Put Me Back Together (26 page)

“Lucas,” I said, trying in vain to gently detach his face from mine—and a little amused by his obliviousness.

“Hmm?” he said, finally breaking his kiss to look at me.

“I think we just gave a soccer mom the shock of her life,” I said, gesturing toward the windows and the strangely large number of people in the parking lot at that very minute, all of who could clearly see into the car. The windows hadn’t even had a chance to fog up completely.

His arms still around me, Lucas popped his head up and glanced around, then burrowed his face in my neck to stifle a laugh. “I feel like I’m fifteen again,” he said sheepishly. I was too busy laughing along with him to bother mentioning that nothing like this had ever happened to me at fifteen.

Grabbing our coats, Lucas placed them on top of me as I continued to try to wiggle the tiny black dress Anita had lent me into its proper place on my body.

“You don’t think anyone really saw anything, do you?” I said as he pulled the car out into traffic and started driving at least twenty kilometers per hour over the speed limit. Mortification was really starting to set in as I thought about exactly what we’d been doing, and how I’d been feeling, just moments before.

“Whatever they saw, I’m pretty sure it was totally hot, so you have nothing to be embarrassed about,” he answered. “I’m not. I don’t care who sees us together.”

Pulling on my beige trench coat, I buttoned it up all the way to the neck, trying in vain to button away my earlier half-nakedness. “Oh really?” I said. “Even if all your friends had walked by? Even if it was Taylor?” I knew we’d covered the Taylor issue the day before, but I didn’t really feel like he’d explained it away to my satisfaction. It was hard to understand how he could be so uninterested in a girl who matched him so perfectly and choose me instead.

Lucas gave me a look before turning his eyes back to the road. He barely braked the car as he took a turn, making the tires squeal. “Do you think I’m driving this fast because I’d rather be with Taylor right now?”

“Maybe,” I said meekly, the beginnings of a grin pulling at my lips.

“Just for that, I’m going to take my time unbuttoning all those buttons,” he said, pointing a warning finger at me. “It’s going to be torture for you.”

“Torture” suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

He brought the car to a sudden halt, yanking up the parking brake, and I realized we were in front of my building. Anxiety prickled at my skin at the sight of it. I’d thought maybe we were going to his room in Victoria Hall, which I’d never seen, but then he did have three roommates and he knew I lived all alone. It made sense that he would bring me here, to the place where just yesterday we’d made out on my bed. He didn’t have any idea that my apartment had become tainted to me. I’d had him pick me up on a random street corner earlier, making up an excuse that I’d been at a friend’s place picking up some notes I’d lent her, both the friend and the notes figments of my imagination. That white lie weighed on me as Lucas opened my door and pressed another kiss to my lips. How many other little lies would I be telling tonight to the boy I didn’t want to lie to, I wondered.

I was still lost in these thoughts as we entered the building and I placed my key into the second lobby door. Lucas was watching me expectantly.

“Are you inviting me in, Katie?” he said, nuzzling my neck, his fingers already unbuttoning the top button of my jacket to give him better access.

All of a sudden the building didn’t seem quite so menacing, and I found the particular worries I’d been harboring fizzling to nothing under Lucas’s touch. What was I so worried about, anyway? What could happen? Lucas was with me.

“Yes,” I murmured into his ear. This was followed by more yeses as he pressed me against the glass door until it opened under our weight and we literally fell into the lobby, nearly landing in a heap.

Grabbing my keys out of the door, Lucas dangled them from his finger. “Race you to the top!” he said then ran for the stairs.

I swallowed once before following him, his words echoing painfully in my mind.

“Race you to the tracks, Katie!”

“You heard him, Katie Kat. You’d better hurry now. If I get there first, who knows what might happen.”

“You call that racing?” Lucas called down to me in a whisper, and I looked up at him. The memory dissolved when I saw his face and that dimpled grin waiting for me.

“I’m coming,” I called, the same words I’d spoken years before, but I put it out of my mind, because looking back was doing me no good. I wanted to look forward. So I cleared a path through the memories and ran after Lucas, hoping maybe, just maybe, we could look forward together.

This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened on my couch.

The moment we walked in the door of my apartment Lucas pulled me down onto it, seating me on his lap. I only had a second to think about the fact that I was literally sitting on top of him, every cake and ice cream-loving pound of me, when his mouth found mine. His hand ran up my thigh as though he wanted to start exactly where we’d left off in the car, and all thinking went right out the window.

“Finally alone,” Lucas said, the hand he’d placed on my thigh making a soft circular motion on my skin, making me feel very much as though I were a wind-up toy. With each turn of the circle, he was turning me on. “It was very forward thinking of you not to have any roommates,” he went on as he kissed across my jaw and over my chin, then downward, toward the low V-neck of my dress. “Thank you for orchestrating this moment.”

“Well, I aim to please,” I breathed as his mouth found the base of my cleavage, that place where my breasts intersected, and I felt his warm tongue lick me in that perfect spot, his hands griping my hips. The heat that had been rising between us sparked into a fire and I parted my lips and began to pant, afraid that if I didn’t I might burn right up.

This time he’d taken off his suit jacket along with his coat, and as my hands pressed into his shirt I could feel the muscles of his chest pressing back. What did a chest that felt like that look like, I wondered dizzily, and before I could stop myself I’d reached forward and unbuttoned the two top buttons of his shirt. My hands stilled and so did Lucas’s as we both realized what I’d just done.

“Are you undressing me, Miss Archer?” Lucas said, and though he was trying to tease his voice had suddenly gone hoarse.

“No,” I said quickly and perhaps not too convincingly, since I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the expanse of smooth, muscled chest I’d revealed. In a sudden fit of daring I leaned forward and placed a kiss in the exact spot he’d just kissed me, eliciting a tortured noise from deep in Lucas’s throat that I dearly wanted to hear again. And again. And again.

