Entangled With My Father's Best Friend

4

By the time I turn back around, Luke's eyes have drifted to me again, their storm-tossed depths burning with undisguised longing before quickly snapping away. I take a slow sip of my wine, holding his conflicted gaze over the rim.

"Is everything alright, Luke?" I ask in a low, sultry murmur. "You seem...tense."

His jaw tightens fractionally as he considers me through the smoldering looks he's struggling so valiantly to repress. "I'm fine," he replies in that rich baritone, a subtle edge of strain bleeding into the words. "Just...preoccupied with certain matters, is all."

"Anything I can do to help you relax?" I take a few gliding steps closer, letting my voice turn into an outright bedroom purr. "It's not healthy to stay wound up so tightly all the time."

Luke's stare turns inescapably heated as I draw nearer, raking over every curve and swell my flimsy dress so enticingly hints at without fully unveiling. His throat works once in a suppressed swallow.

"You play a very dangerous game, Bella," he rumbles in a low rasp. "Insistently toying with fires you can't begin to comprehend."

"Then enlighten me," I breathe out, stopping just inches from where he's seated, near enough for him to smell the delicate cloud of perfume enveloping me. "Help me understand the flames licking around us, Luke. The ones you're barely holding at bay..."

His sharp inhalation is the only sound as the thick tension stretches taut between us, loaded with smoldering undercurrents of restrained passion. Luke's eyes burn feverishly into mine, undisguised want battling viscerally with the rigid self-control I know he clings to with every fiber of his being.

In that heated moment, it feels like anything could happen - like the slightest spark could ignite the powderkeg and lead us to finally immolating in the explosive release of our mutually ravenous desires. My breath comes shallowly, breasts straining against the flimsy fabric as they rise and fall with keening anticipation.

Then, as if snapping back to himself, Luke abruptly rises from his chair and turns away from me, downing the remains of his drink in one bracing swallow.

"I apologize," he murmurs in a strained tone, not meeting my eyes. "This...inappropriate dalliance has gone on too long already."

My heart sinks at his words, even as fresh desperation propels me forward a step, fingers grazing the hard musculature of his back through the soft material of his shirt.

"Inappropriate for who?" I whisper urgently. "Luke, I'm not a child anymore. Can't you see how I-"

He cuts me off by whirling around with startling swiftness, his large hand clamping around my wrist as he crowds into my personal space with those blazing grey eyes pinning me immobile.

"Enough," he growls in that authoritative baritone that sends visceral tingles through my body. "You're right, you're no child - you're a grown woman who should know better than to keep daring the forces you cannot begin to comprehend."

His grip on my wrist isn't painful, but it's unyielding and utterly dominant in a way that makes moisture pool hotly between my thighs. Luke leans in until his mouth is a hairsbreadth from my own, his words washed over my parted lips in a heated rasp.

"I'm not a man to be trifled with, Bella. There are shadows and hungers lurking within me that could swallow you whole if unleashed. Do you understand what you're playing with here?"

A whimper very nearly escapes my throat at the undisguised menace and carnal promise saturating his words. My body openly shudders with yearning as Luke's penetrating stare and musky sandalwood scent obliterates my senses.

For a moment that feels suspendexhausted in forever, I'm sure he's going to seize my mouth in a searing, ravaging kiss and finally shed those rigid shackles of restraint. Finally allow us both to drink deeply of the scalding, forbidden passion simmering in roiling waves between us.

But then reality reasserts itself with a shuddering breath from Luke. He releases my wrist and takes a step back, the inferno in his eyes suddenly banked by a shutter of grim composure.

"Get some rest, Bella," he says in a tone of finality, already turning away from me again. "We've both allowed ourselves to stray too close to that line tonight."

I watch him retreat from the room, at once frustrated and achingly turned on in a way that leaves me trembling weakly. What is it going to take to break through to this man? How deep do his demons run that he can so forcefully strangle down the feral hungers I see raging behind his eyes every time they burningly appraise me?

I lick my tingling lips, mind spinning in a haze of lust and confused desperation. One way or another, I swear I will unearth the secrets that haunt Luke Montgomery's shredded soul. And when I do, I'll also unleash the smoldering beast straining so violently against its cage before he combusts completely from the intensity of starving it.

The next several days pass in a swirl of fleeting, heated exchanges that never quite boil over into the searing release I so crave. Luke cycles between brusquely dismissing my attempts at seduction or surrendering himself to moments of barely leashed passion, only to pull back from the brink each time at the last moment.

And always, always those haunted, preoccupied looks will shadow across his chiseled features whenever he thinks I'm not watching...

It's a humid, sticky evening when everything abruptly shifts to cast Luke's increasingly ominous troubles into a stark, frightening new light. I'm lounging poolside in a scanty black bikini, pretending to read a book while surreptitiously watching Luke pace the length of the hedge-lined colonnade, his brow knit and cell phone pressed firmly to his ear.

At first his tone is clipped yet composed - the sound of a man firmly in command trying to exert his authority over a crucial business negotiation. But his rigid control rapidly frays as the tense call goes on. Fragments of strained conversation laced with sharply indrawn breaths and barely muted curses filter over to me.

"...no other choice...my hands were tied on those terms..." Luke's voice takes on an edge of desperation I've never heard before. "Just tell me what you need to make this go away and I'll get it done. No further questions asked."

My book lays forgotten in my lap as I sit up straighter, skin prickling with alarm at the implications of Luke sounding so direly cornered. Who is he pleading with? And what could have finally bent his indomitable pride into such fraught supplication?

"Everything I've given you so far hasn't been enough?" he demands in an incredulous rasp before suddenly falling into a weighted silence as he listens to the response. A guttural, humorless chuckle rasps from Luke's throat a moment later.

"Leverage? You don't need any more goddamned leverage over me, my friend. My family's life is already poised on the razor's edge here..."

My heart clenches sickeningly at the implication of his harshly gritted words, fear and confusion churning through me. What kind of danger could his family - my own father - possibly be in? And more importantly, who are the shadowy forces imperiling all of their lives with such casual menace?

Luke slowly sinks down onto a wrought-iron bench, shoulders sagging as he cradles his head in the hand not holding the phone. He seems to age a decade before my eyes with each passing demand leveled at him, growing more haggard and haunted with every defeated response.

"I understand. Perfectly..." His voice is hoarse and utterly depleted now, the sound of an old prizefighter being mercilessly beaten into the canvas one last time. "Just...don't do anything until you've received what you've asked for. You have my word on that."

The call ends with a hollow click and Luke remains motionless on the bench, head bowed and spirit utterly extinguished in a way I've never witnessed from the proud, reserved man I know. For long, aching moments he remains frozen that way, cloaked in despair and a profound sense of violation.