Eleven #4
“For you, yes. Try and keep it in mind.”
I headed toward the guest room.
“Nope, wrong way,” Luke almost barked, not angry, but clearly wanting me to go where he’d told me he wanted me earlier. In his room, in his shower, in his bed.
I was out of it, on autopilot, and so had headed toward where I’d been sleeping for the past few weeks. “Sorry, I?—”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” he instructed, taking hold of my arm to raise it and drape it over his shoulders. “Griff, go get everything from the attic and bring it down here.”
“Wait—”
“Don’t wait,” Luke overrode me. “Just do what I told you.”
“Going now,” Griff replied, but then took a step toward me.
“No,” I directed, stopping him. “I’m covered in mud and soaking wet. I’ll hug you when I get out. I don’t want you to get cold too.”
Griff nodded and bolted from the room.
In Luke’s bathroom, he let me go in alone, which was kind of him.
I needed some quiet time in my own head with my own thoughts.
I put my switchblade on the sink counter, then took everything off, which was harder than I thought with the way my clothes were sticking to me like a second skin.
I trudged to the shower, got under the hot water, and after scrubbing myself from head to toe, I simply stood under the water and let it warm me.
It would have been nice to stand under the spray until I was heated down to my core, but I knew Luke wanted to talk to me.
I was not surprised when I opened the door, with only a towel around my waist, to find him sitting on the end of his bed.
“I want to give you some space, because if it were me, I’d need that, but I’m having a hard time.”
“Hey,” I said softly, smiling at him. “It’s okay.”
“You need to put on some clothes. You have to be freezing.”
“I am,” I croaked out.
He looked…hurt, so I crossed the room quickly, and he stood up right before I reached him and took me into his arms as soon as I was close enough.
“You’re so warm,” I murmured into his hair, clutching him tight.
“And your skin is warm and smooth, and I want to sleep right next to you so I can touch you all night long.”
“Luke, you?—”
“No,” he whispered, rubbing my bare back, his right hand behind my head, tangled in my hair. “One second we were talking, bantering, and the next you were running off into the dark all alone. I have never been that scared in my entire life.”
“I was counting on you to keep everyone here safe and calm.”
“Which you knew I would do, and did, up until the second you called.”
“I have to add you on the biometric lock on my gun case so you can get it open. You could have used that if you needed to.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how to shoot. The gun would be useless for me to—wait.” Wrenching free of my arms, he gaped at me. “You didn’t have your gun?”
“Listen, I?—”
“ You didn’t have your gun ?” he yelled at me.
“I had to go or I would have lost?—”
“I don’t care!” he roared. “You could have been killed!”
“You’re wrong,” I assured him, gesturing to the bathroom. “I had my knife and?—”
“No,” he rasped, tears filling his eyes fast. He spun away from me, both hands on his face.
“Shit,” I muttered, stepping around in front of him, taking hold of his wrists. “I’m so sorry you were scared, but I’m trained to take down an enemy without a gun, and I?—”
“He could have shot you!” he shrieked at me, trying to pull free, needing, I suspected, to pace, to move, as waves of adrenaline rolled through him. “You could be dead. Right this second, you could be dead, bleeding out in the street.”
“Not from that guy,” I scoffed, which as flat as his look became, I realized was the wrong thing to say.
“So it’s just luck, then, that you’re still alive.”
“Honey, you need to understand about my training and?—”
“You could be dead,” he moaned.
I took him into my arms and hugged him, nuzzling his hair, loving that his hands went from fists wedged against my chest to opening and lying flat in moments. “I promise you, I am not an easy man to kill.”
“But you have us now. You have a family now, so you aren’t allowed to take stupid chances,” he said into the hollow of my throat, his breath warm on my chilled skin. “We don’t work without you. If we lose you, we won’t recover.”
“Don’t say that,” I said in a gruff whisper. “I have to know that you will all?—”
“No,” he murmured, his breath choppy. “Without you, our family doesn’t work. So from now on, you keep that in mind all the time.”
“Luke—”
“All the time,” he ground out, his jaw clenching tight as he stared into my eyes.
“You belong with us, with me. You’re mine, Nash Miller, and you need to fuckin’ act like it from right fuckin’ now.
