Don't Let Me Go

by Rin Daniels

  For him. She wanted him.

  And the solid ridge of his erection, hard and unmistakable against her stomach, said he wanted her too.

  Lucas stared down at her cleavage. “No bra.”

  “Nope.” She smiled up at him, lazy as a cat. “Want to guess what else I’m not wearing?”

  His eyes darkened. He shook his head like he couldn’t see right. When that didn’t seem to help, he held onto her, squeezed his eyes shut and took three deeps breaths.

  Nadine grinned as she watched him fight for control. Fight himself, probably.

  So she’d gone daring today. As color stained his shadowed jaw, as his hands shook against her, she was glad she’d found the courage to do it. The open air between her legs, the draft of her own stride, had felt sassy and sexy and a little bit bad.

  The ultimate weapon. Let him fight all he wanted. She’d won.

  Like he knew, like he could sense her victory—his victory, too—Lucas’s eyes snapped open, tawny and hazy and determined as hell. “Yeah,” he managed, his voice guttural. “Yeah, okay. Hang on.”

  “To wha—” She yelped when he caught her around the waist, laughed when he picked her up off the floor. The muscles in his arms and shoulders went taut, her dress hiked up under his forearms. It left her ass bare, but as her legs came around his waist for support—as his stare pinned on the bare flesh between her legs—it didn’t matter.

  “God,” he groaned, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Just hold on.”

  “Why?” she asked as he turned, gaze wrenching from her smooth skin. He took a step. The momentum rocked her against his stomach.

  Nadine cried out in surprise, in shuddering awareness.

  He froze.

  Not enough. There wasn’t nearly enough friction between them. She tightened her thighs, dug her heels into his backside to bring her against his stomach again. The rough material of his shirt pressed against her. Her body clenched.

  The callused scrape of his hands on the curve of her ass drew another sharp gasp, a shuddering exhale.

  “Bed,” Lucas said harshly. “Bed, this time. Start to finish. Like…” Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she tilted her hips in his grasp. His body heat seared right through his shirt, found an echo in the lush, wet warmth of her arousal. “Like a goddamn gentleman,” he managed, every syllable strained.

  She caught his face between her hands and forced it up, drowned in the wild need that filled his eyes. Her tongue touched the corner of his mouth.

  He sagged against the hallway wall. It shuddered.

  Heady with her own power, locked in the throes of a need she’d never, ever get enough of, she sank her teeth into his lower lip, biting hard enough that his gasp turned into a violent, ragged growl. He turned, braced her shoulders against the wall and let her slide down his fully clothed body.

  She grabbed at the sleeve of his tank. “No,” she began, afraid he was putting her down, but the word cracked on a sharp cry as he shoved her hard against the plaster with the weight of his own body. His hips pinned hers, locked the hard line of his cock against the center of her body and drove savage nails of pleasure through her. She slammed a hand back against the wall in sheer mindless instinct, but she shouldn’t have bothered. His large hands cradled the backs of her thighs, held her securely, as he dragged himself against her, ground against her flesh.

  His cheek burned against hers, whiskers scraping her sensitive skin. It was all she could do to wrap an arm around the back of his neck, fingers buried in his hair as waves of pleasure, of wild satisfaction, rolled through her in time with every grind, every press.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Nadine seized a handful of his hair. He cursed as she jerked his head back. “More,” she demanded.

  He pulled her off the wall.

  She didn’t play nice. She dragged her chest against his, scrabbling at his shirt, somehow managing to pull it up far enough that bare skin pressed against hers. The fabric caught on his armpits, and she didn’t care. Wrenching at it earned a strangled grunt from him, a surprised, “Shit!” as her efforts threw them both off-balance.

  Maybe it hurt when they hit the hallway floor, three steps from the bedroom. Maybe it didn’t. Nadine didn’t have time to care. Somehow, with his help, his tank top cleared his head and slapped into the far wall. Lucas loomed over her, his knees between her legs, his body bare to the waist, and oh, God, she almost swallowed her tongue.

