“I think you do,” she said. “Or I mean, you could. If you want to.”
“How?” He glanced at her, his blue-green eyes reflecting the luminescence of a sea at dusk. “I’m a fugitive. I have to hide everything about myself.”
“Not with everyone,” Inga pointed out quietly. “Not with me. In Westerly Cove, you’d be around people like—well, okay, not exactly like you, but people you don’t have to hide your shifter self from.”
He huffed out a sigh. “You’re still trying to convince me I’d be safe there?”
“Not necessarily. I’m not naive enough to think they’ll stop trying to find you. But you could be?—”
“Surrounded by people who would be in danger because of me?”
She reached out a hand and cautiously covered his fingers with her own. “Maybe you could stop worrying so much about other people, and think about what’s good for you for a change.”
For a tentative moment his hand turned and began to take hers in return, then pulled away. “If I’m wearing out my welcome at the cabin, you can tell me. I’ll leave at your word.”
Inga sighed softly. “Luke—you’re welcome here for as long as you want. If you’d like to stay when I go back with Nita, that’s fine with me. But is that whatyouwant? Out here alone, on the edge of the world, just you and your dog? Haven’t you had enough of that?”
Luke started to answer, then let out a sigh that sounded like it was coming from the bottoms of his feet. “I ... haven’t been able to think about what I want. It didn’t matter. There was just the next thing in front of me, for what feels like as long as I can remember. I don’t think I’ve really had choices in a very long time.”
“Well, now you do.” She reached for him again in the growing dusk, but this time he moved first, taking her hand in his.
He ran his fingers lightly across the back of her hand, and she shivered. Then Luke raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
His mouth was soft and deft, with a slight tickle from his couple of days’ worth of beard. He turned her hand over and pressed his lips to her palm. Inga leaned toward him, and he kissed her hand again, then transferred his attention to her mouth.
They kissed and kissed, as dusk softly stole the light and color from the world. Inga was barely aware that at some point they had laid back on the blanket. Luke’s hands were under her sweater, running across her belly, and then he stroked hishand over the top of her jeans and hooked a finger under the fastening.
Inga touched his hand. He stilled instantly. “Not—right now.” Her entire body was thrumming with need. Saying no felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Luke pulled back a little, gazing at her in the starlight. “We won’t if you don’t want to, but is that a nice way of saying no, or?—”
“I don’t want to risk—well—Nita’s situation. And I don’t have birth control with me.” She laughed a little, trying to claw her mind back from rampant lust. “Also, I haven’t had a proper shower in days.”
Luke bent down and nuzzled against her neck. “There are other options, you know.”
He took her hand and drew it to the tented front of his pants. When she kept it there, he moved his own hand to the waistband of her jeans and began to undo it.
“Stop me if you don’t want this,” he murmured.
For answer, she began to run her hand over the hot bulge that filled her palm. Luke worked his hand down inside her underwear. She inhaled a little as his fingers touched her mound.
“Good?” he murmured.
“Good,” she gasped back.
She got her hands on the fastening of his jeans, wanting more,needingmore. Meanwhile he had slid two fingers down, moving slowly with light, maddening brushes against her wetness and her clit.
“Ugh—Luke, I want?—”
“Me?” he murmured, kissing his way up her jaw to her lips.
She finally got his jeans open, and her hand met his firm, silky length. He was uncut, thick enough to fill her hand, gliding wetly as she got a rhythm going.
Meanwhile, his fingertip had found her opening. He caressed it lightly, not quite going inside. She groaned with pleasure and need.
His finger continued to tease her until she gasped and bucked her hips in the grip of a climax that rippled through her entire body. Luke came in almost the same moment, and he twisted to the side so that he splashed the rocks instead of her leg.
Luke settled beside her and she continued to hold him as his erection slowly faded. He kept his hand on her mound through her quivering aftershocks, then withdrew it carefully.
