All or Nothing

by Dee Tenorio

  Shaking her head, strangely smiling while she did, she plopped her hat back on her head and ran to catch up.

  She’d like to say the Devil made her do it. But really, who would believe her? Everyone knew she didn’t need help from amateurs when it came to being evil. Lucas’s remark about not sleeping with her the night before had left Belinda with an urge to set him straight. The decision to have sex was never—and would never be—in his hands.

  “Get naked,” she said as soon as Lucas and Sparky entered the back gate to her metal yard just before noon.

  He blinked at her twice. Slowly. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, sorry, I have to be formal?” She could blink innocently, too, and showed him, smiling as sweetly as she possibly could without falling over from insulin failure. “I dare you to pose for me.” She pointed at a borrowed pool chair with a sheet draped over it in the middle of her metal yard. “Nude.”

  He stared at the chair with a frown the likes of which she hadn’t seen since high school.

  “You’re a metal artist.”

  She grinned. “Are you saying you never get hard?”

  His deep blue eyes gleamed and he shook his head at her, obviously trying to decide whether he should run and hide or stay and bare.

  “You could always cry uncle.” She knotted her hands behind her back. Her stomach rippled. Which didn’t make a lot of sense. She wanted him to give up. Maybe not as much as she wanted him naked, though. Particularly naked and understanding exactly who was in control.

  “Even if I wanted to, you don’t want me to,” Lucas eventually said, sounding long-suffering and making her frown while he pulled his T-shirt from his jeans. He headed to the lounge in the middle of her sorted junk piles, lifting the fabric over his head. Why did he have to turn everything into an examination? Couldn’t she simply get a kick out of forcing him to undress?

  She hadn’t done any life drawing in years, but Lucas naked could inspire the arthritic into picking up art tools. She grabbed a sketch pad and her charcoal tin, then set herself up cross-legged on an overstuffed wicker chair she used for idea hunting. By the time she was ready, he was undressed.

  Suddenly wasting him on a drawing seemed like a damn shame.

  He stood there, hands on his lean hips in utter defiance, peering down at the lounge without trust while she stared at his tight ass without a thought in her head. “How do you want me?”

  All kinds of suggestions surged to her empty mind. Beneath me, over me, behind me…any way you can get inside me.

  She cleared her throat. The idea is to torment him, dumbass. “Sit, with your knees sort of…drawn up?”

  She tried not to laugh as he tested the chaise by sitting gingerly. He wasn’t a man who often had to move gingerly and aside from showers and sex, he probably didn’t move naked too often, either. Shoving him outdoors that way was probably the cruelest thing she could do.

  Too bad he didn’t seem victimized in the slightest. Meanwhile, her face was threatening to need a team of firefighters to put it out. And the bugger knew it, thanks to the fact that hair dye did absolutely nothing to change a platinum blonde’s complexion.

  But she couldn’t give in. However dumb these dares became, embarrassing or difficult, she had to remember what the goal was: keeping Lucas from the biggest mistake of his life. If that meant embarrassing the crap out of him and taking whatever cruel kindnesses he doled out, she could do it. Whether or not she could remember her own name while he strolled around nude, however, was up for debate.

  “I don’t think this is what you want,” he mumbled, looking at himself, clearly unable to decide what to do with his limbs. “Why don’t you come over here and set me up?”

  It was a trap. A deliberately lame excuse to seduce her while he was nude. First, she’d go over there and he’d smile at her in his way. Or he’d touch her in some way. He’d search out the chink in her armor and once he had her going, who knew what she’d say to get him inside her? Not a good plan.

  She’d never have gone anywhere near him if getting him naked hadn’t been her own idea. The best defense was a good offense, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that how she lived her life? Yes, and Lucas Lonnigan was not about to change that while playing on her home field. Carefully she set down her implements, then crossed the dirt path to his towel-draped throne.

  “You want me to touch you?” she asked, setting her hands on her own hips; the better to keep from grabbing him.

  Lucas raised a brow. “Do you know another way to move me around?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You promise to keep your hands to yourself, because I don’t believe for a second that you’re noble enough not to take advantage.”

  He looked her over, almost pointedly taking in her overall cut-offs with the bib falling down on one side and the white shirt with pink and blue skulls on it arranged like flowers over her small breasts. “I think you’re safe. You’d have plenty of time to knock my balls in before I so much as got your button undone.”

  The reference to his privates, of course, made her glance right at them before looking immediately back to his face with her mouth skewed. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  He didn’t look repentant about his arousal. It jutted up next to his raised thigh, grazing the folds of his belly as his torso curved so he could settle his forearm on his bent knee. The other leg lay, bent as well, his left foot on its side in the space between his thigh and right foot “You had plenty of ideas last time.”

  She should have brought the charcoal tin, just to toss it at his head. “You have no shame, Lonnigan.”

  “I don’t need any with the way you’ve been looking at me.” He tilted his head back to squint at her in the sunlight, grinning like a loon. A proud, well-endowed loon. She refused to inspect him further until she was safe in her chair several feet away.

