Page 93 of The Moment of Letting Go

His hands move from my hips to my butt. The tip of his tongue traces a path along my bottom lip.

“How are you even real?” His fingers press into my flesh, pulling me closer to his naked lap.

“What do you mean?” I kiss him again.

My legs straddle his lap, his hardness palpable between us, his arms wrapped around my back.

“You’re just unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” he says breathlessly between kisses. “You didn’t freak out on me last night before you left—it made me feel even worse. You didn’t hold a grudge against me about that roach.”

I pull away, grinning into his eyes. “What makes you think I’m not holding a grudge about that?”

He arcs a brow. “Are you?”

“Maybe,” I taunt him. “You could’ve flicked it off me a lot sooner.”

He squeezes his arms around me tightly and buries his face in my throat.

“So what are you gonna do to get me back?” His tongue moves along my collarbone and then his mouth finds my neck.

My chest begins to rise and fall more rapidly, my skin breaking out all over in chills.

“I don’t know yet,” I say with my eyes shut halfway. “But pay-backs are a bitch.”

“Is that right?” His hands squeeze my butt and pull me hard against him. I gasp lightly. “Well, how about this,” he says against my ear. “I can make it up to you and you can promise to drop your little vendetta. I don’t like always having to look over my shoulder.” He sucks on my neck and then my earlobe.

I ache with need.

With my arms draped around his neck, I whisper back, “I don’t know. Maybe. It depends on what you plan to do to make it up to me.”

Suddenly he hoists me off his lap and puts me on my back across his mattress. My eyes grow a little wider, my heart is pounding fervently behind my ribs. I look up at Luke, sitting at my feet, and his hands slide between my thighs, parting my legs before him.

Oh my God …

He just looks at me for a quiet moment, across the landscape of my body. I’m becoming breathless again, just looking at his eyes hooded with passionate, voracious intent. A heat moves through my thighs and travels down into my knees.

His head falls between my legs.

I can’t … I just can’t—

I claw the sheet with both hands as his mouth sends me into sweet oblivion.

TWENTY-FIVE

Sienna

It takes a lot of scrubbing to get the paint off both of us the next morning. And between the cleaning, Luke has his way with me in the shower, too. And then it’s back to scrubbing again. He can’t keep his hands off me. I’d be really disappointed if he could.

“Let me do that,” I tell him as we’re standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror. I take the razor from his fingers and jump onto the counter.

“What if you cut me?” he says, stepping over in between my bare legs hanging over the side of the counter.

“You jump off thousand-foot cliffs and massive buildings, Luke. I doubt my shaving your face is that worrisome.” That was meant as a joke, but once I said it, it didn’t feel so funny to me, after all.

He laughs under his breath.

“Luke,” I say, losing my smile, “why do you still do it? Wait, I mean … I guess the real question is: Why do you risk your life BASE jumping? I guess I sort of get all the other stuff—cliff-diving, surfing in storms, rock climbing; they’re not so … deadly—but I don’t really understand the risks you take with BASE.” When I realize I’m practically talking in half sentences, I stop for a second to gather my thoughts. “What I’m really trying to say is that … it scares me.”

Something unfamiliar flickers in his eyes. Uncertainty? Disappointment? Dread? I can’t tell which, but I get the feeling it’s not something he wanted to hear me say.

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