Merry Ever After (Under the Mistletoe collection)

Chapter Five Evie

Chapter Five

Evie

L uke holds the baby all through dinner.

He eats with one hand and cradles a sleepy Sonny against his shoulder with the other, and I’m starting to wonder if this man is even real. I’m sitting here at the table, telling him about my childhood travels with my mother and some of the funniest customer interactions I’ve had downstairs, but mentally I’m still standing at the window, looking down at the bike with the big red bow and the baby seat.

I’ve never received such a beautiful gift.

It checks so many boxes that I hadn’t thought to check myself. The bike gives me freedom, gives me options for traveling places. Sonny will get fresh air and sunshine and core memories on the back of that bike. It looks expensive, too. Brand new. Shiny. Gears on the handlebars. I shouldn’t accept the bike, but ...

I think maybe I want to be able to go see Luke more easily.

Just for a booty call, obviously, but still. Beats walking.

There’s a little voice in the back of my head calling me a liar for writing him off as a casual lover, but I’m ignoring it. Staunchly. I made a promise to myself and Sonny to protect us from temporary interlopers like his father. Like my father. I can’t be bought with a bicycle. I’m not going to cave thanks to his big-boy mystique.

Why am I so turned on watching him eat his fourth grilled cheese?

There’s something about the grit of his body, the deep tan, the workingman’s muscles, those watchful brown eyes. His sincerity when he talks about his family or the farm. Or anything, really. The way his hand makes my soupspoon look like it belongs to a children’s Playskool tea party set. There’s just something about him, period.

“Baby’s asleep,” Luke rumbles quietly. “You want to lay him down?”

I nod and stand, alarmed to feel my legs are a bit like jelly. “We share a room,” I say needlessly, waving him toward the single bedroom in the apartment. “When he gets bigger, I’ll have to figure something out.”

Luke hums. “I’m sure you will.”

“I’m glad one of us is.” I indicate the crib in the corner of the room, and Luke passes by me, his gaze sweeping the space and taking everything in: The half-finished blouse pinned to a headless mannequin beside my thrifted dresser. The jade-green peel-and-stick wallpaper. My floral bedspread. The silk robe hanging from a hook on my closet. The baby-changing table stocked with diapers, wipes, and clean onesies. “I try to put away half the money I make from selling my designs into a house fund. We’ll see. I’d love for him to have a yard. Space to run around.”

“I’ve got plenty of that. Space.” He straightens up from laying Sonny down in the crib. Looks at me. “Anytime you want to use it, sweetheart.”

That jelly feeling in my legs is spreading like wildfire. I’ve never been jelly for anyone.

I don’t know if I like it yet.

“What exactly are you hoping for here?” I whisper as he comes closer. “With me?”

“I’m hoping for you.” His big hands slide around my hips and squeeze. “Whatever that looks like. However much time it takes.”

Oh God, my suicidal heart is pulsing in an entirely new way. Big, almost painful booms. “You know that saying If something is too good to be true, it probably is ?”

“Yeah.”

My head tilts back to keep eye contact. “That’s what this feels like.”

He’s visibly confused. “ I’m ... too good to be true? Me?”

“You bought me a bike , Luke. You’re good with my son ...”

“You made me jeans that fit. You apologized to my chickens for making them get out of your way.” The last thing I expect is for him to physically pick me up, but that’s what happens. In fact, I’m tossed up into his arms like pizza dough and trapped against his burly chest as he walks us slowly back out into the living room, using a hip to close the bedroom door. “You’re brave and sentimental and a little heartbroken for a few different reasons. You’ve got a lot of pride. Talent. You’re breathtaking, Evie. Gorgeous. If anyone is too good to be true here, it’s you.”

I’m squirming in his arms, no idea what to do with the overflow of compliments. Or how they make me feel like I’m standing in the sun after a cold winter. I’m not hiding my reason very well, either, so neither one of us takes me seriously when I say, “Maybe you’re just saying all that because you want to sleep with me.”

“I can tell the truth and still want to fuck you.”

“Wow. ‘Get you a man who does both,’ right?”

“You don’t have to. I’m right here.”

