Chapter 12 #3
His cold fingers twitched against my pecs, and I took one of his hands in mine, threading our fingers together. His breath hitched, but I pretended not to notice.
Luke laughed shakily. “Okay.”
“There used to be thousands of apple varieties around here,” I said into the quiet. “See, when the first European settlers brought apples over, those apples didn’t thrive because they weren’t used to this climate—”
“I feel their pain.”
I snorted. “But the apple seeds that stuck it out and grew anyway, they cross-pollinated with the other apples that had stuck it out. They adapted,” I said pointedly.
“And what they became was something really amazing. There were tons of different flavors and textures and appearances. Every landholder had a different type of apple in their backyard.”
“So what happened?” Luke asked softly.
“Economics. Food became more commercial, distributors cared most about whether the fruit was pretty and durable so they could make a profit. So apple growers focused on the apples that would sell. Nothing too different. Nothing too… soft.”
“O-oh.” His throat clacked as he swallowed.
“Which was a shame,” I whispered, my mouth up against his ear so that my breath made him shiver. “Because sometimes the soft things are the sweetest…”
The air between us became tense. Expectant.
God, I knew what the objectively right thing to do in this situation was, but my hand wouldn’t listen to what my brain was trying to tell it. I ran my hand down his back from his head to his waist again, and when he shivered, he moved even closer against me.
“… and sometimes different is… is good,” I concluded, tilting my chin and pressing my lips to his.
He inhaled a shocked breath that exactly mimicked how I felt.
Had I really done that? Holy shit, I’d really done that. How fucking amazing.
Then he groaned low in his throat, wrapped his arms around my neck, and launched himself at me.
The sexy man in my arms was nothing like the sweet, shy guy who’d let me guide him around the pond earlier.
This man kissed like he was ravenous and I was his favorite meal, devouring my mouth, and rubbing his tongue against mine.
The kiss went on and on until I’d lost track of time, lost track of what we’d been saying, lost track of any reason I shouldn’t want this. All I could do was feel.
And shit, there was a lot to feel—the lean muscles of his ass as I pulled him against me, the slight bristle of his beard against my palm as I held his cheek, and the… oh, fuck. The hardness of his dick as it pressed against my leg, inches from my own erection.
“Fuck, Luke. I—” I broke off as he moved his mouth lower, running his tongue over the side of my neck in a way that made my brain incapable of communicating with my mouth.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked softly.
“No. God, no.” The words were torn from the deepest part of me. “I need—”
“What? Tell me what you need.”
“More.” I pulled him against me and maneuvered so that I was flat on the bed with him straddling me, with my hard cock trapped below his ass.
“Oh, freaking heck,” he moaned, grinding down against me, our bodies only separated by two thin layers of underwear. “Your body is…” He broke off with a head shake and coasted his hands down my chest with reverent hands, and the look on his face made it clear that he’d thought about this before.
Just like I had.
How hot was that?
His thumbs flicked my nipples—the perfect combination of pleasure and pain—and I gasped.
“Take these off,” I demanded roughly, coasting my hands up the light hair on his thighs to tug at the hem of his boxer briefs.
He hesitated for a second, like maybe that had made things a little too real for him, but then I cupped his erection through the thin fabric, and he thrust against me helplessly.
“Luke, please.” I could see the questions swirling in his eyes, but I didn’t have any answers, only desire pounding through my blood like a drum beat. “Please?”
He bit his lip, then stepped off the bed and stripped off his underwear.
My breath caught in my throat. His cock was flushed and fully hard—so much so that it bobbed against his stomach—and I was clearly no cock connoisseur, but I could say for sure that the sight of it, especially combined with his wild hair and wild eyes and those fucking nipple rings, made my own dick twitch with the need to be free.
Luke put a knee on the bed, but he paused as I tore down my boxer briefs. He stared down at my length and licked his lips, and my dick pulsed in response.
“Come here,” I demanded, missing the weight of him against me. I propped a bunch of his pillows behind me so I could watch him better.
“Don’t rush me. I’m making plans. I need to look my fill.”
“I already have plans,” I informed him. “They involve this.”
I used our size difference to my advantage, lifting him bodily until he was on top of me, straddling me again.
He laughed and sputtered—then closed his eyes and groaned unabashedly as my erection rubbed against the cleft of his ass again, this time with no barriers in place.
Seeing him so lost, feeling his skin against my cock for the first time, was the single hottest sexual moment of my entire existence, and I didn’t think twice before reaching a hand down to grasp his length in my fist and tug.
“Oh God,” Luke whimpered.
“You like that?”
“Uh-huh. Your hands are so big and so perfect.”
“You sound like you’re drunk again,” I said, and he looked it, too, his eyes glassy and his hair down over his forehead. I reached up a hand to brush his hair back.
“I feel like I’m drunk again. What do you want here?”
I blinked. What did I want? “I don’t know. I… I can’t do a relationship. Aiden needs someone to put him first, and I—”
“No.” Luke smiled gently. “I meant what do you want to happen right now, Webb? What do you want me to do to you? What do you not want?”