Learning to Drown (6 page)

“Report me missing. He just…left me.
Oh my god, that stupid motherfucker left me for dead.” That did me in. I
started to vibrate with tears and it felt like I would vibrate apart right in his
rustic little kitchen. Right there in front of a man who had watched my face
while I came, daydreaming about him and his mouth, completely oblivious to his
presence. I said it so I could hear it for myself. Nothing is as hard as the
truth. “He didn‘t care. He left me for dead.”

I dropped my head even as he cupped my
chin. He said into my hair, “Basically, he did. And at some point, I’m going to
kick his dumb ass until it’s in front of him instead of behind.”

Lucas pulled me into his arms again.
How many times this night had he done that? I’d lost count. It was pity. It had
to be. I told myself that even as he stroked my back, a dry kind of anger
radiating off of him in invisible but nearly tangible waves. God help Damien.

“Come on, let me make you another cup
of coffee.”

“I hate whiskey.” I reluctantly let
him break the embrace. He had an inch long scar on his left jaw line. Another
through his right eyebrow. There were golden flecks in his eyes and his front
tooth was crooked.

“Why are you staring at me?”

“Your tooth is crooked.”

“So’s yours.” He grinned.

I ran my tongue and then a finger over
my front teeth and noticed he was right. It was crooked right like his. I
smiled. “We match.”

“Wine?” He brushed the bangs off my
face. In need of a trim and way too long to tame, they fell right back in my
eyes.

“I would like wine. I’m freezing. I’m
pissed. I’m pissed and freezing.”

“I hear you. Now tell me. Why would
you bother playing games with that turd? That cannot have been the first time
he was an asshole. You had to have known.”

 Before I could answer, his phone
beeped. “Yeah, Max? Personal emergency. Send my calls over to Toby. He needs
the extra work with the baby coming. Yeah. I’ll be back on tomorrow. No, I’m
fine. Probably a bad crab cake.” Lucas laughed long and hard, but never took
his eyes off of me. He mouthed the word
boss
. I huddled with my wine,
worrying his borrowed sweatshirt between my fingertips to soothe myself.

Chapter 5

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You can go to
work. I can go to a hotel.”

“And pay with what?”

“Um. I can go to a shelter?” My
stomach bottomed out at just the thought. But I had no family here. They were
all in West Virginia. And I had no good friends. They were all back home, too.
There were two women from work that I was on the verge of friendship with. And
there was Damien. But now I didn’t have Damien any more. I bit my bottom lip
and steadied my breathing. Freaking out and acting like a victim would not
change this awful mess. There was no reason to make Lucas Crow responsible for
me in any way. It simply wasn’t fair.

“September,” he said, frowning at me.
“Look, I know we just met, but I cannot picture you in a shelter, sweetheart.
They’d eat you alive.”

“Well…I can’t stay here!” I threw my
arms up and let them fall into my lap. A gulp of wine burned my throat.
Careful,
don’t drink it too fast. You just had whiskey.

Down he went again. On his knees on
the jaunty red and yellow floor tile. I really loved his kitchen. Or was it
that I loved he even had a kitchen like this? “Why not? Do I scare you?” His
smile was boyish and playful but under it all he really wanted to know.

“No,” I mumbled. “Maybe. Just a bit.”
But in a good way, I wanted to say. Like my blood was flowing faster and
cleaner. I forced myself to look him in the eye. He smiled wider, still kind
but a bit devious.

“What was that? You just turned bright
pink. Is it because I saw you?” He traced the nearly invisible line of my
kneecap through the huge sweatpants. The fingertip must have been dipped in
lava because it blazed up my leg like a brush fire. Hot and fast and right to
the heart of the matter. Right to my pussy where I had yet to be satisfied the
way I’d originally intended for the night.

“Yeah. Most women would turn pink if
someone caught them…” I trailed off. I could force myself not to cry but I
couldn’t push these words past my lips. I traced my other kneecap to keep my
focus, to keep a balance between his touch and mine. His fingers were making my
head swim. It wasn’t the alcohol. It was him.

