In Too Deep: Station Seventeen Book 3 Page 23

  “I could take all day to show you how pretty you are. Here.” Luke traced her earlobe with the edge of his tongue before pulling the soft skin past his lips. “Here.” His fingers found the indentation below her throat, right where her collarbones joined above her heart. Quinn dipped her head back, her eyes still on their reflection in the mirror as she arched up in search of his touch.

  God, he couldn’t deny her. “Here.” Reaching up, he cupped her breasts, running his thumbs over the tight, rosy points of her nipples. Her moan twined around his, and the sound made Luke’s cock jerk at the small of her back. The contrast of his darker skin against her cream-colored body, the flush of her nipples that grew deeper with every pass of his fingers, the way her eyes glittered in the mirror—all of it combined like an erotic slideshow.

  And Quinn watched every move. She watched as he dropped his mouth to her ear and whispered all the filthy things he wanted to do to her. She watched as his hands moved downward from her breasts, skimming her waist, then the flare of her hips before reaching the waistband of her pants to lower them.

  His heart hitched when he realized—sweet Jesus—she wasn’t wearing panties beneath the black cotton. Something primal broke free in his chest, moving his fingers on a direct path to the spot between her thighs. But Quinn didn’t seem to mind his impulsiveness. On the contrary, she parted her legs wider, tipping her hips up for more contact.

  “Please,” she whispered, and funny how one sound, one tiny syllable, could wreck him so fucking thoroughly. Wrapping one arm low over her belly, Luke parted her legs with his other hand, flattening his palm over the tidy strip of blond curls leading to the bare, sweet skin of her sex. He brushed his fingers over Quinn’s slick folds only once before his hot, reckless desire to give her what she wanted won out. Luke curled his fingers to cup her pussy, pressing his middle finger inside her body with ease.

  “Ah!” The cry that rushed out of her was more sound than actual word, and his balls pulled up tight at the greedy clench of her inner muscles around his finger.

  “See?” he ground out, hearing the gravel in his voice as he began to work her in slow, sure strokes. “Look how pretty you are. How wet. How pink and perfect.”

  Quinn’s eyes were nearly navy blue in the muted sunlight streaming in past the curtains. Sliding her arms over his, she anchored his hold on her belly and his fingers between her legs, urging him deeper with a push of her hips. Luke retreated only to add another finger to the first, letting his thumb slip up to graze her clit as he fucked her with his fingers. Her nails dug into his forearm, harder with each thrust of his hand, and before he could control anything about his movements, he withdrew from her body and swung her toward the chair.

  “Keep watching.”

  Guiding her down over the cushions, he knelt between her legs, pulling her forward until her ass was on the very edge of the chair. The blush on her face was a complete juxtaposition with the provocative picture of the rest of her, naked and needy and open, and goddamn, Luke had never wanted anything as much as he wanted this woman right now.

  He fit his shoulders between Quinn’s thighs, leaning in to run his tongue over the seam of her pussy in one long glide. He smiled against her body, making sure she saw it in his eyes as he lifted them to meet her stare.

  Luke felt the way she was looking back at him in every part of his body.

  With his pulse flying faster in his veins, he channeled all of his attention to Quinn. The sweet, musky taste of arousal that belonged only to her, the unchecked sounds she made when he explored her with his lips and tongue, all of it combined to form a deep-seated desire in his gut. Pressing her legs farther apart, he licked her in slow circles and faster, firmer flicks, finally closing his lips over the tiny bundle buried deep at the top of her sex.

  “Oh God. Please. Please, please,” Quinn cried, her hips arching off the cushion beneath them.

  Luke pulled back, but only far enough to say, “Watch. Watch how pretty you are when you come.”

  He returned his mouth to her pussy, a spiral of dirty pleasure uncurling at the base of his spine at the way she moaned so openly. Her skin was so soft, so slick with want, that Luke let his fingers play at her clit as he buried his tongue deep inside her for a better taste.

