Taking Charge (Lone Star Burn #4)(41)

With one hand, he swept the food off the counter behind her and easily lifted her so she was seated on it with him between her legs. He ran his hands up the sides of her thighs, then up to the front of her shirt. With one strong move, he pulled the front of her shirt out of her jeans and then deftly undid the buttons.

He cupped one of her lace-covered breasts and brought his mouth to her nipple, blowing on the material it was eagerly pushing against. Lucy quivered with pleasure and arched herself closer to his mouth. His teeth grazed her nub while his other hand began its own mind-blowing assault on her other nipple.

Lucy moaned with pleasure. Emotionally, she might be a train wreck of indecision, but her body didn’t waver on what it wanted. It hated every layer of clothing that stopped her from feeling his bare skin against hers. Every layer that prevented his cock from driving into her. She reached feverishly for the buckle of his belt, but he stopped her by taking her hands in his.

“Not here,” he said huskily.

“Here?” she asked, then opened her eyes and looked around. Vegetables were strewn on the floor around them. I would have f*cked him right here in Sarah’s kitchen. “What is wrong with me?”

Lucy made a move to grab the edges of her shirt, but David held her hands in his and brought them to her sides. His breathing was as heavy as hers. “Not a single thing. We belong together, you and I.” He kissed the valley between her breasts. “Your heart knows it.” He brought one of his hands to the crotch of her jeans and caressed her through it. “Your body does, too.” He kissed her temple gently. “When you decide to trust me, we’re going to be f*cking fantastic together.”

Lucy was shaking with a mix of emotion and sexual frustration. David casually buttoned up the front of her shirt as if she were his to dress. She felt like a woman being asked to jump off a cliff into the arms of a man below. “I’m trying, David. It might not look that way, but I am.”

He eased her off the counter and pulled her into a hug. “I know you are, and you’re worth waiting for.”

His words were so unexpected, tears of gratitude filled Lucy’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around David and hugged him tightly. They stood in an embrace that was very different from the one a moment before, but it was just as intimate in its own way. This closeness wasn’t about sex. In his arms, she felt safe—loved.

Memories of times she’d felt that way swirled through her. She remembered huddling in her mother’s arms the first time a boy had broken her heart. Her mother’s love had been unconditional. Lucy thought back to the day when she’d told her father she wanted to go to school in Rhode Island. Her father had hugged her this tightly, telling her he’d always support her no matter what she decided to do. A memory of the comforting hug her brother had given her the day of their mother’s funeral came back with painful clarity. Even if David loved her, and he hadn’t gone as far as to say he did, but even if he did—it didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave her.

Love hadn’t been enough to keep anyone with her.

Lucy hugged David so tightly her arms hurt, and she wept against his strong chest. She cried for the parents who had left her, for the brother she didn’t know how to reach, and for the woman inside her who desperately wanted to find a way to believe in forever again.



David rocked Lucy gently against him, murmuring to her that everything would be okay. He hoped he sounded like a better person than he felt. A few moments earlier he’d almost taken her in the kitchen. His cock throbbed painfully from the denial of that pleasure. His body was having a rough time understanding that she was clinging to him for an entirely different reason now.

Lucy needed to face her fears, and he hoped her tears meant she was doing that.

He wanted to tell her he would fix everything that was broken in her life, but he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring back her parents, go back and give her brother the brains and courage to stay with her, or turn back time and stop Ted from ever entering the equation.

He pushed back the passion that was raging inside him and told himself the most important thing was that she was beginning to trust him.

After a few minutes, she sniffed loudly and started to roughly wipe her tears away with her hands. Still in the circle of his arms, she said, “I need a tissue.”

He stepped away only long enough to grab a few paper napkins. He handed them to her, then pulled her back into his arms.

She blew her nose twice, then leaned over to drop them into a trash can. “I sure know how to kill a mood, don’t I?”

He lifted her chin gently until her eyes met his. “I’d still f*ck you on the table in a heartbeat.”

She gasped.

He chuckled and brushed away the last of her tears with his thumb. “Is that wrong?”

A myriad of emotions passed over her face, then her lips curled ever so slightly in a smile. “A little.”

Sensing humor was making her feel better, he joked, “They say honesty is good for couples.”

She shook in his arms and searched his face. “Is that what we are?”

He let out a slow breath and chose his words with care. “You tell me. You’re brave enough to tell Sarah what you want, but I’m the one who needs to know what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours.”

They had visited this place before, and he wouldn’t have put money on one outcome over another. She looked into his eyes for a long moment, then said, “Being with you reminds me of how much I’ve lost, how good things used to be. I don’t know what to do with how you make me feel. It’s wonderful and painful at the same time. Does that make sense?”