Forgotten Promises (Lost Boys #1)

by Jessica Lemmon

  My focus has strayed. I need to steer it away from me and back on the kids at the camp. Getting them out of harm’s way. Abolishing my father and his nefarious plot.

  “I’m stuffed. Want the rest?” She offers her plate, half a sandwich and some stray chips.

  I shake my head.

  “What’s wrong?” She sets the plate on the table.

  “When you call your dad, I want you to tell him the truth about where you were.”

  Her eyes go wide.

  “Everything, Morgan. How I snatched you. How you heard me out. How you believe my story and think he should help me.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Maybe.

  “It’s time to tell him everything. Or I can tell him, if he’s willing to listen to a word I say.”

  She looks so vulnerable. Her one spoken word isn’t more than a puff of air. “Why?”

  “Because.” I stand, the cabin starting to close in around me even though we’ve been in it for less than an hour. I half expect to glance out the window and see dust blow up, a car with a magnetic siren slapped to the roof barreling in our direction. “Someone will find us,” I say darkly.

  She stands, scraping the plastic feet of the chair on the floor so she can see out the window. “You don’t know that.”

  I turn toward her, and hope my expression is grim enough to be convincing. “I do. We can’t hide forever, Angel.” I pull my phone out of my pocket. “Call him now. Tell him everything.”

  “Forget it.” She backs away from my extended hand.

  “Morgan.”

  “Make me.” A shaky smile tips her mouth.

  “I’m not playing. This is serious. This is dangerous.” This is potential jail time and my father hunting me down, gun drawn. This is Morgan’s father bringing every imaginable charge against me. This is a mess. A mess I caused.

  “We drove what, twenty minutes?” She’s backing out of the kitchen, past the front door. There’s nowhere to go in the tiny house. I don’t know what she’s thinking.

  “Yeah, and?” I follow her every backward step.

  “And, the guy was trying to salvage the beer the last I looked. We weren’t followed. We’re back here buried in the thick forest, surrounded by trees, with the car hiding behind the cabin.”

  I press my lips together. She thinks I’m being paranoid.

  “He didn’t know me. The clerk was so high he was circling the airport.”

  I smother a laugh. I’m letting her distract me, so I school my features. I reach her at the bathroom door and snatch her wrist.

  Her chest heaves, her lips part, and her eyes trickle over my face before landing on my mouth. “I need a shower.”

  Against my will, my erection throbs to life. Half-mast is enough to derail my thoughts. My grip on her wrist loosens.

  “Join me?” she purrs, those amber eyes cutting into me.

  A heartbeat passes before the phone call is forgotten. I drop the phone into my pants pocket and back her against the sink, where I effectively devour her mouth. My fingers in the waistband of her shorts, I spin and flatten her against the wall with my body. I have her shirt off in the span of a breath, then she pulls off her bra and unbuttons her shorts. Taking over, I tug the material from her hips and drop to my knees. She’s golden skin and golden hair and I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked up to see a halo encircling her head.

  My angel.

  “Tucker,” she begs on a heated sigh. “Shower.”

  I run my tongue over her bare stomach just over the edge of her panties.

  “Please. The shower,” she pants again, her fingers tearing through my hair, pushing it this way and that. Snapping out of my trance, I stand and knead her breasts with both hands, plucking her nipples and kissing her lips as she arches her back.

  “What will we do in the shower, Morgan?” I husk out, loving the way her eyes fall closed. The way she squirms in pleasure, both palms pressed to the wall.

  “You can kiss me wherever you want.” Her eyelids are hooded, her lips swollen from my kisses. “If you let me kiss you wherever I want.”

  My blood chills briefly before thawing, then catching fire. The idea of Morgan’s mouth on me…down there. I close my eyes and feel another insistent throb in my pants.

  “Please.”

  “Don’t beg,” I tell her, tugging her nipples with my thumbs and forefingers.

  She holds my wrists, gives me a slightly evil smile that I like way, way too much. “Why not? You will before I’m done with you.”

