32. charlee
THIRTY-TWO
charlee
Lucas tugged me along to the back room, hidden from the front of the shop by a privacy wall. No sooner had he flicked on a lamp next to the couch than Lucas sat and pulled me on top of him.
“Say it again.”
My hands lay on his biceps, the veins in his arms bulging.
“I love you,” I repeated, just as I had said in the bar a second before Lucas told my friends we’d be right back. “I never stopped loving you, Lucas.”
“Fuck.” He began to unbutton his jeans. In response, I wiggled off the couch, tossed off my boots, and did the same. Dropping my own jeans to the floor, I repositioned myself back onto Lucas. He pulled my thong to the side, his thumbs and the material of my underwear both massaging my clit.
“You sexy fucking thing. What a good girl you are,” he said before grabbing my hair and pulling me toward him. “I can’t decide if I want to rip that thong off you, finger fuck you while you look at me, or bury myself inside you immediately.”
I was about to give him my opinion until I remembered Lucas liked having control in the bedroom. And I liked giving it.
So instead, I smiled. “Up to you.”
“Mmmmm.”
That sound deep in his throat meant I’d hit a home run. Pleasing him was such a rush for me.
“Now come and ride me, baby.”
I didn’t need much more of an invitation. Soaking wet and ready for him, I let him guide himself inside me, full hilt. I’d intended to take it slow, to show him how much I did, indeed, love him, but all my intentions fled the second I looked back down at his face. Holding onto my hips, his dick deep inside me, Lucas looked like a man who was holding back. And I didn’t want him to. Not with me.
“Give me all of it.”
“Fuck, Charlee.”
He grabbed the back of my head with both hands, twisted his fingers into my hair and pulled. My back arched as the new angle had me taking him even deeper than before. The combination of him inside me and his complete control despite the fact that I was riding him. . .
“You know, I don’t recall you being a screamer, Charlee,” Lucas said, his voice deep and sexy.
“I’m not,” I gasped as his hips thrusted upward.
“Hmmm. Well. You’re about to be.” With that, one hand went back between us, working my clit, as the other tightened its grip.
“Come for me, Charlee. Be a good girl and come for me.”
“I want to,” I panted. “I really do.”
“Come for me, Charlee. Right fucking now. Do it.”
How could a person come on demand? And yet, that’s exactly what happened. My legs tensed and began to shake. I screamed his name as loud as I could as the biggest orgasm of my life took over every bit of my body.
When Lucas called my name, too, his grip loosened in my hair, and we rode the wave together. My energy having completely peaked, a cold sweat glistening all over me, I collapsed onto his chest. Lucas’s arms encircled me. Held on tight.
“Jesus fucking Christ, woman. You are sexy as all hell.”
“Mmmm,” I murmured. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
After a few minutes he asked, “So. . .never stopped, huh?”
I lifted my head. “Never,” I answered automatically. “It’s why I tried so hard to learn your whereabouts. When you came home but didn’t get in touch with me—”
His finger went over my lips. “Lost time sucks, but let’s focus on the present instead.”
“And the future?”
“Later. Even that is uncertain, but the present you can always bank on. And right now, it feels so fucking good to still be inside you as you. . . the present,” he reiterated.
I supposed there would be time to talk about our future later, so for now I simply took his advice and enjoyed the moment. “I love you,” I said one last time so he knew how serious I was about it.
“I love you, too, Charlee.”
But there was something about the way he said the words. As if. . . as if he continued to hold something back. And as much as I didn’t want to worry about the future and would try to remain fully in the present, my brain would not shut off.
I closed my eyes.
Something about the way he said it. But I couldn’t figure out exactly what.
By the time we disentangled ourselves and made our way out of the tattoo parlor, it had been longer than we anticipated. Zoe texted to let me know she and Natalie had decided to turn in. Both of them had early days tomorrow.
“The girls are gone,” I said as we stepped out into the street. “But unfortunately, I came with Natalie. She figured you might be able to get me home?”
“Stay with me tonight.”
We seemed suddenly to be moving at warp speed, and I couldn’t say it was a bad thing.
“I don’t have any clothes. Or a toothbrush—”
“I have extras. Tomorrow I’ll take you back to your house to change early. Maybe we can grab a coffee, and I’ll drop you off. Pick you up and start all over again.”
People were beginning to stream out of Boots and Brews. Karaoke was probably over.
“That sounds an awful lot like. . .” How did I say this without labeling us?
“Dating? I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re doing, Charlee.”
“I know. I just mean it sounds like serious dating.”
“When two people say they love each other and just fucked like we did—”
“Lucas!”
He rolled his eyes. The guy seriously didn’t care about what anyone thought. Thankfully, no one had seemed to hear him.
“Anyway.” I cocked my head to the side and mock frowned. “I would say we’re venturing into the realm of serious dating. Yeah?”
He pulled me into him. “Yeah. So, what d’you think? Come back inside. Spend the night. Maybe the weekend?”
