The Wake-Up Call(70)

“You can still change your mind, meu bem.”

My breath seems louder, everything else quieter.

“I don’t want to.”

“But it’s always true. You can always change your mind.”

I relax back into the seat. I knew that, of course, but it’s calmed me to hear him say it out loud. Something’s shifted since that car door closed. Everything’s different. For instance, Lucas’s hand stays on my knee as he drives. I stare down at it: Lucas da Silva’s hand on my leg. The mind boggles. How did we get here? And what does meu bem mean?

“You have driven me mad today,” he says, taking his hand away to shift gear and then setting it right back there on my knee.

“Don’t I drive you mad every day?”

“Yes,” he says, voice almost silken. His eyes stay on the road. “But not quite like this.”

“No?”

“No. You have been particularly irresistible.”

I’ve never been called irresistible before. I reach tentatively for his hand on my leg, and trace my fingers over his, listening to the way his breathing changes at the contact. It is so strange to touch him like this. So strange to see him as a man I can touch.

“This is weird, isn’t it,” I whisper. “Weird but . . .” Exciting, I want to say, because there’s a giddy, drunken thrill moving through me now, like I’m a teenager again.

“Weird but good,” he says, his voice low and soft.

“Can I . . .” My throat is dry. I swallow, turning my body towards him within the confines of my seat belt. His hand shifts on my thigh, and that tiny movement pulls all of my attention to that one spot, as if suddenly the heat of his palm on my leg is the only thing that could possibly matter.

“Yes,” he says calmly. “You can. Whatever it is you want.” He turns to look at me for a split second and his eyes are as dark as the sky outside. “I’m yours.”

“For the night,” I whisper, and his eyes flicker.

“Yes. For the night.”

I want to reach across to touch him, but before I can, the car jerks and I’m thrown forward. His hand grips my thigh tightly, then flies to the steering wheel. The engine chokes, chokes again; the car stutters along, and Lucas is steering us to a lay-by on this dark country road and suddenly we’re stationary, handbrake on, both breathing hard.

“Fuck,” I say. “Is your car . . .”

“I’m not sure,” Lucas says, sounding much calmer than I feel.

“Do you think we should . . .”

He’s trying the engine. It makes a sound a bit like a steam train. We both wince. I wonder how long it’ll take us to walk back to Smartie from here. We’ve been driving for almost ten minutes on fast roads. Maybe . . . an hour and a half on foot.

Fucking hell. I’m way too turned on for a hike.

“I’ll call my breakdown provider,” he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He opens his door as if to step out of the car, realises how freezing it is out there, and slams the door shut again with a quiet Portuguese swear word.

The conversation is brief—classic Lucas—and the conclusion is that they’ll be here in an hour or two.

“I should wait for them to arrive,” he says. He sounds calm, but his shoulders are tense, and he mutters something else in Portuguese before unclicking his seat belt and turning my way. “If you . . .”

He trails off. I stare back at him, watching his eyes shift from cool concentration to something slower and hotter. We look at each other for so long that it starts to feel like a dare—like a challenge to the other to glance away first. I draw my bottom lip in between my teeth, just slightly, and it does the trick—his gaze drops to my mouth. I win.

“If I what?” I whisper.

I watch him try to pull himself together.

“If you want to go, you don’t have to wait with me,” he says.

“I can wait,” I say, but the truth is, by now, I can’t.

He kisses me first, hard, fast. It’s exactly like last time—zero to a hundred in seconds, all fierceness and fire, and we’re twisted awkwardly and battling to touch each other over the gearbox and the space between us until we break apart in frustration, chests heaving, and he says, “Come here.”

He pushes his seat as far back as it goes. I climb into his lap. He looks up at me, smoothing my hair back from my face, running his hands down my sides.

“We obviously won’t . . .”

“Not here, no,” he says, smiling, and tilts his chin up to invite another kiss.

I’ve kissed plenty of guys. I know what it feels like to get caught up making out with someone, how the world seems to fade and it’s just your bodies and your breath. But this is . . . bigger. Brighter. I didn’t know kissing could feel like this—as though it’s clearing my mind until there’s only sensation.

Lucas kisses with absolute assurance, commanding even when he’s trapped beneath me, with one hand urging my body closer to his and the other tangling in my hair, tilting my head so he can kiss me more deeply. I want him so badly it’s an aching, desperate urge—I have to get closer, take more of him, give more of myself.

Within ten minutes, we’re breathless and beyond reason. We obviously won’t becomes We probably shouldn’t, and then after twenty minutes of making out in the driving seat like teenagers, without a single car passing us down this dark country road, it becomes We could just and Quero você, I want you and God, Lucas and Please and Please and Yes.