By the time he nudged her legs apart she was writhing beneath him, panting with need. He lowered his body until his face was nestled between her thighs.
"Oh my god, Lucas. Yes..."
He placed his entire mouth over the smooth mound and laved her with his tongue. Reagan’s body quivered as he sucked at the baby soft skin of her inner thighs and tickled her lips with the slippery tip of his tongue. Her wetness flowed from her pussy, down between her cheeks. Lucas made soft noises as he licked her juices, drinking it, drowning in it.
"I love the taste of you, Reagan. I want to lick you for hours."
Her entire body vibrated with desire as he teased her, kissing her everywhere but the one place where she desperately wanted his mouth. She shifted her hips this way and that, seeking the contact, needing it. She was aroused to such a fever pitch that when he finally slipped his tongue between her wet lips and touched her clit, she lost it. He stayed with her until the orgasm waned, his tongue flat against her. He grunted against her steamy flesh and squeezed her thighs with his hands. When she came down, he quickly brought her up to peak again. And again. Over and over he made her cum until she couldn’t take anymore and she begged him to stop.
Raising his head, he smiled at her. The storm clouds in his eyes were gone. The tension that always lurked in the lines and creases of his face had dissolved. All that was left was a sort of calm essence, a distillation of Lucas. It was as if she could finally peer through the haziness and see only him.
As he slid up and took her limp body into his arms, Reagan sighed, exhausted and trembling. There was no mistaking it—Lucas loved her. His feelings came across loud and clear just the same. When he touched her, his fingers sent tendrils of emotion along her skin. His tender, selfless foreplay nurtured those tendrils until his love was woven into her very being, a
round her heart and inside it. She felt it with every breath, every pulse beat. And it seemed to soothe away all the self-loathing, the shame and the guilt that had settled inside her. This man loved her.
She felt at peace when she closed her eyes and let oblivion take her.
Chapter 13
When Lucas and Reagan got back from Switzerland she found each task that Aiden ‘asked’ her to do to be more distasteful and harder to get through. Thankfully he hadn’t asked her to spend time alone with any of the clients again…yet, but she had noticed that something in the way he looked at her had changed. It was like he had suddenly realized sitting the appetizers out in front of his business interests was enough to reel them in…but not quite enough to keep them on the hook for a long period of time. Reagan would notice him watching her sometimes and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head. The idea of her own brother possibly selling her to someone was enough to make her stomach turn. If it hadn’t been for her stolen moments with Lucas she would have lost her mind.
Every moment she had when Aiden wasn’t hovering over her or having her break in on a meeting to give the old rich men something to ogle; she was plotting and planning herself. When she first presented the idea of Lucas telling Aiden that he wanted Reagan for twenty-four hours, he had balked. He had adamantly refused to do it. But each time they talked about the things Aidan expected from her and how each task leaned more toward blatantly prostituting her than the last, the more Lucas began to come around to the idea.
Lucas had opened her eyes to the fact that she loved to be dominated and as much as the idea of one of the practical strangers Aiden might give her to, raping her and taking her virginity, disgusted and frightened her…the idea of role playing the whole thing with Lucas turned her on. She would sometimes even lay in bed at night, thinking about it and using her fingers to bring herself to orgasm or she would talk to Lucas on the phone about it and as they planned out the specifics and they would suddenly go from planning Aiden’s demise to full-blown, hot and heavy phone sex.
It was hot and Reagan loved it, and she found the patience the two of them had shown thus far to be withering by the day. She wanted to really be with Lucas, and see him whenever she wanted. She hated sneaking around and she hated that Aiden was in control of every part of her life.
It was a Tuesday night after Aiden had choreographed her ‘accidentally’ interrupting a meeting at the office between him and Lucas and Lucas’ father Rex, when Lucas called her and said, “I’m meeting with Aiden for lunch tomorrow at the house. Dad and I finally settled with him on numbers but I told him I wanted to meet somewhere privately to discuss the ‘bonus’ he and I had been talking about.”
