As she hurried down the sidewalk, Peyton heard Luke’s angry voice behind her, snapping into what she assumed was his cellular phone.
“Graves? Man I have a shitload of people in my fucking place and I need your help getting the place vacated, stat!…Hell, send a bomb threat or shit…Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, thanks, you’re a pal, man.”
Scowling as his voice approached, Peyton clutched her coat to her chin while the cold night wind slapped her hair around, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t walk faster than she already was, and within seconds Luke was at her side. He grabbed her elbow and spun her around. “What part of ‘wait here’ don’t you fucking understand, babe?”
She glared at him and yanked free. “So? Were those all your buddies who saw my butt picture?”
His diamond stud earrings glinted mockingly in the streetlights. God, could she have ever believed they weren’t real? They were probably the only thing that hadn’t been bullshit about him!
“They’re just the assholes I party with when my friends are busy.”
Holding her gaze snared within the depths of his, he stretched out his open hand, quietly summoning her to him.
Peyton didn’t want to think of how the mere sight of him disintegrated her. Of how she wanted to pull up his sweater and lick all of his tattoo. Of how her heart ached so badly that his mere presence tore her apart. She was hurt, shaken, and confused far beyond what her mind could even process.
She started backing away, needing distance from him, from the way she throbbed, physically, at his nearness.
His eyes ignited like a panther’s. “Pretend that you don’t miss me.” He signaled to her, and then to himself, as he advanced. “Pretend all you like. But you and I both know you came here for me.”
“I only came to tell you to your face what a fucking manwhore you are!”
He caught her before she could retreat any farther, his firm hold on her sleeve burning her skin through the fabric. “Curse me if it makes you feel good, Peyton, I don’t give a shit. You’re angry because you’re dying to get the exclusivity, and guess what, woman? You’ve got it. It’s yours. It’s been yours since the day you begged me to have a fling with you, and it’ll be yours until I’m dead.”
Peyton swatted off his hand. “Hah! You seemed very happy tonight planning your next orgy!”
Luke jerked her against him so hard, she gasped, his eyes unmistakably proprietary on her face. The feral clench to his jaw and the possessive glimmer in his eyes made Peyton’s insides spin with all sorts of swirls of wanting. He had never looked at her this way before. Never.
“You were the one being pawed tonight, baby girl,” he said, low and threatening as his eyes practically gorged on her lips, “and the next time you try that shit with me, I won’t be so forgiving. I’m going to break the fucking man’s bones into bits so tiny he’ll never be able to be put back together, and I won’t even get into all the shit I’m going to do to punish you. You’re mine, Peyton. No one touches you but me.”
Her insides heated at the intensity in his eyes, drowning her in those blue pools of desire. Afraid how her knees had become butter, Peyton lowered her voice to a pleading whisper. “Luke, please. We should stop this right now. This has disaster written all over it.”
He cupped her cheeks, his violently tender eyes boring into hers. “We work, Peyton. You and I. This relationship is the best fucking thing that’s happened to me since I was born—”
“The only relationship we seem to have is that you fucked me, just like you did the rest of the city, so that’s about as exclusive a group as a Yahoo e-mail account. Now, good night, Luke!” She whirled around and started walking, and he laughed behind her.
“Ah, God. I really didn’t want to have to do this.”
Before she knew it, he’d thrust her up onto his shoulder like a potato sack and headed back to his building as a stampede of people shuffled onto the sidewalk.
Gasping as the blood started pooling in her shocked brain, Peyton kicked the air and slammed her fists into his impenetrable back. “Let me go, Luke! Are you crazy?”
“About you, yes.”
He shoved through the crowd and into the lobby, and then pressed the up arrow on a different set of elevators that were off to the east and totally empty.
Peyton squirmed furiously as they boarded, gasping and screeching in outrage, until Luke set his palm on the curve of her ass and rubbed it meaningfully. “I’m getting real fucking turned on here, Peyton, so by all means, keep up the fight, baby.”
“Put me down, Luke!”
“As soon as I can pin you down underneath me.”
“I don’t want you anymore.”
He slipped his hot, splayed hand under her skirt, up her inner thigh, and Peyton became brutally aware that she no longer wore hose or panties. “I can easily prove that you do. Yep. You do.”
“You son of a bitch!” she fumed.
Another squeeze on the butt. “Baby girl, that happens to be your future mother-in-law you’re insulting.”
“That’s the lamest proposal I’ve ever heard, and this is from a man who only talks bullshit!”
