Joss

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I woke up disoriented. Where was I? How had I gotten here?

Sleeping on park benches and in bus stations, you never really truly fall asleep, never totally relax your guard, so there’s no chance of falling so deeply asleep that you risk waking up disoriented. When was the last time I slept in a real bed? Edmonton? A trucker had taken me from Saskatoon to Edmonton, dropping me off at a no-tell motel sort of place outside Edmonton at three in the morning. The night clerk had seen me get dropped off by the trucker and assumed the worst about me. The jerk propositioned me—a free night in a room if I’d blow him. I told him to go fuck himself and turned to leave, and then thought better of it. I turned around with a proposition in return. I’d work for free cleaning rooms the next day in exchange for a room for the night.

He agreed because his cleaning lady had quit the day before, and he was facing the prospect of having to make up the rooms himself before he could go home after his shift. I sweetened the deal, telling him I’d stay on for a few days, cleaning rooms in exchange for the room for the night and some cash under the table.

I did that job for almost a week, sleeping in a room as far from the creepy-ass night clerk as possible, with the chain on the door and a chair propped under the doorknob. I cleaned rooms all day. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, the motel’s business was even more brisk during the day than it was at night—mostly cheating assholes meeting their side pieces for afternoon sleaziness, drug dealers selling their wares, and prostitutes selling theirs. Being a place that rented by the hour as well as by the night, I often ended up cleaning the same room several times in a day, which was fine by me, as it meant I got paid. And sometimes, I even got tipped by the patrons.

That week in the motel outside Edmonton netted me enough cash to get me the whole leg from Edmonton to Prince George. By the time I’d gotten picked up by a kindly long-distance trucker named Mark outside Fort Fraser, my cash was nearly gone, which was the only reason I’d had to accept his charity in the first place.

I opened my eyes, blinking at the white snow-filtered light streaming in through the window over my head. The bed I was in was distinctly masculine—red-and-black checkered flannel sheets and a down comforter in a black duvet. The pillow under my cheek had a masculine scent—shampoo, a hint of cologne, and just that man-smell, which jarred memories of climbing into Mom and Dad’s bed and sleeping between them. Dad’s pillow always smelled like the one I was on, and there was something comforting and nostalgic about it.

Lucian.

Our hours of conversation last night flooded through me, hours spent pouring myself out to him. I avoided the touchy stuff—Mom and Dad’s death, and those hellish weeks and months immediately afterward—but I told him things I’d never told anyone. I shared the small stuff, the minutiae, that in some ways defines who we are as people. I told him about eating a mushroom I found in the backyard as a little girl, and getting so sick I had to be rushed to the ER, about failing English class my sophomore year for refusing to read The Scarlet Letter because I’d found the book unutterably horrible and boring and stupid and irrelevant and hadn’t wanted to be bothered with it, which I think the teacher had recognized. I told Lucian about my breakup with my best friend my freshman year, how we’d quarreled over a guy we’d both liked, and the fight had spiraled out of control, but by the time we realized how stupid the whole thing was, the damage had been done and too many nasty things had been said to overcome, and we’d never hung out again.

He, in turn, told me about growing up with seven brothers, being the second youngest, the struggle of being raised by an older brother who was still really just a kid himself, having an absentee alcoholic father. Lucian had idolized his father, until their mother passed, and then his father had shut down and Lucian had been disenchanted, to say the least. He told me a lot about the places he’d seen, how he’d walked across much of southeast Asia by himself, catching rides here and there, occasionally taking a train or bus, working for meals and living on a shoestring, as he called it. While his travels had been voluntary, as in he’d at least had a home to go back to, I still understood him on a visceral level, and he understood me the same way. Unless you’ve lived a vagabond life, you can’t really understand what it’s like, and Lucian is the only person I’ve ever met who genuinely understands.

I sat up, feeling more rested and refreshed than I had in…god, so long.

A glance out the window told me the blizzard was still in full force outside, perhaps even worse than yesterday. Snow was piled on the sidewalks several feet deep, and even higher in drifts in some places, and the snow was still flying so thickly the water across the street was totally obscured.

