His fingers kept kneading but he also put a different kind of pressure there so that I leaned closer to him. I had to tilt my head back further and, so I didn’t topple over, my hands went to his stomach (which, by the way, was hard as a rock).
He tipped his face to mine and murmured, “After we talk tonight, I’ll give you a rubdown.”
Ho-ly crap.
A rubdown from Lucas Stark. I had barely processed the kiss-and-carry through the living room, I couldn’t even begin to contemplate a rubdown. I felt my ni**les tingle.
“I need cookies,” I told him to move talk away from rubdowns. “Cookies are the only thing that works on stress.”
That and tequila but I wasn’t going to get snockered anywhere near Luke. I lost all inhibitions when I got snockered and that would not be good.
The warmth in his eyes was tinged with amusement. “I’ll also get you cookies.”
“Nutter Butters and Chips Ahoy, not the soft ones, the hard ones,” I ordered, blathering on for some ungodly reason. “And those Pepperidge Farms Milano thingies. And Oreos with double stuff but not dipped in chocolate, because that’s too much of a good thing. And if I have Oreos, I have to have milk. I can’t eat Oreos without milk.”
He was laughing now, softly. I liked the sound and I liked that I could make him laugh. I’d always liked it when I made him laugh.
Boy, was I screwed.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“I think that’ll do it.”
His eyes moved from me to across the room then back to me. “Vance and I got shit to do. Stay here. If you go home or anywhere, go with Lee, Matt, Duke or Tex.”
I knew Duke. He’d worked at Fortnum’s for years and was like Indy’s second father. He was an old Harley guy, long gray braid, gray beard, always wearing a black leather vest and a red bandana wrapped around his forehead. I didn’t know any Tex.
“Tex?”
“Coffee guy,” Luke told me. “You might have one of his coffees, it may soothe the cookie craving.”
“Nothing soothes the cookie craving.”
His face got even closer, “I know something that’ll soothe the cookie craving.”
Eek!
I walked right into that one.
New topic!
“What are you and Vance gonna do?” I asked.
“Hunt down Vincetti and Dexter.”
Ee-yikes!
My already tight muscles turned to steel. “Luke –” I started but he touched his lips to mine to stop me from speaking.
“Gotta go,” he said.
My hands grabbed fistfuls of his t-shirt so he wouldn’t move. “Why are you hunting down Noah?”
Without hesitation, he gave me an answer that made the world tilt under my feet.
“He took a piece of you. I’m gonna find him and get it back.”
Oh my goodness gracious. I LOVE him, Good Ava trilled.