Perturbed, I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling I’d helped Gus replace a few weeks before Mia had returned. He’d never told me the rush to complete the final room in his house was for her, but when we’d got stuck into the decorating, perhaps I should’ve guessed. Green and pink—damn, I was such a fool.
I sighed and closed my eyes again, willing myself back to sleep so I didn’t have to admit defeat and sneak out of her bed, but rest wouldn’t come and anxiety crept up on me.
“Stop.”
“Hmm?” I opened my eyes.
Mia was lying on her side, propped up on one hand, watching me. “Stop,” she repeated. “I can hear your mind going a thousand miles an hour even in my sleep.”
“Sorry. Did I disturb you?”
“No more than usual.”
Her impish grin made her seem seventeen all over again, and lightened the cloud I’d been unable to fight on my own.
I reached for her, couldn’t help it, and pulled her down on top of me, wrapping my arms around her so tight, but never tight enough.
She let me, and pressed her face into my neck briefly before running her nose along my jaw. The gesture was intimate, familiar, and one I had never forgotten. I opened my mouth to speak, but she tapped a finger to my lips. “Shh. Stop thinking.”
It was the third time she’d told me to stop and it was barely past dawn, so I did as I was told and lay quietly while she wriggled out of my hold and set to work driving me slowly mad—as if I hadn’t been halfway there already. Light touches, kisses, bites. The bed sheets fell away, and she took me in her mouth until I couldn’t take a moment more without being inside her.
I hooked my hands under her shoulders and pulled her up the bed.
She gazed wickedly at me from behind her thick lashes. “What do you want?”
“Ride me,” I ground out through laboured breaths. “The way you used to.”
Her smirk deepened to something more. She leaned down and kissed me, and as she lowered herself onto my dick, new heat sparked between us. This wasn’t just sex anymore, if it ever had been.
Mia gripped the bed frame and owned me, fucking me, as she stared down, her gaze a riot of arousal and affection. It had a been a lifetime since she’d last looked at me that way. It was too much and not enough, and my head was in bits.
Except it wasn’t. My thoughts were fragments of half-finished epiphanies and aborted panic, but my mind was clear. This was her. This was me. And as long as I was at her mercy, nothing else mattered.
Mia caught my chin, forcing me to keep my eyes on her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to—she was as caught up in this as I was. Her moans grew louder, and a beautiful flush stole over her alabaster skin. She ground down on me harder, and dug her nails into my jaw, her chest heaving. “Oh God, Luke. Why is it only you?”
Her incoherence went straight to my dick...and my heart, ’cause fuck if I didn’t know exactly how she felt. There’d been other women, but never like this. No one had ever tapped into every facet of me.
No one had ever tried.
Release rushed up on me. I grasped Mia’s thigh and her shoulder and thrust up into her, chasing something I hadn’t been ready for until this moment.
It hit me, and my world narrowed to the white-hot shocks of pleasure roaring through my veins. I jerked, and my body seized, and beyond my own ecstasy, I was drowning in her high-pitched gasps and shuddery moans...her sweat melding with mine as she dropped to my chest, and her trembling thighs as she clutched me between her legs.
Mia slumped on me, panting. I held her tight and snagged the duvet with my foot, dragging it up the bed enough to keep her warm when the heat finally faded. My heart pounded and spots danced in front of my eyes. I was wrecked but somehow felt free. “Mia.”
She raised her head and gazed at me, opening her beautiful mouth to speak, just as Gus burst through her bedroom door.
“Whoa. What the actual fuck?”
* * *
Gus was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, glowering at the kettle like it had killed his dog.
I faced the music and slipped into the space beside him. “Sorry, man.”
“What for? Boning my sister, or lying about it?”
“I never lied.”
He sighed. “No, I guess you didn’t. But you could’ve told me. You think I want to see your dick before breakfast?”
“You didn’t see my dick.” I reached around him and flicked the kettle on. “But for what it’s worth, I am sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
He finally looked at me, his face unreadable. “What wasn’t? Being with her, or me finding out?”
“Neither. I meant fucking around in your house. I was drunk last night. I wouldn’t have come back here otherwise.”
“But you still would’ve hooked up with her?”
“I didn’t hook up with her, you fucking goon. You think I could ever see her that way?”
Gus’s expression softened. “I guess not... Shit, I’m not used to defending her honour. This is weird.”
And then some. Gus had backed out of Mia’s bedroom so fast I wasn’t entirely convinced he’d seen me, but creeping out the back door felt all wrong. Gus was my friend...my best friend, when I let him be. It wasn’t his fault I was in love with his sister. “I should probably go.”
“Where’s Mia?”
“Shower.”
“She knows you’re leaving?”
“Of course. You think I’d run out—” The words died on my lips and I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know what is going down between us, but I won’t hurt her again, I promise. Whatever this is, I’m in it for as long as she lets me, okay?”
Gus opened the cupboard next to my head. Stared at the contents and shut it again. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course. I’m a flaky arsehole, but I don’t lie. You know that.”
“You’re not flaky. Just fucked up.”
“Thanks.”
Gus shrugged. “It’s true, and I don’t blame you for that, but I need you to help me take care of her, even when she doesn’t want us to. Don’t let her push you away.”
“I can’t force her to love me.”
“I don’t think that’s ever been the issue, but I’m not even talking about that, I’m talking about everything else. We’ve got to look out for her, okay? Just promise me you’ve got my back on this.”