Lusting For Luke_A Billionaires of Palm Beach Story Read online

  Crap! Is the guy dying?

  I fished my phone out of my purse once again. “Hold on,” I told him, unsure if he could hear or understand me. “I’m going to call 911.”

  Still keeping my eyes on him, my hand trembled as I punched a few buttons on my phone and dialed the dispatcher. She asked about our emergency and our location, then told me that an ambulance would be on the way. As instructed, I set my phone on speaker and placed the device on the ground beside me. In between questions from the dispatcher about the man’s irregular breathing patterns and her coaching me on performing chest compressions, I kept coaxing him to wake up and talk to me.

  “C’mon, c’mon…” I pumped and pumped and pumped on his surprisingly hard chest. My arm muscles ached, and after I don’t know how many rounds, sweat beaded on the back of my neck and my lungs burned for air of my own.

  Yet I kept enough oxygen aside to beg him to do something to show me that he’d be all right.

  Damn it, anything!

  But my pleas didn’t do much good.

  In fact, his breathing slowed to shorter, less frequent gasps, his skin grew sallow under the dim waterfront lamplights, and I didn’t feel any sense of relief at all.

  Not until I heard the loud sirens of the ambulance, saw the red-and-blue swirls of its lights, and caught a glimpse of the wagon pulling up along the park pathway.

  “Miss, can you tell us what’s going on?” asked one of the male paramedics as he sprinted over to us. He’d just hopped out of the passenger side of the ambulance.

  “I-I don’t know.” I snatched up my phone, stood, and took a step away from the homeless man so that the EMT could start helping him. I noticed just then how people had been gathering, gawking. But no one had bothered to help me. Not one. “He asked me for money, and then when he walked away, he collapsed. I can’t wake him up.” My stomach lurched, and a hot flash coursed through me. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

  “It’s a good thing you called, miss,” he said, and turned back to the homeless man.

  The other paramedic soon arrived, and he carried a long, red stretcher. I backed away to give them further room to work. I didn’t leave completely though, I just kept watching them try to get him help that he clearly needed.

  And that’s when my phone buzzed for the third time that night. I hadn’t even realized that I still clutched it in my left hand.

  “Helen, I’m not going to an—” I looked at the screen and stopped short, then punched answer on the screen. “Luke?”

  “Hey, Natalie.” His voice sounded off kilter and a little less steady than usual. “What’s going on?”

  “Why did you call me?” I took a seat once again on the bench.

  “I just got home from New York,” he said. “And I just felt like I needed to call you. I can’t stop thinking about the other night and I just…I didn’t mean for it to come across that way.”

  I sighed. “It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

  “No, I think it is.” He paused. “Listen, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” My answer couldn’t have convinced anyone, and I knew it as soon as I said it.

  “Did I call at a bad time?”

  “Well, I…” My attention focused again on the man, who still had the emergency responders kneeling over him “Actually, I’m at Flagler Park. This homeless guy passed out in front of me and…well, I don’t know if he’s going to be okay.”

  “What?” Luke’s voice sounded a little sharper.

  “They’re working on him right now. He’s…god, I don’t know.”

  “Did you say you’re at Flagler?”

  “Yeah.” I blew out a large breath. “Right by the waterfront.”

  “I just left the airport. I’ll be right there.”

  “What? You’re coming here?”

  Luke didn’t answer. He’d hung up.

  “We’re going to have to put him on the backboard,” I heard one of the paramedics say. The comment shook away my thoughts of Luke and brought me back to my immediate concerns about the person who had passed out in front of me.

  I got up from my seat and moved back toward the EMTs. “What else can I do to help?”

  The growing darkness made it hard for me to see them do their work, but I could still make out the general idea. The first paramedic turned toward me. “Did he say anything strange before he passed out?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Nothing out of the ordinary, I guess. He wanted money.”

  The paramedic and his coworker began to move their patient onto the backboard. “Didn’t complain of any chest or stomach pains?”

  “No.” I shook my head as I played our interaction over again in my mind. “I don’t think he’s had a shower in a while, and he seemed pretty desperate, but other than that… I can’t think of anything.”

  The two emergency responders stabilized the man’s neck with a brace, rolled him onto a backboard then they heaved him onto the stretcher. The second EMT, the larger one, fastened a few of the buckles. “It looks like a heart attack to me,” he said to his colleague.

  The first EMT grunted in agreement. “He may have hit his head when he fell, too. Likely, at least has a concussion.”

  “Where are you taking him?” I asked.

  “Good Samaritan is the closest,” he said.

  My thoughts switched to the myriad of hospital bills this man would run up if he had indeed suffered a heart attack and survived. Thousands of dollars. He wouldn’t be able to pay them, so someone else would end up with the bills.

  The two men finished strapping him to the gurney. They disengaged some latches, raised the gurney into the up position, and rolled him to the ambulance, which already had the backdoors open. Finally, they placed him on the mobile bed in the center of the transport and said a few other things to each other that I couldn’t quite catch.

  “I’m just—” I murmured, and then felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and found Luke standing there. “Oh, my god.”

