Chapter 5 #2
I took his hand. It was big and cold from holding his beer. I wiggled my way out of the car.
Jane lowered the seat and looked like she wanted to get out. Stick placed a hand on her arm. “Let’s stay here and make a dent on this beer,” he said. She looked up at me, silently asking me if I was okay being alone with Lucas.
I nodded and gave her a look—was she okay being alone with Stick? She gave a long-suffering sigh and nodded.
Yeah, I would owe her big. I saw a month of doing her laundry in my future.
Lucas shut the door behind me, keeping hold of my hand. I trailed behind him as he rounded the hood of the car and took the keys from Stick, who handed them to Lucas through the window, which he then rolled back up.
We went around to the back of the car and Lucas unlocked the trunk. He had to let go of my hand to rummage around. “Umm, you might want to not look in here,” Lucas said. Which, of course, made me want to look in the trunk.
“Dead body?” I said, then wished I hadn’t. Let’s face it, I didn’t know anything about Lucas Kade other than he had a brother named Andy Bell and he was going to be retiling my beloved steam room. And Stick? Well, for all I knew, there could be a dead body in Stick’s trunk.
I turned away, looking at the wall that ran along what appeared to be some kind of freeway barrier. From the sounds coming from the other side, that was exactly where we were—on the other side of the freeway.
Which meant I was a long way from my safe, quiet dorm room.
I could hear metal shifting and clanging as Lucas searched for whatever he was looking for. I guessed I should be scared that he was going to come at me with duct tape and handcuffs, but I wasn’t.
The trunk slammed and I jumped. “It’s okay,” Lucas whispered as he came up behind me. “Sorry to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” I lied.
“Come here,” he said, motioning me to join him along the side of the car. We leaned against the metal just past the back seat window, and Lucas set something on the roof. It was a spotlight, I discovered when he flipped the switch, illuminating a very large section of the wall.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Not for. At,” he said, leaning against the car. I leaned next to him and he put his arm on the car behind me, so that his shoulder brushed mine and his forearm was against my back.
I longed to snuggle into his side but I wasn’t ready to make that move.
“What are we looking at?”
“The art.”
“The graffiti?”
He shrugged, and I felt it along my shoulder. “I think of it as art. Some of these guys—these taggers—are some of the best artists I’ve seen.”
I looked—really looked—at the wall again.
He was right. Amidst the chaos were some really stellar works of art.
Some Warhol-inspired sections. An area that had an awesome rendering of the president.
Orioles’ and Ravens’ logos and stuff like that.
And a bunch of small areas with just really cool designs and colors.
But my eyes kept getting distracted by the nonsense of penises and boobs, harshly done with black spray paint. “How can you focus on the good stuff through all of the crap?”
“Ah, Lily,” he said, taking a drink from his beer. His hand moved from the car up my back to curve around my shoulder. “That’s the secret of life, isn’t it? Focusing on the art?”
“And ignoring the penises and boobs?” I teased.
He chuckled. It was a nice sound, one I hadn’t heard before. And from his startled look, maybe one he didn’t make very often.
“Well, you don’t want to totally ignore boobs and penises,” he said. “They certainly have their place.” He gave a pointed look to my chest.
He pulled me closer to him and I burrowed into his side, a place I’d wanted to be since he’d climbed into the back seat with me.
Hell, a place I’d wanted to be since I saw him in the spectator area at the pool as I gave lessons to his little brother.
His hand rubbed my shoulder then moved to my neck, and he lightly grasped my nape. Warm and strong, his hand began to slowly move up and down on the back of my neck, his thumb gently stroking down the side. God, it felt so good. And so much more than I’d ever felt with any boy.
Maybe because Lucas wasn’t a boy. And certainly not one of the brown-nosers who just wanted to date me to get in good with my father. Or who were afraid of my father.
“Do you know who my father is?” I asked Lucas.
He looked startled. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Grayson Spaulding?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Should I?”
I wrapped my arms around him, burrowing deeper, laying my head against his broad chest. “No. You shouldn’t. Never mind.”
He didn’t say anything further, just held me tighter. His hand slid from my neck into my messy bun.
“God, I can’t wait to see your hair down when it’s dry.”
I thought about it. He’d only seen me with my hair in a bun in the pool, or after the steam room when it was soaking wet. When loose, my hair is down to my waist and is midnight black, just like Lucas’s. But with some natural wave, not poker-straight like his.
“It’s almost dry,” I said, and took my arms from around Lucas to start pulling out the tie that held up my bun.
He stepped away from me, away from the car, to face me. He watched my face as I took out the bun, focused on my lips as I shook out my nearly dry hair. I fingered through the long tresses, pulling out snarls, while I focused on Lucas’s hot gaze.
I bent over at the waist then came up quickly, tossing my hair back, like I was a stripper or something. I leaned back against the car, putting my hands on it behind me.
“God damn,” he whispered, not getting it all out before his hands were on my face and his mouth was on mine.
He smelled like the freshly laundered cotton of his hoodie and a little of…car, I guess. I tasted the beer on his lips, then his tongue swept into my mouth and I stopped thinking about what Lucas Kade tasted like and just kissed him back.
