Page 109 of Unexpected

Luke replaced Amanda in front of me and leaned down until his head was next to mine. He brushed my hair over my shoulder and with his hot breath on my neck came plentiful goose bumps all over my skin. He kissed my neck softly before he asked, “What do you think?”

He already knew exactly what got me going, like soft kisses on my neck and the way he held me possessively. He knew it and he used it to his advantage because I had to force my knees from buckling and my breath from catching when his husky voice asked such a simple question.

“They’re all really nice, and your house looks so cozy,” I managed to say somehow. “It also smells like heaven.”

He chuckled against my neck and added, “You smell like heaven.” Then he licked me, and I pulled away.

“Dude, all of your friends are here,” I chastised him, trying to also compose and remind myself that I wanted and needed to make a better impression than last time. “I know how much they mean to you,” I pleaded. “So, it’s really important to me that they like me. I don’t want to fuck it upagain.”

Luke’s expression was one of amusement as he looked down at me, still rubbing up and down the back of my arms, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Honestly, there’s not much you could do to fuck it up,” Amanda spoke up from behind me. I winced and shut my eyes for a second, embarrassed that she overheard my pleas to Luke.

I turned toward her, ready to explain, but she held up a hand and offered me the hot toddy with the other. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously. Before you got here, we were all discussing how much less of a grump he’s been since you came into the picture.”

“Seriously, Amanda?” Luke questioned but in a playful tone.

“Yes, Luke. You were a gradeAgrump most of the damn time.”

I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of my mouth as I took a sip of my hot toddy. If I cured the grump, I’d be okay with that. Or if he wanted to be my grump, that was also fine.

Luke and Amanda moved on from the grump topic and began discussing how to go about dinner. I was content just listening to their rambling and occasionally sipping my hot toddy, especially when Reed jumped in with his own two cents.

“Hey, Luke.” A woman appeared at my side, and I immediately recognized her from the last party I’d been to. Her jet-black hair was as pin straight as it had been the month prior, and she donned a shade of red lipstick similar to mine. Between the hair and the lips and her high bone structure, she was strikingly beautiful.

“I was wondering where you were. Hazel, this is Blakely.” Oh, great. A woman that’s seen my man’s cock.

I cringed at myself internally because technically, he wasn’t my man—or at least not officially—but the thought elicited the same reaction no matter what our relationship status was.

I tried not to second-guess anything, but I immediately began questioning whether she was better in bed than me or had less baggage or knew what the next few years of her life were going to look like.

“Hi,” I said, sticking out my hand, which she took with a less than interested look in my direction.

She dropped my hand in the same second and turned back to Luke. “Could I talk to you?”

“Blake, I don’t—” Amanda began just to be immediately cut off by Blakely’s raised palm in her direction. Amanda rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Fucking hell. You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

Luke’s eyes darted between the two women in obvious discomfort. He crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged. “What’s up?”

“I want to talk in private,” Blakely said with a pointed look in my direction. I raised my eyebrows, surprised by her brazenness, but looked to Luke. If I wanted to make a good impression, the way to do it wasn’t to make enemies of his exes.

He huffed and hung his head. “You have five minutes,” he said. Blakely turned on her heels and exited the living room, heading down the hall and into what I knew was Luke’s bedroom. We’d probably both spent the night there…

Just as the thought crossed my mind, Luke stepped forward and smoothed out the furrow between my brows. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop.”

I laughed. “That’s awfully presumptive of you. How do you know I wasn’t thinking something that you definitely wanted me to think?”

“I can see it written all over your face, Angel. I can read you like one of your books. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said and pressed a lingering kiss to my lips. I swayed slightly when he let me go, both drunk on my extra-strong hot toddy and Lucas Shepherd.

Half an hour later and we were all sitting in the living room crying with laughter at another story of the shit Josh and Reed got up to in college. They were dumb and dumber in most of their college and post-graduate years. Apparently, they’d both figured their shit out at thirty, but their crazy antics proved the perfect party stories.

What made the stories even more hilarious was the fact that they interrupted each other every minute or two, adding additional details that they couldn’t exactly agree on.

“No, he was wearing a gorilla mask and was carrying the stuffed tiger, not the other way around.”

“Actually, I jumped off the bridge and that random chick found me on the shore and then we fucked. Craziest sex of my life.”

Most of them were drunken nights they only vaguely remembered, but others were wildly colorful stories about the times when all their friends—most of whom were sitting in the room around us—had long since gone home.

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