18

Abby took her glass, her hand brushing Luc’s in the process. It sent a zing of awareness down her arm, reminding her of how little she knew about life out here, about men and women and reality.

About seduction.

Was this man a seducer? No. No, he was too gruff, too straightforward, all matter-of-fact with no frills. She quelled a tremor with a warming sip from her glass, but deep inside, something raw and uncontrollable reared its head, trying hard to burst free.

Another sip, and Abby rolled her head on her neck. She sucked in a long, shaky breath to relieve the nerves that bubbled up, reveling in the feel of this shirt she had on—big and soft, like the pants, and brazenly open at the back. She’d wear men’s clothes all the time, she decided. No starch, lace, or modest undergarments. No struggling with too many buttons and ties.

“How do you feel?” Luc asked, shifting the sofa cushions as he sat down beside her, close enough to feel his warmth. It took Abby a moment to understand he meant her burns and not the cotton rubbing her breasts into achy points.

She blushed and coughed, but her nipples didn’t go down.

“Much better, thank you.” She lifted the glass and sipped again, glancing sideways at his profile. “This seems to be helping.”

He smiled—oh, goodness, he was lovely—and she squeezed her legs together, hard.

“It’s been known to do the trick.” He turned the glass to the single lamp in the room and eyed its burgundy glow.

“Would this be different if I were a normal woman?”

He stilled, looking slightly suspicious, before lifting the glass higher and asking, “This?”

She pointed toward him with her wine. “Sitting with me. Having a drink.”

After another brief silence, he set down his glass and shifted beside her, suddenly seeming too big for the sofa. “I’m not exactly a normal sort of man.”

“I figured as much,” she said with a smile of her own. “But what if…what if we’d met in town? At the market, maybe. What would it be like?” She took another swallow of wine, and it lit her right up. Or maybe that was his interested gaze.

“Strange.”

She sputtered, nearly losing half her sip in the process. “Well, thank you very much.”

“No, not you. I mean me. I’m not good at being natural.”

“Okay. When you meet someone usually, what’s it like? You go out to dinner? To see a movie?”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose so.”

“You suppose?”

He opened his big hands, looking almost as clueless as she felt. “Well, not me. I don’t go out to dinner.”

“What do you do?”

He looked to the side, and she couldn’t tell if he was searching for the right answer or sifting through memories. “My encounters with women tend to be more…casual.”

“Oh.” She pictured him in loose, low-slung jeans, slouching and shrugging in that way teenagers did. Casual. “What’s that like?”

His expelled breath sounded frustrated, and she came dangerously close to letting him off the hook, until he answered. “It’s just sex, I mean. No real relationships. Well, I had one, but…” He trailed off, leaving her with nothing. She wanted much more.

Sex? She wanted to know.

Instead, she asked, “How did that start? Your one relationship.” Even that word felt funny. Grown-up and modern.

He frowned. “She told me she wanted me. We fuc—” He cleared his throat, which had turned a mottled red, the color disappearing into his neckline. Abby had to see how far down it went. The need was ravenous, pulsing, painful, and hot. “We did the…sex.”

“Where?” she whispered, picturing a barn or a vineyard—she had a hard time imagining this man anywhere but in the great outdoors.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I…” She couldn’t tell him the truth, could she? That she liked him. That she was curious. That she had absolutely no idea how to be normal, but there was this demon inside, stretching her skin painfully taut in its bid to get out. “I want to do it right.”

The look he gave her said she was crazy, and yet there was something else in that expression.

“What, with me?”

“Yes. How…how would you touch me? If I were normal?”

“How would I—”

“Start? How would you start?” She barely forced the words through a throat that was hoarse with embarrassment, not to mention that yearning inside her—coarser and baser than anything she’d felt. This wasn’t an emotion, exactly—more of a compulsion. “Where would you put your hands?” the demon goaded.

He looked at them—his hands—where they sat on his knees. Such vital parts of this man’s body, cut and scarred and torn apart and missing a piece. They were lived-in and beautiful. Hands that had seen a thing or two, like these softly folded mountains with their low profile and vast knowledge of time. Would they feel that way on her? Experienced? Wise?

