Put Me Back Together (30 page)

“And now you’re making him breakfast like the perfect little girlfriend,” Mariella went on, pressing her hand to her chest. “I think I smell love in the air.”

I swatted her hand with the spatula as she tried to steal another piece of bacon. “Nobody’s said anything about love,” I chastised her. “And don’t you have a child to parent or something?”

Mariella leaned toward the open door as I grabbed the eggs out of the fridge and cracked them over the pan. “Are you alive, child of mine?” she called into the hallway where Ethan was playing with his toy cars.

“Still alive!” Ethan called back, and I heard one of his cars hit the wall beside my door.

“Great parenting technique,” I said as the eggs sizzled. “I guess what I was really trying to say is stop prying into my personal life.”

Mariella smiled broadly at my irritation. “I guess what I’m really trying to say is when are you guys going to start screwing like bunnies, ‘cause I know you’re dying to.”

Before the words were even out of her mouth, I heard the bathroom door swing open and Lucas’s footsteps on the floor. My eyes flew wide open and Mariella pressed a hand to her mouth as Lucas stepped into the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel—one of mine. It had yellow daisies all over it. “Did I hear something about bunnies?” Lucas asked with mock curiosity, his dimples showing.

Openly staring at Lucas’s smooth and muscular bare chest, Mariella dropped her hand to display her mouth hanging wide open.

“Mariella was just leaving,” I said to my friend, shooting daggers at her with my eyes.

“Right, right,” she said, finally pulling her gaze away as Lucas retreated down the hall, chuckling. “Gotta get the offspring to school, a mother’s time is never her own and all that…”

As soon as she heard my bedroom door close, she leaned in toward me and whispered, “Oh my
God
. Have sex with that as soon and as often as you can, girl. I mean, do it right here on the kitchen counter if you have to!”

As I rolled my eyes, unable to stop myself from smiling, Lucas piped up from my room, almost as though he’d heard every word, “Goodbye, Mariella!”

“Bye!” she called with the widest grin imaginable, and scampered out the door.

Still shaking my head, I turned back to the eggs, which were burned into a solid yellow and brown mass. I could hardly focus enough to turn down the burner. Just imagining Lucas changing in the next room was making me dizzy. The image of his bare chest, which I’d never seen before—at least not all of it—kept floating into my mind as I tried cracking a new egg into the pan. It ended up on the floor.

“I’m pretty sure the five second rule doesn’t apply here,” Lucas said into my ear as he put his arms around me from behind. “But I promise to eat the egg off the floor if we can keep on discussing that bunny thing Mariella was talking about.”

“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” I said smoothly, turning around so I was facing him. He’d put on a t-shirt, which was slightly disappointing, but he was still wearing the towel. “And for your information, the egg on the floor was always going to be yours. I don’t believe in waste.”

“Really? Because it seems like we’re wasting tons of space right here,” Lucas said, grabbing me by the waist and pressing my body to his, our hips aligning almost automatically now. Immediately I felt him pressing against my leg, through his towel and my apron. He reached up and plucked my glasses from my face, putting them down on the counter. I closed my eyes and let a long breath escape from my mouth as he nuzzled my neck with his lips. Then our mouths connected and I felt his hands behind my back undoing the knot of my apron. The burner clicked off.

“I see your multitasking skills are improving,” I said breathlessly between kisses.

“I’ve been practicing,” he replied with a proud smile.

Picking me up by the waist, Lucas slid me onto the kitchen counter and then moved forward, pushing his hands into my hair as he continued to kiss me. Mariella’s earlier comment about the kitchen counter came to mind as I dropped the spatula and cupped his face with my hands. His groin was now pressing between my legs and my thin pajama bottoms offered almost no barrier. I gasped as I felt his fingers running up my back, under my tank top, though I wished he would move them around to the front. He’d still never touched my bare breasts and I was dying for him to. The feelings building up in the burning hot center of me were beginning to drive me wild and I made a noise, a combination of a groan and a growl, as I wrapped my legs around his hips.

“Katie…” Lucas said. I could feel him stilling his hands, pulling back. He was putting on the brakes again. “I don’t want to do anything that reminds you of… I don’t know why you’re so afraid of him, but you said he was violent. Did he ever try to—”

“He didn’t force himself on me,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, good,” he said, heaving a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to do anything that would make you think of him or make you feel—”

“You don’t remind me of Brandon,” I said, interrupting him. And as I said the words I knew they were true. Maybe I had thought of Brandon the first time we kissed, but that was far behind me now. This was undiscovered territory, and being here with Lucas was the best thing I could imagine. “Besides, he never hurt me, not in the way you’re thinking. What he did…it has nothing to do with what’s happening right now. So can we stop talking about him, please? I’d much rather get back to this.” I tightened my legs around him.

“Forget breakfast,” Lucas mumbled, pulling me to the ground. Our lips hardly losing contact, we stumbled down the hall toward my bedroom. I walked through the door first and in that moment made the sudden decision to let Lucas know exactly how much I meant what I’d said. I pulled off my tank top and dropped it on the floor, then turned to face him.

His eyes dropped from my face to my chest and then he walked into the bed and fell onto it face first.

I let out an open-mouthed laugh and climbed onto the bed as he turned onto his side, looking foolish. “Is it my imagination, or is Lucas Matthews blushing?” I said teasingly as he pulled me toward him. Just the feeling of his hands against my bare skin, the most skin I’d ever shown him, was enough to shut me up.

“I do not blush,” Lucas said as he stared into my eyes. Before I could offer up a contradiction, he went on. “But I do trip all over myself every time I look at you. Do you have any idea how stunning you are?”

