His lips move against mine urgently, aggressively, the vibration of his voice moving through me in a rumbling, hot growl. Each time his hips rock against mine, it’s rougher than the last, more determined than the time before it, sending my mind into blissful oblivion. Claiming me that much more. I belong to him. We belong to each other.
He presses his solid chest against my breasts. My eyes slam shut of their own accord as he rocks in and out of me so hard and so deeply that I lose my breath once more. My senses. My self-control. My thoughts. I wind my fingers through his hair, pulling and gripping with no regard for how much it might hurt him. I know it doesn’t. It only makes him fuck me harder.
Arcing my neck on the pillow, my mouth open, my lungs and heartbeat frozen somewhere inside of me where I can’t feel anymore, I feel a growing fiery, tingling sensation between my legs, spreading outward through my thighs.
“Oh my God … Luke—” My own body cuts off my words.
“I’ll only come after you come,” he says, rocking against me.
This can’t be real … can it? This has never happ—
Just as that thought enters my mind, a tiny explosion goes off inside my belly, heat spreading throughout my hips and thighs and down into my toes. I moan his name, digging my fingertips into his back. My legs tremble and shake as they tighten around his body, and I feel myself contracting around him, over and over, and I feel like I’m inches from passing out.
Luke pulls out and comes hard, and I reach down and help him, collapsing my hand around his. His sweating body trembles atop mine. His kiss is deep and forceful, the heat of his tongue tangling around my own. He moans into my mouth, pinning me against the mattress with one arm.
With my eyes closed, I feel his lips kiss mine more softly now. Tenderly, as if I’m too delicate to be rough with, too important to him not to be cherished.
My eyelids break apart slowly and I gaze up into his eyes.
I smile softly and he does too.
“What?” he asks, his gaze searching my face. “Why are you blushing?” He pecks my lips.
Reaching up with one hand, I trace the pad of my thumb across his bottom lip. “Oh nothing,” I say mysteriously. “It’s just that … Well, never mind.”
He pecks my lips again. “No, tell me,” he urges, tugging on my bottom lip with his teeth. “What is it?”
When he lifts his head, my eyes veer away from his for a moment.
“Well, I don’t want to bring up my past … you know … experiences, right now of all moments, but—”
A sexy, devilish grin spreads across his face. “Just say it. It’s all right.”
After a moment, I say, “I’ve just never been able to orgasm that way.”
Luke chuckles lightly, plants kisses all over my cheeks and forehead, and then lies down next to me, pulling me closer. I can feel his heart still beating erratically against my shoulder.
“I’m serious,” I say, and I’m telling him the truth. “It’s always been fingers or oral for me.”
His arm tightens around my body. “Well, I can do that for you too, if you want.” A shiver moves up my spine and into my neck as his fingers brush along the bare skin on my waist and down over my belly.
Then his hand moves down. Farther. Farther.
“No, not yet,” I say with light laughter, stopping his hand before there’s no turning back. “I need to recuperate first.”
“All right,” he says and lays his hand across my stomach. “Just tell me when and what and I’m on it.”
For a long time I just lie curled around him with my head in the crook of his arm, and we listen to the rain pattering on the roof and the sound of the ocean not far away. He runs his fingers through the top of my hair softly as we lie tangled together in silence. A sweet silence that says more than anything I could ever say with words. I never want to leave this bed. I never want to leave his arms.
After a while Luke says quietly, “It was an accident.” He’s gazing up at the water-damaged ceiling, but I know the only thing he sees right now is Landon’s face.
TWENTY-FOUR
Luke
Eight months ago we were all supposed to go to China. All of us, including me. We’d been planning this jump for three years.” My chest rises and falls heavily beneath the palm of Sienna’s hand, my heart beating to the rhythm of guilt underneath her soft cheek. “But I didn’t go with them. I stayed behind because I thought the business and the money were more important than being with my brother.” I pause, at war with myself internally. “We always checked each other’s packs,” I say with blame and quiet anger. “But I wasn’t there to check his that day and he died because of it.”
My body tenses next to hers. She lays the palm of her hand softly on my heart.
“Landon was on his way to becoming one of the best BASE jumpers in the world,” I go on, “and would’ve been if he hadn’t died so soon. He had more than six hundred jumps in fifteen countries under his belt, won competitions, had plenty of sponsors. But none of that stuff was what was most important to my brother. It was never about winning with him, or about being the best. He just wanted to drink the sky. He wanted to fly.”
Sienna raises her hand from my chest and wipes a tear from her cheek.
“I was so pissed at him,” I go on, reliving the events out of order, my body growing tenser against hers. “Landon had everything going for him. He could hack into any system, if he really wanted to. Our business never would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for the things he could do behind a computer. I hated him; I always loved him as my brother, of course, but I hated him for a while because here he was, intelligent beyond my understanding, scared of nothing, and I was afraid of everything and all I could do was paint.” I pause to catch my breath.