Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(87)

“That’s the first time you’ve ever said ‘happily-ever-after’ without rolling your eyes.”

“I know. I think you and your parents are contagious. And my immunizations are wearing off.”

Seeing her smile when she said that made a flicker of hope come alive in his heart.




THE NEXT MORNING, Luke awoke Dani with a kiss. On the back of her knee.

Head still under her pillow, she grouchily mumbled a complaint about a four-limit max.

He smiled and trailed kisses down her smooth back. Strategically. When he got to the ticklish base of her spine, she flipped over, tangled in the sheets, looking good enough to eat.

“You need a reverse-Viagra,” she groused. But her eyes licked over him intently.

“You’re one to talk. You about killed me with that last run.”

“You and me both.” Her gaze turned frisky then. “I’ve actually never tried that position before last night. In fact, I’m not even sure we did it correctly. We better practice that one again to be sure,” she said solemnly, pulling the layers of bed sheets off her like erotic gift-wrap.

With a regretful frown, he put one hand over his eyes and used the other to swat away her curious ones as they set out to convince him to play. “We’re supposed to be at my parents’ farm by nine this morning, remember? If we don’t leave in fifteen minutes, we’ll never make it.”

She sat up and swiftly wound the sheet around his chest and arms before pushing him back down onto the bed. He felt like a loosely bound half-covered mummy—with a very alive lower half demanding to be woken up. She blew a soft breath up first one rock solid thigh and then the other as she started outlining some sort of math word problem for him.

Yeah, like he could even add one plus one right now.

“If it takes two people five minutes to get ready...” Her fingers lightly grazed his happy trail. “Will ten be enough to…” A slow glide of her tongue filled in the rest of the equation.

His hips shot forward, arching him high up off the bed. “Keep that up and I won’t last the next five,” he all but growled, lust playing havoc on his vocal chords.

“Really?” she hummed, her mouth promptly interpreting this as a goal, not a warning, as her decadent ministrations kicked into high gear.

He groaned, low and tortured, quickly yanking himself out of the sheets to free his trapped hands. What he was hoping to do with those hands now, he wasn’t at all sure...until he caught sight of the unabashed pleasure in her expression.

Damn.

His head slammed back down to the bed, his fists clenched, his body strung tighter than a crossbow. “T minus four, babe,” he rasped.

Her deep, throaty laugh didn’t help his cause one bit.

In fact, the feel of it along with the other diabolical skills she’d sprung on him with her determined lips and hands sped the clock up drastically. But before he could alert her to the fact, she let out a soft, purring moan.

And just like that, the countdown was over.

He’d probably shouted. Hell, he might’ve even passed out. Eyes shut, body convulsing with each crashing wave of release, he barely had the presence of mind to keep breathing.

Eventually, the temptress slowly kissed her way up his body like a satisfied cat while the roar in his ears subsided. As soon as she lifted her long lashes to meet his gaze, however, the roaring returned with a vengeance and his body corded with a hot hiss.

The pure, raw hunger he saw in the depths of her dark honey eyes stole his soul and sold it to his raging hormones. Yet she didn’t ask him to return the favor. Instead, she just laid her head against his chest and stroked his overheated skin with trembling fingers.

“We better get going,” she said finally, her voice trying to cover up the fact that she was literally shaking with need. “Dibs on the shower.” After one more soft love bite on his bicep, she rolled off the bed.

And got exactly two steps away.

Silly rabbit.

He caught her around the waist and flipped her back onto the bed. “We still have two minutes. Plenty we can do in that time, love,” he reasoned, glorying in her body’s rampant response to him. “Plus, be sensible. You can’t possibly leave in this condition. Do you know how rocky the ride to the farm is? You’d be like a powder keg going through a mine field.”

She started giggling helplessly at the ridiculousness of his comment.

All part of his master plan. He slowly shouldered apart her legs.

They didn’t leave for the farm until well after nine.



*



DANI STEPPED OUT of Luke’s car and took in the farmhouse before her like she was staring at a painting. Her soft smile and wide eyes told Luke how beautiful she thought his childhood home was while her measured breathing clued him in on just how nervous she was to be there.

Adorable woman.

As he rounded the car, Luke saw her look at her phone at the ‘10:01 a.m.’ time he knew was flashing at her. He hid his smile when she stared intently at the phone screen as if she could turn back time with a glare. When he reached down to hold her free hand, she whacked him in the stomach with the one holding her phone. “I still can’t believe you let us be this late!”

“Let us? Honey, I wasn’t the one who instigated the morning b—oomph!”

She gave him a murderous glare and he ducked before she could sock him a third time for laughing.