He gave her a third, harder squeeze on the butt that burned her skin and set her cunt on fire. “By all means, get that off your chest, baby. In about thirty seconds, I’ll have my tongue in your mouth and you won’t be able to breathe!”
They entered a completely different floor than the one where he’d hosted his party, and he stalked down a long hall, crossed what she supposed was a bedroom, and swept her down on the center of a massive king bed.
She shook her head, panting and dizzy, and then she slammed a fist onto his chest, sure that her hair was tangled, her face was red, and her emotions were all over the place.
“You!” she screeched, but the look in Luke’s eyes as he yanked off her coat and tossed it aside made her heart pound and her blood storm like liquid lightning in her body. Wanting rippled in her vagina.
Because she knew with frightening certainty that Luke was not joking here.
He was as sober, as deadly serious, as she’d ever seen him. He yanked off his sweater with so much obvious sexual intent to have his way with her that she began to tremble on the bed.
Lust swirled around her, impossible to deny. She started to edge backward but he lunged forward and pinned her down wearing only his jeans, his hands manacles on her wrists, his chest bare and so sexy that her throat ached.
“Don’t,” she pleaded, stiffening against the tingle of heat that surged deep inside her belly.
“Shh. Listen to me. Listen.” His eyes were wild with a powerful mixture of desire and frustration, and Peyton kept panting beneath him, getting wet. Wanting him. Needing him. Hating him. “We’re going to make love right now, Peyton. On this bed. And we’re going to work this through. Whatever shit is your problem, I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to take care of you.”
She fought to be released. “You’re my problem, you womanizing…”
His hands clenched to still her. “Damn it, listen to me. Deep down I knew one day I would regret sleeping with all those women.” His slate-blue eyes silently demanded that she understand. “And if I could do things differently now I would, I swear to God. But I can’t undo what I’ve already done, and at that time, I could never think of a reason not to.”
When he loosened his hold, she sucked in a breath and edged back on the bed, her heart heavy in her chest. “Don’t pretend I mean something, Luke,” she said weakly.
Jaw tight, he tangled his fingers at her nape and pulled her to him. “Not something. Everything.”
He crushed her lips and kissed her, fast and hard, and when he pulled back, his eyes were the darkest, stormiest sky she’d ever seen, robbing her of her breath.
“I’m not denying myself another single fucking minute of being with you. Not even for a minute. Not even a second. The only person I’ve been bullshitting is myself—thinking you didn’t change everything for me. Everything.”
A deluge of need flooded her. She wanted him too much, she wanted it to be true too badly. “You’re a player, Luke, you want me because you can’t have me, you—”
“No!” His eyes were knives carving into her heart. “I want you because I know what it is to have you. I want you because I know what you’re like, and I want more, more of all of you, not just your body…I want you. And I know you want me, Peyton. God, I know you’re wild about me, I can feel you trembling against me. I can see how much you need me.”
He coasted his hands down her sides, his touch so heartbreakingly familiar, so right, a rush of tremors slid down her spine.
Her lungs strained as she tossed her head in denial, fear and want colliding in her chest. “I don’t want to feel like this, Luke.”
“But you do—we both do. Damn, Peyton, you’ve turned me into a fucking puppy like my friend Graves. Do you think I like it? Just throw me a bone here, baby.”
He caressed her cheeks and scraped his mouth desperately over hers, cupping her face within his hands, and she felt herself weaken, all her defenses demolished by his touch, his words. Him.
“Luke…”
“I love you.” He kissed her softly, tenderly, just with his lips. “I love you, Peyton.” He kissed her again, angling his head, still no tongue, his voice rough, his smile gone from his face. “Do you realize how many times I’ve said this to anyone in my life? Do you? Not once. Not to my father, not to my mother, but I’ll say it to you as many times as you want to hear it.”
Her eyes blurred. “Oh, God, say it again.”
He caught her hands and raised them over her head, manacling them in one hand while he subdued her with his weight. He looked into her eyes. “I love you.” He watched her face as he gathered the fabric of her skirt up to her hips, and then slid a hand between her trembling thighs, searching beneath her folds. A gasp tore out of her.
“Luke…”
He covered her lips, his tongue taking control, delving and coaxing out a helpless moan from her. “I want you.” He unbuttoned the top buttons of her jacket, then proceeded with the blouse beneath, pulling down the lace of her bra to reveal her breast. “I need you.”
He palmed the large swell as he brought his mouth back to hers, and she moaned and locked her legs around his hips, desperate for him to prove that every single word he’d told her was true. Their lips angled, their mouths savagely searching. His tongue overpowered hers, and she felt completely taken, and at the same time, perfectly completed.
