“Lucas.”
His eyes drop to my mouth.
I know what happens next because I have felt the hunger building under every conversation we have had since I arrived. I have the smallest window of time here in which to step back, and I choose, deliberately, not to take it.
“Don’t think,” I whisper.
His mouth comes down on mine.
The kiss isn’t gentle. His hand slides up my spine and grabs my hair, angling my head back. He kisses me like a man who has been starving, and suddenly, for the length of one minute, he can eat. My lips part. His tongue slides against mine. I make a sound into his mouth I am not proud of.
He walks me backward without breaking the kiss. My shoulder blades hit the door with a soft thud. His body follows, caging me there, one of his knees pressing between mine. Heatrolls off him. His free hand finds the hem of my blouse and slips under it, his palm hot and splayed against my bare skin. I arch into that hand helplessly, a moan spilling out of me.
His mouth slides down my jaw. Teeth find the hinge of it and scrape. I whimper. His hand climbs higher under my blouse, tracing my ribs, the underside of my bra, the curve of my breast. His thumb brushes over the fabric, and I feel my nipple tighten against his palm as a sharp, low heat pulses between my legs.
“Lucas…” His name is a ragged whisper on my lips.
His tongue moves down my throat. He licks the place where his mark would go if he were any other man and I were any other woman and this were any other life. I make a wrecked, open sound I have never made before. My hips push forward against his thigh without my permission.
His fingers trail down my stomach and undo the button of my trousers. They slide the zipper down with a small, metallic rasp that is the loudest sound in the room.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispers against my throat.
I shake my head. I can barely breathe.
“Sienna. Tell me.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t stop.”
His hand slides into my open trousers and into my underwear. He finds me—I am already wet, already aching, and he groans against the skin of my neck.
“Fuck.”
His fingers slide through the slick of me, once, twice. A third time. He finds the place that makes me jerk against his hand, and he stays there, circling, while his mouth comes back up to mine and swallows the sounds I am making. Two of his fingers push into me. I clutch at his shoulders. His thumb settles onthe spot his other fingers found, and he sets a pace that has me whimpering into his kiss.
I was already close. I have been close since the oak tree, since the first time I heard his voice on the radio, since the hallway at Darius’s house. My body has been building this pressure for weeks with no outlet, and he is touching precisely the places that have been waiting to be touched.
My hips stutter against his hand. My head tips back against the door. My lips open on a sound he catches with his mouth. I break apart around his fingers with my whole body pinned between him and the wood, shaking, repeating his name against his lips in a way I will wait to be embarrassed about until later.
For one long moment, there is only the sound of my breathing and his.
Then, he goes still.
His fingers stop moving. His mouth lifts off mine. I feel the change in him before I see it, a cold current running through his body from the inside.
He pulls his hand out of my pants. Steps back. Steps back again. His other hand drags through his hair, and his eyes are fixed somewhere on the floor between our feet.
“Lucas.”
“Go back to your room.”
His words throw me for a loop. For a second, I just stand there, flushed, half undone, trousers still open, with the echo of his name still in my head.
“What?”