  He was gorgeous. Utterly sexy.

  Impatient as hell.

  His fingers curved into the front of her dress, tugged it down so violently that the sleeves bit into her shoulder—and she didn’t care. Her back arched as her breasts spilled out of the structured bodice.

  “God, yes,” he whispered harshly. His lips closed over her left nipple, his teeth nipped hard enough to sting.

  Nadine cried out, and maybe it was a word. She didn’t have enough self-control to worry about the little things. He laved her nipple, sucked her flesh into his mouth and she sobbed as the ache between her legs grew emptier, sharper.

  Wetter.

  The band around her ponytail snapped as her head tilted back against the hardwood floor. The surface was cool against her backside, stark counter to the blistering heat of his body as he licked and sucked, nibbled and groaned against her breast. Nadine wrapped her fingers around her right breast and offered it, panting.

  He whispered something—something like beautiful—with such raw satisfaction that she wasn’t sure she’d come right there from his mouth on skin.

  From the promise of his cock inches away.

  He licked at her nipple, ran his tongue over her plump flesh and dragged it around the seam of her fingers as she offered it to him. “Lucas,” she gasped. “Ohmigod, Lucas.”

  He got her. No matter what, he’d always gotten her.

  Hard hands closed around her waist, seared the bare skin. With a strength that pulled an answering pulse of appreciation from her sex, he flipped her over onto her stomach, tugged her up so her weight braced on her knees.

  One hand slid down her spine. “Good.” A word of almost violent approval. “Like that.”

  Her fingers bit into the floor. Her cheek pressed against the surface, every muscle locked in trembling anticipation. The hiss of his zipper, the tearing of a foil packet she wasn’t sure he’d had ramped up every nerve, until she thought she’d scream if he didn’t touch her.

  Instead, she screamed when he did.

  Lucas entered her in a one, hard thrust. She was so wet, so ready, so swollen that the intrusion sent shockwaves through her. She wailed, unable to muffle herself, to swallow her own desperation as he sank deep inside her, filling up that emptiness. Easing that ache.

  Only to create another one.

  He knelt behind her, the rough denim folded own his waist grinding against her ass as he thrust himself again into her, pulled out to the point where she thought she’d die from the wanting, and slammed into her again. It was hard and rough and exactly what her body craved—it was Lucas, wired to the point where his control had snapped.

  Where he wasn’t thinking anymore. Just feeling.

  His groans as his cock slid inside her body, shaking as if he couldn’t stop himself anymore than she could, did as much to ramp her up as the feel of him. The way one hand locked in the folds of her dress, caught around her waist, and used it like a leash to bring her hard against him felt dirty and possessive and wrong on every perfect level.

  The way his other hand caught the long fall of her hair in one fist, jerked it tight as his hips rocked against her, as his cock hit every nerve inside her, was her undoing.

  “Jesus,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Nadine.”

  “Yes,” she gasped, panting. She arched her back, tilted her hips to slam back on him, riding the vicious wave of her pleasure—of his—without caring that seams on her dress popped. Her scalp prickled under the taut grip of his hand, her sex tightened, squeezed, her breath caught.<
br />
  Hitched.

  Shattered. Her nails dug into the floor as her orgasm surged over her senses. She screamed with the force of it, her body locking against his.

  She didn’t know if she’d caught him by surprise, but her body clamped around his cock and suddenly he was bent over her back, one hand flattened against the floor by her face and his hips rolling, grinding against her like he couldn’t help himself.

  Like she’d pushed him over.

  His breath shuddered out on a long, ragged groan as he came.

  Sweat glued his chest to her back. Cooled slowly on her skin as she dropped her face into the curve of her arm and tried to remember how she was supposed to breathe.

  Lucas's heartbeat slammed against her back. His own uneven breath ghosted over her shoulder.

  She inhaled deeply. The fragrance of him—of his sweat and his usual no fuss soap, and faintly of whatever it was about his garage that smelled like cars—filled her nose. It merged with her own favorite body lotion, and with the musky aroma of sex.

  Hungry, hard, delicious sex.

