She did not want to cry in front of him.
He reached across the table to take her hand as he said, “Lucy,” but she pulled back from his hand. “Don’t,” she said.
She sat up and she felt it as a tear rolled down her face. She picked up her napkin, patted her face and coughed to clear her throat. “This is not who I am. This weepy, weak, cheating woman is not who I am.”
He nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m a grown woman and I’m responsible for my own actions.”
She looked down at her plate and picked her chopsticks back up.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She looked up at him, nodded and said, “Of course.”
“Were you happy before?”
She looked back at her bowl of noodles and took another bite as she thought about it. “I don’t know. I thought I was, but when I look back I don’t know. It all seems sort of blurry now. I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t really living, I was just existing. I’m living now but…I don’t know this person that I’m becoming either.”
He made a noise and stood up. She looked up at him in surprise, her chopstick full of noodles halfway to her mouth. He pulled his wallet out and pulled out some notes and sat them on the table as he said, “Thank you for seeing me. I’m sorry I called you.”
She dropped the noodles back into her bowl and held her hand out to him. “Lucas, don’t go. I’m sorry that I cried. It’s not your fault.”
He nodded. “It is my fault. I made you unhappy and for that I am truly sorry.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No you didn’t. I made myself unhappy. Not you.”
He looked down at her as he said, “I gave you cause and I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I hope you have a happy life.”
With those words he grabbed his coat off the back of his chair and walked away. She stared after him in shock for a few seconds before she jumped up, grabbed her coat and purse and chased after him. He was halfway down the block before she caught up to him and he didn’t stop even when she called his name.
She ran up to him, grabbed his arm and he stopped and turned to her. The look of sadness on his face made her heart skip another beat and before she knew what she was doing she reached out, grabbed the lapel of his coat and pulled his mouth down to hers. At first his mouth was hard and unyielding but after a few seconds it softened and he kissed her back.
Her hands went around his waist under his coat and she groaned as the warmth of his chest came to rest against hers. His hands went to her butt and pulled her up until she was standing on her tip toes. As the kiss deepened she felt him growing harder against her and she groaned into his mouth. She had missed this, missed his mouth and his touch and she had been denying it for days.
Uncaring of the people they blocked, she pulled the back of his sweater up until she could touch the warm skin of his back and she felt him twitch against her lower stomach. She ground herself into him and was startled when he pulled back. She looked up at him, her mouth swollen and wet and asked, “What?”
He bent down until their eyes were level and said, “I didn’t come for this. I just wanted to see you.”
She nodded. “I know but I want this. Do you?”
He groaned and pressed his forehead to hers, “How can you even ask that? I get hard just seeing your face.”
She smiled at him, loving the feeling of power that his desire for her gave to her. She pulled back and grabbed his hand, “Can we go to your place?”
Chapter Sixteen
They were walking up the street, holding hands, when a man stepped out of a restaurant onto the sidewalk in front of them. “Antonelli!”
Lucas stopped and Lucy felt the hand that was holding hers tense. “Childress! How are you?”
The two men shook hands and Lucas moved so that he was half blocking her from the other man. “How the hell are you Antonelli? I heard that you just bought Wilton Motors you crazy Italian! Pretty soon your cars won’t have any competition on the road but I guess that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Lucas murmured something that she didn’t catch and she leaned around him. The other man saw her and smiled, “Well hello there! Sorry to intrude. How are you?”
He held out his hand and she reached out to shake his. He stared at her, “You look very familiar, have we met before?”
Lucy shook her head. She hadn’t met anyone since moving to London outside of wedding people and Lucas, but the other man gasped and his mouth fell open, “Oh my word! You’re Isabella Lennox’s granddaughter. That’s how I know you, you look just like her!”
Lucy smiled in shock. She had never, not once in her life, been told that she looked like her grandmother and she thought it was a huge compliment. Her grandmother was beautiful and she had longed as a child, to grow up and look like her. “Well not quite,” she said.
He nodded. “You do. You look just like her when she was your age. We dated when we were teenagers and I still to this day have a portrait of her hanging on the wall of my home in Norfolk. Whenever I see it I remember what an idiot I was to have lost her.”
She felt herself blush and realized that Lucas was staring at her and he looked uncomfortable. She reached out and touched the sleeve of his coat and saw the other man zero in on her hand. “Well, well, Antonelli you’ve caught yourself quite a prize haven’t you. Not enough that you’re the richest man in Europe, now you have to have the prettiest girl in all of London. Unfair wouldn’t you say.”
