Chapter 18
Evan
“Now that you know who I am,” Luca says, my expected rejection showing clearly on his face. “I understand if you want nothing to do with me.”
My first reaction is to bridge the gap between us on the bed and comfort him. Kiss him and tell him, that his past doesn’t matter.
It’s not that simple. Luca just performed emotional hari-kari on himself and he deserves for me to take the time to examine my reactions.
Since I was nineteen and the Reivers upended my life, I’ve made it my life’s work to expose the Reivers and make them accountable for their crimes.
Luca’s details of the violence and hate he took part in, is everything I’ve been fighting against. I owe it to us both to carefully look at what that means to me.
I replay Luca’s story in my head, and I’m brought back to the first day when Luca showed up at my apartment and told me he’d been part of the Reivers and given me the option to have someone replace him as my bodyguard.
That day I’d chosen to let him stay and since then, I’d made him my lover.
It seems way too late to pass judgment on him now.
The day of the Freedom Fest I saw the violence he’s capable of up close, and instead of judging him, I was grateful for it.
And then afterward, I was grateful that the same arms that violently injured my attackers, wrapped around me and offered me comfort.
I think about the boy who patched with the Reivers, that Luca described himself as being. Filled with hate. A bully. Striking out at the world with the anger he felt for himself.
Then I think of the yoga teacher slash bodyguard I’ve spent the last several weeks with under intense conditions. Protective. Slow to anger, even when provoked. A man who risked his own life to save mine.
I’m pretty sure I would have hated the Luca from the past, but I don’t know him. I know present Luca, and I know him to be a good man.
I know more than that. I know I’m in love with him.
Doing a deep dive of introspection into his life made me realize that I’ve been in love with him since the night I woke him up from his nightmare, maybe even before that.
And though the old saying goes, love is blind, I think in this case, my love acts as a spotlight into the kind of man Luca is.
Being super aware of his every move since he first walked through my door, I’ve seen his dedication to protecting me and the hours of hard work he’s put in with Grave in working on tactical attacks against the Reivers.
I’m in love with a good man, I know it.
One who just asked me if I still wanted to have anything to do with him.
The answer is yes. It’s always going to be a yes.
I look at him, as he waits for my response, his muscles tense, and his face grim.
“Your past matters to me.”
He flinches slightly, almost as if he’d just taken a hit. “I understand,” he says, and starts to pull away from me.
“No, you don’t,” I tell him gripping his hand and not letting it go.
“Your past matters to me because the boy who felt he needed to hide who he was, matters to me. The seventeen-year-old who was trying to find a place to belong matters to me. Even the man who looked at the world with hate matters to me because all of them made you the man you are right now in this bed with me. And you—” I take a deep breath. “Matter to me.”
It’s not a declaration of love. I know Luca doesn’t want that from me. I’m not the kind of man, men fall in love with, but it’s important to me in this moment, when Luca is being suffocated by the heavy weight of his past, that he knows I see the man he is in the present.
He leans over to kiss me and then starts to pull back when I clasp my hand against the back of his head and pull his mouth back on mine.
I’m done with overthinking. I just realized I’m in love with Luca and I need to feel his touch. I know there will be a day soon when our stay in the cabin ends, and until then I want to give myself over to loving this man.
Waves of heat flood me and this time it’s me who demands more from our kisses.
I push my tongue between his lips to find his tongue and tangle it with mine.
Maybe it’s my newly discovered love for him, but each kiss ignites the need for another until I’m gasping for breath, but I still don’t want to stop.
I don’t ever want to stop.
Luca moves on top of me, surrounding me with his strength and heat as I revel in the feeling of his cock grinding against mine as his hands travel over my body.
They sweep over my stomach, my chest, and stop to pay special attention to my nipples which Luca pinches and twists until I whimper into his mouth.
Luca pulls away from our kiss and searches out one of the condoms he’d dropped earlier on the bed. “Gotta have you again,” he says as he raises my legs up to rest on his shoulders and kisses me again.
From all the earlier sex, I’m open to him, and this time when he pushes his cock inside of me it slides in easily until he’s bottomed out and against me. I can feel our hearts beating against each other, and I savor this perfect moment as our bodies are connected at every point.
He begins moving inside me and I’m blown away at how right it feels. The first time we had sex it was wild and out of control. The second time was slow and soft. This time, our bodies move together in a seasoned rhythm, that has me moaning Luca’s name over and over again as I buck beneath him.
Is it realizing I love Luca that makes this so good? So intense that it feels like I’m a live wire of pure pleasure and every atom in my body is bursting with love for the man who’s buried deep inside me.
We come together in one long orgasm that leaves me shaking from both the physical and emotional aftershocks.
Afterward, I can’t help clinging to him, needing his touch to ground me.
He doesn’t seem to mind. He picks up the towel we’d used earlier and washes the cum from my body, and then wraps me back into his arms.
Later when I’m sinking into sleep, he speaks into the darkness. “You matter to me too.”