The desperation inside him twisted tighter and he didn’t know why. He wanted to push her hard against the tile, cover her mouth with his, invade her, conquer her. Take what she wanted to give him, because he wanted it so desperately too.
But he couldn’t. Feeling anything at all held the potential to destroy and he was nothing if not destructive. Besides, his soul had been scarred by fire, it was never going to heal, and she deserved so much more than a heart made of nothing but ashes and smoke.
“I will never love you back,” he said fiercely, holding her gaze. “Never, Grace. I can’t. Is that what you really want?”
“No, of course that’s not what I want, you fucking idiot!” She pulled his head down farther, so they were nose to nose, the glorious color of her eyes so close to his he could see the bright golden specks like glitter in them. “But I’m prepared to wait until you do.”
He felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he was suffocating. “You don’t understand. I can’t. Caring about anything is destructive. It kills, Grace. I kill. And you’re … Jesus, you’re life and color. You’re joy and you’re fucking creation. You’re the opposite of me in just about every way there is, and there is no way I should even be touching you, let alone anything else.”
“Is that what you think?” She was so close, all he could see was her eyes, brilliant and gold and full of fire. “That because you got angry once and lit a fire that killed people all feeling is bad? That you’re bad?”
His jaw was tight as if it were going to crack. “Dad told me I needed to—”
“I don’t give a fuck what your father told you. My father told me I was a talentless waste of space and I believed for years that somehow I was the reason he’d turned into such a bitter old man.” She looked so fierce, like a warrior. “Until you. You made me feel like I was worth something. You made me feel beautiful. You made me understand just how much of myself I was holding back and you made me stop being so fucking afraid.” Her fingers tightened on him. “None of what we shared together was destructive, Lucas. Your passion, your intensity, your goddamn feelings, helped me create, don’t you see? Without you that painting would never have existed.”
It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t. “You would have died,” he said raggedly. “Because I couldn’t slow my heartbeat enough to save you. Because I cared too much about you. In the same way I got too angry with my parents. With my foster father. It’s destructive, Grace. I’m destructive.”
The expression on her face was almost impossible to look at, the emotion in it so bright it was like staring directly into the sun. “How many people have you saved, Lucas?”
The subject change was so abrupt, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. “What?”
“I know your confirmed kill count. But what about a count of all the lives you’ve saved?”
His arms were shaking. His bruised and battered soul was shaking. “That’s not … That’s…”
“That’s not what? You told me you saved lives, that’s what a sniper does. He takes one life to save many, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” Her hands were sliding up his chest and around his neck and she was holding on to him, winding herself around him like a vine. All slick bare skin and soft, feminine heat, and yet somehow so strong. “You don’t destroy, Lucas Tate. You protect. And I think you’ve been so busy protecting people from yourself that you don’t know any other way to be.” Her voice lowered. “But you don’t have to do that anymore. You’re not dangerous. I know who you are and you don’t destroy people. You save them.”
He couldn’t speak. Because it didn’t seem possible that she could see him like that. And yet he remembered the painting in the gallery, the one he couldn’t look at.
That painting is my heart.… It’s you.
And it became clear to him, blindingly, why he’d always found it difficult to look at the sketches of him she’d drawn, why he could hardly even look at that painting.
It was because he wanted to be that man in the painting. He wanted to be the man she saw. The man who saved people. Who looked at her with hunger and passion and intensity and most of all love.
He wanted to love her. He had since the moment he’d met her.
The thought was a sledgehammer breaking down walls, the ice around his scarred soul cracking, then thawing, melting under the heat of the emotion swamping him.
And he found he’d buried his face in her neck and his arms were around her, holding her as tightly as she was holding him, and somehow they were sitting on the floor of the shower with the water pouring down onto them and she was in his lap. Still holding him. Keeping him together.
She didn’t say a word, her legs wound around his waist, her arms around his neck.
So he let it all go, the ice and the snow. Let it all melt away, until there was nothing freezing him in place or holding him back anymore. Nothing to stop him from turning on that fucking tap and letting all the feelings come flooding out.
Her. He wanted her. All the time. Everywhere. For however long she wanted. For a day. For a week. For a year.
Forever.
It was Grace. It had always been Grace. And he’d never been in love before, but he knew that this was what it felt like. This desperation. This hunger. This need. Maybe that’s what all of this had been and he’d never known it, never understood.
Well, he understood now and he wanted it. All of it.
“Take me, Gracie,” he whispered, not hiding his desperation. “Take me, please.”
But her hands were already there, wrestling with the wet denim, undoing the button and tugging at the zipper. Opening up his jeans and getting him out, her fingers on his skin making him shudder. Then she was lifting herself up and sliding down, her slick flesh parting around him, enclosing him as tightly as her arms had seconds earlier.
So fucking hot. So fucking good.
He gripped her and she bent her head, covering his mouth with hers as he thrust up inside all that tight, wet heat. There were fire bursts in his head and she was a living flame between his hands, moving on him so fluidly, so perfectly. Not even the water flowing around them could put her out.
