10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
PENNY
W e walk back to the cabin naked. Our clothes are too saturated to put on. This behavior is so new to me. I never walk around nude. Not even in my home. Never in front of Darren. I always felt the need to cover up. Hide my body away. With Lucas, I’m free. Empowered. Maybe it’s the magical surroundings or the way he looks at me. Whatever it is, I’m loving the way it makes me feel.
Lucas leads me by the hand to the outdoor shower and turns the water on. I gasp as the icy water splashes over me. “Oh my God. It’s freezing!”
“Now you’re complaining about the cold. You didn’t seem to care when you were in the middle of a raging storm.”
I giggle. “I can’t believe we did that!”
He taps my nose with his finger. “ You did that. I was happy to come back to the cabin where it’s warm, dry, and safe .”
“I’m sorry. It was stupid of me. I should never have put you in danger.” Yet, at that moment when he took me into his arms, it felt like nothing could harm me. Strange how after all these years of despising him, he has made me feel the safest.
Grabbing my hips, he pulls me close. His erection presses against my belly. Heat spears down to my sex. Who am I? I don’t strip naked in the woods and have sex. Especially in a dangerous storm. Yet I have no remorse. It was exactly what I needed. A cathartic moment. A kind of healing.
“It was the best experience of my life. I wouldn’t change a thing,” he says.
Our eyes lock, and for a moment, something passes between us. I know we have moved to the friend’s stage. Him calling me Penny solidified that. This right now…I can’t name.
Lucas breaks the connection and brings his hand to my hair. “There’s a bunch of leaves and twigs in your hair.”
Mortified, I start to leave the shower. I need a hairbrush and a mirror. I must look a mess.
Lucas clasps my arm, stopping me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to fix my hair.”
He shakes his head, then makes a twirling motion with his finger for me to turn around. “I’ll do it.”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to.”
He gives another twirl of his finger. “You can’t possibly get it all out yourself.”
Doing what I’m told, I turn.
He combs his fingers gently through my hair, plucking out whatever crap is tangled in the strands. After a few minutes, he brushes my hair off my neck and over one shoulder. “Shit. You’re hurt.”
Twisting my neck, I try to look over my shoulder. “What is it? I don’t feel hurt.” Maybe I’m still running on adrenaline after the best sexual experience I’ve ever had in my life.
“You have a few scrapes from lying on the ground,” He sounds annoyed, like it’s somehow his fault.
“I can’t feel a thing.” Then water sprays on my back and I suck in a hiss. Now that I know something is wrong my brain is signaling my body that I’m hurt.
“I thought you said you can’t feel a thing?”
“It stings a little.”
“I’m sorry.” He clutches my shoulders and places a kiss on the side of my neck. “I should have been gentler with you.”
I turn to face him. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. It was perfect.”
He grins. “Perfect, huh?”
With the water from the shower running down his body and his hair plastered to his face, he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever seen. Or had sex with. He is the ultimate fantasy come to life.
I slide my finger over his chest. “Well, maybe not perfect . I’d hate to give you a big head,” I tease. “There’s still room for improvement.”
Lucas narrows his eyes, giving me a mock disgruntled expression. “You did not just say that.”
I tilt my head to the side and smile sweetly. “Oh yes, I did. There is that one thing you did with your tongue that didn’t quite hit the spot.”
Growling, he turns the water off, picks me up, and tosses me over his shoulder like I weigh no more than a toddler.
I squeal with delight. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t have a big head, but I do have a big cock.” He lightly slaps my butt. “And don’t worry, when I’m finished with you, you’ll have every spot hit.”
We lay intertwined in the tangled sheets. My body is too exhausted to move. Lucas hit the spot alright. Multiple times! And it was oh so good. Who knew there were so many creative things he could do with his tongue and, in his words, big cock—which he’s not lying about.
I haven’t felt this relaxed in years. With my work, I feel like I’m being pulled in every direction. Saying yes to everything. These past few days have forced me to stop. If having sex with someone who is only a friend is this amazing, imagine what it will be like when it’s with someone I truly love. That’s how I know what I had with Darren wasn’t true love. How could it be when sex was more a chore than a pleasure? What I’ve done with Lucas I could do every day of my life.
Any affection I had for Darren has vanished. Thoughts of him and his betrayal make me sick to my stomach. There’s no love lost. And it only took four days to realize it.
As appealing as it is to stay in the cabin, with Lucas as my personal sex slave, I can’t hide here forever. My reputation—which Darren is destroying with his lies—needs fixing.
I will energy into my body and untangle my legs and arms from Lucas. Sitting up, I lean back against the headboard, tuck my knees to my chest, and hug my legs. Thinking about the mess I have to face back home causes an icy chill to run through my veins.
Can I even fix my reputation? With the way people turned against me, I’m not sure it’s possible. Thanks to Darren spewing lies about me, and the horrid paparazzi photos with Lucas, I look like the bad guy. All the hard work I’ve put into my career is slipping through my fingers.
They’ve broken me. How do I move forward?
Lucas sits up next to me. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“After the amazing orgasms I’ve given you, you should be grinning from ear to ear, not looking like someone’s just died.”