  How on earth had she ever thought stripping him would give her any kind of an edge? He obviously had no qualms about his body or its effect on her. This wasn’t control. It wasn’t even a power play. The man had her frazzled in ten seconds flat.

  Well, maybe not flat…

  “Can’t you do something about it? It’s casting shadows.”

  “It likes you. If you want it to go down, you know how to get it that way.”

  Her hands itched to take hold of him and do exactly that. To ease him into the palm of her hand, circle him with her fingers, take him deep into her mouth and stroke until he lost all control. He tempted her further, closing his eyes, leaving himself utterly open for attack. For just a second, she reached out, but this was a trap and she knew it. If she wanted him, she was going to have to admit to caring about him. Admit him in more ways than she cared to count.

  She pulled her hands back to her overalls, shoving them in her pockets. “Did you just make your next dare?”

  He opened his eyes and when she met them, they were fiery. “I will never dare you to make love to me. I only want you if you want me. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’s staying.”

  She clenched her hands tightly, glad he couldn’t see them. “I’m sorry,” she finally murmured, finding it somewhat impossible to believe she was apologizing. She never thought she’d be doing that for him. “I know, I just…”

  She didn’t know what to say she wanted. Probably because what she wanted was too confused and blurred to make sense. Her body wanted him. Her heart needed him. Her mind knew better than to give in to either. Nothing was turning out the way she hoped. He was supposed to be embarrassed. His body was supposed to be exposed, not her emotions.

  He reached into the open flap of her overall bib, the back of his hand grazing her belly as he tugged, pulling her close, pulling her down. Then he kissed her. Gentle. Authoritative. A soothing touch and a reminder that what drew them together had never hinged on her ability to do everything right. There was acceptance in his kiss and it might well have been a drug because she was instantly addicted to it. She laid her hands on the sides of his
face, drinking him in like a woman dying of thirst, when he moved away.

  “I thought you needed to draw,” he said hoarsely.

  Her hands slid to his shoulders, her lips already forming the words to tell him she couldn’t care less about drawing when taut lines of muscle rippled under her palms. She frowned, running her fingers over the lengths from the outward curve of his ball joints to deep valleys where his collarbones met his throat, sensing the elusive tingle of inspiration. She could feel it, the surge of energy, the rush of understanding a figure before her as an idea if she could just catch the tail of it and hold on.

  “What?” he asked quietly. Did he feel it, too? Was that why he didn’t move?

  “Turn around,” she whispered urgently, unwilling to break the spell with her own voice. “Face that way.”

  He didn’t argue. He turned until he was facing away as she directed.

  “Fold your arms so your hands are behind your head again.”

  He complied and she could see the hundreds of small muscles flex in his shoulders and down his torso to the paler skin at the small of his back.

  He was a beautiful machine, toned to sinuous lengths, golden skinned with a few freckles and moles across his breadth to make him unique. She could already see the sculpture in her head. The heated, smoothed lengths of polished steel that would represent the beauty of him. It would need water. Water to slide over the planes and curves. Yes…yes…to slide over perfection.

  She ran back to the pad and began slashing and soothing dark dust into shapes and shadows. She did three fast studies before changing his position to a tilted version. First left, then right. How he stood it for so long, she didn’t know. He never moved, never complained. The final drawings were made with him facing her, his dark eyes full of the flame that drew her, the strain at his mouth all that finally slowed her down.

  “I’m done,” she said, knowing she wasn’t. The sketches were only the beginning. The beginning of a masterpiece, though. Only the beginning.

  He wrapped himself in the bath sheet, muttering something about using her shower before walking past her into the workshop.

  She stayed out in the yard, trembling, spent from her artistic exertion, craving a taste of Lucas-scented steam. Seduced again, damn him. She couldn’t even satisfy herself with the taste of a smoke. Instead she gnawed on a pencil from her kit. She made herself stay in the yard until he whistled for the dog and left the same way he came, leaving her emotions fully engaged, far too cognizant of him and how he fit in her life. In her heart.

  She covered her face with her hands.

  This was getting messy.

  “You were naked in the metal yard?”

  Lucas rolled his eyes, stirring his tea while he listened to Kyle making too much out of things. “I was inspiring her.”

  “You were waving your bare ass all over her property,” Kyle corrected, if not disgusted, sounding damn close. “Is it still safe to sit anywhere?”

  Lucas considered the night he and Belinda had made use of any surface strong enough to support them. And said nothing.

  “So what else did she dare you?” Kyle asked, probably making faces over his own morning coffee. He’d gotten the idea that they should update each other on their “campaigns” once a week. For the first time ever, Lucas was making more progress with a woman than Kyle—who had yet to get Jessica to do much more than pause before hanging up on him—which at least made the occasional phone calls worth Lucas’s time. But describing Belinda’s dares wasn’t exactly fun.

  “I have to clean her warehouse every day.” He mumbled the other part of the dare he wasn’t so wild about, hoping Kyle wouldn’t hear.

  He didn’t. “What?”

  “She makes me sing while I’m doing it. Disco.”

  Kyle’s laughter roared though the phone line. “She has to regret that.”

