“I’m sorry you—”
“Don’t you dare try that I’m sorry you’ve reached the wrong room act with me. I talked to your mom, so put him on the goddamn phone.”
Lucas is sitting up in bed now, staring down at the receiver with a blank expression on his face. “It’s Sam,” I say, hoping to elicit some kind of reaction from him. Nothing happens and a chill turns my blood to ice.
He takes the phone from my hands, grasping it as tight as I had only moments before. “Leave,” he says. There’s no cruelty behind it or any emotion at all, for that matter, but I feel numb as I slide off the bed. Leave the room. Draw the door closed behind me.
I sit in the living room, hugging my knees to my chest. I try to focus on watching television—some trashy talk show about a woman and the six men who were possibly her “baby’s daddy”—but I can still hear bits and pieces of Lucas’s conversation with Sam. Every snippet that reaches my ears only intensifies the cramps in my chest.
“ . . . you can’t keep doing this to me,” he yells.
Then there’s silence for a little while. I pretend like I’m interested in the woman on the giant, flat-screen TV weeping at another negative test result. I pretend like I’m not at all spying on Lucas.
“. . . it’s nobody, just—” He pauses, and I can hear a guttural noise rip from his throat. “I’m sending you money. I’ll send you whatever you want, but you can’t expect me to do this with you for the rest of my life.”
I flinch. Is Lucas in some sort of trouble with Sam? And then, a more frightening thought comes to me: is Lucas involved with drugs, just like Sinjin? I wipe sweaty palms on the hem of the t-shirt I’m wearing, Lucas’s shirt.
And then, I hear him say something that makes me shudder.
“You psycho bitch, sometimes I wish you would just go to them and get it over with.”
Go to whom? Get what over with?
I hear the sound of something slamming repeatedly followed by the pipes in the bathroom turning on. When Lucas comes out of the shower nearly an hour later, there’s a blood-stained towel wrapped around his knuckles.
“Lucas . . . is everything alright?” I whisper, hesitantly.
He gives me a strained smile and then motions me to him. “Come here,” he says, pulling him to me.
He covers my lips with his mouth, drowning out all the questions I have. He kisses me like I’m his last meal, like he’s never tasted me before, even though he had me many, many times last night. He pulls me into his lap and slides his finger into my mouth, between our lips. I nibble on the tip of it.
A moment later he stands, with me straddling him, and carries me back to the bedroom. There, he keeps his promise of eating strawberries and me. There, he finally gets the chance to cuff me, turning me over on my stomach and sliding his c**k in and out of my body until I’m sobbing.
And it’s there that I come to terms with the fact that I’ve fallen in love with Lucas Wolfe.
†
My dress for Cilla’s birthday party is the sexiest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned. It’s short and black, made of scalloped lace with a cutout back. When Lucas sees me in it, his eyes darken and he promises me that tonight, my dress will become binds for each of the four posters of the bed.
I get wet just thinking about it.
Cilla’s party is being held at a swanky night club, and I immediately recognize several of her guests from Fuse TV and my iPod playlists. Any other person would be star struck but I’m not. I only have eyes for Lucas. I play my part well, standing by his side as his personal assistant, but wanting him more than anything.
When nobody’s looking, he drags me into a corner with him, kissing me deeply and sucking on my ear. He wiggles his fingers inside of me, causing me to almost lose control on the spot.
“Soon,” he promises.
When Cilla’s boyfriend, the bass guitarist for an up and coming band from Ohio, seeks Lucas out, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. As I’m passing an empty lounge, a long-nailed hand closes around my wrist, slamming me up against a wall. I expect to see Cilla—she’s been prancing around drunk off her ass most of the bight—so I’m surprised when a different face hovers in front of me.
A woman with henna red hair and gray eyes. She’s beautiful, but so are most of the women here tonight. What really strikes me about this particular woman are her eyes. They’re unfocused and wild. Scary. “So you’re Luke’s little bitch?” she demands between clenched teeth, pressing all of her body weight—which isn’t very much considering she’s short and skinny—against me.
“I’m his personal assistant,” I say. But even then, the word doesn’t sound quite right or believable.
She opens her mouth to say something but then her face changes from furious to a look of understanding. “That wasn’t Kylie this morning, was it?”
I suck in a deep breath through my nose. “Sam?” I blurt out.
Her lips curl up into a sneer, and she bobs her head. “If you go near him again, I swear to God I’ll ruin you,” she says. “I swear to God I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I demand, shoving her away from me. “And just who are you anyway?”
“I’ll ruin him,” she promises, choosing not to answer my second question.
That feeling of dread that I felt when Lucas was on the phone with this woman comes back to me, hitting me hard, and it’s impossible to get it to go away this time. Who the hell is she? And what does she have on Lucas that lets her provoke such a nasty response from him? That gives her enough courage to threaten me?