  “When I called you, I was just around the corner. A few blocks up the street. It only took a minute to find a parking spot,” he said, a smirk pulling at his mouth. “So here I am.” He raised his hand as if he wanted to touch my face, but then his hand fell back to his side. “Looks like you’ve had quite an interesting evening.

  “Yes, I have.” My attention shifted to the ambulance, which the EMTs were finishing loading up before they left for the hospital. “I think he’s going to be okay. I hope so…”

  Luke pointed in the direction of the ambulance. “Was it pretty bad? What exactly happened?”

  “He asked me for money, I gave it to him.” I shrugged, still incredulous about everything that had happened tonight. First the date, then the emergency, and now Luke…

  “How much money did you give him?”

  “My last fifteen dollars.” One technician got in the driver seat of the ambulance, cranked the engine, and flipped on the sirens. “He said he needed money for a bus ticket to Miami.” I glanced over at Luke, who wasn’t paying attention to the flashing lights or the commotion of the ambulance. Instead, he was engrossed in what I had to say. His eyes were wide, and his lips parted. “Something about the way he spoke to me made me feel bad for him. I believed him. And then when he walked away, he collapsed.”

  Luke put his hand on my shoulder and stepped closer to me. “You saved that man’s life, Natalie.”

  I waved a hand and looked away. “Anyone else would have done the same thing.”

  “No, they wouldn’t have.” His voice softened as he pulled nearer to me. Our gazes connected again, and a spark ignited in my stomach once more, creating a fire that threatened to consume me. “You’re amazing, Natalie. Do you know that?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I’m sorry about the other day.” Luke lifted his hand again and brushed a few strands of hair out of my face. The softness of his touch only heated the growing warmth in my stomach. “I kept thinki
ng about it in New York. I’m sorry. Let’s start over, okay?” He gave me a short bow. “Pretend you just met me.”

  I cocked my head. “I don’t think it works that way, but I forgive you. I’m not mad. In fact, I don’t think I ever really was.”

  His fingers found mine. “You’ve had quite a night. Do you mind if I take you home?”

  “I’d like that a lot.”

  “Good.” He squeezed my hand. “Let’s go.”

  “So…this isn’t the way back to my apartment,” I said from the passenger seat of the BMW about five minutes later as Luke drove the car across the Royal Park Bridge from West Palm Beach into Palm Beach.

  “Oh, it’s not?” Luke gave me a sideways glance as he brought the car to a stop at the first light on the island. “My bad. You said go home, so I just thought—”

  “Don’t act so innocent.”

  “What? I’m trying to be a nice guy here. I just saved your life.”

  I laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far. But thanks.”

  “Besides, my place is closer.” Luke took his hand off the steering wheel and wrapped it around mine again. “I figured…”

  I laughed. “Figured what?”

  He shrugged. “I’m trying to be a gentleman here, I promise. So, why don’t we just stop there first, and then see what we think?”

  I knew better than to argue. In fact, I didn’t want to. In comparison to what I’d just had to deal with, Luke and his constricted, strange, gilded life seemed like a dream. And I wanted more of him. Being around him felt like being on a drug. My eyelids seemed heavier, and my muscles relaxed in his presence.

  If I wasn’t careful, I’d become addicted to Luke Rothschild very fast.

  I was still thinking this fifteen minutes later as I sat at his kitchen table with a fresh glass of wine. “You live a beautiful life. That’s undeniable.”

  Luke sat across the table from me. He, too, held a glass of wine. “It’s beautiful on the outside, I’ll admit that. But I told you, it comes with its own challenges.”

  “Faye, and what happened to her,” I said softly.

  He nodded and set his jaw a little tighter.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought her up again.” I glanced away and focused on the tilework of the backsplash for a second. “I know you don’t like to talk about her.”

  “It’s okay,” Luke said, and the warmth in his voice made me turn my eyes back to him. “I like the fact that you do. Most people, outside my family don’t like to bring her up. It’s like they’re scared to upset me. But you’re not, are you?”

  “No, but that’s because I can be a blunt person. It’s just easier in life to call things like they are, sometimes.” I studied him. “And your father is another huge challenge, isn’t he?”

  Luke’s handsome mouth moved into a wry smile. “He’s certainly one of them, yes.”

  “Speaking of him, how did the trip to New York go? I thought you’d be staying the whole weekend.”

  “No, I decided not to. It wasn’t simple. It’s never simple.” Luke sipped his wine. “I don’t like what New York does to me, I came back earlier than I first expected. It seemed easier to be in Palm Beach than to be stuck dealing with family expectations in a city I hate.”

  “Hate is a pretty strong word.”

  He drank some more wine. “Only word that fits.”

  Something about the wistful expression on Luke’s face made me think he wasn’t telling me all that he could about whatever had gone on in New York.

  “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

  “No,” he said evenly.

  I looked away again and focused for a moment on a large, abstract, watercolor painting that hung on the kitchen wall above a low set of cabinets. When I glanced back at Luke once more, I swallowed. “Well, I’m sure it can be complicated.”

