Seven
Laura
It was late when we got back to the penthouse, and I was both keyed up and exhausted from the day.
We’d done so much and had so much fun yet not even skimmed the top of everything to do here.
I’d grown up in a boring small city where the sidewalks practically rolled up at eight at night.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say there had been nothing to do but eat and go to a movie.
So being here with Luke, I just felt as if the possibilities were endless.
Including one possibility I wanted to pursue tonight.
Either Luke wasn’t on the same page with me, or he was doing that not rushing me gentlemanly crap.
Not that I didn’t appreciate it. For so long, I’d been pushed and coerced into the directions other people wanted, but I needed this as much as he did.
And I was starting to believe him about looking for long term.
After seeing his brother with Emerson, I suspected it was a Cassel family trait that they saw what they desired and went for it. And Luke wanted me.
I wasn’t so sure about the whole forever thing, but I sure wanted him, too.
The penthouse was eerily still as we walked through it, and though we had a magnificent view of Central Park through the expanse of glass on the far side of the great room, we couldn’t hear any of it.
Luke didn’t turn on the lights as we entered, the outside illuminating the area well enough for us to navigate it.
It was as if we were enclosed in our own little cocoon.
Just Luke and me and enough sexual tension that I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through another lonely night alone.
“Well…” Luke said, his deep quiet, voice matching the silence as we stopped at my room. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” I repeated. My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I gazed up at him. My heart slammed against my chest wall as I contemplated the coming kiss and what I wanted to say to him.
His hands slid into my hair, cupping my throat, while his thumbs caressed the sensitive skin near my ear. My breathing stuttered as my anticipation grew. Fear twined with it as I imagined him shooting me down.
“This was the best day of my life,” he told me. “Being able to spend time with you, live life with you. I want that forever.”
“Luke…” I whispered. “You don’t know—”
“I do know. I knew it the second I saw you.”
He started to lean in, and I wrapped my arms around him, going to my toes and pulling him closer. “You felt it?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too, Luke. I… I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” I whispered against his lips. “I want you.”
“You’re sure?”
“You’re sure I’m yours?”
“More than I have been about anything else in my life,” he growled.
“Then take me to bed.”
Luke moved so fast that if I’d changed my mind, there wouldn’t have been time.
Not that I would have. I knew what I wanted here, and that was to be with Luke.
He swung me up in his arms and headed for his room upstairs in long strides.
A cloud of bedding surrounded me as he dropped me, yes dropped me, onto the mattress then climbed over me.
His arms and legs caged me in as he stared down at me through the shadows, his eyes almost glinting as they picked up the lights coming in through the windows.
“If I take you, if I claim you, you’re mine. All mine. I’m not sharing you, and I’m not letting you go. Do you understand me?”
My tongue skimmed over my bottom lip. That should scare me. Shouldn’t I be frightened of a man claiming he’d own me? Wasn’t that what I’d been running from? But Luke didn’t scare me. Instead, a flutter went off in my belly at the idea of belonging to him forever.
One side of my mouth lifted. “Like you would give me up or share me now? Like I don’t already belong to you?”
“I see we’re on the same page,” he growled. His fingers went to the buttons of my shirt. I covered his hands, stopping him.
“But…if I give over to you, you’re mine, too, and I don’t share. Do you understand that? I don’t do double standards, Cassel.”
“I would never cheat on you,” he rasped.
“I can’t even imagine anything or anyone that would take my attention from you.
Even while we were apart, you consumed me.
And besides that… I don’t know what kind of men have been in your life, but I’m not like them.
You’re mine, and I’m yours, and that’s it.
” He kissed my neck, making a path from my collarbone up to my ear, while he deftly released the buttons on my blouse.
Other men? Did he think I’d had a bunch of lovers?
I covered his hands again, and he lifted up to stare at me once more. His brows drew together.
“Luke, I’m… I’ve only been with one guy.
One time. I’m not… I don’t have a bunch of experience.
I never had any freedom. If I hadn’t snuck out, I wouldn’t have even had that one time.
