Pretend You're Mine: A Small Town Love Story (17 page)

This wasn’t healthy, to have her body need his like this.

He withdrew his fingers and she felt him grip his shaft.

Luke slid the rounded head of his cock between her legs, gently probing. She met his gaze in the mirror. Her breathing was shallow. She swallowed, desperate to be filled.

She felt the pressure as his wide crest breached her sex. Felt the gasp escape her lungs as he invaded her. Harper’s head spun, but she never took her eyes off of his in the mirror. Those hazel orbs bored into her, seeing every corner of her dark soul. She was exposed, possessed.

“Luke,” she whispered. She tried to buck against him. To make him move.

He held her hips still with his rough hands. They stayed that way for what felt like an eternity. He pulled out slightly. Harper moaned and it was all the encouragement he needed to bury himself in her. She cried out in triumph. Luke brought a hand around to tease the lips of her sex apart.

He filled her in a way no man ever had.

She couldn’t catch her breath as he started to move. His fingers teased a sweet spot and his shaft stretched her to capacity. Something was building in her. It was a wall of pleasure so towering, she knew she couldn’t survive the break.

Harper could see sweat forming on his brow, his gaze still burning into her. The thrusts were coming faster now and he gave a quiet grunt with each one. He was going to come like this. Just knowing it put a crack in her wall. Luke reached around her and cupped her breast again. He tugged on her pebbled nipple.

It happened in an instant. The wall broke inside her just as Harper felt Luke’s first shudder of release. He let loose deep inside her. She clamped down on his shaft and shattered around it. Luke released her breast and gripped her chin in his hand, watching her as they both came apart.

***

“W
here did you get these?” Luke asked, lazily running his fingers over twin scars high on her hip.

Harper was draped over him, naked on the bed in a post-orgasmic coma. She shrugged and buried her face in his chest. He shifted her to the mattress and sat up.

Harper snuggled face down into his pillow and ignored him as he studied her skin.

“Harper.” He poked her butt cheek.

“Mmm.”

“Harper Sue Ellen Wilde.”

She rolled to her side. “That is definitely not my middle name.”

“I don’t know your middle name so I had to make one up.”

“So you went with Sue Ellen?”

“It seemed like a good fit.”

“It’s Lee actually.”

“Parents fans of
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

“Very good,” she arched an eyebrow.

“I’m more than just a pretty face.”

Harper’s gaze trailed down his naked body. “Oh, I can see that.”

“Hey, I’m not a piece of meat and I asked you a question.”

Harper sighed and rose up on her elbow. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because they look like cigarette burns.”

“Good eye.”

His blood went icy in the span of a heartbeat. “Who did it? Was it that asshole Ted?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it wasn’t Ted. It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter who it was.”

“Like hell it doesn’t. Someone burned you with a fucking cigarette and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”

Harper sat up. “I really don’t like talking about it.”

“I really don’t care. Tell me who did this.”

He saw the little muscle in her jaw tic and tried to relax. Yelling at her wasn’t exactly a smart way to make a woman open up. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Baby. You can trust me.”

“Why does this matter so much?”

Because you matter. He stopped the thought before it became words. Words that couldn’t be taken back. Shit.

“I don’t like feeling like you’re hiding something from me.” He was such a fucking hypocrite.

“I’m not hiding anything, Luke. It’s just, it’s something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She sighed, and he knew he had won.

“When I was in foster care I was living with this really nice family. A mom, a dad, two brothers. I thought that they might adopt me. It was great, until they got pregnant again and got a job offer on the other side of the country. I was transferred out of their house into another one. That family wasn’t as nice.”

Luke lay back down on the bed and pulled her in to his side. He stroked the smooth skin of her back as she talked.

“It was an older couple and there were a lot of kids in the house. Some fosters, some not. They were always yelling, the kids were dirty, there was never enough food.”

Luke could feel his heart rate ratcheting up and forced himself to keep his touch gentle.

