Page 1 of Reckless Love

Chapter One

Stephen

Six Years Ago

Ava Tucker is my weakness. Has been for eight years and counting. I’d give her anything, and right now, I’m giving her a fifth orgasm.

Fuck, I love it.

The way she trembles. The way her neck arches as pleasure shoots through her. The way her hands clench in the sheets just before I get her to rocket off the edge of her desire. The way she moans my name with such satisfaction, as though no one has ever made her feel this good before. Her pulse, under the pad of my thumb, is still racing. I’m in so deep, no barrier between us, that every squeeze from her urges me to seek my own release. Her body, her sources of pleasure, are as familiar to me as my own.

“Again?” I rasp against her ear while I keep up a slow, consistent pace, savoring the way she clenches around me.

“No.” She’s breathless. “I can’t.”

“You can. You’re so good at coming for me, baby. I love it. Do you want to? One more?”

She shakes her head, and then I drive into her, seeking the same high I’ve just given her. Instinct takes over, and I can’t help falling into another rhythm that’ll make her body sing.

“Stephen, I said I didn’t… I couldn’t…” She gasps. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”

That’s the other thing about knowing her in this way for so long: My unconscious compulsion to please her is very, very high. I have to consciously stop myself, and I was so lost in my own release that I didn’t worry about hers. And then she’s clenching around me again, my name a curse, while I murmur how fucking perfect she is as I spill into her. Her manicured nails dig into my biceps. A moan that’s part satisfaction and part annoyance comes from the back of her throat as she lifts her hips, forcing me deeper.

“Fuck you,” she slurs as she continues to pulse around me.

“You’re the only woman I know who’d complain about having six orgasms,” I mutter. Then her eyes open, and she glares at me.

“Maybe you should go fuck those other women then,” she says, pushing me off.

“Come on, Ava.” I roll to the side with a chuckle. “When are we going to stop doing this?”

“Doing what?” she asks. She turns away from me while she grabs her clothes from the floor around the bed.

“This stupid bullshit where I piss you off, you go fuck someone else for a while, and then you’re back to me, or sometimes me and somebody else at the same time. But you always come back to me.”

“Maybe I won’t anymore.”

I stare at the stubborn straightness of her spine for a beat, and I consider how far I want to push this. We’ve been off and on since the night she graduated high school, when she turned up on my doorstep, telling me she was legal and off to college and tired of waiting for me to notice she wanted me. I noticed—given what Ava is like, I think the entire male population of Bellerive probably noticed her behavior. There was a difference between noting her beauty and acting on any attraction. Legal or not, I figured Ava Tucker was off limits.

Her mother, Celia Tucker, isn’t someone you cross. I didn’t want to be the favored Tucker family cop who ends up on trial for whatever’s been pinned on me because I dared to touch her youngest daughter. But when I mentioned Ava’s behavior to her mother, Celia merely said that rebelling with me was probably better than whatever other unruly acts Ava could cook up, and so I gave in.

Gave in so hard that I’ll do anything for Ava now—tell every secret, break any rule, let her have me or anyone else she wants. Since that first night, “no” isn’t a word I use with her. She wrecked me, turned me reckless.

Whenever things are rocky between us—and they’re almost always rocky—I just keep thinking that when she’s older, things will change between us, stabilize. We’re good together, and any time I’ve tried to have something with anyone else, Ava’s turned up on my doorstep, ruining whatever else that might have been. And I didn’t used to mind all that much. Sometimes, the toxicity was even fun when it wasn’t infuriating.

But she’s twenty-six now, and I’m thirty-four. At some point, we both have to grow up. Which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot: the life I want, how I want to grow old. Who I want to grow old with.

“I’m getting tired of this dance, Ava,” I say as she stands up to slide on her panties.

“What’s that mean?” She turns to face me with narrowed blue eyes, and then she flicks her long dark hair over her shoulder, hands on her curvy hips.

God help me, I love her fucking attitude. Every time she gets icy and cold, I have this burning desire to drag her back to bed, melt that ice until she’s soaking, just for me. Not exactly a grown-up feeling, but hell, I’m a work in progress too. Never said I was perfect. But that’s what makes us good for each other—we accept all the parts we’ve uncovered.

“We should get married.”

“Get married?” Her eyes widen, and then she lets out a laugh of disbelief. “Stephen, there is no world in which I marry you.”

“Why not?” I ask, and my own defenses rise.