35
Alarie
Imet Luke at Bar Louie. I’d chosen a mid-length, clingy, cottony black dress for the night, something different from the blue I almost always wore these days. Something simple that I made slightly sexier by pairing it with a pair of wedges that wrapped around my ankles.
Luke was leaning against the bar, chatting with one of our regular bartenders. He was always dressed to the nines, but outside of the High Court, I would often find him in various stages of undress. Tonight, he wore a sharp black suit, but he had already disposed of his jacket, leaving the suspenders to his pants exposed. His tie was untied and hanging loosely around his neck, the sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up to his elbows, and his brown hair was slightly curled, probably from him running his hands through it all day. The exposed straps of his suspenders only served to further highlight his muscled frame, the way the thin straps seemed just barely capable of stretching over his large shoulders before leading the eye down to his pants.
Rhett wasn’t there. He must have been in too deep with whoever was his date for the night to join us. I walked up to the bar, the click of my heels on the bar’s floor announcing my arrival. Luke, still leaning on the bar with his ass poked out and a foot propped on the bottom ledge, turned his attention toward me.
“Al!” he bellowed in excitement, like he didn’t see me all the time.
“What’s up?” I greeted, popping the straps of one of his suspenders against his muscled back.
We shared our first beer of the evening, sitting at the bar.
“Guess that explains why Jay was in such a foul mood,” Luke commented in response to my rendition of why Jay’s trip to the north was necessary.
I didn’t mention Lady Vitruvian’s pregnancy, but I did hint at issues with the border wall.
“Yeah, that must have been it,” I replied.
Luke flashed me one of his prized smiles and said, “So, when’s the announcement?”
My heart dropped, worried that Luke knew that Jay planned to announce me as House consort. Or that Elizabeth was pregnant. But he couldn’t, I reasoned, calming.
“What announcement is this?” I asked coyly.
“Al, I know competition when I see it. Tell me Jay doesn’t intend to name you counselor at the Spring Ball,” Luke replied.
Relief flowed through me. “You want some competition? How about I beat your ass in horseshoes?” I quipped.
I was actually quite good at horseshoes and had humbled Luke and Rhett any number of times on the back deck to Bar Louie.
“Let’s do it, little girl,” he teased. “But don’t come crawling to me when you’re three sheets in the wind.”
The usual bet between us was that the loser of the game took a shot of the winner’s choosing. We made our way to the back deck of the bar.
“Ladies first, I always say,” Luke said.
“Ever the gentleman,” I teased.
I picked up the rusty horseshoe, feeling its weight in my hand before throwing it perfectly, ringing the stake in the ground. I looked at Luke, satisfied, but not overly so, not wanting to count my eggs before they hatched. I was good, probably better than Luke most of the time, but he had shellacked me more than a few times. I knew better than to gloat this early in the game.
Luke pitched his horseshoe, flashing me a wide smile as his shoe rang directly on top of mine.
“Looks like we have ourselves a game,” he taunted, the challenge twinkling in his eye.
For that smile, I would almost be willing to throw the game. Almost, I thought, throwing another shoe that landed immediately adjacent to my first throw.
We continued to play horseshoes throughout the night, but Rhett never appeared. The first two shots went to Luke. I treated him to two particularly sweet shots because I enjoyed him having to go to the bar to order them. A specimen like Luke was unfazed by a couple of shots.
Luke took the third game—choosing an equally horribly sweet shot for me as my punishment. At this point, we were both several drinks and shots deep, and a win or loss was no longer necessary to provoke another round of shots. We toasted ourselves, each other, and our bastard friend, Rhett, who was too busy banging to hang out.
I closed down Bar Louie for the first time ever. And it was exactly what I had needed to get my mind off how I’d left things with Jay.
“You don’t have to go home, but you have to get the hell out of here,” the bartender bellowed.
We had not even realized the hours that had passed since we first arrived. We stumbled out of the bar, and my hand darted out for Luke’s arm, so I didn’t trip on the cobblestone.
“I whooped your ass, and you know it,” I jeered at Luke.
“Maybe I let you because I just wanted to get drunk,” Luke replied.
“Keep telling yourself that, big boy,” I retorted.
“You know, you talk a lot of shit for someone who can fit under my chin,” he jested.
“With heels, I come up to at least your mouth,” I japed, defensively.
To prove my point, I stopped walking, standing in front of him and lining up my face to his until our faces were inches apart.
“See,” I breathed, my lips inches from his.
If he tilted his head down any farther, our lips would be touching.
“Right up to your mouth,” I said slowly as I stared into Luke’s blue eyes, holding my breath.
“I guess you’re right,” he said, sweeping me off my feet and breaking the tension.
He hefted my weight in his arms, causing one of my heels to almost fall off. We laughed.
“Let me down, Luke. I’m not that drunk,” I protested. “I can walk,” I said, when we finally quit laughing.
Luke set me back down, and I almost instantly almost rolled my ankle. Luke wrapped his arm around my waist, easily holding my weight with one arm as we continued to walk. My black cocktail dress bunched under the strength of his grip at my waist.
