I don’t know what I was expecting; certainly, I wasn’t expecting his skin to be this warm and responsive. Maybe an irrational part of me thought he would be made of granite.
But he’s so real, so kind, and so inviting, I want to touch, squeeze, and nibble every inch of his tanned body.
“What?” he asks.
He’s caught me smirking. I might as well fess up. “Just wondering if every bit of you is tanned.”
Luke laughs and the sound sends ripples down my back.
“I was a pale, pasty farm dude from Indiana. We don’t take our peckers out into the sunshine unless we’re masochists.”
I have to laugh and nearly blurt out a marriage proposal. I love a man who can make me laugh.
“I love your imagery. Naked farm hands, free willies everywhere,” I say.
We laugh and joke some more, which makes me more reluctant to go to work, even more so than the kissing and the touching and the half-naked muscled man offering himself to me.
“I should really go to work,” I say, biting my lip.
“And I should really tell you the truth. I quit my job at Maid For You when I saw your review.”
Chapter Eleven
Luke
Stella’s confused expression remains while she waits for me to answer her question. It’s a valid one: why would I quit my job after one day?
Well, there’s nothing left for me to do now except tell her the gods’ honest truth. I’m already shirtless; I may as well go completely bare, so to speak.
“I wanted to come back here, to you, and finish the job.”
“Oh my,” she breathes. “You quit your job because you wanted to finish my house?”
Here goes. This is it. “And because I can’t stop thinking about you. I knew if I stayed with that job, I’d be assigned to come back, based on your review, maybe every week or two weeks. And that’s not good enough for me.”
Stella nods. “My house is that bad, is it?”
I can’t take how the distance between us seems to be growing with every poorly thought-out thing I say. I step toward her, and she doesn’t step back. Instead she looks up at me again, her eyes glancing from my eyes, to my mouth, to my eyes again. I cup her face again and, oh god, it’s just as surprisingly soft and smooth and ready to be kissed as it felt a moment ago. “Stella. I mean I don’t want to be away from you for a single minute.”
“Oh,” she replies. “But don’t you need to be looking for audit—”
I shush her with my lips, and my tongue tries again to have a taste. Her body relaxes against mine, her soft hands gliding over my skin, exploring my arms, my sides, my abs, lighting little sparks of desire in their path.
Stella’s lips open to my teasing tongue. I push inside her welcoming mouth, and we both exhale noisy moans of pleasure at the rightness of this.
So much right about this.
Her lush mouth, her meadowy scent, and her soft sighs of pleasure flood me with both relief and excitement—relief because she doesn’t think I’m a crazy stalker, and excitement because, well, look at her. I dare any man to spend five minutes talking to her and walk away willingly.
God, what’s happening to me? Just the thought of another man spending time with Stella pokes awake the grumpy alpha bear inside me.
Yes, I say to the beast, you and I know this is more than just a make-out sesh. But let’s not scare her away just yet.
As Stella’s hands blaze a heated trail down my chest, the pads of her thumbs graze my nipples, sending delicious shock waves through my body. My already-hard cock jerks. The beast is wide awake now, and I can’t hold back the growl that rises in my chest. I feel her lips curve into a mischievous smile.
“You gotta go, don’t you?” I say, backing away from her lips, even though I don’t want to.
“Convince me not to go,” she whispers, and I’m already tracing kisses down her neck before she finishes the sentence.
“I want to,” I say. “But I really can’t do my job if you’re here. It’s, like, the first rule of housekeeping.”
“Well, if those are the rules, you must follow.”
My mouth finds its way to the lapels of her jacket and I tug them to the side to reach her collarbones, where I nibble, kiss and suck my way across, from one side to the other, pushing aside the fabric of her silk blouse underneath. My hands manage to remove her jacket so I stop what I’m doing and step away to drape it gently over the back of a kitchen chair before returning to sample the petal-soft skin of her bare arms. I lift one of her arms to my lips, kissing the tender spot inside her elbow, inhaling her delicate outdoorsy perfume.
“This doesn’t feel like you’re letting me leave,” she teases, her delicate fingers exploring my torso, driving me mad.
“You’re free to go. Tell me to stop and I’ll stop,” I reply.
Stella doesn’t tell me to stop, but she says something that makes me stop what I’m doing anyway.
“I suppose I can fit in a quickie before work.”
I pull myself up but still hold on to her arm, warming her skin with my hand as I examine her face. She’s short of breath; her lips swollen from our kissing. I could take her now on the kitchen counter if she wants me to. She would let me. She wants it as badly as I do.
But this isn’t right. This isn’t how I want our first time to be.
I want there to be no barriers, no time limit, no deadlines.
“Stella,” I say, drawing her in close and caressing her midsection with one hand and holding her face with the other. “When the time comes, it’s gonna be slow. We’re not gonna be on a schedule.”
Stella narrows her eyes at me. “You can’t possibly send me to work like this…all heated up and ready to go.”
Now it’s my turn to smile mischievously. “I have no intention of sending you to work on high heat. But I will give you a preview of what we could get up to later, if you want.”
When my hand cups her breast over the silk of her shell top she bites her lip and closes her eyes. I devour her moan with my mouth while my fingers draw out her nipple into a taut peak.
With my other hand I lift her skirt and plunge my hand between her thighs, quickly finding her heat. With me cupping and stroking her pussy, she lets out a groan of pleasure and presses herself into my hand.
“Luke,” she whispers.
“Is this what you want?” I ask her, pulling her panties aside and finding that welcoming, warm place I’ve been dreaming about since I first laid eyes on her. My fingers part her heated, wet folds and explore the center of her. The part of her that’s going to be completely mine tonight.
“Yes,” she murmurs, her eyes pleading with me, her parted lips so close to me I can’t bear to keep from claiming her mouth for myself again.
We taste each other deeper, more hungrily than before, my tongue caressing in concert with the squeezes of my hand on her breast and the strokes of my fingers pleasuring her pussy.
The volume of her moans increase with every swipe of my fingers. She’s soaking herself, and me.
“Please, Luke.”
Between wet, sinful kisses I ask her, “Do you want me to fuck you with my fingers or massage your clit?”