Page 31 of Drum Me Away
I shook my head. “Why do you want to break up?” I asked. I was still chickenshit. All those years of living with my parents and pretending I didn’t care that there was no affection being passed around, pretending I didn’t care that I could never please my own mother, that my father was basically an absentee parent—I was probably a little stilted in the expressing emotions department.
“I want out of the fake relationship,” he said slowly, his gaze steady on my face, his arms still crossed over his muscular chest. I could see his tendons, pulled so tightly it was a wonder they didn’t snap.
I cleared my throat. “What happens when we’re officially broken up?”
“Is there a reason you keep saying it like it’s real?”
I flapped my hand, my gaze bouncing everywhere except to him. “I just…it feels real. Recently. You know, since you decided you wanted to break up. And I…I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what to do.”
He stayed perfectly still while seconds that felt like days dragged by, then, abruptly, he stalked across the small space between us, towering over me, watching my face. I could see his heartbeat, pulsing in his neck, far faster than normal.
“Other than talking about your grandmother, that is the most emotion you have expressed to me in years, Faith.Years.”
I twined my fingers together. “I may have a slight problem with emotions. As in, I don’t do them. I don’t know how.”
“I can show you. If you let me.”
My knees wobbled. Was it weird that this felt so right? Like, I’d been waiting my whole life for this moment?
With Lucas?
The real question in all this was why I waited so long to see the light, so to speak, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment by voicing that concern. Did it really matter? We were here, right now, and the next move was very clearly mine.
I could step back, out of the bathroom, break this spell that had fallen over us, and we would be right where we were thirty minutes ago. Nothing had to change.
And we’d both be unhappy, in our own ways.
Or, I could open up, at least a little. Enough for him to be willing to take a chance. A real chance.
On me.
God, had anyone ever taken a chance on me before in my life? Well, I suppose my bandmates had when we decided to make this gig our careers.
And Lucas was part of the band. Hell, he’d been taking chances on me for damn near half my life.
And I hadn’t seen it. Until now.
I pressed my hand to his chest, where his beating heart kicked into accelerated overdrive. Those deep, deep blue eyes stared into mine. My own heart felt like it was trying to break free of my rib cage, it was thumping so hard, so fast.
Kiss me.
One side of his mouth lifted into a half smirk. “Before I do, you need to understand that it’s going to be real this time.”
I swallowed thickly and nodded without breaking eye contact.
He stepped closer, and when I didn’t move my hand from his chest, he picked it up and wrapped it around his back. and oh God, I curled my fingers against bare skin, still warm from the shower.
And then there was nothing between our bodies but my clothes, his towel, and his erection—which was most definitely fully hard now. Not an inch of space, not an ounce of air.
Heat spread through me like lava, curling and twisting through my veins, so warm that I was half afraid I might combust before anything good happened.
And then his lips were descending, and my lids fluttered closed while my own kisser puckered in response.
It wasn’t like any of those kisses before.
Have I mentioned how fabulous those kisses were?
They were clearly practice for the real thing. Because this, this was chock full of taste and emotions and I couldn’t even begin to name what all was swirling between us as his tongue stroked against mine, sweeping into my mouth, possessing me until my knees quaked again, and this time I damn near fell to the floor.
