Burning Up

by Sarah Mayberry

  “Go up a step,” he ordered, and she used her arms to lift herself up to the next tread.

  “And another,” he repeated. She frowned, but still obeyed him.

  “And one more,” he said. He could see the flare of excitement in her eyes as she guessed what he intended. Her breath caught in her throat as he knelt on a lower step and pushed her legs apart.

  Her head fell back on her neck as his hands swooped up the inside of her thighs. Gently, he probed her folds with his fingers, teasing her as he circled her clitoris, sliding in and out of her slick entrance, all the while watching the heart of her and the way her hips rose in invitation and pleading. She was so pretty. He loved doing this to her, watching her lose her mind. It was the biggest turn-on in the world.

  “Lucas,” she groaned, clenching and unclenching her hands.

  “Just relax,” he said. Then he lowered his head.

  SOPHIE’S WHOLE BODY was shaking in response to what Lucas was doing between her thighs—tasting, sucking, biting, his tongue by turns urgent and demanding, then so delicate it made her want to scream.

  She was so turned on, so aroused, she felt as though she was going to coalesce into a ball of need. Gripping the edge of the stair, she hung on for dear life and begged him to end it, to slide inside her and take them both to the place they wanted to be.

  His response was to lift her legs onto his shoulders and deepen his exploration. She moaned low in her throat and reached for his head to anchor him there as she passed the point of no return and became nothing but greedy, demanding need.

  He kept pace with her, using his hands now to tease her, as well, finally sliding one, two, then three fingers inside her. His tongue circled her clitoris, then he kissed her whole mound passionately with a hungry, openmouthed kiss, his tongue firm and knowing and demanding.

  She fell apart. Her thighs trembled, and she spasmed around his fingers, her hips rising instinctively as she came and came and came. She barely registered the loss of his wet heat between her thighs, he moved so quickly. The next thing she knew, he was inside her and she was clutching his shoulders as he thrust powerfully into her.

  Belatedly she realized he must have his weight on his bad knee. They’d been very careful for the past two weeks to always work around it, but now he was braced on it, hammering into her.

  “Your knee,” she reminded him.

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt. That’s good enough for me.”

  He kissed her, treating her mouth to the same thorough exploration her southern regions had just enjoyed. She surrendered herself utterly to the experience, powerless to do anything else. There was only his body, the feel of his skin beneath her hands, the slide of him inside her, the staccato counter-beat of their individual breaths, the thrust and flex of muscles as they strained toward fulfillment.

  She closed her eyes as she felt herself rising again. He was thrusting fast and hard, lifting his hips higher to gain the most stimulation with each stroke, and she was calling out his name, clinging to him as he shuddered into her one last time, his whole body hard with demand as he rode his own climax.

  He pressed his face into her neck briefly afterward, kissed her gently there, then he rolled to one side. For a few long minutes they both just reclined there on the stairs, naked, glistening with perspiration and desire, staring up at the vast open space above the stairwell.

  “Now would be a really good time for Julia Jenkins to drop in for a surprise visit,” Sophie said after a while.

  Lucas laughed, the sound low and rewarding. She liked to make him laugh. It had become something of a mission for her over the past few weeks, in fact. He was so human and approachable when he was amused—his eyes bright, his head tilted slightly back and his body relaxed.

  She glanced at him, her gaze skimming the strong lines of his profile. He was almost ridiculously good-looking, with his strong, straight nose, his cheekbones, those amber eyes. None of which gave any hint of the man beneath all the superficial attractiveness. The Lucas Grant she had been lucky enough to get to know was so much more than a collection of pleasing body parts and facial features. He appreciated good food in a way that gratified her chef’s soul. He was also surprisingly courteous and considerate—surprisingly because she suspected he’d had his own wants catered to on an hourly basis for many years. But it hadn’t turned him into an ego-driven monster, despite what she’d thought of him initially.

