“Cheers to that!” I agreed.
“Hear, hear!” the old man with the pipe said, lifting his own mug of tea. “To the Bodleian!”
I found myself amused and endeared by Lucas’s mannerisms. One moment he’d be confident and assured, and the next he’d be shy, unsure, hesitant. It was an odd mix, especially when combined with his tall frame and handsome features. He was totally unlike Ian, who was intensely masculine, dominant but not arrogant, and definitely self-assured. Lucas’s presence wasn’t quite so dominating, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Where Ian set me on edge, keeping me guessing and wondering, on pins and needles every moment, Lucas was easy and relaxed. After our toast, Lucas seemed totally content to sit and sip his tea, stare out the window and ruminate in his own thoughts. He was not ignoring me; I had the feeling that if I spoke he’d be totally engaged, but he was just…comfortable with his own silence.
I wasn’t.
I was wondering what the hell I was doing, sitting here having tea with a strange man, when Ian was back in London wondering where the hell I was.
I was also wondering why a significant portion of me was attracted to Lucas, who was in so many ways the exact opposite of Ian. What was wrong with me? Was I being disloyal to Ian? Wait, no, that was stupid. Being disloyal to Ian was vanishing on him the morning after earth-shaking sex. But why did I feel guilty about being attracted to Lucas? Because I was. He…fed the hunger of a different part of me, somehow. His shy, endearing, yet occasionally bold mannerisms affected me in a way that was quite different from the way Ian affected me.
Gah. Why was I spending so much time and mental energy thinking about this? I’d known Lucas for five seconds, and I was already going in circles about him. There had to be something seriously wrong with me. No joke.
I shoved my wildly circuitous thoughts away and enjoyed my tea and the quiet atmosphere of the pub, including the sweet, faint scent of the old man’s pipe. Lucas’s presence, even though he was absorbed in his own thoughts, was strangely comforting.
Neither of us spoke as we continued to sip our tea. This was fine.
We poured more tea, sipped it, and still there was no verbal exchange.
Still fine.
And then Lucas glanced at me, blinked owlishly, as if startled by my presence. “Oh. Um. Sorry, I’m sort of really shit at small talk in, like, social situations. Or—or at all, really. I just kind of get lost in my own head, and I didn’t forget you were here, because um, I mean, how could I? One doesn’t just forget about such beauty as yours.” He blushed. “I. Um. Yeah.” He ducked his head, and a long strand of brown hair escaped his ponytail and caught in his beard near his mouth.
I felt an absurd urge to brush it away, and bravely resisted the temptation.
I blushed too. “Thanks. It’s fine, though. I enjoy sitting quietly sometimes.”
“That’s a rare quality, actually. Most people, I’ve found—most people tend not to be able to just sit and think and be alone, or spend time with someone without talking. Especially when you’ve just met someone, most people tend to think they have to fill every moment with words.” He shrugged, and then his gaze swept over me, speculative. “So. You said, when I stopped for you, you said it’s been a long day, but it’s barely morning, yet.”
I traced a fingertip around the rim of the mug, staring down at the half-inch or so of tea. “Just…drama. I left London rather suddenly, and—” I lifted a shoulder, not willing to get into my inner turmoil concerning Ian, especially not with another attractive male.
He nodded, rotating his mug on the tray so the handle was at right angles to the pot, an absent gesture. “I see. So…are you worried about your…drama…following you here?”
What a sweet thought, so delicately phrased. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just one of those situations—”
He held up a hand. “No need to explain, if you don’t want to. Sometimes, with drama like that, I think maybe it’s best to just busy yourself and make yourself actively not worry about it, you know? That’s my experience at least.” He smiled at me, warm and understanding. “Should we go get your room sorted out, then?”
I nodded and accepted his hand, letting him help me stand up, ignoring the fact both of us sort of forgot to let go right away. Lucas drove me across the campus and showed me to the correct office, introduced me to the correct person, and then hovered behind me, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Are you all right, then?” he finally asked, taking a hesitant half-step toward me.
