The Love Series Complete Box Set (143 page)

After a long pause where the silence in the room falls upon us, she finally says, “I’m really happy with you.” She leans in close to me, resting her cheek on my shoulder.

A confused chuckle passes my lips. “That’s a good thing, sweetness. I am happy with you too. Happier than I ever thought I would be, actually.” Kissing the top of her head, I feel her smile against my shoulder. “So if we’re both happy, what’s with the sad face suddenly?”

She jerks upright. “Oh, it’s not sad. Really, it’s not. I promise.” I tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss her forehead, silently prompting her to continue. “It’s just guilt I guess.”

She smoothes her fingers over my furrowed brow. “That didn’t come out right,” she backtracks and takes a deep breath. “Please don’t ever think I feel guilty about being with you. It’s just so much, so fast. I worry I’m not doing the right thing.” Her adorable face is knotted in confusion.

“Would you like to explain that to me from the bath?” I reach behind us and test the water. “Before it gets too cold.”

“See, that’s just the thing. Here I am, hopping into a bath with a man I barely know, who I’ve only just started seeing, who I let in my house all day while I was gone, who I called after only knowing him one night because someone broke into my house, who I begged to stay the night . . .”

“Shh.” I press my finger to her running one-hundred-miles-an-hour lips. “Look, I don’t know how things are
supposed
to go. But don’t say you barely know me when you know me better than anyone else has. I’m no good at letting people in, so I’m sorry if my . . .” I search my brain for the right word and I just can’t find it, “ . . . if my issues cause you to feel unsure about us, I’ll try my best to fix them. I will.”

“It’s not just your issues. I’ve got a boatload of my own too.” We both relax into one another. After a minute or two of just sitting here, considering everything we’ve both just said, Lucy surprises me by standing and stripping out of her clothes entirely.

Standing naked before me, she’s utterly beautiful and ridiculously adorable trying to be modest at the same time. She slinks into the water. Lightly patting the spot in front of her, she asks, “Are you going to join me?”

Not one who has to be asked twice to crawl into a bath with a gorgeously seductive and utterly confusing woman, I undress quickly and slide in with her. Sitting on opposite ends of the tub, I look at her inquisitively, quirking an eyebrow. “Change of heart, love?”

She crinkles her nose, shrugging a shoulder. “Maybe,” she says quietly. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone.”

I see her game now. Get naked, pull me into the bath and then drag my life story out of me. But as usual, I’m not afraid to open up to her. After splashing some hot water on my face, I decide to tell her about Brody. It’s not something that I talk about often. His injury is one of my deepest regrets, one for which I feel I’ll never be forgiven.

“A kid lost his leg because of me.” The shock and pity I expected to see on her face aren’t there. All I see is love and concern as she reaches for my hand through the water.

“Tell me about it.”

For the first time in my life, I tell someone about the whole thing. After it happened, I
had
to talk to the counselors at the medical office, but even then, I didn’t tell them everything. I was nothing more than a hotheaded kid at the time. I thought I would be able to deal with anything the world threw at me. Little did I know, I was so fucking wrong. After giving her the short version of how the accident happened, she glances down at my stomach, the top of my burn scar visible above the water line.

She scoots over to me, water splashing over the lip of the tub and ghosts her finger over the scar. “I wanted to ask about this the other night, but I figured you would tell me when you were ready.” I try to focus on her fingers as they dance across my skin, but the feeling never fully returned there. When she gets to my side, she notices the other scar. A six inch, raised and jagged line that sits atop my ribs.

“What’s this from?” she asks carefully, tilting her head to the side in concern.

Now that’s something I’ve never talked about with anyone, but here with Lucy I feel like I finally can. “That was from 9/11.”

“You don’t have to tell me. If it’s too much, I understand.”

Pulling her close to me, so that her back is pressed to my front, I twine our fingers together, letting them fall in her lap. I kiss the top of her head before taking a deep breath. “I wasn’t working that morning. I pulled a mutual with my partner because I had to come upstate to help Joe with Katie. Sara had just been admitted to a mental care facility and I couldn’t take medical leave for a few days. He needed me so I called in a favor. It cost Drew his life.” Reassuringly, she pulls our hands up to her lips and presses a soft kiss to my knuckles. “I went for a run that morning and just as I was leaving to go to Joe’s, the first plane crashed into the first tower. All of the bridges and tunnels were closed so I ran through the Lincoln tunnel and found the closest firehouse. I grabbed some bunker gear and got right to work. By the time I was able to get there, the towers were both gone.”

