Chapter 1
I was dreaming about Liam Hemsworth. I remember that. Naked and panting, Liam Hemsworth had entered the bakery where I work—I’m a final-year pastry chef apprentice, which translates to I make fuck all money, do most of the work and constantly smell like croissants. In my dream, the delicious Australian had hurried over to the counter, sought me out with those killer-blue eyes of his and said, “Ronnie, I need four bear claws now. And then I need to eat you.”
That’s the kind of dream any girl is going to enjoy, unless Liam was a cannibal in my dream, but by the hard-on he was sporting when he’d entered the bakery, I’m pretty certain eat meant oral sex.
I remember being very happy in the dream. Very ready to accommodate his needs. I’d just made the most incredible batch of bear claws as it were and had no issues at all with him eating them and me.
I was about to inform him of that when something woke me.
Something hot and hard.
Something suddenly on top of me, all solid and growly and panty.
A something that turned out to be a someone.
My MIA, bad-boy neighbor who I hadn’t seen for over three months.
Lucas fucking Pratt.
He was naked.
I could feel his incredibly muscled body that I’d spent six years trying not to notice sliding against my also naked body. I could feel his muscular thighs and chest and stomach rub against my thighs, my tummy, and my breasts.
I could feel his cock and balls grinding at my inner thigh, dangerously close to the place his cock and balls should never be close to.
His cock, my startled, befuddled brain was telling me, was hard.
My body thought that was goddamn awesome.
“What the hell are you doing?” I burst out, writhing and bucking and wriggling beneath him in the dark.
His hot breath fanned the side of my neck as he tangled his hands with mine in the sheets. He made a sound, a growl-slash-groan that sent shivers of something very much like hungry desire through me, and then his groin slammed to mine and his hands pinned my wrists to the bed beside my head.
Whoa.
“What the fuck have you done to me?” he snarled the words in that same growl-slash-groan as he ground my wrists to the mattress.
I still couldn’t see his face in the darkness of my room, but I could hear the slur in his question. And I could smell the coppery tinge of blood on the air. Along with his sweat and something that may have been whiskey on his breath.
Was he drunk?
I’d never seen him drunk.
If he was drunk, what the hell was he doing here? In my bed?
Trying to…do whatever the hell he was trying to do to me?
“Lucas.” I thrashed beneath him, trying to dislodge him. His naked body slipped and slid over mine. My brain registered the fact my nipples were dragging against his chest. My body registered the fact his cock—suddenly much more rigid than it had been a second ago—was grinding at my sex.
I wanted to scream.
Not in fear, in anger.
The trouble was all I could do was pant his name and writhe beneath him. This was not how I’d expected to be woken.
I should give you some backstory. Here’s the crib-note version.
1. Lucas’s family moved in next to door when I was sixteen and Lucas was seventeen, six years ago. Our families had been close ever since.
2. Lucas had been in trouble with the law before then. He had a juvvie record but I had no clue for what.
3. Lucas mocked me every time we saw each other because he didn’t believe I was bi—I’d been bisexual since I met my best friend at fifteen. We hadn’t lasted as girlfriend and girlfriend, but we had stayed BFFs.
4. Lucas would disappear frequently, with no word. Would turn up days, weeks, months later. Every time he did, he was bruised and looked more menacing than he had when he left.
5. In my last year of school, there were rumors he was making money as some kind of paid muscle for a motorcycle club.