  Quinn made a sound, part pleasure, part need. Her hips shifted, her knees falling wider as the cradle of her body jerked higher against his mouth, her ass lifting up in invitation. A dark, half-forbidden yet highly sexy sensation sparked in Luke’s mind as he realized what she was wordlessly asking for.

  And there was no fucking way he wasn’t going to give it to her.

  Circling the pad of his forefinger over her clit, Luke dropped his mouth even further. Quinn sucked in an audible breath as his opposite hand cupped the curve of her ass, the breath becoming a moan as his pinky finger brushed over the ring of muscle centered low between her legs.

  “Luke.” Her exhale coasted over the bare skin of his shoulder, and damn, she was watching him as intently as ever. “Show me. Make me come.”

  His composure evaporated with those five little words. He stroked the slippery skin at the apex of her thighs while lowering his mouth to trace slow circles over her tight, sweet hole. Quinn’s body tensed, just for a heartbeat, before she began to move with him in obvious pleasure. Luke tested and took, the movement of both his fingers and his tongue growing firm with intention as her cries grew more ragged. She clutched at his shoulders, her hands sliding up to hold him exactly where she wanted him, his tongue at the entrance to her ass and his fingers teasing the rigid knot of her clit. Finally, her thighs began to tremble, and—yes, fucking yes—she came undone with a screaming cry.

  “There. There you are,” Luke murmured, his dick as hard as iron at the sight and smell and taste of her orgasm. “See? So goddamn beautiful.”

  Quinn went lax a minute later, and he shifted back to look at her. With her disheveled hair and her flushed skin and her erratic breaths, she was pretty enough to be painful.

  But then her eyes glinted, and within seconds, she’d pushed forward to tug him to his feet.

  “Quinn. What are you—”

  “Shh.” The borderline sassy command sent an involuntary smile to the edges of his mouth, but the gesture turned into a want-soaked moan when she quickly removed his pants, then his boxers, pausing only long enough to grab a condom from the spot where they’d blessedly stashed a few in her side table drawer the other day. She treated him to a minute’s worth of sheer heaven with her fingers, cleverly rolling the condom onto his cock as she did, and a pulse of surprise rippled over him as she turned to push him into the chair.

  “Now it’s my turn,” Quinn said, straddling his lap and balancing her weight between her shins. The wet heat of her pussy brushed over Luke’s insanely sensitive cock, and okay, yeah, he was going to last about four more nanoseconds if she kept that up.

  “Your turn for what?” He dug his fingers into the armrests for focus. But then Quinn leaned forward, notching the crown of his cock just far enough inside her pussy to make him forget his fucking name.

  “To let you watch.” Her hips lowered another beautiful, excruciating inch. “Show me what you need, Luke.”

  He levered up to fill her in one swift push. “I need you.” He gripped her ass, lifting her over his dick only so he could seat himself to the hilt again.

  “Just you.”

  Quinn’s eyes blazed, her lips parted in surprise and desire. But Luke’s thoughts were hazy, the carnal part of his brain too wrapped up in the pressure of the sweet spot where his cock was buried to process anything else. Keeping his hands in place, he guided her into a steady, provocative rhythm. She answered easily, spreading her fingers wide over the arms of the chair, leaning back just enough to give Luke an unimpeded view of where they were joined. The sight of his cock sliding all the way home, the eager sighs that turned into moans, the pure pleasure on her face, all made his need intensify. He thrust into her over and over, speeding his movemen
ts to the beat of her cries, slipping one hand between them to stroke her clit as he watched her fuck him.

  “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Come for me, baby. That’s what I need.”

  Luke thrust deep, filling her pussy until no space at all remained between them. Holding Quinn in place, he let her roll her hips, grinding against him until his cock hit that hidden spot inside of her. Curling her arms around his shoulders, she pumped her hips against his in a hard, steady motion, taking what she wanted and giving him what he craved all at the same time. Luke’s climax began as hers ended, the squeeze of her inner muscles triggering a chain reaction he had no hope of controlling. His orgasm rushed up from the base of his spine, stealing his breath and his ability to move as he held her close from shoulders to chest to hips. Vaguely, he was aware of calling Quinn’s name, of her body tightening in another burst of release, but those things seemed small in comparison to the one feeling taking over his chest and his mind.