Pleasure swelled through her nerve endings. She was dying, flying as he kissed her with the intensity of an avalanche. The familiar taste of him, his fresh scent, the feel of his perfectly formed body against her softer one, flooded her senses until her entire body felt permeated by his.
“That’s right, baby. This is so much better, isn’t it?” She shuddered under the coarse rasp of his voice, feeling his erection rocking gently against her stomach as she allowed him to undress her. “We’re wound up and we need each other, and that’s okay…we’re together now. And I’m not letting you go, not ever. Not again.” He eased her jacket off her shoulders, then her top followed it to the floor, his fingertips tenderly brushing over her bare skin.
She surveyed his heated expression as he fingered the front clasp of her bra, and she was sure her heart had sprouted little wings. She’d feared she’d never feel him again, see him again, and now that Luke was here, warm and real against her, she never wanted him to leave.
When he pinched her puckered nipple, she moaned.
He ducked his head back to her lips as though he had to eat that moan. Already her mouth felt swollen for him, red, as he sucked up her breaths into his body. Softening the kiss but at the same time deepening it, Luke slanted his head and caressed her mouth with sure, precise strokes that summoned a fresh surge of liquid heat to pool between her legs.
His hand stroked her breasts, alternating from one to the other, as he continued pinioning her arms above her head with one hand.
“Peyton,” he murmured. A whisper. A reverence.
“Luke.”
He groaned at his softly spoken name, and penetrated his tongue so deep, it was as though his mouth was fucking hers.
His kiss fed her, renewed her, and within seconds, she felt invigorated and ravenous for more. She arched helplessly and kissed him back like she had no other purpose in this world, no other ambition than to be completely possessed by this man, right here, right now. His breath staggered through his lips in a rush of hot air when he eased away from her to strip off his jeans.
Her heart galloped as his fingers expertly worked on his buttons and zipper, and his hungry blue eyes shone with red-hot desire as they looked at her, waiting and aching, on the bed.
All of a sudden, Peyton clearly remembered she wasn’t wearing any panties. She spread her legs apart and briskly worked on the buttons of her skirt, then she pulled it off to join the rest of her discarded clothing. She wanted to be completely naked. Completely taken. Completely his.
Then Luke loomed before her, less than a foot away, with an erection that made her mouth drool. He took in her naked form with gleaming blue eyes. “I swear my eyes hurt looking at you, Peyton.”
He bent over her, and the warm feeling of his hard flesh against hers disintegrated her. He slipped a hand between her legs, knowingly fondling her there, in her wet, slick folds. His eyes shimmered heatedly. Cords strained against his neck as his finger slowly tested her slickened entrance. “I can think of nothing else but tasting this sweet, tight, delicious pussy again.”
His palms cupped her inner thighs as he forcefully spread her legs wider apart, making her whimper in submission. Then he inched his face closer to her swollen, aching cunt.
She could feel his gaze burn her sex as he studied it, his eyes clouded with desire as he fingered her folds. She bucked in pleasure when she felt one finger enter in one swift, precise stroke. A power surge of electricity zinged through her.
“So slick and juicy, baby,” he whispered as he bent down to taste her with his mouth.
She almost died at the contact of his tongue, greedy and sure, thrusting into her. He knew just how to move it, surely, precisely, caressing her in the heavenly way he knew she loved. Then he withdrew his tongue and used it to flick the sensitive nub on top in slow circular motions.
He stroked it only with the tip of his tongue, slowly at first, then rapidly flicking it up and down, and while he did so, she felt his finger inside her again, two this time, spreading her walls wide apart for entry, pushing, pushing, then withdrawing, only to push inside with more force. Waves of ecstasy throbbed through her.
She threw her head back and moaned, feeling lost and at the same time, home again. Her fingers locked him against her, urging him closer as her hips arched in a silent, desperate plea for more of his hungry lips.
“Yes, please, more,” she breathed as he licked and fingered the glistening folds of her sex and continued torturing her.
Peyton might be considered an aggressive woman when it came to business, but in bed, she was just a woman. His woman. And she was at his mercy, where all she could do was whimper in pleasure and plead to him for more. “Ohhh, yes, please, oh…Luke, please now…”
He indulged her and pillaged her insides with his mouth and hand until she could speak no more, could barely even breathe.
When her incoming climax made her tense and cry out his name, he pushed her to it, allowing her to come, prolonging the twisting shudders that racked her with merciless thrusts of his finger and tongue.
When she went limp, he slid up to smack a wet, sloppy kiss on her mouth that filled her with the taste of herself. He spread out her legs, and she let him, panting, still needy, her vagina sensitive and rippling for him. “Luke.”
