Chapter 8
“Is this your car?” I asked as we drove away from campus.
“No, it’s Stick’s. He’s letting me borrow it for a while.”
It was similar to the one we’d ridden in Thursday night—older, but restored with loving care—but this one was a shiny deep blue instead of candy-apple red.
“Is this a…what did Stick say the other night? A Charger?”
He shook his head, a smile on his face at my lack of car knowledge. “No. This is a 1972 Chevy Camaro. Vastly different.”
It didn’t look that different to me, other than the color. “How does Stick own so many cars? What does he do?”
Lucas took a quick look in the rearview mirror into the back seat at Andy, who was looking out the window, seemingly oblivious to Lucas and me.
“Stick is…self-employed,” Lucas said to me in a tone that said I’d be smarter to just leave it at that. Which I did.
“Does he fix these cars up himself?”
Lucas nodded. “He’s been a car nut for as long as I can remember. We’d be on the street playing ball, and Stick would be there, but instead of playing ball, he’d have his head under the hood of a car.”
“Playing ball. Something you were pretty good at, right?”
He glanced over at me. “Yeah, I was pretty good. For about a minute.”
“Then you got hurt,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I wanted him to know I knew a little bit about him, even though there wasn’t much to know—at least not online.
He looked in the rearview again as we came to a red light.
A smile, so sweet and unplanned, crossed his face.
I turned to see what had made Lucas smile.
Andy’s little strawberry-blond head was lolling against the car window, his seatbelt the only thing holding him upright.
His eyes were drooping past half-mast, then flickering, in a valiant effort to try to stay awake. An effort he’d soon lose.
Lucas returned his attention to me—to my statement about him playing ball. He ran a hand across the back of his neck, under his shiny, wet black hair. He eased the car forward when the light turned green, careful not to roar like Stick had, so as not to wake Andy.
“Yeah, I guess it’s time for that talk, isn’t it?” he said, resignation in his voice.
I so didn’t want to be something Lucas resigned himself to. “What talk?” I asked, though I thought I knew what he meant.
“The Life and Times of Lucas Kade,” he said, a trace of bitterness creeping through in his voice. “Or, how an A-1 college recruit and NFL hopeful ended up tiling steam rooms in his shithole hometown.”
Definite bitterness now.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said, though I was dying to hear his story. Dying to know everything I could about the man whose hands made my body sing with tension and arousal.
And yes, made my pulse beat faster and my heart clench when he looked at me with those piercing brown eyes.
“No, I’ll tell you. It’s only fair. Because Lily,” he said, his voice dropping to a low and throaty—and oh-so-sexy—whisper.
“I want to know everything about you. I want to hear every story. Touch every part of you.” He looked at me then, and my blood raced through my veins at his promise. “And taste every inch of your body.”
My breathing became heavy, my chest lifted and tightened. Lucas noticed, and when his eyes lifted to my face, I licked my lips and gave him a slight nod.
We both knew what I was agreeing to.
* * *
Because Andy was dead to the world, we decided to just go back to their place and order a pizza. I watched as Lucas sweetly carried a sleeping Andy from the car into a four-story apartment building. If I had my bearings—and I wasn’t sure I did—we weren’t too far from the graffiti wall part of town.
Their apartment was on the second floor. Lucas easily held Andy while pulling out keys and unlocking the apartment door. It looked like a practiced move, and again I racked my brain for memories of the elusive mother. Was Lucas responsible for Andy all the time?
The apartment was small, the main room not much larger than my dorm room. The furniture was old and shabby, but the place was super clean. A tiny kitchen with a table and three chairs was on one side. I could see three doors down the hallway, figuring two bedrooms and a bath.
Toys were strewn around the small place, mostly trucks. A large flat-screen TV was against one wall on a table that seemed too small for the large screen. Several items sat on the floor around the table, as if they’d been recently displaced by the large TV.
“I’m going to put him down, then order the pizza,” Lucas quietly said as he walked down the hallway. He took Andy into the room farthest down the hall.
I dropped my backpack on the floor by the door and made my way to the couch, curling up in one of the corners.