Leaning forward, I let my lips slide against Lucas’s cheek until I reached his ear. “When you make that noise, it makes me lose my mind,” I said. Then I leaned back again, letting my eyes meet his only to find they weren’t gold at all anymore. They were so dilated they were black as night.

Placing his hands under my arms, I felt Lucas lifting me slightly off of his lap and then back down again, this time with one leg on either side of his so I was straddling him. My breath caught in my throat at this sudden, more intimate position and I gripped his biceps hard as he slipped his hands up both my thighs this time, not stopping where he had before, but reaching farther, until his hands were cupping my ass under my dress.

It was at this moment that it occurred to me that maybe I should tell Lucas I was a virgin.

It wasn’t like I’d been keeping it from him. I just hadn’t thought the night would go like this. All our wrestling on the bed the night before had seemed like a distant dream after a night of no sleep, and by the time morning came I’d chalked it up to male hormones. My own hormones were a whole other matter. But never in a million years had I imaged that tonight I’d be straddling him on my couch, telling him he was making me lose my mind. Things like this just didn’t happen in my life. For good reason.

As his lips made their journey down my cleavage again, his mouth so incredibly close to my breasts that I thought I might go mad if he didn’t kiss them, my nervousness made me pant even harder.

Where did Lucas think this was going? I was pretty sure I knew where he wanted it to go, if the way his hands were gripping my ass was any indication. But every make-out session didn’t have to end in sex, did it? Or did it? What did I know? All I had to go on were Emily’s stories, and I could hear her voice in my head right now telling me this was Lucas Matthews. If Lucas knew one thing, it was how to screw, and girls all over campus wiggled right out of their panties at his very first kiss. Well, I hadn’t taken my panties off—although I realized I had mentioned that he might get to see them earlier—but I had started undressing him.

Oh God
, I thought, i
s that some kind of a signal?

Was I leading him on? Was I a tease?

Did I want to have sex with Lucas tonight? Was I going to have sex with Lucas tonight?

I heard him sigh and bring his face up to meet mine, kissing me lightly on the mouth. “I’m getting the feeling I don’t have your full attention,” he said, pushing a lock of my hair behind my ear before returning his hand to my butt. He really seemed to like it down there.

“No, you do,” I lied. I wondered what I should do to make him stop looking at me with that questioning expression. Maybe kiss his chest again?

“Katie,” Lucas said softly. “I don’t know if you realize this, but your body is very responsive.”

I don’t think I’d ever turned beet red before. With my skin colour I didn’t even think it was possible. After that moment I didn’t have to wonder anymore. It was possible. My cheeks had never burned so hot in my life. I had to cover my face with my hands to block out my mortification. “Oh my God, shut up!” I cried.

“I’m not saying it to embarrass you,” Lucas said, pulling at my hands, though I kept them clamped over my eyes. “All I’m saying is considering what I was just doing to you, it was easy to tell your mind was elsewhere. You were barely paying attention. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, louder than any drum. I gazed into his kind eyes, afraid to speak. Would it matter to him? Would it turn him off? Would it make him walk away?

And if he did, could I stand it?

“Are you—” Lucas began until I interrupted him, graceless to the last.

“I’m a virgin,” I blurted.

Lucas clamped his mouth shut but didn’t break our gaze. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but I did feel him take his hands off my ass and smooth my dress down over it.

“I’m sorry, that was stupid,” I said, frowning.

“What’s stupid? Being a virgin is stupid, or telling me about it?” Lucas said, rubbing my arms lightly. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

Peering at his face, it began to dawn on me that he didn’t seem particularly perturbed. In fact, he didn’t even seem all that surprised.

“You already knew, didn’t you?” I said, and the fact that he didn’t deny it right away gave me my answer. “Oh, just kill me now,” I moaned, pressing my forehead into his shoulder. I tried to scramble off his lap, but he held me in place by my legs.

“Katie,” he murmured into my ear. “Don’t hide from me.”

“This is mortifying!” I said still refusing to raise my head. “Here I thought I was being all hot and seductive, and all this time you knew I had no idea what I was doing!”

“Who really knows what they’re doing, anyway?” Lucas said flippantly. “And for the record, I think you were doing a pretty good job at seducing me. For your first try, I’d say that was an expert-level performance. Two thumbs up.”

I punched him on the arm. “Stop trying to make me laugh, I’m too embarrassed.”

“What’s so embarrassing about being inexperienced?” he said, running his fingers up and down my spine, sending fluttering waves through my body.

This time I did look up at him. “Think about how old you were when you first had sex.” I could see his mind going back to that day. “Right, now subtract that number by how old I am right now, and maybe you’ll get why this is so embarrassing. I bet you were having sex when you were fourteen.”

Lucas pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling.

“Oh my God!” I cried. “You really were fourteen! You must think I’m a freak.”

His hand reached up and covered my mouth. “Don’t say things like that about yourself,” he said, which quieted me. Nobody had ever interrupted the hateful dialogue in my head before, probably because I never said it out loud in front of anyone. I didn’t quite know how to react. “You know what I thought when I figured it out? I thought, how could this stunning girl have possibly managed to escape the notice of every guy she’s ever met in her nineteen years on Earth? Because if I’d been there…well, let’s just say your high school memories would be a little more X-rated.”

This made me feel a little better, though not completely. “How’d you figure it out, anyway? Am I that bad of a kisser?”

“I don’t know, let’s check,” Lucas said, leaning in and placing his lips on mine, teasing my mouth open with his. He smiled against my lips. “Seems pretty great to me.”

“How, then?”

“Remember the day when we went to the basketball game, when I leaned you up against the car?” he said.