by Tiffany Sala
I could tell he was thinking about Lucy, because he had the same expression on his face as when she’d driven off that day and left the two of us together. He was so close to driving at a speed that suited the conditions. I just had to help him a little more…
“Look,” I called. “I can’t promise you won’t lose this. I can’t assure you that you’ll remember. But the only thing you can do is let me help you. Let me try to remember for you, when you can’t.”
Lucas slammed on the brakes, abruptly. I whimpered as the car wiggled a little and I was jerked against my seatbelt, but we were under control. We were slowing… and then Lucas swerved the car sideways into a park that definitely wouldn’t have gotten him his licence in a driving test.
He turned to me. “I can give you an experience you’ll remember, all right.”
I didn’t realise what was running over my face at first. Was I crying? Of course, now we’d stopped the car the rain was finding us easily.
“Okay,” I said. I had a feeling I knew exactly what sort of experience he was keen on, and it said a lot about just how messed-up I was right now that I was starting to feel a new adrenaline rush at the thought. “But can we please get the car under cover first so it isn’t completely destroyed by the end of the day?”
And then a police motorcycle pulled up alongside us. I barely managed to restrain myself from dropping my face into my hands. There was no way the officer riding had missed some of what was going on with us.
She flashed a badge, asked for Lucas’s licence, and shot each of us a look in turn, ending on Lucas. “And I thought I was the one making the worst travel decisions out here tonight,” she commented. “Are you two aware it’s raining?”
“We’re getting the car under cover as soon as possible,” I assured her.
“That’s good,” the officer said, “I won’t hold you up any longer than I need to, but we need to address your driving first, sir.”
She must have seen my face fall. This was my car. I just knew I was going to be the one who wound up in trouble for this somehow.
Lucas tilted his head up at her. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see she wasn’t going to be putting down a deposit on whatever he was selling.
“Yeah,” he said, “made a bit of an error in judgement back there. Callie here set me straight.”
Now she was looking at me, and it was taking all my inner strength and then some not to cringe. I’d always tried so hard to avoid doing anything that would attract police attention. It was all very well if you were someone like Lucas or Ashleigh, who lived in neighbourhoods with multistory houses and had good names to support them. If the police got hold of me and found out where I lived, they’d probably assume I was up to something criminal like half our neighbours.
All I could do now was be honest. “I should probably mention this is my car,” I said.
“Well, ma’am,” said the officer, “as you were certainly not driving at the time, all that means to me is that you need to exercise better judgement with who you allow to drive your vehicle in future.”
“Oh, I know that now,” I said. “Trust me.” There was no point in trying to explain to her that I’d never really allowed Lucas to drive my car in the first place.
Something about my words or my appearance made her peer closer. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, ma’am?” she asked.
I tried to imagine what we must look like to her. Me, in my nice work clothes now becoming slowly spotted with rain, clutching my shattered composure to myself. Lucas in his school uniform like always, but still not looking like anything but a rich young man on an entirely different level to me.
I wondered if what she was seeing was my real future. Terrified, abused, just waiting for someone to ask me if I was all right. Lucas right now was far from someone I could imagine, say, hitting me, though he’d certainly crossed the line in terms of physical intimidation.
If I were being completely honest, the future I was walking myself into scared me. But there was nobody here who could force me to be honest about that, and I didn’t really want anyone else intruding into my personal business either.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m sorry I let him drive.”
“He’ll be a lot more sorry than you,” the officer said, “because he’s getting his licence suspended tonight for speeding and dangerous driving.”
“It’s my first time,” Lucas protested.
“It’s the first time you’ve been caught,” she corrected. “Don’t try to pull one on me and pretend that’s not the case. As a provisional driver, any infraction attracts an immediate suspension.”
I just knew a woman like this officer would have no troubles handling someone like Lucas. Maybe there were just some of us out there who could cope with that sort of thing in our lives, and so it naturally fell to us to do the work.
She was looking at me again, not even needing her full attention to write out whatever ticket Lucas was going to get. “I take it from the look of extreme embarrassment on your face that you still have your licence and would not even think of driving as recklessly as this young man.”
“That’s correct,” I said.
“Well, you’ll be driving him home,” she told me. “But I suggest you take a moment to put that top back up first. This rain’s only getting heavier.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Three months,” Lucas grumbled, helping me reopen the top of my car in the shelter of his family’s garage, which might have been larger than my entire house. The seat cushions felt damp enough that we’d agreed the car could do with an extra airing before I headed home. “What am I supposed to do if I can’t drive for three months? I just got done with not being able to drive!”
When, exactly, was I heading home? In the excitement following Lucas’s brush with the law I’d entered Lucas’s house with him without thinking too much about what was going on, and now we seemed to be settling my car in for an extended stay.
“I guess you’ll just have to be very nice to anyone who might be able to offer you lifts,” I said, not really thinking very hard about it.
