“How did I ask who what?”
“Astrid? How did you ask her to marry you?”
“I didn’t. She asked me if I was going to marry her. I said okay. She picked out a ring and I bought it.”
“Wow. Mr. Romantic, huh?” Leah teased.
“It was a unique situation.”
“True,” Leah conceded.
“I was going to do something better, romantic, for Layla.” Ever since he’d opened up about the shooting, Lance wanted Leah to know him, to know his past. All of it.
“Who’s Layla?” Leah perked back to life, no longer in her food coma.
“Layla was a girl I knew from the block. We were together off and on in middle school. Rowan, one of the guys I went out with that night, is her older brother. Right after I got locked up, she started writing me letters and visiting me. She told me that she loved me and would wait for me. I believed her. I loved her. I had a whole plan of getting out, getting on my feet, buying her a ring and asking her to marry me at a Yankees game. You know, have them put it up on the big screen.”
Leah’s nose scrunched. “What happened?”
“After I got released, I found out that she’d been with Roland, one of my best friends, the entire time. She was just stringing me along so that I didn’t dime out her brother.”
Leah’s hand slapped over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled into her palm.
“It’s fine. I should’ve known. Looking back, I feel stupid for not figuring out what she was doing. But, honestly, I’m glad she did. She saved me. Or I should say, the idea of her being mine and waiting for me saved me. She was the future that I looked forward to. I’m not sure that I would’ve gotten through it without her.”
Leah’s head shook back and forth slowly. “How can you be so forgiving?”
“When you’ve made the kind of mistakes I have, I don’t think you really have a choice.” Lance saw a flash of pity in Leah’s eyes.
It was the first time he’d seen it and he didn’t like it. She was the only person in his life who’d found out about his past and not treated him any differently. He didn’t want her pity.
Changing the subject, he asked, “What about you? Anyone ever put a ring on it?”
“No.” Leah shook her head back and forth harder. “Nope. Huh uh.”
“You’ve never even thought about it?”
“Not really. There was a hot minute that I thought Torrance, a musician I dated for a few months, might pop the question. He told me he was going to marry me the first night I met him. It made me sick to my stomach.”
“He was that bad, huh?”
“No. Not really. It wasn’t him, it was the proposal. I was convinced he was going to pull me up on stage and get down on one knee in front of thousands of people.”
“And that would be a bad thing?”
“Yes. That’s my worst nightmare. No offense.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“Because of your whole Yankees game plan.” She shivered. “No thank you.”
“You don’t want all those people staring at you?” Leah didn’t seem to have a problem with attention, so it was strange to him that she’d be so opposed to PDA.
“I just think it’s inauthentic. That’s why I hate rom-coms. Usually the dude messes up, or there’s this misunderstanding and then there’s always this big romantic gesture that makes everything okay. Like the hero has to do that to prove to the girl that he loves her. I just think a proposal should be private. Special. Intimate.”
As she said the words, the always-present connection between them crackled with electricity. The rest of the café disappeared. Lance wanted to do some private, special, intimate things to Leah right now. “You ready to go?”
“Yep.”
Thankfully, it seemed like she was on the same page.
Chapter 22
Lance came back to the room after getting the ice Leah had requested to find her lounging on the bed in his T-shirt, studiously avoiding his eyes. He thought it was deliberate, anyway. There was no way that her nails were that interesting.
His breath caught in his chest. Damn. Was she purposely arranging her long, tan legs like that just to get a rise out of him…a literal one? Or was she just that fucking naturally sexy, that any way she stood or sat or lay was going to look like she was posing for a boudoir photo?
Hell, either one could be true, and honestly it didn’t fucking matter. All he knew was that he wanted her. He didn’t want to want her. But he fucking did.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He was aiming for nonchalant. He achieved raspy desperation.
She looked up, her face the picture of innocence. “What do you mean?”
He tilted his head to the side and gave her a look that let her know in no uncertain terms that he knew she was bullshitting…but also let her know that he didn’t mind one bit, because it was adorable as fuck.
That was a lot of work for one look to do, but he was experienced.
A wicked half-smile spread across her face and he knew that he’d played right into her hands. And he didn’t care. He was no more capable of staying out of her orbit than a moth was of resisting the call of a lethal flame.
She sat up slowly, and he crossed to her in two long strides. He dropped onto the bed beside her and clamped one hand around her waist, laying the palm of his other hand flat against her cheek. They looked into each other’s eyes and his breathing got slow and shallow. He couldn’t seem to get his heartbeat in check, it was skipping all over the place—maybe in time to the flashes of heat that kept flaring up in her eyes.
“Are you naked under my shirt?” His question was strangled by the lust closing in around his vocal cords, and it came out rough and commanding.
Judging by the look on her face and the way she bit her lip when she heard it, she didn’t really mind the authoritative tone.
Her eyes flared and her cheeks flushed, and she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his gently, almost tentatively. “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.” Her lips grazed his as she spoke with sweet, practiced deliberation that just about drove him crazy.
