“It’s true. It’s like the clouds break open to the heavens and …” I make a choir sound that scratches my throat, knocking out a barky cough.
Face still buried, he shakes his head. “Should’ve stayed in my own bed.” His voice is muffled by the plush fabric. “At least I’d get another hour of sleep.”
“There’s plenty of time to sleep when you die.”
“Which will be long before you.”
“I heard sex keeps you young. Virile.”
Turning to face me again, he raises a brow, the sight of him ruffling the butterflies in my stomach. “And if she happens to be over a decade younger than me?”
“You’re practically a god.”
His grip tightens like a band around me. “Then, I’ve no reason to leave this bed. And neither do you.”
“I actually have to pee, so …” As I twist away from him, an arm reaches out, dragging me backward. Long, deft fingers dig into my sides, and I howl with laughter, the urgency to pee squeezing my bladder. “Lucian! Please! I’m going to pee my pants!”
“You’re not wearing pants.”
“I swear to God I’ll wet the bed!”
“After last night, it’s due for a change of sheets.”
“Lucian! Stop! Right now!” I giggle, squirming and twisting in his unbreakable grasp. “I’m begging you. Please!”
“Yes, I like to hear you beg. It warms my bastard soul.”
Reaching back, I take hold of his swollen balls and squeeze, giggling when he groans and the tickling stops.
“That was a dirty move.”
“Sensitive this morning?”
“As a matter of fact they are. Take your piss and get back here, before I decide to take my chances on a golden shower.”
Wearing a smile, I slide on his discarded shirt from the night before, not bothering to button the front, and scamper across the room toward the bathroom. Lifting the fabric to my nose, I breathe in the scent of his cologne as I relieve myself quickly, followed by a cursory brush of my teeth and hair. When I return, Lucian is propped on his elbow, a vision of divine masculinity, his muscles all bunched up while he stares down at something in his hands.
As I approach, I notice the picture. The one I found beneath the nightstand.
“I’d forgotten about this day.” The somber tone in his voice echoes the expression on his face that I recall from the picture.
Crawling into the bed beside him, I slide in close, trying not to disturb whatever thoughts have his eyes so fixed and contemplative.
“It was one of Amelia’s good days. A rarity.”
“You look so unhappy? Why?”
“I never liked pretending, and when she was happy, the lies just became more obvious.”
“What lies?”
“That we were in love.”
“You didn’t love her?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever loved a woman?”
He seems to hesitate for a moment, but shakes his head. “It’s the only brand of pain I refuse to inflict on myself.”
“Why is that?”
He sets the picture down and lifts my arm, tracing my scar with his finger. “When you cut yourself with a blade, there’s an open wound, and blood and pain, but the pain comes to an end and the wound seals to a scar. So you cut yourself again and again, because you forget how much it hurt the first time. The heart is a different animal. A caged, lonely scavenger that feeds on its own wounds. Its scars never heal, because you can’t mend the very thing it needs to survive. So the wound continues to fester, until what’s left of the organ is eventually consumed by its own self-mutilation.”
I hate that his words penetrate deep, and that I know so intimately their meaning. The world would call his sentiments depressing and morose, but it’s the most honest definition of love I’ve ever heard.
I run my thumb over the scars along his arm, the tips of my finger traveling over the jagged, irregular edges of wounds that didn’t seal properly. “You’ve hurt yourself, too.”
“I’m not the devil they make me out to be. The heartless, callous monster. You can’t do this shit to yourself without feeling something. That’s the problem. I feel everything. I feel it very deeply.”
Monsters and devils don’t keep drawers full of their son’s old pictures and toys. They don’t intervene when violent drug dealers make terrifying threats. And they certainly don’t kiss like the world might burn down at any moment.
“You’re no monster,” I whisper, climbing over his body, urging him onto his back. Legs straddling him, I feel the warmth of his hands trail over my thighs to the curves of my hips and higher. My breasts, heavy and pulling at my shoulders, jut forward with his wandering fingertips, nipples hardening beneath the pads of his thumbs.
His tongue sweeps over his lips, his eyes seeming to devour every inch of my body, as he pushes aside the edges of my borrowed shirt. “How can you be so fucking perfect? It’s maddening to look at you.”
“Why?”
“So many things I want to do to you. I never know where to begin.” He gives a tiny tug at my nipples, and I arch toward him, which seems to please him, from the way he bites his lip and grinds me against his erection. “You should be grateful that I don’t have a pair of cuffs at my disposal.”
“I’ve personally found your hands to be just as effective.”
His lips stretch to a wily smile, and before I can react, he knocks me to the mattress, flipping me onto my stomach with ease. In two rapid movements, I’m beneath him, lying on my stomach with my face smashed into the pillow. Big palms grip my wrists at either side of my head, pinning me to the bed. His cock glides between the cheeks of my ass, and the heat of his breath falls against the back of my neck. “If my hands weren’t occupied, though, they could hold your thighs apart while I eat your pussy for breakfast.”
“You assume I’ll try to get away from that?”
“Maybe not.” He licks the shell of my ear, the tip of his cock prodding my entrance. “But it’s better when you can’t.”
From the nightstand, he tears another condom from the strip, two of which we’ve already used.
Turning to the side, I watch him rip open the package with his teeth.
“Do you always use condoms?” I ask, the self-conscious side of me rearing its ugly head. Back home, guys wore condoms with me because they assumed I whored myself out.
“Yes. It’s nothing personal.” After sliding the barrier down his shaft, he grips the base of his stiff erection and moves up my body. “I’ve no intentions of becoming a father again.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
It doesn’t hurt my feelings, as I don’t intend to become my mother, either--pregnant before I have my shit together. As he holds himself behind me, waiting and teasing, as usual, I raise my hips up and stir my ass against his groin to taunt him.
A firm hand grips the back of my neck, squeezing hard enough to make me still. I try to lift my head, to see if I’ve pissed him off somehow, but he holds me down, like a lion affirming dominance over his female. He’s a man who likes to be in control of his body, and perhaps my teasing caught him off guard.