“Yeah, I’m good. I can manage from here, I think.” I wasn’t sure whether to hug him or shake his hand, so I just sort of stood awkwardly too close to him, but didn’t actually make any kind of contact. “Thank you, Lucas. You really came to the rescue today. I’m not sure what I would have done had you not come along.”
He shrugged. “Gotten even wetter, I imagine. It was my pleasure. Truly.” He did the hand-rubbing-the-back-of-his-neck thing again, just beneath his ponytail. It was, like so much about him, an endearingly adorable mannerism. “Well, perhaps I’ll see you at the library, then.”
“I think you will, most certainly.” Oh god, that sounded really British. The more I heard the accent, the more my brain tried unconsciously to imitate it.
“Good, very—very good.” He shot me another warm, quick smile, and then he was gone.
I returned my focus to the woman that would be assigning me a room, and tried to forget all about sexy accents, whether coming from an alpha-male with intense blue eyes, or a sweet, shy, bookworm.
CHAPTER 8
Two and a half weeks. That’s how long I made it without any drama.
As luck would have it, I was assigned a single room overlooking a small courtyard in a building on the far edge of the campus. It was small, warm and sparsely furnished, but it was mine, and I loved it. I found a second-hand bicycle in town and had great fun pedaling slowly around the idyllic, historic grounds of Oxford, a few thick books in the wicker basket attached to the handlebars. Sometimes I’d have a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a block of cheese and I’d spend entire days on a quilt under a tree, reading in the sun.
I read Mansfield Park for the fourth time, then spiced things up with Lolita—god, that opening line is such genius, such pure, unadulterated art: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” (Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.) Then I indulged in the first three of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series before moving on to the more serious fare of A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway. Oh, Hemingway. His style has been described by thousands of critics and students in so many different ways but, to me, he’s the epitome of the eloquence of concision. His prose is like a marble sculpture, he as the artist chiseling and chipping away at a monolith of mineral, steadily and confidently, to reveal the curves and angles of the true beauty beneath. Then there’s Dickens. Of course there’s Dickens, with his long, looping, recursive sentences, each clause crafted with care, puzzle-fit to mate just so with the next, sentences weaving and curling and swooping and soaring with such artful British precision. The age-old question: A Tale of Two Cities, or Great Expectations. Or maybe Oliver Twist. Each of them a classic but for my money, Great Expectations tells such a wonderfully unexpected tale.
I’ve been rambling on about books I’ve read a dozen times each and written countless essays on. But after two and a half weeks of book nerd paradise I was getting bored.
I roamed the library. Perhaps “roamed” isn’t the right word. “Prowled”, perhaps, is more accurate. Skulked in the stacks. Inched through the aisles. Hunted restlessly through the Dewey rows. For books, for treasures, yes…but also for one particular person with long brown hair.
I found him toward the middle of the second week, as I was ruminating on a particularly excellent translation of Beowulf. He was in a far corner, sitting on a bench, flipping between the original text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Tolkien’s brilliant translation.
He didn’t see me right aw
ay, so I sidled up beside him. “You read Middle English?” I asked.
Lucas started violently, tossing his pencil in the air and juggling it before catching it. “Jesus, Nina. You scared the sense out of me.” He blinked rapidly, then began twirling his pencil around his middle finger so fast it became a yellow blur. “Yes, I do. Not too well, as yet, but I can muddle through.” He gestured at my copy of Beowulf. “Enjoying that?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve read it before, but it’s been awhile.”
A nod, and silence. I could see his gaze flickering from me, back to his books, and then back to me. Then, abruptly, he stuck one side of a book into the opening of the other, closing them both so they held his place.
He then stood up, tucked his books under an arm, lodged his pencil behind his ear, and asked, “Lunch?”
It was just an invitation to have lunch, no reason to feel at all giddy.
But I did.
