Chapter 7
Lucas Kade was even more impressive in board shorts. He had one tattoo circling a well-defined bicep. Stark and black, it wasn’t barbed wire or a tribal symbol, but a chain of what looked like ivy. On the back of each arm was the number eight.
“Eighty-eight was my number when I played ball,” he explained when he caught me looking.
And look I did. My God, what a body. Lean and long, but strongly muscled. His back bore the ink “Andy” very small across his shoulder blade, and I smiled as I saw the name ripple with muscle while Lucas lugged Andy around the shallow end.
“You’re doing great, buddy,” Lucas said. Andy, of course, was in heaven.
And yeah, so was I.
We played a game of Marco Polo close to the edge so Andy could keep a hand on it if he needed to. By the end of our session, he was leaping—albeit with his eyes open—away from the wall a few times to Polo Lucas and me.
“That’s it for today, buddy,” Lucas said when Freddy, who was picking up a shift as the lifeguard on duty, called the end to the open swim time.
For the last hour we’d been the only ones in the pool.
And for the last half-hour I’d swum laps while Lucas worked with Andy on putting his face in the water.
I swam to a corner of the shallow end, where the two brothers were.
“You’re an awesome swimmer, Lily,” Andy said.
“Thanks, Andy. Keep practicing and you’ll be able to swim that long too.”
Andy gave me a skeptical look, and it was the first time I saw a resemblance to Lucas. And, I have to say, it was a bit disconcerting.
“She’s right. Keep at it, buddy, and you’ll be swimming laps with Lily someday.”
I noticed the skepticism left Andy’s face when Lucas piped in. Serious case of hero worship going on there.
I knew Lucas was no hero, but the way he was with his little brother certainly made his stock rise with me.
And those rock-hard abs didn’t hurt his stock, either.
We all moved to the ladder, and Andy scampered up first, then moved to the side of the pool where we’d laid out towels. He wrapped up in one and plunked down on the bench, watching as Freddy moved some of the unused lane markers on the other side of the pool.
I moved for the ladder next, but Lucas reached out and wrapped his hands around my waist, pulling me back into him.
“Is it wrong that I got super hard watching you swim?”
I laughed, then let out a sigh as I felt his bulge against my ass, right where he’d positioned me. “If your brother saw, then yes, it would be wrong.”
“Good thing he’s not opening his eyes under water yet,” he said, his voice low and husky. My hands were on the metal rail to the ladder. I moved to release them, but a quiet “don’t,” from Lucas made me stop.
One of his hands moved up from my waist to cup a breast. I looked over at Andy, but he was at the wrong angle to see what was going on. Plus, he was still engrossed in whatever Freddy was doing.
“Freddy,” I said softly, warning.
“He’s busy. Besides, I’ve got your back. Literally.”
And he did, leaning that strong chest against my back, making me wish the racer back of my suit was completely gone.
I’d briefly contemplated wearing a bikini to swim today, but thought that might be trying too hard, when I’d always been in a proper swimsuit with Andy before.
But now. God, now I’d give anything to have less Lycra between Lucas and me.
I leaned back into him, keeping my arms on the bars, giving him access to…everything.
One hand continued to knead my breast, shaping, flicking across the nipple as I felt it tighten to a sensitive bud. His other hand slipped lower, right down the front of me. Right down to the core of me.
His finger teased the elastic of my suit along my inner thigh. I lifted one leg on the ladder, giving him better access, loving how dangerous it all felt, with Freddy on the other side of the room and Andy just a few yards away.
Loving how Lucas made me feel.
His long finger edged under the elastic, turned and sought. My hands wrapped tighter on the metals bars, wishing it was Lucas I was hanging on to as he teased my outer lips, brushed ever so lightly across my slit.
“Lily, are you going to have pizza with us? Lucas said if I put my head under water three times we can have pizza. And I did it.” Andy got off the tile bench and made his way over to us, just as Lucas slipped his hands off my body.
I wanted to scream at Andy. To tell the poor kid to sit the hell back down so his brother could keep his glorious hands all over me. So that I could feel the cool glide of that searching finger deep inside me.
Instead, I rose up the ladder, the steel bars cold against my hot skin.
“I know you did,” I said to Andy as I rose from the pool, the water sluicing down my trembling legs. “I saw. I think it was even more than three times.” I had no idea—my eyes had been on Lucas’s body when he’d been working with Andy—but I took a shot.
Andy’s little face beamed, and I knew I’d shot correctly. “I did. Four times!”
“Wow, that’s great, Andy,” I said, making my way over to the bench, Andy trailing behind me. I grabbed a towel and another one to hand to Lucas. When I turned, he was still in the pool, his eyes firmly planted on my ass. Well, my front now.
