Unlaced

by Jaci Burton

  He blinked. “Your parents—”

  “Are no longer part of the picture. Haven’t been, for a long time.” She shook her head, looked out the window. “Please stop, Lucas. Please. Just . . . stop.”

  Mortified, she had to blink back tears. She could already feel the weight of what she was about to do settling in the pit of her stomach. She’d spent too much time in fucking hospitals and police stations. If he said one more word, she was going to lose it.

  Instead, she stiffened as his arm settled on her shoulders. To her surprise, he didn’t say anything further, just squeezed lightly, a reassurance, his hand stroking her upper arm. A soothing she’d be crazy to take. Like lying down for one minute at home when she was so tired, or taking one more bite of chocolate, things she’d taught herself not to do. But Lucas had undermined some of her normal defenses, to say the least.

  “If I put my head on your shoulder for a moment, will you be quiet and not say anything?”

  In answer, his hand molded itself to her temple, easing her down. He kept it there, just stroking her as the limo made its way through the traffic toward the police station.

  George was the uniform who worked the beat where Jeremy most often was picked up. He’d known her for some time, one of the cops who’d been called to the house for domestic disturbances involving her mother, sometimes her father. So when Jeremy got picked up, he usually tried to keep him from being processed, giving her the chance to come retrieve and talk some sense into him. Occasionally, he’d suggested that shipping Jeremy over to the East Baton Rouge holding facility to cool his heels might not be a bad idea. But they’d been that route before and she wouldn’t do it again, not when she had a choice.

  She’d asked Lucas to head back to his office or, at the least, to stay in the car, neither of which he did. So he was a quiet, unobtrusive shadow behind her as she went through the far-too-familiar routine.

  “I’ll send him out front,” George said, giving Lucas a quick cop assessment. “You can head him off before he takes off.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded, gave her a pitying look she hated, particularly with Lucas there to see it, too. Turning without another word, she headed back out, aware that Lucas held the door for her, his fingertips grazing her lower back as they left the station. She moved a few steps down the sidewalk, and took a seat on a bench. Lucas stood beside her. She wondered why he didn’t sit down, then realized he was blocking her from the chill wind that was sweeping garbage along the sidewalk. He put his jacket around her, made her put her hands through the sleeves without making her talk.

  That simple kindness could have broken her, but fortunately Jeremy came out the front then. He saw her immediately, of course. She always came to get him.

  It was hard to comprehend everything that passed over his face. Derision, hunger, need. Waste was what she usually saw. Features too gaunt, the eyes burning or distant and vague, depending on whether or not he was still riding his latest hit. He’d inherited their father’s height and good looks, as well as the addictive personality that had made her daddy a drunk. Unfortunately, the height and addictive personality were all Jeremy had left. Her twenty-four-year-old brother had the face of a man thirty years older. On the last visit, she’d heard one of the uniforms mutter to George, “She won’t have to waste her time on him much longer. We’ll find his body in an alley soon enough.”

  She couldn’t argue with the truth of that either. But she couldn’t give up on the brother who’d gone from recreational drugs in junior high to hardcore abuse in order to blot out what was happening at home.

  “Rescued by big sis again.” He spread his arms out as she approached him, noting his calculating look toward Lucas and the limo. “Glad you could fit me in before your big date. Going to the prom?”

  “You’re looking worse, Jer. Why don’t you let me take you somewhere, buy you some lunch?”

  “Got things to do. You can give me the cash, though. I’ll pick something up at the deli. Since you’ve got funds to spare.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll just buy another fix. How are you buying your drugs, Jer? You know, possession is far different from dealing. You could—”

  “Go to prison for a long time. So much worse than my life now.”

  She knew better than to engage, but then again, these brief minutes every few weeks were the only chance she got. “You chose this life. You can choose something different. Let me take you to get a sandwich. We can talk about it.”

  “At home?” The thread of hope behind the derision ripped her heart out of her chest, but she maintained a neutral tone.