“Well,” Lucas said, “thanks very much for the offer, and I’m working on it.”
He took my hand. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the more interesting parts of the house.”
I hoped he hadn’t noticed how I’d flinched at his touch, even though knowing Lucas he probably had. It seemed silly, when his hands had been all sorts of other places that were far more confronting.
“It’s a little scary to think there are more interesting parts of your house,” I said, to distract from those more interesting parts of me. I was telling the truth. This vast space with cars and a pool table and an actual bar along one wall seemed like something that would come out of a teen movie, not real life.
But Lucas had only to lead me through a door in one corner of the garage straight into the midst of the house, and I saw right away he’d been telling the truth too. The rest of the house was as vast as the garage: high ceilings, wide hallways—and though there was a refreshing lack of clutter, there was also plenty of room for tasteful decoration. There were paintings and prints of famous artworks on clean white walls alongside studio-posed family photos. Shelves and pedestals and alcoves held a range of books and photos and decorations that was always perfectly in balance with the space.
I felt my face grow blazing hot when I realised Lucas was watching me gape at everything.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “it’s not very classy of me to just stare at your home like this, is it?”
“It’s cute,” Lucas said. “I’d bring you here all the time to watch you carry on like this. And, of course…” His grin had me nervous again. “This is your area, isn’t it? So what do you think of our place?”
“I think it’s really nicely put-together,” I told him, relieved I didn’t need to lie. “It’s probably the most stylish house I’ve ever seen that people actually live in.”
H
is smile was worth any amount of grief he’d put me through to get to this point. “It’s mostly down to Lucy and my dad, not me. I think Dad has picked up a certain sense of style from having to set up his dental practice really nicely… while Lucy is just naturally perfect.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy, who was sitting with a book in the lounge area we’d just entered. She looked the two of us up and down, spending most of her time on me of course. “Got caught in the rain?”
“Just a bit,” Lucas said.
“Is she staying over then?”
“Is that a problem?”
“I—” I tried to insert myself into the conversation, to say I couldn’t stay, didn’t need to stay, but I was so mortified by the connotations my words had gotten all caught up in my throat, and it didn’t seem like there was any room for me between the two siblings anyway.
“It’s none of my business,” Lucy said. “Have a nice night.”
I had a sense when Lucas was dragging me up the stairs to the second floor he was pretty embarrassed by that encounter too.
“Does Lucy have a problem with me?” I asked once we were far enough away that she probably wouldn’t hear.
Lucas shrugged. “Nothing personal I think. You’re probably just different enough from my usual type that she’s not sure what the fuck I’m really doing.”
I wanted to dig into that ‘usual type’ comment, but at the same time it felt like it might be a complete waste of breath. There had obviously been other girls in his life, so there was no point in starting to get jealous so long as I had no reason to believe they weren’t past tense… and it went without saying that I was not Lucas’s usual type. That was exactly how we’d wound up here that night.
“I never agreed to stay overnight yet, you know,” I reminded him.
“I wasn’t planning on asking you,” Lucas said. “You know how to speak up for yourself if you need to.”
I stopped with him in front of a door I assumed led to his bedroom and pulled out the phone he’d bought for me to text my mother about not coming home that night. She was going to be my most sympathetic parent, not that it really mattered what either of them thought any more.
“There,” I told Lucas. “My parents know where I am, so don’t think you’ll get away with dumping my body if something goes wrong.”
His eyebrows were up as he opened the door and gestured me through. His room was just as perfect as the rest of the house, which unsettled me. It didn’t feel like the sort of room a guy would occupy, or anyone’s personal room really—it was like the whole space had its personality missing. Perhaps that was what it was like to be Lucas, still struggling to find who he was with his memories missing.
Perhaps if I could gain his trust, the best thing I could do for him was to encourage him to address those missing memories, instead of trying to pretend they weren’t a problem for him. Perhaps that would change everything.
Nervousness swamped my plotting when Lucas brought me over to a doorway on the far side of the room and I saw a little bathroom in there, one side of it completely dedicated to a shower with no screen or door. The sink looked more like a monument, and I didn’t think I’d used a toilet that fancy in my entire life.
“Well,” Lucas said, “time to strip, I expect you to be clean before you get in my bed.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Who said I was getting in your bed?”
“Well we could go elsewhere in the house,” Lucas said, “but Lucy’s only smart enough to avoid my bedroom, and she’s definitely going to be pissed if she sees me fucking you into the ground.”
Fortunately he didn’t give me too long to think about that. He kissed me, hard, and then pushed me against the bathroom wall, keeping me occupied with his mouth while one hand dismantled my clothes and the other… I heard a rush of water and felt steam tickling my nostrils, and then he had two hands to tear my unbuttoned shirt down my arms, to drop my skirt, to push my bra up and my panties down. I’d bought some new stuff since I started my new job, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t even notice.