  Of course, I didn’t understand. How could I?

  Luke cleared his throat. “Here’s the important thing to remember—it doesn’t matter how much money is at stake or what people ‘think’ about my family’s legacy. In the end, it’s all about the basics. My father likes control. In fact, he worships it. He thinks if he controls me, he controls his legacy.” He eyed me. “You know what? You’re really gorgeous, Natalie.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” A flush of warmth spread up my neck and face. “But, thank you.”

  “I bet people tell you that all the time.”

  “They don’t.”

  “A shame.”

  My gaze met his. “You should see the kinds of guys that I usually meet. Like the one earlier tonight? Before you found me at the waterfront?” I shook my head as if that would shake the unpleasant memory out of my head. “He was a real winner.”

  “How?”

  “Pretty on the outside, but that’s about it.” I closed my eyes at the memory. “Nothing underneath the surface. Someone who idolizes himself as much as his daily trips to the gym.”

  “You don’t need guys like that.” He got up from the table and moved to the refrigerator, where he offered me another round. When I declined, he refilled his wine and took a drink from his refreshed glass. “You need a real man.”

  “And that’s you?”

  “Yes,” he said as he sauntered toward me, glass in hand. “Haven’t you guessed? That’s me.”

  Luke stopped only when he reached my side, and when he did, he placed his wine on the table, then stroked the edge of my jawline with his index finger. “You’re nothing like the other women I’ve been with in a long time. And I like that.”

  “I like it, too,” I whispered, suppressing a shudder of excitement from his hot touch.

  The words had barely escaped my lips before Luke leaned down and kissed me. He crushed his mouth to mine, and it sent a chill through my body. I couldn’t stop myself from kissing him back, and I realized in that moment just how much I wanted that from him.

  We stayed locked together. The moment was too perfect, too much of a relief. Soon, I stood from the chair so that I’d be able to meet his endless kisses full on, without any distractions. He groaned as I did this, and pulled me into his arms. We embraced like we’d both been waiting to do so for weeks, as if the moment had been building and demanded a release.

  “Jesus, Natalie,” he breathed against my mouth after a few moments. “I want you. Do you realize that?”

  “Good,” I replied. “Because I want you, too.”

  He pulled away a little farther. “I knew I had to have you when I first saw you that afternoon, when I almost hit you with my car.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t hit me. That would have sucked.”

  He chuckled and ran his hands up and down my exposed arms before stopping at my neck just underneath my hair. “Will you stay the night?”

  We both knew what would happen if I did, and he probably could guess that I would. Spending the night with him was a foregone conclusion. Still, I decided to tease him for a moment.

  “How badly would you like me to stay?”

  Luke pressed his forehead against mine. “Do you really have to ask a question like that? I think you can figure out the answer.”

  His mouth found mine again, and neither of us held anything back. We melted into each other, and before I knew it, he was leading me through the house, and up the wide staircase. “My room is on the left,” he said when I reached the catwalk landing that crossed over the expansive living room and united the two major wings of the house.

  As soon as we arrived at the doorway, he lifted me up, then carried me to the bed and laid me down on the silky duvet. Luke’s master bedroom featured a California king bed, a few lounge chairs, and an open area that I assumed ended at the master bathroom. Two large pieces of modern art complemented the minimalist décor.

  “I’m going to make you scream,” he murmured. “Like no one else has before.”

  “Good,” I said, already losing myself against his touch. “Because I need you to fuck me. Now.”

 
He lowered his head and growled in my ear. “Do you know what you just said?”

  “Yes. And I meant it.”

  Luke must have taken me at my word, because his lips covered mine again, and the kisses intensified as a fever built between us. His hands seemed like they were everywhere, and nowhere all at once. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I untied the straps of my dress and pushed it down, leaving my collarbone and the top of my chest exposed. Luke followed my lead and traced a pathway down my body with his lips. When he arrived at my breasts, he massaged one with his hand and drew the other into his mouth.

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, god.”

  Luke played with my breasts for a while, then turned his attention further south. He pulled the dress down my hips and off my legs, taking my underwear with the garment. He explored my ribs and the soft swell of my stomach before stopping just underneath my belly button. As I lay naked before him, he spread my legs and slipped his index finger inside of me. I rose up to meet him, and the warmth inside me built as he stroked in and out of my core. He kissed me a few times as he pleased my body, and then his mouth traveled to the apex of my thighs.

  I groaned again.

  “You are so beautiful.”

  His tongue teased me where, moments before, his fingers had been. I relaxed against the bed and took in the ecstasy of it all, letting the moment wash over me like a smooth ocean wave. He tasted every part of me, and when I couldn’t take it any longer, I let go, giving in to my feelings and the utter rawness of how he seemed to know where I yearned to be touched. Before I knew it, he was naked, too.

  “Are you ready for more?” Luke whispered in my ear. “Because I’m not finished.”

  He found a condom in the nightstand and put it on, then moved us underneath the duvet. The cold sheets made me shiver, and the heat of his body seemed hotter. I craved every part of him, and I begged him to take me.