All of You: The Lonnigans, Book 1 Page 4

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, her thighs tightening on either side of him, but unable to close. She didn’t fight him, moaning louder while he inspected every crevice, learning what made her sigh, what made her cry out. Did she like it when he circled the straining nub of her clit? Or when he parted her, teasing the outer edges of her opening, whispering encouragement while taking his tongue back to her nipple?

  She braced herself with one hand next to his chest, the other next to his head, lowering her breasts to his mouth and lifting her hips to give him room to work. Room to move. He finally eased one finger inside her, surprised at the tightness of her muscles gripping him, nearly sucking at him. Another finger joined the first, sliding in and out together while the butt of his palm returned to the nub.

  She cried out again.

  He smiled.

  He continued to stroke, she continued to ride. Feeling her movements growing erratic, he waited for the moment, listening to the ragged sound of her breathing, then when she tightened around his fingers, he applied a sweet sharp pressure to the suction at her nipple and sent her wildly over the edge. Her cries vibrated against his mouth and her muscles clenched on his hand in a series of ripples and contractions that felt so damn good he was almost satisfied already.

  Almost.

  He eased her orgasm, bringing her down gently on her side next to him while her heart tried to find its original beat and her slick body tried to cool. Finally, he pulled away to find his pants.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, almost sounding afraid.

  “My wallet. I need a condom.” And he damn well better have one in there. Hadn’t he put one in last week?

  “I’m on the pill.”

  He frowned. “You are?” Hadn’t she said she and Lucas never—

  “Yup, doctor’s orders. Something about curbing my bad moods when I’m left unsatisfied.”

  He laughed at her kittenish displeasure, her grasping fingers curling around his neck. At least, five of them…

  “I should still—”

  “All I want to feel is you. This first time, believe me, all you’ll want to feel is me.” The five fingers of her other hand reached for a decidedly different head, encircling his shaft like the last spear in the Amazon. She squeezed, tearing a groan from him. “Trust me,” she murmured. “I’m as safe as a Swiss bank.”

  When was the last time he’d laughed this much in bed? He wasn’t sure he ever had. Bringing fingertips of his own to walk across her warm belly, he decided never to go without it again. “Do I need a special account number?”

  She giggled, tugging at him, pulling him above her for a deep, sensuous kiss. “I think that one might work.” Firm strokes glided up and down his cock, jacking him so well he had to grit his teeth not to come then and there. “Why don’t you try your key?”

  “My key, huh?”

  “You’d be surprised what you’d unlock.”

  He was sure he would be. He kissed her again, still drowning in the flavor of her when she guided him into her wet slit. With a sigh, he slid home.

  It was exactly that too. Home. Exquisite liquid heat, tight and throbbing, comfort and demand, give and take, all at once. The most perfect feeling he’d ever experienced. His whole body trembled and so did hers, as if they were truly one.

  “Oh my,” she whispered, her eyes open wide, shimmering in the blue light of the moon through her filmy curtains. He didn’t know how long he stared down into her eyes, watching emotion after emotion cross her face. Elation, fear, confusion, denial, then a careful mask that showed nothing at all.

  He tried to calm himself with a breath, but there wasn’t enough air in the world. Overwhelmed by the urge to cry, to cheer, to hold her close and savor her, console her, he did what his body begged for. He moved. A slow, easing stroke against the tight grasp of her pussy, then back again. And again. And again.

  She clasped him close, throwing back her head and tightening her legs around him. The bed squeaked, the headboard rattled and their breaths became gasps as everything began to spin, to tighten. His muscles ached, but they couldn’t stop. The pressure to stay fought with the pressure to meet his release and he couldn’t decide which would give the greater pleasure.

  The decision disappeared, though, with her keening cry, her muscles quivering around him like a thousand kisses all at the same time, and he exploded into her, incapable even of saying her name, though it chanted through his mind over and over again.