” He had dredged the words up from his heart, and that was absolutely evident from the darkness in his beautiful long-lashed eyes to the muscle working in his jaw.
“I’m done with you second-guessing me, do you understand? ”
I nodded.
“I cannot, and will not, be without you. I knew that before you went out the front door, but now it’s settled in my heart.”
I bent and kissed him because I needed the closeness and he needed to know, even though there was a lump in my throat that I couldn’t speak around, that I felt the same.
My hand went to the side of his neck, and I held him tight, not allowing any movement, showing him that he belonged to me too and how possessive I would be.
I wasn’t expecting the whimper or the deep, needy moan.
When he parted his lips, I ground my mouth down over his, sucking on his tongue, feeling the ache, sharp and demanding, to throw him down on his bed and devour him.
He was mine, after all, so my lizard brain was ready to claim him.
Breaking the kiss, letting him go, I took several steps back and pointed at the closed door to his room. “You go out there,” I insisted. “Now.”
His lips were a deep wine, and his grin, lazy and sexy, made my stomach flip over. When he took a step forward, I took one back.
“I—”
“Yes?” he asked playfully, his eyes, all that blue, locked on me.
What was I saying?
His laugh was evil as he advanced on me.
“No,” I croaked, sounding ridiculous, nervous like I never was. “You have to go out there. Everyone is waiting.”
“Kiss me again, and then I’ll go.”
I scoffed.
“You know, Nash, I’ve never been kissed like you kiss me. It’s so hard and rough and claiming, it’s like being mauled, and I fuckin’ love it.”
I cleared my throat. “If I kiss you again, you’re not getting out of this room.”
His brows lifted like that idea had merit.
“Are you kidding?” I growled at him. “Get out.”
He coughed, and his eyes dropped from my face to my dick, which was lewdly tenting the towel, making me look like some horny teenager. “I don’t think you want me to get out.”
I crossed my arms. “You know I want you. That has never been in question. But your parents and the kids are waiting to hear what happened when I ran outta here.”
“Which you will never do again.”
“Which I one hundred percent will do again,” I vowed to him. “I will always eliminate any threat to my family. I could never?—”
“Your family,” he husked. “ Yours .”
What had I said? I was too raw and tired, not to mention completely turned on, to have any kind of coherent conversation with him. I needed to climb the stairs up to the attic and go to sleep.
“I’ll go, but you are not sleeping anywhere but here with me,” he said, licking his lips, staring at me like he was starving. “Promise me.”
“Your family isn’t ready for?—”
“Our family,” he corrected me. “Ours.”
I exhaled sharply. “Our family is not ready for that.”
“Well, they’re gonna have to be, because I need to get laid.”
My brain was going to explode. “Could you be more crude?”
“I could,” he goaded me with a waggle of his eyebrows.
God, he was perfect for me. He knew when to tease and when to be serious, read me so easily, and responded with absolute submission to my dominance.
A big, strong, powerfully made, lean-muscled man who trembled when I had my tongue down his throat and my hands on his skin.
It was taking everything in me not to pounce.
“Now. Go.”
“All your things are down here. There’s nothing left in the attic, so…where are you going to sleep tonight, Nash Miller?”
He thought he had me. He thought I couldn’t walk out to the couch or go up to the attic. He thought he was so enticing that I couldn’t say no. He thought he had power over me and my decisions because I wanted him so desperately.
“Well?”
And he did. He so did. I wanted him, the kids, even his parents.
I wanted the cat, the house, the parent-teacher conferences, the meal prep, the holidays, the bumps along the way, the change and upheaval, and God, how I wanted to sleep with him for the rest of my life.
I could not fight a moment more, not against myself over the life I longed for.
“I will sleep right here next to you.”
His smile was something to behold. I could see his heart, right there, in his eyes.
“Yeah? You will?”
I nodded.
“Let’s kiss and seal the deal.”
I pointed at the door.
“You’re killing the romance here.”
“This is not romance. You’re horny.”
He gestured at my dick, that really wanted to be close to him.
“Get. Out.”
His throaty, filthy laughter followed after him through the door and into the hall.
It made no sense to pledge my life to a man who might not actually enjoy being in bed with me. Though from his response when I kissed him, perhaps I was worrying for nothing. Only time would tell.