Forbidden Fire (5 page)

Luke swallowed. And again, as if he was feeling sick. “You think it was wrong?” His voice cracked.

She could do this. She’d been turning away from him for years and it had meant that she’d had him in her life. If they went there, God knew what would happen. She couldn’t lose him. She absolutely could not lose him.

Safe ground. They had to get back to—

“I’ll be packed up by tonight,” Luke was saying.

Sian felt like he’d punched her in the chest.

“What?”

But he’d turned away.

She lifted her hand. She had to stop him. They had to… Everything she said was wrong.

He said, “I don’t know what the hell I was doing, living with you.”

Chapter Five

As Luke reached the corner of the block, Elton John was singing ‘
Sorry seems to be the hardest word’.
He stopped the truck with a screech, threw open the door.

He made it to the dumpster outside the back of the Chinese takeout before he vomited, losing the toast Taz had insisted on making for him like the little woman…

When there was nothing left, he wiped his streaming eyes.

“Here, dude, you look like you could use this.”

Luke looked up, hoping like fuck it wasn’t anyone he knew. It was, but he didn’t know Matt from the law office that well. Just saw him in Sian’s coffee house sometimes. He took the offered bottle of water, rinsed his mouth.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. I hope it wasn’t something you ate at Coffee Dreams. I was just going there.”

“What? No.” His head pounded like an empty drum.
Wrong
, Sian had said. But what she’d meant was
unnatural
. She really did think of him as her little brother and all those dreams, those fantasies he’d had for years were just wrong and sick.

“Shit, man, you look really bad. Do you want to come in my office and sit down?” Matt offered.

“No,” Luke managed, hearing the hoarseness in his own voice. What he really wanted to do was go somewhere and cry like the total pussy he was turning into.

“You don’t look like you can drive.”

Luke’s bones locked up around a ‘
hell, yeah
, I can drive’. But he’d worked too many accident scenes to put himself behind the wheel right now. Matt was right.

“I need a breather.” He studied Matt, taking in the towering height, the bulging muscles. And yet the guy had a dancer vibe, like he was light and deadly on his feet. His black eyes were oddly vacant, as if part of him was checked out. “You’ve got a shiner.”

Matt rubbed it. “Yeah. I was thinking about how fucked up last night was and…whammo! Took one while I was sparring.”

“Last night was fucked up for you too?” So his ass wasn’t the only one getting bitch slapped by the love genie. Good to know. But somehow that didn’t make him feel any better.

“Yeah, I really like this woman…well, you know her.”

His stomach tightened. Oh, fuck no. “Um.”

“Sian at the coffee shop. I asked her out.”

“Oh shit.” Luke covered his eyes. He was so not up to hearing this.

“And we finally go out last night…”

“Look—”

“And she’s a total airhead.”

“
What?
” Matt’s jacket was fisted in Luke’s hands. He had him up against the brick wall. “How can you say that? She’s…”

“Whoa! Time out, man!”

When his vision wasn’t red like his pounding blood, Luke saw the way Matt was staring at him. He dropped his hands. “Shit!”

“You know her. Like Biblically.”

Luke swallowed. “She’s my stepsister.”

“Oh fuck.”

“And she’s
not
an airhead,” Luke growled. “She just…she freezes up with guys because of her hand.”

“Her hand, but that’s nothing.” Matt looked confused.

“Not all the guys she goes out with think so.” Luke remembered one hellish night when he’d been sitting in their empty kitchen, counting the hours before Sian came home from her date. Then the call. She’d sounded stiff on the phone, but that was okay. He knew his princess couldn’t help it. Politeness was her default.

But the fact she’d seriously locked down her emotions had scared him. Had the guy she’d been with hurt her? Before he could demand she tell him, Sian was off the phone.

When he’d arrived at the restaurant, it was raining so hard he couldn’t tell if she was crying.

She got in the car and he’d just looked at her.

“I’m okay,” she whispered.

Oh, shit yeah, she’d been crying.

“Before he asked me out, he just didn’t notice my—”

She waved her hand, the one that had been burned in a car accident when her teenage boyfriend had blown through a red light.

“Who is he?”

He’d find the asshole and beat the holy shit out of him.

“It’s…probably better I never tell you that,” she’d said.

“Yeah, it is.” He’d had to agree.

So he’d driven her home and then she’d made them vanilla bean sorbetto from scratch and she’d been his again, back in their kitchen.

Thinking of that kitchen brought him back to telling her he was moving out of the house they shared. Without her, he was like the jumble of a jigsaw puzzle kids had used—full of missing pieces. He needed her as much as she needed him. How was he going to live stuck inside his own head?

Matt studied him. “You look like a guy who’s seriously hit the mat. In a fight, I’d know it was over from the look in your eyes.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, can I trust you to chill out here? I have a client coming by and it’s something I need to be around for.”

Work. Jesus, Luke had to get back to work. He nodded and Matt lifted a hand. “Later.”

“Later.”

It was better when he was alone again. His eyes stung, but he kept sucking in deep breaths. He didn’t know where he was going to move to, but it didn’t matter.

There was only one place where he was home.

* * * *

Sian managed to get through the work day without calling Luke. She didn’t know what she’d say to him. She felt like they’d both decided to jump onto a moving train without any idea of where it would take them.

I’m scared.

Two words. If she told him that, he’d stay. Luke had always been ridiculously protective, doing his best to vet the men she dated even though she tried not to share. His interest had always seemed on the possessive side, but she’d put it down to him not wanting her to get hurt again.

