Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Magnolia
The party at the Holloways’ was the kind of party I’d only ever dreamed of being at.
Every single person there had welcomed me into their group without question or hesitation.
The bond between Luke and his dad friends ran so obviously deep it was enviable, and the women seemed just as close even though some, like Presley and Rowan, were relatively new additions.
There’d been so much genuine affection and love in their house that I felt blessed to be a part of it, whether my relationship with Luke became long-term or not.
Right now though, I was all about alone time with my handsome, sexy date.
We’d managed to stick around at the party for another forty minutes after Addie asked to stay at West’s, which I thought was admirable.
On the way to my apartment, we’d talked about surface stuff—the party and the presents and how well all eight kids between five and ten years old got along.
Even Xavier, the only boy among them, fit right into the group.
But beneath our benign conversation, a tension and anticipation pulsed between us.
We ascended the stairs to my apartment in silence, with Luke’s hand on my waist and my body buzzing with need for him.
Once inside, Luke ducked into the bathroom, which was exactly what I’d hoped would happen.
As soon as he shut the door, I switched on the light on my nightstand, then whipped my dark green party dress off as fast as I could, which left me in the special Christmas lingerie I’d bought for tonight.
It was bright red, a color I normally shied away from because of the red in my hair, but it was all about the theme.
The top part was a bow that concealed my breasts as a present.
The rest was sheer and connected to my sheer stockings.
I left my heels on, prayed everything was in place, and hopped up onto the kitchen counter.
I crossed my legs and waited for Luke to emerge, feeling like it was our first time.
The bathroom door creaked open, and I sat up straighter, my body aching for him.
When he came around the corner, his gaze went toward the bed first. When he didn’t find me there, he turned his head and spotted me.
His brows went up, and his mouth fell open.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. “I have an early present for you.” I held out my arms, presenting myself.
“God, Magnolia,” he said as he approached, his eyes roving over me from head to toe, appreciative heat in his gaze. “I must be at the top of the good list if this is my present.”
“You’re definitely good,” I purred as I uncrossed my legs.
When he reached me, he braced his hands on either side of me and leaned in to kiss me, his body hovering close enough to mine that I could sense it but not touch it, as if he was prolonging the moment when we finally came together.
After he’d kissed me thoroughly, our bodies still not touching, he stepped back enough to take in the closeup view. My body thrummed with need and impatience.
“Are you going to unwrap your present?” I asked.
“You better believe I am.” His voice had gone rough and husky. “I might have a present for you too. Is this a real bow?” He picked up the trailing end of the red ribbon and tugged.
I didn’t need to answer because the bow came undone, baring my breasts to him. He nuzzled into my neck and nibbled his way down.
“You smell good enough to eat,” he said.
“Then by all means…” I left the invitation hanging, grinning down at him as he raised his gaze to mine. “You know you’re killing me with your slow, careful approach to your present. I pegged you for a guy who’d rip into it with enthusiasm.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m enthusiastic.” He closed his lips around my nipple and sucked, sending a shock of need straight to my core.
Then he released it and said, “I’m taking my time to appreciate every single inch of my present.
” He took my other nipple in and swirled his tongue before sucking and sending another zing of heat deep inside me.
I hooked my legs around him and drew him closer, then reached down and unbuckled his belt.
“Don’t I get to unwrap my present all the way first?” he asked, a devilish glint in his eyes.
I unsnapped and unzipped his pants and said, “You took too long.”
As if he took that as a challenge, he went after my breasts, taking one into his mouth and teasing the other with his talented fingers, kneading, pinching, drawing a moan from me.
I let his pants go, braced my hands on the counter behind me, and sought out a place to support my feet, finding the door pulls of the lower cabinets.
“You smell like vanilla cookies,” he said, then licked between my breasts and over to the other nipple.
“It’s my lotion,” I said on a gasp.
He pulled away to meet my gaze. “Vanilla cookie lotion?”
All I could do was nod as I focused on how to get him to have his way with me and fill this aching neediness.
Instead he grinned and said, “Well, it’s no wonder Esmerelda wanted to devour you.”
My eyes popped open and met his. I laughed breathlessly and said, “I need new lotion.”
“Maybe we’ll shower yours off after a while. Or I could just lick it off.”
“You should definitely try that.”
He got busy doing exactly that. My lingerie was down to two thin straps that connected to the sheer part and snapped between my legs.
