She opened her laptop. One of the books she’d read had suggested a visualisation exercise. The point was to see yourself in the future. Fully bring it to life like a movie in your head. What would you be doing? Where would you be? What would you be passionate about?
And when she’d tried it, she’d seen herself still making content, but it having more substance with a full lifestyle brand to back it up with revenue.
So she’d read about women who’d started their own companies, like an actress who’d started a skin care range based on organic and environmentally friendly products.
She wanted that. And following a method she’d found in another of her books, she started to flush out a business plan that made her both giddy with excitement and slightly terrified.
Two hours later, Luke walked into the café. She saw him before he found her. God, he looked good in his jeans. But his smile when he saw her was perhaps the hottest part of him. When it included his dimples, she was done.
“That”—he punctuated the sentence with a kiss—“was amazing.”
“You enjoyed it?”
Luke pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. “It’s so freeing, being up there. It’s . . . you look out of the window, and everything seems so small. And it’s different to flying when you are going on holiday because that plane is so big and solid. Somehow, in a smaller plane, you feel closer to it. Like you’re part of it all, you know?”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I did. And while I was up there, I kept thinking about landing again, and knowing you were here, waiting for me. I’m starting to think I had everything wrong. I’m a pretty fortunate fella, all things considered.”
“And I think I’m a pretty fortunate girl.”
Luke looked down at his watch. “It’s twelve thirty. I need to leave the hotel at two thirty. Want to head back, have lunch, and let me show you how grateful I am?”
Willow closed her laptop. “I’d love that.”
As Luke led them back to the hotel room, he revelled in the moment he was airborne all over again. That feeling of weightlessness as the aircraft bounced over turbulence, as the engines reverberated through the small plane.
He’d felt like a tiny speck in the vastness of the universe, and one overriding message had popped in his brain. Sometimes what you need is the exact opposite of what you want.
He hadn’t wanted a relationship, but he needed Willow. It was a dichotomy. But it made perfect sense.
Or maybe he hadn’t wanted anyone except Willow.
He didn’t know.
But she cared for him, and he found that having someone care wasn’t suffocating like he thought it would be. It was liberating. And the walls around his heart that were already cracked at the foundation fell down.
Once inside the room, he halted Willow, pushed her back to the hotel room door and kissed her, tugging her coat and her bag off her shoulders as he devoured her.
“I’m hungrier for you than I am for food,” he groaned against her mouth.
“You can have me.” He went to kiss her again, but she placed her palms on his chest. “But I have one condition.”
Her eyes glittered with excitement, so he was pretty certain he wasn’t about to be cock-blocked, but he stepped back a little to give her some room.
“Let me hear it.”
“Remember how good it was? That night in Detroit? When it was just the two of us and no baby?”
Luke nodded. “It was incredible.”
Willow bit her lower lip, then looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “You’ve been holding back on me.”
“You’ve not been enjoying shit between us?” he asked.
“Oh, I have. But you’re treating me with kid gloves. And while I appreciate you’re probably trying to go easy on me and the bump and be respectful of us and all that, what we did that night was everything I hoped for in my sex life. Not that it has to be ruin-the-bedframe-great every time.” She looked down at the floor and blushed.
He thought back to that night. “What was it I said to you back then? You want the kind of sex that leaves you breathless and sweaty and hanging halfway off the bed. The kind of sex where you can’t get close enough or deep enough no matter how hard you try, you want more. Within minutes of it being over, you can’t wait to do it again. You want to feel stripped down raw, like your soul has been ripped out of your chest.” Luke put his forefinger beneath her chin and tipped her face to his. “You want that?”
Willow nodded once.
He put his hands on the top of his head. He had been holding back. Because, Jesus, fucking your baby momma like you wanted to put three more kids in her had to be morally bankrupt, right?
“You’re right. I have. I just didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“Flower, you should probably eat first. Drink some water or something.”
She reached for him. Pulled him back flush against her body where her tits and bump pressed up against him in a move guaranteed to take him from zero to sixty in three seconds. “Leave me breathless, Luke. Catch me if I’m about to fall off the bed. Get close. Get deep. Strip my clothes and my soul. I want all of you.”
“Fuck, Willow.” How could he resist her when she spoke like that? How could he say no when she’d expressed what she wanted so clearly? As he slid his fingers beneath her blouse, he kissed the side of her neck. The warm scent of her as comforting as it was arousing. He stopped to pull the blouse over her head and remove her bra.
“Have I told you how much I love your tits?” he said, cupping them before he took a nipple into his mouth.
“Don’t get attached to them. They’re temporary.”
“Loved ’em in Detroit. Love them now. They’re attached to you, flower. Might try fucking them, later.”
Willow grinned. “That sounds really hot.”
“For real?” he asked as he removed her trainers, jeans, and underwear. He’d been joking. Sort of.
“Yes. Why not?”
He felt the shackles he’d put on himself start to fall away. A sense of freedom. In himself, in his life, in the way he wanted to love his girlfriend.
“Go lie down on the bed, flower. Touch yourself while I get undressed.”
The smile on her face told him everything he needed to know. The sex between them had been great. But this felt incendiary. A flash of flames so hot it would leave them both scorched.
As she lay down on his bed, he tugged his T-shirt and hoodie over his head. As he unbuttoned his jeans, her hands slipped beneath her underwear. The damp spot on the cotton, and the movement of her fingers beneath sent blood rushing to his dick.
He squeezed it gently to ease the ache. “I love watching you touch yourself.”
“I love you watching, period.”
He shucked the rest of their clothes, then glanced over at her case. “You got that oil of yours in there?” he asked.
“I do. It’s in the red toiletry bag.”
Swiftly finding it, he placed the oil on the bedside table, and returned to the foot of the bed. He crawled between her knees, pausing to slip her panties down her legs. He kissed her ankle, the side of her knee, the soft part of her inner thigh. By the time he flicked his tongue over her clit, Willow was already wet.