Page 22 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)

Wren

I’m pretty sure Luca’s asleep, so it surprises me when he says, “Oh, yeah?” into the dark right after my stupid, tender declaration.

I should have kept quiet, but it’s like I’m bursting with jealousy and wanting. With this strange, intoxicating feeling of being on the outside of something and desperately, desperately wanting to be on the inside of it.

I’m not usually a sentimental person.

When Uncle Vic and I met for drinks last night, I gave him a gift card to Dave and Busters, and he got me a gift card to a coffee chain. An even, fifty-dollar exchange. At the end of the night, when he wished me a merry Christmas, I’d kept my face perfectly level.

And this morning, when I went to see Gran before coming with Luca, I handed her gift over—a crochet hook, since she can no longer knit—and smiled dutifully when she teared up, pulling me in for a hug.

Holidays have, in a way, always meant acting like nothing bothered me.

There were a few really good holidays with my dad.

Once we went to a Christmas market in Germany and saw the ballet on Christmas Eve, and one year he got me an e-reader since I’d mentioned feeling sorry not to keep any books— we were constantly moving.

But most of the time, Christmas meant carefully looking like I didn’t care. Like I didn’t want anything.

Now, I feel that effort creeping in. To try and not let Luca know just how much today affected me. How much it hurt to see how well they all know one another, the inside jokes and laughs at each funny gift. The tears and hugs after the sentimental ones.

“Your family is really nice,” I say to the ceiling instead of him, because I’m not sure I can stand looking at him right now.

“Yeah, they are,” Luca says. When he turns over onto his side, it rocks the air mattress so I scoot closer to him, my body sliding into his. I don’t move away, and he doesn’t either.

“So you had a good day?” he asks.

I clear my throat, fishing for something to make this less intimate, less of whatever it is. “It was alright. Do you think they were convinced?”

“Very,” he whispers, and I think that’s just as much to do with his performance as mine. The way he’d doted on me all day, bringing me drinks, making my plate, making sure I had everything I needed whenever I needed it.

“Did you tell the truth?” The words are coming out of me before I can stop them, and I squeeze my eyes shut at how stupid this is. It doesn’t matter. And yet, I add, “About not looking in that folder?”

“Wren.” Luca’s voice is serious. “I swear on the Stanley Cup that I didn’t look at a thing in that folder.”

It should be cheesy and stupid—a hockey player swearing on the Stanley Cup—but it’s oddly sweet. Makes sense to me. That cup is the thing Luca cares about most in the world.

And the knowledge that he was telling the truth, me finally, finally believing it, makes a lump form in my throat. A lump that I can’t swallow around, and suddenly, I’m crying.

I never cry. Actually, more accurately, I never cry unless I want to. So right now, with tears sliding down my cheeks, it feels worse than being naked. It feels raw and off-balance. Exposed.

Luca can tell—I know he can, and I wait for him to awkwardly ask if I’m okay, or to somehow produce a box of tissues from nowhere. But he does neither of those things.

Instead, he reaches forward, one of his hands sliding around to the back of my head as he pulls me into him, cradling me against his chest like he knows without asking that it’s what I need.

I should push away from him. I should insist that I’m fine. I should get a fucking grip on myself and stop being so embarrassing.

But it feels good to be held. It feels too good to be held by him, and to cry, to cling to him. Like I’m a scuba diver jumping off the boat into myself, and I can count on him at the surface, a hand on my cord, ready to pull me up the second things go wrong.

I cry long enough that my face starts to feel a little soft and sticky, and I get that sleepy, euphoric feeling.

I cry long enough that when the sadness ebbs, I actually feel his hands. One on my back, firm pressure, the other smoothing the hair out of my face, cupping the back of my neck.

And then I feel the rest of him. So fucking tall, so broad and solid. Somehow soft and strong at once. I’ve seen him slam other guys into the boards, seen him get clocked across the face. Watched him hit the puck with a velocity that would scramble your brains.

But here he is, in a pair of gray sweats, his hands on me so gently that it’s hard to believe he’s capable of such force.

That night in the alley was frantic, intoxicating, fucking thrilling. It filled my brain with helium—made it hard to stop. When I pulled away from him, it was with the certainty that I had to hide how much I liked it.

But this isn’t like that. There’s no frantic pace, no flying hands, no tugging and pushing and heavy, feverish breath. No pressure of someone else watching, of what the picture might look like after the flash goes dark.

