He shook his head slightly. “No. I’d like to do another, if you don’t mind.” At my nod, he said, “Turn onto your back.”
I rolled over slowly, afraid he’d be able to see my heart hammering through my thin sweater. He grabbed the pad and pencil from the floor and stood. Staring down, he let his eyes roam over me, and I felt vulnerable, but not in danger. I knew so little about him, but there was one thing I felt unequivocally: safe.
“I’m going to arrange you, if that’s okay?”
I swallowed. “Uh… sure.” My hands were clutched to my ribcage, my shoulders hunched almost to my ears. What, this isn’t how you want me positioned? I barely contained the nervous twitter that bubbled up at the thought.
His fingers encircled the wrist nearest him, and he brought my arm over my head, bent it as though it had been thrown back. Taking the opposite hand, he splayed my fingers over my abdomen, sat back, stared at me a moment, and then moved it, too, over my head, crossing my wrists, as though I was bound. I struggled to breathe normally. Impossible. “I’m going to move your leg,” he said, his eyes on mine, waiting for my nod. His hands on my knee, he angled it out, leaving it flush against the mattress.
He picked up the pad and turned the page. “Now tilt your face toward me a bit—chin down—that’s good. And shut your eyes.” I fought to remain relaxed, knowing that as long as I heard the scratch of his pencil across the page, he wasn’t going to touch me. I lay unmoving, eyes closed, listening to the rasp of lead on paper, broken by the soft brush of his finger, smearing a line or a shadow.
From the laptop on my desk, my inbox dinged, and my eyes flashed open. Without thinking, I rose to my elbows. Landon? But there was no way I could check.
Lucas was watching me closely. “Do you need to check that?”
Landon had ignored my email all afternoon, when in the past he’d answered so promptly that I was probably spoiled. But Lucas was sitting in my room. On my bed. I lay back, returned my arms to their prior position, and I shook my head. I didn’t close my eyes this time, and he didn’t ask me to.
He returned to sketching, concentrating on my hands a long while, and then my face. He stared into my eyes, back and forth between that intense examination and his drawing. When he stared at my mouth for long moments—drawing, staring, drawing, staring—I wanted to reach up, grab his t-shirt, and pull him down to me. My hands clenched involuntarily and his gaze flicked there and back.
Eyes blazing, he looked down at me. “Jacqueline?”
I blinked. “Yes?”
“The night we met—I’m not like that guy.” His jaw was rigid.
“I know tha—” He placed a finger over my lips, his expression softening.
“So I don’t want you to feel pressured. Or overpowered. But I do, absolutely, want to kiss you right now. Badly.” He trailed his finger over my jaw and down my throat, and then into his lap.
I stared at him. Finally comprehending that he was waiting for a response, I said, “Okay.”
He dropped the pad onto the floor and the pencil followed, his stare never unlocking from mine. As he leaned over me, I felt a heightened awareness of every part of my body that touched a part of his—the edge of his hip pressed to mine, his chest sliding against mine, his fingers tracing from wrists to forearms and then framing my face. He held me in place, lips near my ear. When he kissed the sensitive spot, my breath shuddered. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, moving his mouth to mine.
His lips were warm and firm, pressing against mine, and when his tongue began a gentle onslaught against the line of my lips, I opened them. Tongue delving into my mouth, his hands traveled in opposite directions—one to my still-crossed wrists, pressing them into the mattress above my head, one skimming down my side, digging into my waist. He kissed me harder, claiming the responses he coaxed from me. My head swam, and I was drawing in short bursts of air as if I was surfacing every few seconds before diving deeper. Just when I thought I couldn’t take the intensity, he lessened the pressure and sucked my lower lip softly, brushed his tongue over it, and then he repeated the movement. I fidgeted beneath him and his tongue slipped between my lips again and repeated its closer examination—caressing my tongue, my teeth, the roof of my mouth.
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 cle**age augmented by my folded-up position. Pushing the hem of the shirt above my br**sts, 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.