by Janice Lynn
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m not so sure,” he admitted, surprising himself at his honesty, surprising himself by standing and moving to stand near to her.
* * *
Emily closed her eyes, bit into her lower lip and felt tortured. Why had Lucas come over to her? Why wasn’t he eating his darn pudding?
“Do you remember the first time we kissed?” He bent close and his words seduced her ear, her body, her mind.
Seriously, did he think she’d forgotten their first kiss?
“I do,” he continued, so near she could feel the warmth of his breath. “We were standing outside your apartment door and I leaned down to press my lips to yours. Your mouth was the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted and I couldn’t get enough. You set me on fire.”
Her brain was on fire. So was the rest of her. Hellfire because he was torturing her with past memories. She’d loved him so much, wanted him so much.
But that was long ago.
“What does it matter if I remember?” she asked incredulously, shaking her head. “All of this is crazy. I don’t understand why you wanted to eat at my house, because we both know it wasn’t so you could try my cooking.”
“Your cooking was great,” he assured her, still close to her, too close. “I want the friendship we shared, Emily, before everything went wrong between us. I want to kiss you again. I want to do a lot more than just kiss you. I want all the good there was between us without the golden rings of death to choke out that goodness.”
What was he saying? That he wanted them to be friends with benefits? Was he asking her to be his friend while calling their marriage “golden rings of death”? He really was crazy.
“You want to be my friend?” she quipped, her brain still reeling at what he was saying. At the fact that he’d just said he wanted to kiss her again. That he wanted to do more than just kiss her. Darn him. She didn’t want to think about Lucas kissing her, doing more than just kissing her.
He was so close, he could kiss her.
The thought had her wanting to back away from him. The thought had her wanting to turn to him and satisfy her curiosity. Had Lucas really kissed the way she recalled him kissing her or did her mind play tricks on her?
“Have you lost all your other friends?”
His lips curved upward in a wry grin. “You know better than that, Emily. I’m a good friend. A very good friend.”
Perhaps he had been to his other friends. Not to her. To her, he’d been a mostly absent friend. Although, he probably meant sexual friends.
“Sex?” She rolled her eyes and moved away from him, sitting down at the table and picking up her pudding. “That’s what all this is about? Why you outbid Richard? Why you are interfering in my life when I can’t stand you? Because you want sex?”
“I told you, I didn’t intentionally go to the auction to bid on you. And if the idiot who let me win your bid wasn’t willing to fight harder for you, then good riddance. He didn’t deserve you, either.” He followed her lead and sat back down at the table, too. But rather than pick up his pudding, he leaned toward her. “I don’t believe you can’t stand me. I think you want me. Sex was very good between us.”
Her lips twisted with bitterness. “Did you think so? I got the impression you bored of sex with me very quickly.”
“Never.”
“Then you have very different memories from mine.”
That seemed to throw him. He stared at her a moment, then took a spoonful of his pudding and closed his mouth around it. “This is good.”
“Of course.”
Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him and he arched a brow in question.
“You changed the subject,” she accused.
“You want to talk about my memories of sex between us?”
No. Yes. Maybe. Depended on what he would say.
“Let me tell you. I remember a woman I couldn’t get enough of whom I married and still couldn’t get enough of. A woman whom I was so obsessed with that I wanted to be with her rather than doing all the things I needed to be doing, like studying and preparing for my next day’s patients, or doing the things my parents needed of me. A woman I’d rather spend time with than sleep or eat or anything else.”
The blood drained from her face and she felt cold all over. “I never asked you to put me before anything. I knew you had to study.”
“Saying that and living it are two different things. You expected me to be the husband you thought I should be. You cried all the time, Emily. No matter what I did, I felt I never could do enough, could never make your sadness that you’d married me go away. Knowing how unhappy you were made me miserable, too.”
“You regretted marrying me from the moment we said I do.”
He didn’t immediately deny her claim.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Her voice broke as she pushed for a response. She closed her eyes, shook her head. “Allowing you to come here was a mistake.”
“I asked myself a dozen times why you did. Why you and the pharmacist are no longer together. Reality is we needed to talk, Emily.”
Restlessness hit her and she couldn’t stay seated in her chair a moment longer. She jumped up and moved across the kitchen.
“Despite our past and the way things ended, you’re as curious as I am to see if the heat is still there. You want to know if you’ll melt at my fingertips if I touch you.”
“No.” She grabbed hold of the countertop and white-knuckled the edges. She didn’t want to know those things. Not really. She just... Oh, help her. Curiosity was going to kill her.
“You could have said no to cooking for me,” he reminded. “Why didn’t you?”
Why had she agreed to let him come to her apartment? Had she just wanted to see him? To spend time with him?
