14. Lucas #2
She crosses to me without hesitation, and I pull her down onto the rug in front of the fire. She curls into my side, her head on my chest, the blanket pooling around her, and we just breathe together for a while.
The fire crackles. The rain drums on the roof. Her grandmother is dead, and the world is on fire, and somehow this moment feels sacred anyway.
“I want to feel something else,” she whispers against my shirt. “I’m so tired of grief. I want to feel alive.”
My arms tighten around her. “We don’t have to-”
“I know we don’t have to.” She lifts her head, and her eyes are dark and steady despite the tears still clinging to her lashes. “I want to. I need to.” Her hand comes up to cup my jaw, her thumb tracing my cheekbone. “Please, Lucas. Make me feel something good.”
I search her face for hesitation. For doubt. For any sign that she’s asking for the wrong reasons, that I’d be taking advantage.
All I see is certainty. All I see is want.
I’ve never been able to say no to her.
“Tonight is about you,” I tell her, cupping her face in my hands. “What you want. What you need. I’m not going to take anything you’re not ready to give.”
Her eyes shine in the firelight. “I want everything.”
“Then we go slow.”
I kiss her softly at first, savoring. She tastes like salt and something sweeter underneath, and I take my time learning the shape of her mouth all over again. My hands slide down her arms, and the blanket falls away, and she shivers as the cool air hits her skin.
She’s wearing nothing underneath.
My brain shorts out for a full three seconds.
“Lily-”
“I was hoping.” Her voice is barely a whisper, vulnerable in a way I’ve never heard from her. “When you came in, I was hoping you would-”
I stop her with another kiss.
And then I proceed to worship her.
I start slow. I know she needs this to be different - not frantic desperation, not efficient release. She needs to be taken out of her head completely. Needs to feel something other than loss.
I shed my own clothes while she watches, her eyes tracking every movement, her teeth sinking into her lower lip when I pull my shirt over my head. The firelight catches the tattoo on my ribs - her initials, the secret I’ve carried for years - and she reaches out to trace it with trembling fingers.
“I still can’t believe you did this,” she whispers.
“I’d do it again.” I catch her hand, press a kiss to her palm. “I’d carve your name into my bones if that’s what it took.”
Her breath catches. “Lucas-”
“Lie back.”
She does, stretching out on the rug in front of the hearth, firelight painting her skin in gold and shadow. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen - flushed and wanting and here, finally here, after three years of dreaming about exactly this.
I start at her jaw, trailing my lips down the column of her throat, feeling her pulse jump against my tongue. She gasps when I reach the hollow at the base, and I stay there, learning that sound, memorizing what makes her breath catch.
My hands map her body - the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the soft skin of her inner thighs that makes her shudder when I brush against it. I learn every curve, every sensitive spot, every place that makes her whimper my name.
“Lucas-” Her voice is ragged already. “Please-”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth. I want your mouth.”
I give her what she wants.
I kiss my way down her stomach, pausing to trace my tongue around her navel, feeling her muscles clench beneath my lips. She’s squirming now, her hips lifting in silent plea, and I press them back down with firm hands.
“Patience.”
“I don’t have any patience left.” She threads her fingers through my hair, tugging. “Three years, Lucas. I’ve been patient for three years-”
I silence her with the first stroke of my tongue.
She cries out, her back arching off the rug, her hands flying to my shoulders for balance. I hold her steady, grip firm on her hips, and I take my time.
Three years of watching her suffer in silence. Three years of wanting and waiting and hating myself for both.
I pour all of it into making her feel good.
I learn her rhythms. The way she gasps when I circle her clit with the flat of my tongue. The way she moans when I slide two fingers inside her, curling them just so. The way her thighs start to shake when she’s getting close, her sounds getting higher and more desperate.
“There,” she breathes. “Right there - don’t stop-”
I don’t stop.
She shatters against my mouth, her whole body convulsing, my name tearing from her lips like a prayer. I hold her through it, gentling her down, pressing kisses to her inner thighs as she trembles through the aftershocks.
