His eyes move over my face before settling on my mouth. “Of course.”

“Who planted the flowers on your porch?”

He furrows his brow for a moment until he registers what I mean. “Oh. Me?” he says. “Is that weird?”

“I have no idea,” I tell him.

He braces a hand on the side of my neck and tilts my face back so I have no choice but to look at him. “Friends busy tonight?” he says, thumb pressing at the underside of my jaw. It’s strangely relaxing.

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know. Guess I can’t really imagine you texting me if you had other options available.”

“They were busy,” I admit. I almost tell him that I don’t actually have a lot of friends here, and that I tend to separate myself a little from people anyway, so this thing between us is pretty new for me. A little scary.

I almost tell him all of this, but I don’t. It’s not what you say in this situation I’m trying to maintain.

“Nothing on TV at home?” he asks, smiling as he smooths my hair with the backs of his fingers. I find myself leaning into his touch, my shoulders loosening, my body sagging in his direction. Being near him is a little like slipping into a warm bath.

I shrug and Luke leans in, stopping just long enough to check in with me. I nod slowly and he closes the distance, brushing his lips over mine. “I’m glad you didn’t have anything else to do,” he says against my mouth. “I’m really glad I have your number now instead of Fred’s. I don’t want to kiss him nearly as much as I want to kiss you.”

And he finally does, making me feel that kiss from the place where our lips meet to the tips of my curling toes. I push him back, lifting my leg on the other side of his hip so I’m straddling his lap.

“Can I put my mouth on you?” he says, hand slipping between my legs, to rub me over my shorts.

I shake my head.

“Why again?”

It feels like my brain is short-circuiting and he’s only touching me over my clothes, back and forth and then small circles right where I need it. “We don’t do that.”

“Right,” he says, voice flat, expression guarded. “We fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not that I’m complaining, mind you,” he says, moving to undo the first button of my shorts and slowly sliding the zipper down. “But what about over your panties? I could put my mouth there, suck a little. Maybe hum the alphabet.”

“The alphabet?”

“Literacy is very important to me.”

“You are so persistent,” I say, and try to ignore the way his fingers are ghosting back and forth just below my navel.

“I’m persistent when I want something,” he clarifies. “And I really want that.” He takes my hand and holds it over his cock, and rocks into my palm as if to further illustrate his point. “See?”

I can see the shape of him beneath the denim of his jeans, long and pressed against his stomach.

A wave of heat flashes beneath my skin and I lift his shirt up and over his head in a rush, pulling his mouth to mine.

“Hey, hey,” Luke whispers, dragging his teeth over my bottom lip. “Slow down, Albuquerque. We have all night.”

“I’m not spending the night with you,” I tell him, pulling my own shirt off. I’m not wearing a bra and I suck in a breath when my nipples brush against the smooth skin of his chest. “I’m leaving when we’re finished.”

“We gonna fuck right here on my couch again?”

“I like this couch.”

His fingers slide inside my panties and down to where I’m already wet.

I can tell by his open mouth that there was a smart comment on the tip of his tongue, but he seems to have forgotten it. Instead, he pushes the tip of his finger inside me and drags his eyes along my collarbones and down to my breasts, before licking his lips. “Then we’ll fuck,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment before he grips me by the back of the neck and pulls me to his mouth. “Fuck slow this time.”

My fingers find his belt and undo the buckle, slipping the leather from his pants and tossing it behind me.

“Yeah,” he says, watching me pop open the buttons of his jeans and reach in, wrapping my hand around him. His cock is a living, pulsing heat in my grip. “Oh, God.”

He slumps against the back of the couch and watches, eyes dragging from where I’m touching him to where he’s touching me, and up to my breasts again. His cock is perfect, just like the rest of him.

“Pants off,” I tell him, lifting up while he shoves them down his thighs.

“You, too,” he says, and I stand.

I’m so wet the air feels cold as soon as he pulls down my shorts and underwear.

“Fuck, Logan, look at you.”

Everything in me bottoms out when his fingers slide up the inside of my thigh and he sucks in a breath—I’m wet to my thighs—and looks at me like I’m a meal and he’s deciding what to bite first.

Luke makes a guttural sound, and it vibrates down into my bones when his eyes meet mine. Brown sugar. Burnt sugar. Caramel.

“I can’t wait until you let me kiss you here.” His fingers slide over me, dipping inside, mimicking the movement his tongue would make against me. His other hand smooths up the back of my legs and he kisses my stomach, my ribs, just below my belly button.

“Condom?” I ask, and after a tiny pause, Luke nods against my skin, reaching down to find one in the pocket of his discarded jeans. I watch while he tears open the foil package and unrolls the condom over his length.

“Come back here,” he says, holding the base of his cock in one hand and guiding me over his lap with the other.

He leans in and sucks on my breast, teasing my nipple with his teeth and moaning around it. I sink down slowly and he pulls off with an audible pop, sitting back against the cushions to watch where he’s disappearing inside me.

“London.”

“Shhhh.”

“God. You’re so hot.”

I move over him, slowly. “Shhhh.”

“What?” he says, running his hands down my ribs and stopping at my stomach. “You expect me to be quiet right now?”

“You talk too much,” I say, laughing into his mouth.

It’s like he has some sort of superpower and already knows exactly how I like to be kissed. Open mouth, soft at first with just a hint of tongue. Biting kisses that move from teasing to frantic in the span of a few seconds. He pulls away for a breath just when I want him to, sometimes blinking up to catch my eyes or even just to look at my mouth. He kisses me like he still can’t believe he’s doing it.

I adjust the position of my knees and we both gasp as I bottom out, my ass coming to rest on his thighs. He’s so deep like this. “Oh my God,” I say, and press my forehead to his shoulder while I catch my breath.

His palms smooth down to my waist and he presses his thumbs into my hip bones. “I want you in my bed,” he says through a grunt, moving me, rocking me faster and then slow again. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and down his chest and I can feel the tips of each individual finger where he grips me. “I want to see you better, spread you out under me. I like the way you look. I like the way you smell. And fuck, Logan, I love the way you feel.”

“Such a poet.”