Chapter Three
Rochelle
After another hour on the binder, which Delia did a spectacular job of maintaining, I decide to call it a night and get ready for bed.
The day has been busy, exhausting even, but good progress has been made considering I came in knowing nothing about the wedding apart from the color and style of the dresses.
I finally unpack my suitcase, hanging up the little black dress I chose for the rehearsal dinner on Friday evening and change into the cotton nightdress I grabbed in a hurry from my bedside drawer this morning.
My thoughts go to the letter I left on my kitchen table. The fact that everything feels like it is before the wedding, or after the wedding in terms of when it happened to me and what it will sound like in future conversations with Cassia.
Oh, remember when I lost my job and then helped make your wedding happen all in the same week?
Yes, that was the job I got after your wedding. Remember? The wedding planner let you down last minute!
But my thoughts inevitably return to Lucas.
The duvet is too heavy. I huff and throw it from me, thinking how it’s always like this when I stay over now.
I’ve managed to minimize the days I spend here by arranging to meet with Cassia elsewhere.
My place, a spa as a birthday treat, the new little bed and breakfast by the lake that has the best afternoon tea.
But the times I can’t get out of, like Cassia’s wedding, I end up tangled up in bedsheets thinking of Lucas and that stupid kiss.
Or worse, dreaming of Lucas and what else I would have let him do to me that night in the library.
It’s almost midnight when I give up and decide to go to the library. I have a ridiculous notion that if I go back to the scene of the kiss, I’ll be able to sit there, in that same space, and create a new memory to override the old one.
It makes perfect sense to me. I’ll just sit in the cushioned nook near the lead glass window with the diamond quarries that overlooks the fountain, give myself one last moment with the memory, and then let it go.
I pad through the house in just my nightdress since I know everyone will be in their own rooms at this hour, and I won’t be long anyway. Maybe just an hour or so. One hour to have one last memory of that night. Then a fresh start in the morning.
I feel good about it when I reach the door of the library. It’s closed, which is unusual, the handle cool in my palm. I press it gently and swing the heavy door open, and immediately regret all of my life choices.
I’m frozen to the spot while Lucas sits in a leather Chesterfield armchair facing the window.
I know exactly what he is doing. His breathing is ragged, and one leg is stretched forward and tensed.
Both arms are moving, and his eyes are fixed on the window seat where he kissed me.
Where I was going to sit tonight and try to forget it ever happened.
Then there’s a groan and a pause in his movements as the first rope of cum shoots hard enough from him that I see where it lands on the shoulder of his shirt.
I gasp. Blink. Try to make my legs move. Am I even breathing right now?
I can’t tear my eyes from him as he finishes, his breath coming in short puffs of exertion like he is forcing himself to be quiet. Then he takes a moment, eyes closed, head back on the chair, gathering himself.
He lifts his head, and there’s a movement like he is tucking himself away. This is my chance to leave, I realize, and I spin on my feet, but the floorboard beneath me groans and strains.
“Stop,” he says. Commands, really.
I’m caught.
I turn slowly to face him, my face flushed and a sweat breaking out on my forehead.
“How much did you see?” Lucas asks, his face completely flat, almost business-like.
“I’m sorry,” I start, keeping my eyes on the floor. “I couldn’t sleep, and I just wanted to come and sit in the window.”
“Look at me,” he says, but I can’t do it. If I look at him, I can’t trust my face not to give away my feelings. “Rochelle, look at me.”
I take a steadying breath before lifting my face.
He clenches his jaw, holding something back. Then his expression changes, softens, hardens again.
I don’t know how to read him, and that’s what makes all this so confusing and difficult.
Heat flashes over my skin and doesn’t dissipate, just stays there, suffocating me.
My skin goes damp with sweat and heat, my panties fill with cream that I clench my thighs against to try and stop.
I don’t know why my body responds to him this way after a kiss that happened four years ago, but it feels so entirely out of my control and entirely unfair.
“I can’t get you out of my mind,” he finally says. The words breaking free from him like they were being held there against their will. “It’s driving me insane.”
I stand there, blinking like an idiot because I don’t know what to do about what he said.
Should I apologize? But then I didn’t kiss him first. He kissed me.
I lift my chin in defiance because none of this feels like it’s my fault.
Not really. And I’ve also been living with the consequences of that night, too.
“I want to taste you so bad that I can barely function.” He licks his lips, and my clit throbs, an invisible connection between his body and mine that neither of us are consenting to.
I need him to stop talking. I know I should leave.
Instead, I find myself walking to the window seat. The cushion is thick and plush. A deep green velvet that I know was restored only in the last couple of years because Cassia mentioned it once. I sit with my back against the window, welcoming the cold glass pressing on my overheated skin.
His eyes flash when I look at him now. He watches as I lift my hips and pull my cotton panties down, damp from my arousal, and let them drop to the floor where I flick them aside with my foot.
My hand finds its way to the nightdress over my knee, and slides it upwards as I lift my legs, heels coming to rest on the edge of the cushion.
Lucas makes a sound like his soul is being ripped from him. A low, desperate growl that makes my lower belly feel heavy.
I just need this feeling to stop. This urge to have him consume me. Have him devour me. To put me out of my misery.
He walks towards me, his eyes trained on my dripping pussy, and falls to his knees on the varnished floorboards.
His hands are on my thighs, pressing my legs further apart as his thick, wide tongue makes its first stroke from my entrance to my clit.
A soft “ah” escapes me, one hand finding the back of his head, the other bracing against the paneling beside me.
There are no more words shared between us as he eats me out right there in the library.
He is relentless, working his tongue inside me, swirling it around, gathering up my juices, and swallowing them down like he is starving.
I let the sensations wash over me as he brings me to the edge.
Then he is sucking on my lips, dragging one into his mouth slowly, then the other, bringing me down like a tide going out.
He presses my thighs apart harder until my heels lift from the cushion and my knees press against the polished paneling of the deep window reveal.
When his mouth covers my clit, his tongue making tight, fast circles, I can’t hold it back.
My back spasms, arching towards him, my head bangs against the window, both legs shoot straight up making a wide ‘v’, twitching and trembling.
Both my hands are in his hair now, holding him in place as a moan is torn from me, long and low, before breaking into a shattered and broken sound that would be a scream in any normal situation.
Lucas continues to lick me gently as I come down from whatever stratosphere I was propelled into. My legs finally relax, collapsing back to their bent position on either side of him, and my hands loosen in his hair, finally letting him go.
“You’re even more delicious than I imagined,” he says, dotting a kiss on each thigh, his eyes coming to mine and staying there. The intensity in them is startling.
“You imagined this?” I ask, legs still parted, his fingers now stroking my center in lazy patterns.
“Every night for four years,” he says like a confession. His mouth covers my spent pussy one last time as he reaches for something I can’t see, then he presses my panties against his face and inhales with a groan. “You make me so hard I can’t even think straight.”
He brings my crumpled panties against his mouth and sucks, while I sit there, watching him and wondering what the fuck just happened.