It’s torture—both pleasure and pain.
“I want you,” I finally say.
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Fuck me, Lucas.”
His hazel eyes stare up my body wickedly, and he shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Come first,” he orders, and when I try to protest, he reaches up my body and covers my lips with one hand and my breast with the other as his tongue picks up speed. I can taste myself on his fingers, and my own hands wander up to his shoulders. I scratch into his flesh instead of my own this time, digging my nails into his skin. I’m hardly aware I’ve tangled my fingertips into his hair again until his hands leaves my mouth and breast to clamp around my wrists. He doesn’t release them until I come, until I’m writhing and moaning beneath his mouth. Even then, I’m still saying his name over and over again.
Slowly, he slides his body up mine. He doesn’t stop until we're heart to heart and eye-to-eye, and he’s grinning. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask once I catch my breath. I run my fingers along his jawline, and he grabs my hand, bringing my palm to his lips.
“Because, I want to be inside of you. Right now.”
About damn time.
“Yes.”
He sits up on his knees before he pulls the blindfold away from my neck. Dangling it on the tip of his finger for a moment, he glances between it and me as if he’s trying to decide what he wants to do. Finally, he takes my hand in his and begins wrapping the fabric carefully around my wrist. “And because I plan to tie you to the bed before I f**k you.”
“Okay,” I agree hoarsely.
Chapter 2
“Why did you make me leave?” I ask Lucas a little over an hour later. He’s several inches away from me on the oversized bed, the back of his finger stroking my right palm in wide, circular motions. It feels good, right.
“Because even I f**k up.”
Tugging the soft black sheets over my br**sts, I turn my head so that I can look at him. It’s dark in here, but I can easily make out his frown thanks to the sliver of light coming from beneath the bathroom door. “So what exactly happened?”
“Does it matter now?”
I sink my teeth into my lip to stop my snippy response. How the hell can he even ask me if it matters? One moment we were making plans that would turn our temporary arrangement into something permanent once we returned to Los Angeles together, and the next he was telling me I needed to leave.
“Oh yeah, it matters,” I say.
“Because I froze. I was—”
When his words catch, I ask, “Afraid?” He doesn’t confirm or deny, so I continue, “Of Samantha?”
He immediately corrects me. “Of what she might do to you.” As if to drive his point home, he twists a thick red strand of my hair between his fingers before pressing his lips to it. “There was no f**king way I was going to let her screw with you to get to me.”
I start to sit up, but the crimson-colored blindfold is still binding my left wrist to the bed. Lucas uses this opportunity to slide closer to me, tugging the sheet back down to my waist. He glides his tongue around my belly button.
I won’t let him do this to take my mind off of Atlanta.
“You should have given me an option. You should have given me a—” I shiver and dig my toes into the sheets as he presses his fingertips against the sensitive part of my hip. “God, don’t do that right now.”
This time he uses his mouth, keeping his eyes on mine the entire time. I sigh. “The point is, I’m a big girl, Lucas,” I say.
“Sam is a crazy one, though.”
“What does she have on you?”
Lucas smiles, probably to make me feel better about the situation, but his smile isn’t reflected in his eyes. “Nothing.”
Nothing my ass. When he came to me last night right after I finished watching the “Ten Days” music video premiere, I was sure he was ready to tell me what Sam was holding over his head.
And now this?
“Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
“I’m not. Sienna, you need to understand—”
“Will you understand if I decide to go my own way?” I clear my throat. “If, after I finish the two days that I owe you here, I go back to Nashville?”
Sitting up abruptly, he looks down at me, his hazel eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. For a lengthy, awkward moment, he doesn’t say anything else, and all there is between us is the sound of angry breathing.
At last he snaps, “Don’t do that shit. It’s what she would do. I love you, and I’ll do everything I can to keep you, but I don’t need you doing what she’s done to me already.”
I suck in a deep breath through my nose. Squeezing my eyes closed to stop the burning at the corners, I exhale through parted lips. I will absolutely not cry because that won’t get anything accomplished.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because I don’t want to make demands or be anything like his ex, and I feel wretched that he even made the connection. I’ve only met Samantha once, at a birthday party for Cilla, the lead singer of Wicked Lambs, but I learned all I ever wanted to know about Lucas’s ex-wife during that brief encounter.
At the same time, I want to know the truth about why she had so much control over him. I need honesty just as much as I need Lucas.
He traces the oval-shaped outline of my face, studying every freckle and laugh-line, every long black eyelash and every twitch of my lips. Finally, he reaches across my body to unravel the fabric from my wrist. Once my hand is free, he lowers his lips to mine, running his tongue over the center of my lips until I part them and give him complete control of my mouth.