“Fuck,” I screamed and turned away from her. I couldn’t look in her eyes and bring my anger under control. She needed love and acceptance, not me daydreaming about ripping someone’s head off.
I turned back around and Annie was sitting on the ground holding onto herself. Her back was facing me and I saw three more of those damn scars over her left shoulder.
Count to three ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Hell, make it ten.
I fell down beside her and brought her back against my body to kiss each of the marks on her shoulder. My hand snaked around to the flat planes of her stomach. Damn, she was beautiful, and I was completely humbled I was the one she chose to share it with, but it wasn’t the time to ravish her body — though my aching dick highly disagreed. She had to know I cherished her first. “Damn, I want you so bad, but not like this. Put your shirt on before my lower brain takes over and overrides my upper brain and I release those beautiful breasts from that bra.” I stroked a finger back over the top of her breast for one more touch before she covered them back up.
She shrugged her shirt back on and frowned. “I wish I hadn’t showed you. Hell, I’m the only girl you won’t sleep with.”
Was she serious? “First of all, I haven’t slept with that many.” I placed my hands on either side of her body and leaned into her to linger my lips inches from her full, sensual mouth. Her breath was hot and heavy against my skin. She clamped her eyes closed as a lone tear slid down her face. I brought my fingers to her cheek, lightly stroking it. I could barely feel the touch, just the warmth and tenderness. She was something different than I’d ever experienced. The warmth I’d always felt from her was somehow sharper and stronger than ever before. I shook my head to refocus my thoughts. “Second and most importantly, I’ve never met a girl I want to sleep with more than you, and I’m talking about the naked-body kind of sleeping. But you deserve something special and I plan on giving you just that. Even if my ever-present hard-on busts every zipper in every pair of jeans I own.”
“So if I ask for roses and candles, you would make it happen.”
“I would figure out how to give you the stars.”
She rubbed her hand over her chest. “I understand if it’s too much. But in case you cared, I haven’t been with a guy since I turned eighteen. I only wanted to sleep with you the first night because when you called me beautiful I believed you meant it. Not like all those guys who lied about it.”
Beautiful didn’t begin to describe how I felt about Annie and the way she looked. When I first looked into her eyes, I was put under some kind of spell.
“Are you Aphrodite, or simply a witch?” I asked. “You don’t perform voodoo in the back at work, do you?”
“No,” she said and laughed through the tears. “But one of my foster moms practiced Wicca.”
“Some of it must have rubbed off on you, because I think you have put some kind of spell on me.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Oh, precious, it’s bad. Real bad.” I emphasized each word with a rise of my eyebrow.
The tears morphed into full-blown laughter, and a tightness formed in my chest as her eyes danced with a mixture of tears and giggles. Those emerald green eyes had a spark in them that was familiar. Her laughter spoke to me as if I’d heard it all my life. It was as if she had touched a part of my past, and as much as I wanted to know every one of her secrets, her laugh made me want to do nothing but kiss her.
Then the most magical words in the world came from her lips. “Kiss me.” I’d never heard that tone in her voice before, it was pure unadulterated lust. “That is, if you want to kiss me.”
I wanted to kiss her so damn bad. I’d wanted to kiss her every minute since I walked off in the back of the Downtown Café and locked eyes with a pair of green eyes so haunting they had possessed me ever since. I’d never wanted anything more then to kiss her. I shifted until I was over her and propped on my elbows, looking down at her angelic face. Damn, no one ever lied and said she was beautiful. No one could look at her and deny she was ravishing.
I leaned in closer until my lips were nudged against her ear. “Does my precious want a kiss?”
She didn’t have to answer. The bashful smile playing on her lips told me she was feeling everything I was. Nerves took over. I’d never cared before. I was a Carter — they were just lucky to be with me. Annie was different. I was the one lucky to be with her.
I stroked a hand over her cheek and thanked God in heaven for sending me an angel. And then I lowered my lips to hers, closed my eyes, and kissed her. Her hand rubbed against my forearm as she moaned into my mouth. Each unexplored corner was better than the finest wine. I could get drunk simply from her taste. Her ample breasts lifted to meet my chest; her nipples were like tiny pebbles. Punctuation marks, separated only by the material of two thin cotton shirts.
For the first time ever, I became unhinged. Sex had been my craft form. A craft I mastered. Watching a woman become undone with pleasure as a direct result of my touch was a favorite pastime of mine. But sex was sex. Quick and dirty. Plain and simple fucking. In and out. Women only served the purpose of satisfying a need. However, everything I thought I knew about sex changed when I finally kissed a girl I cared about. Annie had changed everything.
I needed more. More of her touch, her taste, her smell, the sounds coming from her lips. I needed more Annie.
