Chapter Thirty-One
Cassidy
That wasn’t just good sex. It was a conversation, and our bodies were screaming.
It turned me inside out.
I’m dazed and sated. He carries me to the bed, drawing a circle between my shoulder blades with his broad palm. Only when he lowers me onto the crisp white sheets do I realize I’m still wearing shoes.
After a quick cleanup, he kneels at the foot of the bed. Emotion clogs my throat as he slides them off my feet one at a time. The vibrant cityscape outside our window casts half his golden-hued body in brilliant light. His touch is as tender now as it was rough a mere minute ago.
“A real bed.” He crawls beside me, bringing his wonderful heat with him. I burrow into the divot his body creates in the mattress. His legs thread mine as he pulls me against his chest. Our inhales sync. My skin thrums with the kind of satisfaction you can only get from a full-body hug.
“Luke…”
His mouth brands a kiss into my forehead. “Cass.”
Everything I want to say—every question, comment, or promise—slips beneath my tongue and sets up camp. I don’t want to ruin this moment. Not for anything.
“Let’s stay a little while longer,” I finally whisper, my throat tightening.
He tilts my chin up, and I’m treated to everything up close: his soft smile at rest, honey-sheened hair, and eyes that play finders-keepers with mine. He looks at me, and I’m his.
It’s a long stretch of silence that flies by too fast.
Eventually his strong arms reposition my body so my back is facing him. I shudder at the gentle drag of his finger as he draws a shape over my spine.
“Cass.” His murmur skates across my neck as he traces letters into my skin, one at a time. C. A. S. S.
My lips pull into a smile half buried by my pillow. “Yes?”
“I have a confession.”
I attempt to roll over, and he stops me with a firm hand on my hip. He begins to write again. C. A. L. I. “I have played road-trip games. With my family. It was the only trip we ever took together, all four of us.”
A hazy image of a tiny Luke with kid glasses and an eager smile flits through my head. “I’m sorry.”
His sigh is soft but hits like a brick. “Don’t be. It was one of the best weeks of my life. I had no idea how much my life was about to change.”
My heart wants to claw its way out of my back to reach him.
“What I’m really saying”—he pauses, exhaling gently—“is I think I love road-trip games. I couldn’t for a long time, but I’d like to play them again. With you.”
His finger drifts over me.
Y. O. U.
I steal his hand and place it on my chest. His palm absorbs the frantic thumping of my heart. It beats for him.
He inches closer until our bodies are flush. I keep his hand captive against my breastbone. The longer we lie like this, the more my chest needs to work to breathe.
His breathing in my ear grows heavier.
My body starts to stretch and seek, brushing him with a shoulder. A heel dragged up his shin.
I slide his hand lower so his pinky brushes my nipple. I exist in the space between breaths, waiting for him to make the next move.
He rocks forward, pressing his ridge against me. An offering.
I crave his weight. The security of him over me, pressing me into the mattress and holding me captive. The heavy promise of him, how he fills me. I’ve had it twice. I now exist with the knowledge of how he feels inside of me. I’m hollow without it.
I didn’t know the ways in which I was empty until I knew he was an option.
He nuzzles the space behind my ear. “Are you sore?”
I shift onto my back. “Let me test it.”
He moves over me, bracketing me with his arms. I take his length in my palm and tease myself at all the places his tongue has already claimed tonight. A buzzing desire grips my body, surging through my core. “Oh.”
“Good oh or bad oh?” His eyes are infinitely tender, but his voice holds an edge. “Talk to me.”
“It’s more than good.” I circle him over me, and it’s pure electricity. “You are more than good.”
His jaw clenches as he stares down the narrow cavern between our bodies. It’s unbearable how much I want him to slide inside and claim me. I could combust from the effort of not angling my hips and inviting him in. My senses have dialed past a ten and hover at a twenty. I think if he kissed me it’d incinerate my lips. “I need you.”
He cups my chin, his thumb landing on the pulse fluttering in my throat. “I need you, too.” It’s tender but urgent, a moment that lives on the edge.
As soon as he’s sheathed, he crawls over me and lines us up. It starts slow, easy rocks of his hips as he stretches me. His eyes stay fixed on mine. The drag of him is so good I want to savor it for hours. We move like we have all the time in the world. I explore the curve of his biceps and his glistening pecs with my fingertips, relishing the freedom of this position.
His parted mouth and smoldering stare are a work of art. He lowers to his forearms so there’s no gap between our bodies. His kiss pulls me under, under, under until his lips find a home beneath my ear. He groans broken praise in my ear. My skin grows fevered, tight, my nipples burning as they rub against his chest.
Emotion rises to the surface, bursting through whatever flimsy barrier was holding them back. “I feel so lucky.”
Heat builds where we’re joined. He cradles my face with one hand. “Look at me, Cass.”
Our eyes lock. I cry out as he hits me just right. “I’m the lucky one, you hear me? And I won’t let you forget it.”
He wedges a pillow beneath me, bringing my hips higher. Allowing him deeper than anyone has ever been. I know by his shaky, “Oh fuck,” we’ll finish just like this. The pressure as he bottoms out is like nothing I’ve ever felt.
His fingers work small circles over me. A moan leaves my mouth as he moves his other hand to my breast, my ass, everywhere he can stroke and grasp. But even through this crescendo, he never speeds up his thrusts or the gentle assault on my clit, knowing intuitively that steady is the way I need it. Steady, like him.
