Chapter 24
L uca wraps me up in a big, warm towel and does the same for himself, but I can’t stop myself from shivering. I don’t know if it’s the cold or the man or the words he said, but my body is trembling, and my mind is rattling. I don’t want to be this girl.
The one holding onto a grudge.
I listened and I heard everything he said.
He’s said stuff to me before. Stuff that swore love and promised forever. And I believed him then. With my whole heart. He promises he meant it, that the way he hurt me was to save me, and part of me knows that’s true. But it doesn’t erase what’s already been done.
Or my lessons learned.
Luca seems to be all in. Ready to go from zero to sixty in no time flat.
We did that once and it didn’t end well. I’ve been left one too many times by people who claimed to love me. Not again.
What sort of disservice would I be doing to myself if I threw caution to the wind and gave him everything I had?
I don’t know. I just know my heart isn’t ready for that yet.
It’s slow to trust, slow to believe, and slow to forget.
My yearning for him weakens me and that’s not something I can allow to happen again.
“Can I show you around?” he asks as we step back into the main apartment. I nod, words not exactly my friend in this moment. “You’re thinking a lot.”
“I am.”
“Good or bad?”
“Both.”
He gives me a sideways look but doesn’t push it.
Something I appreciate as he leads me from room to room.
An office, a media room, an exercise room, a game room that he swears is for when Stella comes over, a library loaded with books, a crazy amount of Star Wars paraphernalia, and a wood burning fireplace, and an empty room save for an area rug and a large baby grand piano.
“What’s this room?”
“What I hope will one day be a music room.”
I look up at him, staring into his green, heart-stopping eyes that hold on so tight, expressing every thought with a visceral directness.
He’s not embarrassed, not an ounce of hesitation.
He made this room for me, and he wants me to know it.
But it’s unfinished and unfurnished, something I also know is for me.
He wants me to make it my own one day.
Pulse racing, I step into the room, staring around, picturing it filled with instruments.
There’s a gas fireplace in here and I can see it all.
Practicing my cello by the fire while the snow falls outside, Luca in his library or media room or even his office, though I doubt that.
That office sees no action because if Luca is working, he’ll do so sitting on a large, comfy sofa with his feet kicked up and his laptop on his lap.
We knew each other so intimately once, but it was so brief. Yet somehow, we still seem to know exactly who the other is. My nerves frazzle, fear gripping my voice as I start to shiver all over again, teeth chattering.
“Are you cold?” His arms wrap around me from behind, his chest to my back, his body heat somehow making my shivers worse.
“Yes.”
Without another word, he spins me in his arms, hugging me, holding me to him, my ear against his pounding heart, and I know I’m not the only one scared of what this all means. Of where it will lead and where it won’t.
“Let’s do something about that.”
His fingers twine with mine and he leads me out of the music room, through a great room and past a kitchen and dining room, along several other closed doors, all the way to the end of this mammoth place to his bedroom.
I stop here, my arm extending until he feels the jerk of my immobility. He turns back to me with a wry smile. “I’m just getting you something warm to put on.”
“I’ll stand here.”
“Do you want a shower?”
“I can go downstairs and do that in my place. In fact…” I swallow thickly, staring around his bedroom, at his dark bed, so neatly made that we could destroy in seconds. “I should do that. Go, that is.”
“Let me give you something to put on first. I don’t like that you’re soaking wet. It’s cold.”
I’d roll my eyes and say something snarky, but he’s in his closet in the next second and I don’t get the chance. Or maybe it’s because my snark is trapped somewhere in the back of my throat. Luca returns holding a huge Patriots hoodie for me.
“Close your eyes.”
His eyes pulse with heat as he stares at me. “You know I’ve already seen, tasted, felt, and fucked every inch of you, right?”
And just like that, a brushfire blows through me.
My face burns as I walk into his room if for no other reason than I need a little distance from the man and his searing gaze.
With my back to him, I toss his hoodie on the bed and pull my soaked sports bra up and over my head.