And that lunch was everything I’d hoped for and more. We spent several hours in a booth, nibbling at fries—or chips as the English call them—and discussing our favorite books and authors. Lucas, it turned out, was one of the most widely read individuals I’d ever met, and possessed that rare ability of being able to remember and discuss, with authority and passion, every book he’d ever read. He could move with ease and fluidity from a discussion of The Iliad to Tess of the d’Urbervilles, to The Grapes of Wrath, and even to popular fiction ranging from Twilight to Fifty Shades of Grey to Harry Potter.
He mentioned Fifty Shades casually, as a throwaway comment, perhaps hoping I’d miss the reference, plunging on rapidly into an exposition on the rise of the strong female lead in popular fiction.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I cut in, laughing. “Not so fast, buster. You’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey?”
He blinked at me for several beats. “Well. Um. Yes, I have. The first two, at least. I never got around to the third.”
“Why, Lucas,” I teased, “you don’t seem the type!”
His brows narrowed, lowered, and his handsome head tipped to one side. “Why not? What am I not the type for? It’s a book; no book is safe from me. Because it’s about sex? If that’s your argument, I’d beg to differ, actually. It’s not a book about sex, per se, not really. It’s more about the play for power. And yeah, he—Christian, Mr. Grey, whatever you want to call him, he may exercise the power and the control over her sexually, or at least he tries, and she resists it, but in their interpersonal, relational dynamics, she actually holds the power. She changes him. He has all these rules, the contracts and the NDA, all that stuff governing his relations with women. But she comes along and—and she just blows past all that in no time flat. And he’s powerless to resist her, powerless to stop her. He may have tied her up and whatever, but really she was in control the whole time. The whole book is about control. Surrendering it, giving it, taking it, how you use it and why you want it, and why letting go of it can be so freeing.”
“Surrendering control can be freeing, that’s your takeaway from it?”
He shrugged lazily, but his gaze was sharp. “It can be. Done properly.”
“What do you mean, done properly?” I eyed him. “Are you—are into that stuff?”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “Into what stuff?”
I just blinked at him silently for a moment or two, gathering my thoughts and trying to figure out what I was asking and if I really wanted to know the truth. “Um. You know, tying people up, that sort of thing.”
“Rather a personal question, isn’t it, Nina?” His eyes were hooded, heavy-lidded, his shyness and hesitancy gone, somehow. “Are you?”
“Um. I don’t know.”
“Then you aren’t. Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be, if you tried it, though.” His voice was low, barely audible. “Have you ever wanted to try it?”
“I…um…” YESYESYES! The reaction in my gut was instant, blistering heat. Curiosity. “Try what?” I played coy.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t retreat now, Nina.”
“I’m not retreating.” But I was. Curiosity always got me into trouble and I’d only just managed to stop thinking about Ian—all the time, at least.
“You are, though.” He leaned toward me, elbows on the table, and his hand reached out and took mine. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Nina.”
I let my hand rest in his and tried to not think about how his hand was strong but gentle, soft yet firm. “Okay, then, no more questions.”
He grinned, amused. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“But you just said—”
“My point was, I think you do want to know the answer. Am I into that type of thing? Am I? What type of thing? Isn’t that the better question?”
I tried to withdraw my hand, but his fingers circled my wrist and refused to let go. “What type of things are you into, then, Lucas?”
Shitshitshit, how the hell had the conversation gotten here? How the hell had we gone from talking about Odysseus and Hector and Ajax to whether or not Lucas was into bondage? Had I fallen down some weird rabbit hole? Lucas was shy, endearing, hesitant, wasn’t he? But this Lucas was direct, assertive, unblinking.
“I don’t like anything all that weird, Nina, I can promise you that. No flogs or chains or rooms full of equipment.” Then why were his eyes dancing with glinting shards of razor-sharp humor?
“Then what?” I hated how that question, the admission of curiosity, squeezed out of me without my approval.
He let go of my hand. Leaned back in the booth, checked his watch. “I have a meeting in a few minutes. If you’d like to continue this…conversation later, maybe I could pick you up at your room at, say, seven this evening?”
I nodded, my body giving my assent before my mind could catch up.