  Slamming my mouth over hers again, we make out until we are both desperate and my fingers are inside her. Only then do I pull away to spin on the shower and toss her into it, shedding my clothes and following.

  We stay under the spray until the limited hot water runs cold. With loud whoops as gooseflesh covers our limbs, we leap out. Morgan is bragging between chattering teeth as she reaches for a towel about how she told me I’d beg and I had.

  I snatch the towel and drag her mouth to mine. The magical mouth that turned me into Silly Putty in seconds flat.

  “Your turn,” I growl before nipping her bottom lip. “Get your very fine ass upstairs.”

  Morgan

  I’m not begging. I’m not begging.

  Not that I have the oxygen left to beg. Instead I lay with my hands overhead, legs spread on the mattress while Tucker drives his tongue inexpertly against me over and over. It not that he’s bad at it, just learning his way. And with the limited experience I’ve had with a man between my legs, I’m learning my way, too.

  Like with everything else, we’re finding our way together.

  “Oh! There!” A shock like electricity zaps through my bloodstream. “There, there, there.” Fingers twining in his wet hair, I guide him back to where the magic began happening and—“Oh!”

  I feel him smile against my skin. “Found it.”

  “You should be very proud,” I joke, my voice low and sultry.

  His tongue slicks me again, and my smile retreats, my fingers clutching at his scalp. Warmth like honey drips through me, and my mind wanders back to the shower, when I took him into my mouth. On my knees in front of him, I stroked him with my hand before licking the tip, and he watched me from above, eyes dark and heated, mouth open, hair wet and curling on the ends.

  I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. I wonder if Tucker will remember this moment similarly. I try to imagine what I look like to him, my breasts lifting with each tortured breath; my most private part open for his exploration.

  The friction from his tongue sends me up and over, and I whimper as an orgasm hits me like a freight train. The sensation is nothing like any I’ve experienced before. I don’t feel like begging, I feel like crying. And still, Tucker doesn’t stop.

  He slides a palm up my stomach and toys with one breast while he buries his face for another round. I push him away. He ignores me, setting his pace to purposeful while I squirm and pull his hair. Seconds later, another orgasm hits, and this wave is more intense than the one before it. When he maneuvers his hand to my other breast, a third greets me. Tugging on his hair, I hear the word I promised myself I wouldn’t say.

  “Please, please, Tucker, I can’t…Please.”

  Vaguely I become aware of him moving away from the pounding pulse at the heart of me. He kisses his way up my body, skimming his tongue—his marvelously talented tongue—over each nipple before kissing my neck and nipping my earlobe.

  “You begged,” he growls into my ear.

  “Shut up.”

  I hear the crinkle of a foil wrapper and open my eyes to see that he’s planned ahead. He tears the condom open with his teeth and sits on his knees between my legs, rolling on the protection like I showed him. Then he comes to me, elbows on the mattress next to my face, and watches me for a moment.

  “Say it again.”

  “What…‘Please’?”

  He shakes his head, moving forward to enter me slowly, then stops just shy of rooting himself.


  “Tucker.” My hands are on his shoulders, and I tug him toward me. I want him so bad. I’m flushed and ready.

  “I just want to hear it one more time…what you want me to do to you.” His smile warms my soul. “This time I won’t say no.” I know what he wants. It’s what I want, too.

  “Make love to me.” I palm his face. “Please.”

  He lowers his lips to mine, kissing me long and slow, strengthening our connection, moving at a drugging, delicious pace.

  I give myself to him in every way. He doesn’t ask me to beg again, but I do. I beg over and over, until his name and the word “please” are the only two words I’m able to utter.

  Chapter 14

  Pillow Talk

  Tucker

  Morgan lies half on my chest, her hair tickling my arm and shoulder. My fingertips idly stroke her upper arm and her hand rests over my belly. I exist in a haze of eerie satisfaction.

  I don’t quite know what to make of how I feel. But if I were to categorize the emotion saturating me, it would be…happy.

