Chapter 22 #4
I see a clearing ahead, maybe a parking lot for a trailhead. Twigs snap under my steps, and I whip my head left to right, speeding as fast as I can. Branches fly by, the night envelops me, and a man stands there…
Chills cover my skin, and I gasp.
What…?
I blink, breathing hard as I keep running.
A man. Standing still and dressed in a navy-blue suit, watching me fly by.
I look back, but the space where he stood next to the tree is now empty.
I exhale hard. What the hell was that?
I…
I slow to a jog, turning around and searching the brush around the area.
Where did he go? He was right there.
Did I recognize him? I search faces in my brain—friends of my brothers and my parents, customers, business owners in town…
Dark hair, graying a little, but handsome.
Tan with well-manicured stubble on his face.
Around Jared and Madoc’s age, maybe a little older.
He wasn’t dressed for hiking. What the hell?
I feel like I’m never going to get out of this forest.
Twisting around, I slam into a wall, and my head is still reeling so much that I don’t fight as someone lifts me off my feet. One hand under my ass and another guiding my thigh around his waist, he raises me up, his hot breath caressing my jaw as I let out a little cry.
Fireworks whistle in the night, lighting up the earth underneath us, and I look down into Lucas’s face as the reds and golds from above flicker in his eyes.
Sweat mats the hair at his temples, the vein in his neck throbs, and his chest falls hard under my hands.
I try to swallow and wet my mouth, but as if he just came home from work and has been thinking about me all day, he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
I gaze into his blue pools. Wasn’t there something I was running from?
Something weird just happened behind me. What was it?
Quick footsteps pound the ground at my back, and Lucas doesn’t even break our gaze to see who it is.
“Into the woods,” he tells whoever it is. “Don’t watch, and make sure no one comes this way.”
Don’t watch?
I jerk my head, Noah and Farrow meeting my eyes for a moment. Then, throwing each other a scowl, they go separate ways into the woods like Lucas instructed.
Farrow knew I’d run into Lucas. And Noah might work for my brother, but he’s obviously not going to stand in Lucas’s way. I’ll remember this the next time they need me.
Lucas turns with me in his arms, and I notice the car just before he spins us around to walk toward it. Farrow probably moved it when Lucas took off to chase me earlier. He doesn’t want to explain to anyone else why his car is here, does he?
“Quinn,” Lucas whispers, staring at my mouth.
The heat of his stomach presses between my legs, his hard body making me throb. I expected him to be pissed. He looked angry when he set off to pursue me before. But his fingers are gentle, his breathing calm.
Nudging my chin up with his nose, he sinks into my neck, brushing his lips against my skin.
I shiver, but still…
“No.” I push him back and jump out of his arms.
Landing on my feet, I step back. And keep going.
He pinches his eyebrows together, and I look at his fingers balling into fists.
“You’re lying,” he says in a deep voice.
Am I? My body aches, and I can’t calm my fucking heart, but I’m not going to let him use me to avoid what he has to face.
“I’m not lying,” I reply. “I’m not like you.”
I’m not afraid to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear.
His jaw flexes, and he steps toward me as I back away.
“I know you’re lying,” he bites out, continuing to advance on me as I move. “What was your plan when I finally came home, huh?”
I narrow my eyes. My plan?
He quirks a smile, tilting his head to the side. “Come on, Quinn,” he taunts. “I know you thought about how it would go.”
I jerk my chin up, watching his eyes gleam. He doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.
But his voice drops to a whisper, almost pleading, “Tell me.”
I stumble on a rock, quickly righting myself.
I didn’t have “plans.” Fantasies, maybe.
He peers down at me. “Did you think about me sneaking you into my arms when your brothers weren’t looking?” he asks me. “Behind a door? In a dark corner? In a far-off bedroom?”
I force the lump down my throat, images of all the stupid scenarios and shit I used to dream up pushing to the surface of my mind.
“Or maybe you thought I’d see you in a beautiful gown at one of your mother’s fundraisers,” he continues, advancing on me as I keep backing up, circling the car, “and not be able to take my eyes off of you. Is that it?”
I harden my eyes, spitting fire.
He just thinks I was wasting away my days, pining for him.
What a waste of time that would’ve been.
He keeps stalking me. “Or perhaps you’re walking home from the bakery one day. You get caught in the rain and climb in my car when I drive by.” Lucas holds my eyes, and I know the scene is playing in his head too. “We laugh and talk, just like old times, and then…I park somewhere.”
I back into the edge of the trunk, hissing as pain shoots through my ass. Sidestepping the vehicle, I meet his gaze again, glaring.