Cupping my hands together, I wet her hair and then squeeze some shampoo into my palm. Working a lather into her silky hair relaxes me enough to tell her the rest. “I spent the first few hours there just trying to find someone I knew, someone who knew Drew and where he could have been. It wasn’t until late the next day that I learned he never made it out.” I rinse her hair when I can’t find the rest of the words I need to finish my story.

“It was the most horrific day of my entire life. People jumped. They plummeted hundreds of stories because we couldn’t save them all. And to know that one of those lives were lost as a direct result of something I did . . .” I choke back my rising emotions. It’s not a day I let myself think of often, but it’s one that haunts every moment of my existence.

“You have to know it’s not your fault. Please tell me you understand that, Evan.” Lucy nuzzles into my chest and I hold her close.

Drawing from her calmness, I say, “I know it now, but it took me a long time to figure that out.”

After a few minutes, I take a deep breath and finish, “In the days following the attacks, I worked twelve hour shifts at Ground Zero, digging through heaps of twisted steel and crumbled concrete to find him. Another firefighter heard his last radio call, so we had an idea of where to look for him. I was just hoping to be lucky enough to find him, to at least return his body to his family.”

Lucy leans into my touch as I work some conditioner through her long hair, combing through it lightly with my fingertips. “I found his helmet first, crushed on one side and bloodstained in the lining. In that instant, I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure even existed that he died quickly. We found his body later that day. Pulling him out of the rubble, we draped his body in a flag, not allowing any time to truly mourn our losses. Staying focused on finding more fallen brothers was the only thing that got me out of bed. I gave up on life in those months. There were so many funerals to attend, so much loss and sadness. It was easier to shut down than open up. He had a family, too. Two little girls and a boy on the way. And it was all my fault he died.”

Lucy nuzzles into my chest and I hold her close, fighting back my demons. “So that,” I tip my chin down to where her finger is still tracing over the scar, “is from the cancer. I had to have a portion of the lower right lobe removed. I was lucky they caught it in time, before it spread.”

Lucy moves quickly, sloshing more water over the edge of the tub. She sits on my lap, chest to chest, and wraps her legs around my waist. She doesn’t speak for a few long moments. “That’s why you spent your life alone.” It’s a statement, not a question.

Holding her slick body to mine, I nod as she tucks her head under my chin. “Maybe we know each other better than I think. I mean, we’ve got more in common that I thought.” I stare down at her, more than a little confused.

“We’re both so afraid to lose again, that we never let anyone in,” she clarifies. “It was the same for me after Jimmy died. I lost myself to being Melanie’s mom, to doing what was best for her. I dated casually, more because Linda made me, but I never let anyone close. The thought of loving someone the way I loved Jimmy scared the crap out of me. Knowing a new love could be ripped from my life, just like Jimmy, I just couldn’t deal with that. So I chose not to, and well, here I am.” Gazing into her eyes, I get lost there. Her pain is so much like mine—it’s as if we were cleaved from the same stone. Sure, I’ve had a difficult time getting over my own loses, but Lucy suffered the loss of her husband. She has been truly alone, and my heart hurts for what she’s had to go through.

I rinse her hair one last time as she looks up at me. “I think
here,
” she wiggles in my lap suggestively, “is a pretty fantastic place to be.”

“Oh, love, I couldn’t agree more,” I groan as I take her mouth in a passionate kiss. Her fingers tangle in my hair as we devour each other. Tongues dance and twine, teeth crash and nibble, and the sparks fly between us. Wrapping her hair around my wrist, I pull her head back and lick the long expanse of her delicate neck. Biting softly at her collarbone forces a moan from her lips. With my other hand, I toy with her breast, pulling lightly on the hardened tip.

When she starts grinding against me, I remember her initial reservations at even getting into the tub. “Easy, love.” She stops and looks at me, confusion paired with a touch of rejection.