She let go of the countertop, turned away from him.
He stepped over to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Upsetting you isn’t what I want. What I want is to make you feel good, to make you happy. It’s what I always wanted but could never seem to get quite right.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUCAS WAS TOUCHING her again. Emily didn’t want him touching her. The heat of his hands burned right through her T-shirt, scorching her flesh, branding her with memories.
“Why are you saying these things?” she asked, hating that her voice cracked, that she wasn’t strong enough to hide her emotions.
His thumbs stroked over her flesh, making tiny waves of awareness shoot through her. “I’m not over you.”
Something inside Emily shattered. She wasn’t sure if it was her resolve or if it was the glued-back-together pieces of her heart. Either way the impact left her unsteady.
Oh, the times she’d dreamed of this conversation. At times, she’d dreamed of falling into his arms, of their kissing, making love, laughing that they’d ever let anything come between them and vowing to never lose sight of each other again. At others, she’d lift her chin and scornfully laugh at his admission, telling him that ship had long ago sailed.
Instead of doing either, she seemed frozen in place, stiff and cold in his heated hands.
“Emily, when I told you I wanted to be your friend, to kiss you, I was serious.” He sounded serious. His hands gently squeezing her shoulders, turning her around to face him, felt serious. “That is what I want. I want to be a part of your life again, to have you be a part of my life. I didn’t know that when I took the position at Children’s, but I do now.”
“What about what I want?” she asked, trying and failing to keep the pain out of her voice. She did not want to give this man any power over her. Feeling pain was letting him have power over her. He didn’t deserve that power. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
“What do you want, Emily?”
“That one’s easy.”
There went her chin jutting forward. “For you to go away and to never have to see you again.”
Silence.
“Is that really what you want?” He touched her chin, forcing her to face him, stared down into her eyes. His gaze searched hers with an intensity that made her legs no sturdier than the barely touched pudding sitting on the table. “Do you want me to resign from my position at Children’s, to disappear from your life and never bother you again? Because if that will make you happy, then I’ll give you that, Emily. Tell me what you want right now, and I’ll do anything within my power to give you what you want.”
She blinked up at him, unable to answer with words.
Because the words that would come out weren’t the words that should come out.
She wanted him to disappear and never bother her again. Really, she did. That was the absolute best thing that could happen. She’d loved him more than anything in the world and he’d broken her to bits, left her devastated and alone when she’d fallen apart and lost everything. She should hate him.
“Answer me, Emily. Do you want me to go away and never bother you again? To leave Children’s and never purposefully cross your path again? Just say the words, and I’ll go.”
“I...” She paused, her gaze dropping to his mouth. When had he gotten so close that his breath fanned her lips? When had his warm body become almost flush with hers?
“I don’t want to go, Emily, but if that’s what you want, I will.”
She looked back up, met his cloudy gaze and opened her mouth to answer him, to tell him that, yes, she wanted him to go away, to never bother her again, to leave Children’s and to never purposefully cross her path again. She did want all those things.
But none of that came out and whatever she’d been going to say was lost to the pressure of his mouth covering hers in a kiss.
A kiss she didn’t want.
A kiss she wanted more than anything else in the whole world.
A kiss that was surprisingly gentle, almost as if he hadn’t been able to not kiss her and wasn’t completely sure she wouldn’t push him away. His lips were soft against hers and somewhere in her mind she recognized that if she told him to stop, he would, that if she pushed him away, he’d let her. That for the moment he was giving her the power, the control, and she could do with it what she would.
Why wasn’t she stopping him?
Instead, her body betrayed her, tingling all over, craving to be closer and closer to him.
This was Lucas. Her Lucas. His lips. His hands. His body. Lucas.
She was kissing her ex-husband and the world was still standing around her. Was it perhaps snowing in hell? Or perhaps pigs had learned to fly? All three seemed just as unlikely phenomena.
She needed to push him away.
But she wasn’t.
She couldn’t.
She needed to tell him to stop.
But she didn’t. Couldn’t.
She needed to not enjoy the pressure of his lips, the possessive thrusting of his tongue into her mouth.
But she did.
Oh, how she did.
Kissing Lucas had always caused hot lava to fill every inch of her.
He’d been right. She had been curious as to whether or not he could still cause her body to implode with pleasure with the slightest effort on his part.
Her fingers found their way to his nape. His hands had found their way to her bottom and were pressing her hard against his body.
His hard body.
How had that happened so fast?
She squirmed in remembered pleasure. He’d felt so good, made her feel so good physically. So completely and thoroughly satisfied. She craved that satisfaction, that ultimate pleasure that having him inside her had given so many times in the past.
Her head fell back and he trailed kisses down her throat, sucking gently at her skin.
“You feel so good.”
