Lucas

What the fuck am I doing here?

I dropped my overnight bag off at my office after coming straight from the airport, then hightailed it over to the Library because the one person I wanted to see most after Lizzie is the other woman who has my guts tied up in knots.

I’d thought I could fake my good humor, call on cheery old Lucas to get me through. Pretend that her choice of her sister—which I understand, God how I do—didn’t break me a little. Rewire our relationship back to the fun fling we both signed on for.

Instead I sat morosely at the bar, a pint in my hand, jealously watching her every move and plotting the assassination of every prick in the bar in ways that would give an FBI profiler pause. And I wanted her to see it. To feel my possessive streak.

My phone buzzes. Come out to see me.

Her command? My wish.

The bar is empty, all the revelers and wankers gone, and looks like I’ve stepped through a portal and gone back in time. True to its name, the Library’s shelves are filled with gilt-edged books, their spines alight in the amber glow of candles. It’s positively…romantic.

Isn’t that my job?

Trinity is sitting in a booth, a bottle of what looks like whiskey in front of her and two glasses. Her legs are my Kryptonite in that short skirt, long, shapely pins gleaming in the flickering light.

“Love, I’ll do you sober,” I joke. “No need for that.”

“Come sit with me,” she says, so simply, so earnestly my knees practically buckle.

I slide into the booth, keeping my eyes on her. She pours a measure into both glasses. “I know you don’t like whiskey, but it’s here if you need it.”

To loosen me up, I suppose. I put it to my lips, trying to remember all those things I’m supposed to appreciate. I hate not understanding something. It offends me deeply.

“Tell me what I should be tasting.” Tell me how to feel.

She takes a sip, closes her eyes. “This is a Lagavulin sixteen-year-old from the island of Islay. Peat, smoke, bacon”—she tastes it again—“salty sea spray. A little citrus on the way down. A story in every sip.”

I let a drop slip past my lips and try to imagine another place. Craggy rocks, a surging surf, flying pigs dive-bombing unsuspecting beachgoers.

“About what happened when we ran into Emily,” she says. “I didn’t handle it right. I—I panicked.”

“She’s your family. Family comes first.” If anyone should know this, it’s me.

“Right.” But I hear it, the thread of doubt about her place. The pressure she puts on herself to be her sister’s rock. “I think it stems from not expecting this to escalate so quickly.”

“This?”

“Us.”

I snatch a breath at her utterance of that word. Us. “Did you just put a label on this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to overthink it or jinx it, but at the same time, I also want to just say fuck it, let’s do this, you know?”

I do. Alarm bells go off in my head and my heart quicksteps in my chest. Having the ball placed firmly in my court after I thought I was playing practice drills wrenches my brain. If she’s prepared to open her heart to this, just like I asked, then I need to meet her halfway. Yet now that I have the chance to spill, turns out I’m not ready.

She senses my hesitancy. “Maybe a good old-fashioned drinking game. Truth or dare.”

A quid pro quo. Her truth for mine.

“As I’m an open book,” I lie, lie, lie, “then the truth would be boring. I’ll take the dare.”

“Down that shot.”

“I see your game. Can’t wrangle the truth one way, you’ll get me drunk and wheedle it out of me.”

“Not such an open book after all,” she says. “Tell me what happened before you came here tonight. Why you had such a bad day.”

“Just tired from my flight.”

“From London?”

Nice going, big mouth. “That’s right.”

“How’s Lizzie?”

My breath stalls, my lungs seize up. I knock back the whiskey without even tasting it. Bad customer.

She raises an eyebrow, acknowledging what I did. I took the dare rather than speaking the truth, and that’s a more damning admission than any word I could have spoken.

“Back to you,” she murmurs, ostensibly letting me off the hook, but I’m well and truly dangling. No one has ever demanded my words before. I don’t know how to verbalize this.

Me, Lucas Wright. So gifted with the gab, so talented at making other people feel good—well, that idiot knows jack shit about emoting.

“Why didn’t you go on that trip to Scotland to see the distilleries?”

She blinks, contemplates her drink. It should be an easy enough question to fake her way through. Life issues, money trouble, fear of flying.

“I’ll take the dare.” So we both have things we want to hide, just as we both have things we want the other to know we’re hiding. Aren’t we a pair?

“Shirt. Off.”

“That didn’t take long.” Her fingers slide to the buttons on her black shirt and slowly unplug each one from its hole. My breathing picks up with each inch of smooth skin revealed. When she slips the shirt from her shoulders, I swallow hard.