“I’m wet just thinking about coming inside you.” He rubbed his cock along her labia and slowly dragged it up and down between the swollen lips. “I want you to smell of me. I want you to feel me when you walk, when you move, when you come for me again…”
She arched up anxiously for his cock, crying out a please.
His satisfied male groan reverberated in her insides, and Peyton bit her lip when the bulbous tip found the entrance of her pussy and pressed. Inch by throbbing inch, he pushed straight in—penetrating every bit of her throbbing vagina.
“Luke.”
“Baby.”
He seated himself inside her, then grabbed her hips and held her gaze as he started fucking her for real. She cried out from the force, filled up to her throat with his enormous length, and then she cried out each time he plunged into her depths.
Each of his ramming thrusts was swift and powerful, meant to let her know he was boss here, the one calling the shots, the one taking her. The possessiveness in each deep, hard plow exhilarated her, drove her wild as his hands cupped her breasts and squeezed them in need, in domination.
Thick veins popped against the tanned skin of his neck, that same proprietary look he’d been giving her ever since he’d claimed her upstairs still in his eyes, burning like a fire in her soul. She shuddered at the delicious sensation of his teeth as he bent and gnawed at the tender flesh of her neck, and she welcomed the thick length of his cock thrusting inside her, again and again, the pleasure heady and intense and overwhelming.
“Tell me you missed me, Pey,” he commanded hotly in her ear.
“So much,” she gasped.
“Ask me to give it to you harder, then.”
She cried out for it. He made her whimper and beg him to please, please fuck her, fuck her now, fuck her hard. His fingers slipped down her belly so he could thumb her clitoris while he kept impaling her in deep, dominant thrusts until Peyton’s second orgasm hit in a blinding eruption of colors.
She rode it, shuddering beneath him as Luke murmured her name, a hot, exploding breath against her face as his thrusts gradually receded.
For a while they lay there, entangled, sweaty.
“Is this your room, Luke?” she asked when she recovered and lazily took stock of her surroundings, her voice still husky.
“Yep. Now it’s yours, too.” He kissed her lips, and Peyton admired how surprisingly subtle it was, tan and blue. No bullshit like what she’d seen upstairs in his party lair. Her heart soared as she realized he’d been letting her see things about himself that no one else did.
“Please don’t tell me you own the building?”
“Only three floors.”
“Only!”
He chuckled, smacked her butt, then dove to kiss the exact place he’d smacked, until finally he rose to clean up in the bathroom, allowing her to watch his magnificent muscled buttocks clench sensually as he walked away.
Smiling dreamily, Peyton propped back up on a pillow and spotted an open folder on his nightstand. The picture on the very top was of her—and she recognized that navy blue sweater as one she’d been wearing only yesterday.
“You had me followed?” she asked, wide-eyed, when Luke came out.
“Yeah. So?” Unperturbed, he jumped back on the bed and hugged her against his side, coasting his hands up and down her back.
Her frown bit into her face as she searched his eyes. “You know, I never pegged you as the possessive type.”
He held her gaze, fully sober, and then brushed her lips with his. “I never had a possession that was worth more than my life to me.” He pressed his mouth to her ear next. “Just like you were looking for me, I’ve been restless my entire life. Looking for you.”
She dissolved into pure lust at that and kissed him, then she murmured in his ear, “What exactly were you planning to do when you found me?”
“Hmm. It definitely involved some of what we just did,” he murmured, “and some of this…” Rolling her under him, he drowned her in his kisses once more.
Her hands slid up his chest and bumped a scar, where he used to wear the bandage, close to his beautiful small brown nipple. “Is this where you got shot?” Her lips fell there of their own will, kissing the scar, licking it.
He shuddered, his arms convulsing around her. “Ah, Christ. Nobody’s ever kissed it.”
“I’m so sorry this happened, Luke.”
He grinned down at her, both playful and serious. “I’m not, girl. It took me right to you.”
She spent the night at his apartment, and the night after, and by the third night, Luke called the movers to bring all her clothes, her laptop, her home computer—to his place.
He made her lose all reason, all self-control, and all practicality, until Peyton wanted nothing else, cherished nothing else, and knew nothing else, except Luke Preston.
“Come on, you have to smile and look pretty.”
Luke smiled delightedly as Peyton posed for his iPhone again. “Your friends will think I’m such a slut after they saw my butt,” she complained.
“I’ve told you several times they didn’t see your butt. Baby girl, that picture’s mine.”
