Chapter 10 — Luke Time #5
"A place." Her voice thinned, then steadied.
"My stuff. My charger that isn't in an overnight bag.
My shampoo in the shower. A drawer with my name on it, even if my name is written on tape because I know Shay will steal socks.
A room I can walk into and think, okay. I belong here.
Not just when I'm naked. Not just when I'm scared. Here."
There it was.
The thing under all the motion.
Tatum didn't want to be managed.
She didn't want to be caught and returned to the correct shelf.
She wanted a place.
My place.
Her place.
Ours, if I had the guts to keep saying yes.
I brushed hair away from her face. "Which room?"
She blinked.
"That easy?"
"Not easy." I kissed her forehead. "Simple."
Her mouth wobbled.
"Don't be too nice. I just had sex. My emotional defenses are soup."
"Which room, Tatum?"
She tucked her face against my chest, but I could feel her smile.
"The one with the window seat."
"The window seat room?"
"For reading."
"You read?"
She pinched my side.
"Ow."
"I read. Sometimes. Parts of things. Also, the window seat has other uses."
"Such as?"
She lifted her head, eyes wicked again because the serious thing had landed and now she needed air. "Fucking. Obviously. Window seats are underrated. Great angles. Natural light. Excellent place to make questionable choices during thunderstorms."
"You've thought about this."
"I have a rich inner life."
"The window seat room is yours."
She went still.
The joke faded.
"Mine?"
"Yours."
"My stuff can go there?"
"Yes."
"And if I sleep there sometimes?"
"Then you sleep there. Every night if you want."
"And if I don't?"
I slid my hand down her back, over the curve of her ass, and pulled her closer.
"Then you don't."
Her breath caught.
For a second, she looked like she might cry.
Then she kissed me.
Slow this time.
So slow it hurt more than the hard ones.
"I like your house," she whispered. "But I love you."
"I love you too," I said. "And the house is getting better."
"It was kind of sad before."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. I'm helpful."
"You ruined my sheets."
"Also helpful. You needed new sheets."
I laughed, and she laughed with me, and the sound of it filled the bedroom while the mess cooled between us and her leg stayed hooked over mine like she had no intention of giving back even one inch of contact.
After a while, she sighed.
"Steaks soon?"
"Probably."
"Good. Sex makes me hungry."
"Everything makes you hungry."
"Yes, but sex makes me hungry with moral authority."
I kissed her temple.
The window seat room was hers.
I had a feeling she was going to destroy the rest of the house too.
I wanted to let her.
***
By the time the girls came back, I had showered, changed, put the ruined sheets in the laundry room, started the grill, and made exactly zero progress convincing Tatum to keep her hands to herself.
She was in the pool when the front door opened.
Technically.
Mostly she was at the edge of the pool in a yellow bikini that had no interest in public service, arms folded on the stone, chin propped on her forearms, watching me at the grill like I was a steak-adjacent entertainment system.
"You're going to burn those," she said.
"I'm not."
"Your eyebrows are doing the thing."
"My eyebrows are grilling correctly."
"No, your eyebrows are overthinking beef."
I pointed the tongs at her. "Stay in the pool."
"Make me."
That wasn't a sentence a man should hear from a woman he'd just had naked, shaking, and asking for a room upstairs.
My body remembered everything.
The slide of her around me.
The way she'd said inside me.
The feel of her laughing against my chest with my cum still leaking out of her.
I turned back to the grill before I did something stupid with an audience about to walk in.
The front door opened again, and the house filled with voices, bags, and the bright sound of women who had done financial damage with permission.
Kiki came through first, hair windblown, cheeks pink, arms full of bags and one carefully wrapped package of steaks that she held like a sacred object.
"We got ribeyes," she announced. "Good ones."
"Because I supervised," Shay said, appearing behind her with two shopping bags, a bottle of wine under one arm, and a black bikini top looped over her wrist. "Left unsupervised, Kiki would have bought responsible steaks."
"There's no such thing as irresponsible steak," Kiki said.
"Exactly why you needed me."
Penny came in last.
She carried fewer bags than the others, but she did it with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who had found exactly what she wanted and knew what it would do to me.
She had changed at some point. White linen skirt now. Loose green top. Bare shoulders. Hair brushed smooth again, though the heat in her eyes had not smoothed at all.
She looked at me.
Then at Tatum in the pool.
Then back at me.
Her smile was small and devastating.
"Productive afternoon?"
Tatum kicked water at her. "We discussed interior design."
