her. Teaching her. Corrupting her, as she’d said. And he knew he should feel some regret over that.
Well, he did. Some. Not a lot. It was hard to regret anything when he was kissing her like this.
“Please tell me,” he rasped, kissing her neck, down to her collarbone, “that you have a frilly little princess bed that I get to demolish.”
She laughed. “Yes. I absolutely do.”
“Thank God,” he said, hauling her up against him and lifting her feet up off the ground.
“You have a bad habit of picking me up.”
“You have a bad habit of being very pickupable.”
“You can’t have a habit of that,” she pointed out as he scooped her into his arms. “And you don’t know where my bedroom is.”
“I think I can find it.”
He looked out of the kitchen, and down the narrow hall. “Let me guess—it’s at the end.”
“I’m not sure that I like what that says about you,” she said as he carried her toward her room. “That you’re able to guess the location of women’s bedrooms in charming cottages so unerringly.”
“It says that I’m a very, very bad man,” he responded. “But you already knew that. Because you know me.”
“I do,” she said, placing her hand on the side of his face and kissing him as he continued to walk down the hall. She didn’t quite get his lips; she moved to his neck, his cheek and on down.
“Olivia,” he groaned as she scraped her teeth down his tendon.
“What?” she asked, blinking wide eyes at him.
“You are not that innocent. A fact I can attest to. You know exactly what you’re doing to me.”
“I suppose I do,” she said. “But do you know what you’re doing to me?”
“I hope it’s the same thing.”
He opened the door to her room, and indeed, she had a frilly little princess bed. Replete with layers of white bedding, like a snowdrift made from lace.
He set her down at the center, ran his fingers through her hair. “You have to take your clothes off,” he said, “because I have to see this.”
They had made love once in his cabin, and then again on the floor of a barn. And not any one of those times had he felt that she had something that suited her. That was worthy of her. This was it. This soft, pure setting. For the softest, most elegant woman he had ever known.
He wanted to see her naked against this bed. Wanted to see her as she was, beautiful and too good for the likes of him. But his all the same.
She quickly stripped her top off, followed by her jeans, leaving her in a pair of pale pink underwear that he thought made a nice contrast to the white bedding.
But not nice enough for him to want to keep them on her. He leaned forward, hooking his fingers in the sides of her panties and pulling them down her thighs, then he reached behind her and unhooked her bra, pulling it off quickly with one hand and discarding it on the floor. He looked his fill, her pale skin against the white bed, her nipples tight and pink, perfect. Edible. He let his eyes wander down to that dark touch of curls between her legs, that he knew was so delicious, and already wet for him.
And he felt... It wasn’t like anything he had ever known before; it was an excitement. It wasn’t entitlement or the kind of masculine satisfaction he expected to feel when he looked at a naked woman.
It was humility. Awe. It was something bigger than both of those things combined.
He had never felt anything like he did right now. Like he was cracking open. Like he would die if he didn’t have her, and die if he did.
“Hey,” she said, “my turn.”
“I’m looking,” he growled. “Give me a minute.”
“How long does it take for you to look?”
“There will never be enough time,” he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
There wouldn’t be. There would never be enough hours in the day, in a year, in a lifetime for him to look at Olivia Logan.
“Luke?” Her expression became vulnerable, her gaze questioning. And that did something to him. Reached inside his chest and twisted hard. He didn’t want her to ever worry again. Not about anything. He never wanted her to be hurt. He never wanted her to be unsure. He wanted to hold up the sky for her if it threatened to fall. And he didn’t know what in the hell to do with those feelings. He already knew that if the sky needed holding up he wouldn’t be able to do it. That it would all crumble and break around them, the world falling to pieces. He wasn’t a savior. He never had been.
She made him want to be.
But wanting wasn’t enough. He knew that. He knew that better than he knew anything else in the whole world.
He stripped his shirt off, watching as she looked at him, taking satisfaction in her open appraisal. There was something incredible about the fact that he was the only man she had seen naked.
But right about then he had the feeling she might be the only woman who had ever seen him. At least in any way that mattered.