I give him an exaggerated, stiff smile. “Better?”
With a mock scared expression, he shudders. “That’s horrifying!” he jokes. Then with all seriousness, he says, “Are you regretting what we’ve done? I know we haven’t been the best of friends—”
“More like mortal enemies,” I amend. Just because we’ve had sex doesn’t mean Lucas has forgiven me for what I did to him in high school. Yes, I was set up—Lucas is off the hook for that—but me putting drugs in Lucas’ locker got the ball rolling for the traumatic event to come. Will that always be something between us? “But no, I don’t regret what we did. It’s exactly what I needed.”
“Sex with a godly stud will fix a lot of your problems.” He grins.
I roll my eyes and nudge his shoulder. “You think highly of yourself.”
He waves a hand down the length of his body and cups his penis. “When I have this to work with, how can I not?”
I giggle.
With a serious expression, he says, “Why were you so deep in thought?”
“I’m just thinking about all the crap waiting for me when I go home.”
“Don’t you have a team who can fix things for you?”
“Yes, Claudia—you remember her from school, don’t you?”
He nods.
“She, along with my mother, handles that side of the business. After the last phone call and hearing what was being said about me, I didn’t give her a chance to tell me what she’s planning on doing. If I call her back, it will only upset me again.” And I’m in such a happy bubble, I’d hate for it to burst.
“Out in the storm you were more than upset. It looked as if the world was crashing around you. Why did the photos and the stories affect you so much? Surely being so well-known you’d see a lot of crap written about you. As much as it sucks, it comes with being famous.”
I rub my hands up and down my legs. “I’ve always been insecure about my body. When I was a kid, my mother put me in a bunch of beauty pageants. Forced me to join ballet and gymnastic classes. Anything physical. She told me it was so I would have a talent for the pageants. I knew she wanted me to lose weight to give me a better chance of winning.” I pull the sheet from the bed and cover myself. “When I got on stage, the judges looked at me with sympathetic eyes. The other girls didn’t bother hiding their giggles when I squeezed myself into a sparkly gown. It was humiliating.”
“Why didn’t you quit?”
“I tried. My mother kept entering me in them.”
“She made you do that when you hated it?” Lucas says incredulously. “Why?”
“She had competed, and so did her mother. They were both winners. She wanted me to follow the family tradition.” Photos of their time on stage were displayed in our house. Put there to motivate and inspire me to be just like them.
“How long did this go on?”
“I started at five. My last competition was when I was fourteen.”
“What made it finally come to an end?”
“I did something to make my mother understand that I never wanted to be in another pageant again.”
Lucas raises an eyebrow. “What did you do?”
“I dyed my pink gown black, wore a black wig, and sang Zombie by The Cranberries.”
Lucas laughs.
“It was the happiest I’d been on stage.” I giggle at the memory of my mother’s mortified face. “I told her if she wanted me to continue doing pageants, that was my new look. She never asked me again. The embarrassment at seeing her only daughter looking like a goth chick was too much. How could she show her face to the other mothers on the circuit again?”
“So being forced to do pageants made you insecure about your body?”
“Not just the pageants. I was always the chubby kid at school. Never the pretty, popular girl. The boys never looked twice at me.” I drop my head and smooth out the bedsheet. “Then the photos Travis took and sent through school were so humiliating, I guess I never got over it. Seeing the pictures of me online at the hotel brought me back to that memory and dragged up the old feelings.” It took me a long time to get over that period of my life. I’m not that young eighteen-year-old anymore, but that doesn’t mean the pain doesn’t hit hard.
Lucas puts a finger under my chin and tilts my face up to look at him. “Just so you know, I found out that Travis is in prison for a lot of serious shit. He was a fucking asshole, and if I’d known he was the one to hurt you back then, I would have done something about it. I’m sorry he did that to you.”
Travis is in jail? A sense of relief washes over me. Karma caught up to him.
“As for boys not looking twice at you, I looked multiple times. I couldn’t stop, and I liked what I saw. Still do,” he says.
Heat fans over my cheeks at his words. I wish I’d known that back then.
Lucas slides off the mattress. Naked, he saunters to the table. My eyes drink him in. His broad shoulders, narrow waist, and corrugated abs make my mouth water. I can’t believe I had my hands all over him. What a perfect rebound guy. Except, I don’t see him as someone to help me get over Darren. Being with Lucas is healing. Fixing something that was broken inside me. I’ll always be thankful to him. If I never see him again after we leave the cabin—a thought that squeezes at my heart—I’ll always have these memories. Something to pull out when I’m not feeling great about myself.
Coming back to bed with the camera, he presses a few buttons and the screen lights up. My photos are in there! How could I have forgotten about them? Maybe because Lucas has my mind on other, more exciting, things.
He holds the camera out to me. “Take a look at these. You can’t tell me there’s a man alive who wouldn’t look at you twice.”
My hands shaking with nerves, I take it from him. I pull in a deep breath and look at the screen. Gasping, I stare at the first photo. “Oh my God! This is not me.”
“It sure is.”
