13. charlee
THIRTEEN
charlee
For a second, I thought he would pull me toward him. Instead, he placed a sort of plastic wrap over my tattoo, taped it, and let go.
Had I seriously gotten a tattoo today?
And had Lucas seriously said, There is a side to me that is very comfortable outside the limits of societal acceptance? What did that mean exactly?
The possibilities were endless.
“What do you drink these days?”
He moved toward a back room, and I couldn’t see him anymore. But I had gotten a glimpse of a very fine ass on his way out. Lucas was definitely built differently now than before. He’d always had muscles, but now they bulged. Clearly the man worked out, and it made me want to actually use that gym membership that collected dust only to be used every January.
“Lots of things. Vodka. Red wine,” I called to him. Did he have a bar back there? “Drier the better.”
I heard a refrigerator door open, and then a few minutes later, Lucas came back out with a beer and glass of red wine.
“I guess it’s happy hour,” I said, taking it from him.
“Against my better judgment,” he said, sitting back on the wheeled stool. “Feel free,” he said, gesturing to a couch.
I got up from the chair and took him up on the offer, sitting in the corner of it, arm propped up on the edge with wine. I took a sip. “Not bad.”
“Only the best for a Donovan.”
First shot fired.
“I guess that’s supposed to be some kind of dig?”
He shrugged. “I said what I said.”
“So, yes.”
Lucas didn’t answer. Talk about a tough nut to crack.
Where the hell was I supposed to go with that? It was like the new Lucas had a perpetual chip on his shoulder, but I had no idea why or what to do with it.
So, I’d start at the beginning. Taking a sip of wine, I dove in. “My father didn’t let up. That night, we got into a huge argument. He threatened. . .” I hated to make it all about my father, as if it was completely his fault. Except, it really was completely his fault. “He threatened not to pay for college,” I blurted.
Lucas’s hand froze halfway to his lips, his beer bottle dangling in midair.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“And you didn’t tell me that because?”
With a warped sense of loyalty toward my father, even now I tried to defend him. “I don’t know. He honestly thought it was best, that a serious relationship at that age—”
“It had nothing to do with our relationship,” Lucas said, finally taking a swig of his beer. “He thought you were too good for me. Daddy’s princess dating the guy from across the river whose father is the town drunk? I guarantee it had nothing to do with your age, Charlee.”
“You’re wrong.”
He laughed in my face. At which point I glared at him, thinking he would reverse course. Instead, Lucas seemed unrepentant.
“Seriously? What’s with you, Lucas? Where’s the nice guy I knew in high school?”
“Knew?” His eyes narrowed. “You mean dated. Kissed. The one who felt you up behind Buona’s Pizza after a football game. Who got you off with my, what did you call them, magical fingers? I think we were well beyond ‘knowing’ each other, Charlee.”
A vision of Lucas with his hands up my sundress on the Ferris wheel at the Summer Kickoff Fair flashed through my mind.
“Ahh, I see you remember at least one of those times.”
“You’re not playing fair, Lucas.”
“No? What exactly does playing fair look like?”
“Like you keeping the conversation clean so we can get to the bottom of things.”
“Clean, huh? So, you don’t actually want to know what I’m thinking right now?”
That felt like a trick question.
“I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking. Which is why I’d like to focus on the breakup. And the fact that you never gave me a chance to explain. And then, within a week, you were gone. No contact again for ten friggin’ years.”
“Go ahead and guess.”
“Guess what?”
“What I’m thinking. If you get it right, I’ll rehash anything you want.”
I took a sip of wine. And a stab at his thoughts. “You were thinking something dirty.”
“You’re gonna need to be more specific there, bright eyes.”
I couldn’t even imagine. Nor was I inclined to verbalize the thoughts that were floating across my brain. “I don’t know. I give up.”
“So easily?” Lucas wheeled himself toward me so he was directly in front of the couch where I sat, the tattoo he’d just given me feeling almost like a brand. “I was thinking about ripping your pants down and fingering you,” he said, his voice low and deeper than before. “Keeping my grip on you while your knees buckle. Imagining you looking at me but unable to speak because my hand will be covering your mouth to keep you quiet.”
His voice would haunt my dreams like the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future sent to torture me for breaking up with him. If I’d ever heard anything sexier in my life, I wasn’t aware of it at the moment.
I swallowed. And wondered if the clenching between my legs was really what I thought it was.
“Is that what you’d have guessed?”
I shook my head, unable to speak.
“Then you’d have been right. Because what I was really thinking was, if it were up to me, you wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. Pants down, zero fucks given. You’d be mine.”
Holy shit. Was he for real? “That’s. . . what you were thinking?” I managed to say.
Lucas smiled in a way that told me to cross my legs if I didn’t want to spontaneously come right here and now.
“Actually,” he said, his voice somehow sounding even deeper, more gravelly, “what I was really thinking was that you wouldn’t have a fucking choice.”
He said the word fucking with an emphasis only a man like him could pull off, with full-on emphasis on that first syllable, as if it were as much of a delicious threat as an adjective.
“Well then. . .” I was wholly unprepared for this Lucas.
Intrigued? Yes. Mindfucked? Yes. Turned on? Most definitely. But prepared? Hell no.
“That’s what I thought, Charlee.” He took a long swig of beer and wheeled his stool away. “That’s exactly what I thought.”