  “You’re not allowed to come there. Not as long as you’re strung out. It hurts Marcie and the others too much. Jessica really misses you. If you’d just let me get you into a program—”

  “Been there, done that. Don’t give a shit,” he said bluntly. “Fuck off, sis. Don’t need help from someone with a silver spoon stuck up all her holes but nothing to give her brother. Maybe that’s your problem. If you’d given me more of a chance to be the man of the family, rather than taking on the role yourself, then maybe I wouldn’t have turned out like this.”

  “I was the oldest, Jeremy. You know I—”

  He cut her off with a sharp gesture. “I’m only two fucking years younger than you. But you had to run it all, do it all, make me feel even more like a screw-up.”

  She really did know better, but her nerves were frayed, firing her temper. “I tried that, remember? While I was trying to get my degree, you invited your creepy friends over to shoot up. You remember how one of them tried to rape Marcie when she was thirteen?” Cass stepped into him, bumping his toes. He stank. God, when was the last time he’d bathed? “Or were you too stoned to remember your sister screaming for your help?”

  “Back off,” Jeremy snarled, shoving her back, curling a hand into a fist. And found that hand caught, his body yanked around, hard gray eyes inches from his face.

  “I don’t care if she is your sister, you don’t hit girls,” Lucas said evenly. “And you sure as hell don’t hit her.”

  “So she finally got herself a boyfriend. I was beginning to think she prefers pussy, only she’s so cold you’d have to use a hairdryer to get anything up her cu—”

  Lucas hauled him up onto his toes. “Finish it, and you’ll be on your ass picking up your teeth. She may see her baby brother, but I see a piece of shit. You shut it, or I will shut it for you.”

  Cass had frozen. In her anger, she’d almost forgotten Lucas was with her, at her back. Cold, controlled, his eyes like steel. Her brother was enough of a street creature to know when the odds were against him. He shut up, though he glared.

  “She weighs nothing, comes up to your chin, and you were about to hit her with a closed fist. Jesus.” Lucas thrust him off, away from Cass, hard enough to send him stumbling, and she didn’t miss that he positioned himself between them. “If nothing else, that should tell you that you need help. You’re absolutely right. She does need a man to help her lead the family. Get into rehab, stick with it. Admit you need your family’s help. That’s what a real man would do.”

  “Jeremy.” Recovering, Cass stepped around Lucas. “Please, let us help.”

  “Fuck off.” Jeremy took off at an awkward run, his limbs uncoordinated so he stumbled over a couple cracks on the pavement, but kept going.

  She almost gave chase, then felt the gentle but firm restraint of Lucas’s hand. Pulling away, she rubbed her forehead, counted to ten. “I’m not in the mood for lunch anymore.” She didn’t think she could bear to look at him, but then Lucas touched her face, surprising her such that she looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry, Cass.”

  “No. Nothing for you to be sorry about.”

  “Yeah, there is.” He looked down the sidewalk, where Jeremy had stopped, backpedaling when he realized they weren’t following. He shot a middle finger at her, shouted something intelligible, and then turned, striding away among a largely a
pathetic crowd who recognized a junkie when they saw one. “That’s something for everyone to be sorry about.”

  Moving farther from his comfort, she stared at a homeless person propped against the side wall of a storefront, sheltering from the wind. “I live in a safe, beautiful house. I have a security guard and a gate. Specifically so he can’t be there.”

  “Has he been through rehab?”

  “Twice. Ditched it both times. I had to make sure he couldn’t get to the girls and Nate,” she added, a steadying reminder. She wouldn’t let Lucas see her fall apart over this. More than that, she wouldn’t do it to herself. “They’d fall right into his traps, his sob stories. But I keep . . .” Her voice trembled again, despite her attempt, but she steadied it with a fierce shrug of her shoulders. “Well, that’s that, then.”

  “No. What?” He took her by the shoulders, wouldn’t let her go when she pulled. “Tell me, Cass.”