  This was it. The moment, the woman, that would change everything about him. He knew it in his heart and mind, body and soul. This was the magic he’d always heard about and never known. A true, one-in-a-million kind of woman.

  “Oh, Lucas…” she murmured, kissing his cheek and turning his blood cold.

  He’d found his one in a million, all right.

  But she thought he was someone else.

  Shit.

  Chapter Four

  Okay, it was the coward’s way out. But since he’d already done a hell of a lot of other things he wasn’t proud of that night—enjoyed them immensely, of course, but he wasn’t proud of them—he put the cap on it by tucking Jessica into her bed, finding his clothes and hightailing it out of her apartment.

  She thought she’d just made love to Lucas.

  He thought he might throw up.

  Could he blame her for his own idiotic behavior? Should he feel guilty? Should he feel ashamed for what was clearly the best night of his life? God, he didn’t know. Right now, he felt like a criminal. Like a kid who’d snuck out and didn’t know how to get back inside the house without getting caught.

  Getting caught…

  Dammit, how long might it be before she tried to reach him and ended up getting Lucas? He couldn’t let her—or Lucas—find out that way. Which meant, of course, he’d have to tell Lucas what happened.

  He could see it now: Hey man, can I crash on your couch? By the way, I just had the best sex of my life with your date. But she thinks she slept with you. Blankets still in the hall closet?

  Kyle groaned. His brother was going to punch a hole right through his head. And he’d deserve it. So, no. No telling Lucas until he absolutely had to. For now, he’d just head over there and run interference until he could think of a way to get out of this with his head—and his balls—intact. He just needed a plan. The chuckle that escaped him was almost bitter with disbelief. It’d have to be a fucking perfect plan, woven by fairies and delivered from on high, because even he wasn’t that good at spinning things.

  He miserably made his way to Lucas’s building, inwardly awaiting execution because not a single viable thought came to mind. Of course, the lights were off in the apartment. Not to be deterred, Kyle rang the bell. No answer.

  He checked his watch, scrunching his eyes in the not-so-bright light of the hall. One in the morning. Lucas slept light, the doorbell should have woken him.

  Unless he wasn’t home.

  But in order for Lucas not to be home…he’d have to still be on Kyle’s arranged date with Belinda Riggs.

  That took a whole minute to sink in.

  When Lucas offered to swap dates with him, it hadn’t been hard to figure out why. Lucas wasn’t exactly a generous soul. But Kyle had plans to meet his friend Belinda that night. Watching Lucas and Belinda screw up what should have been an inevitable happily ever after had become something of a spectator sport for him. Every few years, the two of them would accidentally remember they were in love with each other and Kyle did his utmost to make those accidents happen in a positive way. The problem was that both of them were stubborn, cranky, miserable and determined to remain that way.

  For a second, Kyle could only grin. Maybe for once they’d managed to work things out without trying to kill one another?

  Then he realized that if his brother didn’t come home, he was stuck sitting on the doorstep until Lucas returned. Damn, damn, damn. Now he not only had to find a way to explain the truth to Jessica and hide said truth from Lucas, now he
had to come up with an excuse for waiting at the door all night.

  Groaning, he let his body slide down the glass-and-wood door until his ass landed on the threshold. At least he was collapsing on Lucas’s doormat. It was probably vacuumed daily. Hell, he was probably the only person other than Lucas or Belinda to ever step on it. He leaned his head back on the door and crossed his arms to get comfortable while he waited. He didn’t even notice dozing off…

  Until the earth moved.

  The door shifted and he fell backward so hard that his head cracked on the parquet flooring of his brother’s apartment. With a pained moan, he looked up at the towering figure of his twin. His sallow, angry, rumpled twin.

  Uh-oh. “Morning, Lucas.”

  Lucas grunted and stepped over him.

  Yup…this promised to be a fun discussion. Kyle rolled over onto his belly and let his forehead rest on the cool ground for a moment. Note to self: do not sleep on doorsteps again. His spine complained, his neck was tight enough to string fence and he couldn’t feel his ass at all. All of which were small blessings compared to what Lucas would do to him once the truth was out.