Nothing could. She was fire and lightning. She was sunshine. She was everything.
And as she took him deeper, faster, harder, all he could do was whisper the same phrase over and over again in her ear. “I love you, Gracie. Oh God, I’m so in love with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Grace opened her eyes and for a second she couldn’t work out where she was. She wasn’t in her bedroom in her apartment or in the bedroom in Lucas’s apartment with the stained glass in it.
No, this room was kind of cold looking. White walls with nothing on them. Dark wood floor. A plain dresser against one wall and not much else.
She frowned and rolled over.
And her heart began to swell up, becoming large and painful, pressing against her ribs, making them ache.
Because Lucas stood naked near the window. His back was to her, the skylight above his head shining gray morning light all over his golden skin. He should have looked pale and washed out, yet he didn’t. The way the light fell illuminated all the sculpted lines of his beautiful body, the exquisite width of his shoulders, the elegant play of his lats, and the strong column of his spine. The muscular curve of his truly fabulous butt and long, athletic legs …
Her heart swelled up even more.
After what had happened in the shower last night, after she’d taken him the way he’d asked her, they’d dried each other off and then gone to bed. But not to sleep. In fact, she didn’t think they’d slept for hours, unable to stop touching each other, reaching for each other.
I love you, Gracie.
She hadn’t expected that. She really hadn’t. But somehow she’d broken through all his ice and reached the man buried underneath it. The bright, vital passionate man he’d been all along. The man she’d always known was fire.
Lucas stopped
speaking, turning to put the phone down on the dresser next to him. Then he turned back to the window, looking out of it.
Unable to resist the urge, Grace slipped out of bed and went over to him, slipping her arms around his waist, laying her head against him, pressing her cheek against his back. The feel of his smooth, warm skin against hers was a glory she didn’t think she’d ever get sick of.
His hands came down to rest on hers where she’d laid them on his taut stomach.
“How long have you known that I was awake?” she asked quietly.
“Since the moment you woke up.” There was a warm thread running through his voice that thrilled her utterly. That was for her; she knew it.
“What gave it away?”
“Your breathing.”
“Again? Okay, I must remember to stop breathing so I can get past your super sniper powers.”
“Don’t you dare.” His hands tightened on hers. “Wolf called. He handled the situation last night. The press were told it was a random attack. Drugs, the usual shit.”
She swallowed, a lingering remnant of the fear of last night washing through her. And he must have felt it, because he suddenly turned around, sliding his arms around her and drawing her close. There was no silver at all in his eyes. They were glowing, a deep, true blue that took her breath away.
“The cop,” he said. “It was the guy I had in the basement. That I sent back. I thought he was just a cog in the machine, but apparently he was Oliveira himself.”
She swallowed, staring up at him, seeing shadows in his gaze. But she knew what they meant. “You couldn’t have known who he was, Lucas. And you couldn’t have known he’d come after me. You couldn’t have killed him either.”
He said nothing for a long moment. “De Santis gave me his word he’d called them off. I even followed you for a couple of days after you left the apartment to make sure you were okay.”
Her heart lurched a little in her chest. She hadn’t known that. “You did?”
“I wanted to make sure.” His hands spread out on her hips, stroking her, his gaze searching her face. “Wolf was able to find out a little more about what happened. Apparently, Oliveira was concerned about more than simply money. He wanted to make an example of you, a public show of what happened to people who betrayed him. His power base was probably failing and he needed something to shore it up and you just happened to be his unlucky choice of method.” Lucas’s thumbs moved caressingly. “I’m sorry, Gracie. I should have—”
But she reached up and laid a finger across his beautiful mouth. “No. There’s nothing you should or shouldn’t have done. And short of following me around forever there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it.”
He sighed and kissed the tip of her finger. “Wolf wouldn’t tell me how he knew. He just told me he had sources tell him that something was going to happen and decided to come check on us.”
“That seems like … very good timing.”
“A little too good, yes.”
“Hmmm.” She leaned into his warmth. “Is it worth calling your other brother to find out what’s going on?”
“Probably.” He lifted his hands, running his fingers gently through her hair, and it felt good, making her want to purr like a cat. “I need to talk to Van about a few things anyway.”
“What things?”
“Me.” He combed his fingers through her hair again. “And you.”
She shivered. “What about me and you?”
“That we’re together. And that I should probably stop being a hypocrite about him and Chloe.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really.” Then Lucas Tate smiled, a smile she’d never seen before. Bright. Fierce. Sexy. Thrilling. “If he can have what he wants, then so can I.” His hands slid down over the curve of her butt, squeezing her gently, making her shiver. “I’m afraid it means you’re not ever going to be getting rid of me, Gracie. I’m going to be around permanently, whether you like it or not.”
Her throat closed, a bubble of happiness nearly cutting off her speech. But she forced herself all the same, because there was at least one question she wanted to know the answer to. “What about the Navy? Will you go back to base?”
Lucas’s smile deepened, became something even more beautiful if that was possible. “No,” he said slowly. “No, I think I’m done with that. I might give civilian life a try for a change.”