” My teeth sank into my lip, worried. Maybe, he did wanted someone more worldly, less sheltered. Somehow, that didn’t ring true.
His chin lowered as he stared into my eyes. “Past is the past. All that matters is you and me. I’ve had a hard-on for you for months.”
Oh.
“But… So, what about afterward, after we’ve been together? Then it goes away?” Was I grasping for flaws? I still couldn’t believe this man was mine.
He scoffed. “Hardly,” he laughed. “Afterward, you’ll be mine. And you’ll be lucky if we aren’t fucking on every accommodating surface we can find, flat or not, as often as possible.”
Oh. Oh! My body went all soft and wet at his assertion—well, softer and wetter.
The things he said just fried my brain, sizzled all circuits and sent me scrambling for new connections. My lips moved, trying to form words while he finished unbuttoning me and shoved the shirt down my shoulders. At the same time, he kissed every inch of flesh he exposed along the way.
“I think I like that idea,” I gasped.
“Good,” he chuckled against my skin. He flicked open the front release on my bra, shoved aside a cup then drew his tongue over the puckered peak. “Then we have a plan. I claim you, you’re mine, and I’m yours. Then we fuck like proverbial bunnies from now until the end of time.”
“Uh-huh,” I cried out as he sucked on that nipple, sending ribbons of white-hot sensation twisting down to my core.
I bucked beneath him, calling out his name.
My hands tore at his sweater. He helped me tug it off then went right back to his torment to the pebbled tip.
I shoved my fingers into his thick, dark locks, holding him there while he sucked and licked.
His hand molded the mound. Then the other joined, learning the dimensions of my other breast. He pinched and pulled at the tip, and my pussy flooded in reaction.
I knew when he touched me, I’d be embarrassingly slick for him. So ready for his cock.
My hands slid down the muscular expanse of his bare back until they reached his waistband. Undeterred, I slipped my fingertips just beneath it. Luke moaned against me, shifting. His covered cock thrust against my center, and lights flashed across my vision. Holy…
“Do that again,” I breathed. “Oh God!” I cried when he complied.
It felt so good, better than I’d imagined.
My one time had been clinical, unappealing even, but I’d touched myself before.
Honestly, nothing of consequence had ever happened.
I’d begun to believe that whole clit and orgasm thing was a myth.
There was no myth here.
Good lord, I wanted to have him rub against me for the rest of my life. And to think, I could have had this weeks ago.
“You’re thinking too much,” he growled against my neck.
“No…it feels good. I was just thinking…we could have done this sooner if I hadn’t—”
He kissed me and smothered my recrimination. His lips brushed over mine, taking, tasting, soothing occasional nips until he leaned his forehead against mine. “You weren’t ready then. You had to be ready, because I’m not playing to you—I am not letting you go.”
I swallowed hard, drowning in his eyes. How could I have run from this, and now, I was jumping in with Luke without reservation?
Because it was Luke.
I was still uncertain about the future, but underlying everything else, I trusted him. Never breaking eye contact, I reached between us and wrenched open the button on his pants. I didn’t hesitate or think about my lack of experience as I shoved down his zipper.
Luke didn’t reach in to help me. He just let me disrobe him, probably understanding I needed to take this step. It had to be all me. But as soon as I pushed down his pants and boxer-briefs and my fingers closed around his cock—his oh-my-God huge cock—he sprang into action.
The rest of my clothes were gone in a flash, and our naked bodies were moving against each other as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And maybe, it was at the most basic of levels.
He kissed me tenderly, his hands stroking over me as if he were intent on learning every curve and finding every secret that had been hidden by my clothes. I did the same. The man was so hard and strong, without a soft spot on him as his smooth, warm skin stretched over the firm muscles.
“How are you so built?” I muttered. His fitness was a little intimidating. “I mean…don’t you sit at a desk all day?”
He chuckled against my skin as he kissed a line between my breasts. I fought the urge to shove him away from my soft belly before he reached it. I was slim, but not super fit like him.
“Hardly,” he said. “I’m in the field a lot. And lately, in the gym a lot, too. You have no idea the frustration I’ve had to work off.”
