Put Me Back Together(52)
Lucas looked back and forth between me and Ethan a few more times, then his eyes settled on my face and I stared at him, shaking my head because I knew none of this made any sense to him. Wordlessly I begged him just to put up with my craziness one last time and he’d never have to do it again. He gazed at me a few minutes more, blinking thoughtfully, then nodded once and turned and closed the door.
“Can I be the stegosaurus?” he asked Ethan as he sat down beside him on the rug.
The little boy nodded and handed over the toy, then started to telling him the names of all the characters in the movie, pointing at the screen.
I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh of relief.
Somehow we made it through the night. Like a real trooper, Lucas sat with Ethan and played dinosaurs and built a fort and harassed Turner while I made us a dinner of chocolate chip cookies—I had the dough, after all—French toast, and apple slices, using up all the fresh ingredients I had in my fridge. We watched the rest of Toy Story and made it halfway through A Bug’s Life without Ethan bursting into tears, which he finally did only because I reminded him that it was already ten minutes past his bedtime. Though the sight of those tears nearly sent me over the edge again, Lucas dealt with them like a pro. He got the kid to stop crying and brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, all for the promise of being able to go to sleep inside the fort.
When it came time to go to sleep, Lucas lay down on the floor next to Ethan’s cushion fort and they whispered secrets into each other’s ears while I watched from my perch on a kitchen stool. I hadn’t really known if my rescuer would be good with kids when I’d called him in a panic, but he really was. It was really precious to watch, and kind of a turn on in a weird way, although I tried to ignore that. He would make a great dad one day.
We retreated to my pillowless bedroom once Ethan was asleep so as to not wake him up. I collapsed facedown onto the mattress, nearly delirious with happiness that the nightmare was finally over. Then I felt the mattress sag next to me as Lucas sat down on my bed and I scrambled into a sitting position, all of a sudden very aware that there was a guy in my room. I’d never had a guy in my room before, or on my bed, or leaning back on my headboard watching me with his legs splayed. Or grinning at me because I’d been staring at him, speechless, for five minutes.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I guess I just got a little…” Upset? Overwhelmed? Maniacally hysterical? There didn’t seem to be any adequate word to finish the sentence.
“Are you going to thank me from over there,” Lucas said, gesturing at my perch on the corner of the bed, “or over here?” He patted the bedspread beside him.
Uh-oh.
“Uhhh…” I stalled, glancing around the room for something to distract him, but there was nothing but art supplies and books. Why the hell was my room so boring? Then I felt two hands grab me by the waist and suddenly I was sprawling, my butt on one side of his legs and my feet on the other, not quite sitting in his lap, but pretty close.
“Over here—that’s what you said, right?” Lucas said, pulling at my hip so my side was pressed up against his chest. “That’s what I thought.” He rested his arm around my shoulder, coaxing my head onto his chest. I resisted at first, but it was the scent of him and the all-encompassing warmth of his arms—they were intoxicating. I let my head fall against him, just for a minute, I promised myself.
“Are you going to tell me what tonight was all about?” he asked.
A band of anxiety wrapped itself around my chest, but I forced it loose. “Maybe another time,” I said, hoping that would be enough.
“Mmmhmm,” Lucas said. He was rubbing his hand up and down my arm in a way that was incredibly distracting. Then his other hand, which I’d lost track of, brushed against my cheek and I felt the beating of my heart begin to speed up.
His fingers reached farther, grazing against the skin of my neck and easing into my hair. I let my eyes fall closed at the tantalizing feeling.
“I missed you,” I murmured into his shirt, and suddenly I felt the beating of Lucas’s heart pick up, as well, the pounding precisely even with my own.
He removed his arm from my shoulders and I felt him guiding me backwards until I was lying flat on the bed and there he was next to me, propped up on his side. Our bodies weren’t exactly touching. His hand was braced against the mattress beside my hip, his chin in the palm of his other hand as he gazed down at me.
I swallowed and tried to catch my breath as my heart went completely crazy, beating a mile a minute. Whoa, I said in my head, and a second later I realized I’d also said it out loud.
“Katie Archer,” Lucas said, and I couldn’t believe how much I loved hearing him say my name, “you are driving me crazy.”
I wanted to protest, but then his lips were on my neck and all possibility of thought was lost. From somewhere in the back of my brain where I was still aware of what was going on, I heard myself breathing hard as I let my head fall back, baring more of my neck to his insistent lips. Then I twisted to face him, feeling the tight curve of his waist through his shirt as my hands pressed against his body. When he found the sweet spot where my neck met my shoulder, I felt something blossom to life inside me and pressed my hips against his. He reacted by making a sound like a growl deep in his throat.
How had this happened? A minute ago I was just sitting beside him on the bed and now suddenly his hand was caressing my hip and I was wishing he would let it move higher up. He leaned over me, feathering kisses across my jaw as he moved to the other side of my neck, and I felt him against my leg, warm and hard. All the fuzziness cleared from my head in an instant as my eyes flew wide open.