  “I keep telling myself not to think of him as my brother anymore. Because he really isn’t, not anything like what I remember. But he is. He is.” And she couldn’t help it, the tears were coming, the sobs, and she couldn’t stop them. “Sometimes I just want it to be over. I want to grieve him all at once, rather than these bits and pieces.”

  Appalled at the words she’d said, bitterness gave way to something else. Oh, God, I can’t do this here.

  At her look of total panic, Lucas simply picked her up off her feet, right there on the sidewalk in front of the police station, and strode back to the limo. Cass wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. The tears were overwhelming her. This was Lucas’s fault. This whole well of emotions he’d opened up in her today and yesterday, it was spilling out now, in the place she could least afford the show of weakness.

  As they approached the car, she remembered he’d sent Max off to find some lunch, but her gratitude for that did little to ease the pressure inside her. When he slid her into the second seat and got in, she struck out at him, intending to castigate him for treating her like some weak-kneed female. Only somehow she ended up clutching the T-shirt instead, gripping it hard enough to rip, as she tried to pull apart something other than her own insides. He folded his arms around her, brought her against the cotton.

  “Goddamn it, Cass, let it go. Anyone can tell it’s gnawing at you like a cancer. I’m not going to hold it against you.”

  She broke. Sobbed out the frustration and misery. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried about it, because it hurt so much to do it. His hands were between them, pulling the borrowed shirt free of her skirt, as she hiccupped painfully. Now he reached beneath it and unhooked the corset, all the way down, just one of the ways he was easing the combustible emotions pouring out of her. She didn’t try to stop him, though in hindsight she doubted he would have let her this time. His hands slid in under it, replacing the stiff stays with heat, the welcome touch of his fingers, molding over her bare rib cage, becoming a different form of support as she gulped in the air she needed for the sobs.

  By the time she eased up, she was sure she’d turned her makeup into a raccoon’s mask, but embarrassment was getting to be a lost cause with him. Repairing the damage to her pride wasn’t worth the effort.

  “Shh.” Lucas was murmuring to her quietly, she realized, and had been doing so for a while. As she pushed herself up, trying to avert her face, he drew her back, wiping her eyes with the fresh handkerchief from the pocket of the coat she was still wearing. When she tried to take it, do it herself, he let her, but he kept her within the curve of his arm, stroking her hair, his other hand settling on her hip, holding her in a secure circle. He pulled the corset out from beneath the shirt, away from her body, and folded it on the seat beside him, out of her reach. “You don’t need this. Not with me.”

  Exhausted enough not to argue, she leaned into him. Her breast mashed into his hard chest in a comforting way. There was nothing between them now, on several levels. She’d just revealed far too much to him, and there was an ache inside her she was tired of feeling. His body was solid heat, and the steady drum of his heart was a counterpoint to the erratic beat of her pulse. It reminded her that there was a way to assuage the loneliness and despair of all of it, at least for a few minutes. The way she’d wanted him to do from the beginning.

  Surging up, she found his mouth with her own, awkwardly enough she thought she might have cut his lips with her front teeth. However, as she locked her arms around his neck and straddled him, she tossed aside control or finesse and demanded from his mouth what some deep part of her was sure only he could provide. No logic or rationality to it, those two things she’d always allowed to guide her life. She willed him to know what she wanted without words.

  His hands slid under the shirt again, caressing bare skin marked with the impressions of the tight corset. Finding them, he spoke against her mouth, a soft admonishment as he stroked abraded skin. But he also brought her closer, and the first time both breasts touched his chest, she moaned in his mouth, her hand dropping down to push his jacket out of her way so she could feel him beneath his thin shirt. Cotton felt so good when it was fitted over a man’s firm, hot skin, imbued with his scent. His arms circled her back, letting her feel the imprint of his fingers on her flesh, learning the curves of her, learning where she liked to be touched. If it was Lucas, she didn’t care where, just that he touched her. She ground herself against him, against the unyielding hardness of his cock.

  “Cassie,” he said, his voice harsh as he wrapped his hand in her hair to hold her back a necessary inch, though his eyes were full of reassuring desire. “We’re in front of a police station. We can’t do this here.”