Still staring at it, I say with disbelief, “You must have edited it or used some kind of filter.” I flick through more. My eyes grow wider with every photo I see.
“No filter. It’s only natural light. This is you. This is what I see. What the world should see. Not the fucking photos those bastards posted.”
“I look…beautiful,” I say with awe. In every photograph I’m lying on the forest floor of leafy vegetation. A ray of sunlight filters through the canopy to sprinkle what looks like golden dust over my naked body. Surely, I don’t really look like this?
“That’s because you are beautiful . Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
When I’m done looking at the pictures, I put the camera on the bed. My chest fills with emotion. No one has done anything like this for me before. “Thank you for taking them. You did such an amazing job. I never knew you were so talented.”
“It’s easy when you have a great subject. If anyone gives you shit again, show them these. That will shut them up. Or I’ll shut them up for you.” His expression shows me he’s telling the truth. He’d stick up for me. Look what he did for me at the hotel when he hated me; what would he do now that he likes me?
“Darren would never stick up for me like that.” The comparison between the two are so different.
“Surely he’s fought away paparazzi who’s held a camera to your face without consent.”
I shake my head. “He loved the attention. Whenever I complained about the intrusion, he’d laugh it off, saying we should be grateful for the publicity.”
“Why the hell were you with such an asshole?” Lucas rakes his fingers through his hair.
Getting up, I take the shirt Lucas gave me to use as a pajama off the chair and put it on. I stand by the bed. “A few years ago, a mutual friend introduced us at a party. I was getting my career off the ground. I had a regular gig booked on a morning show. My first book was releasing. Darren got noticed on the football field and had signed a contract with the New York Dragons. We were both in a position where all the glitz and glamour was new, scary, and exciting. We bonded over being the new kids in our industries. Our careers grew, and we stayed friends. He was charming and we got along well. Then one thing led to another, and it moved past friendship. When he asked me to marry him, I believed it was the next step for us. We were comfortable. Our relationship didn’t take too much time away from work. When I think back, he wasn’t always a jerk.”
Taking my hand, Lucas leads me back to bed. I sit next to him. “When did it change?”
“Nothing big happened. That’s probably why I didn’t see it coming. I never noticed the lack of affection and intimacy. We weren’t kids, so I didn’t expect we’d be groping every chance we got.”
“He should have been all over you twenty-four seven.”
I smile. “Well, it wasn’t until I spent time with Harper and Alyssa that I noticed the way Finn and Hayden looked at their wives. Like they are goddesses. In public they can barely keep their hands off each other, so I can only imagine what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes.”
Lucas shudders. “Don’t remind me. I’ve accidentally walked in on them a time or two, and they were not in their bedrooms.”
Giggling, I say, “It’s so obvious they’re in love. Now that I’ve stepped away from my relationship with Darren, I know what we had wasn’t love. It was easy. Convenient. Our jobs constantly pulled us away from each other for days, sometimes weeks, at a time, yet we never planned a schedule to make sure we weren’t apart too long. The only time Darren insisted we be together was when I had an important event to attend. He enjoyed rubbing shoulders with celebrities and getting his photo taken.” I frown at the thought. “He showed more interest in that part of the relationship than he did in me.”
Was that the only reason he proposed? To reap the benefits of my career? He’d asked me to marry him after he’d gotten injured in the Super Bowl and thought he might never play again. Did he do it because it was a way to stay in the limelight? Nausea coils in my stomach. He used me.
“Is that why you don’t seem heartbroken over the affair, because the relationship wasn’t about love, or are you still in shock?” His brow creases like my answer is important. I know he’s worried he’s taken advantage of me during a vulnerable state. He couldn’t be more wrong. Being with Lucas is exactly what I needed.
I’m not sure when it happened, but my body is pressed against Lucas’ side, my head rests on his chest, and his arm is wrapped around my shoulder. I could get used to this. The affection Lucas has shown me within a few hours blows away any attempt Darren ever made. What the heck was I thinking staying with him for so long? Comfortable and easy isn’t what a relationship should be based on. Learning about Darren’s affair has done me a favor. What if I’d married him? I’d be in a loveless marriage and would never have experienced this moment. If this is the only time I feel secure and desired, at least I have something to hold on to.
“I’m not heartbroken. Deep down, I think I knew something was off. After what he did, my heart should have shattered. It didn’t. I’m more annoyed at the mess he has made of my reputation.” And I’m disappointed that I wasted my time with him when I could have experienced so much more.
“It sounds like you’re better off without him.” His fingertips softly brush up and down my arm. “And it’s time you stop thinking about him.”
“How do I do that?”
“I know a thing or two we can do to get him off your mind.”
I tilt my face up to look at him. I grin because I know he has something sexual in mind and I’m ready for it. “Are you going to make me forget?”
“Absolutely,” he says with playful arrogance.
“How are you going to do that?”
He rolls me onto my back, leaning on his elbows on either side of me. Hovering above, his eyes burn into me. “I’m going to kiss every part of your body and then fuck you so hard you’ll forget your own name. Is that what you want?”
Heat pools between my legs. “Yes please!”