  He was also generous, in so many ways. In the bedroom, he was the most lusty yet considerate lover she’d ever imagined. And then there was St. Barnaby’s. From little things he’d said over the past few weeks, she’d worked out that he contributed to other charities, too, all of them for children. She suspected he did so anonymously, as with St. Barnaby’s.

  What kind of man didn’t want the world to know he cared for something other than his own apparently hedonistic lifestyle? What kind of lessons had life thrown at him to make him so afraid to show his true self?

  They were questions that sat in the back of her mind every day, but she knew she would never ask them.

  Fun. They were all about fun.

  She snapped out of her reverie as Lucas stretched and yawned beside her. “Is it nap time, Ms. Gallagher?” he asked.

  “You’re spoiling me, you know that, don’t you? How am I supposed to go back to normal life after four weeks of so much laziness and decadence?”

  “You’ve been doing your tinkering in the kitchen every afternoon. That’s not decadent,” he said.

  She pulled a face. If he knew what she’d been tinkering with—her mushroom parfait and her olive sorbet and her poached-egg ravioli, experimenting and testing and adjusting until she got her recipes right—he might be inclined to retract his statement. It was pure indulgence. Still, she was quietly excited by some of the combinations she’d come up with.

  She eyed him, wondering if it was time to test her new ideas on an audience yet. But her toes curled a little at the thought. What if it was all an abject failure? Lucas was the last person she wanted to witness her falling on her face.

  She frowned, recognizing the thought for what it was—Old Sophie, once again desperately seeking a rational, safe foothold. For that reason alone she knew she should ask Lucas to be her first test audience. But she probably wouldn’t. Her ideas were too new, too fragile and fantastic. And his opinion meant too much to her.

  Talk about walking a fine line.

  Again she gave herself the lecture that was practically her mantra: she’d be stupid to let the intimacy of the past few weeks fool her into believing that what was happening meant anything or was special or anything else equally deluded. Just because she had discovered the man behind the mask didn’t mean anything. He was thirty-five years old and an avowed bachelor. He lived his life at full tilt. She must never forget those pictures of him in those magazines, the ones where he was drunk and partying with some leggy blonde. That was the life that awaited him outside the gates of this estate, the life he would be returning to.

  Lucas ran his finger across her forehead, soothing the frown that had formed between her eyebrows.

  “What’s this for?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking,” she said dismissively.

  He hesitated a moment, then reached for his crutches. “Bed calls,” he said. “Come on.”

  We’re in a bubble, she thought as she tilted her head back and watched him make his way up the stairs. Two people high in the mountains, enjoying a time-out from the normal world. Up here, they could pretend that they were equals, and that there was nothing beyond the next few hours to worry about. And it was true, too. For another two weeks, at least.

  She stood to follow him, but was distracted by the ring of her cell phone. She’d left it on the dining room table, and she made her way down the stairs to collect it.

  She’d never been particularly self-conscious about nudity or her body—apart from wishing for a few extra inches in height, all of it leg—but it was hard not to fe
el the slightest bit exposed wandering around this huge, luxurious house in her birthday suit. It was the kind of house that made a person feel really, really small, human and naked. Consequently, she returned to her perch on the stairs as she took the call.

  “Sophie, it’s me. I’m just ringing to see how you’re doing,” Becky said.

  “Becks,” Sophie said, delighted to hear from her friend. “How are you?”

  “I’m good. You still okay up there?”

  Sophie glanced down at her nudity. “Let’s just say I’m enjoying myself,” she said.

  Becky sighed enviously. “Lucky girl. Lucky, lucky girl. I would kill to be in your shoes.”

  “How did your court case go?” Sophie asked, deliberately changing the subject. She hadn’t mentioned a word about what was happening between her and Lucas. For starters, she knew he valued his privacy. While she didn’t for a second think that Becky would blab to one of the tabloids or something equally revolting, Sophie still felt uncomfortable talking about him to anyone. This might just be about sex, but what was happening up here in the Blue Mountains was…private. Personal. About her and him, and the rest of the world be damned.