Hell, I was a dirt bag and didn’t deserve to taste her sweet lips. Too late, I would never let her go again.
Chapter 26
Annie Prieto
My life had been an ever-revolving merry-go-round. I’d been holding my breath for months, waiting for what was to come, never believing it would be Lucas.
His tongue traced over my lips, forcing them open. I’d never been more aware of touch, and how it set every other sense in motion. I wanted to take in every movement he made, the way our bodies moved as one, but I wasn’t sure what to focus on first.
He pulled back and inhaled as if he hadn’t taken a breath in forever. He tightened the grip he had on the back of my head. I clamped my eyes tighter, unable to look at him. His breathing slowed into shallow, quiet breaths.
I stilled not knowing what to expect next. Was he going to kiss me more? Was that it? Did I do something wrong?
“You are unbelievably perfect,” he whispered. “I could look at you forever.”
I started to open my eyes but Lucas stopped me with a gentle kiss to each eyelid. “Keep them close. Let me look at you for a few more seconds.
I sucked my trembling bottom lip into my mouth with my teeth to keep from smiling, but I refused to move and open my eyes.
I couldn’t hold it back any longer and laughed. The laughter poured from my lips. However, I managed to keep my eyelids sealed together.
Lucas took my face into his hands and lowered his lips to mine. The laughter ceased immediately as he parted my lips with his tongue. When our tongues met, I knew we were working as one.
I’d dreamed about this moment more times than I could count. Lucas simply kissing me. And a kiss had never affected me like that before. I was falling hard for this guy. I was falling in love with every last thing about him.
Lucas’s mouth grew more demanding, he sucked my tongue deeper into his mouth. The jolt from my lips vibrated all the way to my toes. It was kissing, but it was more than that, too. It was two people feasting after starving for what seemed like a lifetime.
I read a line in a book once or maybe it was some meme, but anyway, it said, someday you’ll meet a person and you’ll just click – you’re comfortable with them, like you’ve known them your whole life, and you don’t have to be anyone or anything but yourself. That person is your person.
Lucas was my person.
Lucas pulled back from me, and I concentrated on each ragged breath he took.
“Can I confess something?” I nodded and he closed his eyes. “I don’t believe in the whole God thing. And even if he was real, I don’t want any part of him. After all,
he let someone like you get hurt.”
“The only person who has never let me down was Jesus. He has been the one good in my life.”
“You really believe that.”
“How could I not? He saved me when I was still in my mother’s stomach, gave me the most magical childhood, loved me when I was a teen and no one else did, and just when I was about to give up on life, he sent me you.”
Lucas’s arm gave away beneath him and he dropped down, pressing his weight on me. “Let’s go dancing,” wasn’t what I expected him to say.
The music echoed in the room and pulsated in my ears, but all I could think about was how her body would feel naked and under me. The very thought was more intoxicating than any drug. Annie Prieto had proven she wasn’t a girl I could bag and throw to the side. She owned me in a way that boggled the mind. The strategy at that point was to take it one step at a time and see where she led me, and focusing on the end result could easily screw up the whole process.
Annie’s hand was in her hair again. Each time she removed her hand, it left her hair a little messier, only making her more arousing.
“I need to use the little boy’s room,” I said and adjusted her shirt collar.
“I felt a big boy earlier,” she said and placed a kiss on the base of my neck.
I would gladly show her my boy if she wanted me to, but at that second, I had to step away.
The aches had only been getting worse and I’d waited until it was too late. The throbbing pain had been building all night into a deep, intense throb but I was having too much fun.
By the time the song had finished, the pain had reached unbearable limits. It was the kind of pain which brought about nausea and blurred vision. But I never wanted Annie to see this side of me.
I’d only excused myself to take a few pain pills and pray it would not turn into this fiasco.
Each step I took, an excruciating pain shot up my legs and straight to my head. As I walked through the bathroom door, I pulled a bottle of meds from my pocket and unscrewed the top when a sudden jolt of pain shook me to my knees. I tried to scream but I didn’t even have the oxygen in my lungs to make a noise. I gasped for a breath, inducing a stream of bile to erupt from my lips. An entire smorgasbord of the food I had eaten the last twenty-four hours and an entire bottle of medicine exploded over the room.
Great, just what I needed.
I leaned back against the wall screwed. My life had come down to lying on the bathroom floor in a rundown bar, covered in my own vomit and unable to even make myself stand up.
A bouncer came in mumbling something about Annie. Then Annie dashed through the door, and I panicked.
Annie kneeled beside me and had me and my vomit-covered body in her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you felt like this?” Her face contorted, and a teardrop fell down her left cheek.
“I’ll be okay. Just give me a minute,” I said, and smiled through the pain still ripping apart my body.
Her grip intensified as she pondered the room around us. “I’ll be okay,” I said to reassure her.