Looked like I wasn’t going anywhere for at least another day.

There are worse places to be stuck—the thought popped up in my head and refused to go away. I mean, yes…Lucian has been kind. He saved my life, and he let me take a shower and got me clean clothes and fed me, and his family seemed to accept me without question, his brother’s pushy interrogation notwithstanding.

And yeah, none of the Badd brothers were exactly hard on the eyes, Lucian especially.

God, that man. Those deep, dark, expressive eyes, and his long, thick, wavy brown hair? His features, thin and sharp and otherworldly in their beautiful perfection. He wouldn’t need a wig or makeup to play an elf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings—just give the man pointy ears and he’d be an elf. Orlando who? Lucian was Legolas, but way sexier.

I mean, his name was Lucian, for god’s sake. How cool was that?

Why did my pulse thunder just thinking about him?

The entire time we’d been talking last night, I’d been tempted to hold his hand, which I’d refused to let myself do. I’d also wanted to trace those sharp, high cheekbones with my fingers, and the line of his lips. I’d found myself wanting another look at him without his shirt on.

None of those thoughts were even remotely like me. I wasn’t that type of girl, and my life didn’t lend itself to idle, unproductive nonsense like being attracted to guys. Surviving took every ounce of energy and every second of my day, and I didn’t dare trust anyone that far. Not with my body, not with my safety.

I’d learned that the hard way, and wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

A lesson I’d do well to remember around Lucian. Just because he seemed nice, seemed kind, didn’t mean he was. It’s possible that he might expect some gesture of gratitude from me at some point, the way some guys seem to expect something in return. Granted, I’d learned to trust my gut when it came to which trucks to get into—one look at a guy, and I could reliably tell if I should trust him. I’d also learned the hard way to trust my gut, and that I was never wrong about men.

Lucian was the real deal—that’s what my gut told me. His brothers were the real deal, too. His sisters-in-law, well…I had no real, recent experience with women near my own age. Should I be their friend? I wanted to be; they all seemed like smart, sophisticated, fun, funny, cool girls, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. Of course, that made them as intimidating as hell. How could I measure up? I wasn’t educated like they all seemed to be, and I certainly couldn’t match Eva’s flawless fashion sense, or Claire’s brutally blunt and hysterical humor, or Dru’s easy, competent grace, or the twins’ effortless sense of worldly cool, or Mara’s fiercely feminine aura of strength.

Ugh. I’m falling into my own head.

My stomach rumbled, shaking me out of my thoughts. There was no clock in the room, which didn’t surprise me, as Lucian probably used his phone for an alarm, if he needed one at all. I had no concept of what time it was, not with the sun obscured, but judging from how stiff I was as I got out of the bed, and how hungry I felt, I suspected I’d slept really late.

I went across the hall and used the bathroom, and then made my way out into the living room, where I was greeted by a sight that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Lucian, wearing nothing but a pair of tiny, tight running shorts, was gripping a tension bar for pull-ups, hauling himself up in slow, smooth repetitions. His body was coated in sweat, his chest was heaving, and his muscles bunched and flexed as he pulled up, lowered himself, and pulled up again. I counted eight reps, and then he dropped to the ground in the pushup position, and began running in place, his knees driving up to his chest, palms flat on the floor. His back was to me as he did the mountain climbers, and I tried in vain to not appreciate how tight and hard his ass was, but failed miserably.

I found myself wondering if it was as hard and firm to the touch as it looked.

Probably.

My breath caught as he finished the mountain climbers. He went back to the tension bar, leapt up and caught the bar in both hands, and now, instead of pull-ups, he pointed his toes and lifted his stiffened, outstretched legs until his toes touched the lintel over his head, and then lowered them again, as slowly as he’d lifted them. He did this twenty-five times before dropping to the floor, gasping for breath. He wasn’t done, though. He dropped to the ground again and did pushups, fifty of them, slowly. His back rippled, and his arms flexed.

