He really was the best man.
“But—”
He stopped me with another kiss, this one on my lips. “Next time, I’ll let you fuck me. You’ll ride me while I watch you move over me,” he said so simply, so matter-of-factly that it made me want to roll him on his back and make him keep his word.
But instead, I asked, “Next time?”
“If you’ll have me.” His lips fell. “I don’t think I can stay away, Rosie. Not now that I’ve tasted you. Not now that I’ve had you. Not when I have only a week to feel you here, against me.”
There were many questions I could have asked right at that moment.
What happens after you leave?
What are we doing?
Do you also feel this powerful, beating force right in the middle of your chest?
But a big part of me didn’t want to hear his answer to any of those questions. I wanted to live in this moment, right here, right now. I wanted to have this one next time he was talking about and all the times after that. For as long as I had him. Even if that was only a week. I didn’t want Lucas to have to define what we were or weren’t on top of having to do that with himself after he’d lost so much.
So I said the only thing I could. “Then, don’t. Don’t stay away.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rosie
There were a few things that could stir me awake with only a whiff. Number one was the smell of smoke, embedded in my brain since that time Mr. Brown decided to microwave a wig at three in the morning. No, I never asked for the whole story. I simply took the experience as a life lesson and rolled with it.
Number two, however, was a far more pleasant way to be welcomed into the day—or night. It was pancakes.
And that was the scent filling my apartment.
My stomach grumbled in delicious anticipation.
Anticipation that soon morphed into a different kind of hunger when I patted the bed and immediately remembered who had been filling that space beside me. Holding me all night. Placing slow kisses on the back of my neck. Wrapping himself around me like he never wanted to let go.
Lucas.
A wave of need surged through me, settling deep in my belly, and pushing me out of the bed like a woman on a mission. I snagged the first piece of clothing I found lying around—Lucas’s hoodie—and slipped it on.
Never in my life had the distance between my bedroom and the kitchen seemed so long.
When I finally reached the threshold of the kitchen, music was filling the space. It was a song I’d never heard before, that Lucas had never played before, but had a bright and upbeat rhythm.
My gaze zeroed in on the man at the stove, pink spatula in hand and apron tied around his trim waist. He was in his boxers, shifting his weight from side to side, in perfect sync with the music, doing a little ass wiggle every couple of beats.
And… Lord. My poor, puffy heart tripped and then swelled at the sight of him, knowing with absolute certainty that I was so gone for this man, it wasn’t even funny.
I must have let out a sound of some kind because Lucas turned. His beautiful grin caught me completely off guard, and I thought I mumbled something stupid like, “Hi.”
His eyes met mine with the same big emotion he had looked at me with last night, when he’d told me he wouldn’t stay away, and said, “Buenos días, Bella Durmiente.”
Lucas’s gaze swept up and down my body. Very slowly. And his smile changed. It didn’t fall, not exactly, but it turned serious, focused, as it thoroughly inspected my legs.
“I grabbed the first thing I found,” I said a little too breathlessly, waving at his hoodie. “Is that ok—”
“Yes,” he rushed out. His voice deep and low. “Please keep it, wear it all the time.” He inhaled slowly, as if he had needed the extra oxygen. “You know what? How about you keep all my hoodies? T-shirts, pants, too. Keep everything, I don’t mind. I rather see them on you than on me.”
My lips twitched. “But what will you wear then?”
He nodded his head, still distracted. “We’ll figure that out later.”
The laughter I had been holding in escaped my lips and I sounded like a teenager in sweet, sticky love. “Okay, deal,” I told him, delighted to hold that kind of power over him. “But only if you keep dancing.”
I moved to one of the chairs that sat around my kitchen table, taking it out and plopping myself onto it. I braced my elbows on the table and my chin on my fists, waiting.
“I’m ready to watch now.”
The smirk that curled his mouth was delicious. “You saw that?”