She seemed only marginally happier as she shook her long, sable hair. “I still feel so weird meeting them like this.”
“You’ll meet them when it’s poker night here next week. But now I want them to know I’ve got myself a lady and they can’t mess with her…”
He clicked on the picture, and then stared down at it, his heart tangled up in his chest. Peyton was smiling, dressed in a white button-down shirt and a black little skirt, seeming shy and beautiful. Luke opened a new e-mail, added his friends’ addresses—Graves, Daniel, Cade, and Andrew Fairchild’s. Although Andrew had been away for almost three years, the guys always copied his cell number in case he was back in the city—then he punched on the keyboard.
Gang, meet my lady. U assholes better be nice when u meet her @ poker night! And you better stay the fuck quiet about what a fucking dickhead I am because I plan to keep this woman for good. Her name is Peyton and she is MINE.
—Luke
He sent it out, then set the phone aside and grinned as he rose from the bed and headed toward her, watching her arrange the papers she’d been reading last night into her briefcase. He palmed her butt, and when she swung around, he swept his lips down for a short but heady kiss. “I like the way you look in the morning,” he murmured. He squeezed the lovely curve of her rump, and caught her earlobe between his teeth, tugging.
Her eyes darkened when he yanked her skirt up to her waist with one sure, now-expert move, and she moaned out a protest and shook her head. “Luke, I should leave. I can’t be late again today if I want to face my boss.”
“Baby, once I hand my staggering portfolio over to you he’ll be begging you to please me and concede to my dirtiest wishes. He’ll double your salary. Whatever it takes to keep me satisfied. Hell, you’ll probably be your boss’s boss—and if you get any sort of crap today just blame me and I’ll buy the fucking business for you.”
She laughed, then kissed him. “Oh, Luke.”
“Can you blame me when you feel so damned good?” He whispered against her face, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her back to the bed. He set her in the center and settled on his side facing her, stroking her face with his fingers. “I heard you talking to your friends yesterday,” he taunted in a husky whisper as he lowered a hand to fully cup the lush curve of her breast. “I heard you tell them about me.”
Oh, yeah, he’d heard. The excitement in her voice. The love. And now he wanted to make her say it. The little bubbles in his chest demanded it, were popping like crazy at the mere prospect.
“I just wanted them to stop asking about my mysterious new man,” Peyton said with a sigh.
He chuckled at that. “No, Pey. What you wanted was to hang up quickly so you could come in my face. Yet you missed telling them the best part. That you’re in love with this lucky dude.” Slowly his thumb tortured her nipple through the fabric of her silk blouse.
“Maybe,” she breathed, her eyes sparkling.
“You’re so in love with me, Peyton, I can feel it all around me like a halo,” he said, watching her cheeks go pink and getting hard instantly.
He reached between her legs and under her skirt, and he could see Peyton could barely speak as his finger slipped into her panty, then eased into her wet sex.
“You? With a halo, Luke?” She panted, sinking all five fingers of one hand into his hair.
“You’ve fallen hard for me, baby,” he continued, mercilessly stroking inside her channel.
She stared at him, her lovely cheeks heated with desire and an endearing shyness. “And if I admit it?” She caught her lower lip as if to keep from moaning. “What…will you do?”
“I’ll marry you,” he conceded as he lowered his face and brushed his lips to hers. “So I can call you Mrs. Preston and carry you around like another limb. So legally I can demand you to be here every night…so I can blow your sweet kitty anytime I want, fuck you anywhere I want…”
“Oh, God,” she gasped as his fingers continued their assault.
“Say it, baby,” he whispered. “I know you want to. You know I feel the same.”
She groaned as she fought it. “It’ll go to your head. You’re too cocky for your own good,” she gasped, but her body said otherwise, and she melted back against the mattress.
“I’m not going to let you come until you say it,” he purred, retrieving his fingers. She groaned in protest, then glanced straight into his eyes with her dark ones.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He smiled in satisfaction and slipped his finger inside her pussy again. “That’s better.”
She groaned. “I never thought I could love anyone so much. Every second I’m not with you is painful…”
“I know, baby, it hurts me, too.” He locked his lips with hers and drew her taste into his body, his chest full of emotion like it had never been in his life. “Show me how much you love me, Pey. I promise you I’ll spend my life showing you how crazy I am about you.”
And he showed her when he slowly, lovingly possessed her, promising her that he would soon make her his, completely and utterly, and that every day he would remind her that she was treasured, and when she forgot then he would remind her again.
So she could call her friends up any day soon and tell them she was now Mrs. Luke Preston—and that Luke Preston was totally taken with her.