She glanced back down over my face. I nodded my head in unison with hers. After a kiss on the head, she released me and left me alone to gather my thoughts. I scurried to gather the pills off the floor when I noticed Tammy standing over me. “Sorry about the mess. I've just been getting muscle cramps. I would never want to leave this mess behind,” I said, trying to get rid of the heaviness settling into every nerve in my body.
“Quit the bullshit,” Tammy said and stomped her foot over the last remaining pill on the floor. “Lucas, you promised me you would never get wrapped up in this shit.”
“It’s not what it looks like.” The overwhelming fear of what Annie could be thinking radiated from my face and burned my eyes.
“I won’t have this going down in my bar,” Tammy snarled in a decibel too loud.
I gripped the edge of the sink to help me stand, and the floor swayed under my feet. Tammy’s hand shot out. I thought to steady me but instead it clasped around my lower arm, digging her nails deep into my skin.
“Tammy, I know what I’m doing. And you need to get off your high horse, because it is you that has let me drink at your bar since I was eighteen.”
Tammy’s eyes bulged out of her head, and I wasn’t positive that she wasn’t ready to slam the fist she was making at her side against my face. My instincts told me I should’ve been scared, but after the day I’d had I didn’t care anymore.
“I deserve an explanation.” Anger flashed in Tammy’s eyes. She was pointing at me, and it was threatening.
I was force to walk away but not without one last statement. “The only person who deserves anything from me is Annie.”
Annie was waiting right outside the restroom door, and by the way she was appraising me I was sure she heard every word said between Tammy and me.
I raised my chin a fraction as I pulled my baseball cap down.
Annie smiled and the tension started to ease away. I realized just how much the pain was growing inside of me. I needed to hit the sack, ASAP, but first, Annie needed an explanation.
I could no longer deny the feelings I had for her. They went way past friendship, and the way she was staring at me, I knew it did for her, too. But I wasn’t a selfish person and hated the fact I’d brought her into my chaos. But I’d never wanted anything more than Annie, and I could never sever any ties with her. That was a pain I couldn’t endure. And I knew pain all too well. Trying to function and carry out my daily routine was becoming a chore I found more difficult with each passing day, and it did nothing to ease any guilt I felt when I thought about what I wanted with Annie.
“Annie,” I started to say when I fell over and into her arms.
“Are you okay? You need me to take you to the ER?”
I'd never been one to look for sympathy and surely didn’t want any from Annie but the days of hiding were coming to an end.
“I need legs that work, my tiny dancer.”
“I need to use the little boy’s room.”
I’d felt Lucas’s manhood more than once that night and little wasn’t a word I would’ve used to describe it.
“I felt a big boy earlier,” I said and nipped my teeth into the base of his neck.
Lucas didn’t respond as he turned to rush across the dance floor. I took a seat at our booth in the corner and followed his ass with my eyes all the way to the restroom. It was a superior ass, and I wasn’t wasting the chance to stare at it.
I finished off a wine cooler and had ordered a second one and still had no sign of Lucas emerging. Worrying was becoming an understatement.
I threw back my second drink and motioned for Tammy. “Can you check on Lucas? He’s been in the bathroom for about twenty minutes.”
“Sure thing, sweetie.” Tammy winked and motioned for a bouncer. “This worried look is quite attractive. I can see why Lucas is crazy about you.”
Compliments were not what I was fishing for, I wanted Lucas. My heart was racing. I couldn’t shake the feeling something was very wrong.
Unable to sat there another second, I bolted to the restroom when the bouncer came running out.
“Lucas, what’s wrong?”
I harshly urged the door open, meeting resistance. “Don’t come in. Please, Annie.”
Lucas was on his hands and knees. Pills were scattered across the floor. The wall and floor was coated in vomit. It looked like a frat party had exploded in the room. Lucas had a wad of paper towels in his hand, trying to clean the space.
I didn’t even take a breath before I had him in my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you felt like this?”
“I’ll me okay. Just give me a minute,” he said and faked a smile laced in excruciating pain.
I didn’t want to give him a nanosecond much less a minute but I was fully aware if Lucas and I were to ever work, time was the least of what I had to be willing to give.
Needing to feel the softness of his skin, I placed a kiss on his for
ehead and reluctantly walked away but waited right outside the restroom door to hear him, not even caring I was using my bad eavesdropping skills on Lucas.
My heart melted when I heard him say, “The only person who deserves anything from me is Annie.”
Lucas stumbled out the bathroom door and pinched the bill of his cap. The stupid grin on my face was all too real. I tried suppressing it because Lucas’s pain was nothing to smile about, but what was were his words. They made me happy, I felt my heart explode in a happiness I haven’t experience since I was a little girl dancing for my biggest fan.
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