  Weird.

  “Whose place is this?” she asks.

  “Friend from juvi has a cousin who lives in Colorado. This is his hunting cabin when he comes home to visit.”

  “And you can use it just…whenever?”

  “It’s empty in the summer, but he keeps everything up and running. My buddy and I used to meet here sometimes just to get away for an afternoon.” To escape for a while. Smoke cigarettes. Have bonfires. Then it was back home for both of us to find fresh hell to endure.

  She falls quiet. I stare into space remembering the times Joel and I came up here. Seems like forever ago.

  When too much quiet stretches between us, Morgan speaks again. “Penny for your thoughts.” She slides a hand up my chest. I love her touch. I can’t believe I ever cringed away from her. Now I crave her. Crave this.

  Us.

  “That’s something my dad always says. I’m not sure why.” She smiles. I can feel her cheeks lift against my chest. “I guess saying things that make no sense is a dad thing.” Her smile fades. “Most dads.”

  I squeeze her tighter. She’s being careful with me and I appreciate it, but I don’t need it. “I think you’d be disturbed by how surprisingly normal my father is,” I say, feeling the truth of that statement eat at my stomach. It was frightening how well he hid his scaly underbelly from the public. From everyone.

  I realize I haven’t told her yet why I’m doing any of this. Why I tossed her into the trunk at a 7-Eleven and dragged her to the middle of nowhere.

  “So the reason you’re here…the reason I need your father’s help…” I trail off.

  “Tell me.” She doesn’t flinch, instead opening herself to me, to my story, to my needs—all of them, even those I didn’t know I had. She is changing everything. She is changing me.

  I need her strength. And somehow, I think she can tell because she holds me just as tightly as I hold her. Morgan being near makes it easier to talk about him. She makes everything easier, and I’m not entirely sure how that happened in just a few days.

  “There is a fantasy camp for kids who want to go into law enforcement when they grow up. Boys age eleven to”—I swallow hard, feeling acute nausea at the idea of my father having access to children—“eleven to fourteen.”

  “And your father volunteered.”

  “The entire thing was his idea. I think since he doesn’t have…” I trail off again, unable to voice the rest. Since he doesn’t have his sons. My father doesn’t have Jeremy at home, and he now knows I can take him in a fight.

  “The ugly, scary part of him is awake again,” I tell her. “It’s hungry. He needs to feed the demon.”

  I tell her the details I know. Where the camp is located, how the police station is funding a good part of it.

  “Do the men he works with know what he’s capable of?” she asks.

  “No. I don’t think so.” At least I hope not. I want to believe there are good men protecting Baybrook. I want to believe there are good men, period.

  “So you can go to them. Tell them what you know.”

  I turn to meet her eyes. Her beautiful, innocent face. The twist in my stomach turns into a double knot. Before me, I bet she never thought of things like this. I bet her father has protected her from the ugliness of the world as much as possible. But now she’s with me, and she knows. She’s feeling things and hearing things she shouldn’t have to feel and hear. That’s my fault.

  Let her go and never look back.

  That seed of truth has ugly, thorny shoots. It has the potential to sprout into a flesh-eating plant. But I’m selfish, so I close my eyes and give the idea a violent shove. I’m not going anywhere. Not just yet.

  “I can’t go to cops, Angel, because of who I am,” I say quietly.

  “A criminal.”

  “Yeah.” The doubt seed unfurls another prickly leaf. Morgan Young has just acknowledged she’s involved with a criminal.

  “But you had good reasons.”

  She’s trying to justify my actions, and as much as she shouldn’t, I like that she’s doing it.

  “I don’t think they’d care what my reasons are,” I tell her frankly. “To them, my beating my father would look like revenge, I’m sure of it.”

  “My dad will help you.”

  I hope so. I want to believe the strength and confidence I hear in her voice, but I’ll feel physical pain if that promise doesn’t come true.

  “You deserve justice, Tucker.” Her voice rises indignantly. “So does Jeremy. Especially Jeremy.”