  “The windows are tinted. I need you to make me come. I need to come, and only you . . . I only want you to do it. Make me do it. Here. With you inside me. Not any other way. I want you to just fuck me, the way you’ve been wanting.” She wanted to be taken, swept away. Wanted to smell him and the vehicle upholstery, his suit, bite his irresistible mouth as he slammed her down on him.

  As she curved her long nails, stabbing him through his shirt, her eyes were half-wild, like a feral cat. Lucas suspected she wanted the wildness, all the world narrowing to just that and not any of the other nightmares she was facing.

  “I don’t want to just fuck you, and you know it. That’s not what you want either.” He caught her wrists, holding her. “Cassie, look at me. I want to make love to you. Take you into my bed and keep you there a few decades, savor every inch of you. Make you scream yourself hoarse, and mark every part of you as mine. Make you want to be mine.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That’s not what I want.”

  “It’s what you need.” He made himself soften the words, though he kept enough steel in his voice to hold her attention, mindful of whom he was dealing with. “In a few minutes, Max is going to be back. He’s going to drive us to your home, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “I haven’t agreed to that.” Her expression fired, but he saw fear behind it.

  “You want me enough to take it how you can get it,” he said shortly. “This is the offer that’s on the table. You willing to take the risk that I’m right? That it will be hell and gone from just fucking?”

  She stared at him, and her big blue eyes, the need in them, almost broke his resolve. He’d take her any way he could get her, too. Wasn’t that a hell of a discovery? If another tear fell, he’d be a goner.

  “You . . . can’t. My sisters are there.”

  “Okay, then.” Taking a deep breath, he considered that new variable, an obvious one that had been clouded by lust. “Then we go spend the afternoon with your sisters. I’ll figure out an option for the evening. You keep some energy in reserve.”

  She nodded, her mind in obvious confusion. “Lucas, with them in the house, we can’t—”

  “Cassandra.” He framed her face in his hands, held her captive. “I’ve had enough of playing games about this. You hear me? When I take you to your bed tonight, it won’t be blat
ant or inappropriate, but I’m going to be there for breakfast. I’m going to become part of your life, and theirs. We’re going to see where this takes us. You deserve something for yourself. I’m that something. What better example could they have of what sex is supposed to be about, than a guy who’s head over heels about their sister? Someone who is willing to stay for breakfast?”

  She shook her head, trying to pull away, escape. “Lucas, you know I have absolutely no way to process the logistics of any of this.”

  “I’m the bean counter, remember?” He smiled, though he wanted to bring her back to his chest, if for no other reason than her generous breasts and the aroused nipples beneath his borrowed shirt were going to make him let go of any resolve at all and fuck her brains out in the backseat until the violent rocking of the car gave them away and they spent the night waiting for Ben to come make bail for them. “Let me deal with that. Don’t let it be about consequences, worries, or how the world can suck and things go bad. For once, just take it.” He gave her a fierce look. “Take the moment and see if it can lead to a lifetime.”

  “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly at last, so unlike herself that he wanted to hold her tight, in comfort this time. But he knew you had to close the deal before the opposition backed out. The most important thing was the signature on the bottom line, and the kiss he crushed on her lips now, bringing those delicious breasts back in contact with him, was a definite signature. With a flourish. So definite that he couldn’t help crushing all of her to him, pressing the hard weight of his need between her legs, eliciting a provocative whimper from the back of her throat.

  “I want to go home,” she said again, gratifyingly breathless. “I need to see the rest of my family.”

  “Okay. One condition. You tell me about them. About you. Give me that.”

  When she started to shift, he adjusted her so she was no longer straddling him, but he kept her cradled in his lap. More important, it allowed her to stare out at the parking lot, the dismal landscape of the police station, rather than at his face, which he knew might help her talk about what was obviously difficult. But he linked his hand with hers, a simple sign of intimacy and support he hoped would help. She squeezed down on his fingers, and just when he thought he’d have to prod some more, she spoke.