20. Toro Belly #2
“I think that’s just to women. And since I am a woman, I guess I can reappropriate the inappropriate compliment?” I considered. “Should I catcall you too when you get out of the spring? ‘Hey, baby, nice ass. Wouldn’t mind serving it for breakfast.’”
At that, we both started laughing.
“My turn now, but I’ll warn you, the question is definitely inappropriate,” Lucas said a minute or two later. “Like any amateur scientist, I have to get to the bottom of another great mystery.”
I chuckled. “Okay, warned. What’s that?”
His eyes met mine, suddenly solemn, but a little nervous. “Do you ever think about it? Having sex?”
“Do I—what?” I sat up, then shrank back into the water when I realized what I’d almost bared.
“I only ask because…well, I know you’re a virgin, obviously. And I know why, because you’ve told me. But what I don’t know is whether you even want that sort of intimacy. It occurred to me after what happened…the other day… that I’d never asked.”
There must have been something on my face that alarmed him, because he continued on in a fashion that could only be characterized as babbling.
“I don’t mean I’ve been thinking about how to have sex with you—I mean, I have, sort of, because, well, that kiss knocked my fucking socks off, and you’re incredibly beautiful, so I’d have to be dead not to even consider what it would be like—but what I mean is that I never thought to ask if you even wanted more.
You said maybe. Which doesn’t mean yes. I thought that was maybe to me, but maybe you meant it for everything. The whole act.”
By the time he was done, I was turned fully to the back of the bench, my arms folded under my chin, uncaring that all of my shoulders and upper back were out of the water, which now acted as a translucent white bandeau. I needed to cool off more than I needed to stay modest.
Lucas seemed to notice, but once again, diverted his gaze.
“I…” I started, unsure how to answer. “Well, the short answer is…yes, I have thought about it. And yes, I want to do it. Believe me, my sister has asked.”
“Joni?”
I nodded. “Zero boundaries.”
He blinked. And waited for me to continue, just like I had with him.
“I think about it a lot,” I continued, more comfortable talking with him about it than I would have thought. “More than I used to. Especially when I see other people…well, like Joni and Nathan, for example. They can’t keep their hands off each other.”
“Hunt? Really? He seems a bit stiff.”
“Not around her. She takes down his boundaries too, believe me.” I sighed. “So, yeah, I want it. I suppose I was always just too shy to make a move with people.”
“People like my brother?”
His eyes were very much not meeting mine anymore, but the tension that had reappeared in his neck and shoulders told me he was waiting for the answer.
“I—yeah, I suppose. But…”
I found myself unable to say exactly what I meant. Had I actually imagined sex with Daniel? Really imagined it, in a visceral way that actually included real body parts?
Maybe.
But not really.
I thought back to the night before I left for Paris.
The night I’d burrowed into Daniel’s closet while being forced to listen to the man of my dreams fucking another woman in a way that wasn’t exactly romantic. Or passionate.
It was funny. I hadn’t thought about that night in a very long time other than to remember my horror.
But now, I remembered the woman had liked what he was doing to her.
Maybe?
I didn’t think she’d orgasmed, although the noises she was making hadn’t sounded like anything I’d ever heard from another human. But what did I know?
Daniel had definitely finished.
All I knew was that after that, my fantasies about Daniel changed, somehow. They’d moved to the realm of love and romance only. Whispering sweet nothings. Smiles and flowers and hearts and weddings.
Maybe a tempered kiss here and there.
But nothing about the body.
Certainly nothing about mine.
Lucas, however, had kissed me twice, touched me a few other times, and the memory of those few moments set my skin alight with anticipation.
I hadn’t shut out those memories. Rather, I cradled them like precious jewels. Pulled them out in the dark of night when I couldn’t sleep. Yearned for more, though I still hadn’t articulated that to myself.
And yes, I’d touched myself thinking about them.
More than once, actually.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I don’t think about Daniel that way like I used to. Really…not at all. Not anymore.”
Somehow, Lucas and I were closer than we’d been all week. During our conversation, we’d both inched along the stone bench until only a few feet of water separated us. I could see the droplets on his shoulders, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath.
Without thinking, I reached out with one hand and wiped a drop of water from his mouth Those curiously full lips, so masculine, yet soft on a face that was otherwise carved from stone.