Sounding as frayed as she felt, he said, “I told you, I’m not good at speaking.” It wasn’t until the words sank in that she understood the underlying meaning.

“You’re good at”—she swallowed, more brazen than she’d been in all her twenty-two years, because, despite the accusation that put those old scars on her arms, she’d never actually seduced a man before—“doing, though. Is that what you’re good at?”

They were so close, sitting on the sofa in the warm living room, by the light of a single lamp and the glow of the fire. It was surreal, all of it. Dreamy.

In the time it would have taken to find something else to say, something proper to take them back to familiar territory, Luc’s hand rose to her face. His knuckles skimmed her mouth in that signature move, shutting her up definitively. It didn’t even surprise her that he’d use the back of his hands instead of the pads of his fingers. With those calluses, he probably couldn’t feel anything at all.

They were warm and dry against her lips. She opened her mouth enough to let her tongue out to taste him. His indrawn breath made her think she might need to do it again—just to see how he’d react this time. She licked the crook between his fingers and got a long, slow exhale in response.

So she moved, just a little. Just enough to grasp the edge of his finger in her mouth, to bite it and let it catch on her bottom lip. She watched him closely—him watching his own hand, the place where their bodies touched, the flush of blood under his skin, the way the islands of his pupils, already big, ate up their surrounding sea of blue entirely.

“You are sure you want this, Abby? With me?” he asked, searching her face but not moving that hand away.

Abby’s only answer was to grasp his other hand in hers and press it hard against her neck, against skin that felt hot. So hot.

* * *

At the sound of Abby’s words, then at the touch of her skin, Luc’s cock went from thick and heavy to unbearably hard and ready to explode.

He wanted her. There was no doubt about that. There hadn’t been, if he was honest, from the first time he’d laid eyes on her. But he wasn’t supposed to do things with her, and she wasn’t supposed to do this seduction thing. Luc had come to America to work and to make something of himself. Not to seduce an innocent, religious girl—the equivalent of a nun, in his mind.

Or so he kept telling himself, because, sitting there in his oversize shirt and pants, Abby was the sexiest thing he’d seen in his life.

“What are you doing, Abby?” he managed to ask. He hated the way her features fell in response. But they shouldn’t be doing this. She didn’t need to get embroiled with him; she needed to leave, to get far away. And Luc was not skilled enough in the ways of seduction to do this right—whatever this was. He’d only mess it up, the way he’d messed up every other time he’d been with a woman.

“I was…” She inhaled, maybe taking in a dose of courage, before she lifted her chin and went on. “I wanted to… I want to…”

“We shouldn’t.” He stood and took a couple steps back. She needed someone smooth and knowledgeable. Someone who’d take her out and show her the world. Not a man who’d rather do anything to avoid crowds.

Her shoulders squared up. “Why not?”

“I can’t kiss you again,” he said. He knew this, but he wasn’t happy about it.

“Because it’s a sin?”

He blinked, confused, and shook his head. “No, Abby—”

“I want to do it again. It’s wrong, I know that, but—”

“Of course it’s not wrong.” He paused, searching for words. “It’s just…you should do this with someone more…like you.”

“Like me? You mean sheltered and inexperienced? Or another sinner? Because people out here do things. I’ve seen ’em, even in public. It’s so…shameless. Maybe… Is kissing bad where you’re from?” Her words came out breathless, the consonants almost inaudible.

“Bad? You mean wrong?”

“Yes. Is it bad that I want to kiss you just because it feels good?”

He huffed disbelievingly. “No. No, that’s not bad.”

Luc strode to the steps, thinking he’d go up there and… What? Get himself off while she sat down here, expectant and waiting?

No, to the bathroom. A cold shower would clear his head. Or outside—yeah, he could go out into the snow and—

“I want to try more,” she interrupted. Jesus, why couldn’t he catch his breath?

“Not with me, Abby.”

“Oh. You don’t want me like that.”

“That is not what I mean. I mean you are…” He lifted his hands, trying to describe the perfection of someone so bright and crushingly lovely. “I mean I’ll ruin this. I’ll ruin you.”