“I might have an inkling. Some of us just work off out frustration with Ben and Jer— Oh my God!”
Luke sucked hard on my clit, and I bucked under him, overwhelmed by the sudden orgasm that hit me at his touch.
“That’s right, baby,” he murmured, pulling my legs over his shoulders.
His fingers came to play, parting me, stroking me while his mouth explored but unerringly returned to my sensitive nub every few seconds to keep me edging closer and closer to another release.
But after the initial one, he kept drawing back and keeping me from tumbling over, making me insane with need for more. Sadist.
“Luke, please…” I begged, writhing as his tongue teased at my opening. “I…please,” I moaned.
He pressed his lips the top of my mound, staring up at me, white-hot passion in his eyes.
As he moved over me, trailing kisses up me, I knew this was it.
This was the moment I’d become completely his, and we’d enter a whole new world.
His cock was throbbing and heavy between us, and I wrapped my fingers around the hot, steel rod, squeezing and running my hand along it to feel what would soon be inside me.
Luke moaned against my collarbone. “It feels so good to have you touch me. I’ve needed you for so long.” Together, we positioned him at my opening. “Now, you’ll be fully mine, Laura. Tell me to stop now because I will never let go once I have you.”
His please was an ‘out’ I didn’t want. Yes, I needed to figure out my way in the world and find independence outside of my family, but I’d have to navigate it with Luke beside me. Sometimes, inside me. More than sometimes. More like a lot .
At the moment, nothing was more important than us being one.
“I’m sure. I want this.” I grinned him. “Consequences and all.”
“All good consequences,” he promised. We both groaned in unison again as his cock started pushing inside me. So slowly, stretching my walls wide with his girth. It pinched, since it had been so long for me, but it was also perfection. I clenched around him, my body trying to draw him in.
“Luke,” I cried, my head tossing back.
He froze.
“Stop?” he whispered, concern and a touch of pain in his gaze.
“No, God, no, don’t stop. I’ll kill you if you stop.” My nails dug into his shoulders, and I shook my head frantically. “More. Give me more. Fast. Give me all of it. I need you filling me.”
His lips brushed over mine. “Anything you want.”
And he surged forward, going deep. I arched, crying out beneath him.
“I’m good. It’s good,” I whispered when he paused.
I curled a hand behind his head and brought his lips back to mine.
My whole world had shrunk to his body over mine, his cock deep in me, stretching me so full.
If more existed outside that, I didn’t know anymore.
But nothing in my life had ever felt so right as being one with Luke.
I’d been made for this moment. Maybe, even made for this man. Was it…love?
And suddenly, I understood why I’d run, why I’d been so afraid. Luke changed everything for me. Nothing would ever be the same again. Part of me had recognized him as my missing piece and been afraid of what it would mean.
I stared up at him, breathing hard.
“Luke,” I whispered almost reverently.
His eyes shone down at me, full of…promise. “You feel it, too, don’t you? We’re meant to be.”
I nodded. My hips shifted beneath him, unable to stay still. A cry escaped me, but he recognized it for the pleasure it was. Slowly, he started moving, gaining momentum as we lost ourselves in each other.
Something I didn’t recognize, twisted and grew inside me, growing tighter, readying for imminent explosion.
It still took me by surprise, and I gasped, clinging to Luke as my pussy spasmed around his driving cock.
Stars flew across my vision, his pounding hips the only thing keeping me anchored to earth.
“Oh fuck, Laura, yes,” he grunted out. “You’re so damn tight. You…feel so…good. So…perfect…” A deep, guttural growl echoed through the room and warmth painted my core as he released, deep inside.
He collapsed forward but still rested most of his weight on his forearms. His forehead pressed to mine.
“Mine,” he vowed, staring into my eyes.
I grinned, the weight of the past years sliding away and leaving behind only joy. God, I’d missed joy! There had been times I’d been happy, but nothing like this. I’d never realized there was a difference.
“Yours…so you say,” I teased. “But I may need further demonstration.”
“Anything you need. As many times as you need,” he promised. Then he proceeded to do exactly that as we finished out the best day of my life.