He laughed, treating me to the full smile I craved. “Oh, really?”

I returned the smile, but it felt counterfeit—as though someone else had shaped my mouth into a happier contour than I was capable of feeling. “Really.”

Every minute, I battled a mounting dread over what I’d learned on the Internet the previous night, and from Dr. Heller hours before. Lucas had been through such hell, and shared it with no one, as far as I knew. He’d said there were things I didn’t know about him that he might never be able to reveal, and instead of respecting those secrets, I’d unearthed them. I wanted to be the one he let in, but my prying could easily be turned into an excuse to shut me out.

“I guess it would wreck my standing as a top chef if I told you I made brownies from a box for dessert.” His expression was stern.

“Are you kidding?” I rolled my eyes. “I love brownies from a box. How’d you know?”

He was trying to maintain a severe demeanor and failing. “You’re full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace.”

I looked up at him and arched a brow. “I’m a girl. That’s part of the job description, Mr. Maxfield.”

He dried his hands on a dishtowel and tossed it on the counter, pulling me closer. “I’m very aware of the fact that you’re a girl.” His fingers threaded through mine and he restrained both of my hands behind me, gently, pressing them into my lower back. My breathing quickened along with my heart rate as we stared at each other.

“How would you get out of this hold, Jacqueline?” His arms surrounded me and my body bowed into his.

“I wouldn’t want to,” I whispered. “I don’t want to.”

“But if you did want to. How would you?”

I closed my eyes and visualized. “I would knee you in the groin. I would stomp on your instep.” I opened my eyes and calculated our relative heights. “You’re too tall for me to head-butt, I think. Unless I jump up like they taught us to do in soccer camp.”

One corner of his mouth turned up. “Good.” He leaned down, our lips inches apart. “And if I kissed you, and you didn’t want me to?”

I wanted him to so badly my head swam. “I—I would bite you.”

“Oh, God,” he breathed, his eyes closing. “Why does that sound so good?”

I leaned in and up, as close as I could get, but his lips were still out of reach, and my arms—trapped behind me—couldn’t stretch to pull him down. “Kiss me and find out.”

His lips were warm. He kissed me carefully, nibbling and sucking my lower lip. Drawing the tip of my tongue along the inner edge of his mouth, I swept it over the the slim ring, lightly, and he groaned and pulled me in so tight I could barely breathe. My hands were suddenly freed and he grasped my hips, lifting me onto the counter so that our angles were reversed.

Thrusting my fingers into his hair, I pressed my tongue into his mouth, cautiously, tracing over the hard palate just behind his teeth while wrapping my arms and legs around him. He sucked my tongue into his mouth and I gasped. I’d never kissed anyone like that; I’d never been kissed like that. One hand at the back of my neck, directing me, the other balancing me on the edge of the counter, he coaxed me to do it again and when I did, he caressed my tongue with his own, grazing his teeth over the surface, biting it softly as I withdrew.

“Holy crap,” I moaned before he drove his tongue into my mouth, finally, and I tightened my grip on him everywhere, wanting to cry from how right it felt.

Plucking me from the counter, he strode into his room and we fell onto his bed, my legs still locked around him. Braced over me, he kissed me deeply, stroking the interior of my mouth until I was writhing under him. He pulled me up and removed my sweater and I unbuttoned his shirt. Leaving it hanging open, he started to unzip my jeans, stopping to scan my face.

“Yes.” There was no hesitation in my voice.

He pulled the zipper down slowly, watching me; I felt the pressure of it as I lay still, panting softly, staring up at him. One hand on my thigh and the other stilled at the base of the zipper, he murmured, “I haven’t tried this with anyone… significant in a long time. It’s never worked before.”

I tried to rein in the disbelief all too evident in my tone. “You haven’t had sex before?”

He closed his eyes and sighed, his hands moving to grip my bare waist. “I have. But not with anyone I cared about or… knew. One-time things. That’s all.” He raised his eyes to mine.

“That’s all—ever?”

He smiled sadly, his fingers running just inside the perimeter of my loosened waistband. “It’s not like there’ve been tons of them. There were more before, in high school, than there have been the past three years.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that. I couldn’t focus on anything but the feel of his index fingers hooking into the belt loops at the side of my jeans.

“Lucas? I said yes, and I meant it. I want this—as long as you have protection, I mean. I want this, with you. So this is okay.” I was babbling, worried that it would end as it had six days before. I exhaled a breath and spoke just above a whisper. “Please don’t ask me to say stop.”

Staring down at me, he pulled and I lifted my hips. My jeans slid down my legs and he tossed them aside, shrugged out of his shirt and removed his jeans. “I want it to be better than okay. You deserve better than okay.” After grabbing a condom from a box in the nightstand and tossing the small square on the bed, he settled between my legs. I was shivering like I had no experience whatsoever. “You’re shaking, Jacqueline. Do you want to—”

“No.” I put my trembling fingers over his mouth. “I’m just a little cold.” And a whole lot nervous.

