‘No,’ I whispered. His hand tugged at mine, like he was going to reach for the scarf, but I forced it upwards. I disentangled our fingers to press one of his into the hollow between my collarbones. ‘That’s where it was.’
I’d told myself a thousand times it was silly to miss something that fleeting partner after fleeting partner had told me was a stain on my perfect image. One had suggested looking into getting it smoothed out, that without it I would be truly stunning.
I wished I’d been with someone like Lucas before. His scent was threaded through with deep and enduring want, but crystalline sadness wound around the edges. He leant forward and pressed his lips to the place our fingers touched.
‘You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known,’ he whispered into my skin. ‘And not because you don’t have a scar anymore or because of any other part of your body.’ He breathed against my finger tip. ‘You’re beautiful because of who you are, inside far more than out, and that’s something that can never be taken away from you.’
A breath shuddered from me. I’d imagined this moment many times. I hated that becoming a werewolf had erased my scar, but I hadn’t wanted that to be a barrier to sexual intimacy for my whole life. In shadowy fantasies, I’d wondered what I would feel and what someone would say in the moment I took off my scarf.
Nothing I’d imagined matched up to the reality of Lucas’s lips on my neck, to his kind words spoken into my skin.
‘Please take off everything else,’ I breathed.
Lucas pulled back, took one long second to stare into my eyes, then his hands left mine. His fingers tickled down my chest and stomach, they tucked under the thick wool of my jumper.
My hair couldn’t have looked good after he tugged the fabric over my head, but his brown eyes looked almost black as they dashed between my face and exposed arms and collarbones peeking out of the neckline of my T-shirt.
His fingers stroked my stomach as he fumbled with the button of my jeans. Brow furrowed in concentration, he eased open the zip.
We both gasped when his knuckles brushed the sticky fabric at the front of my tented boxers.
‘Naked,’ he whispered as he helped my jeans down my legs.
‘What was that?’
He looked up at me from where he was crouched, waiting for me to lift my feet. The stretch of his neck did something to me. My cock twitched, stomach contracting.
Lucas’s eyelids fluttered. The blast of pure desire he would have been treated to from his position right near my groin must have been overwhelming.
‘Naked,’ he repeated, as he eased my feet out of my bunched jeans, like saying it again would make it any clearer. He swept my jeans out of the way and stood, then placed his hands on my hips and breathed deep. ‘I have loved seeing you fully clothed, but I am really fucking excited to see you naked.’
Lucas had gone from zero to a hundred since we’d kissed on his bed, which had to be less than an hour ago. He had been so deeply unsure of what he was feeling but now he’d figured it out, he was embracing every aspect of wanting someone. He had run and launched himself off a cliff, and I was more than happy to join him in the freefall.
I shivered as his hands moved from my hips to trace the sides of my stomach and up over my rib cage. His thumbs spread, like he couldn’t resist the chance to brush over my nipples. The rub of his calloused skin made me shudder. He raised my T-shirt over my head, his face slack with awe as he dropped it on the floor beside us.
I resisted the urge to shuffle, left my hands at my sides despite the desire to cup my throat and hide the bulge in my underwear. Everything about Lucas – his scent, his face, hiseyes, his hands – screamed that he wanted this. He wanted me. Just as I was. Inside and out.
He bit his lip as his fingers dove under the waistband of my boxers. Eagerly, he tugged them down. They slid over my thighs, then dropped to the floor. I untangled them from my feet, kicked them to join our tangled pile of clothes.
We both breathed heavily as we stood and stared. Lucas had been naked for minutes so I should have become acclimatised to it by now, but it was difficult to get my head around the sheer amount of tanned skin on show.
Since the moment Lucas had recoiled from my kiss weeks ago, I’d told myself friendship with him was all I could ever hope for. I’d never get to touch across his chest, never nose into the hair at his groin, never see the most secret parts of him. It was overwhelming for Lucas to have returned after weeks of absence and for all the things I’d told myself not to wish for to be in touching distance.
He reached out to hold my hand. ‘You okay?’
He’d checked in with me after he’d taken off my scarf. Then, I hadn’t been able to deny that being exposed was difficult. It didn’t feel so tough now that I could step forward and have so many parts of me on so many parts of him.
He gasped as our chests met, the hair on his tickling the smooth skin of mine. I eased forward until our cocks touched, and we both groaned.
‘I’m good.’ I rubbed my hands over his shoulders, twined my arms around his neck. I moaned as his hands stretched around my waist, his tentative touch questing up to my ribs and to the bottom of my spine. ‘You?’
He laughed, pressing our bodies together, and his mirth was replaced with another groan. He leant his forehead on my shoulder.
‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to get enough of you,’ he murmured.
His heartbeat didn’t skip, but his words couldn’t mean what I wanted them to. Lucas was so new to this. He couldn’t be feeling the same irresistible pull I did, prompting the belief that a thousand touches still wouldn’t be enough.
Only a lifetime together would satisfy the growling beast inside of me.
