CHAPTER NINE
Lucas
Damn Uncle Harvey. He knew what he was doing to me when he stuck Ava and me in the same room together with the no touching rule. My only consolation was that Mason had to be suffering the same way I was.
When Ava came back to the bedroom, all the breath was pushed out of me. Her hair was brushed into soft curls, and she wore a short, sheer nightdress that barely brushed the bottom of her ass. In the dim light, I could see the contours of her large, perky breasts beneath the gauzy material. I was so frustrated about not being able to leap up off the bed, crush her against my chest, and dive right into a kiss that would have her breaking any rule she needed to just to be with me.
Rather than kill any chance I had of achieving my lifelong dream, I grabbed a pillow and put it over my face. “Get in bed.”
There was silence, and I kept the pillow over my face, purposely constricting my air flow in the hopes the blood would return to my brain from my lower regions, until the bed dipped on her side. I felt her slide in beside me, then she peeked under my pillow. She was so near, I could smell her lavender body wash and the clean scent of her hair. I wondered if her pussy tasted as good as the rest of her smelled.
“What’s going on under there?” she teased as she lifted the pillow partially off my face.
“Get on your own side.” I was being playful, but it came out as a growl.
“Want a snack?” She held up two packs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
I wasn’t particularly hungry. My cock was though. He wanted a pair of melons with a side of clam. I ripped the pillow away from my face, wanting to have her under me so I could grind myself right into her deepest recesses.
I threw the pillow at her. “Where did you get these?”
“Out of a bowl in the bathroom. There’s like a bowl full of candy in there. Why would there be a bowl full of candy in the bathroom?” she asked, unwrapping a chocolate sphere.
I stared at her in disbelief. She was probably the most vanilla girl I’d ever met. “Well, there’s lots you can do with candy before you eat it, but you would probably end up with chocolate on the sheets.”
Her fingers froze, and she turned a cute shade of pink. “No!” She looked at her candy with a measured level of disgust. “Really? With chocolate? Not in… there?”
“In anywhere.” I smirked and licked my lips, just to freak her out and make her want to stay on her side of the bed. I couldn’t take much more of being this close to her. Soon, she would need to tie me up, leash me to the bedpost like the wild animal I was. That thought led to thoughts of tying her up. I was so fucked.
I was even more fucked when her eyes got big, then she shrugged and licked the inside of the peanut butter cup with her tongue. My cock shot straight into the air. It’d been a long time since I’d been this hard, and I knew I had to do something to turn the tide before I begged her to put where my brain currently was in her mouth too.
“It’s very yummy. I could show you how that works.” She stopped midlick, and I almost didn’t have enough willpower to continue. “But I think we need to learn more about each other. For the game’s sake.” Plus, I’d been about to share some things with her that I was reconsidering now, and I needed to know more about her before I spilled beans I couldn’t get back.
She nodded slowly, her eyes a mix of emotions, some I was sure were the same ones I was feeling.
“Tell me about you, like your upbringing, et cetera. Tell me about your family, what led you here.” I waited as Ava blinked a few times, like she was trying to clear her mind and focus. God, I hoped I was having the same effect on her as she was on me.
“Well, I’m from a very small town in Arkansas. My mom was a teenage beauty queen who fell for my dad, Dale Durant. We were — strangely — local celebrities as Dad’s dad, Grandpa Dick, ran his cheesy commercials for the family-owned car dealership. Until the day he died of a stroke on the used car lot.”
“Oh, Ava, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. But it only gets worse. You sure you want to know all this?”
“Please. I want to know what build you into the fabulous woman you are today.”
She smiled at that. “Grandpa was a local celebrity. I remember seeing his tacky commercials on television. Dad took over the lot but didn’t have the charisma or the drive, and sales fell. After Grandpa died, Dad ran it into the ground. He started drinking. A lot, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
What a horrible way to grow up.
“He was always drunk, and my mom was never one to speak up, so she just cleaned up his messes and did her best to smooth things over. She’s his enabler. I love my parents, but I refuse to be like that. I had to get out. I got a partial scholarship, saved money working at the variety store in town and left home vowing to get my sister out and help her become independent.”
I knew right then that even if we didn’t win, even if we went no further than lying here in this bed with clothes between us, I was going to help her help her sister.
“How old is your sister?”
“Just turned eighteen. She graduates this year and has dreams of veterinarian school.” She sucked the chocolate off her fingers, making my cock pulse, and stared off into the distance. “I bet you grew up quite differently.”
“On the contrary, I can see a lot of similarities in our upbringings. About the time my uncle built his empire, most of my father’s life insurance was used to pay off a bad business investment and what little was left had run out. My mom needed to get a job, so she took the first one offered to her, fearful that she wouldn’t be able to take care of her family. She worked as a bank teller for a lot of years and refused most help. She was an inspiration to me, and I vowed that I’d make enough money one day to repay her efforts.”
“So you take care of your mom now?”
“She has wanted for nothing ever since my investment business started turning profits.”
“Wow. I’d like to help my mom that way.”
“Well, we’ll see to it that you will. I think we should get some sleep now.”
“You like to be in charge, don’t you, Lucas?”
Her words were like a double fist punch to my chest. I did. And when I wasn’t, my entire focus was on how I could change the situation to put me there. “I am in charge, just some people don’t know it.”
She rolled her eyes and snuggled under the covers so that she was peeping just over the edge of the sheet. “Aren’t you going to change into something more comfortable?”
I debated on how to answer that then decided on the truth. “I think it would be best for both of us if as many layers of material were between us as possible.” Besides, I had serious doubts about unzipping with this kind of hard-on.
She swallowed hard and pursed her lips.
I blinked, then I was practically swallowing a pillow. The little vixen had hit me with her pillow and caught me by surprise. As I was bent over, picking up the pillow from the floor, I felt a sharp thwap on my butt.
I glared at her, hoping to fake her out, then pummeled her with pillows to her delighted shrieks. We smacked each other and dodged until we were both out of breath and there were feathers floating in the air around us.
“Truce!” Her face was pink with exertion, and I could imagine that it would look something like that after I made her come.
I flopped back on my side of the bed, smiling. “Truce.” It had been a long time since I’d had even so few minutes of delirious fun, maybe since Mason and I were kids… back when we’d been friends. The thought sobered me.
When she raised her pillow threateningly, I said, “If you do that again, we’ll start this all over, and both of us will not get any sleep.” I punctuated that with my pillow raised over my head.
She fake cowered. “Okay, but this war is only paused, not over.”
I gave her a mischievous grin. “It won’t be over until I win.”
I turned out the light to punctuate my statement. She didn’t argue and didn’t emerge from under covers for the rest of the night. I listened to her even breathing as I stared up at the stars. I liked just being near her. I liked her smile. I liked everything about her.
However this contest was going to turn out, it had begun. And though I had little control over it as a whole, I found myself caring less about that than discovering more about this amazing woman who slept within arm’s reach.