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“No.” I put my trembling fingers over his mouth. “I’m just a little cold.” And a whole lot nervous.
He pushed the covers down beneath me and dragged them back up, over us. His weight pressing into me, he kissed me thoroughly before staring into my eyes, his fingers drifting over my face. “Better?”
I took a deep breath, my fears dissolving with his touch, the anticipation climbing faster than it had minutes ago in the kitchen. “Yes.”
As his thumb caressed my temple, his fingertips teased into my hair. His eyes were so pale this close that I could see every fragmented facet. “You know you can say it.” His voice notched lower, softer. “But I’m not asking you to, this time.”
“Good,” I answered, lifting my head to capture his mouth, my hands kneading up and over the hard muscles of his back before trailing my nails down the center from his shoulder blades to his hips.
His earlier hesitation gone, he removed the last scraps of fabric we were wearing, fixed the condom in place, kissed me fiercely and rocked into me.
Had this been Kennedy, it would have been over in a few minutes.
My last coherent thought, as Lucas took his time kissing and touching every part of me he could reach and my body arched into his, was oh… so this is what all the fuss is about.
***
We lay facing each other, snuggled under the covers, shoulders peeking out. I watched his gaze drift over my face, stopping on each feature as if he was memorizing it: ear, jaw, mouth… chin, throat, curve of shoulder.
He came back to my eyes then, lifting his hand and tracing over the individual attributes while watching my response. When his fingers trailed over my lips, they edged the border before rubbing across the lower one, and I swallowed and concentrated on breathing. His eyes fell there and he stared for a long moment before cupping the back of my neck, moving closer and kissing me so softly I hardly felt it, until the thin connection caught and ricocheted through me, shooting to my toes like a current.
I sighed and our breath mingled. Pushing the covers to my waist, he urged me onto my back before propping his face on his hand and continuing his perusal. My exposed skin should have been cold, but I warmed under his examination. “I want to sketch you like this.” His voice was as gentle as his touch—now skirting across my collarbone, back and forth, before moving lower.
“Can I assume it won’t end up on the wall?”
He smirked down at me. “Er, no, this one wouldn’t go on the wall, as tempting a thought as that is. I’ve done several sketches of you that aren’t on the wall.”
“You have?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Can I see them?”
He gnawed his lower lip, fingers tracing along the curves of my breast and then following the bumps of each rib. “Now?” His warm hand curved around my waist and he pulled me closer.
I looked into his eyes as he lay over me. “Maybe, in a little while...”
He scooted lower. “Good. ’Cause I’ve got a couple things I’d like to do first.”
***
He pulled on his dark boxer briefs before padding out to the kitchen. I heard the front door open and close a moment later, his voice a low murmur mixed with Francis’s insistent meows. He came back with a tall glass of milk and a plate of brownie squares.
Handing me the plate, he took a sip of the milk before setting it on the bedside table. I sat with the sheet held over my br**sts and watched him move across the darkening room. He flicked on the desk light and picked up the sketchbook. Stacked in a corner of the desk, there were several just like the one he held.
In the center of his upper back was a gothic-looking cross, not quite high enough to peek out of a t-shirt neckline. The remaining tats were tiny scripted lines surrounding the cross, not meant to be read from a distance, just like the poem on his left side. His skin was clear from his shoulder blades down. Turning, he caught me studying him—I couldn’t look away, so there was no hiding my appraisal.
He crawled onto the bed, propping the pillows and sitting behind me, his legs on either side of my hips under the covers. While I lay back against his chest and nibbled a brownie, he opened the sketchbook and flipped through pages, some containing little more than shapes, lines and vague forms, others detailed portrayals of people, objects or scenes. A few were finished and dated, but most were partially complete.
Finally, he opened to his first sketch of me—which he must have done during class, when I sat next to Kennedy. My chin was propped in my hand, elbow on the desktop. I took the book from him and browsed page by page from there, slowly, amazed at his skill. He’d sketched two of the oldest buildings on university grounds, a guy skateboarding down the drag, and a panhandler on the outskirts of campus talking to a couple of students. Interspersed with these were meticulous illustrations of mechanical things.
I turned the page to another sketch of me, this one very close-up—facial features and the suggestion of hair, but little else. Scrawled in the bottom corner was a date, two or three weeks before Kennedy dumped me.
“Does it bother you—that I was watching you before you knew me at all?” His tone was guarded.
I found it impossible to be bothered by anything at the moment, wrapped up in him as I was. I shook my head. “You’re just observant, and for some reason you found me an interesting subject. Besides, you’ve sketched a lot of people who didn’t know you were scrutinizing them so closely, I assume.”
He chuckled and sighed. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
Leaning to the side, propping my head against his inked bicep, I looked up at him. Still clutching the sheet to my chest in a belated show of modesty, or insecurity, I watched his heated gaze flick there before rising to my face. “I’m not mad anymore that you didn’t tell me you were Landon. The only reason I was angry was because I thought you were playing me, but it was the opposite of that.” I let the sheet drop, and his searing gaze dropped with it. Lifting my fingers, I brushed them over the smooth skin along his jaw. He must have shaved just before I came over. “I could never be afraid of you.”
Without a word, he took the plate from my lap and the sketchbook from my hand before lifting and turning me onto his lap. Arms surrounding me, his mouth moved over my br**sts as my hands tangled in his hair. I ignored the reproach in my mind—the one insisting that I was the one withholding information now, and while I might not fear Lucas directly, I feared his desertion if I told him what I knew, and how I knew it.
