Thalia
I lick my lips. “I want to sleep with you.” There’s no way he doesn’t know this. I’m throbbing and wet and desperate, and maybe he can’t know this, but my nipples are pebbling through the thin fabric of the nightie he bought me, and there’s no way he can’t tell.
Plus, why would I be kneeling next to him? His question makes no sense.
He’s a good guy, and he just wants to make sure we’re on the same page. He doesn’t want to take advantage of me. That has to be it, because I may not have had a boyfriend for years, but I’m not a nun, and I know that a man knows when I want him. There’s generally no need to spell it out.
But Lucas makes no move to pull me against him. He lets go of my chin and stares out the window, looking hurt.
Shit. “I’m sorry.” I scramble to my feet and turn around to jump back in bed.
His hand clasps my ankle. Then he’s standing behind me, his front to my back, his erection pressed against my lower back, his hand wrapped around my waist.
“I don’t want to just sleep with you, Thalia,” he says.
“You’ve been under my skin since I first met you, and if you’re mine tonight, I want you mine for…
a very long time.” His finger trails the bare skin of my arm.
“So if you’re looking for a one-nighter, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m not your man. ”
Lucas Hunt has had me under his skin since he met me? My knees weaken, and my head drops to his shoulder.
He continues. “I know how hard you fight for what you want, and I know the passion you put into your work. I know how fiercely you love your family, and I know how well you treat your coworkers. And I know the patience you have with your supervisor, because you probably think she has her reasons for being a bitch that have nothing to do with you.” He dips his lips to the crease where my neck meets my shoulder.
“You’re wrong about that,” he says against my skin, “but that makes you an even better person.”
A zing goes straight down my center, touching my soul as it goes. “And going on that, I bet you’re a fierce, loyal friend. And going on that, I’ll bet you’re an incredible lover. And I don’t want to find out overnight that I’m right, only to lose you in the morning.”
He lets go of my body, takes a step back, and I shiver in the sudden cold.
“I don’t want to sleep with you, Thalia,” he continues.
“I want to make love to you. And I want to give you so much more than that. I don’t want to be a notch on your bedpost. I want you to know me.
So if this is not what you want, climb in bed, and we’ll forget about this.
But if you want me the way I want you, turn around, look me in the eyes, and tell me you’ll be mine. ”
A notch on my bedpost? Making love to me? Where is this all coming from?
My body takes over. The turning around, I can do, and I do it slowly, deliberately.
The looking in the eyes is harder, because he has me pinned somewhere between desire and commitment, and I’m afraid that once I drown in his eyes, I’ll say yes to anything.
I can’t make promises I won’t hold.
What would it look like, to be with Lucas for a very long time? Why does he even want me that way? What does he see in me? Apart from all the…nice things he just said about my loyalty and having me under his skin.
Right now, my eyes are trained on his pecs. They’re heaving slightly, his breath labored. I pinch my lips together and look up at his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs. My gaze travels to his eyes. “I can’t promise you forever, Lucas. We barely know each other. It’d be crazy.”
He licks his lips, a quick swipe of the tongue, and his eyes sparkle. “Yeah, I’m a little crazy like that.”
I drop my eyes. So this is it, I guess. I lean against the bed, ready to crawl up under the covers. I did what I could to get what I wanted, but I’m not going to lie to him.
“Give me three months,” he says.
“Wh—three months?” My heartbeat picks up. Three months, I can do. Oh my god, three months sounds perfect. Okay then, can we both jump into bed now? “Why?” is my stupid-ass answer.
He cocks his head to the side. “That’s the longest you lasted. I like a challenge. Three months.”
Three months with Lucas will be more intense, more demanding, and probably more exhausting than three months with my college boyfriend. Is this really what I want? Can I even afford a relationship right now, with everything going on at work? One night was so much more reasonable.
He leans over me, pushes the strap of my nightie off, and kisses my shoulder.
I take a sharp inhale. My nipples peak stronger through the satin fabric. I clench the comforter with both hands, or I might pull him to me. I haven’t said yes to his offer yet.
He trails kisses from my shoulder up my neck. My head falls to the other side on its own, and I can’t help the moan that escapes my lips.
“Was that a no?” he asks, his mouth against my jaw, peppering kisses up to my ear. He cups my chin between two fingers.
