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“Just wait.”
“Since when can’t you drive and talk at the same time?”
His jaw bunched. “I can’t drive and propose marriage at the same time!”
Holly stared at him, stunned. “What?”
“Oh, hell.” He shot her a hard look. “You heard me.”
Had she? Holly swallowed. Marriage? Lukas was proposing...marriage? She couldn’t find any words.
“Would it be such a bad thing?” Lukas demanded. “I thought we had a good month.” He hit her with the glare again. “Didn’t you think we had a good month?”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “But...”
“But what?”
“It was an...affair.” Just saying it made it sound weak and insubstantial. Nothing like what she’d experienced. And yet...
“An affair?” Lukas fairly spat the words. “So, I was just an itch you wanted to scratch?”
“As I was for you,” Holly retorted.
“You’re more than an itch,” Lukas told her. He slammed on the brakes at a red light and cursed under his breath. “You couldn’t wait, could you? You had to push.”
“Me, push?” Holly gave a sharp laugh.
“You could have waited till we got home.”
“You could have acted less like you were going to the dentist!”
They glared at each other. Holly looked away first.
“It’s green,” she said. “The signal.”
Lukas ground his teeth and stomped on the gas pedal. Neither of them said another word until they reached the door of her apartment.
There, Holly fumbled with the key in nerveless fingers until Lukas took it away and opened the door for her. “Thank you,” she said primly. “Good night.”
But of course, Lukas came in before she could shut the door on him. “I love you, damn it,” he said raggedly. “I want to marry you.”
“‘I love you, damn it’?” Holly echoed.
He raked a hand through his hair. “You know what I mean! It’s more than an itch, Holly. It’s a future. You feel it. You know you do.” He reached out and caught her by the arm, hauling her against him. “You love me, too.”
Holly didn’t deny it. She didn’t fight him. Couldn’t. She wanted him too much.
She knew the depth of her foolishness, then. She had lied to herself when she’d believed she could have these few weeks with Lukas and walk away from him satisfied and unscathed. She had thought that being aware was being in control. She was wrong. It would hurt.
But staying would hurt worse. She had to go.
But not yet. Not without this—this touch of his lips, the warmth of his arms around her, the silkiness of his hair threaded through her fingers, his hands skimming down the zip on her sexy dress, then easing it off her shoulders, letting it slither to a pool at her feet.
“You love me,” Lukas whispered against her ear. “And I love you.”
Then he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. His eyes were hooded, the skin taut across his cheekbones, his lips barely parted, breathing softly and close—so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek.
She took his face between her hands and ran her thumbs across his brows, then across those sharply sculpted cheekbones, memorizing each detail before pressing her lips to his.
Lukas groaned. He toed off his shoes, then sat up, fumbling to drag off his tie and undo the buttons of his shirt.
Holly’s hands wrapped his, held them still. “Let me. Please.” Her throat ached as she spoke.
Lukas let out a harsh breath. “Go ahead then.”
She took her time, slipped the tie off his neck, then with fingers almost as unsteady as his, she undid the buttons one by one, tugged his shirttails out of his trousers and pulled it off, then skimmed his undershirt over his head. Pressing kisses to his chest, she brought her hands down to his belt buckle, worked it open, slid a hand in to caress him.
“Hol’,” he warned, his hips surging against her. She would have taken longer, would have had him as strung out as she had been that night so many years ago. But Lukas was done with that. His patience gone, he peeled off his trousers and shorts, shed his socks and bore her back onto the bed.
Then he had his way with her, took his time, kissed his way from her breastbone to the apex of her thighs. He settled between her legs and skimmed his fingers up them, then parted her, touched her, stroked her.
Holly tried to hold still, but couldn’t. She twisted beneath the friction of his fingers as they heightened her pleasure. And then he moved over her, came down to her and entered her fully, and the two of them were one.