He saw me, I know he did, but his focus was total until he finished his pushups and leapt up to his feet. Facing away from me yet again, he squatted down so his butt was nearly touching the floor, and then leapt into the air with a single powerful spring, landing into a squat, and then leaping again.

This time, I didn’t bother trying to stop myself from staring. I just owned it. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? The man had an amazing ass, and it was right there in front of me, in action. Flexing, hardening, going taut as he leapt. Good god.

Should I be this faint? Why were my thighs quivering?

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I leaned against the wall and watched as he finished his jump-squats, and went back to the bar and began the entire circuit again—pull-ups, mountain climbers, pushups, jump-squats. He did the circuit through twice more without resting, at which point he was gasping for breath, chest heaving, dripping sweat.

He was nowhere near as bulky as his older three brothers, especially—Bast, Zane, and Bax. They were each monstrously muscled, heavy with muscle, like bulls or bears, whereas Lucian made me think of a wolf, lean and quick and powerful.

I thought, after the end of his fourth round, that he’d be done, but he wasn’t. He rested for a full sixty seconds—I counted—and then he dropped to the pushup position, did a pushup, and then jumped his feet underneath him, leapt into the air, dropped back down, did a pushup, and repeated the leap. After doing this twenty times, he collapsed on the floor on his back, gasping and sweating so bad I was honestly worried about him.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him—lying there gasping, each muscle of his abdomen rippled and flexed with each breath.

Finally, once he’d caught his breath, Lucian glanced at me. “Hi.”

I blinked hard, and forced my eyes away from those abs. “Uh, hey.”

He rolled to his feet in a lithe movement. “Hungry?”

I nodded. “Famished.” Following him into the kitchen, I glanced at the clock on the stove: 1:25 p.m. “Holy shit, it’s one thirty in the afternoon?”

He nodded as he began pulling out ingredients—some kind of flour, eggs, extracts, oil, baking powder. “Guess you needed sleep.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I gestured to the ingredients. “What are you making?”

“Pancakes.”

“You have a thing for breakfast food in the afternoon, huh?”

A shrug. “I have a thing for breakfast food in general.” He glanced at me as he mixed the ingredients together. “You know how to make pancakes?”

I shook my head. “Um, no. Not really.”

He smirked and shook his head as he set a griddle to heating. “What do you know how to make?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Kraft Mac ’n Cheese?”

He made a disgusted face. “That is not food.”

I flipped him off. “That shit was my jam, growing up, man. I made it every single day after school.”

He sighed. “I’ll make you real mac and cheese for dinner, tonight.”

Now that the griddle was heated, he waved me over to the stove and handed me the bowl with the batter. “Ladle out some of this onto the griddle. Just big enough to be about the size of your palm, or less. These are going to be thick so we’re making them on the small side. Do six.”

I did as he’d instructed, making six small circles of batter on the griddle, the air immediately filling with the scent of frying pancakes. While I did this, he was heating up another pan and adding frozen breakfast sausages, which sizzled as they cooked.

“When do I flip them?” I asked.

“When the batter is mostly solid on top.” He glanced at them. “Another minute or two.”

I started to panic—what if I messed them up, and ruined them? He didn’t seem worried, focusing instead on making coffee and turning the sausages.

“Should I flip them now?” I asked. “They look like what you said.”

He glanced again as he filled the carafe with water and dumped it into the coffee maker. “Yeah, they’re good. Go ahead and flip ’em.”

I carefully and nervously flipped them one by one, and felt an absurd burst of joy in the sense of completion. Lucian made sure I removed them when they were done, and then I managed to make the second batch all on my own, flipping them when they were a perfect golden brown. By the time the pancakes were done, Lucian had finished the sausages, and the coffee had finished brewing. We sat down together at the table, across from each other, took turns drizzling syrup and spreading around butter, and dug in.

“Damn—these are amazing!” I said.

He grinned at me. “You made ’em.”

“All I did was cook them, you made the batter.”

He finished a bite. “Wanna know the secret?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“The flour I used was a mixture of sprouted oats and almond flour, rather than traditional pancake mix. Makes them denser, and if you get the mix right, they’ll be just as fluffy, but twice as filling.”