He sets me down on my feet in front of the couch, hands flexing at his sides, obviously waiting for me to give him the green light. “You know,” I say, sprinkling some seduction into my voice, “you get a little more confident every time I see you.” He allows me to reverse our positions and push him down onto the couch. “What’s that about?”

“I don’t know.” His chest puffs up and down. “Maybe it’s the way you look at me.”

I kneel in front of him, settling my hands on his knees and slowly, slowly letting my palms travel toward the juncture of his thighs. The closer I get to his mounting erection, the faster he breathes, his fingers digging into the couch cushions, lust bracketing his mouth. “How do I look at you?” My hands reach the growing bulge between his legs and scrub over it lightly—up, back, up and back—while he curses gutturally, making him stiff as possible before I unzip his jeans. “Like I want to do this?” I lean down and kiss the ridge trapped in his gray underwear before peeling the waistband down, exhaling in a rush at the sight of him, long and thick and wrapped in veins. “Oh, my sweet Lord.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same exact thing,” he groans, his head falling back, his arms stretching out along the back of the couch. “It ain’t built for sucking, sweetheart, I know. Just use your hands and lick the head for a while if you can. If you don’t mind.”

I have no idea what to address first: how politely he’s requesting a (sort of?) blow job or the other part. “Not built for sucking?” He shakes his head adamantly, as if to drive that point home. A point I’m suddenly determined to show him is false. Placing my lips on the crown of his erection, I speak right against it so my lips stroke him with every word. “I think we need to disprove that theory.”

He moans.

I haven’t even done anything yet and he’s moaning, fingers buried in the couch cushions, his stomach heaving up and down. This man has not been given the pleasure he deserves—and I’m going to get a lot of satisfaction out of being the first.

Bringing him fully out of his briefs, I gather my hair in a ponytail and make brief eye contact, wordlessly asking him to hold it. He does. In an unsteady hand. And all of him turns unsteady as soon as I suck him into my mouth, stretching my lips to their full capabilities, using both hands to masturbate him, twisting gently on the upstroke, taking as much of him into my mouth as I can handle, spitting on him to help lubricate my path.

“Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus,” he chants when I give him an extra-rough suck, followed by quick, continuous strokes. “Oh Jesus, please.”

“I think you were built for sucking,” I murmur, then rake my teeth up and down the side of his straining sex, flicker my tongue against the head. “Say it, Luke.”

“I was made for sucking.” His fist gets firmer in my hair, and my hormones sing happily. “It was made for Evie to suck on.”

I rub the tip of my tongue in his slit, and come appears like liquid pearls, streaking down the side of his thickness, where I catch the droplets with my stroking hands, using them to make him even more slippery, hands moving faster, making his breath hitch along with his hips, his giant body growing restless on the couch.

“That’s all I can handle, Evie. Baby, time to quit.”

I pout at him and his eyes glaze over.

“I’m warning you,” he growls.

I’ve never considered myself a tease, but going forward, I can definitely see myself becoming one if teasing makes his thick thighs shake, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a pained grimace, his fist pounding on the back of the couch. My goodness, Luke is hot. He was hot before, but his appeal is tenfold when he’s worked up. And I’m so distracted by the flex of his thigh muscles and his raspy breathing that I forget he warned me.

I’m flat on my back on the living room rug before I’ve had my fill and am still whining about it when Luke yanks off my panties and drops onto his belly, pressing my legs open and grinding his open mouth down on my sex, groaning deeply enough to send a vibration along the entire length of my body. But oh shit, oh shit, it vibrates for an entirely different reason when he rubs his face side to side to part my flesh and begins lapping at my clit like its fruit from the tree of life, his calloused hands reverent on my knees, massaging, stroking, wet sounds, grunts and gasps, filling the living room.

“I want you inside me.”

“It ain’t ready yet.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

I attempt to sit up, falsely believing I can pull this huge man anywhere, let alone on top of me, but his heavy forearm straps across my belly, keeping me pinned. “I want you screaming for more, not less, sweetheart.” We make eye contact over the length of my writhing body, and when he’s satisfied that I’m not going to sit up again, he slides his forearm off my belly, bringing that hand between my legs, watching me with sweat on his brow while he pushes two fingers inside my soaked entrance, keeping them shallow, drawing them in and out five, six times, before biting down on his lower lip and pumping them deep, jiggling them as if trying to loosen me up, prepare me. “How the hell am I going to stop touching you long enough to get on a condom?”