  And, perhaps foolishly, there was a part of her that believed that if no one else knew, it wouldn’t be quite so bad when she and Lucas finally said goodbye and went their separate ways.

  Yeah, right.

  “Actually, the reason I’m calling is because there’s this new book coming out about Lucas. An unauthorized biography,” Becky said. “Normally I wouldn’t read one of those things, you know. They’re so tacky. But there was an excerpt in the weekend paper and I couldn’t resist.”

  Sophie stiffened, sure that Becky was about to start filling her in on lurid details from Lucas’s past. She so didn’t need to know which beautiful women Lucas had slept with before her. It wasn’t jealousy or possessiveness, she assured herself, just peace of mind. Who wanted to be compared to Halle Berry, for example? Not Sophie. Not in a million years.

  “You know what, Beck—”

  “It’s amazing how a person can look like they’ve got it all, but underneath they’ve missed out on so much,” Becky said.

  Sophie opened her mouth to protest again, but it was too late. She’d heard Becky’s words and now she wanted to know exactly what Lucas had missed out on. For a second longer she warred with her conscience, but it was no match for her curiosity. Not when she’d witnessed Lucas’s nightmares and sensed how badly something or someone had damaged him in the past.

  “What did the article say?” she asked. She shot a glance over her shoulder, hating the thought of Lucas catching her talking about him.

  “That he was a ward of the state who grew up in state homes. He was fostered out a number of times, but he never seemed to stick until he was in his teens. No one knows what happened to his parents, whether they died or dumped him or what—the reporter couldn’t get access to Lucas’s records,” Becky said.

  Sophie sucked in her breath. She felt as though someone had punched her in the belly. She flashed to that night Lucas had finally told her about his dream. His nightmare had been about an empty house and missing parents. No wonder.

  “It sounds like this guy has dug around in Lucas’s life enough already,” Sophie said, starting to get angry on Lucas’s behalf. She knew without asking that he would consider this book a massive invasion of his privacy. This wasn’t a charity donation that was being made public, this was his pain. Pain he kept hidden even from himself.

  “Yeah. There’s a picture of the author with the article. He looks like a real jerk,” Becky said. “Weaselly, if you know what I mean.”

  After they wound up their conversation Sophie sat in silence for a few minutes, her thoughts churning. Lucas was an orphan. He’d grown up without a home. She could only imagine what he’d gone through in his life. Had he been abandoned, or had something happened to his family? Had he been abused? God, had he ever been loved, the way all little boys should be loved?

  He was sprawled across the center of the bed already asleep when she entered the bedroom. She stood watching him, feeling for him. He might be big and strong now, but once he’d been a little boy with no home and no one to tell him he was special. She was the product of two people who had loved each other and her sister unconditionally. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would feel to be so alone in the world.

  She felt like crying. She wanted to crawl into bed beside him and wrap her body around his to try to ease his hurts. Because he was hurt, broken in some way. She understood that now.

  But it wasn’t her place to care about him in that way, and she knew without a doubt that he would reject her tears and her empathy.

  Dressing quietly, she made her way downstairs. She felt restless, a little sick in the stomach. So much for this being a sex-only fling. She’d passed the point of protecting herself long ago. She was with Lucas for the duration. Then she would start her new life without him. And he would go back to pretending he didn’t care about anyone.

  Without really thinking about it, she gravitated to the kitchen. The only currencies that he was prepared to accept from her were sex and food. So she would give him a culinary experience. And in doing that, she would give him something of herself, too. And maybe—No. That would be expecting too much from a man like Lucas. She squashed the thought before it was even fully formed. She would cook for him, invite him into her imagination. It would be a gift, just as making his diet bearable had been a gift. And that was all it would be.