How was he supposed to explain the things that got him off, the images that crowded his brain? How could he tell a woman like her that he always liked the bounce of tits and the sight of his cock sinking in? That foreplay was a hand wrapped in hair, conversation, a nod, and a few grunts? He pictured trying to explain how far he was from a romantic. His fantasies… God, if she only knew. He had no idea how to keep his desire civilized enough for someone so innocent.

“I still don’t understand. If you want this, then why are you stopping?” she asked.

“Because I don’t want to hurt you, all right? Your back, but also your”—he made a pointless motion in her general direction—“your person. I’m not gentle, like you need. I’m not…slow and romantic. I don’t spout poetry or…or dance. Or do foreplay.” And then, because he needed to shock some sense into her, he said, “I fuck, Abby. I fuck hard and fast. I do it for me. I’m a selfish lover because I’m no good at communicating, and I’ve never understood how. So, no. No, I’m not the man to introduce you to the pleasures of the flesh.”

He stood there breathing hard, wishing he could escape the soft accusation in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Abby.” He looked away. “I need to sleep now. You should sleep upstairs in my…in the bed. Could you… Could we…”

Eyes downcast, she stood, her freckles lost in the blotchy wash of red that took over her pale, pale skin. His hand itched to touch it, but damn it, he wouldn’t be the one to break whatever seal of abstinence this woman had been brought up with. He’d let some other man do it—a man whose flowery tongue could ease his way.

The thought of tongues made him angry, while his prick ached in his pants. There was nothing to do but storm into the kitchen, petulant but righteous in his restraint. Another man would give in.

But not me.

“All right then. May I…” She motioned toward the bathroom, not meeting his eye.

“Yes, of course,” he said, feeling only slightly contrite as he went about the business of closing the house down for the night. He let the dog out, stuffed a couple more logs into the stove, all of it with the hot, guilty strain of his erection between his legs.

When she reemerged from the bathroom, he’d turned on the stair lights, turned off the others, and sat on the sofa, waiting.

“I like you, Abby.”

She stopped.

“I am trying to say that I like you too much.”

She nodded but nothing else. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected.

“You have everything you need?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She watched him for a long moment, those eyes seeing right through him, filled with something close to pity. Or maybe it was regret. “Good night, Luc.”

“Good night, Abby.”

“Thank you for helping me. For saving me, I mean.”

He started to shake his head to deny and then stopped. “I would do it again.” And again. And again.

With a last nod, she turned and disappeared up the stairs, leaving him alone with Le Dog’s quiet snoring and the suffocatingly cozy crackle of the fire.

He couldn’t sleep, of course. Not twisted up and turned on like this, hot and aching like a teenager, consumed with a teenager’s guilt. Knowing she was ready and willing, right up those steps.

But her back.

Right. He concentrated on the memory of her back, the shocking, red lines printed deep, the fresh ones still too puffy to make out the patterns. The way the burns went to the edges of those perfectly curved shoulders, the way her breasts, braless, hung heavy against the fabric of his shirt. He’d seen her nipples stiffen. Her mouth slightly open, her eyes pinned on him… He could smell her, still, could almost taste her and— Merde, he couldn’t stop thoughts of her body from haunting his brain. Didn’t want to stop.

He reached down and clasped himself. He pressed hard at first, in hopes of abating the pressure, but it only served to chafe and stir things up. What would she feel like down there, between her legs? She’d be tight, wouldn’t she? Tighter than anything he’d felt around him, he’d bet. And pink, like those lips. The same color and probably plush in the same way, ripe and wet and…

He was breathing hard now, with his hand on his cock, shamelessly working up and down over his pants, until the fabric was too much in the way. He worked it down to midthigh, exhaling hard at the feel of cool air on his hot, hot skin.

And then, taking a tight hold of himself with his left hand, he worked it up and down, added a twist at the top, imagining that twist like the hot glove of her sex, only she’d be tighter. Suppressing a moan, he turned slightly to the side, wanting to see his hand in the firelight and hoping it would look like hers. He was closer to coming than he’d have thought possible after just a few strokes. So close that, when his eyes landed on her silhouette on the steps, he almost kept going. Almost.

But the figure let out a shocked, ladylike gasp, and instead of finishing, he pulled the blanket back over himself, stilled, breathing hard, and waited.