I pulled my North Face off and tossed it on the chair in the corner of the room.
I noticed three large boxes tucked neatly behind the chair, out of the way.
Yeah, it kind of seemed like maybe somebody with a big-ass TV had just plunked down into this little apartment.
Lucas was back out in a flash, a smile on his gorgeous face. “He is out,” he said, “but I know that doesn’t last long at this time of day. He’s going to wake up starving in about an hour.”
His eyes roamed over me. I’d put my North Face on over my leggings and tiny knit shirt in the locker room, so Lucas hadn’t seen me without the bulky jacket until now.
The way I was sitting had made the hem of my shirt ride up a bit, and his eyes zeroed in on the skin showing.
I still had a tiny bit of tan left from lifeguarding at the country club last summer, though that was more on my face and arms, since I didn’t wear a bikini often, even though it was technically allowed.
Lucas made his way over to me. He was about to sit next to me, then stopped.
With a pained look on his face and a sigh, he pulled out his phone from his jeans pocket.
“Let me just call and get the pizza. I’m serious, he’s going to wake up starving.
And Andy may seem like a sweet kid, but he turns into a whiny little shit when he’s hungry. ”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, so do I.” He’d been walking away from me, toward the kitchen area, but looked at me over his shoulder at that and smiled.
God, when he smiled at me I just wanted to peel all my clothes off and rub myself all over his big, strong body.
“Somehow I don’t see you doing whiny,” he said. He went to a drawer, opened it, and started rummaging around what looked to be delivery menus.
My phone vibrated in my jacket pocket and I reached for it on the chair—nothing was very far away in the small room. I pulled it out of my jacket and looked.
Syd and I going to a party later tonight. Will you be back? Jane had texted.
I looked at Lucas’s back, how his broad shoulders tapered down to his waist and how his jeans fit so perfectly. And that ass. Good Lord, where to start on Lucas’s ass?
No. Have fun, I texted back.
Lucas turned and walked back to me, a pizza menu in his hand. “What’s up?” he said, motioning with his chin to the phone in my hand.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just Jane checking in.”
“Afraid you came to the dark side of town and disappeared?” He was teasing, but there was something a little serious in his voice. A little defensive, and I knew I’d need to be aware of, and careful of, Lucas’s slight insecurity about where he came from.
Hey, we all had our shit to deal with. I knew I certainly did.
“No, not that. She just wanted to know if I wanted to go to a party with her and Syd—that’s our suitemate—later.” I had meant to show that Jane wasn’t concerned about my safety, but I realized by the look on Lucas’s face that I probably shouldn’t have been so honest.
“Do you want to go to the party with them? ’Cause I can bring you home as soon as Andy wakes up.
Hell, I can have Mrs. Jankowski come over and stay with Andy and I can take you home right now.
” He rattled this all off so quickly, I almost didn’t grab his hand in time before he’d turned and walked away from me, presumably to make plans to take me home.
But I did grab his hand, and I held on tight. I even reached out with my other hand, holding his in a tight grip. “Wait. No. No, I don’t want to go to the party. I want to stay here.” He looked down as he stood over me. A thousand emotions played over his face.
I’m not what you need. His words to me that first night played over in my mind.
He was probably right, but right now I needed nothing as much as I needed Lucas Kade to want to be with me. To want to hug and kiss me. To want to do everything to my body that I wanted to do to his.
I tugged on his hand. “Lucas,” I whispered. I leaned back into the corner of the couch, pulling him with me. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t fall on top of me, either. “I don’t want to go to any party tonight. I just want to be with you.”
He put a knee on the couch next to my hip.
He held out his free hand in front of my phone, like he wanted me to hand it over to him.
Did he want to check and make sure I wasn’t lying?
Would he be that type of guy, always checking my phone?
I could see that kind of possessiveness from Lucas, but not that kind of insecurity. But really, how well did I know him?
I gave him my phone, still holding on to him with one hand. He didn’t look at it, not even a tiny peek, but took it, and his own and the forgotten pizza menu, and placed them all on the scarred coffee table in front of the couch. He even put both phones face down on the table.