  She chuckled. “So what does sex in a hallway make us?”

  Lucas’s forehead dropped between her shoulder blades. “Addicts,” he muttered against her sweat-slick skin.

  Yeah. She’d take that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE SWITCHED THE radio to classic rock, probably in deference to her. Nadine liked pop, but Lucas would rather lick an exhaust pipe than play it. She took the compromise for what it was.

  She sat on a pile of boxes that had been there ever since Mr. and Mrs. Bourdin left Sulla Valley. The stacks were perfect for lounging in, solid enough to hold her weight and let her prop her feet up in a lazy recline. She’d never asked, but given the state of the house he’d been left with, she suspected the boxes were full of his parents’ stuff.

  Lucas didn’t talk about it, and she didn’t push. If she had to guess, she figured he kept the things in here where they’d be out of the way, but close enough to remind himself of the family that left him.

  Maybe he hoped they’d come back. He didn’t like sympathy, didn’t like it when she said anything about it. All she could do was be there for him.

  Her parents thought he was just a delinquent; a bad-boy so broken that even his family didn’t want him. She knew better.

  Lucas bent over the shiny red car he loved so much, hands elbow-deep in the engine. He hadn’t bothered putting on a shirt—which made it so easy to ogle him. His jeans rode low on his hips, giving her lascivious gaze total access to the wide expanse of his lean back.

  And the red scratches she’d put there.

  Heat swept up her cheeks. It wasn’t all embarrassment.

  “You sure you don’t want some ice for that cat scratch?” she asked.

  He shot her a slow, lazy grin over his shoulder as he worked at something beneath the hood. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Her body, thoroughly used and happy for it, twitched. It was about all she could manage. The man wore her out. “If you’re very good,” she said huskily, “I’ll lick it for you.”

  His fingers stopped working. His gaze trailed from her tousled blonde waves, across the oversized black T-shirt she’d borrowed from him. It lingered at her legs, and at the glimpse of navy blue boxer-briefs peeking out from under the hem. She’d stolen those from him, too.

  It wasn’t couture, but the way Lucas couldn’t stop running his eyes over her, it didn’t matter. Her skin burned where his gaze touched, and her sex—so very lethargic after all the orgasms he’d coaxed from her—still tightened. Her toes curled over the corner of the box she propped her feet on.

  His eyebrows jerked up in wicked appreciation, but he deliberately turned back to his car. “Maybe later.”

  She stuck her tongue at him. “No fun.”

  “You just had your turn,” he shot back, but with enough amusement that she could only sigh.

  “You like that car more than me.”

  The engine he focused on muffled his snort.

  “So mean.” Nadine pouted, leaning back into the boxes. She crossed her feet at the ankles, drew little designs on her bare thigh with her finger. “That’s like me saying I love my closet more than I love you.”

  Silence.

  Oh, no. Her stomach turned over. She hadn’t mean tot say that. Not like that. It wasn’t in the plan.

  Initially.

  Sure, she’d intended to seduce him so hard, his head would spin, but she hadn’t come over today with the intention of confessing her undying love.

  She stared at the fading white lines she fidgeted into the skin of her leg.

  In her peripheral, Lucas very slowly pushed up from the car. One hand lazily hooked the belt loop at the front of his jeans, adjusting them as he turned to look at her. She couldn’t see his face. As the music curled into the silence stretching between them, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Wasn’t it the usual practice that honesty was the best policy?

  Maybe she was an idiot. Lucas wasn’t ready to hear the L-word yet. She was too impatient.

  Her heart slammed inside her chest. Spinning around, she set her bare feet on the cool cement floor and stood. “Although my closet has—”

  “I don’t.”

  Her effort to make a joke of it, to tease him to hide her embarrassment, faltered. Surprised, she looked at him—couldn’t help but thrill again over how gorgeous he was, with his five o’clock scruff and lean body. He lounged on the edge of the open engine hood, not sitting but leaning. A wrench dangled from his fingers.

  His eyes—so serious—pinned somewhere over her head.

