“What’s this?”
“You have it if you need to call that Dawn woman. Or him. Or anyone. No more prisoner. This is something we’re in together. You can take your phone and stay. You can take your phone and leave. It’s time for this little game to stop and the figuring out to begin.”
I remembered that I told him I loved him. I remembered how inappropriate it felt and yet so honest. And I realized, that even though I wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on–not really anyway–my heart said the same thing when I looked at him. I love you…I love you…
I put it on silent and stuck it in my purse. I watched the scenery fly by as we headed toward the cabin. When it started to snow it looked magical. When Lucas reached out absentmindedly and put his big hand on my thigh and rubbed my leg affectionately, I felt magical.
The cabin was bigger than I expected and more gorgeous to boot. A blonde wood work of art, it sat by itself in the middle of towering trees. Dusk was falling and the air was blue. Lucas carried our bags in and we uncovered the furniture. He lit a fire and turned to me. “I’ll be back, running up for groceries. You’re here alone and if you want to make calls you can. If you want to leave, you can. There’s a spare truck in the garage for hunting. The keys are over the sink on the hook.”
“Lucas, I’m not going anywhere,” I said. I toed the rag rug in the center of the room. “I don’t want to.”
“I’m not a good guy. You could do better.” His face was stone, I couldn’t read him.
“You are.”
“I shared you with my brother.”
“I wanted you to.”
“I knew I didn’t want to.”
“That’s all that matters now,” I said, feeling anxiety crawl in my chest. Did he want me to leave? Was that what this was about?
He stared at me. “No,” he said, simply.
“No what?”
“No, I don’t want you to leave. That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Right. Like I said, no. I do not want you to leave. But I need you to understand that you have the option. Wrong, scratch that, I want you to understand. That if you stay, it’s you who’s staying, not me making you. Not some game. Not some scene. Not some scenario.”
“I know.”
“I hope so. Because I’m kind of freaked out. And when I get freaked out I get pissed. When I get pissed, I’m hard to be around. So, here I go, off to get our provisions. You are aware of the vehicle, you have a phone, you are free and clear of me if you want.” His voice was gravel, hard and unforgiving. "Any requests before I go?
“Hurry back,” I said and turned my back before I started to cry.
I wanted to be here. I didn’t know how to get him to believe me.
When he left, I watched him do a three point turn in the truck and head down the road in a sudden burst of gravel dust. The tail lights winked at me, glowing red and demonic in the sudden dusk. It had fallen from a twilight purple shadow to darkness in a blink, or so it felt. The snow continued to drift down, looking more enchanting out here in the woods than it ever did in the city.
I dialed Dawn and told her I’d had a family emergency. An issue that had to be dealt with. She was free to choose a new planner if she wanted. I felt a pang realizing I was cutting her loose verbally the same way Lucas had just done to me. There was a difference, though. Dawn had hired me to do a job and I was lagging. Lucas was cutting me loose after doing the emotional equivalent of getting me hooked on heroin. But in this case, he was the drug.
Dawn assured me that she would be patient, we had plenty of time and I was the planner for her. She showed some faith. So now I had to set about showing Lucas some faith.
Chapter 24
He returned with a bottle of red wine, rotisserie chicken, what looked like a whole garden of vegetables from the salad bar and a chocolate cake. He nearly looked startled to find me there, and I smiled, uncorking the wine with a wine opener I’d found while peeking in the kitchen drawers. “I’m starving.”
“Did you call anyone?”
I nodded, not looking at him. I poured each of us a glass but let them set to breathe. “I called Dawn and told her she could find a new planner if she liked.”
He frowned. Was he really expecting me to leave that easily? Did he really think he was that off-putting. “And?”
“And she said no way, Jose, I was the girl for her. So she was going to stick with me.” I said the last few words slowly so they’d sink in.
“That’s nice of her,” he mumbled, pulling out plates and silverware.
“Not so much. She knows I’m right for her and she doesn’t need to second guess it.”