He started to reach for the hem of his shirt but she swatted his hand away.
“Not yet,” she whispered before upping the ante by crushing her lips to his and moving them so passionately that the friction between them just might start a fire.
Since he didn’t trust himself not to strip her bare, he threaded his hands through her hair and tilted her head up, giving him greater access. He pushed his tongue into her mouth where it danced with hers in a primal frenzy. He couldn’t tell if they were in a beautiful choreographed dance together, or a wildly competitive wrestling match. He didn’t really care, as long as it kept feeling this good.
She slid her hands up his back and he could feel the pleasurable bite of her fingernails digging into the skin, even through the fabric of his shirt. It was one of the most amazing feelings in the world—not just the little stinging tingles themselves, but the raging fire of lust they brought rising up from his belly. He knew that he was approaching the edge, getting to the point of no return.
He drew back slightly, just enough to growl, “You drive me fucking crazy.”
Her swollen, well-kissed lips turned up in a satisfied smile. “Good. Then my plan is working.”
He laughed, a deep and satisfying belly laugh that filled his whole soul. He would never get tired of finding out what the next thing to come out of her mouth was going to be. He didn’t think he’d ever get to know her well enough to predict it—he didn’t think that anyone could. She was a bundle of surprises, and that was exactly what he loved.
That theory was confirmed in the next moment when she took him completely by surprise and put both hands firmly on his shoulders, pushed down until he was lying completely flat on his back on the bed and straddled him.
From the night they’d shared he knew she definitely liked it when he took control. But it seemed she also got a thr
ill out of taking control herself. Yeah. He could work with that. He could most definitely work with that.
She grasped the bottom hem of the shirt she was wearing and pulled it up over her head revealing she was not naked. She had on a matching bra and panty set that was completely see-through and it was almost hotter than if she’d been nude. He could see the outline of her areolas and nipples, and the dark hair that set right above her pussy. When the shirt cleared her head her pink hair fell back down to her shoulders in a shiny, bouncy waterfall.
Slowly, she ground her hips in a steady rhythm on his lap as she reached behind her and unhooked her bra, drawing it forward over her shoulders and arms, then holding it out to the side and dropping it with a sly smile on her face.
During the whole performance, her back was straight and her chest was pushed forward. She was proud of her curves—proud of her whole body—and it showed. Fuck, that was so hot.
In fact, of the millions of sexy things he’d noticed about her in the time they’d known each other, he thought that the way she embodied pure confidence in her own skin had to be, hands down, the absolute sexiest.
She placed her hands on her hips, giving him a playful smile. “Like what you see, cowboy?”
He laughed, tracing small circles on her taut belly with his thumbs as he grasped her waist with his strong hands. “Cowboy, huh?” He’d never been called that one before.
She shrugged. “Sure. You know, that whole Bon Jovi motorcycle thing? You’re a cowboy riding a steel horse?”
He shook his head. “Of the two of us, I’m not the one who’s about to be riding a steel anything, baby.”
She smiled as she leaned down to kiss him again. “Touché.”
Her lips peppered his with hot, demanding kisses as she tugged his shirt up over his head. He really liked the way her fingers moved without hesitation, so confident in undressing him. She had a goal and she was going to keep diligently and smoothly moving forward on it until she accomplished it.
When his chest was completely bare, she bent all the way forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her bare breasts to his chest. They were warm and pillowy, and he was swept away with the erotic rush of her nipples brushing against his skin again and again. It was so hot, the way the hard buds traced paths over the bulging mounds of his pecs.
She rolled off of him then, pulled him gently on top of her. As he held himself over her, their faces just centimeters apart, he felt an electricity flowing between them that couldn’t be denied.
He pressed his lips to hers again and they kissed in manic frenzy fueled by raw emotion and primal need.
Before he knew it, they were both completely naked and pressed together, her legs around his waist, his arms around her body. They were so close that he felt like she just might disappear right into his arms—which was exactly what he wanted.
He leaned forward and whispered into her ear, feeling her hot breath against his own as he did. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. Ever since the last time I touched you, all I’ve been able to think about is touching you again. Being inside you again.”
He felt her sharp intake of breath at his words and, as if his cock wasn’t hard enough already, that little gasp sent a new wave of rock hard steel through him, firming up his erection and making him almost desperate to bury it inside her.
He wouldn’t do that right away, though. Not this time. He had one little thing that he wanted—no, make that needed—to do first.
“And there’s one other thing I’ve been dying to do,” he rasped into her ear.
“What?” she whispered, her voice barely audible through her shallow panting.
“Taste you.”
* * *
Leah closed her eyes and pressed her head back into the pillow, determined to be fully present and enjoy every single sensation that Lance’s amazing mouth was sending through her body. This was like a rare treat—to have no responsibility at all except to receive pleasure.
She knew that the reason she was getting to enjoy this was because of Lance, because of the fact that he was such an amazing person, and lover. The kind of guy that actually got a thrill from the simple act of giving her pleasure.