  Both of us, but I don’t correct her.

  She is silent for so long, I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. Then she pulls away from me and blurts out, “Drew dumped me because I wouldn’t go down on him.”

  The change of subject is shocking and more than a little distracting. I prop my head on my hand, mirroring her position. “What are you talking about?”

  “You were the first time I”—a shy smile crosses her face, and my nerves clatter like dice in a cup—“ever tried that.”

  My eyes must have bugged out because she laughs shyly and looks down at her hand resting on the bed between us.

  “Well…” I have to clear my throat because it’s clogged with lust and the memory of her suctioning lips on me, how good it felt to let her love me that way. “You’re fantastic at it.”

  “Thanks.” Those eyes lift to mine, and I’m hot and restless remembering how good she can make me feel. How good I make her feel. Then another thought intrudes, and I don’t like it. I’m not the first one to touch her. I think of Drew, and my lip curls. After a few seconds, I ask the question eating into my brain like bits of broken glass.

  “What did you do with Drew?” I don’t want to know. But I do.

  She shrugs one shoulder. “The usual.”

  Anger flashes through me, hot and persistent.

  “I wish I wouldn’t have ever let him touch me,” she says.

  “Me too.” Possession, thick and unjustifiable, blazes through my bloodstream.

  “Especially now that I have you.” She strokes my chest with delicate fingers.

  Now that she has me.

  I tamp my anger down and study her smooth, beautiful skin.

  “I don’t want there to be anyone else but you.” Her words are brittle, like she doesn’t know if she wants me to know. I don’t know if I want to know, either. Being the only person she wants is a huge responsibility, and I have no idea if I’m ready for it. If I ever could be. I’m broken and damaged. She’s perfect. Or was. Until I got to her. Internally, I cringe.

  “I want to stay here. With you. Just a little longer.”

  I shake my head even though what I really want to tell her is that I want to stay with her, too. But we’re not safe here. She isn’t safe here. Maybe with me, she will never be safe. The moment I think it, that truth hits and hits hard. It sinks to the bottom of my gut like a stone.

  “We have to l
eave this place, Morgan. You have to leave this place.”

  “I know.” She bites her lip. There’s something she wants to say; I can see it. Most of me wants to hear her say it, but a sliver of me doesn’t want to know how far she’s fallen with me.

  It’s the same sliver that knows how far I’ve fallen with her.

  All the way.

  Morgan

  At the last second, I chicken out. The question on my tongue is “What happens when we get back to Baybrook?” and I want to and don’t want to hear the answer at the same time.

  Part of me wants Tucker to make some sort of pronouncement about how I’ve changed him, the way I’ve affected him. He’s changed me already, which I know sounds crazy, but I can’t ignore my emotions. Especially when they’re this intense.

  The word rebound flits through my brain, and I shoo it away. Tucker isn’t my Drew rebound. I’ve known Tucker since the eighth grade. He was once my rescuer. Once my knight. Once the mysterious, dark stranger who never spoke to me again but never fell off my radar. If anything Drew was a rebound for Tucker.

  “Tell me about prison,” I say without thinking.

  His dark eyebrows shoot into his unkempt hair. I am really beginning to love the moppish tumble on top of his head. He grins and I feel swoony.

  “Why?” he asks.

  I shrug, keeping my thoughts to myself. Picturing him there, more animal than man is at once scary and intriguing. Everything about Tucker Noscalo intrigues and beguiles me, even if it isn’t supposed to.

  “What’s it like?” I ask instead of answering him.

  He’s quiet for a few minutes. Then—

  “It’s…lonely,” he says.

  Not the word I expected. I expected him to say “scary” or “intense.”

  “Were you…afraid?” I would have been terrified.

  He shakes his head. “No. Not afraid. It was like juvenile detention on steroids. I knew to go in with my best game. I knew I’d have to defend myself against certain men who would like me.” He cants an eyebrow. “Like me, like me.”