“In a secluded wood,” he goes on. “And you slide into my lap, and after a while, we can’t tell if we’re wet from the rain anymore or from the sweat.”
I breathe hard, seething. I can’t help seeing the fantasy play in my head though, hearing the rain on his car roof as we make out inside. His hands under my dress. His tongue on my breast.
Pushing the images away, I scurry back a few steps, increasing the distance between us. “You’re making fun of me.”
I wanted him.
I care about him. I’m worried about him.
But I’m damn-well telling him no.
“It must’ve been a double-edged sword,” he tells me. “You wanted me home but not too soon, otherwise you would’ve been too young.”
Screw you…
“But not too late, either,” he adds, “otherwise I might marry someone else.”
I shake my head.
But I know everything he says is true even if I won’t admit it to him. Except the part where he snuck me into his arms in a dark corner. It was Madoc’s basement, actually. And it wasn’t a hot afternoon in his car. It was a wintery night in the dead of December.
Where the hell are my brothers? I’d kill for Jax to show up right now. He’s the one people are most afraid of.
“You were in a race to grow up.” He charges me and grabs my arms. “And this is what it was for.”
No!
I shove him away with a scream. “It was for a dream!” I yell. “For someone who never really existed!”
I was a kid. A stupid kid who wanted an ideal that wasn’t real. And I knew it then. I knew it when I was sixteen, when I was eighteen, and now. The more you dream, the less it’s going to happen.
He steels his spine, lifting his chin. “Congratulations,” he says in a snide tone. “Now you’ve officially grown up.”
My mouth falls, and I don’t know if I want to growl or cry. How dare he try to get me into bed and then mock me when I reject him.
What the fuck happened to him?
I don’t realize I’m tearing up until I blink. “Did you really kill someone?” I ask him.
“All of your careful plans shot to shit,” he continues, ignoring me.
I laugh bitterly, letting my eyes fall to the ground. What am I supposed to do? Hugo Navarre is coming after him.
And he just wants to fuck?
Lifting my eyes, I lock on him. “You used to feel like a giant next to me.” The words taste like ash in my mouth. “You knew everything, and you never seemed afraid. Strong and steady, and God, so tall.”
He seemed so tall to me.
“But a child’s brain sees what it wants,” I tell him, “and I actually don’t like you much at all.”
His breathing remains steady as he continues to step toward me.
“All we do is fight,” I point out. “We don’t mesh well.”
Vomit rises up my throat saying the words.
He whispers, “No, we don’t.”
And he takes another step closer.
I draw in a breath, retreating as he advances.
I swallow. “I was wrong to hold you to an ideal you never were.”
He nods.
Another step.
What happens now? Are they coming for him?
What happens tomorrow? Will he go home to Dubai?
“You’re different.” I pinch my brow together, feeling the sob rising up from my chest. “Like a ghost, fading in and out.”
“Yeah.”
I don’t know him. Not really. Did I ever?
“And I don’t think you like me much, either.” I harden my tone. “I’m childish to you.”
He cocks his head, his eyes never leaving me. They haven’t left me since he caught me minutes ago.
Is Hugo going to hurt him? What if he fucking dies?
“I’m childish to you with my little fantasies,” I tell him.
His misty eyes follow me as I move and he moves.
“Of you rescuing me from the rain and taking the long way home,” I admit. “Of you getting drunk one night, unable to resist anymore and holding me in a dark corner.”
His chest rises and falls heavier, his face pained and desperate.
I stop stepping away from him. “Of you teaching me how to come with a man inside of me.”
He closes in, taking my face in one hand and pressing his open mouth to my temple. His hot lips blaze a fire over my skin.
I want him. I’ve always wanted him, and if anything happens, I want to love him for just one night. I want Lucas Morrow to have me first.
Sliding my hands up his chest and around his neck, I press myself into his body. “Teach me how to come with a man inside me,” I whisper. “Just once. Just the first time.”
“Ah, fuck,” he groans, lifting me into his arms again, one hand under my ass and the other behind my knee. My mouth crashes to his, the hair on the back of my neck rising with the heat engulfing us.
Just once...
Walking me backward, he presses me into the door of my brother’s car.
I can barely breathe as he crushes me, bearing down and diving into my mouth, taking me over. His tongue flicks mine, sending a current shooting down my body, straight to my clit. I shudder, gasping.
A fire sparks in his eyes, and he covers my lips again, his growl falling down my throat as he thrusts between my legs.
“Ah,” I moan.
Shit.