I look into the beautiful blue of his eyes, and whisper, “Luke.”
He slows his movements and plunges his tongue into my mouth. His smile is soft as he rocks his hips against mine, and it’s so achingly perfect that I want to scream. I hiss and beg him with my eyes until he begins to move faster again, until the tempo brings me beyond all reason.
I do scream when the orgasm tears through me, slow at first and then harder. I move against him as rapidly as I can, pushing my hips and thighs and stomach and chest against his smooth skin, needing him to burn with me.
“Luke,” I scream.
“Stella,” he says softly, his eyes clouding with emotion and panic and desire. “Stella. Please.”
But I am utterly lost to the fire. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I feel his body wrench against mine, in long, shuddering waves that roll again and again as he pumps and pulses into me.
We breathe together, perfectly in tune, and his hands graze the side of my face. Eventually, he draws himself off and rolls to the side, but our legs are still wrapped together.
He tangles his fingers in my hair and gives me a soft smile. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I laugh. “It’s a little late for sweet nothings. Aren’t those usually reserved for trying to get girls into bed?”
“Laugh all you want. It doesn’t make that statement any less true. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Now. Always.”
I want to tell him that I love him, with all of the words that I know how to say and some that I don’t, but there’s terror hidden in every line of his face. He doesn’t want to hear me say it again.
I’m afraid of you.
And I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of what I could lose. What he could take from me.
I’m more afraid of what will happen if I don’t try. So, tonight, I’ll give him my body, again and again, until he has everything of me. I’ll give him my love, whether he wants it or not.
As I slide my hands over his stomach, I can feel his desire mounting again. I need to possess him, with my mouth, with my hands, with every part of my body. My intent is unmistakable. He lets out a low groan.
“You really are going to kill me.” Each word is a low purr, and each word makes me smile.
“We can think about that tomorrow,” I whisper, brushing my lips against his ear. “How does that sound?”
I don’t give him the chance to respond. Instead, I slide my mouth lower, and his face contorts in an odd mix of pain and pleasure.
I love him with my body, with my soul.
I just have to hope that it’s enough.
W
hen I rouse myself from the stupor of dreamless sleep, I need a few seconds to adjust to the early afternoon light. I’ve lost time again.
In the best possible way.
I just have to hope that I haven’t lost Luke. Despite his whispered words and the promise of his lips on mine, I know that there’s a very good chance that he will see the world differently without the shelter of darkness.
I stretch my arms across the blankets, searching for the warmth of his body, but he’s not in the little hollow amongst the pillows. I panic. He could be halfway across the world by now, and I wouldn’t put it past him.
The knot in my belly loosens when I feel the burn of his eyes upon me. At least he hasn’t fled. That’s something.
“Stella...”
His voice is a bundle of raw torment, which spells only disaster for me. There are only two options, really—he’s about to release either a brotherly lecture or a torrent of cruel words carefully chosen to hit their target.
My bones still ache from his delicious torture and neither choice is particularly appealing.
I‘m not in the mood for a lecture, but the other option is far worse, and far more likely.
Forget that ever happened.
In my dorm room, I couldn’t see beyond the haze of my own anger to find what he was hiding. I think he was afraid, which he admitted last night. I think he loves me, which he didn’t say last night. In my infinite cowardice, I didn’t ask.
He fights fear with anger, and I don’t think I’m strong enough to withstand another assault, not when he knows exactly where and how to inflict maximum pain. I tread lightly.
“Good morning, Luke.”
I don’t get the courtesy of a greeting. “I think we should...”
I lift my eyes to his and force myself not to cower under his gaze. My small display of bravery throws him off-balance, so much so that he breaks off his speech mid-sentence. For about a millisecond, I consider putting the blame of seduction on my shoulders. I consider running across the room and throwing my arms around him.
He might be able to resist my soul, but he doesn’t seem to have the fortitude to resist my body. I’ll counter his arguments with love. I’ll tell him how I feel, again, and pray that he hears me this time.
“Luke, I...”