  Even though it was neither safe nor smart in any way, Luke wanted to let her in and never let go.

  22

  Quinn lay tangled in her bed sheets, watching the sun give way to shadows on her bedroom floor. After their mind-blowing session in her living room chair, Luke had led her in here, letting her pause just long enough to throw on a tank top and a pair of boy shorts before pulling her beneath the covers and holding her close. She’d dozed for a little while—this morning’s fear-laced adrenaline rush might have been strong, but it had also paled temporarily in the face of both the preternaturally amazing sex she and Luke had shared and the comfort of his closeness afterward.

  Quinn’s fear hadn’t remained at bay for long, though. Reality crept back in with the early evening shadows, turning her nerves ragged and reminding her that not even great sex could distract her forever.

  Are you sure great sex is all it was?

  Her heartbeat sped beneath the light gray cotton of her tank top, so quickly that if Luke were awake, he’d surely have felt it. Okay, so what they’d shared this afternoon had felt like more than sex, like maybe they’d been connected on a different level than before. The emotion in Luke’s eyes had been obvious, even though his words had been wicked and his actions even more so. There had been no mistaking the truth in his words.

  I need you. Just you.

  “You know, if your heart rate goes any higher, I might be forced to do an exam.”

  Even though Luke’s voice was quiet, Quinn jumped all the same. “Maybe my heart is beating fast because you just scared the shit out of me,” she said, but of course, he was too smart to let such a lame answer squeak by.

  “Or maybe you’ve got something on your mind that you need to talk about.” He shifted from beneath the covers, sitting up to look at her, and damn it. Damn it! How could he see so far into her with one little stare?

  “I’m worried that Ice is going to hurt someone I care about,” Quinn said, because Luke wasn’t going to let her off the hook until she did. “But I don’t need to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ll feel a whole lot better once I can just get back to work like normal.”

  Unease built in her stomach, forming a hot, heavy ball. The longer they sat there in silence, the more tempted she was to fork over the truth, to admit that she wasn’t just worried but terrified, and that she didn’t know how to make the feeling go away.

  Luke’s eyes remained steady even though his voice was soft enough to take another chunk out of her resolve. “What you’re feeling right now isn’t your normal. You’re trying to drown yourself in taking care of other people so you don’t focus on the fact that who you really need to be taking care of is you.”

  Her heart slammed with how right he was, how much she wanted to tell him so, yet her defenses sank in with teeth and hooks. “Oh, really? And how do you know that?”

  “Because I do the exact same thing, Quinn. I do it every. Single. Day.”

  His undiluted honesty hit her like a wrecking ball, and Quinn had no choice. She pushed up from the bed, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

  “I’m just so scared,” she said, her words as rickety as an old staircase. “I thought by now I’d be able to shake it. For a while, I did. But then I saw Ice today, and it was like nothing had changed at all, and…God, I just don’t know how to make this fear stop. Every time I think I’m okay, it comes back like a boomerang. I don’t know how to make it go away.”

  Luke’s arms tightened around her, his hands flattening over her shoulder blades, reminding her how to breathe. “I don’t either,” he admitted.

  “You don’t?” she asked. His honesty took her by surprise, but rather than frustrating her—or worse, making her more frightened—the simple admission allowed her the chance to breathe.

  “I don’t.” His fingers pressed into place. There. Breathe. “I can’t pretend to have all the answers, no matter how badly I want to. But I can promise I’ll be here to help you find them.”

  The truth of it grounded her more than any nicety or pat “there there”-style answer, and she pulled back to look at him. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Because the week-old memory of being threatened at gunpoint still scares you? God.” His eyes widened. “Of course not.”