Lucas leaned in and his face was close
enough for me to see each individual hair that pushed through his tan skin. I
could make out each tiny wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, showing how much he
had laughed in his life. And how much sun he had gotten over the years. I could
smell coffee on his breath and oil on his clothes. He was so striking it made
my heart hurt. “Masturbating?” he asked softly. His lips a fraction of an inch
from mine. His warm breath on my lips, my cheek.

“Yes, that.” Not much of an answer. I
wasn’t even sure he’d heard me.

“Touching yourself?” Closer now. His
fingers still rubbing circles and patterns and whorls on my knee, though my own
finger had stilled. My pussy literally thumped now. A wet, hungry heartbeat at
my very center. Wanting so badly for him to grab me, shake me a  bit and take
my mouth in whatever way he chose. Yes, it was unsafe. Not wise. Maybe just
stupid, but here I was with him looking at me that way and those were the
pictures running through my mind.

“Yes. Touching myself.” Lucas pushed
his fingers higher when I said it. My confession earned me a rough rub of his
wide thumb over my clit. He went right to it like he had that X-ray vision I
feared. Simply ran a line up my leg and centered in on me there. He stroked,
the pressure soft and perfect. My eyes fell closed and my head tipped back.

“Does that feel good, Ember?”

I nodded, it was all I could do. Lucas
removed his hand. I opened my eyes and he stared at me like I had been here a
thousand times and we’d known each other forever. I read that look and said,
out loud, “Yes. It feels good.”

I was rewarded for my verbal skills.
His finger returned and pushed me more firmly, rubbed a half-assed, lazy circle
that curled my bare toes on the cool tile floor. Watching his face made me uncoil
inside. Pieces of the horrible night lifted off of me, fell away in dirty
chunks as he moved closer. I would have been surprised if a sheet of paper
would fit between our lips, and yet, he did not kiss me. Instead he said right
up to me, so close I couldn’t lie. “What were you thinking about?”

My breath stuttered and I blew it out
softly. My lips shivered belying my nerves. The truth? Lie? I found his eyes.
So close and so brown, gold flecks like some gorgeous but dangerous animal. His
hand had left--he wasn’t touching me. I felt the absence of his touch. Lying
wasn’t an option. “You. I was thinking about…” I forced the last word out.
“You.”

This time he did not touch me through
the sweatpants. He pushed them down just in the front. Just enough to expose
the angle of my hipbones, the smooth hill of my shaved sex. I watched, my
breath stalled in my lungs, my ears rang. He pushed a finger into my cunt.
Slow. It disappeared to the first knuckle and only then did my brain and body
reconcile the sight and the sensation. I inhaled the air I’d been denying
myself. Middle knuckle. All the way in. He stopped, one finger deep in my
wetness, smiled. That fraction of an inch disappeared and he kissed me. Softly
at first. Gentle.

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t take the time
to feel stupid. It had slipped out and this bizarre but perfect moment in time
could not be wasted with worrying that I was stupid.

“Yeah. Oh. You’re very wet down there,
Ember. Your pussy is wet. For me.” He flexed deep inside me and it was as if he
had pushed an invisible switch with the pad of his finger. My nipples went
taut, my belly fluttered with a delicious pressure. “Your
cunt
is wet.
For me.” His lips pressed to my earlobe and he pushed another finger inside.

“Yes, it is. It is for you.”

“Say my name.”

“Lucas.”

“Say it.” His thumb slipped over my
clit, wet with my own silken juices. Had I stopped breathing? It felt like it.

“Yes, Lucas, for you.” My hips bumped
up under him. I gripped the sides of his ladder back chair. Holding hard to the
woven seat like it would crumble under me. I  watched his hand  in my pants.
Watched his eyes track my movements. I sat trapped and mesmerized as he leaned
in, kissing me again. He bit my bottom lip. Pain and pleasure warred in my
nerve endings.

Holding the pink flesh between his
sharp white teeth he said, “Say it.”