“I can run you back to House Vitruvian if you want,” Luke offered.
He often scooped me in his arms and ran with unnatural speed to our destination. More so due to my slow pace in my high heels than anything else.
“Let’s go back to your house. I think we could use a nightcap,” I offered.
The last thing we needed was another drink. But I wasn’t ready to go back to the manor. We made our way back to the Bellamy manor, yelling and laughing the entire way back to Court. When at last we made it to Luke’s private bar, Luke made me my favorite drink, a nip of scotch with a splash of soda and a twist of orange peel. It was later than Luke and I had ever hung out by the time we were willing to admit it was time to quit drinking and go to bed.
“Ready for me to take you to the manor?” Luke offered again.
I didn’t respond to his offer, instead walking out of his bar and toward his bedroom. As I did so, I kicked off my heels, flinging the shoe from my right foot into the distance before kicking my left shoe in the opposite direction. Luke’s laughter rang out through the silence of the house in the early morning as my heels struck objects in the distance. I laughed too, unable to resist the urge to match Luke’s mood.
I continued to walk toward Luke’s bedroom, slipping my tight black dress off in the hallway, allowing it to pool at my feet. Luke trailed behind me, his laughter silenced by the sight of me undressing and moving into his bedroom. Standing in my matching set of a black satin bra and thong, I entered Luke’s room and went to his closet. Finding a soft shirt that smelled like him, I slipped it on and then removed my bra through the armhole of the shirt.
Luke entered his room where he was greeted by the sight of me in his shirt in his bed. He slipped off his shoes as he removed his watch from his sizable wrist. His eyes continued to bore into me.
“You sure about this, Al?” he asked, beginning to unbutton the white button-down he wore. “I can still get you home.”
I had never stayed at his place before. The charade we put on to cover up for my relationship with Jay had never extended that far. But this didn’t feel like part of the charade at all. It felt like something entirely different. In response, I crawled on all fours farther into the bed, allowing my ass to poke out of Luke’s overly large shirt.
Luke ran his thumb across his pouty lower lip and down to the irresistible dimple in his chin, considering, before continuing to strip off his clothes. He stripped down to his gray boxer briefs and came to the side of his bed, stopping to take a sip of water with his eyes still on me.
I rose to my knees, meeting him at the side of the bed, and wrapped my arms around his neck, roughly pulling him onto his bed and on top of me. I pulled his body between my legs, his shirt that I was wearing pushing up to expose my stomach and the only other piece of clothing I wore. Luke pulled up from my embrace as I lay on my back with my legs loosely wrapped around him.
“Al, you’re wasted,” Luke admonished.
“Don’t be that way,” I responded.
He looked at me skeptically.
“Ok. I’m a little drunk,” I admitted with a smirk.
The liquor in me made me want to do something wild and reckless, but I still knew what I was doing.
“But we both know we’ve wanted this for a long time, Luke. Tell me I’m wrong,” I demanded, tightening my legs around his waist until his boxers rubbed against my satiny panties.
I felt Luke harden against me. I curved my body into him, pressing my aching sex into his thickness, and whatever control he had disappeared. He collapsed onto me, lowering his mouth hungrily to mine, his soft lips caressing mine before he slid his tongue into my mouth, probing, as he pressed his muscled body against mine.
I reacted to the feel of him in my mouth vehemently, desperately wrapping my arms around his muscled back, pulling him closer into my body as I returned his kiss passionately. I began to writhe against him as our mouths fed at each other like I was trying to eliminate the possibility of air between our bodies. I reached my hand down toward the band of his boxers, and Luke pulled away from our embrace once more.
“Al, no,” he said. His hands dug into my thighs, keeping me separated from him. “Not like this,” he whispered quietly but firmly.
“You don’t tell me no,” I said defiantly, half-joking, half-serious.
Luke took a deep breath.
“Al, what do you think I am? A fucking god?” he asked, squeezing his hands on my thighs until little white marks formed under his grip, his hands almost shaking in his effort to hold back.
“It’s a godsdamn miracle that you aren’t on all fours with me buried inside of you right now,” he said with heat in his voice that turned my core into liquid. “I’m trying to be a gentleman here. I promise,” he finished, sounding exasperated with himself.
I didn’t like being told “no,” but I knew he was right.
“Ugh,” I sighed, disappointed, my legs still wrapped around him.
I tried not to picture what Luke had suggested. Me, on my hands and knees with him behind me, his strong hands lined up on the dimples on my lower back, as he pulled me into him at the same time he thrusted into me. The ache between my thighs disagreed emphatically, but Luke was right. This wasn’t right.
Seeing the disappointment on my face, Luke laughed, dissipating the tension between us. I loosened the grip of my legs around him as he continued to laugh. I laughed too.
“You know, Luke, laugh all you want, but someday I’m going to be yours and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it,” I promised, not making any sense, drunk and already beginning to fall asleep.
I retreated to my side of the bed and began to fall asleep almost immediately.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Luke retorted, pulling my body into the crook of his own.