“Well, damn. I had no idea you could even make flour from almonds.”

He shrugged. “I’m kind of the health food junkie of the family. Bax eats pretty healthy too, being an athlete and all.” He eyed me, hesitating. “How is it you don’t know how cook? I know I said I wouldn’t ask questions, but I’m super curious about this one.”

I ate in silence, not answering right away. I took a sip of coffee, breathed a deep sigh, and set my fork down.

“I can make a hell of a latte,” I said. “I just never learned how to cook.”

“You worked in a coffee shop?”

I shrugged, tilting my hand side to side. “Yes and no.”

He frowned at me. “You’ll have to clarify that one.”

“It’s complicated.”

He sighed as he finished his pancakes and took two more. “Seems like an innocuous enough of a question.”

“You’d think, but it’s not.”

“You really won’t tell me a damn thing about yourself, will you? I mean, not the real stuff.”

“I told you things last night that I’ve never told anyone. Seemed pretty real to me.” I felt anger rising, my quick-burning temper flaring.

“I know, I know—I’m sorry.” He held up his hands to forestall my impending outburst. “I just—it’s just that you dodge the weirdest shit.”

“My parents owned a cafe—a coffee shop and a bookstore. Mom shelved the books, Dad worked the espresso machine, and they took turns with the register. They were the only two employees, so they worked all day every day. I’d come home from school, do my homework, make a snack, and eventually head over to the cafe.” I let out a shaky breath. “As I got older, I helped out after school. Dad taught me to how to make lattes and cappuccinos and mochas and whatever, and I’d shelve the books and help with inventory, stuff like that. I’d stay with them until they closed at nine, and then we’d all go to dinner at this little mom-and-pop diner down the street, owned by friends of my parents’. Mom didn’t cook, and neither did Dad—although Dad would make us eggs or pancakes on Sunday mornings, the only day they opened late. I never learned, though. Dad would make them before I woke up, and he’d come in and get me up—waking up to breakfast on Sunday mornings was…it was magical.”

Lucian just stared at me, his gaze understanding, compassionate. “That sounds awesome.”

I nodded. “It was. It really was. But we were open from nine to nine six days a week, and from noon to seven on Sundays, which meant Mom and Dad never had time for home-cooked meals. I’d figure out my own breakfast, eat lunch at school, and dinner with them after work, at the diner. Breakfast on Sunday mornings, and then dinner again. I usually stayed home and caught up on homework or went to Maria’s for the afternoon on Sunday. But…cooking just wasn’t part of our life.”

“I grew up on bar food. Burgers, chicken tenders, fries, shit like that. When I was little, Mom would cook for us, but like I said before, she died when I was nine, and food for our family that wasn’t grilled or deep fried disappeared when she passed away.”

“Is that why you like healthy food?”

He nodded. “Partially. I got in shape and cleaned up my diet while I was overseas, and when I came back, I just had no interest in going back to living off bar food. I worked as a cook on several boats, so I learned how to make a lot of different stuff, and I just tweaked the ingredients to make them healthier.”

I couldn’t help the question. “How did your mom die?”

His eyes searched mine. I knew we’re both aware of the hypocrisy of my question—I asked him a question I wouldn’t answer myself.

“Brain cancer,” he said, eventually. “It was fast. She was fine and healthy, and then one day she had a headache that wouldn’t go away, and then she came home from the doctor’s office, crying, and then, just a couple months later, she was gone.”

“God, that’s awful. I’m sorry.”

He toyed with his fork, his eyes downcast rather than on me. “It was…pretty gnarly.” He slugged back coffee, which was still scorching hot, but he didn’t seem to notice. “She went from beautiful and healthy to frail and skeletal in a matter of weeks. There wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do. The tumor was too big to cut out, and chemo and radiation wouldn’t have saved her, only prolonged the inevitable, so she refused treatment. Which means we just…sat in a hospital room and waited for her to die.”

