Not For Sale (9 page)

“Lucas,” she whispered against his mouth, “Lucas…”

Lucas groaned, cupped her bottom, lifted her into the hard urgency of his body. She gasped and moved against him.

“We can’t do this,” she whispered.

“We can. We have to.”

“We can’t. It’s wrong…”

“Then tell me to stop,
querida.
Say it, and I’ll let you go.”

“Stop,” she said, but her body was pressed to his, her mouth was warm and open against his mouth.

Lucas caught her wrists.

“I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman. And it has to be the same for you, do you understand? You have to want me. Me. Lucas Vieira. No games. No masquerade. No pretense. Because if that isn’t how it is for you—”

“That’s exactly how it is,” she said, and he swung her into his arms, and carried her up the stairs, to his bedroom. To his bed.

His hands, his body, were shaking.

He wanted to take her as he should have taken her that very first time they’d been together.

But he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t, and there was no sense in wondering why he was so out of control because it wouldn’t change anything. His need, his hunger, were almost unbearable.

Still, he used the last of that control to try to make her understand what was going to happen.

“Listen to me,” he said roughly. “I want to make slow love to you. I want to touch you until you beg me for release.” His hand slid under her sweatshirt; he cupped her breast, stroked her nipple and she cried out and arched toward him. “But I can’t. Not now. Do you understand? I need you too badly. This time. This way. No holding back, no finesse, no—

“Damnit,” Caroline said, “damnit, Lucas…”

She pushed his hand away. Sat up. Yanked her sweatshirt over her head. Pulled off her sweatpants.

She was wearing a white cotton bra. White cotton panties. Nothing exotic, nothing silk, nothing lace, just her, just Caroline, and it was all he’d ever wanted.

He told her, in Portuguese, how beautiful she was. How he
hungered for her, and as he did, he stripped off his clothes, then the last of hers.

She lay back. Gave herself up to him. His mouth. His hands. His body. Her eyes grew dark, her breathing quickened, his name sighed from her lips as his sweat-slicked skin met hers and the broad head of his swollen penis brushed against her.

“Caroline,” he said, the one word hot and urgent, and he thrust into her.

Caroline cried out. Not with pain, though he was deep inside her, so deep that, for a heart-stopping moment, she wondered if she could take all of him in.

Her cry was one of ecstasy. Of fulfillment. Of knowing that this, only this, was what she had been created for. Of knowing that she wanted him, wanted him, wanted him. Her muscles quivered, her body accepted the exquisite intrusion.

“Lucas,” she sobbed, “oh, Lucas…”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

He kissed them away. Kissed her mouth. And then he began to possess her, to drive her toward that place he, only he, had taken her before.

His strokes were hard. Demanding. Possessive. She loved it, loved the sense of being his, of belonging to him, of being claimed by him.

And then she stopped thinking.

The world spun. Her vision dimmed. Caroline cried out, Lucas threw back his head and groaned, and they flew over the edge of the universe, together.

T
HEY
lay sprawled across the big bed, breathing hard, skin salt-slicked, Lucas’s powerful body over Caroline’s.

Slowly, the world righted itself.

She sighed, turned her head, kissed his shoulder. He murmured something she couldn’t understand but that was all right because it was enough to understand this. That she was with him, lying with him, feeling the race of his heart against hers, the weight of his muscled strength bearing her down into the softness of the cool linen sheets.

He kissed her temple. Stroked one big hand the length of her side, his thumb sliding over her nipple, then over the curve of her hip.

“I’m too heavy for you,” he murmured, and she responded by putting her hand at the base of his spine. The feel of him against her, warm and hard and male, was too wonderful. She didn’t want him to move, didn’t want either of them to move, not in this lifetime or any other.

Still, after another couple of minutes, he lifted his head, brushed his lips over hers and rolled onto his side.

“No,” she whispered, and he slid his arm under her shoulders and drew her close against him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly, and she turned toward him and pressed her face against him, her nose at the
junction of his shoulder and his arm. She loved the smell of him there, earthy and masculine.

“That was,” he said, “that was—”

“Yes,” she said. “It certainly was.”

He laughed softly and pressed a kiss to her tangled hair.

“I’m just sorry I was so fast, but—”

“You were perfect.”

“We were perfect,” he said. “Perfect together.”

Her heart did a little dance step. She tilted her head and looked into his face. Such a beautiful, sexy face. She wanted to tell him that but she had the feeling he was not a man who’d want to be referred to as “beautiful.”

She smiled. He smiled back at her, and kissed her with such tenderness that her throat constricted.

“Querida?”
His tone softened. “Seriously. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

“Because…I know, truly, it was fast—”

“Lucas. It was wonderful. It was everything I—I—”

He rolled again so that now he was on his belly, one arm lying across her, his eyes intent on hers.

“It was everything you what?”

Caroline felt her face heat. “It was everything I’ve dreamed of since—since—”

“Since that night.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He said nothing for a long minute. Then he traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of his index finger.