Instead, when I wipe my face on my shirt and look up at him, I find nothing but his steady gaze returned to me.

And when I move slowly forward, eyes darting down to his lips, Luca keeps his on me the entire time.

Maybe he’s going to stop me. Maybe he’s going to point out that there’s no reason to do this here and now, in the basement, where nobody can see us.

I close my eyes just in case he’s going to be the voice of reason.

But he doesn’t stop me, and my lips land on his. Soft, warm.

Kissing him is like running my fingers across the arm of a velvet couch. It’s like watching the taffy spin at a candy store. Hypnotic. Comforting. Endless. Sinking. Slow.

He shifts, pushing me onto my back, And I let him. Luca braces himself over me and kisses me, one of his legs sliding between mine—but not pressing. Not pushing for anything. Like kissing me is the entire point.

When one of his hands finds my waist—toying with the hem of my shirt—and his thumb slides over my bare skin there, it feels like the most illicit thing that’s ever happened to me. And it feels like permission to let my hands wander too.

I slide them up and under his shirt, brain fuzzy at the way he gasps against me.

I trail the tips of my fingers over his chest, feeling the muscle move beneath my hands, his body responding to me.

He’s ticklish, jerking. But his skin is soft, even the spattering of hair over his chest is soft, and I want to take his shirt off, get the light on, examine it to see if it’s the same color as the golden hair on his head.

Remembering that hair, I move my other hand up, cupping the back of his neck—so warm and solid. I slide my fingers up against the nape of his neck. His hair is so thick, and surprisingly silky for a man, like he has a hair care regimen.

I twist my fingers in it and tug.

Luca kisses me lazily. It’s explorative, our bodies rising and falling together in the pleasure like this air mattress is a raft, and we’re lost at sea.

There’s a voice in the back of my head trying to warn me that this is a bad idea. That touching him like this, and letting him touch me—it’s only going to get me hurt. That the last time I trusted a man to take care of me, it landed me in prison.

But if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s silencing the voices in my head.

I tug at Luca’s shirt, sliding my hands up his sides until he shivers at the feeling, He pulls away silently, stripping the thing over his head until his chest is bare above me.

Of course, I’ve been with other men. I turned eighteen in Spain, for fuck’s sake. I’ve seen shirtless men, seen them literally walk out of the ocean like Greek gods with the water dripping down their bodies. I’ve been the subject of their sultry stares. Made love on the beach in France.

But, for some reason, it’s the sight of Luca’s bare chest in this basement, through the dim light, that makes my soul feel weak. Like there’s a sexual mountain top, and I’ve finally reached the peak.

His chest doesn’t play with pretense. Luca doesn’t pause to flex, or present himself any certain way. In fact, he seems oblivious of what his bare torso is doing to me as he lowers himself down, like his sole objective in life is getting his mouth back on mine.

And he does, one of his hands slipping up between my head and the pillow, tugging my hair and tipping my head back to kiss me deeper. He slants his mouth over mine in a way that’s both reckless and careful.

Kissing seems to be the only point, but that doesn’t stop my body from reacting to him. I’m thoroughly wet, and my body wants more than the kissing. Much, much more.

I lift my hips up from the bed, tightening my thighs around the one he has between my legs, grinding against it to get some pressure where I want it. When I gasp at the feeling of it, he swallows the sound, and seems to decide he wants to hear more.

Pulling back, Luca shifts his body so he can stay braced over me, but slides his hand up under the hem of my sleep shorts, pushing the elastic band of my cotton underwear to the side, his fingers slipping inside the fabric.

I gasp loud enough that he cups his hand over my mouth, his eyes meeting mine in the inky blackness.

He’s breathing hard now, his fingers having gone completely still.

He’s not even touching anything—not near my clit or entrance.

But the feeling of him there is putting me in tangles.

I can’t think, other than the want for him to touch me.

Slowly, he lowers his head until his lips are against my ear, whispering so quietly I wouldn’t be able to hear him if he wasn’t this close, “Do you want this?”

I nod so quickly I could strain my fucking neck. I clutch tight to him rock my hips against him, catching the edge of his hand on my clit so my entire body jerks at the sensation.

Unable to speak, I do everything in my power to communicate my consent. To tell Luca that, yes—I want this.

He lets out a breath and the slightest groan from the back of his throat, then finally, finally moves his fingers.