Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,61
like Luke.
The others had eventually left, but Luke hadn’t. But then again, at the moment, he was professionally attached at the hip to her. Was he with her just because she was his job?
“You okay?”
Hope was jolted out of her thoughts by his low voice, thankful that her face was buried against his shoulder, so he couldn’t see her blush. She was more than okay. It felt like she finally understood sex. Like she’d been eating wax fruit all these years and finally someone had handed her an apple. A real one, juicy and sweet.
Mmmm.
She ran his words around her head, trying to focus. Was she okay?
Why yes, yes she was. She was more than okay.
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling. There wasn’t much to smile about. A good friend had been murdered because he knew something about her past. Geraldo had died because of something in her past. That past was murky, unknown, and was reaching out with clawed fingers to catch her and drag her down.
And yet.
And yet here she was in the arms of the most attractive man she’d ever seen, who’d loved her all night and who was still holding her tightly. She’d come to know his body almost as well as her own. To know the smell of his skin, the way he’d tighten his arms each time she moved. His taste when he kissed her. The way the light caught on the dark blond hairs on his chest and the light hairs along his forearms.
He was incredibly strong. The muscles she was touching were hard as wood, though warm. She felt like a fairy-tale princess behind magic walls, protected from the dragons outside.
Luke pulled away and tucked his chin down to look her in the eyes. She met his gaze calmly.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She said the words on a sigh and rested her cheek against his shoulder.
It was true. Hope was a planner. To do her job, she needed to keep a lot of data in her head and it all had to be structured. Time was one of the elements she kept in her head and it was omnipresent in all her processing. Her life was one eternal timeline. But right now, it felt like she had stepped outside of time. There was no past and no future, just an eternal now, wrapped in a strong man’s arms.
Not to mention the fact that those strong arms seemed to have swept away all the thoughts in her head. Though right now she didn’t need thoughts so much as the man himself.
Wow. That was primitive thinking. One night of really good sex regressed her about ten thousand years, punching her right back into the Stone Age.
But — how on earth could she have known? Have realized what it meant to be held? Her parents had never hugged her, not that she could recall. Her best friends, Felicity, Riley and Emma, hugged her but she hadn’t seen any of them for two years now. What few boyfriends she’d had weren’t big touchers. One had been so awkward he never touched her until he’d lunged at her suddenly, having worked up the courage to do so entirely inside his own head. He’d essentially humped her through their clothes like a German shepherd humping the couch pillow.
Not huggers, any of them.
Oh man, it was so great being held. She didn’t have to do anything. She was draped over Luke bonelessly, touching as much of him with as much of her as possible. They smelled of sex and each other. She could hear his heartbeat against her ear and feel it against her skin. He had one long strong arm around her back, stroking her buttocks and one big hand against the back of her head.
Hope realized that for the very first time in her life she felt safe. There was someone else between her and the world, this world that was sometimes cruel and always cold and indifferent and had lately been trying to take big bites out of her.
Luke wasn’t cruel and he wasn’t cold and indifferent. For now, at least. And what else was there but the now?
“I’m glad you’re okay.” Luke pressed a kiss to the top of her head and let his own head fall back to the pillow. “I, um, I haven’t had a lot of practice lately. That first time, I didn’t know if I’d remember how to do it right.”
A laugh exploded out of her.
“That’s funny?” he asked, voice lazy, ruffling her hair.