  “She wears earplugs.” The dog wasn’t so lucky. He howled for a while each day before trotting off to hide under a sink until the attack on the Bee Gees was complete.

  “Please tell me you got her back somehow.”

  Lucas thought about all the things he began leaving hidden for her around her loft and workspace: new art supplies—particularly some new charcoals—a new pair of boots and a certificate to her favorite leather outfitter to replace the pants he’d ripped, among other things. It was going to take her weeks to find it all, by which time she couldn’t give any of it back. But somehow, he doubted Kyle considered black fishnet stockings with satin bows to be a vision of revenge.

  “I dared her to take the dog.” The look on her face of pure disgust still managed to brighten his day. Oh, he’d regret it when this was all over—and to a degree, he really did miss the sniffing, licking little monster—but it was still a sweet play.

  “So what’s next?”

  Lucas grimaced. “Dancing. On Sunday.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lucas replied over more rambunctious laughter. Kyle was the dancer. Kyle enjoyed clubs and screeching music, grasping women and probably even the sweaty crush of people. Lucas avoided people in general, something most folks had the presence of mind to be grateful about.

  It was his own damn fault though. Belinda had been bopping around her downstairs kitchen barely wearing a camisole and a pair of white panties, waiting for her ancient toaster to need flipping, while he was forced to stay alive next to her. It was an impulse to grab her hand and spin her into his arms, one of the few he gave in to. At first, she’d been startled, but then he spun her back out and she’d started laughing, joining in while he all but twirled her in the big open space. The two of them weren’t going to make John Travolta worry about his disco legacy, but by the time the song was over, they were both laughing uncontrollably, exhausted and sprawled in her mismatched chairs, and the toast was burned all the way through. She even let him kiss her goodbye when he left.

  His inner alerts did make some noise after she made the dare though, wondering if she were pushing him into a Kyle-mold on purpose or if she was just picking things he’d hate to do. Frankly, it was a toss-up. “I’m not real wild about clubbing it either, but I figure we’re still even.”

  “Yeah, how’s that? You’ll be wearing steel-toe boots, too?”

  “She has to dye her hair.” That dare had been a stroke of genius. “Eyebrows, too. Back to the original color in time for the dancing.”

  Belinda’s jaw had dropped, leaving her vulnerable to yet another kiss before he slipped away from her front door. The truth was, the past week had been a smorgasbord of stolen kisses and caresses. She didn’t even get mad at him anymore. Not when he touched her hand or grazed her healing tattoo with his fingertips. Not when he whispered things in her ear as he passed. Not even when he insisted on kissing her whenever he arrived or left. He’d never felt so free or seen her hidden smile so often.

  Of course, there was a reason to her laxity. She was trying to break him down. It started with the sudden lack of clothes. He’d come in, finding her in various levels of undress. The worst was the morning she came out of her shower in a wet white towel too soaked—and too worn—to be any deterrent to his sight. Her building hardly had any windows and the ceiling fans did almost nothing for the heat, so her lame excuse of being hot had enough truth to it that he couldn’t complain. His dick might throb, but it wasn’t complaining.

  It wasn’t getting satisfied, either. She teased, she pranced and she all but dripped sex left and right—something that had to be making her as nuts as it was making him—but she wasn’t getting any until she said the magic words.

  After a moment of quiet, Lucas realized Kyle hadn’t said anything in a while. In fact, his silence seemed thoughtful—a frightening prospect if ever there was one. Lucas figured out how much so when his brother finally broke it.

  “She’s going to figure it out, Luc. If she hasn’t already.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “You’re dating. Creatively, I’ll give you that, but it’
s turning into something that resembles a relationship and I’m telling you, she’s going to notice.”

  Lucas tried not to be irritated. Kyle sounded almost logical. Such behavior should be encouraged. Usually. “What do you mean, resembles?”

  “I mean to you, this is a relationship. Something you can keep going until you unwrap the real Belinda beneath all her bullshit and attitude and then you’ll get to keep her. To her, this is a game. A way to have you and not have to make it real.”

  Maybe Kyle was better off stupid.

  “I know it’s the last thing you want to hear, but you can’t keep walking around in a fog. I’m worried you’re going to get hurt, man. Again.”

  Lucas leaned back in his chair, frowning. All right, maybe stupid was a harsh word. Kyle was probably right. He even knew Kyle was genuinely concerned. His brother was the only one who knew how badly he’d taken losing Belinda as a kid, the only one who knew the truth about his first year in Massachusetts. But he’d come too far to back away when he felt so close to breaking through. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t real now. It would be.

  “She’s worth the hurt.” His voice sounded like a growl to his own ears.

  “Have you given any thought to why she’s this way?”

  Smart men knew when to end a conversation, but he was feeling a little too like his twin to do it. “What do you mean?”

  “I told you a while back that you’re not the only reason Belinda bites men’s heads off if they so much as say hello to her.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. He’d had that effect on other women, too. “So?”

  “So, if you’re sure you want to keep going with this game of yours, maybe you want to think about your strategy for dealing with who Belinda really is when you finish digging her out.”

  “Are you looking for the Yoda award, Kyle, because you’re being cryptic and you suck at it.”