Put Me Back Together(71)

“I do not blush,” Lucas said as he stared into my eyes. Before I could offer up a contradiction, he went on. “But I do trip all over myself every time I look at you. Do you have any idea how stunning you are?”

“I’m not—” I began, but then his hands began to move against my bare skin and I had to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from screaming with anticipation. The back of his hands brushed against the bottom of my breasts and I sucked in a breath, bracing myself against Lucas’s body.

In one fluid motion Lucas pulled his shirt off and I found myself exploring the curves of his chest while he explored mine. There was something so intimate about being in bed with him, our bare skin pressed together, that I felt a little lightheaded. Then his thumbs slid across my nipples and I wasn’t just lightheaded anymore. I was mindless. The tension inside of me began to build in a way I’d never felt before and a tingling took over my limbs as I found his lips, his hands still caressing my breasts with such delicacy, as though I were a precious thing. The room spun around me and I knew nothing at all except the feeling of his hands on me. Then he broke our kiss and lowered his face to the skin of my breasts. Just one touch of his lips and the world exploded into tiny little pieces that did not fall around us but drifted down, slowly, like snowflakes.

When I came back to my senses I was lying with my cheek against Lucas’s chest, the bed sheet draped lightly over us, and my entire body seemed to be singing. Lucas trailed his hand along my back and it was as though a musical note erupted everywhere he touched.

“Well, that was new,” I whispered. I was trying not to feel be embarrassed and failing miserably.

In response Lucas shifted me upwards and placed a kiss against my warm cheek. “That was amazing,” he said, brushing my hair away from my face.

“Really?” I said. It bothered me that he hadn’t felt all the same things that I had. Wasn’t it my turn now? Wasn’t that how this worked? “Do you want me to…”

I reached downward, wanting to feel him, but then I hesitated. I had no idea where the towel was at this point and touching him there without any barrier…that wasn’t something I’d ever done before.

Taking my hand in his, he brought it to his lips and kissed it. “I definitely want you to,” Lucas said, “but there is the matter of the exam I’m supposed to be taking in about an hour.”


Glancing at the clock on my bedside table, I saw that he was right.

“All right,” I said. “But don’t forget, it’s your turn next. Fair’s fair.”

“Oh, I won’t forget. Trust me,” Lucas replied, running an idle hand down the front of my body and planting a kiss on my lips before swinging his legs to the floor. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be not forgetting all through my statistics exam, too.”

As he got out of bed my suspicions about the towel were confirmed. He was entirely naked. As he pulled on his boxers and wandered down the hall in search of food, I pressed my face into the pillow and giggled like an idiot. For about five straight minutes.

“Will you stop picturing me naked and get in here?” Lucas said, poking his head back into the room. And this time I wasn’t too embarrassed to show him my beaming grin.



We wolfed down our meal of cold bacon and toast, which had never tasted so good, and got dressed. He let me chastely put on my clothes in the bathroom, as I’d been doing every time he came over in the morning. I might have just been topless in front of him, but there was something about putting on clothes that struck me as decidedly unsexy. I wasn’t quite ready for him to see me struggling to button my jeans as he displayed his rock-hard abs.

As we walked toward campus, Lucas took my hand in his. This was another new thing we were doing, that I was trying to get used to. It drew a lot of attention, which I tried to bear without too much squirming. It helped that he kissed me every chance he got. Nothing made my mind go blank like Lucas’s lips on mine.

“So you and…Brandon,” Lucas said. He always had trouble saying his name. “You never did anything like that?” I guessed his meaning: Had Brandon and I ever come close to having sex?

I struggled not to groan. Over the last little while it had become glaringly obvious that whenever he wasn’t occupied appreciating my body Lucas’s mind drifted to my stalker and the few details I’d told him about the situation. I wasn’t sure how much longer the story I told him was going to hold up, which left me in a cold sweat.

“No,” I said stiffly, hoping he’d sense my wariness of the subject and back off, but he kept glancing my way, waiting for more. “I was younger. We never got to that step.”

Because I was in middle school, was what I didn’t say.

“So you broke it off?” Lucas persisted.

Actually, no. When I woke up covered in blood he was already gone.

“I guess you could say it was a mutual decision,” I replied.

He didn’t look too happy with me when I was testifying that I’d never seen him before in my life.

“I’m getting the impression that you don’t really want to talk about this,” Lucas said, putting an arm around my shoulder. I leaned into him, letting the past fade to black as he held me close, feeling the safety of his arms. “I know you probably think I’m obsessing. I just can’t stand the thought of him hurting you again.”