6. Olive
olive
I couldn’t sit still. But then again, I had never been the type to do that. Not like Scarlett or Raven.
But in Luke’s truck, anticipation mounted with every minute he drove.
We hadn’t said a word after he’d kissed me again after taking turns tasting our…
Wow. That actually happened!
Nice guy Sheriff Luke March had eaten me out like I was his last and final meal.
In a dark parking lot where anyone could have seen us, of all places!
My sisters and brother had all been inside the brewery. Any of them could have walked out and seen something! Who would have thought the man, the one I had deemed too nice and sweet and probably way too vanilla, had that in him!
I sure hadn’t.
My eyes roamed to his face, observing his profile as he drove. I gave up trying to be subtle about it. What was the point? We both knew what this was.
A one-night stand. That’s what I thought it was going to be.
What I’d wanted. Sorta. But Luke had tossed a wrench in that.
Give us a chance. It had been a real request and not just something said in the heat of the moment, no matter how much I wanted to talk myself into it during our short drive.
The man had teased my body as if he had mastered it, until I had no choice but to give in.
Liar, a little voice whispered.
I’d wanted to give in from the first moment he asked. And it scared me. Terrified me.
For the first time in a long time, I wanted more.
The thought of easy and fun didn’t appeal to me when it came to Luke.
I looked away and, as if he missed my eyes of him, his hand rested on my thigh, pushing the skirt of my dress so his palm could be skin to skin with my bare thigh.
I’d never been happier about taking the time to shave that morning than right then and there.
“What are you thinking about?” he broke the somewhat comfortable silence we’d fallen into.
“Why did you make me promise I’d give you a chance?” I blurted, unable to mask the way my voice slightly shook.
“Us,” he corrected purposely. “I made you promise me you would give us a chance.” My teeth sunk into my bottom lip.
Us. Could there be an us?
I’d witnessed my sisters fall one after another.
I mean, I’d even watched my oldest sister, Coral, be in a long-term relationship to be broken hearted in a way I’d worried about my usually hard-ass attorney sister.
When I’d picked her up after the first time she’d hooked up with her now soon-to-be husband, Oleg, I’d known it wasn’t going to be a just-for-fun fling for her.
If Coral could risk her heart again after what she’d gone through with her bastard ex, who had all but flaunted his new relationship in her face, to find love again, maybe I could, too? The question was, did I want to? Yes, that now melded voice whispered in the back of my head.
“Us,” I repeated, my voice a little stronger. “Why?” I repeated, needing to know.
“Because you’re mine,” he replied, as if it wasn’t weird or a little creepy.
There had to be something seriously wrong with me for liking it.
No, for loving it. How many nights did I wake up from a dream where I’d imagined he’d been watching me sleep?
It hadn’t been a scary thought. If anything, it’d been comforting.
The idea of Luke watching over me warmed me from the inside out.
I shook my head, and he made a noise of discontent.
He probably assumed I was shaking my head about being his.
“You are mine,” he repeated with an unbending confidence that made me blink.
Shit, it was crazy how well I read him despite not really knowing him all that well.
But if I was honest, I’d been drawn to him from the first moment I’d seen him when he arrived in Moonlit Pines.
He hadn’t noticed me then. I’d watched him walk into Pine and Grind with a white tee and faded jeans and an old baseball hat with the brim pulled low, almost blocking those beautiful blue eyes I’d fallen for from the very start.
But as I’d stared at him, watched the way he was with everyone around him, giving everyone a polite smile and kind words to strangers around him, he’d seemed too nice.
Too sweet for me. Onyx, had pulled up a chair at my table, but I had been so enraptured by the new guy in town that I hadn’t even noticed Onyx sitting next to me.
When I did, I’d almost fallen out of my chair, and he good naturedly laughed at me.
You would chew him up and spit him out., he’d playfully teased.
Those words had bounced around in my head.
I would end up seeing him everywhere. I swear I thought the man was hardly ever home.
Whether he was in uniform or his civilian clothes, I could have sworn he was always around.
At the brewery, at the grocery store, even at the dang ski resort before I quit.
Until the day he’d popped up at my booth at the farmers market and made me so mad I’d had no idea what the hell I thought I’d seen in him.