So she knew she could use those magic words to get him to stay, but it would be for all the wrong reasons.

Now, as she watered the cement flowerpots outside the front door, she racked her brain for something, some kind of reason that wouldn’t give her away.
Hey, why rent some place when you own half this house?
Right, like Luke had ever cared about money. Luke cared about people, which was why he’d become a fireman.

Okay, how about excuse number two, one she was loathe to pull out of the drawer, but if it worked…
I get that we’re adults now and you probably want to live with someone. So you can just bring her here. It’s a big place and we’re both adults.

Yeah right. Except the thought of Luke with another woman made her want to puke. She remembered a date a couple of years ago that had taken her to an exclusive hotel. She’d seen Luke with one of his women, a beautiful stacked blonde. They’d been swimming in the pool and when the woman had pulled herself from the water, there had been no doubt she had everything Sian was lacking. She was curvaceous, not twig-boned, and she was…perfect. No mangled hand. No freezing when a guy got close to her.

Luke had had his hand between their bodies and she couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but suddenly she realised he was touching the woman intimately. Teasing her.

At once Sian had tingled at the idea of what that would
feel
like. Jesus, Luke’s hand on her. She’d also wanted to tear the woman away from him and shove her back in the water.

Mine.

Seeing him with another woman had led to a lot of hot, angry dreams. Luke touching her, then Luke with another woman. Sian had been so zapped and emotionally strained she’d been grateful Luke had always taken such care to keep his women out of sight. She didn’t want to meet them. She didn’t want to pretend to be nice.

When Luke’s familiar red SUV pulled up, Sian froze with the watering can hanging from her good hand. He stared at her through the windshield, his own expression hidden by his mirrored sunglasses.

Finally he got out of the truck, moving slowly as if he were exhausted.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Okay, next she’d talk about how hot it was, which was stupid since it was always hot in July. Duh. “Luke, about you moving out…”

“It won’t take long. I don’t have much shit.”

Sian’s body seemed to take over. So she blocked his path into the house.

Luke stood there, looming over her, smelling fresh from his after-work shower, his wide shoulders straining his simple T-shirt. He still had those damned sunglasses on so she couldn’t read his eyes. She wondered if it was deliberate.

“You don’t collect stuff like I do,” she joked, trying to pull them onto familiar, lighter ground. “Though you’ve always been patient about driving me to all those flea markets I love.”

Sian loved the whole shabby chic thing. When their parents were gone, she’d dragged Luke to a ton of open markets to pick up the recycled Italian gilt chandeliers she’d painted white or the furniture she’d slip-covered in creamy denim. Now she wondered if the frankly feminine look of the house had ever bothered him, but he’d never said anything.

“We could redo the house!” she blurted.

Luke frowned. “Sian…what the hell? You love how the house looks. And I’m not driving to another out-of-state flea market this year. Anymore seashells and gilt and we’ll have to talk intervention.”

He was teasing her the way he always did. Maybe it would be all right. Everything she was feeling spilled out in a messy ball of words. “Last night… If you need sex, I’m willing.”

Luke froze, staring at her.

Oh God, oh God, she knew she was saying this all wrong. But she’d do anything. He couldn’t leave. Luke, her Luke.

“You’re probably between girlfriends and I’m not seeing anyone.” Wow, wasn’t that an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“Are you offering me sex so I’ll stay here with you?” Luke asked.

And whoa, didn’t it sound even more pathetic when he spelt it out baldly.

“I…we’re adults.”

“You’re my sister.”

“Stepsister.”

“You said it was sick…what happened between us, me wanting you.” He looked sharply away.

“No, oh no, Luke…”

“This isn’t about you and me. This is about Mr Henry.” Sian knew whatever Luke said next was going to hurt. He knew all her vulnerabilities. He stepped over them lightly, but he knew where they were. “He kept leaving you all the time while you were growing up, but I was always around. You rely on that.”

“Luke—”

“I was always around because I was a kid, Sian. Not because I had any more choice than you did. Now it’s time we make choices as adults.”

But I want you here.
The metal watering can scraped against the porch as Sian stepped back to let Luke walk past her.

Only he didn’t leave the way she’d expected. He yanked off his sunglasses as if they were a sudden impediment to reading her. Blazing blue eyes devoured her face. “You want sex with me for all the wrong reasons but you know what?” He laughed again. “I don’t give a fuck.”

Wrong? Right? Just words. Her body was closer to his. She reached out and gripped his arm. His skin was hot to the touch.

“Those guys you go out with don’t make you come. That’s why last night you needed it.”

“They never make me come,” she admitted. Was that dreamy voice hers?

“But I can.”

“Yes.” His hand was under her short skirt. He held her gaze as he went to the heart of her body, no waiting, no foreplay or pretty path of words.

He yanked on her panties, tearing them aside.

Sian gasped.

“Spread your legs,” he ordered, his face hard. He was giving her what she’d said she wanted, but everything was still so warped between them.

Sian widened her stance and was rewarded by Luke’s callused fingertips brushing against her. She whimpered.

“You’re wet for me.” A note of wonder in his voice.

Oh, God, how could she not be wet for him?

They were standing outside. The house and drive were secluded, but anyone could drive up, see them like this. Somehow it only added to Sian’s excitement. Luke had touched that other woman in public. This was Sian getting upfront and personal with his edgy side.

Chapter Six

Luke crowded her against one of the white pillars. The watering can fell from her hand, ringing on impact. The loud clatter was lost in the hot drum of her blood.