Emily

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I had the taxi let me out at a strip mall a few blocks from Luke’s place. When your mother is Westlake’s most prominent police officer, someone is eventually going to talk. At eighteen I’d had my own car, and I’d usually parked it here, in front of the vacuum store that never seemed to do any business and that Luke and I always joked was probably a mafia front. At least no one ever saw me parked in front of the Riggs place, which would have been a disaster.

Nothing much had changed, I noticed as I walked down the street to the house. The Riggs property was pretty big, planted with mature trees, the neighbors hundreds of feet away. There were still weeds everywhere, the walkway was cracked, and some of the boards of the front porch were rotted. I could see the guest house behind the main building, where Luke and I had spent all of our time. It was dark and missing a few shingles, but otherwise it looked just as it did eight years ago.

The house was dark, too, except for one light on the main floor. I’d only been in the house once or twice, when Luke brought me there when no one else was home. It had been fun, sneaking in sex on the living room couch, but I hadn’t had any desire to have one of Luke’s brothers walk in, so we’d kept to the guest house as a rule.

Rules, I thought as I walked up the wooden porch steps in the dark. I need to set some rules. We weren’t teenagers anymore, overrun with hormones. I needed to make it clear that this was just sex, nothing else. That it might be tonight only. That we were going to be careful that no one could know. That I wasn’t staying the night. Yes, that was definitely a good idea. I would—

I raised my hand to knock, but the front door opened before I could do it, revealing a dark shadow in the doorway. A dark, looming shadow that was utterly familiar and smelled like laundry soap and male skin and sweaty sex.

He took my arm and pulled me through the doorway, his touch slow and warm. He closed the front door behind me and backed me against it, caging me in with his big, stupidly hot arms. And Luke Riggs leaned close, his breath against my neck, and nipped me gently at the curve of my jaw.

I opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a moan.

Luke touched his tongue to the spot he’d just bitten, soothing it, and Jesus, I was already wet between my legs. I’d had sex—actual sex—with guys who didn’t make me as hot as Luke did with one lick of his tongue. I placed my palms flat against the door behind me and tried to hold myself up. “Luke,” I managed.

“I told you to take your clothes off,” he said in a rough voice in my ear, and I went hot all over. Just like that, we were playing a game. One we’d played before, that we both knew and liked. The rules were this: Luke took charge and got bossy, but he was still mine to control. He used his voice and his touch and his tongue, and he said dirty things to me, but I could always get away from him, or push him, or say no.

I loved this game. I never, ever said no.

“I know,” I said to him, my voice a breath.

He placed a fingertip deep in the vee of my neckline, between my breasts. Then he drew it up slowly, over my breastbone and my clavicle and up the line of my neck, his mouth still close to the skin beneath my ear, his other arm still caging me. I felt my pulse pounding in my throat beneath his touch.

“Seven months, Em,” he said in his sexy rasp. “You need to be fucked properly. By me. Now take this dress off before I rip it off you.”

I didn’t need any other prompting. I pulled down the side zipper and shrugged the dress off my shoulders, letting it drop to the ground. I stepped out of it and kicked it away.

Luke tutted, moving his fingertip beneath the strap of my bra. “Now this.”

I unclasped the bra and dropped it. I kicked off my mule sandals, too, so now I was just in my panties, white lace against my skin.

He straightened the arm that was caging me and looked down at me, even in the almost-dark, taking his time. “Still that smoking hot body,” he commented, giving me a little thrill. I didn’t look like I had at eighteen, but I hoped I looked pretty good. He drew his finger down around the curve of my breast, traced it over my hard nipple. Moved his hand down my stomach, lower.

“Do you…” I tried to speak while my brain shouted lower, lower, keep going, lower.

His hand paused below my belly button. “Do I what?”

I was playing the game. “Do you… want my panties off?”

“Hmm,” Luke said, a pure male sound deep in his throat. His hand moved lower again, moving under the waistband of my panties, and my legs parted as he slid his fingers down between them. He leaned his mouth to my ear again. “Do you think I want your panties off?”

I couldn’t think. No words were forming, in either my head or my mouth. Just a pure signal of pleasure as his fingers moved into my pussy and started to rub. His big, rough, work-hardened fingers on my tender flesh, his thumb brushing gently over my clit. My head thumped back against the door as I gasped for breath, over and over.

Then I couldn’t breathe, because he put his mouth on mine and kissed me. A long, slow, deep kiss, possessive and a little hard. He licked his tongue into my mouth and it felt so good, so familiar and new at the same time, that I gave in completely. I let him suck my tongue and rub my pussy and pin me to the door. Then he broke the kiss, hooked his fingers into the hips of my panties, and got to his knees.

It wasn’t possible that something this good was happening to me. I was having a wild erotic dream where Luke Riggs, fully clothed in jeans and a tee, was pulling my panties off and putting his mouth between my legs. The first time he ever did this to me we were eighteen, in the back of his truck, and it was so good I just about screamed. This time promised to be better.

