Page 20 of Lucky Star

Chapter Eight

Cameron

Itook a beat to gather my senses before dropping my eyes to the woman sleeping to my left. During the night, she’d kicked off the blanket, leaving only the bottom half of her body covered by the flat sheet. In the watery morning light, she lay on her stomach, arms wrapped loosely around her pillow. Her face was turned toward me, affording me a rare moment to take her in without making her feel self-conscious.

Sarah stirred and even though I didn’t want her to wake up and find me staring down at her like a major creeper, I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Memorizing her face felt as necessary as breathing. I wanted to remember what she looked when she wasn’t weighed down by the weight of the world, the stress and unhappiness that until a couple of nights ago, had been my doing.

As I trailed my eyes from the top of her fiery curls to her turquoise-tipped toes that peeked out from the bottom of the sheet, she shifted again, and a breathy moan escaped her lips. It sounded so much like the moans she made when I ran my tongue over her sweet, honeyed clit that my cock twitched at the memory of the taste of her on my hungry lips.

“You’re staring at me,” she murmured, eyes remaining closed.

“You haven’t even opened your eyes. How’d you know?”

“I could feel you staring at me.”

I laughed. “Shit.”

She rolled over and stretched her body. On a deep sigh, she remarked, “It’s okay. I would have done the same if I’d woken up before you.”

“What are your plans for today?”

I would have liked nothing more than to stay cocooned in this room making love to her until neither of us could walk, but that didn’t seem like the most productive use of our day off.

“I’ve been thinking, you’re my girl now, but I’ve never taken you on a proper date.” Her eyes twinkled. “You tell me what you want to do.”

Sarah went from relaxed sleepyhead to kid-in-a-candy-store in no time at all. “Ooh, there’s a new exhibit at The Getty I’ve wanted to check out! Can we do that?” She grabbed her phone off the nightstand, punched some information into the browser, and tossed it my way.

I scrolled through information about the exhibit. Honestly, I didn’t get the appeal, but then again, modern art wasn’t really my thing. I could sit through lectures on Renaissance and Baroque painters if forced—I knew this because Sarah had forced me to—but there was just something about all these lines, squiggles, and blotches that made absolutely no sense to me. I knew beauty was in the eye of the beholder and all that, but this stuff wasn’t even pretty. At least those Italians had transformed the way regular, everyday people saw the human form. This though? Just messes on canvas as far as I could tell.

And yet, when I darted my eyes back to Sarah to see if she was fucking with me, she looked so excited about the idea that I didn’t have it in me to tell her I’d rather get my chest waxed. Which, incidentally, I’d once had done for a print ad for some high-end resort wear (which I wore very little of in the photo) and had vowed right then and there would never happen again.

“Yeah, sure. That sounds great.” I pasted an exaggerated grimace-slash-smile on my face when I handed the phone back to her.

“You’ll love it, I promise.” Laughter filler her eyes. She knew I wouldn’t love it.

“Sure, I will.” I rolled my eyes. “But I love you, so let’s do this thing.”

In one smooth movement, she sat up and crossed her legs in front of her. “I’ll tell you what. You spend the afternoon at the museum with me and I’ll take you to dinner to celebrate. Anywhere you want.”

Last year, one of the gaffers on a show I’d had a short-lived story arc on had turned me onto La Rosita, a tiny Mexican restaurant on Ventura Boulevard his cousin’s wife’s mother owned, and I’d been hooked on their tacos and Micheladas ever since. I rarely got a chance to stop in any more since my character had been killed off in a revenge murder plot and therefore wasn’t often on that side of town anymore. But since La Rosita was close right off an exit on the freeway we’d take to get to and from The Getty, I knew immediately where I wanted to go.

* * *

As it had turned out,wandering The Getty hadn’t been a completely terrible way to pass the afternoon, and while I hadn’t loved the exhibit Sarah was thrilled to have seen, walking hand and hand through the courtyards and hallways had been a lovely experience. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to being able to touch her and hold her without making up some excuse as to why. It gave me a secret thrill to know that from now on I could do it whenever and wherever I wanted. No more pretending or hiding my feelings from the world. And if the happy smiles she tossed my way throughout the day were any indication, she felt exactly the same.

I’d figured she’d expected me to pick somewhere fancy or upscale for the dinner portion of our date, but she didn’t complain when I dragged her to the hole in the wall Mexican joint to eat off soggy paper plates while sharing a table with ten of our closest non-friends. In fact, she let out a few moans of delight once she’d gotten a taste of Rosita’s el pastor super burrito, which was when I’d had to throw a few “don’t even think about it” death glares to our tablemates.

Focused entirely on her food, Sarah remained oblivious to their furtive, heated stares, but I hadn’t. When a guy—any guy—spied a beautiful woman moaning the way she did while her lips were wrapped around something long and thick, his mind went to one place, and one place only. When she moaned again, I flipped our plates and told her I wanted to switch meals, something we often did so it didn’t look suspicious. Once she was happily devouring my carne asada tacos and I was inhaling her burrito, the men kept their eyes trained on their own meals.

By the time we pulled into her driveway a couple of hours later, I realized the day hadn’t been too different from all the other times we’d hung out, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. Sarah had exposed me to art—her field of expertise—and I’d introduced her to the best damn tacos in L.A. All told, it had been an excellent first date for two people who’d danced around their feelings for years.

After leading me to her bedroom and going down on me the way she’d gone to town on her burrito, Sarah and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how long we’d been out, but it had to have been a few hours. Her side of the bed was in deep shadow, while a shaft of light from a street lamp outside cut through the window to illuminate mine.

Wordlessly, Sarah scooted across the space that separated us and settled alongside me, her arm resting across my torso and her head over my heart. Neither of us spoke for a handful of seconds, our breathing the only sound in the room. I closed my eyes and fell into a semi-conscious state where I wasn’t quite asleep, but not exactly awake either.

In my mind I relived all of the wonderful things I’d done to her just a few hours earlier, the way her body had felt in my hands. The pure, profound love I felt for her. I couldn’t imagine it got any better than that. It had been both passionate and tender, and we’d both given as good as we got. I’d always wondered how it would be between us and now I knew it was explosive.

My eyes still closed, Sarah leaned over me and placed a gentle, lingering kiss on my lips before moving away to plant a series of kisses and bites along the rest of my exposed skin. She started at my ear, sucking the lobe into her hot, wet mouth and then clasped it between her teeth and tugged. I felt that tug in other parts of my body as well. I’d never been into biting before, but with Sarah, it turned me the fuck on. That first time she’d sunk her teeth into my skin had shocked me, but immediately she’d soothed the ache with long flicks of her tongue and I’d been done for. Now I looked forward to the sting of her teeth on my flesh.

---