me with his hands, but he curls them into fists at his sides. His voice is tortured, desperate. “Don’t do that.”
My every nerve ending is tingling as I unsnap my jeans and wiggle my hips out of them. It’s hard to speak without my voice trembling, but I want him to see that I have control and I know exactly what I’m doing. “Do what? I’m getting ready for bed.”
Suddenly, his hands fly out from his sides and he grabs my wrists, holding them immobile. “Don’t fuck with me, Penny. I can’t fucking do this now. You said you want to save yourself for the man you marry.”
I’m breathless, my body quaking for him. “Right. I’m married to you.”
He shakes his head, his eyes full of a pained desperation that makes me want him all the more.
“But not for real,” he says with a ragged breath, and my heart drops. “You’re saving yourself for the man you love. Mr. Perfect. And you should.”
I knew it. Knew I’d say something to ruin things. I said too much. If I hadn’t told him about my past, he’d be all over me now, making love to me. A thousand emotions roil in my chest, and I can’t seem to get one out. “What if I never find him?”
He exhales, his nostrils flaring. “You will. Even if you don’t, that’s no reason to settle.”
“You think I’d be settling with you?”
He squares his shoulders and grits out, “I am one hundred and ten percent sure you will be settling if you let me fuck you.”
“Why? How can you think that?”
He sits back, his chest heaving. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. It matters to me, Luke. Haven’t you ever wanted something so bad it made you change your mind about everything you once thought was true?”
He shakes his head slowly, his eyes on the ground. “If I fuck you, it won’t give you what you’re looking for.”
He means that fairy-tale love that I believed in back when I was dating Gerald and naively thought he was it, that it would be me and him for the rest of my life. “Maybe I’m not looking for that anymore.”
“You should be. You deserve that. You deserve someone who appreciates every last little fucking amazing thing about you, Penny,” he says. “If we do this, it’ll just be a fuck. That’s all. That’s all I’m capable of. All that’s possible here. That’s not what you want.”
“Don’t tell me what I want!” I shout at him. “Give me what I need.”
It raises something in his eyes I’ve never seen before. Something hot and almost feral. His hands are still clasped on my wrists. He pushes off the bed, coming to his full height and towering over me. My breasts rise and fall with every breath as he holds my gaze. I’m nervous I might have done something to really hurt him, to make him reject me once and for all, and it eats me raw as I wait for him to make the next move.
In a sudden motion, he drags me aside and throws me down on the bed.
He leans over me and, placing both big hands at my hips, drags my jeans and panties down together in one swift movement, baring me completely. I try to sit up, but before I can, he scoops his hands under my ass and drags me to the edge of the bed, resting each ankle upon his bare shoulders.
And he dives in. Without warning. He plants his mouth so full on my core that I cry out.
“This what you want?” he says, his angry words muffled by my body, his breath hot and hard. No one has ever done this to me before. I’m half-surprised, half-embarrassed . . . but all turned on when his tongue circles my clit, in just the way his fingers did hours before.
But this is that times a thousand. He licks me from bottom to top, not a place unexplored. Embarrassment gives way to a clutching need. The wet heat of his tongue has me twitching with pleasure. I venture a look at him, and he’s gazing at me with a dark, hooded, angry look that only serves to make me hotter. He’s delivering just what I asked for, and damned if he’ll stop until I’m done.
“Oh god!” I cry out, my moan nearly shaking the walls as he flicks his tongue over my most sensitive spot, then dips it down to probe deep inside me. He lifts