I ache with need.
With my arms draped around his neck, I whisper back, “I don’t know. Maybe. It depends on what you plan to do to make it up to me.”
Suddenly he hoists me off his lap and puts me on my back across his mattress. My eyes grow a little wider, my heart is pounding fervently behind my ribs. I look up at Luke, sitting at my feet, and his hands slide between my thighs, parting my legs before him.
Oh my God …
He just looks at me for a quiet moment, across the landscape of my body. I’m becoming breathless again, just looking at his eyes hooded with passionate, voracious intent. A heat moves through my thighs and travels down into my knees.
His head falls between my legs.
I can’t … I just can’t—
I claw the sheet with both hands as his mouth sends me into sweet oblivion.
TWENTY-FIVE
Sienna
It takes a lot of scrubbing to get the paint off both of us the next morning. And between the cleaning, Luke has his way with me in the shower, too. And then it’s back to scrubbing again. He can’t keep his hands off me. I’d be really disappointed if he could.
“Let me do that,” I tell him as we’re standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror. I take the razor from his fingers and jump onto the counter.
“What if you cut me?” he says, stepping over in between my bare legs hanging over the side of the counter.
“You jump off thousand-foot cliffs and massive buildings, Luke. I doubt my shaving your face is that worrisome.” That was meant as a joke, but once I said it, it didn’t feel so funny to me, after all.
He laughs under his breath.
“Luke,” I say, losing my smile, “why do you still do it? Wait, I mean … I guess the real question is: Why do you risk your life BASE jumping? I guess I sort of get all the other stuff—cliff-diving, surfing in storms, rock climbing; they’re not so … deadly—but I don’t really understand the risks you take with BASE.” When I realize I’m practically talking in half sentences, I stop for a second to gather my thoughts. “What I’m really trying to say is that … it scares me.”
Something unfamiliar flickers in his eyes. Uncertainty? Disappointment? Dread? I can’t tell which, but I get the feeling it’s not something he wanted to hear me say.
It makes me wish I hadn’t brought it up.
Suddenly¸ as if I’d never said anything at all, Luke’s hands grab my hips and he steps closer, lining himself up with me below, a lopsided grin at his lips.
Although it seems like he’s deflecting the topic, I give in to him, unable to shake that playful gleam in his eyes.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warn him, glancing downward, and he makes a pouty face.
Despite my concerns—my fears—for Luke, I try not to think about it, but find that impossible. For a moment my playful smiles are forced and my laughter is only covering up my worry. But I get to work shaving him while trying to keep him in line at the same time, and before long Luke manages to make my smiles real again.
I only nick him once, and he really lays the complaining on thick—more like whining—but he’s not fooling me. I threaten to cut him on purpose if he doesn’t hush, but the only thing that gets him to shut up is when I kiss him. That always works. But it always leads to more sex. If he’s not inside of me, he’s touching me with his fingers or his mouth. Just about everywhere except the laundry room and Seth’s room. Watching a movie—he can’t keep his hands off me. Standing at the stove cooking a real breakfast to show him how it’s done—he can’t keep his hands off me. Swimming in the ocean—he can’t keep his hands off me. In his car on our way to hike to a waterfall—he pulls over under a canopy of trees and I return the favor, surprised I can get him almost all the way into my mouth.
“Oh my fucking God, Sienna …”
The steering wheel hits me on the head when he moves his hips in a way that pushes my head against it.
“Owww!”
“No, no, no, don’t stop,” he says kind of frantically—and hilariously—with his free hand on the top of my head, I know just wanting to push it back down.
I finish him off and complain more about the steering wheel on the way to the waterfall.
He makes it up to me later.
If the thought of having to leave Hawaii was unbearable before, now, after all of our intimate moments together, how he cherishes me in every single way, the thought utterly rips me apart. Every kiss, every touch, every whisper, every time he looks at me with those magical, endearing eyes of his, I lose myself a little bit more: to Luke, to the possibilities of change; I lose myself in ways I never imagined, or would have welcomed before I met him.
After the hike, and a thousand photographs later, we spend the rest of the afternoon near a beach, lying out on a blanket on the grass, looking up at the blue sky. Our shoes kicked off, my camera sitting next to my purse. A couple of sub sandwiches half eaten beside us as we watch some local surfers ride the waves.
“Luke,” I say, my voice filling the small space between us as we lie tangled on the blanket, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Monday.”
His long fingers comb through my hair as he gazes into my eyes thoughtfully.
“I think about it every day,” he says. “I wish you didn’t have to go back.”
“Me too.” It’s all I can say; it kills me to think about it, much less talk about it, but I know we have to.
“I know you have to get back to your job and all that, but I’d like to come visit you. My parents live in Sacramento. I can stay with them and visit you. And I know my way a little around San Diego already.”