“After I had been there a week the mom left and things got ugly fast. The man had a nasty temper, especially when he drank. Every payday we’d all do everything we could to stay out of his way. But someone always got noticed. And once or twice it was me.”

Luke felt sick to his stomach. “How old were you?”

“I was twelve. I was the oldest in the house.”

“Did he ever do anything ...” Luke couldn’t get the words out without choking on them.

“Sexual? No, just regular run of the mill physical abuse.”

“What happened to him?”

“Jail.”

“Is he still there? Is he any kind of threat to you?”

“He’s still there.”

He kissed the top of her head and held her close, forcing himself to be gentle when the rage pounding through his veins wanted to destroy something.

“Thank you for telling me, Harper.”

When she didn’t respond, he nudged her chin up. “I’m sorry. I hate that that happened to you.”

“Me, too. Let’s talk about something less depressing. Like maybe another shower?”

Three Weeks...

H
arper worried that her confession to Luke would make him see her as damaged goods, or worse, feel sorry for her. However, nothing slowed down their need for each other. They spent more time in bed than out of it. She kept waiting for the intensity to fade, to not ache to have him inside her. To get used to the sight of his naked body. To not feel that pitter pat in her chest when he said her name.

Maybe it was the fact that their time together was expiring that fueled the intensity. Whatever it was, it left her breathless.

She watched Luke as he seamlessly folded preparations to leave into his already busy days. At work, Frank and Charlie would be stepping up in Luke’s absence. They had done it before, and Luke trusted them with what he had built.

At home, Luke would count on James for property maintenance and check-ins. His brother also had access to Luke’s accounts and made sure bills were paid. While Luke double checked his auto-pay bills, changed the oil in his truck — and her car — and checked the level in the propane tank, Harper started a list of things she needed to do before leaving.

She and Beth worked long hours trying to get everything around the office caught up and organized.

“Thank God you’re here.” Beth puffed as she hauled a towering stack of papers to the shredder. “Otherwise, I would have been stuck filing all of this crap.”

Harper staggered behind her under the weight of her own load. “Scanners.” She gasped. “Best invention ever.”

Between the two of them, they had managed to scan the last eight months of paperwork and invoices into an online system that was backed up daily. Going forward, all paperwork would be done electronically and stored in the system. But that still left all of Garrison’s old paper records.

“I think we should get an intern this summer to do all the scanning and shredding.” Beth dropped the papers in an unceremonious heap next to the shredder. “And washing our cars and picking up our lunches.”

Harper felt a little twinge with the realization that she wouldn’t actually be here this summer. Who knew where she was going to end up? But it was probably past time for her to bring up the subject to Luke.

With only two weeks until his unit deployed, she needed to strategize a graceful exit. She had every intention of using this month for résumé polishing and job-hunting, but she had spent the majority of her time working or naked.

She didn’t feel particularly remorseful about her priorities. However, she was dangerously close to getting carried away with their faux romance. A little shot of reality, however painful, was a healthy reminder of what she needed to focus on.

Guiltily, Harper thought about the handful of emails her friend Hannah had sent her with job postings in Fremont that she hadn’t even opened yet.

Thanks to the generous salary Luke gave her and the fact that he refused to let her pay rent or utilities, her savings account was being rebuilt, and she would have plenty for a security deposit and rent on a new apartment. She’d even have a little left over for some furniture.

A little place of her own would be a good thing to focus on when it came to getting over Luke.

Harper sighed and dumped her files on the floor. “Let’s go grab some lunch before we tackle the shredding. My treat.”

***

W
hen Luke came home that afternoon, he found Harper perched on a barstool squinting at his laptop. Harper lifted her face for a kiss, and he caught a glimpse of the screen.

“Looking for a new job on your boss’s computer? Classy.”

Harper wrinkled her nose at him and pulled him down for another kiss. “Very funny. And yes.” She turned her attention back to the screen. “I’m also trying to figure out how to make being in this position for only a month not sound flaky on my résumé.”