  When he said it that way, her fear seemed a lot more logical than it felt. Still… “It’s just that you’re handling all of this so much better than I am. To be honest, I’m a little jealous.”

  “You shouldn’t be. Believe me.” Luke blew out a breath. A flare of emotion moved over his face, a corresponding pang of shock moving through her when he didn’t blank it or cover it up. “You know a minute ago, when I said I bury myself in taking care of other people so I won’t have to look too hard at myself?”

  Quinn turned toward him, her knees brushing over his bare legs beneath the bed sheets. “Yes,” she said. This was the point at which Luke usually clammed up or re-channeled the conversation.

  Only this time, he didn’t.

  “I wasn’t exaggerating. My mother was…killed in an accident when I was fourteen.” The words were rusty, as if they hadn’t been spoken in ages, and they stunned Quinn into momentary silence. “A gas main explosion destroyed the real estate office where she worked. No one inside the building survived.”

  Quinn’s heart wrenched, and even though she knew from her own personal experience that no words existed to erase the ache, she said, “Oh, Luke. I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded. “We were totally blindsided. Hayley was just shy of her seventh birthday, and I was in middle school. One minute, we were a normal family, going to work and school and having dinner together every night, and the next…everything was wrong.”

  Tears burned behind her eyes. As much as she’d hated it, she’d had time to adjust to the thought of losing her father, and she’d been too young when her mother had died to really understand the loss. But this? God, no wonder Luke didn’t talk about it.

  Except now, he was. “My grandmother, Momma Billie, came up from Asheville. She was devastated, too—my mother was her only child, and my grandfather died before I was born. But after the accident, it was my father who was completely non-functional.”

  “Your father?” Quinn’s cheeks blazed with the heat of her graceless blurt, and she bit her lip hard in penance. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I assumed he wasn’t in the picture since you didn’t mention him, but I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, you’re right,” Luke said, his mouth set in a hard line and his body rigid beside hers in the bed. “He’s not in the picture. He hasn’t been since the day my mother died.”

  After a minute of silence, Quinn gave in to her confusion. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “My father spent two days locked in his room after the accident. He refused to see me or Hayley, or anyone. Then, the night before the funeral, he walked out of the house. He said…” Luke paused for a deep draw of breath, the look on his face making the hairs on the back of Quinn’s
neck prickle even though she couldn’t pinpoint why. “He said he needed some air. So he walked to the park where he and my mother used to take me and Hayley all the time when we were little. Then he sat down under an old weeping willow tree and shot himself in the head.”

  For an odd clip of a second, the combination of words was so strange, their meaning so utterly foreign, that Quinn was certain she’d misunderstood.

  And then she realized she hadn’t.

  Oh God. Oh God. “Luke,” she whispered, her heart bottoming out in her belly. But it was as if, now that he’d kicked the conversation into motion, he couldn’t stop it, and he kept going, the words pouring out.

  “Some nearby neighbors heard the gunshot and called the police, but he’d planned it well. The wound was instantly fatal. We buried them together, then Momma Billie moved to Remington to raise me and Hayley. I found out later that he’d left a note asking her to look after us. But that was all it said.”

  “I don’t…” Quinn’s throat closed, so she swallowed hard and said the only true thing she could think of. “I don’t know what to say. That must have been really awful for all of you.”

  Luke made a sound that would have been a laugh, except there was no happiness in it. “It was surreal. Hayley was too young to understand a lot of what had happened. She kept asking where our mom was, and when our dad would be coming home.”

  God, Quinn could relate. Every time her phone rang in that first year after her father died, she’d had an irrational pang of hope that it was him before remembering he couldn’t possibly be calling.

  “Anyway,” Luke continued. “After two months, Momma Billie decided to sell the house. I think she knew it would be too hard for any of us to live there. So we moved to Mission Park.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad decision,” Quinn ventured, and he nodded.

  “It helped Hayley, and even though she never said so, I think it helped Momma Billie, too.”