Reagan was thoroughly depressed about the business. It was something her step-father had been so proud of and with good reason. He had built it from the ground up with the intentions of his children and grandchildren reaping the benefits of it for decades to come. By children, he had meant Reagan too and it warmed her heart to know that. But if the business had to be sold, she was happy that Lucas and his father would be her partner. They were both brilliant, good-hearted men and she knew they would help her take it to new heights.
Reagan sighed knowing it was almost over. She would soon know if Aiden was Satan himself or the brother she had always loved. Maybe he had just gotten caught up and taken things too far. What Lucas was about to propose would cause the heads of most brothers to explode. It might even send a ‘normal’ brother into a homicidal rage. Reagan wasn’t worried about Lucas on the off chance that happened. She knew that he was more than capable of handling himself. She only prayed that Aiden went in that direction and not the other.
On Wednesday morning when she came down from her room for breakfast she found Aiden sitting in the breakfast nook sipping his coffee and reading the paper. He looked up at her as she came into the room and smiled…and then he ran his eyes over her body, slowly, like he was picturing her without the jeans and blouse she was wearing. Reagan turned her back to him to pour her coffee but she couldn’t suppress the shudder from the chill that ran down her spine. She had caught Aiden looking at her like that once or twice before, but she had convinced herself those times that he was thinking of something else and she just happened to be in the way. The very idea that he was thinking of touching her or doing things to her made her want to vomit. Who is this man and how was he able to hide his true colors for so long?
By the time she had her coffee she had composed herself enough to take it over to the table and sit down across from her brother with a smile on her face.
“Good morning.” She looked out the large window next to the table and said, “It’s a gorgeous day out there.”
“Yes, it is,” Aiden smiled, drawing his tongue across his bottom lip. Reagan almost curled her lip in disgust, but she caught herself and held the smile. “Why don’t you spend some time out in the gardens enjoying it?”
She took a sip of her coffee and tried to act surprised as she asked, “You don’t need me at the office today?”
“I’m not going to the office today.”
Reagan took in his business suit and tie and the briefcase he always carried to work sitting on the counter near the table and asked, “Oh, are you taking a day off?”
“No, and neither are you. I want you out of sight unless I call you, but don’t go far in case I need you. I’m meeting with Lucas Ferris again, this time just him and me one on one. He requested this private meeting and I have a feeling he’s about to offer me a deal I can’t refuse.”
“Oh, well that’s good. What kind of deal is it?”
Aiden shot her a look of disdain. “It’s complicated business stuff that you would never understand.”
Reagan almost rolled her own eyes. Over the past year, Lucas had been schooling her in business and how to read and understand contracts. He never wanted her to be taken advantage of again the way that Aiden had taken advantage of her with his father’s will. Besides, if their plan turned out the way Lucas knew it would and Reagan hoped that it wouldn’t, she would be the one solely in charge of the family’s business dealings.
“Okay,” she nodded with what she hoped was a sweet, clueless smile. “It’ll be nice to spend some time out in the sun today.”
After breakfast, Reagan had changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and headed out to the rose gardens at the back of the estate armed with her iPod, a big floppy hat and a pair of gloves. She went to the tool shed and took out a box of gardening tools and carried it all over to the path that would take her into the midst of what had always reminded her of something out of a fairy tale, the way the multi-colored rose bushes wound around the cobblestone path. She spent the first hour or so clipping and trimming and just about the time she took her first water break she realized that she could hear male voices. She glanced over toward the back of the mansion and saw that the sliding glass doors between the veranda and the main living room were open. The screen was closed and just beyond it, she could see a large, shapely silhouette framed inside of it. It was Lucas and just the sight of his shadow made her mouth water. He must have asked Aiden to open the glass doors or opened them himself so that Reagan could hear what was being said inside. Although she couldn’t hear the words from where she stood, the pitch and the tone of their voices told her they were having some kind of disagreement. She wondered if Lucas had told him the plan and Aiden’s voice was high and strained because it disgusted him. She hoped that was the case.