Luke went to the sink to pour two glasses of water. “Call it a short-term contract position.”

“God. You’re a genius. No wonder I want to get in your pants all the time.”

He immediately felt himself go hard. Keeping the island between them, he slid a glass to her. “I can write you a reference letter, if that would help.” Where the hell had that come from?

Those big gray eyes widened with hope. Always a punch in his gut.

“Are you serious? That would be amazing!”

Great. Now he had to do it or look like an asshole. Writing an email was difficult for him. How was he supposed to put a glowing review on paper? Not that Harper didn’t deserve it. She had taken his floundering mess of an office and started pushing it down the road to being an efficient operation in just two weeks.

Maybe he could make Sophie write it.

“So where are you looking for jobs?” he asked.

Harper took a sip of water. “I’m focusing on my original plan of Fremont. It’s no Benevolence, but I think being close to Hannah again would be nice.”

“Have you thought of staying around here?” What the fuck was wrong with him? He hadn’t even known he was thinking it before it was shooting out of his mouth.

Harper shifted in her seat and looked away from him towards the cabinets. “Uh, yeah. For about a minute. I don’t think it would work.”

Now he had to ask. “Why’s that?” He pretended to flip through the mail on the counter.

She cleared her throat. “I don’t want to say because you’ll take it the wrong way and go into panic mode.”

Luke decided to just stare her down until she broke. It took her about thirty seconds of squirming before he won. “I thought about staying until I realized what it would be like to run into you and your future girlfriend and then wife at the grocery store every week. Every time I’d see you, I’d think about what it was like to be with you while knowing that now someone else gets to be with you that way...” She shuddered and shook her head. “That’s not the way I want to spend the rest of my life.”

His gut churned at the idea. Not of him with someone else. That wasn’t going to happen. But Harper would move on. She deserved to move on. He would see her around town with some guy who would ask her to marry him. He’d see her with kids at sporting events. They’d run into each other at the lake in the summer and it would be some other lucky asshole’s hands on those perfect curves.

Luke set his glass down with a bang on the granite. Harper jumped.

“See? I told you you wouldn’t like it. I’m not saying I’m in love with you, Luke. I just don’t like the idea of you moving on.”

Right back at you, baby.

“Good point. Hey, your first mail here.” He tossed the envelope with her name written in scrawling handwriting to her. Harper glanced at it and frowned.

“Just junk mail,” she said shoving it under the laptop. “So since we’re on the subject anyway, what are we going to tell your family about me leaving?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it yet.”

Harper sighed. “Me neither. I let you distract me with that hot, naked body of yours.”

“Oh, you mean this hot, naked body?” Luke pulled his shirt off and was dragging hers over her head before she could gasp with laughter.

***

W
ednesday evening, Harper headed home without Luke. He was off on a job site somewhere, solving a crisis, reassuring a client. She appreciated his work ethic. No problem was too small for him to tackle when it came to making clients and employees feel valued.

Just that morning, Luke had called their newest employee in for a meeting. John was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and had great promise as a future finish carpenter.

“Listen, John, you need to understand that just because you’ve got a little money in your pocket, it doesn’t mean you get to out and do a bunch of stupid shit. You don’t need to buy a $45,000 pickup, and you sure as hell don’t need a 60-inch TV for your parents’ basement. I want you to be successful, and I’m here to help you get there ...”

Harper had grinned to herself as she made copies and eavesdropped outside Luke’s office.

He really cared about his people, whether they were family, friends, or employees. He was the kind of man you could depend on. Not only to help you out of a jam, but one who would protect you from one if he could.

She carried her purse and lunch bag back to the kitchen and dumped them on the counter. It was such a beautiful spring evening, she decided to open up every window in the house to welcome the breeze. She ran up to the bedroom to change into shorts and a t-shirt and was on the stairs when she heard the knock at the front door.