I pull a wet strand of hair from across her forehead before brushing my knuckles gently down her flushed cheek. “You were worried we were going too fast.” Looking down at our legs wrapped around one another in a bathtub is the perfect backdrop of irony for what I’m about to say. “I don’t want to do anything you might have reservations about. If you feel like this is too much, too fast, then I can take a step back. We’ll keep it casual.”

She crinkles her nose as she wiggles her hips against me. “Yeah, something about this,” she adds another wiggle, “doesn’t feel casual.” It takes physical restraint not to push up into her. I wonder if she realizes how fucking sexy she is.

“Get over here.” I shake my head and smirk, wrapping my arms around her back. “This is definitely more than casual, but I don’t want you to . . .”

Her soft lips push against mine; her tongue licks across the seam of mine, seeking entrance. “I do want this, but I guess I’m just scared,” she admits quietly as she curls her head into the crook of my neck.

I mumble against her hair, “Me too, love. Me too.” She pulls back out of my arms and searches my face. “But what if we promise to be scared together. Screw what we’re supposed to do, how slow or how fast we’re supposed to move, what we’re supposed to label things. Let’s just be together and enjoy being happy for the first time in a long time.” I can only hope that’s what she wants, too.

She kisses me seductively and I know she can feel me hardening and pulsing between us despite the cooling water. “That sounds like a perfect plan. Now, will you take me to bed so that I can show you my plan?” Winking playfully, she unfolds herself from my lap and struts out of the tub, all sexy-as-sin. Standing at the edge of her bed, which is visible from the tub, she crooks her finger at me, but says nothing.

Who am I not to listen to that?

I tie a towel around my waist and walk toward her. “You won’t be needing this,” she rasps as she slips the knot free. Taking the towel in both of her hands, she rubs it across my body, drying me off, before she pushes my shoulders down, forcing me to sit on the edge of the bed. Her plan comes into focus—as does her perfect ass—as she leans down to run the towel up her legs and across, wiping the tiny beads of water lingering there.

She steps in between my legs and pushes me further back on the bed, crawling over me as I scoot toward the headboard. Pressing her body fully against mine, I feel the heat of her arousal on my twitching thigh. I grab her ass, pulling her close to me as our mouths mate with animal-like ferocity. Breaking the seal of our lips, she looks up at me, eyes wide and with so much passion that they’re more black than blue.

“I want to kiss you,” she pauses a beat before adding, “all over” in a seductive rasp that makes me throb with need. Her tongue glides effortlessly down my neck and across my still-wet collarbone. Placing hot, open-mouth kisses across my chest, she more than surprises me when he licks my nipple. Falling lower, she reverentially moves her lips across my scars, making sure to look up at me before she nuzzles her cheek against them. “Your body is amazing, but these, they just prove what a beautiful soul you have too.”

Her words strip me bare. Here I am thinking she’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever met inside and out, and now she’s telling me that she feels the same about me. Some of the fear from earlier melts away as she places one last kiss to the scar above my lung.

Raking her nails down my thighs, she kneels in between my legs and stares down at me, passion and desire heavy on her face.

With a feather-light touch, she traces the tip of her pointer finger up and down my erection, from root to tip and back again. When she wraps her hand delicately around me, it’s an instinct to push up into her palm. “You’re so good with your hands,” I ground out from behind my clenched jaw.

“Would it be okay if I try my mouth?” Her shyness is completely disarming and utterly beautiful.

“This is me and you. You can do anything you want, love. But don’t you dare do anything because you think you
have
to, or because you think I want it.” Despite my words, I want to beg her to wrap her hot, wet mouth around me.

“No,” she declares with a confidence that negates her shyness from a moment ago. “
I
want this. I just want it to be good for you. It’s been so long . . .” Her words fade away and even though she never finishes her sentence, I know what she wanted to say.

On a deep breath, she leans her face down into my lap, pressing her hot lips to the wide crown. When her tongue glides across the underside of the tip, I fist the sheet, a white-knuckled grip. “Fuck, Lucy,” I groan her name as it takes every ounce of restraint to keep from pushing past her lips.