  Kyle dragged himself to his feet with the help of the doorknob. “Should I take your effervescent welcome to mean you won’t be saying thank you?”

  All he heard in response was another door slamming.

  “I guess that means you didn’t have a great night then,” he said loudly, closing the front door, as if Lucas would listen. “Here I was hoping you and Belinda had finally settled things. Especially since you’re getting home at—” he consulted his watch, “eight thirty-two in the morning. Which means you either got lucky or she locked you in her trunk again.”

  Nope, no response. He knew he wouldn’t get one either. Lucas was already a clam. Involve him with Belinda and the man could double for an armored car. The good news was that it probably meant Lucas wouldn’t care too much about Kyle’s love life—not that he ever cared much in the first place.

  The bad news? Who else would he talk to about it?

  “I had a great time, thanks for asking,” he yelled down the hall when he couldn’t think of anyone. “Jessica’s amazing. If you weren’t possibly the stupidest man on Earth, you might have noticed. And while we’re on the subject of your dubious intelligence—” he put a hand on the wall while he tossed off his shoes one at a time, making as loud a clunk down the hall as he could, “—I knew you were up to something when you came up with this stupid date swap idea. I didn’t know what, but I knew you had something up your sleeve. I’ve met rocks more giving than you, but I went anyway, didn’t I? Don’t see me complaining because you figured out Jessica was going to break up with you last night, do you? No. I’m happy I went. You hear me, happy!

  “Jessica loved me,” he called out a little louder because Lucas hated being thwarted. “She thinks I’m sexy. She thinks I’m interesting.”

  She thinks you’re Lucas, his conscience reminded him, stopping him mid-rant.

  Damn it.

  “She’s going to kill us both.” All the false cheer seeped out of him. He dropped his head into his hands and then ran his fingers through his hair before pulling at whole clumps, which turned out to still be sore from when Jessica pulled on them while she came apart beneath him.

  What a mess.

  “I thought she was great.” He didn’t yell this time, talking more to himself than to his truculent sibling. “Really great. Like, the-best-great-there-is kind of great. And she’s going to hate me.” His voice trailed off as he looked miserably around the room. No miraculous arrival of his brother. Just the phone, which he vaguely remembered hearing ring through the night, on a long slim table, sitting next to the answering machine, a few feet away from the front door. Mr. Analytical’s keys were in the bowl there too, probably so he could unload his personality while collecting messages.

  The machine was blinking rapidly. Mesmerizingly. He had a feeling that the frequent phone calls were from Jessica. On the one hand, he wished he could have picked up the phone and reassured her. On the other, he was so damn grateful there had been a locked door between him and the phone. What would he have said? How would he have explained? Could he explain?

  Kyle walked to the table, looking down at the blinking light and the two-digit message counter. Twelve messages. How many had been there last night? Probably not many. Lucas never left things like this for long.

  Kyle looked back over his shoulder toward the silent bedroom where Lucas had locked himself away. Would the sound carry? He inspected the machine, grateful that Lucas cared more for efficiency than technology, and turned the volume dial down, hopefully far enough so that no one but him would hear. Crossing his fingers and shrugging, he pushed the playback button.

  There were several messages, including one from Belinda, which he ignored.

  “Lucas?” Jessica’s warm voice sounded slightly plaintive, slightly panicked, dousing him with the cold water of his reality. “Are you there? Maybe you’re not home yet. I’m not sure when you left… Call me when you get home, okay? I’m not trying to be needy or anything… I just…I don’t usually do this—”

  Kyle’s stomach plummeted. He’d known she wasn’t the kind who’d understand when she woke up alone, of course, but hearing the soft confusion in her voice reminded him abruptly. Yet another thing to feel crappy about. He never slept with women who expected to see him in the morning. Hell, half the time, they left him with little to no prodding at all. Jessica was completely unprepared for such a bastard move and it showed in her voice. How the hell was he supposed to fix this?