“You don’t need one,” I say on a hot shudder. “I’m on the pill. I was just seen by the doctor, too ...”

He looks at me like I’ve just granted him entrance to the pearly gates. “I can have you without one?”

“Yes.” I’m suddenly so positive this man is going to blow my mind, I let out a sob. “Please.”

He spits on me. Twice.

I love it.

“‘Please’ fuck you?”

“ Yes. ”

His low rumble of anticipation fills my ears as he sits back and kneels long enough to strip his shirt off over his head and throw it onto the ground, the glorious breadth and musculature and power of him on full display, not to mention the shaft he’s choking in his fist. And he falls on top of me, catching himself on his left elbow before his full weight flattens me, his right hand fitting his flesh to mine, poising himself to thrust, an earthquake of need traveling through him, through me.

“What’s this little dress called?” He leans down and bites the neckline, turning his head left to right until it starts to rip. “Get the straps down and show me them tits.”

“Yes, sir,” I whimper without thinking, almost delirious, fully under this man’s spell, which is not really a spell at all, it’s just authenticity. He’s a man who wants what he wants—badly—and that’s me. When I’m thoroughly enjoying every action, every word out of his mouth, who am I to slow us down? “It’s a slip,” I say unsteadily, drawing the straps down my arms and baring my breasts. “A slip.”

He stares down, gulping. “You look beautiful in or out of it. You’d be beautiful wearing anything.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, kind of shaken. I slide my fingers into his hair, my nails abrading his scalp, and massage his hips with my inner thighs. And he loves that, loves the skin-to-skin contact, my touch, the friction. Loves it as much as I do.

“God, Evie, I’m ashamed of how hard I want to fuck something so pretty, but I need you too much,” he breathes unevenly into my neck, his right hand moving, as if on its own, shaking, pinning my knee to the floor, hard, his length beginning to press home inside me, causing a delicious stretching sensation, the slowly realized state of being full. So full that I can barely stand the pleasure/pain. “Been wanting between these legs since I saw you.”

“I’ve been wanting you here, too. So bad,” I gasp. My eyes start to water and he’s only halfway inside me. There’s an instinct to demand we slow down, let me get used to him, but there’s an even louder one to feel him fully now , a promise of the most intense pleasure of my life on the other side—and I trust it. I trust him. I trust what I feel between us. “I’ve wanted you.”

“You have?” Luke pants, pausing his forward press inside me, lifting his head to look at me with brown ones that are glazed with need. A trace of vulnerability among the sea of hunger.

Unbelievable that this impressive man needs reassurance, but I’m all too prepared to give it to him. Drawing him into a groaning kiss, I gently rake my nails down his back and sink them into the flesh of his butt, contracting my inner walls until he grits his teeth and shudders. “Don’t you know how hot you are?” I lean up and snare his earlobe with my teeth, lifting my hips and squeezing. “Nothing has ever tasted better than your kiss.” My voice falls to a whisper. “Except maybe your cock.”

“ Son of a bitch, Evie. ”

“Give me all of it.”

“Oh fuuuuuck ,” he heaves, plowing his hips forward on a harsh grunt, making me scream into my closed mouth, my nails definitely drawing blood on his back ... but after a second, I realize I was right. The pleasure is a lot, but it’s magnificent. It’s a full claiming. It’s pushing all the boundaries I didn’t know needed pushing, and I want more. More. I’m yanking on his hips for it, begging with gibberish I somehow know he’ll understand. “Evie.”

“Move. Move, please.”

“Do I feel good this deep?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Right before my eyes, his expression transforms from astonishment to unimaginable lust, relief, gratitude, and he begins to buck his hips, his testicles smacking loudly off my backside, the floorboards groaning underneath me, his forearm snaking beneath my lower back to hold me steady while he fucks me in a desperate frenzy, his lower body brutal in its strength and perfect in its honesty, the depth of his need exposed. “Come on, then, woman, and take some dick,” he grits out. “Waltz into my town and make me hard, leaning over the counter of the shop to show me your pretty, round tits. I saw ’em, baby. Now they’re mine.”