“What? You love me?” His smile is mirthless. “I thought you would have grown out of childhood crushes by now.”
Oh, shit. This absolutely cannot be happening again.
I peer closely at him. His smile wavers. Then, I catch the uncertainty in his voice, the infinitesimal pause between his words that only I could have heard.
I don’t think anymore. I know. He’s in love with me. My stupid heart feels like dancing, but I steel myself. I won’t succumb to fragility. There’s a reason he’s been pushing me away, and unless I can uncover what it is, he’ll leave again.
Fight fire with fire. And ice with ice.
“If you’re going to say that this was a mistake, you can go shove it. One bout of lovemaking...” I pause, watching the vein in his neck bulge. “Once could be a mistake. Twice, a regretful lapse in judgment. Three times, not so much. Four times...”
I casually flick the covers from the bed. His eyes sweep over my body, and when he finally finds his voice, it’s low and seductive.
“We could make it five,” he suggests.
God, that’s so tempting. Ice with ice, Stella. Don’t cave. “If you want to forget that this ever happened, then I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“I wasn’t going to say that...”
I refuse to listen to his lies. “Oh, yes, you were.”
He sighs. “You’re right. Yes, I was.”
There’s a gathering storm. I’m no longer afraid of permanent damage, but I will run out of patience with him if he takes too long to come to the same conclusion that I have—it’s against all laws of the universe to continue to fight the inevitable.
I lean back against the pillows and give him a scornful look. “I’ll give you some time to think of a different, but ultimately useless, speech to get me to hate you. I’ll try to save you some time and let you know that I will never, ever be able to hate you. However, you are the smartest, dumbest, most mulish person that I’ve ever met, so I know that you won’t listen to me. So, give it your best shot. Make me hate you and then do a damn good job of apologizing for it, because that’s life. A series of mistakes and apologies, with the good stuff filling in all of the cracks.”
“That’s not what...” His voice is hoarse. “I didn’t...”
I stand up and place my hands over my bare hips. I’m cheating, but as we’ve established, it’s never really been a fair fight. He tears the t-shirt from his body and whips it at me.
“Put the shirt on, Stella.”
“Make me.”
He crosses the room in a single stride and slides it over my head. “See? Not that difficult.”
I’m sorely tempted to rip it back off, but I like the sight of his exposed chest, so I choose not to disrupt the status quo. Luke does it instead.
“It isn’t going to work, Stella,” he says gently.
His words are an echo of what I’ve been telling myself, but I don’t think he means it in the same way that I do. If he had screamed at me, I might have been able to laugh it off, but the unvarnished fondness in his voice is chilling.
He’s not finished talking. I lift my chin and try to remain calm.
“Your so-called love is an illusion created by familiarity and hormones. If Jack...if...if everything had gone exactly as it should have, you would have forgotten about your stupid crush on me a long time ago. We’d probably be laughing about it right now, actually.” There’s a pause, and his gaze shifts to the ground. “You don’t love me, Stella. I don’t love you, either. Get out of here. Make a different life for yourself. Holden’s a good guy, and I’m sure you’ll be very happy.”
I brush a gentle kiss over his lips and touch two fingers to his mouth. I will force him to listen, even if he doesn’t want to hear.
“That’s not going to work, either. I do love you, Luke, and I’m not mistaking it for anything else. You can pretend that it’s not true, and you can spew all of the lies in the world, but I’m not leaving until you cut all of the crap. You will tell me one true thing. If it’s that I mean nothing to you, so be it, but you will look me in the eyes as you say those words.”
“Stop playing games,” he says hoarsely.
“I’m not playing games with you.”
His face twists into a half-smile. “I think you are.”
“I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never played any games with you.” His eyebrows quirk, telling me that he knows my statement is not entirely accurate. I can’t risk anything less than whole truths. I correct myself. “It’s not that I haven’t tried. The little red dress trick when I was eighteen was a game. I wanted you to see me as something other than your kid sister, and I tried to be something that I wasn’t. I never should have done it. I was angry at myself that night, not at you. I’m not that person anymore.”