“I’m not—” I began, but then his hands began to move against my bare skin and I had to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from screaming with anticipation. The back of his hands brushed against the bottom of my breasts and I sucked in a breath, bracing myself against Lucas’s body.

In one fluid motion Lucas pulled his shirt off and I found myself exploring the curves of his chest while he explored mine. There was something so intimate about being in bed with him, our bare skin pressed together, that I felt a little lightheaded. Then his thumbs slid across my nipples and I wasn’t just lightheaded anymore. I was mindless. The tension inside of me began to build in a way I’d never felt before and a tingling took over my limbs as I found his lips, his hands still caressing my breasts with such delicacy, as though I were a precious thing. The room spun around me and I knew nothing at all except the feeling of his hands on me. Then he broke our kiss and lowered his face to the skin of my breasts. Just one touch of his lips and the world exploded into tiny little pieces that did not fall around us but drifted down, slowly, like snowflakes.

When I came back to my senses I was lying with my cheek against Lucas’s chest, the bed sheet draped lightly over us, and my entire body seemed to be singing. Lucas trailed his hand along my back and it was as though a musical note erupted everywhere he touched.

“Well, that was new,” I whispered. I was trying not to feel be embarrassed and failing miserably.

In response Lucas shifted me upwards and placed a kiss against my warm cheek. “That was amazing,” he said, brushing my hair away from my face.

“Really?” I said. It bothered me that he hadn’t felt all the same things that I had. Wasn’t it my turn now? Wasn’t that how this worked? “Do you want me to…”

I reached downward, wanting to feel him, but then I hesitated. I had no idea where the towel was at this point and touching him there without any barrier…that wasn’t something I’d ever done before.

Taking my hand in his, he brought it to his lips and kissed it. “I definitely want you to,” Lucas said, “but there is the matter of the exam I’m supposed to be taking in about an hour.”

Glancing at the clock on my bedside table, I saw that he was right.

“All right,” I said. “But don’t forget, it’s your turn next. Fair’s fair.”

“Oh, I won’t forget. Trust me,” Lucas replied, running an idle hand down the front of my body and planting a kiss on my lips before swinging his legs to the floor. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be not forgetting all through my statistics exam, too.”

As he got out of bed my suspicions about the towel were confirmed. He was entirely naked. As he pulled on his boxers and wandered down the hall in search of food, I pressed my face into the pillow and giggled like an idiot. For about five straight minutes.

“Will you stop picturing me naked and get in here?” Lucas said, poking his head back into the room. And this time I wasn’t too embarrassed to show him my beaming grin.

We wolfed down our meal of cold bacon and toast, which had never tasted so good, and got dressed. He let me chastely put on my clothes in the bathroom, as I’d been doing every time he came over in the morning. I might have just been topless in front of him, but there was something about putting on clothes that struck me as decidedly unsexy. I wasn’t quite ready for him to see me struggling to button my jeans as he displayed his rock-hard abs.

As we walked toward campus, Lucas took my hand in his. This was another new thing we were doing, that I was trying to get used to. It drew a lot of attention, which I tried to bear without too much squirming. It helped that he kissed me every chance he got. Nothing made my mind go blank like Lucas’s lips on mine.

“So you and…Brandon,” Lucas said. He always had trouble saying his name. “You never did anything like that?” I guessed his meaning: Had Brandon and I ever come close to having sex?

I struggled not to groan. Over the last little while it had become glaringly obvious that whenever he wasn’t occupied appreciating my body Lucas’s mind drifted to my stalker and the few details I’d told him about the situation. I wasn’t sure how much longer the story I told him was going to hold up, which left me in a cold sweat.

“No,” I said stiffly, hoping he’d sense my wariness of the subject and back off, but he kept glancing my way, waiting for more. “I was younger. We never got to that step.”

Because I was in middle school
, was what I didn’t say.

“So you broke it off?” Lucas persisted.

Actually, no. When I woke up covered in blood he was already gone.

“I guess you could say it was a mutual decision,” I replied.

He didn’t look too happy with me when I was testifying that I’d never seen him before in my life.

“I’m getting the impression that you don’t really want to talk about this,” Lucas said, putting an arm around my shoulder. I leaned into him, letting the past fade to black as he held me close, feeling the safety of his arms. “I know you probably think I’m obsessing. I just can’t stand the thought of him hurting you again.”

“How could he,” I said, forcing a smile, “with you standing guard?”

We went into our favourite coffee shop, the same one where we’d shared that molten brownie months ago, and my eyes lingered on the table we’d sat at that day. It seemed ages ago, before I knew Lucas, before I trusted him.

Before I put him in danger.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to show you something,” Lucas said. He handed me a pamphlet as he stepped up to the counter and ordered our drinks—a hot chocolate for me, extra whip, and a coffee with sugar for him. There were photos of kids playing various sports on the cover—soccer, volleyball, basketball—but every time I tried to read the words across the top they blurred.

I had the oddest feeling, as though I should scream, but I couldn’t think why. Outside the windows of the coffee shop the day was sunny. The leaves were beginning to grow in on the trees. The cafe was busy and buzzing with conversation. Lucas stood over by the counter, waiting for our drinks, winking at me. And yet it felt as though the world had suddenly tilted off its axis.

Something’s wrong
, I thought to myself.
What is it? What
is it
?

My phone buzzed and I took it out.

Em: So how’s Hottie McLover who makes you ignore your own TWIN?

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and searched for a clever response.

Me: Divine. Best McLover I ever had.

Em: I’m glad you’re happy, sis. You deserve it. But so do I, so he’d better have some hot friends.

Me: Like you’ve ever needed help finding a guy.

Em: Not in the Matthews league. You’re moving up and you’re taking me with you.

Me: You got it, sister.

I was still smiling at my phone when Lucas sat down at the table with our drinks.