Lucas froze under my touch, then shuddered as my thumb drew down to his chin, then along the strong line of his jaw.
“Marie,” he breathed. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling brave,” I said softly, knowing it was the truth.
I couldn’t say why. It didn’t make sense.
He was my boss. Fifteen, almost sixteen years older than me. Impossibly rich, more powerful, the kind of man who could squish me and all my family members like bugs if he so wanted.
But I didn’t see any of those things in this pool. Right now, Lucas was just a man, and I was just a woman, tripped to our skins in this beautiful place, naked with our bodies and our minds.
And in the spirit of genuine honesty, there was only one thing I wanted to do.
“I do think about it,” I said again. “I think about it with you.”
My hand continued its exploration below his ear, learning the texture of his stubble stubble grewn through the day, the exact pattern of the muscles in his neck and jaw, the architecture of his bones.
Then I moved down across his clavicle and to his sternum, where, with a deep breath, I slid it under the water.
His hand fell over mine, trapping it against his chest. “No.”
I swallowed. “Oh. Okay.” I tried to pull my hand back, but he kept it there, trapped. “Lucas?”
His heart pounded beneath my palm. His eyes were closed, and the muscle I’d just mapped in his jaw ticking while he took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled over several seconds.
He wasn’t letting me continue. But he wasn’t letting me go either.
My mind scrambled for a foothold, trying to find the shape of what this was.
He hadn’t wanted “maybe,” he said at the farm.
Because he had wanted me there too. And badly.
I was willing to bet that if he had allowed my hand to keep going, eventually I would have found the same evidence of that desire now.
He said I would beg.
Well, I wasn’t ready to do that. I wasn’t ready for sex either.
But I did want something more than a kiss.
There was no “maybe” about it.
“Courage ,” I murmured, to myself and maybe to him too.
Then, before Lucas opened his eyes or I lost my nerve, I lifted my leg under the water, then slid it across him in one quick motion until I was no longer seated on the bench, but straddling his lap. The water lapped between us, covering my breasts to just above my nipples.
My hand was still pinned to his chest.
Yeah. I was right about him wanting me. The steel length now nestled against my inner thigh told me that plainly.
His eyes popped open, dark and wide and stunned. “Marie?—”
“I want to,” I insisted. “I want to touch you. And I want you to touch me.”
But his reaction wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
His body remained stiff. The way he was sitting, with his neck craned back, eyes squeezed shut again, jaw clenched, and all of him quivering with tension, he didn’t look like he was enjoying himself. At all.
I sat back on his knees and took my hand from his chest so I could cover my own, aware of the way one move would bare my breasts completely. Aware now that he may not want to see them.
His eyes opened, a typhoon whirling in their depths. “What’s wrong?”
“I—” I swallowed, looking at anything but him. “Nothing’s wrong. For me, anyway. But you…it’s okay, Lucas, if you don’t want to do this. If you changed your mind. About me.”
I made to slide off him, but his hands found my thighs like iron vises, clamping me in place.
“What do you mean, if I changed my mind?” he asked through gritted teeth.
God, he was really going to make me say it.
“I just mean…”
The typhoon threatened to strike, demanding the truth.
I found I had to give it.
“I meant it’s all right that maybe…maybe I’m not what you thought?”
A deep furrow carved between his brows. “Marie, I’m having a lot of trouble getting the blood to flow to my brain here, so I need you to speak more plainly. Specifically, what the fuck are you talking about?”
My God, he looked like he was in so much pain.
“Just that, I’m not…perfect. Like my sister. Or a model or whoever someone like you would usually, um, be with. Like this.”
The frown deepened. “Marie, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I am not usually with anyone like this. I have never, relatively innocently, shared an outdoor spring every night with a woman for ten straight days only to have her climb onto my lap at the end.”
It was hard to explain the jolt of inadequacy that possibly had nothing to do with Lucas. The feeling of being a woman in a world where the media was saturated with images of cellulite-free thighs, perfectly flat stomachs, and tits that could be held up by mere strings.
My body was a thing of function, not elegance.
Louis had helped me find shapes and clothes that made me feel beautiful, but I knew the truth.
Compared to the creatures who graced the covers of magazines or socialites who dated men like the Lyons brothers, I was completely and totally average, full of awkward curves, thighs that needed Photoshop, breasts buttoned shirts couldn’t hold.