hot shower to warm up. She didn’t need to warm up now. No. She was overheating if anything, heat flushing over her skin from head to toe.
It paralysed her, as if someone had put her under a spell. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t talk. All she could do was stare at Luke. If she’d had room in her head for it, she’d be embarrassed, but she didn’t. There was only him, filling her field of vision, his body a magnet for her touch. She had to curl her fingers into the palms of her hands to stop herself from reaching out, because though she couldn’t think straight, she remembered very well what he felt like. Like warm steel. He felt like no other human being she had ever touched. He smelled good, too, of soap with a faint overlay of leather.
He watched her watching him and she couldn’t move, could barely breathe. The air around them felt charged, like something was about to short circuit.
Like her.
Her hands started trembling uncontrollably. Something had taken her body over and she felt completely rudderless. A broken branch tossed about by a raging river.
He reached her in two strides, placed his hand over hers, large and sinewy and almost twice the size of her hand. She stared down at their hands, so different they could have almost belonged to two species. Her hand was small and soft and about the only thing she did with her hands was work the keyboard. His, however, was powerful and tanned, with a few small white scars, and was clearly used for a number of things.
He was a good shot, he said. He could cook. He was an excellent driver. He was probably really good at …
Images blossomed in her head as if she were watching clips from movies. Luke, his hand cupping her shoulder, moving down to cover her breast. Crazily, it was as if she could feel his hand on her skin. Her breast felt heavy, exactly as if he were touching her.
In the movie reel now showing in her head, she was naked on a bed. Sprawled wantonly, legs spread wide, arms out. To her knowledge, she’d never done that except once, at summer camp, when the temperature was 102°. She’d been twelve and hadn’t been thinking of sex but of cooling off. Sex was under the covers, preferably in the dark. Not like this, her entire body an invitation.
To sex. That’s what this was. Her imagination had sandbagged her and run ahead of her, imagining sex with Luke. Because it was going to happen. No doubt about that.
“You okay?” His deep voice penetrated the fog of imaginary sex that had suddenly filled her mind, that would soon turn into the real deal.
Was she okay? The slight trembling had stopped. She thought about her situation. She was on the run. No idea who her parents were. But she somehow had memories of a broken-down trailer park in Sacramento, California when she’d never been to California.
Those were the cons.
On the pro side, she had the handsomest man alive on her side, protecting her and helping her. He was backed up by a highly competent security team in Portland, with the help of the most powerful security company in the world.
There was a luscious spread of fabulous food right under her nose.
She was absolutely certain that equally fabulous sex would be in her future soon.
“Fine,” she answered, smiling up at him. “Let’s eat.”
The food was, as promised, absolutely delicious. As delicious as the woman sitting across the small table from him. He was drowning in pleasure as he put bite after luscious bite in his mouth while smiling at Hope. Who was smiling back at him.
Luke wanted sex. Normally, sex would take precedence over food any day and for a moment he wondered at himself, that he was sitting here stuffing his face when what he wanted to do really badly was pick her up, rush into her room — or his, he wasn’t fussy — strip her and jump her bones.
She was willing. She hadn’t said the words and he’d get the words out of her before taking her to bed, but her eyes let him know sex was going to happen.
So why wasn’t it happening?
“This is so good,” she said, digging into the risotto. “I really needed this.” Color was coming back in her face and her green eyes glowed.
That’s why sex wasn’t happening. Not right this minute, at least. Hope needed this. Needed a