“Fantastic. I’ll see you at seven, then.” He was gone in a breeze of faint cologne, leaving several bills on the table to cover the meal. I hadn’t even seen him looking through his wallet.
I sat in a daze for several moments before getting up and cycling back to my room, my head spinning all the while.
What the blue fuck just happened? Had I just agreed to a date with Lucas? I mean, a date date. Not an impromptu lunch between two students, but a real date. The kind where I could possibly end up bound and gagged in Lucas’s bedroom, discovering that I also liked sex while tied up.
God, I really should not be thinking like that. What the hell was wrong with me all of a sudden? My entire adult life, since the moment I lost my virginity, sex had been fun, enjoyable, something that you did as a matter of course with your boyfriend, whenever and wherever you could manage it. Quickly, under the covers, in a dorm room. In a car, in the backseat with a seatbelt in your spine and an armrest as a pillow, the windows steaming. In a basement, during a movie, under an old quilt, stealthily. Once, most daringly, in the back alley behind a bar, while drunk, regretting it mightily the next day, because eeew. But it was never something I thought about all the time. Never something I fantasized about and dreamed about and went crazy over….
Because now, it felt like I was going crazy. It was as if Ian had broken something loose inside me, freed some ravening beast from a once-locked cage deep inside me. I’d masturbated nearly every single day since coming to Oxford. Thinking of Ian, usually. Bad girl, I’d scold myself, after, physically breathless and mentally anguished. You abandoned him, you have no right to use him for masturbational material. But I did. A lot. In the shower. Before falling asleep. In the morning, before I was fully awake.
Lately, though, I’d forced myself to stop. Thinking about Ian, at least. I tried to replace the memories of what he’d done to me, how he’d made me feel, by thinking of someone generic. Someone not him. Anyone else. I didn’t deserve to think about him. Whenever I did, I’d go mushy and ripe with guilt and regret.
But now, in my dorm, damp from just having gotten out of the shower and shaved myself head to toe—except for a little patch of fuzz downstairs, because being totally
bald just felt weird—I lay on my bed with my towel wrapped loosely around me, my hair splayed out on my pillow, my skin heated and flushed from the deliciously scalding shower. My fingers stole downward and Lucas’s features skittered across my mind. His long, thick hair, which I didn’t usually like on guys but worked on him so well, his soft, warm brown eyes, his tall frame hovering over me, gentle hands touching me everywhere, fingers feathering over the tender skin of my belly, dancing across my thighs, yes, yes, brushing aside the edge of the towel and cupping me, sliding his fingers in, in, stroking over my clit and nudging it, sending thrills of heat blazing up from the little bundle of hypersensitive nerve-endings.
I was gasping, moaning low under my breath, and then my spine arched up off the bed and my fingers were flying, and I could almost feel stubble rasping on my breast and teeth gently biting my nipple and lips on my belly. I could almost hear a deep voice rumbling in my ear, encouraging me to let go, to come hard, to come for him…
The voice had a lilt, a British burr. That’s all I knew.
Stubble on my skin? Or a beard?
Long hair draped loose over my belly as lips descended to ravage my clit? Or short and messy, tickling and brushing?
Fucking hell…
I came with a whimper and a rush of release, but it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the nuclear-hot, chemical rush of a real orgasm. It was more like a cheap knockoff. The real thing was a diamond-encrusted Rolex, and the brief, shallow burst I’d just experienced was a knock-off watch you got from the bargain bin at K-Mart.
* * *
Lucas picked me up at six-fifty-eight, dressed like a true Oxford student in dark, dressy jeans, a trim white button-down, and a wool blazer with real leather elbow patches. He held the car door open for me and then whisked me away, out of Oxford, across the countryside and to some little village a few miles—kilometers?—away. He pulled up outside a—what should I call it? A cottage? It was a tiny, low-roofed home, with small leaded windows on either side of a narrow door. He twisted the key in a burnished, scratched lock-plate.
Big Love Abroad (Big Girls Do It Book 11) Page 13