We pretty much ate in silence. The wine was phenomenal and the sofa felt like heaven. A big overstuffed, off-white monstrosity draped in various throws and padded fat with throw pillows. I curled in around Lucas and he draped a loose arm across my back, stroking the small of my back so softly my eyes eventually drifted closed. Some movie with explosions and bad guys blared on the TV but I was listening to the lulling sound of his heart.
I woke to him carrying me in his arms. I wasn’t much shorter than him so I had no idea how he managed me, a cumbersome, gangly package. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Time for bed.”
He took me to the bathroom where I sleepily stumbled through my nightly routine. In the hall, he took my hand and led me down the hall. Instead of veering into the room he’d shown me as he master bedroom, he veered into the guest room. I opened my eyes, feeling so sleepy I felt drugged. The last few days had sapped me emotionally and that always made me feel like I’d been hit by a truck. “Why here?”
“I need to think.”
“About what?” I pulled back but he tugged me gently. He stripped me of my clothes and basically dressed me in the new flannel pajamas. I let him. I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to punch him on some level. He was banishing me again.
“About us. About me and how I feel and why you are so goddamn different.” Each word he spit out felt like a nail flying from his mouth. Sharp and dangerous and possibly rusty.
“Can’t you do that with me in there with you?” I snapped.
“No. If you’re in there with me, I’m going to fuck you. And when I fuck you I’m going to want you.”
“You want then fuck,” I growled.
“Not with you. I fuck and then I want. I want you more after I’ve had you than before. On all levels. My heart…”
I stared at him, eyes narrowed, stinging with tears that I absolutely refused to shed. We weren’t away together if he was putting me in separate room like some visiting cousin from Kalamazoo. “Your heart what?”
“Aches. My heart aches when I’m with you. And I don’t know if I like that.”
“I…” I shook my head and then gasped when he pulled my arms out and put two leather cuffs on my wrists. They were soft and pink and connected. A figure eight of buttery pink leather with buckles that I could not reach once he’d put them on me. I know, because I immediately tried. “What’s this?”
“If you decide you want to leave, you can. Come to me and I’ll take these off for you before you go.”
“Why not just leave them off and I can go if I want to go,” I bit off each word, my heart racing with hurt and outrage.
He leaned in and kissed my forehead in a shockingly tender manner. “Because you’ll have to come tell me this way. I can’t stand the thought of you sneaking out of here in the dead of night like a thief. I’d just need to know.” One more kiss on the head and then he pulled the covers back for me. I climbed in, swallowing convulsively so I wouldn’t cry, or worse yet, beg him to change his mind.
“Goodnight, Ember.”
“Yeah,” I said and turned my back to him.
“I’m right next door,” he said.
I nodded, but stayed silent. He shut the light off and I tried to look at the bright side. At least Daisy wasn’t here.
* * * *
I was sure I woul
dn’t fall asleep. I simply knew I’d never drift off this way. Not as hurt and pissed and irritated as I was. So of course I drifted off immediately upon Lucas leaving the room. But I woke at two thirty, the chartreuse green digital numbers of the alarm clock stared maliciously as me from the nightstand. I wasn’t hindered in any way other than having my hands bound so I tossed the covers off and sat up, smelling the air. A lake air smell that spoke of fewer vehicles, open land and big bodies of water. I’d go in and I’d make Lucas let me sleep with him.
I tiptoed, the cabin's floors creaking and groaning in certain spots. I stilled and heard outside some night bird sound its call. Probably an owl, I thought. Hopefully and owl. A country girl I was not and though I adored the cabin, the landscape and the seclusion was a bit unnerving.
Lucas’s door wasn’t latched and I pushed it open with the tips of my toes. “Lucas?”
Silence. No snoring or heavy breathing or anything. His room was darker than mine and I wondered if he’d left the shades cracked to the outside just enough to let the light from the side porch shine a yellow beam of light into my room.
