“Yeah, babe?”
“What was with the handcuffs?”
His arm got even tighter. “If I had to, I was gonna cuff you to me again.” His head came up and he kissed my shoulder then he settled again and said softly, “I didn’t have to.”
Hell and damnation.
I just kept giving myself away.
Chapter Twenty
Straighter
It had been a long and emotional night so when I woke up, I still felt asleep and thought I was dreaming. Either that or I was in my pretend happy place. Those were my excuses for what I did and I was going with them.
See I woke up before Luke. I woke up happy (yes happy, it was morning, I hadn’t had the chance to put my defenses up yet), warm and post-night of mind-boggling life-altering sex relaxed, curled into his side and the first thing my eyes saw was the wall of his chest. There were a lot of things about Luke I liked (read: pretty much everything), but I liked his chest especially. So, since I liked it so much and I was living a dream, I leaned down and kissed it.
I decided I also liked his neck so once I was done kissing his chest I shifted up and kissed his neck. Since I was at his neck, I saw that I had, indeed, given him a hickey the night before and even though that was silly, juvenile and highly embarrassing, secretly I liked my mark on him so I kissed that too.
You also like his jaw, Good Ava reminded me.
She was right. I did like his jaw. Luke had a great, strong jaw.
So I kissed Luke’s jaw.
You also like his… Bad Ava started but Good Ava threw her halo at Bad Ava, it bonked off Bad Ava’s head so Bad Ava snapped at Good Ava, Hey!
“Babe,” Luke said softly, his voice husky with sleep, his arms coming around me.
I lifted my head to look at him, planting my hands on his chest, moving closer to his face and still in my dreamy, pretend happy place, I smiled and whispered, “Good morning.”
That’s when I noticed his face. It was soft and his eyes were sleepy, warm, inky and completely unguarded.
Whoa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stop right there.
Before I could react, retreat or even take the moment to memorize that look leveled at me, his hands came to my hair, pulling it off my shoulders to bunch it the back of my head. One hand shifted my hair to his other hand and the fingers of his free hand drifted down my back. His head came up and he brushed his lips against mine.
He settled back into the pillows and his warm, unguarded eyes roamed my face as I lay there frozen. Good Ava was twirling with delight, a la Maria in the mountains at the beginning of The Sound of Music while Bad Ava had her face in her hands and was shaking her head.
Luke’s eyes settled back on mine and, softly, he murmured, “Christ, you’re beautiful.”
At his words my blood turned to ice. The pretend happy place around me exploded and I found I was in the polar arctic, surrounded by snow and wasteland.
What was I doing? What, on earth, was I doing? How had I let it get this far?
No.
No, no, no.
This was wrong. It wasn’t right, it was very, very wrong.
What I was, and forever would be, was Fatty, Fatty, Four-Eyes.
What I was not was beautiful.
Without a word, I jerked away from him and rolled to a seated position on the side of the bed, nothing but escape on my mind. I had no idea where I was going but I was going there and fast. I almost had my feet on the floor when his arm sliced around my waist and I was yanked back, across his lap.
“Where are you…?” he started but I was struggling, out-of-control kicking and hitting, my fists connecting with his flesh.
I had struggled against Luke before but not like this. It was like it was life or death. And in a way it was life or death because what I just learned about Luke was just like dying and all I knew was I had to get away.
“What the fuck?” Luke clipped, getting hold of my wrists and forcing my back to the bed using his torso. My hips still in his lap and my legs useless, he half-pinned me, pressing my wrists against the bed at the sides of my head.
“Get off me!” I shrieked, desperate, panicked and out of my mind.
“Jesus,” he muttered, staring at my face.
I bucked and pushed against his hands at my wrists. “Get off!”
“Ava, talk to me,” Luke demanded. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Off!” I cried, my voice hitching as tears clogged my throat. I choked them down and started fighting again. Surprisingly, I got a wrist free and somehow slid away but he yanked me back, rolled full on top of me and caught my wrists again, jerking them over my head.
“Let me go,” I said.
“Talk to me.”
“Let… me… go!” I yelled and bucked viciously.
“Talk, damnit!” he barked in my face.
I stilled at the fury in his voice and, for some reason, talked. “This game… or whatever it is you’re playing with me… is bad enough but don’t you ever lie to me, Lucas Stark.” At that point, I was ignoring the fact that I lied freely to him.