  The next few messages were hang-ups. The four a.m. message was short: “Lucas, you don’t have to hide from me. I—I know you don’t usually have these kind of things happen to you. It probably seemed scary, the first time. But you don’t have to worry. We’re still friends. We can talk about it. Really. Call me, okay?”

  She was upset, but not for the reasons he thought. She was upset for him. No, for Lucas. Kyle began to laugh a little, putting pieces of the night and her odd comments together. She seemed to think Lucas was a sexual martyr…or maybe just a virgin. God, he had to get his brother out more often.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Kyle jumped at the boom of Lucas’s voice behind him and spun around. Crap, he hadn’t even done anything yet and Lucas already looked mad enough to kill.

  The machine announced the next message was at six that morning.

  Okay, maybe he’d done something. “I can explain—”

  “You’ve got no right to be playing my messages. That’s my business phone.”

  Kyle frowned, looking at the plain black module as if it were going to make his brother sound like a human being. “You gave your girlfriend your business number?”

  “Jessica isn’t my girlfriend, she’s a business contact. There was no reason to—damn it, Kyle, you don’t see me pushing every damn button I see in your apartment.”

  “I never see you in my apartment.” Way to stick to the point, moron.

  His brother must have thought the same thing because he leveled him with a sour glare that could only be translated into “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Lucas, it was just sex.” Jessica’s voice interrupted the silent conversation. “Honestly, we can be adult about this.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened to the point that Kyle wondered if they might fall out. Well, that officially ended the evade-and-escape plan for the day.

  “I can explain—”

  “You keep saying that, but I don’t hear you explaining,” Lucas replied, not seeming to draw breath. “You slept with her?”

  Did Lucas have to look as if he couldn’t fathom the possibility? Kyle might not be an MIT graduate, but he wasn’t a troll. Jessica was a beautiful woman. His only crime in sleeping with her was not staying longer to make love to her again. “Um…yeah.”

  “But she thinks you were me?”

  Okay, two crimes.

  Kyle decided not to me
ntion how her confusion wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Thanks to the mystery of biology, they did look reasonably alike. But Lucas’s eye-bulging shortage of oxygen was already of concern. “Yeah.”

  “How…wh…” Lucas closed his eyelids—probably to get those eyeballs back in place—and pushed out another breath. “Explain.”

  “I went on the date, like we agreed.” Better to remind Lucas of that upfront. Summing up the rest of the night wasn’t as easy. “We hit it off.”

  “I think that goes without saying.” At least Lucas’s sarcasm was still intact. God forbid they have a conversation without that.

  “I tried to tell her before things got too carried away.” It was the one thing he’d done last night that he could feel good about. Well, aside from the orgasms.

  “That’s where this gets confusing.”

  Where? The orgasms? Those had been pretty clear cut actu—

  “How hard is it to say that you’re not me?” Lucas demanded.

  When up a creek without a paddle, do what any sane person would do. Jump out and swim like a maniac. “Amazingly hard, thank you very much.”

  Lucas didn’t seem to be buying it.

  Secondary option? Turn the tables. “Didn’t you ever tell her you had a twin?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Lucas asked, eyes open again and starting to look a little wild. That couldn’t be right though, Lucas was never wild. “Was I supposed to tell her I’m an organ donor while I was at it? We had dinner for a few weeks. It wasn’t a confessional.”

  Kyle winced. I’m digging a hole to friggin’ China. And yet, he couldn’t seem to stop the words from continuing to come out of his mouth. “You don’t have to go to a priest to talk about yourself.”

  “Telling her I’m a twin isn’t talking about me.” Lucas glowered. Things never boded well when Lucas glowered. “It’s talking about you.”

  “Whatever. The point is that Jessica is probably the most interesting woman I’ve ever met in my life. She’s smart and beautiful and different. I wanted to get to know her better. Didn’t you?”