Sweet Obsession (Nights Series #4)(6)

Ash was the one person in the world who could completely derail his normally unflappable mind and his ironclad intentions. Luke had thought that time away from the young man would dampen the forbidden attraction he felt for him.

He was wrong.

His body’s instant and visceral reaction to Ash when he saw him waiting outside his office had stunned Luke. And the insane desire Luke had felt when he trapped the young man against his desk and felt his body heat was more intense than it had ever been before, more potent than anything Luke had ever felt for anyone before. Luke had wanted to taste Ash badly. To take him. To mark him. Luke had wanted to sink his teeth and his cock into Ash’s flesh and brand his body with his scent and his insides with his seed.

But it wasn’t what had almost happened right there on his desk that had doused Luke’s ardor as effectively as a bucket of icy water. It was the expression on Ash’s face that had finally made Luke come to his senses and end the intoxicatingly dangerous situation they’d found themselves in.

Luke didn’t think he’d mistaken the desire in Ash’s steel-blue eyes. That shocking awareness had stayed with him for the rest of that day, making it hard for him to concentrate. He’d wondered numerous times if he was losing his mind or if Ash had wanted him to kiss him as badly as Luke had wanted to.

Luke’s absentmindedness hadn’t escaped his secretary.

“Are you going to tell him the truth?” John had asked before he left for the day.

It had been past seven that evening. Although Luke didn’t like keeping his staff late, he knew John didn’t mind. The guy had been his aide and a friend for over five years, and Luke paid him more than generously for his dedication to Rutherford Industries and to him.

“Should I?” Luke had asked tiredly, raking a hand through his hair where he sat, trying to focus on several convoluted documents.

John had pulled a face.

“Ash is twenty-two, Luke. And the kid is smart. I know having the backing of the Rutherford name didn’t hurt his application to Stanford or the university here, but they wouldn’t have accepted him if he wasn’t a brilliant student.”

“That’s the problem, John.” Luke rubbed his eyes. “To me, he’ll always be that little kid. The one whose diapers I once changed and whose scrapes I used to bandage.”

John had watched him for a silent moment.

“Well, you’d better come to terms with it and quick,” he’d stated in a cool voice. “You might not feel ready to tell him the whole truth yet, but you’re going to have to give him something to justify why you’ve just turned his entire world upside down by forcibly moving him across the world to another country.”

John’s words replayed in Luke’s mind as the car pulled up in the courtyard and the chauffeur got out to open his door.

“Seven thirty a.m. as usual, Mr. Rutherford?” the man murmured as Luke stepped out.

“I’ll probably drive to the office tomorrow, Dan,” Luke replied, trying to mask the weariness in his voice. “I’ll call if Ash and I need you.”

A small thrill ran through Luke as he said those words. Ash and I had an unexpectedly sweet connotation to it, one that made his heart swell with joy briefly.

The chauffeur nodded and climbed back inside the limo. Luke stood and watched the vehicle’s taillights disappear around the bend, aware he was stalling. He turned toward the mansion. There were still lights on inside. Luke braced himself and headed in.

Silence greeted him when he entered the hallway.

“Ash?” Luke called out.

He dropped his bag on a console table and stared down the corridor that led to Ash’s bedroom. Motion up ahead caught his eyes. Tiny waves disturbed the surface of the pool at the rear of the property. Luke headed into the lounge, fingers tugging at the knot in his tie, gaze seeking the man outside through the open glass doors.

Ash bobbed in the water as he reached the end of the swimming pool.

Luke froze in the next moment, his breath stilling on his lips.

Holy. Fuck.

The words he had been rehearsing all through the evening, the tone he should adopt to talk to Ash, the way he should react to the young man’s predictable anger—everything Luke had been planning fled his mind when Ash climbed out of the pool naked.

Ash rose to his feet and stood staring out over the garden with his back to Luke. He raised his hands and slicked the wet dark locks flush to his scalp, the water running in rivulets down his neck and back.

Luke’s cock stirred and swelled as he took in the exquisite, sculptured lines of Ash’s body. It was clear that Ash worked out regularly. The underwater lighting and the lamps framing the deck and garden cast soft light on his beautiful muscles and the toned, honey skin of his shoulders, back, and legs.

Luke’s erection grew to full mast when his gaze narrowed in on the ravishing curves of Ash’s firm ass. The urge to sink his teeth into those two perfect globes of tight flesh swept over Luke like a storm.

Sweet Je—

Luke swallowed a curse when Ash turned. The young man headed to the deck chair where he’d left his clothes and shoes, oblivious to Luke having a mini coronary in the lounge. As if the sight of Ash’s sinfully sweet behind hadn’t been bad enough, the full-frontal view just about killed Luke.

Ash’s dick had grown splendidly from the time Luke last recalled seeing it when he changed Ash’s diapers and when Ash used to run naked around the Rutherfords’ swimming pool as a toddler. Add to that his defined six-pack and the flat, taut muscles of his lower belly, and Luke wondered if he was going to stroke out from all the blood rushing from his head to his own cock.