Our tongues danced and played and he tilted his mouth for a better angle, taking the kiss even deeper.
I took my hands from the cold metal of the car and placed them on the warm cotton of Lucas’s hoodie.
I felt the muscles in his chest flex at my touch, but I just wanted to taste him.
My entire being focused on the kiss, his mouth on mine, demanding, conquering, yet giving as well.
I moaned into his mouth as he nipped my lower lip.
“Jesus, Lily,” he said, and took my mouth again. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he stepped closer to me, leaned into me. My fleece pulled up and I could feel the denim of his jeans on my bare belly.
He pushed his hips into me and I felt his erection.
I shifted my legs, opening my stance so he could get closer.
Closer. It couldn’t be close enough. I grabbed on to his hair, running my fingers through it, clutching his neck.
I rubbed up against him like a cat in heat.
“Lucas,” I whispered against his mouth, then ran my tongue along his full lips.
“I know, baby,” he said. Like he knew how crazy this was, going at it against a car when I barely knew him. He pulled away and put his hands along my face, forcing me to look at him.
I felt dazed, drugged, and it seemed like he did too.
“I know,” he repeated, echoing my thoughts.
“But I can’t…” He didn’t say more, just kissed me again.
Sweetly at first, as if he didn’t want to scare me.
Even though my feelings for him—so strong, so fast—were scaring the crap out of me.
I kissed him back, trying to let him know I was okay.
He figured it out, taking the kiss deeper again, grinding his erection into me as I shifted closer, meeting him.
“Dude, we gotta go,” Stick said from his window, which I hadn’t even heard being rolled down, as induced in my Lucas fog as I was.
“What?” Lucas said, pulling away from me. He was in as much of a haze as I was, looking at me as if I’d said the words.
“Dude. Lucas. We’ve got to go, man,” Stick said, causing Lucas to look from me to his friend.
A look passed between them. Lucas nodded. In a flash he’d turned off the spotlight, put it back in the trunk, and herded me around the car to where Jane let us in.
We sped away and back through town.
“Sorry to do that to you, man, but I got a call,” Stick said, meeting Lucas’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“It’s okay,” Lucas said. The look he gave me said it was anything but okay—it was full of regret and unfinished business.
He put his arm around me, and I again resisted the urge to crawl onto his lap. But this time, I did move very close, and laid a hand across his chest.
His hand played in my hair, occasionally massaging my neck and scalp. It felt incredible.
“Why did we go there?” I asked. He leaned into my neck, nuzzling.
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
“No. I mean, why there? How was that place inspiration?”
He took a drink from his beer, draining it. “I like looking at the colors the taggers are using. Some of the designs. It gives me ideas for tiling jobs.”
“You mean you’re going to do a tile mosaic of the president in my steam room?”
He smiled, placed a soft, warm kiss on my lips, then shook his head. “Nah. I’m thinking more like penises and boobs.”
I laughed, reveling in our private joke. Jane and Stick had been silent since we’d gotten back in the car. From the stiff set of Jane’s shoulders, I guessed I was looking at more like two months of doing her laundry.
As we got back to the small, swanky area of town, the car slowed down along a row of parked cars.
A fancy French restaurant was on one side, a trendy fusion place on the other.
Valets were running cars for both places, as the street had no parking.
Diners got out of expensive cars and headed into the restaurants.
I hadn’t known about this small pocket of town, and figured it’d be about the only area my parents would deign to go to when they’d come to pick me up for break.
Stick pulled the car over onto a side street just past the row of restaurants. In a moment, a valet came over to Stick’s window.
I was confused. Were we going to one of these places to eat? Stick and Lucas did not seem the valet-parking kind of guys. More like they’d be the valets themselves.
But no, the valet handed Stick something that I couldn’t make out, looking at Jane first, then into the back seat. “Hey, Lucas,” he said. Lucas didn’t say a word, just gave a slight chin raise to the guy.
“Hour and a half, max,” the valet said to Stick.
“Got it,” Stick said. The valet stepped away and returned around the block to the restaurants.
“What do you think, Lucas?” Stick said. “Getting any more inspiration?”
“No inspiration here,” Lucas said, his voice sure, and with just a touch of steel in it. “Move on, Stick.”
“You never know, you might find something that strikes you,” Stick said as he put the car in gear and drove.
I cuddled into Lucas, but his hand in my hair had gone still.
“Nope. Not here. Let’s just take Lily and Jane home,” he said.
The drive home was quiet until just as we were reaching the dorm and Lucas asked me for my phone. Jane got out of the parked car as I handed my phone over to Lucas and he punched in some numbers as he got out and let me past him. His phone rang and he disconnected the call he made to himself.
“There,” he said, handing the phone back to me. “Now we have each other’s numbers.” He looked like he wanted to kiss me, but he just got back into the car and Stick sped off.
“Oh, he’s got your number, all right,” Jane said as she turned and walked into the dorm.
I stood and watched until I couldn’t see the car lights anymore.