Page 13 of Restless Obsession

“I think you might be,” I answered. She shrugged and, with a giggle in the air, I lost her eyes as she walked towards the wall.

I watched as she stood on the tips of her toes and reached for a Ghostface. She looked at the mask in her hands and turned over her shoulder. Her gaze on me, my face, my body. It was clear she liked what she saw. That she was picturing me shirtless wearing that thing as I chased her around.

And she liked was she saw.

Lucy turned and placed the mask back on the wall before we kept walking down the aisles.

“What’s your thing anyhow?” she asked when I caught up to her side after turning the corner. The store was massive.

“What do you mean?” I pretended not to understand.

“You know what I mean.” She hip-checked me, and I laughed.

“I don’t know. I work a lot.” You, I wanted to say. She was my thing.

“Hmm, and?” she pushed, willing to pull teeth for information. And because I couldn’t resist giving her anything and everything in my power, I kept sharing. “And I hang out with my brothers.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I have four of them.”

“Four! That’s… a lot. I’ve never seen them around the building.”

“They’re pretty busy. I usually go to them.”

“Five brothers… Big family.”

“We grew up in the system together,” I shared right off the bat and braced for some kind of judgment or pity in her eyes. I’d told her a lot about me during our online chats but never something like this. That look never came.

“We were adopted by the last couple who fostered us. The Porters. They gave us their name. Their love. They were good people.”

“I’m glad you had that. That’s good you had one another,” she said softly. “I have two sisters, and we don’t even see each other for the holidays. I couldn’t tell you the last time we were all together for brunch, much less a holiday,” she shared. I’d found this out with my digging online but had never really understood it.

“And why’s that?”

“Well, the oldest lives in Spain. The other… she doesn’t… really like what I do.” Judgmental bitch. That was her loss, though, not Lucy’s.

“And your parents?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“Mommy and Father Dearest?” she laughed humorlessly. “They split up when I was five. My dad was never really around before that and less after he left. He passed about four years ago. And my mom moved to Florida when she retired. She’s in her own world. According to her, she did her job raising us and her job was done the moment we graduated high school. She wasn’t the cookies-and-milk type, if you know what I mean.”

“That sucks.” I hated that for her. Didn’t they know how fucking amazing she was?

“Your brothers and you might not share blood, but that’s not what makes a family. I wish I had… people like that, you know? Whom you can count on to just call about having lunch together.”

I wanted to give her that.

I was positive my brothers’ women would bring her right into the family fold.

“Anyhow… that’s not what I meant with what are you into. I told you one of my kinks, I guess you could call them.” She pointed at the wall, and I realized we were standing in front of a wall of women’s costumes on the skimpier side. “What’s your thing, Victor?” she asked without blushing.

And fuck me, I loved this side of her.

I’d seen it time and time again through a screen, but face to face? It reminded me of the serious trouble I was in when it came to Lucy. She might have sweet little blushing moments, but she wasn’t a scared little virgin.

She was a woman.

A full-grown one who knew exactly what she wanted and what she liked. My chest rose and fell as heat pumped in my blood. She had no qualms about exploring, either. I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. My eyes moved to the costumes on the wall.