“Then why did you run away from me?”

“I didn’t run. I left.”

“You ran, Caroline. In the middle of the night. Without leaving me your phone number. Without leaving me anything but memories I couldn’t erase.”

She put her hand to his cheek, felt the roughness of the end-of-day stubble. He turned his face and kissed her palm.

“I took my memories with me,” she said softly.

That made him smile. “Yeah?”

She loved that simple “yeah,” filled with arrogance though it was. She didn’t like arrogant men; her mother might have been a fool for the type, but she wasn’t.

But Lucas was different.

His arrogance was part of him. It wasn’t an act meant to impress others, it was raw self-confidence, very male, very appealing.

Incredibly sexy.

“You’re not going to run away this time.”

She looked into his eyes. They were as dark as she’d ever seen them, and hot with something that made her breath quicken. His body was stirring against hers.

Heat slithered through her veins.

“No?” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

He was right. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight. Tomorrow would come soon enough and reason would come with it but for now—for now, there was this. Lucas’s mouth on hers. His taste on her tongue. His hand on her breast, his leg between her thighs.

Caroline smiled.

“And how are you going to stop me?” she murmured.

He laughed, low in his throat. Lifted her leg, brought it high over his hip. Teased her with the fullness of his newly aroused flesh rubbing against her sudden wetness until she moaned.

“Lucas.”

“Caroline.”

Despite this, what he was doing to her, the exquisite torture of it, she was determined to repay his teasing with her own.

“Lucas,” she said, “do you really think what you’re doing is enough to—is enough to—”

She gasped as he rocked into her.

“I don’t know,” he said, the roughness of his voice denying the innocence of his words. “Is it?”

“No,” she said, and caught her breath as he rocked into her again. Not deeply enough. God, nowhere near deeply enough. “No,” she repeated, but the word was a moan.

“Because if it isn’t…”

He thrust harder. Deeper. Caroline arched like a bow at the pleasure of it.

“Do you like this?” he said thickly.

“Yes.” She framed his face between her hands. “Yes, oh yes!”

“Good. Because I like it, too. I love it. The feel of you all around me. Opening for me. Stretching for me.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Lucas, please…”

He groaned, drove deep, sank into her until there was no him, no her, no beginning and no end.

And took her with him, to paradise.

The cat woke her.

“Mrrow,”
it said, in a voice surprisingly delicate for such an arrogant winner of a thousand back-alley fights—but maybe she knew less than she’d assumed about arrogance and tough guys.

Maybe some of them wore those qualities like a shield and only let a handful of people get past it.

“Mrrow, ”
the cat said again, and Caroline sighed.

Oliver—she’d named him for the half-starved, brutalized little boy in Dickens’ sad tale—Oliver was right. Middle of the night philosophizing wasn’t helpful when there was an immediate problem to solve, and Oliver’s problem was probably an empty dinner bowl.

She reached down, felt a ragged ear and caressed it.

“Okay,” she whispered, “I’m coming.”

Lucas lay sleeping beside her, his arm looped around her shoulders. Slowly, carefully, she eased away from him. He stirred in his sleep, muttered something in Portuguese—she’d finally figured out that what he occasionally spoke was not Spanish but something close to it—and she froze, not wanting to wake him.

That was what she’d done that first night. Awakened suddenly in the dark, stayed absolutely still for fear of waking him, but this was different. She wasn’t worried about waking him this time, she simply wanted him to get some sleep. Neither was she shocked at finding herself in his bed.

Okay.

She was. A little. Sleeping with him again—not that they’d done much sleeping—was the last thing she’d ever imagined she would do. Not that she hadn’t thought about it. About him. About what he’d made her feel, what being with him had been like.

But she and he came from different worlds. That those worlds had intersected had been a quirk of fate. And then, when fate had brought them together again, at Dani’s, Lucas has been so angry, so cold to her, treating her as if she had done something unspeakably wrong. Yes, she’d slipped from his bed that first night but surely that wasn’t enough to.

“Mrrow, rorrow, mrrow,”
the cat said with obvious impatience, and Caroline rose, reached for a silk throw at the foot of the bed, improvised a sarong and padded, barefoot, from the room.

The cat wound around her ankles as she made her way down the stairs. There was just enough light to see where she was going and she remembered the broken glass in the kitchen in time to avoid it.

Oliver avoided it, too, all but tiptoeing his way through
the little minefield of shards. He jumped onto a wicker stool and from there to the white stone counter where he sat, tail curled around his feet, watching Caroline with almond-eyed interest.

First things first, she thought, and she searched for a utility closet, found one, found a dustpan and broom, carefully swept up the glass and dumped it in the trash.

“Now you won’t cut yourself,” she told the cat, who answered by lifting a paw and licking it.

She checked Oliver’s dishes. The water bowl was still full but she emptied it, rinsed it, then refilled it. Just as she’d figured, his food bowl was empty.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said guiltily.