I squeeze the headboard, moving with him until suddenly it’s there, a release taking shape at the edges. Outside, I tense.
Inside, I fall.
It steals my breath. It’s pleasure so intense my entire body is compromised, and I lose my grip. Every thought escapes my head, eclipsed by white, hot, mindless relief.
He finishes a second after, with one hand clutching my hip, the other buried in my hair.
We collapse.
I wait for him to roll away to clean up, but instead he angles me toward him and presses a kiss to my forehead, my cheek, my mouth, dusting me with hot, stuttered breaths.
His first instinct was to kiss me after. Like everything else could wait.
…
We doze off for two hours. Luke wakes me with an apologetic kiss and a reminder that my family is waiting for me.
The five-hour drive home is a pillow talk blur. All too fast, we’re at his mom’s house to drop him off.
Luke grabs my sweaty palm across the dash.
“You being nervous is making me nervous,” he says with a stilted laugh. “Trust me, you have nothing to worry about.”
“I want your family to like me.”
He kisses my knuckles. “They’ll love you. Let this be the least of your worries.”
I blink toward the house, framed by the bright morning sky. “Ha. Good joke. I am one large worry masquerading as a human.”
This meeting is beyond important. Family is everything to him. If they don’t like me, it could change the way Luke sees me.
I’m meeting his family.
Later this week, he’ll meet mine.
My heart kicks a new rhythm.
“Ugh, my family is going to love you. You are pretty much my mother’s dream.” I feign a frown. “The ego boost you’re in for. You’re about to be so insufferable.”
“My ego is already pretty big after last night.” He brushes my lips with a chaste kiss. “You turned my name into a curse word.”
I follow him up an uneven stone path leading to the front door of his family home. Overgrown rose bushes not in bloom wither to the left of the stoop.
“I need to clean this up while I’m here,” he mumbles. He grabs the handle, and a deep frown carves his face. “Huh. Locked. Wish I had my key.”
“I’m guessing you had it in your luggage?”
“Yes. I’ll have to get another made.” He knocks and takes a few steps back. “Someone will answer. This house is never empty.”
“Luke? Is that you?”
Luke does a double take over his shoulder. “Mrs. Brothers. Good morning.”
Across the street, an elderly woman in a terrycloth robe uses her newspaper as a sun shield. She crosses to Luke’s property, hobbling up his yard.
He moves to meet her, which means I move, too, since our hands are linked.
“I’m so glad you decided to come. I know it’ll mean a lot to your mother. What’s the latest?”
Loud sprinklers one yard over flit in the background.
Luke’s palm grows sweaty. “What?”
“I guess it’s still early yet. Sophie promised she’d call and update me. Are you on your way down there?”
“Sorry, where do you mean?”
Mrs. Brothers clutches her paper to her chest. “Today’s her procedure, dear. At St. Vincent’s.”
“St. Vincent’s.” His brows knit together before he schools his expression into something neutral. “Of course.” Luke releases my hand, a flat affect to his tone. “We were heading that way.”
I rack my brain for some mention of a procedure and come up short. He would’ve mentioned it when we talked about our reasons for getting home.
Unless he didn’t know. Which would explain the swift change in his demeanor.
“Who’s this?” Mrs. Brothers offers me the kind of grin that makes you feel like you’ve done something grand just by existing.
“This is Cassidy.” Luke’s hand moves to my back. “She’s…” His faraway gaze meets mine. “Important. Listen, we’re heading out. It’s good to see you, Mrs. B. Cass, you ready?”
I nod, the word important tucking into my heart as my head scrambles to keep up with what’s happening.
Mrs. Brothers ambles toward her house.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” he blurts. “We—I need to get to the hospital. Not ‘we’ because it’s not something you need to worry about right now with everything you’ve got going on. You can drop me off.” He rubs his forehead with an open palm. “If you wouldn’t mind, I mean.”
I step into his shadow and tilt my chin to get a better look at his face. “I’m not going to just drop you off, Luke. Let me come with you. My family can wait a little while longer.”
“Are you sure?” His tone is a guitar string pulled tight. A cello. Something deep and ominous. I float my hand over his shoulder. “Of course. Let me drive.”
His nod is tight. “I’ll drive. I know where this particular hospital is located. It’s a bigger one.” The muscles of his throat move as he swallows. “A procedure. Sophie would’ve known about this for weeks. She should’ve told me.”
“You can call her on the drive.”
In the car, I rub the nape of his neck and keep the radio low in case he wants to talk. His sister doesn’t answer his call. He doesn’t say much until we pass through the front doors of the hospital, where we’re smacked in the face by frigid manufactured air and the smell of industrial cleaning supplies.
Feet from the security desk, he stops to point across the lobby. “There’s an outdoor garden in the back if you’d rather wait there while I deal with this.”
I’m not going to back away and let him go through this alone. It could be minor. Something his family forgot to tell him because it’s so inconsequential. No matter the situation, he needs support. “Luke. I want to be here for you. This is what people do for each other. If you want to be alone, of course I’ll honor that, but I’m happy to go with you.”
I wind my fingers through his. He squeezes my hand. “Thank you.”
“Let’s figure out what floor she’s on first, okay? One step at a time.”
His smile is a wisp, but it’s there. “Smart. I’m sure it’s just the outpatient floor if it’s a procedure. Maybe an annual checkup I forgot about? Who knows?”
But as soon as we step up to the counter and find out where his mother is, the warmth in his eyes all but bleeds out.