  That freaking ember of hope he kept urging to life inside her became a flame. A slow, warm balm. Calm. She had to keep this cool. Like she didn’t have anything better to do, she sauntered around his car, hands clasped behind her. “You, um, don’t?”

  “Like my car more.” He cleared his throat. “Just for the record.” And then, with a rueful half-smile, he added, “I’d never sleep with my car.”

  Nadine’s laugh caught on a snort. “I bet you would if you could figure out a way.”

  “Nah.” He rubbed the back of his head and turned around again. The strong shape of his fingers eased through his shaggy hair. He needed a cut. “Red’s sweet, but I like blue.”

  She fought back a smile, pausing in front of his worktable. “Oh.” Lame response, but it was all she had as something warm welled inside her. Something delicious, and more than a little insidious.

  She flattened both hands over her chest.

  He liked her more than he liked his car. She couldn’t think of a sweeter thing he could have said. Except the all-important bit, anyway.

  Lucas ducked his head, returning his attention to the engine he was always messing with. She took a deep breath, forced calm as she turned to study his cork board. The photos were old, washed out. He didn’t keep many, and of them, she was in most.

  Her smile won as she reached up to touch a faded photo. Freshman year in high school, huddled on the bench at a sporting game. Football, probably. He wasn’t looking at the camera, gaze turned somewhere out over the field and his typical sullen scowl in place. Nadine had always been a ham; her grin was wide and aimed straight for the camera.

  Wow, they’d been young. Practically babies.

  Which just meant that she could be patient, here. Even if it killed her. “Why paint this one red, then?” she asked, raising up on tip-toes to smooth the folded yellow flier. Car Show! it announced, with all the usual bold lettering and a stereotypical classic car pin-up along the side.

  Hey, she recognized that event.

  “Classic color.” He grunted a bit as something pinged from under his hands, his forearm tightening as he rolled the part into place. “The 1969 Ford Fairlane Cobra was the king of the budget muscle cars. Relatively plain to the eye, but with enough torque to lay some serious drag on the road.”

  Most of what he said about cars tended to fly over her he
ad, but she’d picked up enough of his general jargon to know that the car he’d restored was fast and powerful. Exactly the kind of car the event he’d pinned showcased. “So why red?”

  “Because nothing says muscle car like red.”

  “Not yellow?”

  “Yellow’s okay,” he replied patiently, “but there’s a reason why cops pull red cars over more than any other color.”

  “Sheer badassery?” Nadine teased.

  “Yup.”

  She grinned, turning around to lean against the worktable. She loved watching him tinker. He seemed to relax when he worked on his car. Something about it, the focus or the finnicky part details or whatever it was, seemed to melt the tension right out of him.

  Even Nadine couldn’t do that.

  But she’d known that about him for years. Like he’d found a kind of solace in this car.

  She laced her hands behind her head. “What are you going to do when that car’s all done?”

  “Mmm.” Not quite an answer. “Don’t know.”

  “Sell it?”

  “No way.” He leaned over, one hand curling over the frame in a way that shouldn’t have looked sexual and totally did.

  If he wrapped that hand around her waist, eased it over her hip, she wondered if he’d feel the same way he did when he touched that car.

  God. She was jealous of a vehicle. Nadine’s exhale shook.

  Down, girl.

  “I might use it as a model piece.”

  She shook her head before her eyes glazed from her own imagination. “What?”

  “A showpiece,” Lucas said, easing out from under the hood.

  “Like in the flier?”

  When he glanced at her, eyebrows raised, she gestured back to the pinned notice. His mouth twisted, a brief line that vanished as he turned his attention back to his baby. “Not really. Actually, I was thinking about opening an auto shop.”

  That was news to her. She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He studied the engine, and though she couldn’t see his face, she assumed it was with critical intensity. He always did that, like the car was a giant puzzle and he had the mental picture to compare it to. But his voice was quiet, even a little hesitant. “If I use the Cobra as a model of what I can do, I could specialize in restoring vintage cars and still make most of my income on everyday vehicles.”