She washed that, too, dried it and filled it with Kitty Krunchies.

“Meow, ”
the cat said politely, and yawned.

Caroline smiled and scooped him into her arms.

“Were you lonely, baby? Is that why you woke me?”

The cat purred and closed his eyes. Caroline kissed the top of his head, wandered out of the kitchen, into the living room and sank down in the corner of a white sofa that surely had cost more than everything she owned.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You have me now. You won’t feel lonely ever again.”

The cat seemed to grow heavier. His purrs slowed. He was falling asleep, safe in her arms.

Caroline lay her head back.

That was how she’d fallen asleep in Lucas’s arms that very first night. They’d made love that second time and he’d held her close and she’d felt an emotion, a state of being, whatever you could call it, that she had never felt before.

She’d felt safe.

Such a strange thing for a grown woman to feel, but there was no other way to describe it. That was why she’d fallen
asleep in a strange bed, in a strange man’s arms…until she’d awakened and realized that she’d had sex with a stranger…

Caroline’s lashes drooped.

Lucas was right. She
had
run away. The reality of what she’d done had been too shameful to bear.

Now, she had done it again, gone to his bed even though he was still little more than a stranger, a stranger who confused her beyond words, talking to her with such tamped-down rage at Dani’s, then coming to her rescue, soothing her terror.

Coldness seeped into her bones.

Was she her mother’s daughter after all?

It was years since she’d let in those buried memories but they flooded through her now. Mama in their little house just outside town, a new man with her. Mama, bright and happy and excited, certain he was the one.

And, weeks or sometimes months later, the inevitable signs that the affair was running its course. For the man, never for her mother. Mama’s Prince Charming would drop by less often. He would call less frequently. He had excuses when Mama invited him to supper.

The only good thing about those times was that, for a little while, Caroline would have her mother to herself; she wouldn’t have to pretend she wanted to watch stuff on TV when Mama and the current love of her life went out or, even worse, disappeared into Mama’s bedroom.

It happened over and over. Still, when each affair played out to its predictable end, her mother was always devastated. Shocked, to find herself discarded. Not Caroline. She’d been able to read the signs by the time she was eight or nine.

If nothing else, growing up that way, she’d learned something valuable.

You didn’t let yourself get involved with a man who thought he owned the world. You didn’t treat sex casually. And you certainly didn’t give a man all of yourself. Not ever. Bad
enough if you gave a man your body, but you never gave away your heart and your soul.

She took a long breath.

Okay. One out of three wasn’t so bad.

She was involved with an arrogant man. Some might say she’d treated sex casually. But she absolutely had not, absolutely never would give Lucas anything but her body.

Her heart, her soul, were safe. Completely safe—

“Caroline?”

A light came on. Caroline’s eyes flew open. The cat hissed, jumped off her lap and ran.

“Querida?
What are you doing, sitting alone in the dark?”

Lucas stood in the center of the living room, naked except for a pair of sweatpants, his dark hair tousled, his face shadowed by that sexy end-of-day stubble she’d felt beneath her fingers.

Her heart thudded.

He was so beautiful. So much more than beautiful. Just seeing him scattered her doubts, made her think only of what it was like to be in his arms.

“I thought you’d left me again,” he said, as he came toward her. He bent and kissed her, his lips taking hers with possessive hunger.

“This time,” he said in a rough voice, “this time, I would have come after you.”

She looked up at him. She wanted to say something clever and sophisticated. Instead, what she was thinking tumbled from her mouth.

“Then—then, why didn’t you last time?”

He nodded, as if she’d asked him to explain some complex mathematical formula.

“Lucas? Why didn’t you look for me?”

He nodded again and ran his hand through his hair.

It was an excellent question. Why hadn’t he sought her out the morning she’d left his bed?

Ego, at first. Women did not walk out on him. Going after her would have damaged his pride. Stupid, but there it was.

Then, after Jack Gordon told him more about Dani Sinclair, after he’d put two and two together and figured out what Caroline was.

If
that was what she was. Only if…but still, how could he tell her that?

How could he say,
I couldn’t go after you because it kills me to think of you with other men. Because I am too proud to have ever imagined myself in such a situation. Because, even now, a part of me wonders if you are acting, if sex is a performance for you, if what you said was true, that the night you were with me was truly the first time you had sold yourself
…

It must have been, he thought fiercely. A woman whose profession was sex would not cry out with shock when he parted her thighs, sought the delicate bud between them, teased it with his tongue. She would not blush under the intensity of his gaze when he drew back and said he wanted to watch her face as he made love to her.

“Lucas? You didn’t look for me and yet, today, you insisted I come home with you.” Caroline swallowed dryly; he saw the muscles in her throat constrict. “It doesn’t make sense.”

No. It did not. None of it did. He only knew that she belonged with him. That he wanted her with him. That he had told himself he’d gone to her apartment for closure when the truth was, he’d gone there for her.