The pain in his voice was very carefully modulated, hidden behind words carefully enunciated, his tone too calm. As an expert in that same tactic, I saw through it.

“Lucian, I’m sorry.”

He stood up abruptly. “You’d think after eleven years that I’d be less affected by it.”

He walked back toward his bedroom, and I was torn between following him and letting him go.

But my legs didn’t seem to be conflicted at all, because I found myself following him. He was in his room, removing clothing from the drawers under his bed. He stood up and turned around, finding me standing in the doorway, watching him.

“Lucian, I—”

“In case you’re wondering, Dad died of a heart attack,” he interrupted. “But don’t worry, I won’t ask about your parents.”

He twisted to slip past me, and I breathed in his sharp scent, tensing as his body brushed up against mine. I felt his chest against my breasts, and his breath on my face, and his hips and his thighs against mine, and every muscle in my body froze, tensing. I stopped breathing. My heart hammered in my chest.

His eyes met mine for a split second as he slid past me, and then he was gone, into the bathroom.

And then I found myself chasing him yet again, emotions rampaging through me—anger, confusion, desire. I shoved the bathroom door open without thinking, without hesitating. He was naked, the water running, and just about to step in. When I slammed the door open and entered, he turned around to confront me.

“The fuck, Joss?” His voice was surprised and not a little angry.

Ohhhh shit. Oh Jesus. God, he was perfect. I couldn’t look away. Every muscle was defined, not an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. All lean, hard muscle and masculine angles and planes. And then…my eyes wandered downward.

To say I blushed wouldn’t be doing the fire on my cheeks due justice.

I didn’t have a lot of experience with male anatomy, but…oh my god. HUGE. Long and thick and pink, hanging down his thigh, curled to the right ever so slightly, with a thatch of dark pubic hair in a spray around the base. I swallowed hard, trying like hell to tear my gaze away, to leave, to act, to say something, anything.

“Get a good look?” Lucian snapped.

His voice shook me out of my trance, and I spun around, covering my face with both hands. “I’m—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I just—” I had no good way to finish that, so I didn’t, instead took a deep breath and started over. “I wasn’t thinking. I apologize.”

“Turn around.” His voice was quiet, but firm. Not angry, anymore.

I shook my head. “Um, no. Thanks.”

“I’m covered, Joss.” His voice was amused, now.

I turned around, and he had a towel around his waist, the water still running, the curtain open.

He gestured at me. “You barged in here like you had a hair up your ass. Might as well say what you were gonna say.”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Joss.”

“No.”

“Joss.”

I took an aggressive step forward. “They were killed in a car accident, okay?” I shouted the words, the first time I’d spoken of it since it happened, and then I continued more quietly, once the initial outburst was out of me. “We were on vacation in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, three years ago. I was seventeen. They wanted to go hiking the Evangeline Trail, and I didn’t want to. I was on my period and had horrible cramps, and hiking sounded like complete hell, so I stayed at our hotel. They were driving to the trailhead. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. We’d just had breakfast together. An older guy was driving the opposite direction, had a stroke, and crossed the centerline. Hit my parents head-on. All three of them died instantly, although I think the old guy was already dead from the stroke.”

“Shit.” He turned off the water and then stepped toward me, mere inches between us, and his hands came to rest on my upper arms. “Joss, I’m sorry.”

I kept going, because now I had to get it out. “The cops found me at the hotel. I was in my pajamas watching a comedy special on my iPad. I’d ordered dessert from room service, and I’d…I’d just pigged out. I was eating Key lime pie when they knocked on the door. I answered it, and I saw them standing there, and I knew. I just…I knew. I fell to the floor crying before they’d even said a word. ‘Miss Mackenzie, your parents have been killed in a head-on collision. I’m so sorry. Can you come with us, please?’” I choked as I repeated the words I won’t ever forget, in the same flat, emotionless, robotic tone they’d been spoken to me. “He was a kid, the guy who delivered the news. He looked scared. Probably his first time doing a notification call, or whatever it’s called when you have to tell someone their family is dead.”

I blinked away tears, swiped at them angrily, because I don’t cry. I don’t cry.

