All or Nothing (12 page)

He opened his eyes and when she met them, they were fiery. “I will
never
dare you to make love to me. I only want you if you want me. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’s staying.”

She clenched her hands tightly, glad he couldn’t see them. “I’m sorry,” she finally murmured, finding it somewhat impossible to believe she was apologizing. She never thought she’d be doing that for him. “I know, I just…”

She didn’t know what to say she wanted. Probably because what she wanted was too confused and blurred to make sense. Her body wanted him. Her heart needed him. Her mind knew better than to give in to either. Nothing was turning out the way she hoped. He was supposed to be embarrassed. His body was supposed to be exposed, not her emotions.

He reached into the open flap of her overall bib, the back of his hand grazing her belly as he tugged, pulling her close, pulling her down. Then he kissed her. Gentle. Authoritative. A soothing touch and a reminder that what drew them together had never hinged on her ability to do everything right. There was acceptance in his kiss and it might well have been a drug because she was instantly addicted to it. She laid her hands on the sides of his face, drinking him in like a woman dying of thirst, when he moved away.

“I thought you needed to draw,” he said hoarsely.

Her hands slid to his shoulders, her lips already forming the words to tell him she couldn’t care less about drawing when taut lines of muscle rippled under her palms. She frowned, running her fingers over the lengths from the outward curve of his ball joints to deep valleys where his collarbones met his throat, sensing the elusive tingle of inspiration. She could feel it, the surge of energy, the rush of understanding a figure before her as an idea if she could just catch the tail of it and hold on.

“What?” he asked quietly. Did he feel it, too? Was that why he didn’t move?

“Turn around,” she whispered urgently, unwilling to break the spell with her own voice. “Face that way.”

He didn’t argue. He turned until he was facing away as she directed.

“Fold your arms so your hands are behind your head again.”

He complied and she could see the hundreds of small muscles flex in his shoulders and down his torso to the paler skin at the small of his back.

He was a beautiful machine, toned to sinuous lengths, golden skinned with a few freckles and moles across his breadth to make him unique. She could already see the sculpture in her head. The heated, smoothed lengths of polished steel that would represent the beauty of him. It would need water. Water to slide over the planes and curves. Yes…yes…to slide over perfection.

She ran back to the pad and began slashing and soothing dark dust into shapes and shadows. She did three fast studies before changing his position to a tilted version. First left, then right. How he stood it for so long, she didn’t know. He never moved, never complained. The final drawings were made with him facing her, his dark eyes full of the flame that drew her, the strain at his mouth all that finally slowed her down.

“I’m done,” she said, knowing she wasn’t. The sketches were only the beginning. The beginning of a masterpiece, though. Only the beginning.

He wrapped himself in the bath sheet, muttering something about using her shower before walking past her into the workshop.

She stayed out in the yard, trembling, spent from her artistic exertion, craving a taste of Lucas-scented steam. Seduced again, damn him. She couldn’t even satisfy herself with the taste of a smoke. Instead she gnawed on a pencil from her kit. She made herself stay in the yard until he whistled for the dog and left the same way he came, leaving her emotions fully engaged, far too cognizant of him and how he fit in her life. In her heart.

She covered her face with her hands.

This was getting messy.

“You were naked in the metal yard?”

Lucas rolled his eyes, stirring his tea while he listened to Kyle making too much out of things. “I was inspiring her.”

“You were waving your bare ass all over her property,” Kyle corrected, if not disgusted, sounding damn close. “Is it still safe to sit anywhere?”

Lucas considered the night he and Belinda had made use of any surface strong enough to support them. And said nothing.

“So what else did she dare you?” Kyle asked, probably making faces over his own morning coffee. He’d gotten the idea that they should update each other on their “campaigns” once a week. For the first time ever, Lucas was making more progress with a woman than Kyle—who had yet to get Jessica to do much more than pause before hanging up on him—which at least made the occasional phone calls worth Lucas’s time. But describing Belinda’s dares wasn’t exactly fun.

“I have to clean her warehouse every day.” He mumbled the other part of the dare he wasn’t so wild about, hoping Kyle wouldn’t hear.

He didn’t. “What?”

“She makes me sing while I’m doing it. Disco.”

Kyle’s laughter roared though the phone line. “She has to regret that.”

“She wears earplugs.” The dog wasn’t so lucky. He howled for a while each day before trotting off to hide under a sink until the attack on the Bee Gees was complete.

“Please tell me you got her back somehow.”

Lucas thought about all the things he began leaving hidden for her around her loft and workspace: new art supplies—particularly some new charcoals—a new pair of boots and a certificate to her favorite leather outfitter to replace the pants he’d ripped, among other things. It was going to take her weeks to find it all, by which time she couldn’t give any of it back. But somehow, he doubted Kyle considered black fishnet stockings with satin bows to be a vision of revenge.

“I dared her to take the dog.” The look on her face of pure disgust still managed to brighten his day. Oh, he’d regret it when this was all over—and to a degree, he really did miss the sniffing, licking little monster—but it was still a sweet play.

“So what’s next?”

Lucas grimaced. “Dancing. On Sunday.”

“You?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucas replied over more rambunctious laughter. Kyle was the dancer. Kyle enjoyed clubs and screeching music, grasping women and probably even the sweaty crush of people. Lucas avoided people in general, something most folks had the presence of mind to be grateful about.

It was his own damn fault though. Belinda had been bopping around her downstairs kitchen barely wearing a camisole and a pair of white panties, waiting for her ancient toaster to need flipping, while he was forced to
stay alive
next to her. It was an impulse to grab her hand and spin her into his arms, one of the few he gave in to. At first, she’d been startled, but then he spun her back out and she’d started laughing, joining in while he all but twirled her in the big open space. The two of them weren’t going to make John Travolta worry about his disco legacy, but by the time the song was over, they were both laughing uncontrollably, exhausted and sprawled in her mismatched chairs, and the toast was burned all the way through. She even let him kiss her goodbye when he left.