  11

  SINCE HE’D BEEN BANNED from the kitchen for the bulk of the afternoon and early evening, Lucas knew that something was up. The bottle of wine on the table confirmed it, as did Sophie’s first words when she entered from the kitchen, two plates in hand.

  “Tonight’s meal is going to be a little different,” she said as she slid a plate in front of him.

  He studied his meal: a single, rustic-looking ravioli, surrounded by a squiggle of dark olive-colored oil and flanked by two slices of buttered, oval-shaped bread. Saliva pooled in his mouth.

  “It’s not on your diet,” she said a little defiantly. “But I wanted to show you what I’ve been working on.”

  “Screw the diet. This looks fantastic.”

  She was asking him to be her taste tester. For some reason, the thought gave him a warm feeling in his belly.

  She sat opposite him, and waited for him to start first.

  Palming his cutlery, he cut the corner off his ravioli. To his surprise, a warm, thick egg yolk oozed out.

  “Cool,” he said. Swirling a forkful of the pasta in the oil, he lifted it to his mouth.

  Flavors danced across his tongue, simple but delicious. He moaned and Sophie smiled.

  “You like it,” she said.

  “It’s great. Delicious. What’s this green stuff?” he asked, gesturing toward the oil.

  “Truffle oil.”

  Then he tried a piece of the toast. It was buttery, decadently so.

  “Brioche,” she explained when he shot her a questioning look.

  He made short work of his appetizer, and she disappeared into the kitchen. She was pleased with his response, he could see. Damn, he was pleased. He hadn’t eaten anything as interesting and tasty in ages.

  Fifteen minutes later she returned with his entrée. He’d poured the wine while she was gone and was taking leisurely sips of a light, peppery Shiraz.

  “Okay,” she said, setting down his plate in front of him. She hovered for a moment, as though she wanted to fiddle with it some more.

  From what he could see, there was nothing more for her to do. The meal was a miniature work of art. Three towers of lamb were arranged in a line. A fourth tower sat alongside them, made up of something very dark, almost black. Sitting in a separate ramekin was something rich and creamy-looking, dusted with cracked pepper.

  “It’s lamb,” she explained. “And…other stuff.”

  A magical mystery meal. Lifting his glass, h
e proposed a toast.

  “To the chef,” he said.

  “You might want to eat first before you say that,” she said, eyeing the food anxiously.

  For the first time he realized she was nervous. This meant a lot to her, he suddenly understood.

  “Sophie…”

  “Eat!” she said, waving a hand at him. “Put me out of my misery.”

  Slicing into the lamb, Lucas took a bite. “Mmm. Good. You rolled it in something. Goat cheese?”

  “Yes.”

  On his next pass, he took a slice of the black stuff to accompany his lamb. “My God, what is this?” he asked, registering the salty, tart coldness in his mouth.

  “Black olive sorbet,” she said.

  He laughed. “Wow. Great. It’s perfect with the lamb.”

  She looked hugely relieved. “I liked it, but I wasn’t sure…” she said.

  “Sophie, it’s all amazing. Explain this other thing in the little cup to me.”

  By the time he’d cleaned his plate, he’d been utterly entertained and entranced. The combination of flavors, temperatures and textures had been inspired.

  “Best meal I’ve had in years,” he said with emphasis as he set his cutlery down.

  “There’s dessert yet,” she warned him.

  “Bring it on, baby,” he said.

  But when she came to clear his plate, he pulled her into his lap and kissed her soundly.

  “You were worried,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been. I think you’re incredible.”

  He kissed her again, his fingers sliding into her hair, his tongue dancing with hers.

  “It was all a little crazy. I just started putting flavors together. I think…I think this has all been in the back of my mind for a while. I experimented with a few ideas like this for Sorrentino’s, but I chickened out on adding them to the menu.”

  “Why? People would line up around the block for a meal like this. It’s interesting. It’s entertaining. It’s cheeky and clever.”

  She blushed and pulled him into a tight, fierce hug. “I’m glad you liked it.”