NINE
CLAIRE WAS SO TIREDSHE could barely keep her eyes open, but they’d finished the first coat on the entire upstairs. Luke worked alongside her for hours, mudding and taping like a pro. She’d read somewhere that he’d gotten his start in construction, but with the tailored suits and scary expensive car, it was easy to forget. He proved it to her tonight. The man knew his way around a trowel.
Claire pulled her truck into the gravel lot beside the construction trailer and turned it off, but she didn’t get out. She glanced in the review mirror at Luke’s car, idling behind her. When they left the flip house, he insisted she go home with him. As hard as he worked for her, she couldn’t say no. That’s what she told herself anyway. Never mind that more than anything, except maybe a shower, she wanted to climb back into his big white bed and wrap herself in his arms.
When she told him she needed to swing by her place to pack, he said no. He’d take care of everything. And he could, she knew he could, but the ease with which he got her to agree to things scared her. With every moment they spent together, it got harder and harder to say no to him about anything. She was afraid that soon she wouldn’t be able to refuse him at all.
He’d agreed to let her leave the truck at the jobsite in case her crew needed something from the toolboxes on the back, and he was waiting for her to get into his car and go with him. She wanted to, God help her she did, but she couldn’t help feeling like she was about to cross some line. One that would make keeping her heart safe almost impossible.
Luke was a good man. He wouldn’t hurt her on purpose. Everything he’d done so far had been to make things easier for her. But she was falling for him already and every time she gave herself to him she fell harder. Before long she didn’t know if she’d be able to get herself back up when he moved on. And he would move on. Men like Luke Masters weren’t for happily ever afters. They were for theoh God fuck yes just like thatmoments.
She drew in a shaky breath, exhaled and opened the door, praying her heart knew the difference.
CLAIRE STOLEGLANCES at Luke as they rode in silence to his building. He had to be tired. He’d worked a full day before staying up half the night to help her on her job. But something about the set of his jaw seemed more pensive than exhausted, and she wondered if he sensed the line, too. Crossing into new, dangerous territory.
He parked the car and met her at her door before she’d had a chance to do more than fumble out of her seat belt. His hand never left the small of her back as he steered her into his private elevator and moments later guided her through the front door and down the hall to his bathroom.
Closing the door behind them, he walked to the shower and pushed buttons on a pad in the wall. Rain cascaded from a pair of shower heads and jets inside the glass enclosure pulsed to life. In seconds the room began to fill with steam.
“Arms up, sweetheart,” Luke said, reaching for the hem of her T-shirt.
Without hesitation, she complied, and he stripped the shirt off over her head. His hands skimmed the sides of her body as he dropped to his knees in front of her and went to work on the laces of her boots. She let her hands drift to his hair, tangling her fingers in the dark waves. He looked up at her, heat and tenderness mixing in his eyes, and she melted, giving in to an emotion she wasn’t ready to give a name.
Her fingers skimmed the sandpaper scruff covering his jaw, and he turned his head to kiss her palm before going back to work on her boots. She steadied herself with her hands on his shoulders as he tugged off her boots and socks. When he popped the button on her jeans, her fingers tightened reflexively on his shoulders, pressing into the strong muscles of his back. He pushed the denim over her hips and down her legs, urging her to step out of the jeans.
With his face barely a breath from the soft swell of her stomach, he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and drew the lace down. He clasped her hips in his strong, warm hands, bracing her while she toed off the scrap of fabric. When he leaned forward to press a soft kiss to the tender dip of skin above her mound, her breath caught in her throat. There was something so intimate about him on his knees in front of her, his forehead resting against her stomach while his lips played over the flesh above her damp curls. For reasons she couldn’t explain, having him rest against her was somehow more intimate than if he’d put his mouth on her sex.
Before she gave into the feelings she was fighting hard against, she tugged on his shoulders, urging him to his feet. While he watched, she unhooked the front clasp on her bra and shimmied out of it.