He pushed the covers down beneath me and dragged them back up, over us. His weight pressing into me, he kissed me thoroughly before staring into my eyes, his fingers drifting over my face. “Better?”

I took a deep breath, my fears dissolving with his touch, the anticipation climbing faster than it had minutes ago in the kitchen. “Yes.”

As his thumb caressed my temple, his fingertips teased into my hair. His eyes were so pale this close that I could see every fragmented facet. “You know you can say it.” His voice notched lower, softer. “But I’m not asking you to, this time.”

“Good,” I answered, lifting my head to capture his mouth, my hands kneading up and over the hard muscles of his back before trailing my nails down the center from his shoulder blades to his hips.

His earlier hesitation gone, he removed the last scraps of fabric we were wearing, fixed the condom in place, kissed me fiercely and rocked into me.

Had this been Kennedy, it would have been over in a few minutes.

My last coherent thought, as Lucas took his time kissing and touching every part of me he could reach and my body arched into his, was oh… so this is what all the fuss is about.

***

We lay facing each other, snuggled under the covers, shoulders peeking out. I watched his gaze drift over my face, stopping on each feature as if he was memorizing it: ear, jaw, mouth… chin, throat, curve of shoulder.

He came back to my eyes then, lifting his hand and tracing over the individual attributes while watching my response. When his fingers trailed over my lips, they edged the border before rubbing across the lower one, and I swallowed and concentrated on breathing. His eyes fell there and he stared for a long moment before cupping the back of my neck, moving closer and kissing me so softly I hardly felt it, until the thin connection caught and ricocheted through me, shooting to my toes like a current.

I sighed and our breath mingled. Pushing the covers to my waist, he urged me onto my back before propping his face on his hand and continuing his perusal. My exposed skin should have been cold, but I warmed under his examination. “I want to sketch you like this.” His voice was as gentle as his touch—now skirting across my collarbone, back and forth, before moving lower.

“Can I assume it won’t end up on the wall?”

He smirked down at me. “Er, no, this one wouldn’t go on the wall, as tempting a thought as that is. I’ve done several sketches of you that aren’t on the wall.”

“You have?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Can I see them?”

He gnawed his lower lip, fingers tracing along the curves of my breast and then following the bumps of each rib. “Now?” His warm hand curved around my waist and he pulled me closer.

I looked into his eyes as he lay over me. “Maybe, in a little while...”

He scooted lower. “Good. ’Cause I’ve got a couple things I’d like to do first.”

***

He pulled on his dark boxer briefs before padding out to the kitchen. I heard the front door open and close a moment later, his voice a low murmur mixed with Francis’s insistent meows. He came back with a tall glass of milk and a plate of brownie squares.

Handing me the plate, he took a sip of the milk before setting it on the bedside table. I sat with the sheet held over my breasts and watched him move across the darkening room. He flicked on the desk light and picked up the sketchbook. Stacked in a corner of the desk, there were several just like the one he held.

In the center of his upper back was a gothic-looking cross, not quite high enough to peek out of a t-shirt neckline. The remaining tats were tiny scripted lines surrounding the cross, not meant to be read from a distance, just like the poem on his left side. His skin was clear from his shoulder blades down. Turning, he caught me studying him—I couldn’t look away, so there was no hiding my appraisal.

He crawled onto the bed, propping the pillows and sitting behind me, his legs on either side of my hips under the covers. While I lay back against his chest and nibbled a brownie, he opened the sketchbook and flipped through pages, some containing little more than shapes, lines and vague forms, others detailed portrayals of people, objects or scenes. A few were finished and dated, but most were partially complete.

Finally, he opened to his first sketch of me—which he must have done during class, when I sat next to Kennedy. My chin was propped in my hand, elbow on the desktop. I took the book from him and browsed page by page from there, slowly, amazed at his skill. He’d sketched two of the oldest buildings on university grounds, a guy skateboarding down the drag, and a panhandler on the outskirts of campus talking to a couple of students. Interspersed with these were meticulous illustrations of mechanical things.

I turned the page to another sketch of me, this one very close-up—facial features and the suggestion of hair, but little else. Scrawled in the bottom corner was a date, two or three weeks before Kennedy dumped me.

“Does it bother you—that I was watching you before you knew me at all?” His tone was guarded.

I found it impossible to be bothered by anything at the moment, wrapped up in him as I was. I shook my head. “You’re just observant, and for some reason you found me an interesting subject. Besides, you’ve sketched a lot of people who didn’t know you were scrutinizing them so closely, I assume.”