In one quick motion, I pull his ten-sizes-too-big hoodie over me and then remove my shorts and underwear, my skin practically sighing to be rid of the cold, wet garments.
I spin around and swallow my tongue at the sight before me. Luca is standing exactly where I left him, his eyes scorching a trail over me, his thumb gliding along his bottom lip as he devours me without touching me.
My breasts swell, my nipples already hard as pebbles and my empty core floods with heat, becoming impossibly wet. I need Luca Fritz more than I am willing to admit. Even to myself. Especially when he stares at me like this.
“You are without a doubt the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Knowing you’re completely naked beneath my sweatshirt.” His voice is low and rough, my belly dipping along with it. “The second I walk you home and return here, I’m going to jerk off to you looking just like this.”
Holy hell.
“Show me.”
“What?” He blinks at me, his eyes widening even as his body takes space-erasing strides in my direction. I take a step back, the backs of my knees hitting the bed behind me.
“Show me how you’re going to jerk off to me.” I stare at that tattoo on his chest and then slowly shift my gaze up to his. “Do it, Luca. I want to watch you get off to me.”
He groans, his head falling back as his hand absently rubs at his engorged cock, very visible through the thin, wet lining of his shorts.
In one swift motion, he lowers them to the floor, his cock springing free, and dear God, I forgot how perfect this man is.
Every inch of him. Muscles cut from stone, smooth, tanned skin, large, thick cock.
I lick my lips and he moans, grabbing himself at the base and giving it a good squeeze.
“I can smell how turned on you are, Little Bird.” He moves into me, close, but not quite touching, his black eyes blown out with just the tiniest ring of green around them.
“Touch yourself.” Hand on my hip, he lowers me until I’m sitting on the bed.
“Lie back, slide the sweatshirt up, and make yourself come while I watch and jerk off to you.”
Panting, I fall back onto his bed, hiking my feet up until they’re resting on the frame of his bed, and then I let my thighs fall open. He steps between them, hovering over me, his hand still on his cock, though it’s now still.
He’s waiting.
My heart beats into a hysterical rhythm as I raise the navy fabric up my thighs over my pussy, higher until my breasts are exposed before removing it completely.
My stomach quivers as my hand comes up, cupping my breast and pinching my nipple.
Palpable lust licks at me, matching the hunger in his eyes, which are locked on my movements.
Slowly, he starts moving his hand, sliding up his firm length and rubbing his thumb over the head of his cock that’s already glistening with precum. He uses it as lubrication and I lick my lips, wanting to taste him on my tongue, the words tumbling from my lips making his dick jerk in his hand.
“Baby, I’m drooling right now at the sight of you.
I’m already barely hanging on and then your wicked mouth says something like that?
Fuck. Touch your pussy,” he demands, pure dominance.
“Rub your clit and then slide two fingers inside yourself. Do it. Show me how greedy that pussy is for your touch.”
My back arches as I pinch my nipple harder, my other hand moving into action, doing his bidding. A slave to him. To his look and his dirty mouth that makes me so hot and impossibly wet and more turned on than I ever thought possible. Knowing I’m the one doing this to him is a high unlike any other.
My fingers start rubbing at my swollen clit, making warm tingles shoot across my skin. Gnawing on my bottom lip, I glide my fingers lower, circling my opening.
“Good girl. Look at you. So wet, you’re dripping down into your ass. All over my bed. You have no idea how badly I want to taste that. All of it. Fuck yourself, Raven, before I lose my mind here.”
“I want to touch you,” I tell him, pushing my fingers inside and moaning because hell, it’s impossible not to. “Take you down my throat. Have you inside of me again.”
“Picture it, Raven. All the dirty, filthy things you love me doing to you. Are you watching me? You see how hard you make me? All for you. Only for you. I’m going to take your ass next time. Do you remember that? How much you loved having my cock inside your ass?”
“Yes,” I cry as I pick up my pace, lifting and squeezing and punishing my breasts as I hike one leg up onto the bed, butterflying my knee out.