I could feel his scruff against the insides of my thighs. I could feel his hands pulling my legs apart. Then I could feel his mouth, his tongue traveling my throbbing skin, rubbing and exploring in an open-mouthed kiss. My knees shook and I pressed myself into the door to stay upright. I tilted my head back and I pushed my hips forward into his face, and he took me greedily, using his mouth, sucking on me, making me wetter than I already was. God, his mouth was pure sin, and I hadn’t felt anything like it in eight years. I whimpered against the door as he moved just so, right over my clit, and gave it slow, hot attention, like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. He sucked it softly and swiped his tongue around it, then over it, then again.

I went off like a rocket, shouting and writhing, the pleasure hitting me so hard it was almost painful. I didn’t hold back; I just let it take me, and I let go. It was fucking incredible, and when I came to, panting, he was holding me up so I wouldn’t fall to the floor.

Luke stood up, wiped his arm over his mouth—why that was so goddamned hot, I had no idea, but it made me weak—and took my hand without a word. Then he led me upstairs.

It was dark up here, but he knew where he was going. He led me, buck naked, to a bedroom and pulled me inside. I sat on the bed, and he pulled his shirt off over his head, and oh, I was ready again.

It was almost dark, but I could see his muscled body, the tat on his arm, the dark dusting of hair on his chest and stomach leading down into his jeans. He looked different than he had eight years ago, thicker and more heavily muscled, but he was the same gorgeous work of art. He unbuckled his belt and pushed his jeans and boxer briefs down in one motion while I watched the show. His thighs were strong and dusted with the same dark hair, his hips were lean, his stomach flat and rippled, and when he kicked his clothes off and stood straight again his cock stood out thick and hard. For me.

I knew every inch of him. I scooted back on the bed, lying crosswise, and leaned back on my elbows, slowly raising my eyes up to his.

Luke stepped forward to the edge of the bed, looking down at me. He casually put a hand on my bent knee and pushed it aside so my legs were open. This was still the game, but not the game, because he said, “Tell me what you want.”

I watched him, standing there between my legs, his cock out and ready. I wanted that. I wanted everything in my life to be blank except that. “Fuck me hard,” I told him.

He looked down, his dark lashes against his cheeks, looking down at my open legs. He brushed my other knee aside so he had a better view, and he took it in, his gaze black. “You look as good as I remember,” he said roughly.

You look better than I remember, I wanted to say, but the compliment felt too raw. Instead I leaned back, letting him have a good view, and I teased him. “I’m not as good. I’m better.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

I lowered a hand between my legs, where he was looking, and crooked a finger at him. “Come here, Mr. Big, and find out.”

“Fucking hell,” he said. He leaned to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer, taking out a box of condoms.

“Brand new box?” I said, seeing that it was unopened. Good, the bitch part of me gloated. He isn’t mid-box.

Luke opened the box and looked at me from under his lashes. “I bought them when you sent that first text,” he said. “I know when you want to fuck, Em. Usually before you do.”

I couldn’t argue with that, and besides, he’d opened a condom and was rolling it on. Another thing that shouldn’t be hot but made my insides clench, I wanted him so bad. I watched him in a lust-filled stupor.

“Ready?” he said when he was finished. He leaned forward and put one knee on the bed. “You better be.”

I pulled him down to me and kissed him, deep. He braced himself over me, broke the kiss, and pushed into me, running his teeth lightly over my lower lip. I moaned. It felt so good. But he was taking his time, pushing me open, pushing all the way in, and I wanted oblivion.

“More,” I begged him.

He put one hand on my thigh and pulled out, slamming into me. He still had one foot braced on the floor, and his heavy weight made it hard, just like I wanted it.

“More,” I said again.

Luke did it again, and again, until he was in a rhythm. It was deep with an edge of rough, his fingers digging into my thigh and his hips slamming into mine, and my mind became a blank white slate of pleasure. I let everything go: my niggling thoughts, my worries, my regrets. There was just Luke’s gorgeous body and his scent that made me high and his hands on me, his cock in me. I had to brace one hand above my head so I wouldn’t get slammed into the wall. The other I put on his back, gripping him, feeling his muscles flex over and over as he rode me.

I had no idea what kind of god had made Luke Riggs, but in that moment I was thankful to her. I was downright religious.

His hand let go of my thigh and moved between my legs, and I felt myself losing it again. “Luke—”

“You’re coming with me,” he said.

“God, it’s—”

“Do it.”

Another climax rolled through me, and my hips lifted off the bed. Luke pushed me down again, pushed deep, and came, making a sound in his throat that was deep, utterly masculine, and kind of sweet, like he had been pent up for a while. Like me.

We caught our breath like that for a minute, Luke’s hands on the bed where his arms were braced, my hand still over my head, the other still on his back. He lowered his head for a second. Then he pulled out of me and stood, turning and walking to the bathroom.

I watched through an orgasmic haze as his amazing ass walked away. And when it disappeared through the doorway, I summoned my voice and said, “Luke.”

“Yeah?” he said from the bathroom. He hadn’t even bothered to turn on the light.

“I hope you don’t think we’re finished, because we’re not.”