Luke

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I made a small choking sound, not quite a laugh. I finished up and walked back into the bedroom, where Emily was still sprawled on the bed where I’d left her. She looked like she couldn’t move.

She watched me walk toward her without even trying to hide it. She’d seen me naked plenty of times, but she still looked kind of fascinated. I took that as a good sign.

I lifted her legs and swiveled her boneless body, then pulled the bedcovers down. “Em,” I pointed out, “I just fucked the hell out of you.”

“I know,” she said in a dreamy voice as she watched me get in bed next to her. “It was a start.”

I lay on my back in the dark. I’d just come so hard I saw stars, and it did a lot to relieve the tension after today. Seeing my brothers again, that scene at the bank, the money, the second safe behind the shop that I’d found the combination to and opened—all of that was going to eat at me. I knew that. But right now I was in bed with Emily, smelling sex, my mind drifting. I couldn’t put two thoughts together, which was the way I wanted it, at least for now.

She slid under the covers and rolled on to me, her arm slung over my chest, her face buried in the side of my neck, like we did this all the time. Like we’d just done it last night, and the night before that.

I blinked in the dark, swallowed. I put my arm around her and stroked her shoulder. She pressed even closer to me, warm and smelling of woman, and put her cheek against my skin. It was a bona fide cuddle, and I pressed my advantage, running my hand over her side to her waist while she practically purred.

This was the Emily I remembered. She always changed after I’d made her come a few times—she lost her edge and got soft and sweet. Affectionate, even. Like we were a couple, even though we weren’t. But in those hours at night a long time ago, we’d pretended we were.

Now she ran her fingers through the hair on my chest and my stomach, then leaned up on one elbow and kissed my pec. “Do you still hate having your nipples touched?” she asked.

“Don’t go there,” was my answer. I hated that.

I felt her smile against my skin. She kissed me lower and ran her hands over me appreciatively, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world, so I just lay there and let her do it. I watched her blonde hair trickle over my skin as she kissed lower, and I found myself reaching out and running my fingers through the strands, watching its pretty gold against my hands. She was a natural blonde, and I could never get all of the grease off my fingers since I’d started back at the body shop. Part of me was still surprised Emily let me touch her at all.

She kissed my stomach, then sighed in her dreamy way. “You didn’t gain any weight,” she said. “Trevor Halbersen gained weight. He looks like someone stuffed a pillow down his shirt.”

That was good, because Halbersen was the football jock who had dumped Emily in high school for not putting out. “You fuck him too?” I asked, the words coming out harsher than I intended as I watched my fingers touch her hair.

“No,” Emily said. “I ran into him in the Price Mart. He looks like a fifty-year-old PTA dad, and you have these.” She pressed her fingertips into my abs, which I flexed for her obligingly.

“You picked the right guy, then,” I said.

“Duh,” she replied. She was always a little goofy when she was drunk on sex. Which was why I’d tried to keep her drunk on sex. It was always the moment with us—just the moment. Just the two of us doing what we wanted together for a little while. She explored my abs for another minute, like she hadn’t seen any in a long time, then moved down, down.

I grunted as she stroked her fingers up my dick, which was still recovering. “Emily, I’m not eighteen anymore.”

“Be quiet,” she said in her sex-drunk voice. “Your cock and I haven’t seen each other in eight years, and I’m saying hello.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or wince, because she leaned down and brushed her lips over it while it was still oversensitized. I realized she’d actually given it a kiss, a rather sweet one, like she was glad to see it. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling and took a breath, because having Emily Parker kiss your cock is, once again, not the worst fucking thing in the world. Also, she was making it wake up again.

“I knew it,” I said as she kissed her way back up my stomach again.

“Knew what?”

“You haven’t been properly laid in eight years.”

That made her look up at me, pushing her hair back from her eyes. “I’ve been laid plenty, thank you,” she said.

“Not true,” I said. “And whatever you got was crappy. I can tell.”

“I have had very fulfilling sex.”

“Then why did you swear off men?”

Her lips pressed together in a line. “Well, you attacked me like a starving man attacks a steak. I don’t think you’ve had a nonstop porn party, either.”

“I was never in one place very long,” I said. “No relationships. I never saw anyone more than once.”

I didn’t know why I told her that. It wasn’t the kind of thing I talked about. Emily frowned, still looking at me from above my stomach. “Hmm,” she said.

I frowned back at her. “What?”

“I might be an awful person,” she confessed, “because I’m kind of happy about that. I hate thinking there was some girl who was prettier and more awesome than me.”

I felt a smile tug my mouth. Yeah, she was as humble as ever. “So really it’s all about your ego,” I pointed out. “Not my happiness.”

She sat up and straddled me, letting me see everything in all its full glory—her tits (36C, you think I didn’t fucking know?), her slim torso, her hips, her perfect thighs squeezing me, her blonde hair in sex-tousled curls over her shoulders. “Luke,” she said, rolling her eyes, “me and my ego are your happiness. I mean, come on.” She gestured to herself, then did a little wiggle with her hips that sent shock waves straight to my cock. “Aren’t you happy right now?”

“No,” I said, and in one move I hauled her off me and flipped her onto the bed, facedown. I rolled on top of her and pinned her gently, rubbing my half-hard cock into the crack of her ass. “Now, maybe,” I allowed, a growl in her ear. “Now I’m happy.”

She was laughing into the pillow, but she slowed and bucked her hips up off the bed, pressing her ass into me and rubbing. “Oh, god,” she said in a half-moan. “Tell me we’re doing it again.”

I reached down and cupped her ass, then gave it a quick, stinging slap. “Only if you’re good.” She moaned again, and I said, “We do it my way this time.”

She wasn’t laughing anymore. “Okay, Luke,” she said.

I leaned down and let the scruff on my jaw scrape the tender skin of her neck. “Open your legs,” I told her.

She did.

Oh yes, she did.

It was a long night.

And Emily was right.

For the first time in eight years, I was pretty fucking pleased.