His mouth left mine, his lips trailing down the side of my neck and soliciting a whimper from me. The sound fueled him, encouraging his hands to grab the back of my knees and hike me up his body.
As if it had been choreographed, my legs clamped around him, and he secured me against him again.
“Lucas,” I breathed out, pulsing with a new surge of need, letting my fingers into his hair. “You—” His teeth nipped at the lobe of my ear. “You can’t—”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, rearranging me around him, the new position making me know, feel, how big and hard he was. “There are things more important than that. You. You wanted a kiss.” He met my gaze, a feral expression contorting his face. His mouth. Hunger flooding his eyes. “What else do you want from me?”
Everything. “Another kiss. A second one. And a third. And a fourth, and—”
His hand returned to my hair, fisting it in his fingers, pulling at it so I’d expose my neck. “Is that all you want?” he said against my pulse, nipping at my skin with his teeth.
No, I wanted to say, but then, he was cupping my head and bringing our mouths together. Then, his hips were punching up, right against the junction of my thighs and he was so hard, so hot against me that I—
“Lucas,” I whimpered, my lids fluttering shut.
“I asked you a question,” he rasped even when his breath seemed to catch, too. “I said I’d give you whatever you asked. And you wanted my mouth. A kiss. And now.” He stopped himself, rearranging me around him, the friction feeling impossibly good and not at all enough at the same time. “Now I want to give you more. Now I don’t want to stop at your mouth, Rosie.”
I was the one who shifted next, sliding down along his pulsing length, bringing the same expressions of delicious pain to both our faces. I pulled at the hair at the nape of his neck when I expelled my next words, “Then, don’t stop. Give me more than that. Give me what you promised me at the Masquerade Ball.”
His throat worked, his eyes darkening with a realization, with a thought. “You had to be perfect, didn’t you? You had to be capable of taming and pulling at everything that’s inside of me?”
Yes. “Everything. I want it all.”
Lucas’s expression changed, and God, he looked ready to succumb, to give me exactly what I had just asked of him, and I wanted to let him. So, I took his mouth that time, encouraging him. He groaned deep in his throat and… a ringtone sounded.
I barely registered it as mine at first. Not until it rang again and infiltrated our bubble, making us come up for air.
Lucas’s voice was barely a rasp, but he said, “That’s your phone, preciosa.”
Still dazed, I fought against the remnants of the fog while the incoming call stopped and started again.
Lucas placed a kiss on the corner of my mouth, then another one on my forehead and placed me back on the floor. He walked us where we’d left our coats, back at the entrance to the roof. Fishing for my purse, he opened it and extracted my ringing phone.
I checked the screen—unknown—and answered the call.
“Rosie,” I heard. “I’m ready to go home.”
“Olly?” Every single cell in my body that had been burning scalding hot just seconds ago turned to ice. “Where are you?”
My brother didn’t answer, not right away, but I could hear the noise in the background. Music. The nightclub.
“Text me the address,” I told him. “Do you hear me, Olly? Text me where you are. I’m on my way.”
There was a curt, “Thank you.” And then, the line went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rosie
Lucas’s hand squeezed mine again.
He’d been doing that the whole ride, and I knew what it meant. He didn’t need to voice the words “I got you, I’m here,” because that gentle but fierce squeeze of my hand as it lay cocooned in his was enough. No. It was more than enough, really. Him being here, not hesitating to hail a cab without asking for the full story or details, and taking the reins of a situation I was having a hard time keeping up with was more than enough.
It was everything.
The image of the busted lip Olly had sported the last time I’d seen him flashed in front of my eyes.
God, what the hell have you gotten yourself into, Olly?
Lucas’s fingers squeezed mine again, and I thought he murmured something, something soothing, but all I was hearing in my head was Please, let him be okay. Whatever this is, please, please, please, let him be okay.