“No, it wasn’t,” I breathe.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Thalia. I’m losing it here. I want to fuck you seven ways to Sunday for the next twelve weeks. I just need to know that you’re on board. Like I said, I don’t want to sample you. I know I’m going to need more than one night with you.”
He’s losing it. Gorgeous, cocky, athletic, Lucas Hunt says he’s losing it because I haven’t consented to sleeping with him for the next three months. To getting to know him for the next three months. Yet.
Meanwhile, I’m a hot mess down there. I don’t know how long I can keep this going. “I thought you said you wanted to make love to me.”
He growls and pulls the strap off the other shoulder. “That didn’t seem to convince you. Look, when all is said and done, if you say the word, there’ll be a lot of fucking and a lot of lovemaking. I guarantee it.”
I’ll give him that. The man knows how to talk to a woman. “Okay,” I whisper. “Three months.”
A slow grin spreads on his face. He lowers his lips to mine, barely grazing them at first, and I close my eyes.
His breath is warm and sweet, with a trace of mint.
He seals our mouths together, and his tongue starts a slow exploration, lapping inside me, almost tentative at first, until I meet his strokes with my tongue, and he invades me with a growl.
As if he was waiting for my permission.
His kiss is soft and strong, just like him, and it’s profound too, and reverent, like a promise. And when his arms tighten around my whole body—god!
He breaks the kiss and says against my lips, “I knew you’d be sweet, baby, but fuck.” He nips at my bottom lip. “Fuck!”
Three months. Three months of this. What have I done to deserve him?
My whole body thrumming, I fist his hair. “Lucas…”
“I got you, babe.” He puts his arms around my waist and lifts me higher on the bed, then does quick work of my nightie. “God, Thalia, you’re so beautiful. Knew you were beautiful under all those tight ass clothes.”
Tight ass?
He chuckles as he kisses my collarbone, down between my breasts, then takes one nipple, sucking on it gently, then harder, until I arch under his pressure.
“That’s it, babe. Right where I want you,” he mumbles as he trails his strong, calloused hands up and down my body, as if he wanted everything at once. As if he didn’t know where to start.
Am I a tight ass?
“Your clothes, babe. Not you,” he grumbles, as he takes his time moving to my other nipple and starts torturing it equally, making me writhe under him.
“You’re hot. Fucking hot.”
Lucas Hunt thinks I’m effing hot.
My eyes flutter closed, then fly open when he moves down to my belly, kissing his way down to my center.
“Fucking clothes make you even hotter.”
My legs drop open for him on a moan.
He groans as his tongue explores my folds, and god.
God!
He flicks and sucks and laps me, and when he runs his hands up to my breasts and lightly pinches my nipples, I come undone. He enters me with two fingers, his thumb stroking my clit.
And then our eyes connect, and there’s awe in his.
How had I missed all the times he was, actually, looking at me? How had I discarded those as accidents?
I’m not a screamer, but here, in this bedroom, under Lucas Hunt’s hands and mouth and his gaze, I come inside out and scream, abandoning myself to him.
And after he cups my center with his palm, collecting the last of my orgasm, he crawls to me, pulls me to his chest, and cradles me in his arms, drawing slow strokes on my naked back, kissing my hair while I catch my breath.
His erection strains his boxer shorts, his breathing is labored, his heartbeat bangs loudly against his chest, yet he’s letting me catch my breath.
Three months of this?
God.
God! What have I done?
I run my hand down his beautiful, chiseled abs and under the thin fabric.
He lifts his hips. I get him totally naked, and my mouth waters at the sight of him. Long and thick, veined and beating for me. I stroke him, making him moan and making me wet again.
A drop of precum pearls, drawing me down. There’s no resisting Lucas, in life or in bed. I lower my mouth to him and lick it off. Oh god. Just the smell of him makes me wet. What is happening to me?
He holds my hair back so he has a better view and says, “You don’t have to, Thalia.”
My belly clenches at his raw voice and his words. No, I don’t have to. But I want to. And it’s not because this beautiful alpha male is moaning and groaning for me under my hands and that’s the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s not because giving him pleasure alone might make me come.
It’s because under all that gentleness, that care, that attentiveness lavished on me over the past day, there’s a beast ready to take me on and turn my life upside down, and I like it.
I want it.
I might have been under his skin for a long time, but he just touched my heart.
“I want to,” I murmur, my mouth already around him. I take him as deep as I can, slowly at first so I don’t gag. He’s so long, I wrap my hand at the base of his shaft and stroke him as I lick and suck him.