She did feel good. She felt good that he was kissing her, touching her. That he wanted her.
But those weren’t things that should be making her feel good. He was her ex-husband. They were no longer married, were no longer anything to each other except for painful memories.
So why wasn’t she stopping him?
Because sex with Richard hadn’t achieved more than a meager orgasm and she wondered if she’d imagined the mind-blowing meltdowns she’d had at the ministrations of this man’s mouth, hands and body.
She hadn’t imagined a thing. Just Lucas’s kisses, his hands, had her on the brink of volcanic eruption. She wanted that explosion, that release, even if it wasn’t real.
She wanted him for an orgasm. The kind that made her want to wrap her legs around his waist and cling as tightly to his body as she could as wave after wave of pleasure shook her.
She’d let him give the pleasure she knew was his to give. She’d take his kisses, his touches, his body inside hers. She’d demand he give her more and more until he lost control and they both saw stars.
This time she was under no illusions of grandeur or love or happily-ever-after.
* * *
Lucas cupped Emily’s bottom and molded her against where he throbbed. His lips tasted the sweetness of her throat, his tongue nipped into the groove of her collarbone.
She wiggled, grinding her body against his, and he almost swore.
He’d had sex since their divorce. Not once had he felt this heat, this burning. Not even at the pinnacle. They’d not even removed a single item of clothing and he was bursting at the seams. For Emily.
His Emily.
With her, the burn had been about so much more. It had been a heated look, a light stroke of her finger across his skin, an accidental bump of her body against his, and he’d lose focus of everything except taking them both so high they’d never fall back to the ground.
But they had fallen back to the ground and it had been a rough fall. One that had left Emily in constant tears and him feeling helpless to dry them.
He pulled back, cupped her face and made her look at him. “We have to stop.”
Her eyes widened, then filled with anger. “No. You are not going to do this to me. You aren’t going to be the one to push me away. Not this time.”
The second she’d spat the words at him, regret had filled her face. She’d revealed things she hadn’t wanted him to see. Things he suddenly needed to see, to understand.
“What do you mean?” He hadn’t pushed her away. He’d wanted her. Always. He’d just not been able to bear the sadness he’d caused her.
“Never mind.” She went to pull away, but he held her to him.
“No. I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
Her body stiffened, but she didn’t fight to get loose. “Then you’d best pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable, because you’re in for a long wait.”
Why did he feel as if he’d handled this all wrong? Maybe he was destined to always do things wrong with Emily, to always upset her and make her unhappy. Yet she was the only woman he’d ever wanted to do things right with.
“Emily, I want you.”
She laughed, but it was a humorless sound that could have just as easily come from a wounded animal who’d just been kicked. “Yes, I can tell by you saying we have to stop after making me think you wanted to have sex with me.”
“I do want to have sex with you.”
“Would you please make up your mind? Your indecisiveness is killing me.”
“I’m not being indecisive. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“Toying with my emotions by seducing me with your kiss, then pushing me away, that’s your idea of doing the right thing? You really are a sick one, aren’t you?”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “I guess you might see it that way, but
hear me out.”
“I’m all ears.”
“There is nothing better I’d like to do than push you up onto that countertop and kiss you until you scream with pleasure.” His hands dropped to her waist, caressed her there, as if he considered making good on his suggestion.
“But?”
“But I didn’t come here for sex, Emily. I came here tonight because I wanted to be with you, because the thought of eating alone, or even with someone else, when I could be with you just wasn’t acceptable. I’m here tonight because I needed your company and no one else’s would do.” His hands moved to her hips, pulled her flush against his hard body and worked her shirt free from her pants. “No one else has ever done. Just you.”
His words were aphrodisiacs to her tortured mind and body.
“Maybe we should have just stuck with sex the first time around,” she said, arching her pelvis against him and running her fingers along his shoulders.
“Maybe. Certainly, I don’t want marriage again.” His hands slid beneath her shirt, lighting fires in the wake of his fingers trailing over her skin. “That isn’t in my future.”
“You think I want marriage to a selfish jerk like you again? Wrong.”
Had she really just tugged his shirt out of his waistband while calling him a selfish jerk? Was she really going for his belt?
“You’re sure this is what you want?”
She got his belt buckle loose, undid the snap of his pants, his zipper. “What do you think?”
He groaned as her hands flattened against his abdomen, then moved to his hips and pushed downward on his pants. “I’ll make it good for you,” he promised.
“You better.” He always had. From the very first time, he’d made sure she enjoyed what was happening between them.
She always had.
* * *
Emily’s breath came in short, hard pants. Her heart raced. Her body was coated in a glistening sweat.
She remembered exactly why she’d allowed to happen what she’d just allowed to happen.