Page 54 of Lucky's Trouble

The man sitting in front of me is in no way a white knight. He doesn’t ride a horse; he rides a motorcycle. He doesn’t have a longsword; he has a gun. He doesn’t wear armor; he wears a leather vest. Still, none of that makes him any less of a hero to me. I fling myself at him, needing to give him a hug. He wasn’t expecting it, so he flies backward onto the couch, and I land on top of him.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome.” His arms wrap around me, holding me tight and making me feel safe.

Later, I’ll go back to being angry with myself for not handling this on my own because I shouldn’t need a knight or a hero or a Lucky to solve my problems. When that happens, Lucky will get pissed at my stubbornness and call me out, and we can go back to the way things were. Right now, though, I put all that on the back burner to appreciate the fact that someone out there cares enough about me to want to help.

We stay like that for a long time, my body pressed into his while I soak up this feeling. That is until I feel something hard press into my hip. Is that his—oh my God.

I lift my head, and our gazes lock, mine confused and his. . . I don’t know what his is. His pupils are blown, leaving the barest ring of stormy blue-gray. There’s no tension in his face, the usual small wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead nonexistent.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” he says, his voice weighted and rough. “If that’s not what you want, I’m gonna need you to pry your hot little body off me.”

“Wanting has nothing to do with it,” I say. “But I think I need to listen to my gut.”

“Okay, so what does your gut say?”

“It should be saying there’s something seriously fucked up with both of us, considering you’re covered in blood, and I’m covered in bruises, both from the same man.”

“I think that makes this moment poetic, don’t you think?”

He’s only proving my point. We are darkly disturbed individuals to be turned on right now.

“Don’t answer that,” he says, thinking better of it. “You said that’s what your gut should be saying, but what is it saying?”

That’s easy. It’s telling me that all I want right now is to not think about my shitty life and my shitty past. The only way I can think to make that happen is to let this man make me forget with his mouth.

Instead of blurting all that out, I answer by shifting so our pelvises are aligned and his hardness is lined up with my softness. My clit thrums a steady beat, and a rush of arousal dampens my panties. Lucky swallows thickly, tilting his hips to give me the barest of friction.

Until him, I thought I was dead inside. Nothing turned me on, not when I tried and failed to make myself come, not when I had an attractive customer to grind on, and definitely not when Neal would show up at my door to remind me how much I owed him.

As it turns out, all I needed to make my body spark to life was Lucky. That knowledge doesn’t give me an ounce of comfort. His words are pretty, and he’s definitely put in more effort than anyone else in my life ever has, but I worry that’s just who he is, and once he’s put me back together and made me happy, he’ll get bored.

He leans in until our lips are so close that his unruly mustache and beard tickle my skin. Our warm breaths combine with our gazes, but he stays there.

“What’ll it be?” He wants me to make the first move, to be the one to make the choice.

So before I can talk myself out of it, I crash my lips into his. It starts out messy and hungry, our teeth clanging as we each vie for control. But when his talented tongue spears past my lips, slipping and sliding against my own and making me dream up all the other places I want to feel it, I give up the reins.

Lucky pushes up to sit, bringing me with him and turning us so he’s resting against the back of the couch, which forces me to spread my legs to straddle his hips. Though forcing is the wrong word because I want nothing more than to be as close as possible to this man.

He bites my lower lip, reopening the wound there so the taste of him is replaced by the metallic tang of blood. I pull away, swiping my finger over it and coming away with a red streak.

“Shit. It keeps reopening.”

“Don’t care, Hellcat.” He leans in and swipes his tongue over the place where it’s split before diving back in to kiss me some more. When my pussy throbs in response, there’s no doubt just how darkly disturbed we are.

He pushes my shirt up, and our lips part so he can tug it over my head. Thankfully, I took a break from the TV long enough to shower and change, which means I’m now wearing a lacy black bra.

But he surprises me when he ignores my breasts completely and, instead, plants kiss after kiss on my throat, right where the bruises in the shape of fingers are, and I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose.

“I know I can’t kiss away the marks, but it makes me feel better knowing I was the last person to touch you in all these places, not him,” he says before getting back to work.

“Lucky.” I close my eyes, committing this moment to memory as he rights the wrongs he didn’t commit, expecting nothing from me in return. Is this man even real, or another figment of my imagination like my knight was?

He sure feels real.

“Stand up,” he orders once he’s satisfied.

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