I had a moment longer to cope with being completely exposed in front of him when he was pulling his shirt over his head, then his eyes were roaming all over me as he pleased as he unbuttoned and lowered his own pants. His body was incredible, of course, sleek and muscled and with a spray of dark curls on his chest that matched his eyelashes.
As my own eyes dared to explore lower, he stepped closer, taking hold of my shoulders and pushing me in the path of the shower spray. Hot water laced my skin, and then that sensation was superseded by his even hotter mouth on my nipples, suckling one and then the other.
“You have the most lovely tits,” he sighed. He squeezed them as he continued to suck, and then I felt his hand sliding down my wet belly, his fingers sliding into the thicker wetness between my legs. “And here, of course, we need to make sure things are very clean.”
My head tilted back as he pumped his fingers inside me. The noises I was making echoed in the shower space. I kept reminding myself a house like this would have much better soundproofing between rooms than mine. I had to believe it, because I couldn’t deal with the thought of Lucy or Lucas’s parents hearing me.
My own hands were shyer than his, but I couldn’t resist touching what was right in front of me. I dug my fingers into the muscles of his arms, enjoying the way they tightened as he worked on me, and then as I fell more and more under the spell of what he was doing, I clung to his back to balance myself.
Lucas made me come fast and hard, the pounding of the water over my body making it feel like every part of me was throbbing in release. He took his hands away to shut the water off while I was still coming down, leaving me utterly aware of how vulnerable I was to him now, trails of water tickling my naked skin, my nipples stiff and aching from the cold and from his sucking.
Lucas was fumbling around on a shelf near the shower for something while he held me up, and then there was a noise I didn’t make sense of until he stepped back and reached between his legs—then, too fast for me to react, he grabbed me from behind, hoisting me up and supporting me on the wall, and with a growl and a thrust he was deep inside me.
The pain seared through me as every part of me stiffened. I was tensing for further agony, but Lucas stayed still, frowning at me.
“You’re not going to tell me you’re a virgin now, are you,” he said.
“Not if you’d rather I didn’t,” I managed to get out.
“Shit,” said Lucas. “Fuck. Well that was rude of me then, wasn’t it.”
With both his hands supporting me, he moved us out of the bathroom in slow steps, staying inside me so that I could feel his movements with each shift of his muscles. And now that the initial shock had worn off, there was a tiny jolt of pleasure in each of those movements.
He didn’t come out of me until we reached the bed, and then he pulled back the cover to lay me down in the middle of it and clambered on top of me, sliding back in but only a little, teasing my entrance.
“I really had no fucking clue. You’re always so hot for anything, I mean I figured maybe you hadn’t had some of these things done before because guys our age, you know they’re fucking idiots, but…”
“I’d kissed some guys before and that’s it.” I didn’t feel like I owed him the information, but at that moment I wanted him to know, to see what he would do with it.
I could tell right away from the way he was throbbing a little inside me how much he liked it.
“Well,” he said, “you won’t need anyone else either once I’m through with you.”
He pushed all the way back in again, slowly and smoothly. There was little pain this time, and as he found his way into a rhythm, pleasure from his movements in me and his hands on me blocked everything else out.
I grabbed his hips to brace myself. I felt like I was going to come again already, and I didn’t know that I wanted to give everything up to him so quickly. It didn’t seem right—
“Fuck�
�sorry—” Lucas gasped, and at the feel of him pressing further into me than seemed possible, his dick throbbing—well, I didn’t have any control over myself, but I thought I had all the permission I needed.
“Thank fuck for that,” he muttered as my orgasm hit hard. He held onto me all the way through every last bit of it, kissing and nibbling at my neck, and then when I was finally done and quiet, he pulled himself up on his arms to stare down at me.
“Well, Callie… and what do you think?”
My words slipped out of me before I could review them. “You’re a lot sweeter in bed.”
I winced as his laugh made him press harder inside me for a moment. “That’s the plan to stop you from being so difficult to get here the next time.”
He pulled away from me abruptly and turned his back to deal with the condom he’d had strategically planted in his bathroom all along. “Although the next time is probably going to be a few hours from now, once I’ve had a chance to get my mojo back.”
“You’re making it sound a bit like a video game stat.”
“Well that’s it then, never using that fucking phrase again.”
I pulled the covers over myself, feeling shy without him over me, but that almost made it more awkward because there I was now, nestled in his bed. “I have to work tomorrow,” I informed him, not for the first time of course. “I’m going to need to get enough sleep that I can get home early and get ready.”
“Get ready here,” said Lucas. “Lucy will have some unused makeup lying around you can borrow if you need that sort of thing, and I’ll make sure your clothes get washed and dried. You’re not going to need them overnight.”
Lucas being incredibly nice now he was getting everything he wanted was far from the worst outcome I could imagine.