Shay dropped her bags on the patio table. "Naked?"
"Obviously."
Kiki looked at me, then at Tatum, and whatever she saw made her smile go soft. "You okay?"
Tatum launched herself out of the pool like a creature built entirely out of water, skin, and bad ideas. She padded across the patio dripping everywhere, climbed directly into my lap even though I was sitting in front of the grill, and stole a piece of watermelon off the plate beside me.
"I'm great," she said around the bite.
She was.
Her skin was warm from the sun and cool from the pool. Her hair was wet and darker than usual, clinging to her neck. The yellow bikini rode high on her hips, and when she settled on my thigh, her body fit there with a confidence that made my hands want things dinner didn't need witnessed.
Kiki clocked all of it.
So did Shay.
So did Penny.
None of them looked surprised.
That was becoming one of the most dangerous things about my life.
Shay poured wine, then held up the black bikini top. "New. Luke-funded. Morally questionable. Possibly illegal in church parking lots."
"We're not wearing it to church," Kiki said.
"Not with that attitude."
Penny set one of her bags on the patio chair nearest me. "I found the dress."
The way she said it made the grill irrelevant.
"Show me," I said.
"Later."
"Penny."
Her smile sharpened. "If I show you now, you'll burn the steaks."
Kiki made a pleased sound and started unloading bags onto the patio table with the solemn joy of a woman documenting evidence.
A folded blue sundress. A pair of heels Shay immediately stole and held against her bare leg.
Something black and lace-edged that Kiki snatched back before Shay could wave it like a flag.
Tags flashed. Tissue paper drifted. The afternoon's purchases spread across my patio in soft, expensive proof that my card had gone out into the world and come back carrying pieces of them.
Not errands.
Evidence.
Shay plucked a receipt from one bag and whistled. "Luke, your credit card has stamina."
Kiki looked at the receipt, then at me, and her expression went warm in a way that made the joke land somewhere deeper. "You said whatever we needed."
"I meant it."
Penny's fingers brushed the top of her bag. She didn't open it. That restraint was worse than a reveal. Whatever was inside had changed how she stood, shoulders back, chin lifted, green eyes on me like she was already walking into that party with my hand at her waist.
"The dress is dangerous," Shay said.
Penny smiled. "The dress is appropriate."
"For manslaughter," Shay said.
Tatum pointed a wet finger at me. "Told you. Eyebrows."
I flipped the steaks.
Correctly.
Tatum looked mildly disappointed.
Kiki moved through the patio like she'd always known where the plates were.
Shay set napkins down, poured wine, stole a tomato from the salad, and made a satisfied sound that belonged in another room.
Penny disappeared upstairs with one bag and came back without it, which I noticed and didn't comment on because some truths were better left to land quietly.
When she came back, she had changed nothing visible.
That was the problem.
The dress was upstairs now. Hidden in my house. Waiting for a night when she would put it on for me and walk into a room full of people brave enough to think they knew what Penny Rourke was allowed to want. She caught me looking toward the stairs and smiled into her wineglass.
No one else would have called that foreplay.
They would have been wrong.
By the time dinner hit the table, the back patio felt like a scene from somebody else's life.
A better somebody.
String lights coming on.
Pool water glowing blue.
Steaks on plates.
Wine sweating in glasses.
Kiki barefoot with her legs tucked under her, eating with that warm, focused pleasure she brought to food and sex and anything else she had decided deserved attention.
Shay talking with both hands, somehow making a story about a saleswoman and a dressing room sound like a felony confession.
Penny sitting close enough that her knee brushed mine under the table.
Tatum on my lap.
Not beside me.
On me.
Wet hair, yellow bikini, steak knife in one hand, stealing from my plate with the other.
She had dried enough that the pool water was gone from her shoulders, but the bikini was still damp where it pressed against me.
Her bare thigh was warm across mine. Every time she reached for my plate, her ass shifted on my lap, and my body remembered the bedroom with a clarity that made dinner feel like an act of discipline.
Tatum knew it too.
She always knew.
She leaned back against my chest and murmured, "You're being very responsible with the steak knife."
"I'm trying."
"You were less responsible upstairs."
Kiki coughed into her wine.
Shay lifted both hands. "I heard nothing. I respect privacy. Also details later."
Tatum grinned and stole my potato.
"You have your own food," I said.
"Yours tastes better."
"It's the same steak."
"No, yours has theft."
Shay raised her glass. "To theft."
Kiki clinked hers against it. "Responsible theft."
"Boring theft," Shay corrected.