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I can’t believe this. I genuinely — what? Lucas. Lucas is begging me to let him kiss me.
Lucas.
I don’t understand, but I find myself nodding, and I don’t have a reason why, but when Lucas feels my head shift against him and raises his head to look at me, I nod again. His expression changes, as if all of his pain has melted away in the blink of an eye. And it’s a relief.
And, when he presses his lips against mine, gently, softly, almost not there at all, it feels right. It feels good. It makes my body spark, the way it happens it books, the way it never did with Cleo.
The kiss only lasts a moment before he pulls back and caresses my face. His hand drags down past my neck and over my collarbones.
“I bet she doesn’t appreciate your body like I do,” he says, pulling my shirt up by the hem. When he tugs it over my head, I let him.
“Does she even know how cute your little tummy is?” he asks, and he brushes over my skin with his fingers, leaving sparks of pleasure in their trail. “How soft your hair is?” He burrows his nose into my hair and inhales. “Does she tell you how gorgeous you are?”
I stare at him. Me? Gorgeous? It’s official: he’s gone insane.
When he leans down to kiss me again, it’s slow. His wet tongue comes out, pressing between my lips, and I part them, letting him inside. He licks into my mouth, and it’s gentle, almost…loving.
Yep, he’s definitely lost his mind.
As Lucas kisses me, he roams his hands over my body. He touches me like he’s only got a few minutes left, like it’s a race, like I’ll be taken away any second. A graze over my stomach, a touch of my hips, a brush over my nipples which makes me suck in a sharp breath. He touches me like he’s a blind sculptor, memorising every contour of my body so he can recreate it out of marble later.
I wait for him to slide my pants down. There’s no way he hasn’t noticed my erection, and I’ve definitely noticed his, the way it grazes my hip as he holds himself above me. But when he drags his fingers down my body, he jumps from my belly to my thighs. He doesn’t touch my butt either. There’s something strangely innocent about it, something non-sexual about the moment, despite the fact I’m so, so hard.
His fingertips are slow and light. His breaths are soft. Gentle. His body cages me in, but I don’t feel like a captive. I feel like I’m tucked away in a safe haven.
My eyelids become heavier and heavier. I’m so exhausted, and not only because I barely got any sleep last night. The tsunami of emotions I’ve experienced in the past fifteen minutes alone has left me bone-tired.
As if sensing my sleepiness, Lucas stretches out beside me, so we’re sharing a pillow. His eyes are soft as he gives me a small smile, then reaches out for my hand, bringing it to his lips as he closes his eyes.
I feel myself sinking into the mattress and let my eyelids fall shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lucas
Age 15
I’ve had dreams about Charlie since I was a kid. Just normal dreams, about us playing in the playground, or on a tropical island, or on a pirate ship and he had a pet parrot and I had a pet monkey.
I only started having those kinds of dreams last year. It wasn’t only Charlie, of course. Sometimes it would be faceless guys, or some actor I’d seen on TV, or a model I’d see on the cover of Men’s Health in the supermarket.
Of course, the dreams about Charlie pissed me off the most. When I’d go to school and see him in class and notice that he looked exactly as he did in my dreams…well, that’d piss me off even more.
I hated my subconscious for conjuring up such dreams, and I’d hate my body for how it’d react, and then I’d feel guilty for dreaming such things about someone I knew in real life, and then I’d get annoyed at myself for feeling guilty in the first place.
My biggest fear was that one day, Charlie would look at me, and he’d know. He’d know what happened in my dreams the night before.
My biggest fear was that he’d realise how much power he had over me.
I thought about this in Geography today, while staring at the back of his head. Sure, he acts like he’s terrified of me, but if one day he walked up to me and said that he’d let me hold his hand if I licked the floor of the boys’ bathroom, then I know that without a doubt, I’d get on my knees and lick the boys’ bathroom floor, germs be damned. If he told me to turn over all the money I saved for a chance to press my face into his neck and smell him, then I would. If he told me that if I did all his homework for the rest of the year, he’d let me pet his hair for sixty seconds, then I would. If he told me he’d let me kiss him, just once, if I got myself suspended from school—
So that’s why I hate him. And that’s why I can’t ever let him know the truth; that all he would have to do is ask, and I’d do it. I’d do it without a second thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Now
When I wake, I don’t know what time it is, and I don’t know where my phone is, so I can’t check. Through Lucas’s open blinds, the sky is deep navy, tinging with light blue and purple at the edges, the way it does before sunrise.