Lucy looked at Lucas and saw the light in his eyes dim. The richest man in Europe? Surely the other man had to be joking.
They talked for a few more minutes, the man made Lucy promise to send her grandmother his regards, before he went on his way.
They walked in silence for a few blocks before Lucas stopped and stepped out in the street to wave a cab down. In the back of the cab he moved away from her and put his hands on his knees. She reached out to grab his hand and he looked at her with what seemed like concern on his face. She smiled at him and he smiled back in relief.
When they got to his house he paid the driver, and with his hand on the small of her back, pushed her ahead of him. The door was opened before they reached it and Lucy looked up to see a man about her father’s age in a dark suit. “Good evening Signore Antonelli, Miss.”
Lucy nodded at him as he held the door. They stepped inside and Lucas helped her off with her coat and handed it to the man before taking off his own. “Thank you Barnes.”
The older man nodded and said, “Your mother called. She said she would call back tomorrow.”
Lucas nodded. “Thank you. You can go now.”
Barnes nodded again and turned and walked off. Lucas grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the stairs. As they climbed he said, “My mother drives me crazy. She refuses to use a cell phone and she only seems to call when I’m not here.”
She chuckled at that and he smiled down at her. They reached his room and unlike the first day when she had been there, the bed was made. He pulled back the covering and turned to her. She saw his hesitation so she reached up and pulled her sweater over her hand on threw it on the floor. His face broke into a wide smile and he kicked his shoes off and sat down on the bed, in the middle of it and leaned back against the headboard.
He put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankles and she froze. His voice as he said, “Take them off so I can watch,” was quiet but she felt it all the way to her bones which had suddenly seemed to soften.
She hesitated with her fingers on the button of her jeans but then took a deep breath and went for it. Her fingers shook as she moved the zipper down but that didn’t stop her. She pushed her jeans down and stepped out of them and suddenly she remembered he man in the street saying that she looked just like her grandmother. While, to some that might not be the most appropriate thought at the moment, to Lucy it gave her courage. Her grandmother was
known for being beautiful and sexy. Men crossed streets and worlds to talk to her, to be near her. Maybe she, Lucy, did have a little of her grandmother in her after all.
She took a deep breath and reached down to the front closure on her bra. She smiled at Lucas and bit into her lower lip as she slowly undid it and peeled it away from her breasts. She heard, from across the room, as Lucas inhaled and she felt even more confident. She turned her back to him, pulled the bra off, and threw it at him over her shoulder. She turned her head to watch as he caught it and brought it to his nose.
As she watched he inhaled the scent of her and his eyes, when they met hers over the bra, were dark and stormy. She turned towards him, her hands cupping her breasts and walked towards the bed. She stopped a few inches from him and he reached out to touch her but his hand came up short. She stayed just out of his reach as she dropped her hands to the waistband of her panties. His eyes followed her hands and she saw his pupils dilate with desire.
Slowly she pushed her panties down and his eyes burned a trail as they followed their progress. When they were to the floor she stepped out of them and his eyes went to the triangle of soft, black hair between her legs. She was scared but trying to be bold as she ran her hand down her side and softly ran her fingers through that hair. His face was flushed, his eyes huge as he watched her hand.
Would he be disgusted the way that Sam had been?
She realized then that she was testing him.
She was scared, but she did anyway. She had to know.
It only took a few minutes to realize that his reaction was the opposite of Sam’s disgust. His hand flexed and unflexed as if he wanted to reach for her and as she watched he squirmed uncomfortably on the bed.
Growing bolder because of his obvious enjoyment she sent her hands searching and gently stroking and he never took his eyes off her.
His chest was rising and falling rapidly in time with the movement of her hands and her own breath was coming in short gasps as she quickly approached her peak. With a shudder she went over the edge and when the waves had subsided she opened her eyes and looked at him, unsure of his reaction. Their eyes met as he said, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He pulled her towards him and she went eagerly, wanting to kiss him, to touch him, and to watch him as he found his own release.
They made love and afterwards, sated and tired she remembered what the other man had said, so she asked him, “You’re not really the richest man in Europe are you?”
He didn’t say anything so she rolled towards him. His eyes were closed and his face was smooth as he caressed her thigh. “Lucas?”
He didn’t open his eyes as he asked, “Does it matter?”
She sat up and pulled away from his touch. “I don’t know.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. He sighed and sat up, propping his back against the headboard. He was naked, the sheet at the foot of the bed where it had been tossed, and for a second she was distracted by the sight of his body.
She looked up, met his eyes and felt herself blush. He smiled before asking, “Why would it matter?”
