Lucca won’t hurt me. He won’t.
The door to the bathroom opens, and steam billows into the bedroom. Lucca walks out with a towel slung over his shoulder. His hair is still soaked, and beads of water glisten on his skin. He looks like a damn god, dangerous and sharp.
“What the fuck are you doing?” His voice is filled with venomous rage, but his eyes darken and flicker with desire that burns as it moves over every inch of exposed skin.
I swallow around the knot in my throat. “I want you.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You want me?”
“Yes, I want you to be my first.”
He’s told me before how things are with him, but I’m not any of the other women he’s been with. I’m different, and he knows that.
The sides of his mouth tick up, but he’s not smiling. It’s like he’s disgusted, but that can’t be right because I know he wants me. Anger takes root in my heart. I will not let him push me away. Not again.
“I know you want me, Lucca. I see it. I feel it. You try to distance yourself, and you lie and say you aren’t jealous, but I know you are. You want this as much as I do. You’re just afraid,” my voice cracks, giving away my emotions, “afraid to feel something for me, afraid to admit the truth.”
A war wages inside of him. I see the battle playing out on his face. He’s grappling for control.
“If I touched you like I want to touch you, you would never forgive me, and I would never forgive myself.”
“You’re a good man, Lucca, and you’ve never hurt me. I trust you.”
A sinister laugh that numbs me to the bone slips from his mouth. “See, that’s the problem. You’re too trusting and too naive for your own good, and I think it’s time I proved to you just how bad I am.”
The light in Lucca’s eyes shuts off, and when he blinks, the man before me is the one that killed my father, the man who murders and kills without care. Like a wounded animal, my first thought is to retreat, but that would do me no good.
If I run, then he will chase, but if I do nothing… I don’t know what will happen. I trust Lucca, but do I trust this side of him?
“Run…” he orders. “Do it. I can see you want to run. To hide. Maybe you don’t trust me with your fragile heart after all?”
Dropping the towel to the floor, he stalks toward me. Fear zings up my back, and a bright neon sign blinks in my mind, warning me, telling me I’ve made a grave mistake, but how will I ever know if I’ve made a mistake if I haven’t even tried?
“I…” my voice trembles, “I trust you, and I still want you.”
He stops directly in front of me, and his chest brushes against mine. He looks down at me, and I crane my neck back to look up at him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see his hand moving toward my breast. With two fingers, he grabs the hardened tip and pinches it, causing a jolt of both pleasure and pain in my abdomen.
Leaning into my good ear, his teeth graze the sensitive skin there before he asks, “Is this what you want, little girl?”
I normally hate when he calls me that, but this seems different. He is using it in a twisted, perverted way, and I don’t know how to process the change. Lucca is not that much older than me. There are only eight years between us, and I’ve always felt much older than I am. The problem is Lucca is also older than his age in many ways.
Life has aged us, turning the handle on our clock faster than the average person’s.
“No. I want more. I want all of you.”
With those words, I set into action events that we can never come back from. Before I can grasp what is going on, Lucca pounces on me, shoving me back against the bed. Confusion gives way to fear when he spreads my legs and centers himself between them. I can feel his throbbing erection, and my want glistens against my folds, but I didn’t want it to happen like this. I didn’t want to be taken by him like all the others before me.
Lifting a hand to his face, I try to get him to look at me, to see me, but he grabs both hands and pins them to the bed above my head. I’m helplessly trapped.
“Is this what you want, Claire?” he hisses through his teeth.
I shake my head, just as tears form in my eyes. He’s holding me down with little effort, and no matter how much I buck against him, it’s like trying to move a brick wall.