“Where did you go?” Sienna whispers. She leans into me and cups my face in her small hands. “Luke, how are you here?”
But the helicopter is lowering, and she feels it too. Sienna blinks and looks away, and she gasps as she realizes where we are. “Are we in New York?” She turns back to see me grinning, and she smiles. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” I grunt. I take her small delicate hands in my huge rough ones. “We’re home, and I’m going to tell you everything, love.”
She blushes, and her lip catches between her teeth. “You keep calling me that,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“Why?”
I smile, a growl rumbling in my chest as I draw her into my arms. She slides into my lap, and she moans when I kiss her slowly.
“Because I do, Sienna,” I say quietly. “I love you, and I always have. And now, I’ve finally got you.”
My lips find hers as we slowly drop to the landing pad outside my penthouse. Now it’s time to tell her everything.
4
Sienna
For a moment, my stomach lurches as the helicopter drops. But it’s like Luke knows what I’m feeling and is instantly there for me. His big hands hold mine, and for the hundredth time, I wonder if this is a dream. But the lingering tingles and tremors from what he just did to me with his tongue are still there, and I know I’m wide awake.
Besides, this is almost too crazy to be a dream anyways. My forever crush is back from the dead, somehow even hotter and sexier than he was before. He’s dressed like the CEO of a fortune five hundred company, and we’re flying in a helicopter with his freaking name on the side of it. And if that weren’t crazy enough, he also just took me away from my own arranged wedding, and then made me come like I’ve never come before with his tongue. It really is too insane to be a dream.
The helicopter touches down, and Luke suddenly picks me up into his arms—one under my knees, the other around the small of my back. I wrap my arms around his neck, and when the pilot slides open the door, Luke steps out, holding me.
I look around in sheer wonder, barely daring to blink. We’re on top of a huge building on the edge of Central Park, with the lights of New York City glimmering like jewels all around us. I look down, and I almost lose my breath again when I see his name again; this time emblazoned across the helicopter landing pad.
“Luke!” I yell over the sound of the helicopter. I turn to him, staring into his eyes. “What the hell is going on?”
But he just grins, which is a mix of infuriating and panty-melting. If I even was wearing panties, that is. I shoot a quick glance over Luke’s shoulder at the helicopter, but he chuckles a rumbling laugh.
“They’re in my pocket, Sienna.”
I blink and stare at him. “Are you a fucking mind reading now?”
Luke laughs. “I know you, love. I know you better than I think you’ve ever known. Now, I’m going to tell you everything, I promise.”
He walks over to a door and swipes his watch face across a panel. The door opens, revealing a gorgeously fancy elevator, and he steps in. I turn to look at him when the doors close, and before I know it, I’m kissing him again. Jesus, maybe this is a dream after all.
The doors open with a ding, pulling me away from his lips. I turn and I gasp as he steps out into a the most beautiful, elegant apartment I’ve ever seen, even in movies or TV shows.
“This is home?” I gasp as he gently sets me down.
“For now.” He shuts the door and flicks on some more lights, illuminating the gorgeous penthouse.
“Luke, how long…” I frown and look at my hands. “How long have you been not dead?”
He smiles thinly. “I never was, I was just… gone.”
“I need more than that,” I say, and he smiles.
“Come here, love.”
He takes my hands and pulls me through the sumptuous apartment to a beautiful sofa by the huge floor to ceiling windows, next to a grand piano. We sit, and he turns to me, taking a deep breath and frowning.
“Do you want a drink?”
I grin. “Luke, I’m twenty.”
He chuckles. “Right. Right.”
“And I don’t really drink anyways.”
“Same,” he says with a grin. “Alright fuck it, I hope you’re ready for this.”
“Me too,” I say with a small smile.
“After the Marines,” he says slowly, taking a measured breath. “We joined Fortress Security. We started pulling work for all sorts of scumbags overseas—warlords, rogue Sheiks, or offshoots of the Saudi royal family. You name it, and we probably did jobs for them. I’m not proud of any of it, Sienna,” he says with a growl and a shake of his head.
“We were in Turkmenistan, near Iran, when we got ambushed, badly. The whole squad got shot to hell, mortars going off everywhere…”
He closes his eyes and turns his head, and I reach over and take his hands in mine. I squeeze them, and he turns back. His eyes hold mine.
“I don’t… I don’t know what happened to Carter,” he growls. It hurts to hear, but I’ve also been processing my brother being gone for years now. And in a strange way, it feels like closure to hear it from Luke.
“I thought I was dead, Sienna. I mean it. I got hit and went down, and I thought I was a goner. But then I woke up, in chains.”
“What?” I gasp. My hand flies to my lips, and his face tightens.
“A rival warlord hit us, and his men found me in the ruins of the convoy. I don’t actually know why they didn’t just let me die, but they didn’t. They hauled my ass back to his desert palace, they stitched me back together, and then I went to work for him.”
I frown. “Doing what?”
Luke’s jaw tightens. “Training his men,” he growls. “I hated it, because I didn’t know if I was training the next wave of terrorists who’d be shooting at US troops in a month thanks to my training. But I had to. I got to know the warlord—a man named Waleed, pretty well, and he started to think of me as his buddy. We’d have these little meetings over tea when I wasn’t training his guys, and he started to open up. I learned that Waleed was no fucking moron. He’d had an Ivy League education in the US and had a fucking master’s degree in finance. That’s how he funded his little desert war games. The fucker was day-trading on financial markets and making a killing.”
Luke smiles that smile of his that always got my heart pumping. And I remember that not twenty minutes ago, those sinful lips on this gorgeous man were between my legs, making me scream. I blush at the thought. I tighten my legs together, and my face gets even hotter when I remember that I’m not wearing any panties, and that I’m still wet from his tongue on me.
“So, we started a trade. I’d show his men how to fight like Marines or Fortress Security guys, and he’d show me how to play the markets.”
“Were you any…” my jaw drops and it all suddenly clicks. I look around at the gazillion dollar apartment, with the helicopter pad on the roof complete with a helicopter with his name on it. And then I look at the man sitting in front of me, holding my hands in his.