“They’re yours. Yes. ”

Damn it, oh damn it , I’m so horny it almost feels wrong. I’m opening my thighs in a way that’s nearly lewd, arching my back so he can watch my breasts bounce in time to his anguished thrusts. Yes, anguished. He’s in pain, but the only way to solve it is to bang me on the living room floor, and that erotic truth is a rush. It’s a wild rush, being needed like that, so I whimper ridiculous things into the dark I’d never say in the light. Things that sound amazing right now but I’ll blush over in the morning. I tell him he’s Daddy and my pussy needs his come, and I’ve never had it so deep, so good in my life, which is 100 percent true. So achingly true that my orgasm is like a sharp slap to my senses, a fresh gasp of air on another planet. It arrives with a vengeance, rippling my flesh and unearthing incoherent screams from deep inside me, all while Luke labors on top of me, his erection even fuller than before, his control gone.

Good.

“Didn’t mean to take you on the floor,” he slurs.

“That’s okay,” I sob, being pummeled by my release. “It’s okay.”

“Maybe that’s what you get for having pussy this motherfucking sweet, huh?” He drives deep, hard, holding, his big hand reaching down to slap my backside, once, twice, only intensifying my peak. “I’ll work my ass off for this tight thing. I’d sweat all day under ten suns for one little hit. Taking me so fucking deep , baby. Fuck. All the way to my balls. Good girl. ”

I’m done.

The wave crests one more time and I twist beneath him, tires screeching in my head, grinding, grinding, grinding out the last of the pleasure, rife with relief and wonder.

On the other side of my orgasm, I’m drained and euphoric, my vision blurry, my heart and mind determined to feel the proof of his pleasure, too. I want it now. I need it so bad. My knees are open and I’m holding on for dear life, rejoicing in the brutality of how he fucks me against the soft carpet, grunting like an animal into my neck, his sweat mingling with mine, his harshening breaths telling me it’s almost time. Almost time to feel that blast of heat ... and when it happens, when he goes off like a bomb inside me, I wrap my thighs around his hips as tightly as possible, kissing the moans off his mouth, liquid heat gathering inside me, fulfilling me. Fulfilling him.

“Anytime you want it, Luke,” I gasp into his ear, squeezing . “Anytime.”

“How about for the rest of my fucking life, Evie?” he says, sealing his mouth over mine, kissing me roughly during those final dizzying thrusts. “How about that?”

He drops down on top of me, his full weight pinning me for two, three seconds while he struggles to fill his lungs, but he becomes self-aware all too quickly, rolling off me onto his back, though he twines our fingers together immediately, as if he dreads severing the connection we just created—and his behavior is what brings the moment screaming into focus.

How about for the rest of my fucking life, Evie?

I’ve lost control of how fast this relationship is moving. So much so that it feels like a relationship already. What I thought would be a mutual swap of pleasure turned out to be ... more. The way he took me was more of a vow, a possession, than anything that belongs in a friends with benefits situation.

He put my son to sleep.

I already feel ... connected to Luke in some way. It snuck right up on me.

“Evie.”

“Yes?”

I look over to find him studying me, scrutinizing my face ... and when his mouth sets itself in a resigned line, I know he’s reading my mind word for word. Which is scary in itself.

Luke fastens his jeans, then rolls onto his side and kisses my shoulder, reaching down to raise the straps of my slip and gently cover my sex with the hem of the garment. He pulls me close and nuzzles his forehead with mine, but he stops short of kissing me, something I notice way too much, probably because I’m craving the texture of his lips, the sandpaper scratch of his evening stubble.

“Evie ...” His breath is stilted. “I’ll never recover from what you just gave me.”

“Luke . . .”

“I reckon I have to wait for you to come to me now,” he says slowly, as if he’s only realizing this now. Adapting to me as we go. This man. “I’d rather die than scare you or push you for more than you’re ready to give. But I’ve made my position clear. If you want to be mine, if you want me to be yours, you know where to find me.”