Chapter 95: Chapter Twenty-Three: For The Love of Desks-1

=== It was almost déjà vu except that when I opened my eyes this morning, a pair of bright, crystal blue ones were already gazing at me—wide awake and smiling. No shin-kicking this time. If anything kicked, it was my heart, right into overdrive, when I realized that I was pressed close to Luke's warm and very naked chest. "Where did your shirt go?” I croaked. I shifted slightly in a secret attempt to discern if he was just as unclothed from the waist down. I discovered very male and very bare legs entwined with mine around the ankles. It was skin to skin. My heart nearly jumped out of me. "Please tell me we didn't have sex last night and I was too doped up to have stayed conscious for it," I groaned, briefly squeezing my eyes shut. Luke didn't say anything. The idiot just kept grinning. Then I glanced down at myself, quickly realizing I still had my old college shirt and cotton shorts on. "Oh. But I'm fully dressed so I'm guessing we didn't?" I totally sounded inane but I wasn't fully recovered yet. No, not from Lola's drama yesterday, but the fact that Luke was here with me because he chose to be. “Are you very disappointed?” he asked, his grinning only broadening even more. “Yes,” I blurted out before shaking my head. “I mean, no, I’m not. I’d like to be conscious and fully participating for my first time. So I’m glad that it wasn’t last night when I was doozy with painkillers.” Luke’s smile shrank by tiny increments as his brows drew in together in confusion. “You’re telling me that you’re a virgin,” he said, shaking his head slowly as if it somehow helped him make sense of his own statement. He suddenly shoved the covers aside, revealing me in my super-sexy old and baggy sleepwear while he was looking like an underwear model in nothing but a black pair of boxers that did not conceal his very masculine interest. “You’re telling me that some red-blooded male passed this all up,” he continued, his voice dropping an octave, as he snaked a hand around my left butt cheek and gave it a quick, possessive squeeze. He skated it up and under my loose shirt, following the dip of my lower back until it rested on the curve of my waist, his thumb rubbing heated strokes against the skin on my stomach. He lifted his eyes back up to me and they now blazed like sharp blue flames. He leaned in, lowering his face just along the line of my shoulder where my shirt neckline gaped, his lips imprinting themselves on my skin with their heat before they could even make contact. I swallowed hard, my heart rapping against my chest so fast I swear I could feel the room vibrate with it. “With the implication of that statement that, uh… males aren’t that d-discerning as long as they’re r-red-blooded…” My eyes shut close, my breaths hitching on their way down my lungs as Luke continued to place very strategic kisses along his way to the side of my neck where it felt like an entire universe of nerve endings was centered. “Then, um… men will approximately h-have half the world’s population for variety. Some girl’s bound to b-be passed… up.” Luke raised his head, looked at me, and laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Max, at a time like this, when I’m trying to seduce you out of your pajamas, you’re analyzing my comment.” I pouted. “If I’m supposed to find a compliment in there somewhere, I ought to.” He just laughed harder before suddenly rolling me over on my back, trapping me beneath him with his arms braced on each side of me and his legs looped around mine. If I closed my eyes, I could probably accurately describe Luke’s flawless anatomy based on every point of contact I had with it with my own body, his most prominent feature right smack in the center of us. And no, it’s not his heart. Try again. He dipped his head down until a lock of his dark hair fell over his forehead and brushed mine. He was still smiling but his eyes were back to that same vivid, hot blue. “I don’t have to tell you, or myself, that it’s different being with you. But right now, thinking that nothing could be better than laughing like this with you, in the kind of moment that used to only make me happy once I’d fucked my brains out—it makes it very clear just how different it is because it’s with you.” Luke wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Romeo (even though he did have his moments) but that was alright with me because I was determined for us to have a happy ending. He wasn’t done being his version of romantic though. “I suspect it won’t be the last time it hits me. I suspect that it will never stop. I’m pretty damn sure that I will never forget just how different, and how much better and happier everything is, just because it’s with you.” I smiled and cupped the side of his face. “Is that why you decided to give in? If you can’t cure the madness, embrace it?” He wiggled his brows at me. “As you said, what’s the difference? I’ll be mad either way—with or without you.” He looked so happy that for a moment, a small prickle of doubt niggled under my skin at the passing thought of how something so incredibly magical could last in reality—like a beautiful bubble with all the colors of the rainbow that could burst anytime. “I hope you won’t regret it,” I said because I couldn’t help myself. Just because I leapt off the cliff first didn’t mean I wasn’t scared anymore. It’s a long dive into the deep unknown after all. I always imagined I would find someone someday. I just didn’t imagine it would be Luke Hedenby. But somehow, as I looked into his eyes which were soft with affection and warm with a smile, I perfectly understood the mystery of us. There was no reason to ask ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why not the others?’ when the only answer was because you were you—that his choice wasn’t born out of what you had in abundance or what others had lacked. He’s with you because you’re the one he wants. There’s no need to break it down into an equation and find your value in the plus and minus of other people.