Easy(28)

If someone had asked, How does this compare to kissing Kennedy? I would have answered, “Who?”

Lucas’s hands each grasped a wrist and placed my arms around his neck. Responding by doing something I’d dreamed of doing more than once, I pushed my hands into his hair, mussing it further. He drew me up, scooping me onto his lap as he scooted his back against my pile of pillows at the head of the narrow bed, one booted foot still on the floor, the other drawn up under me. Leaning me back, his hand cradling my head, he kissed a path down my neck and into the V of my t-shirt. My head fell back as I panted and tried to form a rational thought.

His hand drifted under my shirt to slide along my ribs, roaming over the satin cups of my bra, his fingertips skimming the skin above, the curves of flesh, the cleavage augmented by my folded-up position. Pushing the hem of the shirt above my breasts, he moved his lips to the places his fingers had been and ran his tongue along the line of skin just above the edge of my bra.

My hands tightened in his hair as his fingers skimmed the front clasp. Hadn’t I worn this easy-access bra for this very reason? My body wanted him, but my mind protested—a first kiss, to feeling me up, to—what?

Erin’s voice in my head said, Rebound the hell out of him! and I choked an untimely laugh.

Lucas raised his head and cocked an eyebrow at me. “Ticklish?” he asked, incredulous.

I was entirely horrified, and couldn’t imagine a bigger tragedy in that moment than having ticklish breasts—unless it was having the stupidest sense of humor on the planet. I bit my lip, trying not to laugh again, thinking, Oh my God. I shook my head.

His gaze flicked to my teeth, clamped on my bottom lip. “You sure? Because it’s either that… or you find my seduction techniques… humorous.”

I barked another laugh, unable to contain it, and he shook his head as I sat on his lap, my chest half-bare, mortified. I jerked my hand from his hair and slammed it over my imprudent mouth.

Then, he smiled. Behind my palm, I smiled back, begging him silently not to make me laugh again—because just under the surface, the repressed hysterics were preparing to mutiny.

“Maybe I should just tickle you and get it over with.” He appeared to mull over the idea.

“Please don’t,” I said, alarmed. Like most people, I wasn’t an attractive sight when tickled. I knew this, because my aunt had filmed my jackass older cousin tickling me into a writhing, pleading mess on my eleventh birthday. My face had turned a blotchy scarlet, spit trailing from the corner of my mouth, and the sounds of protestation I uttered were almost inhuman.

“No?”

“No. Please, no.”

Sighing, he took my hand from in front of my face and pressed it to his chest, leaning forward swiftly and kissing me. I noticed he’d carefully pulled my shirt back down, though that didn’t stop him from stroking his fingertips across my abdomen beneath it, or palming my breasts through the bra, his thumb stroking over a nipple while his mouth moved with mine, leaving me lightheaded. Against my hand, his heart thumped in time with mine.

I forgot all about laughing.



***

My lips were sensitive and tingly. Touching them brought rushes of gooey memories—his hands, and what they’d done in concert with his mouth—the crazy-making kisses, and the few words he’d spoken. You’re so beautiful.

I wanted to see the sketches, so he showed them to me. They were good. Amazingly good. I told him so and earned his barely-there smile.

“What will you do with them?” I asked, more than a little belatedly.

“Redo them in charcoal, probably.”

I waited for more. “And then?”

He shrugged into his hoodie and stared down at me. “Tack them to my bedroom wall?”

My lips parted, but I had no idea what to say. Bedroom wall?

His eyes returned to the pad, turned to the second drawing. “Who wouldn’t want to wake up to this?”

That statement had a ninety-nine percent chance of meaning what it seemed to suggest, but I wasn’t sure enough to reply in kind, so I said nothing. He closed the sketchpad and laid it on the bookcase near the door. Taking my chin in his hand, he rubbed his thumb across my lower lip, gently.

“Ah, crap.” He pulled his hand away and looked at his fingers. “I forgot what my hands look like after drawing.” He looked at my shirt. “You may have little gray marks… everywhere.”

Assuming I now had a gray lip and possibly faint streaks of gray across my abdomen and the upper curves of my breasts, I couldn’t think what to say beyond, “Oh.”

He balled his hands into fists, set one under my chin to raise it again and used the other to tug me closer. “Don’t worry, no fingers.” Dragging my body against his, he kissed me, his back against the door to my room. In this position, there was no hiding what his body wanted from me. I pressed against him and he groaned into my mouth and wrenched his mouth from mine, breathing raggedly. “I have to go now, or I’m not going.”