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“Is that what you’d have guessed?”
I shook my head, unable to speak.
“Then you’d have been right. Because what I was really thinking was, if it were up to me, you wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. Pants down, zero fucks given. You’d be mine.”
Holy shit. Was he for real? “That’s. . . what you were thinking?” I managed to say.
Lucas smiled in a way that told me to cross my legs if I didn’t want to spontaneously come right here and now.
“Actually,” he said, his voice somehow sounding even deeper, more gravelly, “what I was really thinking was that you wouldn’t have a fucking choice.”
He said the word fucking with an emphasis only a man like him could pull off, with full-on emphasis on that first syllable, as if it were as much of a delicious threat as an adjective.
“Well then. . .” I was wholly unprepared for this Lucas.
Intrigued? Yes. Mindfucked? Yes. Turned on? Most definitely. But prepared? Hell no.
“That’s what I thought, Charlee.” He took a long swig of beer and wheeled his stool away. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
lucas
I stood in front of the refrigerator having closed it with a second beer in hand.
So much for wanting to meet at a neutral spot. No dinner. No drinks. No date. And yet, here we were, Charlee now the proud owner of her first ink, which I’d designed like some lovesick puppy after vowing to avoid the woman at all costs.
Not even two beers in.
Telling Charlee exactly what was on my mind.
You’re batting a thousand, Lucas.
What the hell was I even doing here? Coming home after the disaster that had been the end to my military career was supposed to be a fresh start, not a catapult back into a life that I’d escaped from in the first place. Charlee had been a bright spot back then.
Captain of the cheerleaders. Daughter of Kitchi Falls royalty. President of her class.
Sexy as fuck.
And yet Charlee Donovan had chosen me. It had been a good run, and I’d caught feelings for her. Loved her.
I didn’t exactly join the Army to escape the pain of our breakup, one that was as sudden as an IED explosion. No warning whatsoever. I’d been considering enlisting for months, and that had just been the catalyst.
The man I’d become since was one who knew himself, who’d come to terms with the possibility of death. . . who never lost perspective. So, what the hell was I doing here today?
Fucking Charlee. The one temptation I couldn’t resist.
“I thought you got lost in there,” she said, still hesitant after I’d gone ahead and told her exactly what I’d been thinking.
“I thought maybe you’d have run out of here terrified,” I said, sitting back down.
“You don’t scare me, Lucas.”
“No?”
“No,” she said emphatically.
Mmmm. If she could read my thoughts right now, Charlee wouldn’t be so quick to say that. There was a beast within me that hadn’t been there when she knew me last, and Charlee was too innocent, too sweet, to see that side of me.