He sighs. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t angry with you, either. But I don’t see how any of that could possibly matter now.”
I sense his exhaustion, not of the body but of the soul. We can’t keep doing this, over and over in endless cycles. I have to end it, one way or another.
“One true thing, Luke. Just one.”
He gives me a searching look. I don’t hold anything back—I put every ounce of emotion I possess into our connection. If he can’t believe my words, maybe he’ll find another way to the truth.
I watch intently as his expression flickers from doubt to realization and then back to doubt again. As disbelief crosses his features, all of his barriers begin to fall away, one by one. He sinks onto the bed.
I kneel beside him and stare into his deeply troubled face.
“One true thing,” he says finally, stroking my hair softly. “Here is is—I’m afraid of the way I feel about you.”
As it turns out, I need more than one true thing. “How do you feel about me, Luke? I know you want my body, but sex is easy. Cheap. At one point, that’s all I would have asked of you, but too much has happened between us for this to be anything less than vitally important.”
A rueful smile crosses his lips. “I’ll say it if you need me to, Stella bella, even though it won’t make a damn bit of difference for us. I’ve been in love with you since that day on the patio. Before that. I think I’ve been in love with you all my life.”
I thought I knew. I thought I had it all figured out. I knew nothing. I try to control the implosion, the heavy thudding against my ribcage, but it takes a long time before I’m able to still the swirl of emotion.
“That makes all of the difference,” I whisper. “You should have told me.”
The silence grows thick, but I won’t be the one to shatter it.
He crooks his head to the side and studies me for a long moment. “I made Jack a promise, right before he died. One that I never planned on breaking. I promised him that I wouldn’t hurt you, and I keep doing that, don’t I? Over and over. You see, we can’t be together, Stels. We just can’t.”
That’s it, then. Finally. Whole truths and not halves.
I breathe. In theory, I understand the weight of his vow. I can even understand why my brother asked that of him, even though it was incredibly foolish.
Jack never would have let it come to this. Just like my father, he would have huffed and yelled and pouted, but ultimately, he would have understood. Of all of his innumerable talents, loving was the one thing he did better than anyone else in the world, and he would have wanted that for Luke. For me.
I speak, in breathless, halting starts and stops. “We were born to hurt each other. Not just you and me, but everyone. Without the pain, what is there? Nothing. I’m intimately acquainted with most kinds of pain, but the thought of walking out that door and never seeing your face again is more hurt than I can shoulder.”
His face clenches in pain. “It doesn’t have to be like that. We could be friends again.”
“You said it, Luke, not me. We were never meant to be friends. It just wasn’t in the cards.”
I drag my hands through his hair before bending down and giving him a fierce kiss which coaxes away his stiffness and replaces it with unrelenting desire.
I break away and draw a shaky breath. “I’ve done grief, and I’ve done fear, and I’ve even done crazy. I’d like to try being happy, and I don’t think I can do that without you.”
There’s a light in his eyes that looks an awful lot like hope, but Luke is still waiting for an absolution that can never come. I try to give it to him anyway.
“My stupid, idiotic, loving, cheating brother would forgive you for breaking a promise, but he would not forgive you for breaking my heart.”
I watch as he grapples with that, as he fights against his stupid noble principles and his love for Jack. After an eternity, he raises his eyes to mine in surrender. I want to weep, or sing, or dance.
“Okay. Yes.”
“Yes to what?”
All of the remaining ice melts away, until there’s nothing left but a crystalline ocean. “Yes to trying to be happy.”
I want so badly to believe him, but I can’t trust it. Not yet. “Really?”
He strokes his fingers over my palm. Each touch ignites a new nerve ending. “I will warn you. I don’t have all that much experience with happiness, so I might not be much good at it.”
Then, he lowers his dark head to mine and sweeps me into an all-consuming, all-powerful kiss that removes every ounce of doubt and every other brain cell from my mind.
“I love you,” he whispers, tracing the outlines of my features with his eyes. “Make me one promise, though?”