“Fuck, Claire,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Your turn.” She pulled his T-shirt free from the waist band of his jeans and pushed it up, revealing inch after glorious inch of his hard chest. When she’d bared his chest, he reached down and grabbed the hem from her, peeling the shirt off the rest of the way. She skimmed his chest with her hands, tracing the lines on his muscles with her fingertips. God, he was gorgeous, all coiled strength and lean muscle.
She leaned in to press a kiss to the smooth skin between his pecs, using the tip of her tongue to lick the salt from his skin. Luke’s groan rumbled against her mouth and then his hands clasped her head, dragging her face up for a kiss. He teased her lips with his tongue and she opened for him, drawing him inside. He turned her head, giving himself better access and plundered her mouth. By the time he broke the kiss, she was breathless, her legs so shaky she clung to him for support.
“Get in the shower, Claire,” he said, the command thick in his voice. “Now.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he spun her around, smacked her on the ass and nudged her toward the shower before she could protest. Yelping at the sting from his hand on her bare skin, she made a dash for the water.
Hot water bombarded her from all sides, raining down on her from a pair of wide circular shower heads above and hitting her with the strong spray of a dozen jets on the walls. She tugged the elastic from her hair, tipping her head back to let the heat and pounding work the knots out of her weary muscles. The door opened, and she felt Luke slide in behind her. He gripped her forearms and pulled her back to him so her head rested against his chest and his long thick cock pressed the small of her back.
“If you hadn’t insisted on working yourself to death, we would have time to do this the way I want to.” He murmured the words against her ear, tugging the lobe with his teeth. “But you need to sleep and I need to fuck you and there aren’t enough hours left in the night to do either.” He slid his hands down her arms and caught her fingers, turning her so he could position her hands on the tile wall. Jets of hot water beat over the front of her body. “Don’t move,” he warned.
She heard a click and then smelled the delicious scent of bergamot and something richer, earthier. He ran his soap-slicked hands over her starting with the backs of her hands and working his way down her arms to her sides. When he reached the swell of her hips he circled his hands to the front of her body, sliding up to cup her breasts. His hard cock rode just above the cleft of her butt and she raised on tiptoe, pushing back against the silk covered steel.
“Stay still.” He gave her nipples a quick hard pinch with his soapy fingers, and she gasped as pleasure and pain warred inside her. “I mean it, Claire. I’m looking for an excuse to turn you over my knee. You don’t want to give me one, unless you are very sure.”
She sucked in a breath, biting her lip and struggled to decide if she was thrilled or horrified. There was something delicious about his words, and she had to admit she was curious. What she found even more disturbing was the fact that if he wanted to, she was pretty sure she’d let him. But not tonight. She was much too tired and overwhelmed to try anything that adventurous tonight. She stilled, and he gentled his hands, slicking them over her skin as the water rinsed the soap from her body.
With his hands cupping her breasts he directed her so the spray from one of the jets hit the edge of her nipple, making her gasp as the tender skin pebbled tight. He moved her so the spray hit all around the sensitive peak without directly touching the tip, and her breath came in shallow pants as desire coiled low in her belly. By the time he’d repeated the process with her other breast, she wanted him so much she was fighting to keep from grinding herself against his rock hard cock.
“Feet apart, sweetheart,” he said, nudging her foot with his. She hurried to comply, spreading her legs for him, wanton, needy and aching to have him fill her.
He slid his hand down soft mound of her belly to her sex, slipping his fingers between her delicate folds.
“Jesus, Claire,” he said on a groan. “You are so fucking wet. For me. All for me.” He plunged two fingers inside her, and her muscles tightened around him, needing the fullness, needing the stretch of him filling her tight channel. Pressing his thumb against her clit, he made gentle arcs with the fingers inside her, winding her closer and closer to her climax. Using the slick tip of the index finger on his other hand, he pushed against the bud of her ass, breaching the tight ring of muscles.
She gasped and panted, completely overwhelmed by the sensations going on inside her. Every one of her nerves sprang to life as the water teased the front of her body with pinprick sprays, and his hands worked in tandem to send aching ribbons of need coiling through her. He slid his finger in and out of her tight bud until she was so hungry for him she started to push back to meet his shallow thrusts.
