Page 31 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

“Really?” He seems surprised, and I don’t know if it’s at the idea that I am superficially effeminate enough for people to think I’m a woman at a glance or that being taken for one doesn’t bother me. “And you don’t care?”

“Nope. Not even a little. As long as they’re nice about it.”

I swipe the key through the door of our room and open it.

That same rustic, mountain-cabin aesthetic follows us in here, though the scale is considerably less grand.

But there’s still a great view of the mountains, looming in the darkness, and there’s one bed, king-sized.

No complaints here. I set my bags down and throw myself onto the plush mattress.

“This is awesome,” I declare, staring out the window behind me upside down. “You really went all the fuck out, didn’t you?”

“Come here, stunt girl. I want to try something.”

I prop myself up on my elbows and look at Luca. He’s standing near the center of the room, watching me, his arms folded and his white-blonde hair falling into his eyes so I can’t read his expression quite clearly. I don’t know if I could, anyway.

“Why?” I say, playing coy.

He raises his chin and says nothing, so I get off the bed and go to him.

The corner of his mouth curls in something that’s not quite a smile.

Not a smirk, either. But I can see his eyes and there’s something dark and hungry in them, the pupil swallowing all that nice green and just the sight of that makes my pulse quickstep.

I lean up to kiss, to touch, to be touched, but he steps just out of reach and I fall back on my heels.

“Take your clothes off,” he tells me in a low voice. “Except this.” He reaches out and fingers the choker around my neck. “Leave this.”

I don’t have a fucking clue where this is coming from but he doesn’t have to ask me twice.

I strip quickly, ignoring the way my hands shake with a heady combination of anticipation and excitement.

The jacket, the shirt, the jeans and boots and socks—everything goes, dumped in a heap by the bed.

I’m naked in the middle of this big gorgeous hotel room, which is warm but not quite warm enough to keep the goosebumps from erupting on my bare flesh.

All the while Luca watches me with an obvious but tempered hunger.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he tells me.

I do. I grasp my forearms behind me and he moves in, circling me like something predatory.

A wolf. A hawk. I lift my face almost defiantly as he inspects me, and he orders me to look at the floor.

I almost snap back with a what for but of course I don’t.

I just can’t believe he’s playing this game with me, now, here of all places.

So my gaze obediently sweeps the carpet.

I catch a glimpse of my cock, already standing at eager attention where it sweeps the plane of my belly.

My lips are all at once dry and I run my tongue over them.

My skin is crying out to be touched, shuddering, fly-stung and needy. We’ve done fuck all but I am already approaching desperation. He has never deprived me like this. He’s always been unable to keep his hands off me.

I feel his breath on my ear as he whispers, “Beautiful. You’re so perfect,” and I make a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

He moves around to the front of me. His fingertip running along the seam of my lips, peeling them back as if to consider my teeth.

I can’t help myself. I bite him—not hard, nothing more than a nip—and hear his sharp intake of breath.

He snatches a fistful of my hair and wrenches my head up so that I can see his face again.

“You’re fucking bad .”

I smile. I know I am .

And I think he’s going to kiss me at last, his lips are parted and so damn close.

Maybe he’s breathing as fast as I am right now, and I swear I can hear his heartbeat, somehow, syncing up with mine.

My eyes lock with his and I will him to kiss me.

I want to lick his mouth and rub my face against his.

I want him to press his clothed body against my nude one.

Luca touches my lips again with that same finger, and I open my mouth even though it’s not enough.

I want more. He slides it inside and this time I don’t bite.

My tongue swirls around it like it’s the head of his dick.

My head bobs and he groans faintly, before letting me go and stepping away. “On your knees,” he says. “Eyes down.”

I sink gracefully to the carpet. My hands stay where they are, locked around my forearms. He disappears from my periphery once again but he’s not circling me this time.

He retreats behind me, and the bed squeaks beneath his weight as he sits.

I feel a flare of indignation in my chest that he’s left me alone on the floor while he’s on the bed.

I should be there with him. He should want me there.

“What do you want?” he says.