Her breath caught as a relief she hadn’t known she’d feel flooded through her. “Oh, well, are you sure? A sniper in a suit sounds dangerous.”
Lucas gave a laugh that brushed over every nerve ending she had, rough and sexy and soft as worn velvet. “I’m not dangerous,” he murmured. “Not anymore. But I’ll settle for being just a little bit wicked.”
Wicked, yes, she thought that maybe he was.
Then his hands slid a bit further over her skin and there was no maybe about it.
Wicked was exactly what he was.
* * *
“You’re an asshole.” Van’s voice down the other end of the phone line sounded aggrieved. Which, to be fair, he had every right to be.
“Yeah, I know,” Lucas said, pointing to the place he wanted the two removal men to put the large canvas they were both carrying. “And like I said, I’m sorry for being a dick about it. In my defense, it was my own shit. Not yours. I’m happy for you and Chloe, I really am.”
And he was now he had Grace. Now he’d realized what it was he’d been missing all this time.
The men stood the canvas against the wall, then went out, while Lucas tilted his head back and eyed the ceiling. Grace wanted a skylight put in for a bit more light and he wondered whether or not two might be better.
It was a week after her exhibition and they’d both decided that there was no point living apart, that they both wanted to move back into the apartment in the converted church together. Lucas already had a cleaning company and a dry cleaner on speed dial because he had a feeling he was going to need both quickly and often. Grace wasn’t the tidiest person around when it came to either her paint or her nail polish. Not that he minded. He was sure his tidy streak could work both ways.
Van made a noncommittal noise. He and Chloe had apparently retreated from New York to Wyoming without telling anyone, purely to get away from the media circus the news of their engagement had generated. “So are you going to tell me what your shit is?” He sounded less aggrieved now, which was good.
Lucas knew he should have called him before, but what with chasing up any loose ends that Oliveira had left behind in order to make sure Grace was completely safe, not to mention dealing with the fallout of what had happened at the exhibition, he hadn’t had a moment. Though perhaps that was more because he’d been avoiding the issue. Calling up his brother to apologize and admit he’d been an asshole wasn’t easy.
“Not yet.” One day Lucas would tell Van and Wolf about his mother, but that day wasn’t today. It probably wouldn’t even be tomorrow, or maybe not until even next year. But he would. Eventually. “I will at some stage.”
Van made a growling sound but didn’t press. “Fine. So what? You’re shacking up with this Grace chick then?”
“You can call her Grace, you know.”
“Okay, okay. You shacking up with Grace?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” His brother didn’t sound at all surprised. “Since you’re not re-upping, I’ll expect you at work tomorrow then, bright and early. A director’s work is never done, you know.”
“Fuck you,” Lucas said succinctly.
Van laughed. “Nine A.M., asshole. And I’m going to need a debrief about this de Santis shit, since I’ve got some intel to pass on.…” He paused. “By the way, I’ve been calling Wolf for days now and he’s fucking avoiding me, the prick. You know what’s going on with him?”
“No. And you’re not the only one who’s been calling either.” Lucas had been trying to get in touch with his younger brother, but the last time he’d spoken to Wol
f had been the day after Wolf had put a bullet through Oliveira’s skull. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“Fuck,” Van muttered. “He’s still in New York, though, right? He’s not back on base, I’ve checked.”
“Christ knows.” Lucas turned as the door of the studio opened and a familiar tall, slender figure slipped in. All thoughts of Wolf vanished from his head. “I’ve got to go,” he said to his brother.
“Hey,” Van said, right before Lucas disconnected. “You sound happy. Are you?”
Lucas smiled, but it wasn’t for his brother. It was for the woman who was coming toward him, amber eyes full of warmth, her lovely mouth turning up in a grin that was just for him. She had a paintbrush in her hair and an armful of paint tubes and there was nothing he wanted more than to pull her down on the floor and revisit a few special memories associated with this particular room.
“Yeah,” he said, and there was no trace of ice in his voice at all. “I am.”
“You are what?” Grace asked as he disconnected the call without waiting for his brother to respond, and put his phone back in his pocket. “And who was that?”
“It was Van. I just told him I was happy.”
Grace’s smile was as bright as the summer sun. She dumped the paint on the floor and came over to him, sliding her arms around him, pressing her beautiful body up against his. “Good.” She rose up on her toes to brush his mouth with hers. “So am I. I even thought I might call my mother, which means I must be very happy.”
“If I can call my brother then you can definitely call your mother.” He lifted his hands and pulled the paintbrush out of her hair, watching as the little bun uncoiled down her back in a beautiful red-gold fall of silk. Then he tangled his fingers in it, gently tugging her head back so he could look into her eyes. “Did Craig get back to you about extending the exhibition?”
“Yes.” Her gaze glittered with excitement. “By another couple of weeks. Plus he’s had requests for my work from lots of different collectors, so I’m going to be kind of busy for the next six months.”
“Unsurprisingly.”
The Wicked Billionaire--A Billionaire SEAL Romance Page 30