I held the towel up to him, my eyes questioning why he was still in the pool. He gave a tiny shake to his head and then eye-pointed to what was undoubtedly a still very hard hard-on.
I was happy to confirm that you indeed could not see anything below the pool’s edge from this angle. And also happy to confirm that I got Lucas as turned on as he got me.
Andy was between us with his back to me, so I rubbed my towel slowly across my breast, cupping it and stroking it more than drying my suit.
“You’re not helping,” Lucas said with a growl, but the heat in his eyes told me he enjoyed the show.
I was about to take it further—Lucas made me want to be bold, and I was not a bold girl by nature—when Andy turned back to me, causing me to pat myself dry with the towel like a normal person. Not like someone dying to have Lucas’s hands all over them again. And soon.
“So, are you gonna have pizza with us?”
I looked past Andy to Lucas, to gauge how I should answer. Did he want me to have pizza with Andy and him? Or was I just helpful for the pool part of their guy day because I was Andy’s instructor?
I waited, staring at Lucas, who stared back. I could see a hundred emotions playing across his gorgeous face, but I couldn’t read them.
“It’s a Saturday night, buddy,” he finally said to Andy, though his eyes didn’t leave mine. “Lily might have big plans. Might have another party to go to.” There was that pissiness again, and it thrilled me.
Childish, I know. But I felt the same way. The thought of Lucas out at a party, no doubt with some girl—or two or three—trying to get with him, made me insane. It was an emotion I had no right to, no claim of any kind. And yet…I felt it.
And I knew Lucas felt it too.
“Am I invited for pizza?” I said quietly to Lucas. My chin raised in answer to his tone, challenging him.
“Yes,” he said, deep and throaty, at the same time as Andy’s sweet little voice said the same thing.
“Then I’d love to come,” I said.
“I’d love to watch you…come,” Lucas said, with an eighth-grade boy’s maturity.
I should have rolled my eyes at the bad pun, and the pervy tone in his voice. Instead, I just looked back at him and mouthed, “You will.”
Andy smiled and said, “Yay, Lily’s coming,” then plucked his towel from the bench and began haphazardly to dry himself off.
“Here, let me help,” I said, sitting on the bench and motioning for Andy to stand in front of me, which he did.
I took his towel from him and began to dry him off, as I did with the little girls in my swim class when we went into the locker room.
“Probably no sense in doing this now,” I said, though I continued to do so. “You’re going to take a shower soon and get all wet again.”
Andy shrugged his little shoulders, and only turned around and held his arms out from his sides so I could dry his back.
Lucas still watched us from the pool, I assumed still trying to gain control. I silently wished him luck with that, because I seemed to have lost all sense of control from the moment I saw Lucas Kade sitting on these very bleachers.
He rose from the water then. Instead of using the ladder as Andy and I had, he hoisted himself out with his arms onto the side of the pool deck.
God, those glorious arms, bulging and flexing with the weight and effort. Water ran down his muscled chest. I longed to trail my tongue along the ridges and hard muscle that the moisture followed.
I took Andy’s scrawny arms in the towel and gave them a quick drying, absently wondering if Lucas’s magnificent build came more from his mother or father. If Andy would one day be as big and strong as his older half brother.
As Lucas walked over to us and grabbed his own towel, I tried to remember their mother.
She’d brought Andy the first week of lessons but hadn’t stayed to talk with me.
The week after that, she had again quickly left as soon as Andy was out of the locker room, not waiting to speak with me about Andy’s progress.
I hadn’t even gotten the girls out of the locker room before Andy was gone.
Then this past week it had been Lucas, and then Stick, who had picked up Andy from his lesson.
My mind searched for an image of Andy and Lucas’s mother, though I had only basically seen the back of her as she’d herded Andy down the hall.
Not that I expected she’d have the build of a college football star, but I seemed to remember her coloring was more like Lucas’s—dark—as opposed to Andy’s fair hair and skin.
“Okay, buddy, let’s get going so Lily can go change,” Lucas said, placing his hand on Andy’s shoulder.
Andy seemed reluctant to leave the warm petting I was giving him with the towel, but when Lucas placed his hand on Andy’s shoulder, the little boy melted into his brother’s body, snaking a small arm up and around Lucas’s back.
A place I couldn’t wait to snake my hands around, too.
“Meet you in front of the locker rooms?” Lucas said, as we all started moving toward the locker room doors. I waved a goodbye to Freddy, who answered with a wave of his own.
“See you in a few,” I said as I got to the women’s door.
“Lily,” Lucas said, and I turned to him. “Don’t take too long. I can’t wait to…have pizza.” His hungry glance up and down my body told me he was going to be having much more than pizza this evening.
“I can’t wait, either,” I said as I ducked into the door.
I’d never said truer words.