“Won’t Andy be whiny if he has to wait for dinner?” I said as Lucas, with the ease and grace of an athlete, lifted his other leg and straddled me. Each of his knees were now on the couch, and had me encaged. A cage I was dying to fly into and lock the door behind me.
“I’m willing to put up with an Andy fit if it means I can put my hands on you that much sooner,” he said as he towered over me. He smiled down at me and I let out an answering sigh, my body melting all the more.
“Me too,” I said quietly as I sank further down into the couch. I laid my hands on his legs. The denim of his jeans felt rough and cool, and I was vaguely surprised to not feel his body burning up the way mine seemed to be. I slid my hands up his rock-solid thighs, circling around to his ass.
He just looked down at me, but his eyes burned and his nostrils flared as if he could smell me. He probably could—I seemed to be emitting pheromones like I’d just been swimming in them instead of the IM pool.
“We can’t…go very far,” he said, his voice low and throaty.
He cleared his throat and continued, “Seriously. Andy will wake up soon and come running out here. And I just don’t want to have that talk with him quite yet about why his big brother was naked and on top of Miss Lily.
” An ever-so-small smile crept across his face even as he undressed me with his eyes, paying particular interest to my chest, and that strip of skin showing below my shirt.
“Okay. So no Naked Big Brother and Miss Lily,” I said. I dropped one hand from his ass and I swore I saw him flinch from the loss. I touched the hem of my shirt, brushing the back of my hand across my bare tummy.
Lucas made me want to step out of my passivity. Made me want to be bold. Made me want to stop being the peacemaker and instead be the fire starter. “So, just how far can we go?” My thumb slipped beneath the cool knit cotton of my white shirt, Lucas’s eyes following the motion.
He swallowed hard. I followed the motion with my eyes as it traveled down his throat, wanting to lick that exact spot.
“God. So not far enough,” he said. He reached over his shoulder and pulled his hoodie over his head, taking his T-shirt with it. Instinctively I reached out and hung on to the gray cotton T-shirt as he got rid of the hoodie and tossed it on the chair, on top of my jacket.
“What was I thinking?” I said as I pushed the T-shirt up his body, admiring his hard abs like I had when I’d first seen him in his board shorts at the pool.
“Get rid of this too.” I smoothed across his chest, the T-shirt falling over my hand, hanging up on my wrist. It didn’t matter.
I could now feel that gloriously warm skin.
The only thing better would be to feel it against my bare chest.
“That whole Naked Big Brother thing, remember?” he said, chuckling, as he lowered and adjusted the T-shirt back into place. But he didn’t move my hand. Instead he placed his on top of mine, but outside of his shirt.
“Jesus, Lily,” he whispered, looking down at me, into my eyes, which surely showed how much I wanted him. “You make me so hard. You drive me crazy. From the first time I saw you.”
I looked from his face to the bulge at the front of his jeans. My eyes went back to his. “Me too. From the first time I saw you.”
He nodded. He knew. Of course he knew. “That first time,” he said, like it had been months ago instead of just days.
“When I saw you in your swimsuit, all I could think of was peeling it off you, getting inside you.” He made no move, just kept my hand beneath his, his other hand gently laid on my hip.
Then he sat back on his haunches, his ass resting on my legs.
His fingers twined with mine, even with the cotton of his shirt between us.
His other hand squeezed my hip, then his fingers splayed wide.
“Then I watched you with Andy, with all those kids. And it became more than just wanting to get in your pants.” A finger smoothed along the edge of my pants, half on the material of my leggings, half on my skin.
He left a trail of fire as he gently brushed that finger along my waistband.
“Believe me, I still want to get in your pants. But I want to…” He sighed.
I could tell these types of words were hard for a guy like Lucas.
Which made me treasure them all the more.
I waited for him to continue, lying quietly beneath him, my hands still on his body.
“I want to know you, Lily Spaulding. Really know you.” I squeezed the hand that held mine.
He took a deep breath then let it out. “And…I want you to know me, too.”
I waited, wanting him to know that I got how hard that was for him to say. “I want that too,” I said, meaning it more than anything I’d ever said before.