She shook her head. “I…I don’t know.”
He rubbed a hand across his chest and she followed its movement with her eyes. Something twisted low in her belly and she once again had to force her gaze to focus on his face. It really should be a crime for anyone to look as good as he did.
“I’m rich. No, I’m not the richest man in Europe; at least I don’t think so.”
She gulped, “You don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “Does it matter? Does it make you want me more?”
She laughed. “God no, it makes me want you less.”
He sat up straight at that and grabbed her foot. “What? That’s crazy. Why would it have anything to do with you not wanting me?”
She sighed and shook her head before she said, “Because I’m not rich. I’m far, far from it. And it makes us different, even more different than we were before. We live in two different worlds.”
He pulled on her foot and she stretched her leg out in front of her. He grabbed it and her other leg and pulled her across the bed towards him. The silk of the sheets rubbed gently across her flesh and when she was in front of him he pulled her up so that she was straddling him. She felt the hair from his thighs on the backs of her legs and before she could stop herself she rubbed against it.
“You realize that’s crazy right?” he asked. “You’re a reverse snob Lucy Jacobs.”
She shrugged her shoulders and he reached up and cupped her breasts. “That’s unfair,” he said. “You’re judging me on something that I have no control over.”
She sighed, and her head fell back as his thumbs lightly traced over her nipples, still sensitive from earlier. “Lucy?”
“Hmmm?”
“Lucy look at me.”
She rolled her head forward, opened her eyes and smiled. It was the smile of the cat that ate the canary, it was the smile of a woman who had been loved good and proper and who knew she was about to get it again.
“Why does it matter?”
She frowned and reached forward and put her finger on his mouth. “Shhh, enough talking.”
He shook his head, and shook off her finger. “Why does it matter?”
She gave a huge, loud sigh of frustration and asked, “Why does what matter?”
“Why does it matter how much money I have or that we’re so different, if you say we don’t have a future?”
His words penetrated her desire and she thought about what he said. She didn’t like the answer that formed in her mind. He was right; they didn’t have a future together. It didn’t matter how much money he did or didn’t have. None of it mattered. In nine days she was marrying Sam and all of this would be just a fond memory.
She looked down at him and angry at him and at herself she asked, “Do you want to talk or do you want to fuck Lucas?”
Her words shocked him, and his head jerked back. She swore that a look of hurt went across his face, but it didn’t stop his body from reacting to her words. He looked as if he was about to say something but he didn’t. Instead he picked her up off his lap and pushed her down to the bed. He came up over her, spread her legs with hard hands and thrust into her.
Later she was standing at the foot of the bed, pulling her sweater on over her head when he asked, “Are you protected?”
She didn’t understand so she turned to look at him. His meaning only dawned when their eyes met. She nodded her head, trying to keep her face blank. She wasn’t protected, she hadn’t even thought about it once, but he didn’t need to know that.
Her stomach felt sick as with shaking hands she pulled on her pants and buttoned and zipped them. God what had she done? She had never once considered the possibility of getting pregnant. It wasn’t something that she had to worry about with Sam. A childhood struggle with leukemia had made it impossible for him to father a baby and since he was the only man she had ever slept with, protection was something that she had simply never had to think about.
She didn’t look at him, too afraid that he would be able to read the fear in her face as she put her boots back on.
She grabbed her purse from the floor and without saying anything to him she opened the door and walked out of the room. She was halfway down the stairs before he caught up with her. She looked down at his hand on her arm and then at him and saw that he hadn’t bothered to put any clothes on. She wanted to smile but she fought it.
She pulled her arm away and continued down the stairs. At the front door he grabbed her coat and helped her on with it.
“Will I see you again?”
She shook her head, not trusting her voice not to shake.
“Can I have a kiss goodbye?”
She shook her head again.
“Please,” he asked.
She looked up at him, helpless at the plea in his voice and when their eyes met she had the startling image of a baby with his gree
n eyes. It was so powerful, so unexpected that she felt dizzy with it and she closed her eyes.
“Lucy, what’s wrong?” he asked and pulled her towards him.
She could only shake her head against his bare, warm shoulder. Everything was wrong. Every single thing in her life had gone to shit in just a few months time. She was in a strange city, cheating on Sam, and possibly pregnant with her lover’s child. Everything was wrong and nothing was right.
She pulled back from him and he squeezed her shoulder. She felt the warmth of his hand through her coat and despite everything she wanted to sink back into his arms. She wanted him to hold her and make everything okay.
Impossible Things Page 10