return the favor and order me around later.”
Weirdly, I was counting on that.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emma
Avoidance could only go so far. Eventually, one had to give in. Lucian and I stayed at the wedding until the last of the guests began to amble to their rooms. And then we left too. To our room.
It had been all fun and games when I had teased him about our single room earlier. It didn’t feel that way now. Not when he’d danced with me under the stars and told me he believed in me. No one had ever said that to me. Not like that, as though it came straight from their very core. Lucian believed in me. It changed everything. I wanted him. Him. No one else.
My fingertips were cold, my skin so tight that my movements felt unnatural as I dressed for bed in the ultraquiet of the bathroom. Given that I’d thought I would be alone tonight, my nightclothes consisted of a far-too-thin cotton nightshirt that reached the tops of my thighs and boy shorts underwear.
Honestly, I’d shown more in the pool. The man, like countless others, had seen me practically naked on television. Oh, the hubris in taunting him with that little nugget of information. It didn’t feel particularly amusing anymore.
I dithered in the bathroom, rubbing lotion into my feet and legs, waiting for my damn nipples to go down. But my heart kept pounding against the fragile wall of my chest.
Realizing that if I stayed in the bathroom any longer, Lucian might start to wonder what the hell I was doing, I left that certain safety and stepped out into our room. His back was to me as he stared out of the set of glass doors that fronted the sea.
His buttered-toast voice rumbled along my anxious skin. “Wind is starting to pick up—” He turned and fell silent. Crystalline-green eyes ran over me, hot and slow and thorough. The sound of his swallowing, a subtle movement of his throat accompanied by a soft click, pinged in my chest, and my breath hitched.
Lucian closed his eyes tight for one thick moment, as though bracing himself. When he opened them, his eyes were clear and cool. A lie.
“I’ll go wash up.” He strode right past me, a man on a mission.
Good luck with that, Brick.
He hadn’t been exaggerating about the wind, though. A gust blasted the windows and doors so hard they rattled. I hopped into bed, scurrying under the safety of the covers. At least that was what I told myself. That it was the weather I was hiding from. But when Lucian opened the bathroom door a few minutes later, the sound reverberated through me like a shot.
I couldn’t help but stare at him as he quietly went around the room, turning off the lamps I’d ignored in my bid to get to the safety of the bed—which was seriously ironic given that the bed was the least safe place to be.
Like me, he was wearing a ratty T-shirt, one that molded to the planes and contours of his chest. But he’d switched out his suit pants for jeans. My lips quirked as he slowly made his way to the bed, leaving only the lamp on my side table on.
“Are you planning to sleep in those?” I asked.
Lucian froze in the act of pulling back his side of the covers, then straightened and squeezed the back of his neck. “I didn’t pack anything else. I thought I’d be sleeping alone.”
“I know.” Guilt mixed with a weird protective tenderness for this man. Which was ridiculous, I supposed, given that he was more than capable of watching out for himself. “I didn’t either.”
He stood there, staring down at me with a helpless look, his jaw bunching. I sighed and leaned back against the plump pillows. “Just take them off. I won’t be able to get comfortable knowing you’re sleeping in your jeans.”
Some of the old smarmy Lucian sparked in his eyes, and his smile went sideways. “That’s a strange bit of logic, Snoopy.”
“No, it isn’t.” I held up a finger to count my points. “The idea of sleeping under the covers in jeans sounds incredibly uncomfortable; ergo, me knowing you’re in them makes me incredibly uncomfortable.”
“I could sleep over the covers.”
“Lucian. You’re dithering.”
“Dithering.”
“Yes.” I should know. I’d dithered like a master in the bathroom. “Just take them off, and get into the damn bed.”
Again came that sideways smile, like he couldn’t help himself. “There’s that bossiness you’ve been hiding.”
“Hiding?” I