Good ones like that were hard to find, she knew, and even harder to hold on to. They were few and far between. So why was she so ambivalent? Why was she fighting her feelings so damn hard?
She knew the answer—because she might lose him. But maybe that wasn’t enough to justify not enjoying the moment. She didn’t really want to think about it—the thoughts just popped into her head like they originated from an outside source. She tried to shove them aside, and the farther down her body that Lance’s talented tongue traced little circles of pure bliss, the easier and easier that was.
It didn’t really matter. Nothing that happened anytime in the future, or anywhere outside this room—hell, outside this bed—mattered.
It was only her and Lance, and there was only here and now. They were in a perfect bubble at the moment, one comprised of pleasure and ecstasy, and the absolute most sure-fire way to go bursting beautiful bubbles like those were to start over-analyzing them. She wasn’t going to make that mistake…and definitely not before Lance’s incredible mouth reached his goal—the apex of pleasure between her legs.
Lance moved down her chest and to her breasts, giving each of her nipples enough attention to get her truly fired up, and then continued his path down her belly.
It seemed to her that he was taking his sweet time, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to thank him over and over (and in very graphic ways) for being so attentive, or dig her fingernails into his back and growl at him to hurry the hell up and get to the good part.
Damn. This was the kind of confusion that Lance seemed to inspire in her, and it was exactly the kind of thing that she was trying to avoid in her life. Less drama. Not more. That was what kept piling up in the “cons” column when she thought about surrendering her heart to him.
But then he’d put his hands on her. Or his lips. Or his tongue. And that was when the items in the “pros” column would start piling up at a rate of speed that she could hardly keep track of.
She arched her back and moaned, burying her fingers in his hair and pressing his mouth tighter against her skin. It was always this way, and not only when they were touching—her hunger to be closer to him was nearly insatiable, and it didn’t seem to matter at all how close they already were. She needed more. She needed to be just a little bit closer. Always.
Finally, Lance pushed her knees apart, and then his mouth was working its way up her inner thighs. She could barely breathe, the anticipation was so monumental.
When he reached within just a few millimeters of her tender folds, he extended his tongue and ran it up and down her seam, drawing a low moan from her that lasted almost a full thirty seconds. She reached up behind her and clawed at the fabric of the pillows, so desperate for something, anything, to hold onto that she would even settle for their fluffy texture.
Then, he took things to the next level, inserting two fingers inside of her and pumping them in and out while he used his tongue to trace little circles all around her hard pleasure button.
Oh, fuck…
Just when she thought that she couldn’t fall any further into oblivion, he did something that made her head spin even faster, and her body buck even wilder.
Before she knew it, she was rocketing off to outer space, a powerful climax roaring through her like a freight train. She could do nothing but let go and surrender herself to the wave of feelings crashing over her, drawing her out like a riptide.
“Oh…fuck, you deserve a medal for that,” she moaned as she came down from the high.
He drew back just long enough to say, “Thank ya, kindly, ma’am. I aim to please.”
She laughed, loving his playful side, although the mirth was underscored by the total body bliss that was still sending tingles through her limbs.
They lay together for a mom
ent, running their fingertips over each other’s bodies and just enjoying the way it felt to be so close, to have their skin pressed together like that.
Leah wasn’t sure, but she was pretty confident in saying that she had never felt another moment in her entire life that came as close to pure happiness as lying in bed in that random hotel with Lance, in a state of blissful afterglow, letting each other’s fingers explore their body and talking about everything and nothing.
Paradise.
After just a little while, though, the need began to grow inside of her again. Just lying there and touching wasn’t enough anymore. Just like she always needed to be closer, now she needed more.
She rolled over on top of him and positioned her lips at his ear, just like he had done to her earlier. She whispered what she had to tell him, letting her hot breath rollover his neck and earlobe as she did.
“I need you inside me,” she said. “With everything I am. Every cell of my body wants you. Needs you. Please.”
The last word took on a begging quality, which she would usually have hated to hear in her own voice. But in this situation, she actually found it kind of hot. In fact, she decided on the spot that the whole begging thing was going to be a brand-new tool in her erotic toolbox, and she would not hesitate to pull it out again when the appropriate moment arose.
He set her to the side, sat up, grabbed a condom, unwrapped it, and rolled it onto himself. It felt like just a few seconds and it also felt like forever, all at the same time.
Once it was on, he lost no time in responding to her plea. Not with words. That would’ve been empty. No, he used actions—they meant a hell of a lot more. He showed her that he was going to give her exactly what she wanted by immediately pinning her underneath him and positioning himself at her entrance.
She angled her hips up to give him easier access, and at the same time snaked her arms around his neck.
Fuck, she was lucky. She understood that fully at that moment, looking up into his eyes as he readied himself to thrust into her. She was the luckiest damn woman on the face of the earth, and it was all because of Lance.
Just One Look - Leah and Lance (Crossroads Book 15) Page 20