His inner alerts did make some noise after she made the dare though, wondering if she were pushing him into a Kyle-mold on purpose or if she was just picking things he’d hate to do. Frankly, it was a toss-up. “I’m not real wild about clubbing it either, but I figure we’re still even.”

“Yeah, how’s that? You’ll be wearing steel-toe boots, too?”

“She has to dye her hair.” That dare had been a stroke of genius. “Eyebrows, too. Back to the original color in time for the dancing.”

Belinda’s jaw had dropped, leaving her vulnerable to yet another kiss before he slipped away from her front door. The truth was, the past week had been a smorgasbord of stolen kisses and caresses. She didn’t even get mad at him anymore. Not when he touched her hand or grazed her healing tattoo with his fingertips. Not when he whispered things in her ear as he passed. Not even when he insisted on kissing her whenever he arrived or left. He’d never felt so free or seen her hidden smile so often.

Of course, there was a reason to her laxity. She was trying to break him down. It started with the sudden lack of clothes. He’d come in, finding her in various levels of undress. The worst was the morning she came out of her shower in a wet white towel too soaked—and too worn—to be any deterrent to his sight. Her building hardly had any windows and the ceiling fans did almost nothing for the heat, so her lame excuse of being hot had enough truth to it that he couldn’t complain. His dick might throb, but it wasn’t complaining.

It wasn’t getting satisfied, either. She teased, she pranced and she all but dripped sex left and right—something that had to be making her as nuts as it was making him—but she wasn’t getting any until she said the magic words.

After a moment of quiet, Lucas realized Kyle hadn’t said anything in a while. In fact, his silence seemed thoughtful—a frightening prospect if ever there was one. Lucas figured out how much so when his brother finally broke it.

“She’s going to figure it out, Luc. If she hasn’t already.”

“Figure what out?”

“You’re dating. Creatively, I’ll give you that, but it’s turning into something that resembles a relationship and I’m telling you, she’s going to notice.”

Lucas tried not to be irritated. Kyle sounded almost logical. Such behavior should be encouraged. Usually. “What do you mean,
resembles
?”

“I mean to
you
, this is a relationship. Something you can keep going until you unwrap the real Belinda beneath all her bullshit and attitude and then you’ll get to keep her. To
her
, this is a game. A way to have you and not have to make it real.”

Maybe Kyle was better off stupid.

“I know it’s the last thing you want to hear, but you can’t keep walking around in a fog. I’m worried you’re going to get hurt, man.
Again
.”

Lucas leaned back in his chair, frowning. All right, maybe stupid was a harsh word. Kyle was probably right. He even knew Kyle was genuinely concerned. His brother was the only one who knew how badly he’d taken losing Belinda as a kid, the only one who knew the truth about his first year in Massachusetts. But he’d come too far to back away when he felt so close to breaking through. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t real now. It
would
be.

“She’s worth the hurt.” His voice sounded like a growl to his own ears.

“Have you given any thought to why she’s this way?”

Smart men knew when to end a conversation, but he was feeling a little too like his twin to do it. “What do you mean?”

“I told you a while back that you’re not the only reason Belinda bites men’s heads off if they so much as say hello to her.”

He wasn’t so sure about that. He’d had that effect on other women, too. “So?”

“So, if you’re sure you want to keep going with this game of yours, maybe you want to think about your strategy for dealing with who Belinda really is when you finish digging her out.”

“Are you looking for the Yoda award, Kyle, because you’re being cryptic and you suck at it.”

“Do you
remember
her father?” Kyle said in exasperation. “Truck driver. Roughly the size of a redwood. Lots of plaid and baseball caps? Is he ringing a bell, because it should be pretty damn obvious, Lucas.”

“I remember him, all right.” He just didn’t like to think about him. It wasn’t often, but nights when Adam Riggs was home, sometimes the yelling next door went into the early hours of the morning. There were times he’d snuck out to check on Belinda through her bedroom window. She was often there, arms around her endless supply of siblings. He still hated himself for the nights when she wasn’t.

He’d told her once that he’d keep his window open for her, if she ever needed somewhere to hide. She’d punched him in the shoulder, pretending he was out of his mind. But he still kept that window open for her, and every now and then, in the earliest hours of the morning on the nights when the yelling had been at its worst, he used to swear she’d been there, sitting on the sill.

“You think that kind of childhood’s not going to leave a person with scars?” Kyle demanded.

No, he knew she had her scars. Knew each and every one as if they were on his own body, evidence of his inability to protect her. The slim crevasse at the corner of her eye, the two empty spaces in her teeth on the right side, the deep dent in her left side where her ribs had been cracked when she was fifteen. No one could ignore the small shift of her nose, high on the bridge, giving her beauty a hardened edge. He remembered the broken fingers, the split lips, the days when she didn’t talk because her jaw was too sore… He’d seen them all—on her body, in her eyes—and he’d certainly felt the results of them over the years. “Her sisters have scars. They’ve gotten married.”

He’d reassured himself with that as each Riggs daughter found a mate, given himself hope with the thought that, someday, he might be able to bring Belinda around. First marriage, maybe even children. A simple dream for so many, probably the most difficult goal he could imagine for himself because if it didn’t happen with Belinda, it wouldn’t happen with anyone.

“You and I both know she is not like her sisters,” Kyle continued, making Lucas’s hopes sound foolish. “They won’t talk about those days, but how many scars do you think they have compared to her? How much guilt do you think they drag around? She protected them like they were
her
kids. Why do you think they let her get away with whatever she does?”