“You,” I reply immediately.

He goes quiet for a moment and I think I might’ve said the wrong thing but I’m starting to lose my ability to reason. I stare at the patterns in the carpet and wait. “Noel,” he says, slowly this time as if I am stupid, “what do you want .”

“ You ,” I say again, and it comes out sharper than it should. “I want you. Please,” I add as an appeasing afterthought .

I think he sighs, but I’m not altogether sure. The sound of my heart is deafening at this point. It seems to jolt my entire body with the force at which it pounds in my chest. My vision is just a little fuzzy around the edges, pulsating with my heartbeat. “And what, exactly, do you want with me?”

“Everything. Anything.”

More silence. I want to turn around and look at him, gauge from his face what the hell it is he wants me to say, but that would defeat the point.

I am near tears for some fucking reason, lost and unmoored down here on the floor.

Utterly alone, under a spotlight in a sea of darkness.

Some invisible audience just beyond the circle of light watching and judging me.

My nails dig into my arm and where they do I imagine vividly there are black little crescents from my nail polish.

“Why don’t you think about your answer first?” Luca says at last.

He doesn’t know I’m not capable of fucking thinking right now, I guess.

He doesn’t realize I am little more than raw nerves and need down here.

The carpet before me is swimming, its patterns taking on new shapes and forms and colors.

My lips part. There’s no sound, except for a thin whimper that’s pathetic even to my ears. I think I am crying.

“Just be honest,” Luca says to me. Not unkindly.

“I am .” My voice breaks and the tears spill down my cheeks.

I don’t even know why I’m fucking crying.

What’s happening to me? Do I hate this, is it too much?

I don’t know how or why because I’m just here, kneeling naked and untouched and—I shut my eyes and take a shuddering breath and I know, precisely, what it is I want.

So why is it so hard to just say it? To ask?

Because he could say no. Because he could deny me.

He could leave me here forever. That could happen, and why not?

He wouldn’t be the first to do it. No, I can’t say the things I want out loud, I cannot ask, I can’t do that to myself.

I can’t, I won’t. He can’t make me. I’ll just fucking stay down here forever until he gets bored of this stupid game and either fucks me or lets me put my clothes back on.

“We don’t have to do this anymore, Noel.” Luca’s voice is still gentle. “It doesn’t have to be like this if you don’t want it to. The ball’s in your court.”

That’s right. I could end this with one word.

I don’t.

I rub my cheek on my shoulder. It’s an automatic gesture, something reflexive and self-soothing that I don’t even know I’m doing until Luca says, “Stop that.” I freeze with my face pressed against skin that s smelling of sour, anxious sweat, and I am trembling from something more visceral than cold.

My lower lip is seized and mauled by my teeth, which I know he hates, but he can’t see my face so he can’t stop me.

And the worst part is that despite this humiliating routine and all my weeping and gnashing of teeth, I still want.

Does he know he’s in my head? Is he conscious of the space he occupies there, the razor-sharp awareness I have of him embedded in my brain?

Even now I’m so terribly fucking aware. I can feel him where he sits on the bed exactly five feet behind me.

I can feel the disturbance in the air his body creates.

I can picture him, ankle crossed over knee and shirt sleeves rolled up his tattooed forearms. His white-blonde hair falling in his face as his green gaze fixes on my back, counting the knobs of my spine as he waits, maybe, or wondering why the fuck he ever got involved with me.

Come get me. Why won’t you come get me?

Swallowing is an audible effort, but Luca remains infuriatingly silent, offering me no consolation whatsoever.

He wants me to roll over and offer my belly and let him gore me.

My lower half has become pins and needles and my shoulders burn.

I fucking hate this, oh, I hate it. I hate the stillness and I hate the carpet burn on my legs and I hate the way my arms are shaking.

Most of all I hate being forced to confront the weight of my own desire.

Because it is so heavy.

“Why are you doing this?” My voice is rusty, as if I’ve not spoken in many hours. It’s been ten minutes at most.

“You know why.”

“I don’t ,” even though I do.