I sucked in a breath, and shook my head, and forced them away. I kept going. “My dad was from Jamaica, and his family was all still there, but we never saw them. He left when he was nineteen and never went back. I never met any of them.” I flipped up the end of one of my dreads. “My dad was black. Where the name Mackenzie came from, I never knew. It was his legal name, I know that much, because it was on his driver’s license. I don’t know. Maybe he picked it at random to distance himself from his family…that’s what I’ve always assumed. Mom was from upstate New York, where I grew up. We lived less than half an hour from my grandparents, and I was pretty close to them as a kid, but they died when I was young. Which left Mom’s brother, Uncle Derek, as my only family, and he was—or still is, I guess—the quintessential permanent bachelor uncle. Nice guy, loved hanging out with him on the holidays, but…there was no way he was going to take me in. Not a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“Jesus, Joss.”

I let Lucian hold my arms, because the feel of his hands on me wasn’t a bad thing; it grounded me, reminded me that I wasn’t there anymore.

“I identified them. And then they brought me into a room with some Canadian government official, and someone from the US government, since we were on vacation in Canada. They were discussing what to do with me. Deciding my fate, as if I wasn’t there and didn’t get a fucking vote. Just doing their jobs, I know that now, but then? I was still in shock. But I’d physically seen Mom and Dad’s dead bodies, so it had been hammered home that they were dead, they were gone. That I was alone. Uncle Derek never even crossed my mind as an option, I just remember sitting there listening to them talk about foster care and the difficulty in finding a family to take me, given my age. They left, at some point, I don’t know why. To discuss my fate in private, maybe. And I was like, no, fuck no, I’m not going into foster care. Fuck that. I knew a kid in my high school who was a foster, and…his stories did not inspire confidence, to say the least.” I closed my eyes, inhaled, held it, and let it out slowly. “So…I left. I just walked out of the police station, walked back to the hotel, packed some shit in my backpack, and left. I didn’t think about it, I just knew I wasn’t going to sit around while some random government dudes decided what happened to me. So I just…I started walking, and I never stopped. Otherwise, I would’ve just… I would have laid down under a bridge somewhere and just…stopped.”

“I’m glad you kept going.”

I finally met his eyes. “I didn’t have a plan. A goal. Nothing. I just…I walked because I didn’t know what else to do. I should’ve tried to get back to the States; I realize that now, but I just…I wasn’t thinking. I followed the road away from Yarmouth and walked for…I don’t even know long. Hours. All the way to the next village on the coast, don’t remember its name. I needed to get away, as far away as possible and as soon as possible—away from the accident, away from the death of my parents—it wasn’t a logical decision to run, it was an emotional one. So I bought a bus ticket. And then another bus ticket, and another, and somehow, almost a full day later, ended up in Québec. I don’t even know how I got there. There were a lot of transfers, and I was operating on autopilot or something. I had a lot of cash, since Mom and Dad had left their cash behind when they left to go hiking, and I’d taken it. But that bus trip to Québec cost me a lot of money, and I realized I couldn’t keep taking buses everywhere, especially if I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I needed to get away. So I got to Québec, and just kept walking west.”

“Just because to get as far away from everything as possible?” Lucian said, his voice gentle.

I nodded without looking at him. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“And now?”

Something in his voice made me look up, and the mocha of his eyes was warm and kind and gentle and inquisitive and hypnotic. Once I met his gaze, I couldn’t look away. He was tall, so much taller than me that I had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes. His chest was bare, and he was clad in only a thin towel cinched around his waist. A mental image of his…um…manhood…flashed through my mind, and I blushed again. Maybe he noticed, maybe he didn’t—my skin is dark enough it can be hard to tell when I’m blushing.

“And now…what?” I swallowed hard.

“Now that you’re here, what are you going to do? You’re as far west as you can go, and you’re back in the States. So…now what?”

Was his face closer than it had been? Were our bodies pressed closer together? Why was my pulse going so haywire? What was happening to me? I don’t react this way to anyone, about anything. Ever. Even when I had that crazy crush on Nick Wellesley in tenth grade I wasn’t affected by him like this, and we got to what Maria called “second base” before I realized Nick was dating three other girls at the same time as me.

