Page 25 of Love Again

He’s standing behind me with a hand on the back of the chair. “Keller doesn’t believe in regular glasses. Sorry. Here.” He slides the mason jar over. Goose pimples rise on my arms when his shirt brushes my ear. Then Luke kneels and grips the seat of my chair and turns it so I face him.

We are nearly eye level with each other, that’s how much taller he is. I watch him swallow, and then he stares into me, deep into me.

“But now that I’m here, Devon, can’t we talk? Can’t we try to figure this out? We never got a chance to even have a conversation about what happened.”

I take his head in my hands. His stubble rakes my palms. “We did, Luke. We did and I can’t do it again. I was looking for you and you were looking for me, and neither of us should have been in that building.”

What I still can’t bear to say is the truth: we are the reason Max died.

“I know, I know. But what I feel for you is so—you’re my person. You are who I’m supposed to be with. Don’t you feel that too?”

I answer by closing my eyes, and my hands start to drop from his face.

He continues. “I know you do. I can see it in your face.”

Gripping my wrists, he kisses each one along the inside.

His lips are warm and firm. My panties are wet now, drenched with the need for him to be inside me.

The tendons in his shoulders roll when he moves to stand. “We’re married, Devon. I take our vows seriously. I will do everything I can to woo you. And I’m not going to wait around for you to tell me what to do. You can’t treat me the way you do everyone else.”

We married after a month. Too young and way too fast—typical of me. I always take the plunge, as hard and as fast as I can. Often on a dare. His proposal, at the time, seemed like a dare. We never even bought rings.

I took the plunge with Luke. And then Max died.

Luke shifts his weight and takes one of my hands and slides it under his tank top. His abs are hard, defined, and the ridges of his ribs are firm. Then he slides it further up his chest, through the light tangle of hair to the flat, wide muscle of his left pec.

“Do you feel that?”

Now his heart beats hard, strong, and in perfect rhythm under my fingertips, which are cold and damp. I’m so nervous, so scared of my own heart that I don’t recognize myself. I lay my head against his stomach.

“This is yours, Devon. All of it.”

He releases my wrist and pulls me up from the chair for another kiss. I wrap both arms around his waist and slide my hands to his ass and cup each cheek. My mind is as hungry as my body. With my thoughts racing with memories of his weight on me, his mouth on me, my dreams, Max, the fire, I moan into his mouth when he captures mine.

The last person I slept with was my husband.

I take our vows seriously too.

Chapter Eight

Luke

My groin tightens the moment the weight of Devon’s head settles onto my stomach, her hand on my chest, her fingertips exploring. I feel goosebumps rising when I take her arms and pull her up to stand next to me. She smells like almonds.

Devon always smells like almonds. Almonds and milk and vanilla. It’s not a perfume, and it’s not a hair rinse—it’s her.

I have to put all the cards on the table. She needs to know I’ll do everything to not let her go again. I didn’t fight for her the last time, and it nearly cost me my life. Instead, I acted like I didn’t care. And when she left, I didn’t care enough to care about myself.

But feeling her alive and warm and moving in my arms—it’s more than I could have imagined. More than I’ve ever imagined. She’s been absent from my life for so long.

I don’t even dream of Devon. The few times I’ve woken myself on the brink of tears, my throat hot and hurting, I wondered if it was because I was dreaming of her.

Thank God I can’t remember. It would be torture to have her only in my dreams.

She gasps a little as I pull away, and I cup the back of her head and press her forehead to mine. Honestly, I would be happy if we could stand here forever.

“What are we doing?” she whispers.