When she comes down, she’s crying again - but these aren’t grief tears. These are release. Relief. Something breaking free after being locked away for too long.
“More,” she gasps, tugging at my shoulders. “I need more. I need you inside me. Now.”
I kiss my way back up her body, stopping to draw one nipple into my mouth until she gasps, then the other, until she’s arching off the rug and cursing my name.
“Lucas, please-”
“I’ve got you.” I settle between her thighs, bracing myself on one arm, using my other hand to guide myself to her entrance. “Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine. Dark. Desperate. Devastated in the best possible way.
“I love you,” I tell her. “Whatever happens after tonight, whatever comes next, I need you to know that. I’ve loved you for three years. I’ll love you until there’s nothing left of me.”
“I know.” She reaches up, traces the line of my jaw. “I love you too. Now move.”
I push inside her slowly, watching her face, cataloging every expression. The way her mouth falls open. The way her eyes flutter closed. The way my name breaks apart in her mouth.
The first slide home nearly undoes me.
She’s so warm, so tight, so her - and after three years of imagining this moment, the reality is almost too much. I hold still, buried to the hilt, forehead pressed to hers, trying to remember how to breathe.
“Move.” Her hips roll against me, impatient. “Lucas, please-”
I move.
We find a rhythm - slow at first, deep and deliberate, every stroke designed to make her feel cherished. Then faster as the need builds, her nails raking down my back, her legs wrapping around my waist to pull me deeper.
The sounds she makes are devastating. Little gasps and moans that go straight to my spine, building with every thrust until she’s practically keening.
“You’re mine,” I growl against her throat, and I don’t know where the words come from - somewhere primal, somewhere possessive, somewhere I’ve kept locked away for three years. “You hear me? Not his. Not anyone’s. Mine.”
“Yours.” She pulls me down for a kiss that’s more teeth than tenderness. “I’m yours.”
“Say my name.”
“Lucas-”
“Again.”
“Lucas-”
She breaks apart beneath me, clenching around me so tight I see stars, and the feeling of her coming drags me over the edge with her. I bury my face in her neck and come harder than I ever have in my life, her name on my lips, her arms wrapped around me like she’ll never let go.
Afterward, we lie tangled together on the rug, the fire crackling beside us, the rain still drumming on the roof. Her head rests on my chest, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my skin, and I feel more at peace than I have in years.
“I love you,” she whispers again, like she can’t stop saying it now that she’s started.
My arms tighten around her. “I love you too. Always have. Always will.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We don’t sleep for hours.
Every time we start to drift off, one of us reaches for the other, and it starts again - slower, softer, learning each other’s bodies with the patience of people who finally have time.
She rides me in front of the dying fire, her head thrown back, my hands on her hips guiding her rhythm.
I take her against the wall when we stumble toward the bathroom, her legs wrapped around my waist, her moans echoing off the tile.
By the time we finally collapse into the bed, the rain has stopped and started again twice. Gray light is creeping through the windows, almost dawn.
She’s draped across my chest, her breathing finally evening out into sleep. I hold her close and watch the shadows move across the ceiling, thinking about all the ways my family failed her. All the ways I almost failed her.
I won’t fail her again.
By morning, I’ve memorized every way she sounds when she comes.
I plan to spend the rest of my life adding to the collection.
***
Morning light filters through the cabin windows, golden and deceptive.
I wake to her phone buzzing on the nightstand. Not a single notification, a cascade. The screen lit up like Times Square, numbers climbing in real time.
47 missed calls. 203 text messages. And counting.
Lily stirs against my chest, feels me tense, and reaches for the phone with sleep-heavy hands.
The color drains from her face.
But it’s the fourth headline that makes her stop breathing. Her face - the red dress, the lifted chin, the defiance - splashed across every screen in America.
MAXWELL HEIRESS CONFIRMED: Lily Maxwell Is the Last of a Dynasty
“They know who I am.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Everyone knows.”