I waited for him to discover that, which took another five minutes because he was obsessed with my breasts.
Which worked for me, because the things he was doing to them had me close to orgasm.
As he continued working my nipple over with his mouth, I felt his fingers on my upper thigh, trailing toward the edge of my teddy. His thumb scooped beneath the mesh material and down to the apex of my thighs.
He groaned, lifting his mouth from my breast to look lower. “Snaps?” he asked rhetorically, then whipped them open. “God, that’s hot.”
He touched my folds and dipped his finger inside me, eliciting a gasp from me and making me arch into him, my head falling back.
“You’re ready for me, aren’t you?” he growled.
“I’ve been ready,” I said in a breathy, needy whisper.
“As much as I’d like to lick your vanilla cookies off from head to toe”—he took his wallet out, flipped it open, and removed a condom, then lowered his pants—“I need to bury myself inside you in the next twenty seconds.”
“Please.”
As he rolled the protection on, I shoved his shirt up his chest until he lifted his arms so I could remove it and toss it to the floor.
He slid me to the edge of the counter and guided his dick to my opening as I wrapped my legs around him.
Then he pushed inside, filling me, making me gasp with the suddenness of his glorious invasion.
I moaned at the friction as he slid partway out, then thrust home again, my breasts jiggling with every stroke until he palmed one of them.
“Yesss,” I said, winding my arms around him to hold on for the ride of my life.
Between his manipulation of my nipple and the bliss of his thick cock pumping into me, faster now, I succumbed to an overload of sensations. My thoughts went offline as I merely held on and felt, my body fully out of my control as it climbed, reached, stretched toward release.
“Luke…God…yes…harder.”
He gave me what I asked for, and my body crashed into ecstasy, stealing my breath away.
I clung to him, arched, keened, riding it out for long, blissful seconds.
Finally I gasped for breath and collapsed into him, summoning control over my arms to hold on more tightly as he thrust harder, working for his own climax.
“Fuck, Mags,” he ground out.
The next thing I registered was his hands scooping me up by my butt. He held on to me, turned, stepped to the empty wall by the refrigerator, and pushed my back against it, pumping harder into me as if his life depended on it. All I could do was hold on and let him use my body however he needed to.
He pounded into me for a while longer, and I was stunned to feel my body come alive again out of nowhere.
As Luke’s thrusts became even more intense, I climbed with him, reduced to gasping and needing and clinging to him.
I came at the same time he did, thankful he pressed all his weight into me as he released, because there was no way I’d be able to stand on my own two feet. Possibly not in the next twelve hours.
We stood there, or rather he stood there holding me up, both of us panting as I tried to process what he’d just done to me.
“That’s never happened before,” I said when I could get enough air to speak.
“What? Sex against the wall?”
I laughed lazily. “That too but two orgasms so fast.”
“Told you I had a present for you. And now I need to get you to the bed before my legs give out.”
He pushed away from the wall enough for me to slide my feet to the floor, then leaned in and pressed a tender kiss to my lips. “You okay?”
“I think my entire cellular makeup was blown apart and rearranged.”
Grinning, he said, “We’re damn good together, Mags.”
“Mm-hmm.”
We kissed again. Then he stood back enough to shed his pants the rest of the way. He kicked them and his shoes off, making me laugh.
“Oops,” I said. “We forgot to get all the way naked.” My teddy still hung from my shoulders.
“Seemed to work out just fine.” He took my hand, and we crossed the floor to my bed, ignoring the discarded clothing and the condom wrapper.
When we got to the bed, I took off the teddy, pulled back the bedding, and crawled under the blankets. Luke followed me in, reached back to turn the lamp off, then pulled me into his arms.
I’d never felt so satiated, content, and taken care of in my life. I drifted off within seconds.
The next morning, minutes after Luke left at quarter till six, I stretched out in my warm bed, my body pleasantly sore from multiple rounds over the course of the night.
The sex had been incredible, creative, and infused with laughter and conversation, which was yet another thing I’d never experienced before.
We’d talked for hours about deep topics and silly ones. We’d even managed to catch a little bit of sleep, though I worried about how he’d get through his full day of work.
He was so good to me. It was like he’d said. We were good together.
As I started to get drowsy, a thought popped up in my mind: When it has seemed too good to be true in your life, it always has been.
I forced myself to dismiss the thought and succumbed to another hour or two of slumber.