Wait. He’d asked me a question. What was the question?

His chest was hard and soft and the same time—the skin was soft and warm, but the muscle underneath was hard as a rock. Wait…why did I know that? Oh, because my palms were both resting on his chest. And his face was closer to mine because either he was leaning down, or because…oh—or because I was up on my tiptoes.

A tableau, then: his eyes on mine, his hands sliding from my arms down to my waist, my fingertips digging into his pecs, just above his nipples.

And then he huffed gently, a sound of frustration, or relief, or of him giving in to something he’d been fighting, I wasn’t sure which. A huff, and then his mouth was slanting across mine, and his lips were warm and damp and soft and gentle, and my heart was crashing in my chest, and the feel of his body against mine made me dizzy, and his mouth was intoxicating. His kiss was intoxicating. This wasn’t Nick, an eager but clumsy boy—this was a man, and god, could he kiss. It swept me away, and I lost myself in it. I heard a soft whimper, a breathy sound from my throat.

Yes, it was a kiss so potent it literally made me whimper involuntarily.

And yet, that sound, the whimper, it snapped me out of the hypnosis his kiss had put me in.

I stumbled backward, fingers on my lips. “Lucian, I—”

“You are so damn beautiful, Joss.” His voice sounded awed.

I blinked hard, my throat closing, heart still hammering in my chest so hard it hurt, my hands shaking, lungs finally sucking in a full breath. “I can’t—we—I…shit.”

I turned and ran into his bedroom and closed the door. I collapsed on the bed, my mind spiraling, emotions running on high-octane, adrenaline crashing through me.

He kissed me.

I kissed him.

Which was it? Does it matter?

That kiss was the most amazing experience ever. It felt as if, for a few incredible moments, all the worry and stress I had been feeling was lifted from my shoulders, and I felt light and free. Amazing.

Too amazing.

I want to kiss him again. I want to kiss him again so badly I have to grip the duvet under my hands to keep from getting up and crashing in on his shower again.

I fell backward on the bed, laughing into my hands, hysterical.

I saw his penis…and it was beautiful. I want to see it again. I want to touch it. I want his hands on me.

Shit, shit, shit, this was bad.

I can’t feel this way about Lucian. He’s too much like me, and yet so different. His family is so…much. Overwhelming and amazing and fun and welcoming.

I belonged. For a few minutes there, I had known what it felt like to be part of a family. More than just that, but part of…something big and complicated and messy. Even with Mom and Dad, it had been neat and orderly and lonely. Dinner was always a quiet affair. I spent a lot of time alone, or with my best friend Maria, before we argued over that idiot Tim Ennis. After that, my life was even more lonely. And then, after Mom and Dad died, I was just…alone all the time.

So to be surrounded by all those people, who all knew each other and loved each other, making fun and teasing and joking, laughing, drinking together, just…being together…that was something I would never forget.

But the kiss, though.

Holy shit.

My thighs clenched together involuntarily at the memory of his mouth on mine, and the possessive way his hands had moved to encircle my waist.

I wanted more. Desperately, I wanted more.

But this was dangerous territory. If I wasn’t careful, this could get out of hand very quickly, and I don’t think I could handle anything else going wrong in my life. I can’t let myself have him. I can’t let myself want him. Because there’s another problem, another secret I’m not ready or willing to reveal, to him or to anyone.

But that doesn’t stop me from being totally under his spell. I kept seeing his eyes as he closed his for the kiss, kept feeling his lips on mine, his strong hands on my waist, kept seeing that long, thick organ dangling between his thighs.

Need was an overwhelming drive inside me, and I only knew one way of alleviating the pressure…something I rarely had the privacy or opportunity to indulge in…

I shouldn’t.

God, I shouldn’t.

But my body was going crazy, my mind whirling. My nipples were hard, my thighs quaking. Heat was pooling. It wouldn’t take much, and it had been so long…