I inched forward in the dark so I wouldn't stub my toe or trip. My fingers, close together because of the leather cuffs, waved through the darkness like feelers. Finally my knee hit the edge of the bed and I leaned in, groping for the feel of him. Slowly, my eyes were showing me the darker outlines of objects and the hump shape of a man in the bed. When I touched his leg a hand shot out and grabbed me hard, pulling me off balance. I screamed as I fell but then Lucas clamped his hand over my mouth.
“Are you leaving? Did you need me to take your cuffs off?” he said, his voice velvety in the darkness.
“No. I was lonely. I wanted to be in here with you.”
He sighed. I heard the frustration in that sigh. But I also heard something that sounded like desire. But that could have been my imagination. “Go back to bed, September.”
“Lucas. Let me sleep with you. Please?”
“No. I can take the cuffs off and you can go or I can help you back to bed.”
Okay, so my throat felt pin-sized at that point and my own frustration was so out of control I felt like throwing a temper tantrum. Simply coming unglued and screaming and carrying on until he either gave me my way or tossed me out into the night on my ass. “Lucas—”
“It’s not up for debate. Those are your choices. Will you want to leave if I forbid it? If I won’t fuck you? Will that make you go?”
Silence. Dark and silence. I felt like I was in a cave, lost and on my own. I hated that feeling. “No,” I said, my voice wavered with tears and I willed it to stop. Why did I have to be such a fucking girl sometimes?
“Then I’ll help you back to bed.” I felt him rise more than saw him. When his warm hand wrapped around my bound wrists I wanted to beg him again. The urge to try anything and everything to get him to change his mind was overwhelming. But either respect for him or pride got in the way and I willingly let him tug me back to my bed.
Lucas tugged the sheet up over and sat down on the edge of the bed. His hand smoothed over my forehead and now that we were in my room I could see a slice of his profile from the meager light through the window. “Good night again, Ember. Don’t come back. Okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “Can I…” I shook my head as a wash of unwanted tears overflowed my lower lids.
“Can you what?” He smoothed my bangs. I didn’t know if he could tell I was crying. Part of me hoped so, so that he felt like shit. Part of me hoped not, so he wouldn’t know how fucking weak I could apparently be.
“I was just going to ask if I could ask a question.”
“Ah but that is a question,” he teased. I actually laughed. It was an almost angry laugh. “But yes, you can.”
“Why? Why do I have to sleep in here? Why if you are so protective of me? Why if I am different?”
“See, you are different. Which is why you have to be in here. You're so special that when I’m with you, I can’t think. I’m not sure I like that, and I’m damn sure not used to it. So you’re close enough that I have you and you’re not so close that you’re fucking up my head. Until I come in and touch you. Then you fuck up my head.” His fingers slipped under the covers and he slid one into my panties. I bit my lip to keep from making sounds. I arched my hips and held my breath when his fingertip met my clit. He pressed and twirled and little swirls of pink stirred up in my vision.
“When I touch you, I can’t be rational,” he confessed. He slid that finger into my pussy, then another and slowly started to curl his fingertips against my G-spot.
I held my breath, my head swimming and my body thumping with pleasure. “When I touch you, all I want is you. All I think of is you. All I can feel is you.” With each word he thrust just a bit and his fingers curled and my pussy clenched. And when his lips met mine in a soft, reverent kiss I came, my cunt seizing up around his fingertips, my body greedily taking whatever pleasure he was willing to give.
“Oh,” I said.
“Which is why you have to sleep in here sweet September. I’ll come get you when the sun comes up.”
Lucas left my room again. And this time I heard him lock the door behind him.
Chapter 25
“Rise and shine sexy,” Lucas said. He watched her struggle, watched those big blue eyes flick open and then drift closed. Open and then closed. He wanted to smile, wanted to chuckle at her. Though he rarely every put anything in the category, Ember could often only be described as cute. Hot and sexy, funny and smart, a bit unsure of herself and easily flustered, but there were times that the only word he could dig up from his memory banks that handled all that was September Sullivan was cute.