I’m so desperate to close my eyes, but I won’t dare.
I can’t stop staring at him. His face drunk with desire, with need.
His cock, heavy and hard, angry as he strokes it, cupping his balls with his other hand.
What we’re doing… watching, directing, yearning…
it’s so insanely intimate. Filled with so much trust, it makes my head spin.
He grunts, moving faster, and I match his pace, fucking myself with two fingers and finding my clit with my other hand. His hips rock forward, canting in my direction, and I’m so close. My legs shake and my body fills with a curling warmth that starts deep in my core, slowly spreading out.
“Luca, I want you to come on me.”
“Fuck,” he hisses. “I’m so close. You need to come with me. Tell me you’re there.”
“I’m there,” I cry out. “I’m there.”
“Fuuuck!” he bellows, cum shooting out of him and all over my belly and tits in thick, white ropes. The second it hits me, I come so hard, I’m seeing stars. My back off the bed, my eyes snapping closed as euphoria explodes through me until I’m boneless and spent. Panting and dizzy.
The feel of his hand startles my eyes open, locking straight on his smirk.
“So damn hot, Raven. You are a fucking goddess,” he praises as he rubs his cum into my skin before bringing his wet, sticky fingers up to my lips.
I lick them, savoring his taste, and he takes my fingers into his mouth, all too happy to lick me clean.
“Damn, I love how dirty you are.” Bending forward, his lips fuse with mine, tasting himself on me and forcing me to do the same with him.
“Any way I can convince you to stay here with me all day?”
“I’m supposed to have breakfast with my father.”
“Shit. Then let’s get you dressed back in my sweatshirt and downstairs before he finds me and kills me. Do you need a ride? I can drive you.”
“No. I’m borrowing my friend’s car.”
“Raven—”
I shake my head and with a frown, he pulls me up off the bed, kissing the corner of my lips before he helps me into his sweatshirt the way you would a small child, arm by arm, then kisses me again, this time with so much passion, my toes curl. He runs and grabs himself a dry T-shirt and shorts.
“I’m not ready yet, Luca.”
He stares into my eyes, his gaze bouncing back and forth between mine as if I’ve just said something vital to him. “I can be patient. Do I have to keep my dick in my pants?”
“Are you asking if you can fuck other women? Because the answer is no.”
He chuckles. “That is most definitely not what I was asking. But that goes for you as well. No one else, Raven. I’ll wait and I’ll give you whatever you need, but the only people we touch are ourselves and each other. So… that’s a no to me having to keep my dick in my pants?”
I fight my grin. “I’d say yes, but clearly we’re not very good at doing that.”
“Not with you, baby. I never will be. But I can do patience. For you, I can do anything. Just being with you again like this, for now , is enough.”
“And if I said you had to keep your hands to yourself?”
He groans. “I can try, but I’m already thinking of ways to get back into your pants, so let’s not have that be a make it or break it rule.” He smirks, taking my hand and leading me out of his bedroom, toward the front door, grabbing my phone and AirPods on our way.
I don’t say anything, still reeling from the confessions in the pool. At what we did after. We step onto the elevator. My sneakers and wet clothes are still scattered between his pool and bedroom, but I’ll deal with that later.
He walks me to my door, waits while I punch in my code to unlock it, and then hovers by the entrance. His hand still holding mine, he jerks me to him, straight into his chest, and kisses me senseless. Full tongue. Tons of heat. But his hands stay stranded in my hair, not wanting to push me.
“Can I see you tonight?”
My heart pounds unevenly as I shake my head. “I have practice.”
“You’re going to be thinking about me in the shower when you wash my cum off your body.”
“Are you going to jerk off to that?”
“Damn straight.” Another kiss. “Despite being pepper sprayed and feeling like my eyes were going to melt out of my skull, this has been one of the best mornings of my life.”
I laugh, pushing him back and shutting the door in his face before I kiss him again. Or drag him inside. Or invite him back into my heart as a full-time resident. But all I can think is me too . And that’s what scares me the most.