She knew him. Knew where he had been weak when he should have been strong. Knew about his darker moments, knew about his pain.
She knew him. Every scar, in a way that no one else ever had.
And he didn’t feel any more like he knew what he was doing than she did. Didn’t feel any more experienced. He wanted to give her something more than sex, and sex was all he knew. Intimacy was something else, and he didn’t know it.
This was all new to him. This feeling. This feeling that told him he wasn’t enough, while desperately making him desire to be more.
It was easier to smile. It was easier to make a joke.
It was easier to let the object of your desire walk off with another man because it would be better for her if he would let her.
He unfastened his jeans, pushed them down his hips, stood naked before her, enjoying the avid way that she visually explored him from her perch. Then he reached down and grabbed his wallet out of his jeans, taking care of protection before joining her on the bed. He held her. Pressing her bare chest to his, her stomach to his. Hips locked together, legs woven within each other. He sifted her hair through his fingers, kissed her on the mouth. And he could have done it all night, with no thought to his own satisfaction. Because just tasting her, the slow, languid movements of their mouths, was more, was deeper, than the best sex he’d ever had before this.
She began to thrust her hips gently against his, urging him to give her more, the silent demand something that he couldn’t refuse. Not her. Not Olivia. Right then, he didn’t want to refuse her anything.
He couldn’t deny himself. The immediacy of his need to be inside of her shocked him, but it was almost that same feeling he’d had when he had walked into the saloon and seen her standing there with Bennett. It was beyond logic. It was beyond familiar. It was something new and elemental that lived in a place inside of him he hadn’t known existed. Something reserved just for her. A space that he hadn’t realized was there. Waiting. All this time.
This wasn’t desire. It was need. Pure and simple.
The need to be inside of her. To possess her. The need for her to belong to him. Olivia. His Olivia.
He shifted, parted her thighs and slipped between them, pressing into her slowly, gritting his teeth as he did, trying to keep hold of his control. Of his sanity.
There was precious little of it left. He had lost most of it when he had walked into that bar tonight. Or maybe, he had lost it before then. Maybe she had laid claim to it years ago; he was coming to collect now.
But then, he didn’t have the ability to worry about it anymore. Because he had nothing left in him but need. But feeling. He wanted more. Needed more. Deeper. Harder. All of him and all of her. And maybe if it were possible, her inside of him a little bit. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t know what would be. That terrified him. That feeling that he would always want her. That there would be no end to it. That this was what he was, for the rest of his life. This mountain of need and unsatisfied longing.
She arched against him, wrapping slim legs around his hips, her heels digging in his lower back, urging him on.
He looked down at her and his heart stopped. She had her head thrown back, moving side to side, her eyes closed. She bit her lip, the color rising higher in her cheeks. He could see her pleasure. See her desire.
She was wild. His Olivia. Undone. For him.
Any control he thought to stake claim on was gone now. He had no more finesse. No more measure left in his thrusts. All he could do was desperately chase the release that was snarling at him from deep inside. Demanding satisfaction.
He gripped her hips, moving hard inside of her, meeting her every hip flex with a hard, decisive thrust of his own. Her fingernails dug into his skin, and he welcomed it. Welcomed any sense of discomfort that might take the edge off this pleasure. Because the pleasure was what might kill him. Was what might make it impossible to go back to life the way it had been.
This life that had been fine. At least until Olivia had shown him there could be more. Until Olivia had become his reason for breathing.
She curved her face into his neck, her internal muscles pulsing around him as she found her release, and then he found his own. Was blinded by it. Deaf to everything but the roaring in his ears and the sound of his own heart thundering like a spooked horse inside of his chest.
And Olivia was whispering words in his ears. Soft words. Sweet words. Words he hadn’t heard since he was a child.
Words no one had ever spoken to him. But he couldn’t translate it. All he could do was feel. Like a battering ram in his chest, trying to break out.
And suddenly, all the words ordered themselves in his mind, and he was able to understand.
Just in time for her to press her lips to his cheek, one last sweet whisper in his ear.
“Luke. I love you, Luke.”