My mind scrambled for a moment.
Frantic beats of anxiety pulsed in me. Say what? What should I do? But then he
pressed my clit, circled, pressed harder and harder until my vision was
peppered with little white spots. I started to come and he almost pulled his
fingers free to deny me. Magically, mercifully, my brain kicked in. “Yes, Sir,”
I whispered. “Yes, Sir. For you.”

“You’re coming for me.” He bit my
throat above my collar bone. The sparks of pain accenting the liquid pleasure
that rolled through my cunt, filled my womb.

“Yes, Sir, for you,” I managed before
my head fell back and my hips shot up. His hand in my pants, his mouth at my
throat and what wanted to be fear in my mind. But I tamped it down. Just for
now. I could worry when it didn’t feel so fucking good.

Chapter 6

It all stopped. Everything. The whole
world. His hand was still in my pants. Hell, still in
me
. I could feel
the two hot spots of red on my cheeks. Could hear myself panting. The wet
liquid sounds of his fingers in my cunt so loud it filled my head as my orgasm
unwound in a slow warm spiral.

Lucas watched me. Not a lazy gaze, no
shred of being smug. He watched me intently as if studying to remember
something for later. The tilt of my head, the angle of my neck, the way my hair
fanned out and my bangs fell in my eyes. He seemed to tick off the points one
by one with his intent gaze. It made me feel pretty. Spectacular. Important.
Had Damien ever really seen me when he looked at me? Now I wondered. And how
much of other people did I see when I looked?

I watched the scar below his wrist as
he flexed his fingers one more time, wringing the very last swell of pleasure
from me. His forearms bulged below the pale blue sweatshirt that must have seen
a thousand washings. His eyes had gone from intense coffee brown to damn near
black and there appeared to be green flecks in there with the gold. More than
anything I was fixated on that scar in his eyebrow. How had he gotten it? Would
it feel good to him if I ran my tongue over it? Would he make noises like I
made or be more stoic?

His mouth came down on mine even as he
pulled his hand free and tucked the sweatpants up over my hipbones. His hands
pinned me in when he leaned on the seat. Lucas pushed between my thighs with
his body. Holding my face. “Do you just like to dress up and play or are you
for real?”

I paused, thinking. I had always thought I was for real. I truly got off on the
thought of being abducted. Used, abused and kept against my will. Playing it
out with Damien had worked at first, but then it hadn’t. Too much orchestration
and requesting on my part. Then Damien let me be hauled off, possibly leaving
me for dead. Obviously that was the end.

I chewed my lip and Lucas sat back on
his haunches. So patient. So very, very calm on the outside. Like a lake on a
still day--no ripples or waves. Nothing to betray whatever was underneath and
deep down in the darkest depths. “Well?”

“I don’t…know. The first time it was
great. I told him and he did it.”

“And then he fucked you and you came
hard. More than once, I bet.” His finger tugged the simple gray ties that fell
from the neck of the sweatshirt I wore. His fingers tucked back in my pants and
he touched me again. His finger pressed my clit until my breath felt too big
for my body
.
He pulled a bit harder on the ties and the hood cinched up
around my neck in a loose lasso.

“Yeah. More than once and harder than
ever.” I leaned forward, seeking a kiss or just his closeness? I wasn’t sure.
“But then the next time…” I shrugged.

“You didn’t get off?” Lucas watched
every flicker, every twitch. He circled his finger and I tried to keep my
breathing steady. I failed, my breath coming in short bursts as I tried not to
raise up to meet his hand but sit and let him do what he wanted. He hardly
blinked.

“I did get off. I did. But when I told
him--”

Lucas tugged the strings a bit harder
and the hood gathered tighter. The way he pulled it like a rein set me off. His
fingers slipped into my pussy as a whole new want rushed through me. A fresh
rush of need. I tilted my hips and he stroked my G-spot. I tried not to think,
tried to just feel. Lucas said, “Did you always tell him when you wanted it?
Was this like a scheduled event?”

“Well…” What was the right answer
here? My brain was between my legs. When he was touching me, nothing else
registered in my head. His thumb pressed me and his fingers delved deeper. What
had I done wrong? How does your lover know if you don’t say? “I cannot expect
him to read my mind. I had to tell him. And then he could do it.”