“The weekend, huh?”
“If you want. I have a pretty busy Saturday and was thinking. . . maybe if you have a few minutes you can help with a design or two. I have two women coming in looking for fine line work, very feminine stuff.”
“Ahh, and just because I’m the girl, I should design the girl stuff?’
He slapped my ass.
“What was that for?”
“No good reason except I felt like it. Want you to get used to me slapping that sweet ass of yours every opportunity I can get.”
“Even in public?”
“Especially in public.”
I laughed. “Anyway—” I was about to tell him that I’d love to help with some of the designs, mention that I’d been tooling around a bit on the side, when one of the assistant managers at Lakeside walked by.
“Charlee,” he said. The man was a few years older than me, but he looked like was he was sixty. The haircut didn’t help. “I saw you guys in there,” he said to us. “Great voice, man,” he said to Lucas.
I introduced the two men and was about to take Lucas up on his offer when suddenly it was like a bucket of ice water was tossed onto my face.
“Out celebrating the big promotion?” Though he didn’t say it with any malice or jealousy that I could tell, the bottom line was Lucas now wanted to know what the hell was going on.
“Charlee?” he asked immediately.
“Why don’t we head back inside?” I asked, pretending to laugh off the suggestion that I was out celebrating.
“Or not,” Lucas said, stubborn and suspicious as ever. He refused to budge.
“Hey, good seeing you out and about. Nice to meet you, Lucas.” And with that, my father’s employee walked away, not realizing the shit storm he’d just created.
“Promotion?”
Fuck.
Fuckitity, fuck, fuck.
“Let’s go in—”
“Tell me,” he said. And suddenly, I didn’t like the demanding tone. In the bedroom was one thing, but otherwise. . .
“I’m not a fan of your tone right now,” I said as fewer and fewer people came out of the bar next door.
“Well I’m not a fan of finding out you got a promotion from a stranger,” he countered.
“I didn’t get a promotion,” I said.
“That’s not what it sounded like.”
“My father offered me one. I didn’t take it. Or not take it. Either way, no one should have found out about the possibility yet, but Dad made an announcement at a manager’s meeting the other day.”
“Okay, and you didn’t mention it because? Seems pretty significant to me.”
“Because I didn’t want you to think my father was continuing to control my life. I’ll have you know at dinner last night I told my parents we were together, were staying together, and refused to say anything more about it.”
“What’s the promotion, Charlee?”
I pursed my lips together.
“What’s he offering?”
He made it sound dirty somehow. “Vice president.”
“Of Lakeside?”
“Yeah,” I said, resentful for whatever reason.
“And the current VP?”
“Is retiring.”
Lucas was pissed. “I just don’t get why you didn’t mention something so significant?”
“Because you’re not reasonable when it comes to my father.”
He made a sound that told me exactly what he thought of that statement. “I wonder why?”
It was like we were boxed in with nowhere to go.
“So this is always gonna be a thing between us?”
“Your father? I don’t know, Charlee. You tell me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Except the roller coaster of emotions with Lucas was sometimes too much to handle. When things were good, they were really fucking good. But somehow, he had the ability to cut through me, to wound me, like no one ever had before.
“I think you should take me home,” I said with nothing else left to offer. Maybe I should have told him. But it was my father’s meddling that had caused so many problems since the start.
“Let’s go.”
No arguing. No trying to talk me out of it. Lucas simply began walking into the alley where his truck was parked. I peeked at the wall that he’d pinned me up against. And thought of this past week, especially just now, in his shop. How the hell had we gone from that to this?
Lucas shut down so damn easily. He was like a brick wall even as he held the door open for me. It was as if he had a switch, and there was no dimmer. Just on and off.
Right now, he was most definitely off. Which was fine because I was too. If he could be stubborn, so could I. Begging in the bedroom was one thing, but I wasn’t going to do it on a regular basis outside of that context. If he didn’t want to talk, fine.
Not surprisingly, when we pulled up to my house, Lucas didn’t say a word. Sometimes when I felt like I was with the old Lucas— the one I knew before he became an Army sniper, before being deployed to two active combat zones, neither of which I knew enough about to know how they had changed him since Lucas didn’t like to talk specifics about his time in either— it was easy to forget he’d been gone so long. And had become a different man.
Now, glancing briefly at his profile before jumping out of the truck, it wasn’t hard to forget at all. This was the disciplined, almost cold, Lucas. The one whose shell I didn’t know how to crack. The one who had asked me for a dating arrangement I knew was wrong but agreed to just to be with him.
I slammed the door shut and realized he hadn’t opened it for me. Honeymoon, I guess, was over before it really even got started. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe losing even more of myself wasn’t a place I needed to be at the moment. Because who Charlee Donovan was, what she wanted out of life, out of her career, was about as clear to me at this moment as what would happen with Lucas, a man I alternatively loved and wanted to give a swift kick in the rear to sometimes, and tonight had absolutely been one of those times.