“Hunh?”
“I said rise and shine. It’s sunny and it’s chilly and we’re going to eat some kick ass pancakes, courtesy of me. And then we're going to go on a hike.” His eyes drifted to her window where he’d pulled back the curtains. Fat flakes of snow drifted down and swirled around the small deck that lay outside her room. “It’s snowing.”
“Then why in the world would we hike?” she mumbled and threw a pillow over her head.
Lucas did laugh then. He stalked over to her as quietly as possible and then pounced, jumping on the bed, tearing off the pillow so that she shrieked like an axe murderer was on the loose. One thin hand clutched at her chest, the other twisting restlessly in the attached leather cuff. Seeing her hands held together that way, her at his mercy again, made his cock hard. But he ignored it and leaned in, pressing his lips to her temple. He watched the pulse jump at her throat and wanted to press his teeth there. Instead he said “Because we need to do something that isn’t fucking.”
“Good god, why?” But then she smiled and he felt his heart break a little. When she smiled sometimes he felt like he’d swallowed a lit light bulb. It was an entirely horribly pleasant feeling that often left him feeling angry. Good things did not come to him easily, even when he asked for them. So he looked at Ember being dropped in his lap, into his bed, into his life almost as some cruel universal joke. The Trojan horse. The bomb wrapped like a birthday gift.
“Because we do. I said so,” he growled and found the key for her cuffs in his pocket. He set her slender wrists free, watched her rub them to get the blood flow back. Her hand darted, almost too fast for him to track, and she touched him. His belly, his belt buckle and finally she went for the bulge in his pants that even half asleep was visible to her.
Lucas snorted, grabbed her hand and held it tight while he climbed off.
“Please,” she said, looking like she would cry. “I feel like you’ve abandoned me.” Her face said maybe she hadn’t wanted to admit that to him. Again he felt his heart seize up uncomfortably. The urge to comfort her rose up in him, an unexpected wave of emotion and he turned away from her before he could.
“If I’d abandoned you, Ember, you’d be back in town, on your way to finding a new place or asking that dipshit you were with to take you home. You wouldn’t
be here one room away from me and locked in so I could keep you safe–know where you are. When I want you,” he tossed over his shoulder feeling simultaneously like the dominant and a huge shit.
He heard her make a soft sound that might be crying. He didn’t turn but he said, “ Come on, now. No time for that. Hop in the shower so I can feed you and then I’ll show you the woods. You’ll like it.”
“Yes, Lucas." He smiled, but there was that feeling again. That he had to at least give her something. Let her know. She wasn't just some toy and he wasn’t sure he liked it. But didn’t he at least owe her the honesty.
“What a mess,” he said to himself. And then “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. And then you have to change. And change sucks.”
* * * *
I pushed the pillow to my head and let out a half-assed scream. Part of me wanted to take a shower and then kick Lucas Crow in the shin and storm out like some movie star in a bad romantic comedy. Another part of me wished we still had Matthew here as a distraction. When the brothers had been butting heads I had felt the attraction and want coming off Lucas. I could read him better because he wasn’t guarding himself from me, he was too busy warring with his sibling.
“But now it’s just us and he’s determined to mull every little thing over. So get used to it, Ember. Get used to being frustrated and anxious–physically, mentally and emotionally because that man is the most stubborn man…ever!” I kicked at the covers in frustration and ended up stubbing my toe on the footboard and let out an enraged shriek.
“Stop talking to yourself and take a shower!” Lucas yelled and I stuck my tongue out. His silent treatment and inability, or unwillingness, to talk to me about his feelings was making me a bit childish and I recognized that. I couldn’t stop it, but at least I recognized it.
The shower was hot, the jeans were perfect, the sweater was soft and the boots cheered me up. By the time I got to the breakfast table, Lucas was filling my plate with bacon and fluffy pancakes. I almost forgot to be pissed at him. Almost.
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