She’s wearing a cream-colored bra, pearlescent in the candlelight, a dream against her skin.

“Jesus, you are one fine woman, Trinity Jones. Looking at you is sun and starlight and what keeps my heart beating when all it wants to do is stop.”

“Lucas,” she breathes before I pounce like an animal. I need to touch her, will die if I don’t. Might die if I do.

She heaves a breath, the rise of her breasts brushing against my chest. Her hand cups my cock and drags over it roughly. I fucking love it.

“Yeah, love. Harder. Stroke me, Trin. Rub me raw.”

In seconds, my zipper is down and she’s unpacking me with one hand while I lick the palm of her other, a lascivious, dirty stroke of my tongue. I place her slick hand on my hard-as-my-heart dick. She grips me like a champ, feeling my need for her not to go gentle.

Punish me.

“That’s it. Just like that, love. Leave a footprint.”

She’s breathing heavily. I’m panting like I’ve run a marathon. Like I’ve run my life.

“Inside. Please, inside.”

It’s all happening so quickly, but that’s what I need, a fast and furious fuck. I cup her ass under her skirt and pull her astraddle me. There’s no time to divest her of her panties. No time for anything but this woman and her heat and wetness surrounding me until I’m home, plunging deep, fucking up into her like I could reach her heart. Make it mine.

The only sounds are ragged breaths and lusty moans from both of us. Until she points out an obvious problem.

“Lucas, we need a condom.”

“Fuck.” That’s why she felt so good. So right.

I grip both of her hips, readying to pull her apart from me.

She stays home. “Truth or dare.”

I swallow. I pant. If one of us moves another inch, I’m going to embarrass myself.

“Do you trust me, Lucas?”

It’s a dare, but it’s also a plea for the truth, and I can only nod, amazed at this leap she’s taking. Because only a woman who believes I’m worth it would ask me that.

“Say it, baby.”

“I trust you. More than anyone.” The words emerge shaky. I mean them to their core.

I’ve no idea how we got here. That’s not right, though. It was baby steps, a slow burn, a jump over the chasm, an overhaul of my outlook.

I shouldn’t be here, I want to tell her. Two roads diverged in an English wood…and I-I—

She makes it us, bucking her hips, urging me upward. The roads that parted all those years ago veering back to each other. Above me, she’s a shining beacon, the light I strive to reach.

“That’s it, baby. Right there,” she says into a kiss that rips me open. Moving inside her is the greatest gift I could receive, but then Trinity’s a giver all the way. She wants to take care of me—not just my dick but my heart. Both are hurting and she is the cure.

I’m expanding, thickening inside her, and with it my blood vessels are flushing open. Everything is magnified. Everything is Trinity.

I glance a thumb across her clit, then press harder, merciless. She screams and it triggers my release. I drive up and into her, wringing every squeeze of her pussy to fuel my orgasm. Taking and taking and taking until I can take no more.

Ten seconds elapse. Thirty. A full minute to catch my breath and find the words.

I’m in love with you.

I don’t say that. I can’t say that.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For being greedy.”

“Lucas, you’re the most generous man I know.”

I can’t agree. I’m selfish and petty, a bearer of grudges, a keeper of a toxic past.

She kisses me softly. “What did you mean? About the footprint?”

“Nothing, just something silly.” I laugh, seeking him out. Happy Lucas. Chicago Lucas. “Trying to be deep.”

She’s staring at me now, and I should be softening inside her but I’m still rock hard. I could go again, the adrenaline is still pumping through me.

Then it starts.

Not words, not sweet murmurs, but kisses. Across my cheeks and nose, over my eyelids and eyebrows. She pays special attention to the scar I got when I fell out of the tree that night, as if she suspects this might be the way to open me up.

It’s not.

But she might be. The key to my lock, the zig to my zag.

With each butterfly caress, I feel my heart thumping, my soul opening, my mind letting go. I’m not only turned on. I’m turned out. Flayed from the inside, exposed to the harsh elements of soft bar light and a postcoital cuddle.

Trinity’s kisses fill me up, make me bloom. This is what moments with her are like, each one an unfurling of tightly bound layers.

Then she reveals her most destructive weapon. Three words, arrows every one.

“Let it out.”

She’s here, ready to be my sponge. All I have to do is uncork the bottle and pour out my troubles. Just tell my friendly bartender.

My hands shake but I tighten them around her waist to get a grip on my emotion. My eyes are closed, savoring those words. I’m not used to talking about her—about Lizzie. I’m not used to being given this freedom.

I take a breath and do as Trinity says: I let it out.