But despite all the push and pull, mostly on my part, trying to save him or myself, I wasn’t sure, I was in his truck.
I’d let him go down on me and come on me like he was marking me as his. And I’d liked it. A lot.
“I know it’s probably fast but?—“
“That’s not why I was shaking my head,” I cut him off, not wanting any more misunderstandings between us. Not if I was going to give this a real shot. And I was going to do just that. “I was just thinking… it doesn’t matter…”
“It matters to me.”
“I just…” I swallowed and took a breath.
Life was about choices and the risks we took.
I knew that firsthand. If I hadn’t taken a chance opening a little side hustle baking cookies, I wouldn’t be closer than ever to opening my own shop, and I’d still be working nights in the laundry room of the ski resort.
Risks took hard work.
I knew from watching my parents work at their marriage through the years that it wasn’t easy. And I didn’t mind work or getting my hands dirty.
“No games. No lies,” I found myself saying, unblinking while looking at him as he drove.
“Are those the rules?” he asked, still lightly stroking my thigh back and forth. I didn’t miss the way his hand seemed to move higher up my leg, dangerously close to my panties, stoking a fire inside of me.
“Yes. No lies. No games.” My breath might have hitched, but I needed him to agree.
“I’m not a fan of secrets, Sheriff.” A muscle twitched below his eye, but his fingertips started to stroke my upper thigh, and my heart started to race again.
I wanted his touch so badly, so much more than I had ever wanted anyone else’s. Ever.
Luke lit my body up as if he hadn’t just made me see stars less than twenty minutes ago. My eyes roamed down his face to his chest, and I noticed the thick bulge at the front of his strained jeans. The size of him was a surprise, too. One I wanted to take a ride on as soon as possible. Focus!
“Okay, from here on out, no lies, no games.” There was something about the way he phrased his agreement that made me pay attention, move my eyes to his profile just as he put his truck in Park .
“We’re here,” he diverted my attention to look through the windshield.
My eyes landed on his place, and my sex clenched.
“Back to the scene of the crime,” I muttered, accidentally out loud. “Maybe we should go to my place.” My nerves were getting the better of me.
“I want you in my bed the first time I have you.” That had my attention jumping to him, and our eyes locked. The way he said it was almost like he had put a great deal of thought into it.
“You sent me home last time I was here,” I reminded him.
“I told you?—“
“I know… but maybe the real reason you sent me away was because you were already… entertaining someone else?” He scoffed and rested the back of his head against the driver’s seat.
“We both know I only have eyes for you, Cookie.” His hand squeezed my thigh.
“Don’t call me that.” I rolled my eyes hoping he somehow couldn’t see the way my heart skipped a beat.
I’d never been a fan of nicknames.
With a name like Olive, kids weren’t the nicest in elementary school. Oli was as much as I tolerated, but that was because I’d grown up with my siblings, who were always shortening it.
But the way Luke called me Cookie? The way he said it with emotions I didn’t want to name got to me from the first time he’d called me it to the point of dreaming about him calling me that.
“I gotta lay down some ground rules.” Uh-oh.
Here we go, I thought to myself. This was where he either told me he was into some really weird foot stuff or laid out some kind of kink.
“You still want this, for us to walk in there, I need you to know…” He took a deep breath, and I braced.
His blue eyes locked with mine as our fingers tangled together.
“This isn’t a one-night stand. And it isn’t going to be some kind of friends-with-benefits shit, either.”
“You don’t want to be my friend.” I’d meant to ask it with some sass, but instead, I sounded as vulnerable as I felt.
“Olive, I want to be your best friend. I want to be your man. I want to be your fucking world.” I blinked, but it was like my brain couldn’t make sense of everything he said. Like it was too much for me to process.
“Cookie,” he called out again even though I was still staring at him.
“Don’t call me that,” I mumbled, and something in his bright blue gaze softened.
“We both know you like it.” I didn’t argue with him. I also didn’t want to think about how he knew that. “You walk in there with me, you’re mine.”
“You say that like…” I had no idea why I couldn’t spit it out. I had never been shy about things when it came to sex.
“Like what?” He was watching me closely.
“Like that’s what you want,” I blurted out, my heart racing inside my chest.