Oh my God, shut up.
Luke smirked. “Did we? I thought I’d delivered my side.”
He had. And more. But the devil inside me couldn’t let go. Couldn’t admit that I’d rocked up on his doorstep for the simple inexplicable reason that I needed to know he was okay. “Who said it was a one-time thing?”
“You didn’t say much at all.”
Not with words. We’d both said plenty in other ways. I shivered as his continued closeness worked its way under my skin. “Look, I thought you might be hungry, so I brought food. Eat it and weep, I’m leaving.”
Luke shrugged and let his hand drop. I forced myself to turn away as he drifted back to his house. I was halfway into my car when he called my name.
I glanced around. “What?”
He smiled a little. “Girl, just come eat with me.”
* * *
He’d always been the ultimate gentleman...everywhere except the bedroom. Either way, I ate most of the pizza, and I had no regrets.
Luke watched me demolish the last slice, leaning against the kitchen counter, slowly tipping cold beer down his elegant throat. I could tell he had something to say.
I licked my fingers and shut the pizza box. “Something on your mind?”
“Would it matter if there was?”
I rolled my eyes. At some point in the twenty minutes it had taken us to inhale an extra-large pizza, I’d lost the will to pretend I was entirely dead inside. “Just say it, Daley.”
For a moment, he seemed as though he wouldn’t, then he sighed. “Why are we so bad at this?”
“At what?”
“Having a normal conversation. We’ve always been crap at it.”
“That’s not true. We used to talk for hours when we camped out at the lake to screw all night.”
“We were teenagers, we didn’t have that much to say.”
That wasn’t true either. Our relationship—in the traditional sense—had been on and off since we’d started secondary school, and even in his father’s last few months, when Luke had rarely spent a night away from my bed, we’d never acted like a proper couple. No dates or hand holding in public. No V-day cards or mushy shit. But we’d always had plenty to say, even when the words wouldn’t come.
I reached for my beer. “Since when have you ever wanted to be normal? Has adulthood changed you that much?”
“You tell me.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
He shook his head slightly, as if our childish exchange validated his point. And I couldn’t deny it. We weren’t like other people. Gus had brought a hook-up home the other night. They’d had a drink and a laugh, some noisy sex, and parted with more laughter. So fun. So easy.
Nothing about Luke had ever been easy.
Or maybe it was me.
I drained my bottle and slid it across the counter so it skittered to a stop beside him, teetering dangerously on the edge. The Luke I used to know would’ve caught it, unable to cope with the mess if it fell. This older, wiser version ignored it. Kept his gaze on me, taking me apart without saying a word or moving a glorious muscle. “What do you actually want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
He sighed. “Nothing that we’ve fucked up before.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I don’t want to fight about shit that happened ten years ago. If you want to talk, I can do that, but I don’t want a fight. I’m done with all that.”
Lucky him, but my temper tripped up as I traced his tired face—the lines the past decade had put there, the subtle smudges shading his beautiful eyes. My fury for him burned bright, but the will to unleash it on him diminished with every second I lingered in his spotless kitchen.
I couldn’t fathom how such a thing was possible. I’d married Laurent to get Luke out of my head once and for all, and when that had failed, I’d been angrier with him than ever, but right now, I just wanted to...be here with him.
The realisation stunned me. I shook my head. “I don’t want to fight either.”
“So what do you want? You made it pretty clear we’re not friends.”
“Do we have to be?” I stepped around his breakfast bar, an inch from invading his personal space. “Friends, I mean? Can’t we be something else?”
His eyes widened. “Like what?”
“Like what Gus has with the guys he hooks up with. I don’t want to fight, I don’t even want to think. I just—”
“Just what?” Suddenly, he was right there, his chest pressed against mine, leaning down, his lips so close if I stuck my tongue out I could taste him.
I closed my eyes and stretched up to meet him, a whisper tumbling out of me a split second before I kissed him. “Baby, I just want to feel.”
* * *
I woke with a start, but without the racing pulse I’d become accustomed to in the last twelve months. My face was pressed into clean cotton, and a softly worn duvet was bunched at my waist. The darkness was punctuated by a familiar glow from the streetlamp outside the wide bay window.
Shit.
I’d knocked out in Luke’s bed.
I sat up, expecting to be alone. The sight of him stretched out beside me caught me off guard. My heart stuttered. He was fast asleep. Peaceful and perfectly still. Angelic. The years fell away and I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, even as my head screamed at me to cut and run. I trailed a finger over his cheekbone, revelling in the way his quiet breaths hitched, and brushed a stray lock of his hair back from his face. My thumb itched to trace his lips, but I didn’t dare. Luke was a light sleeper.
Besides, touching his lips would remind me of his kiss, and then I’d never leave.
“I should go.”
“Come upstairs with me.”
“No.”
Yet somehow, here I was, naked and sleepy in his bed, my limbs aching in all the right ways.
I gasped. “Harder.”
“Yeah?” Luke’s grip on me tightened, and he slammed into me with more force. “Like that?”
“God, yes. Like that.”
Heat rippled through me. We’d gone from kissing in the kitchen to fucking on his bed in the time it had taken me to compute that kissing him was every bit as dangerous as I’d feared it would be. But it had been hard to care as he’d flipped me onto my stomach and fucked me while I’d lain prone and screaming his name. I’d come so hard I’d clearly fallen into some kind of coma, and I was still in Luke’s bed.