6. The police would inevitably pay a visit to our house looking for him during every one of his mysterious absences.
7. He always had money to burn. And I mean, serious money to burn.
And 8. He would often confuse the hell out of me by randomly baking the most delicious brownies in the world and bringing them over to our house…usually after I’d had a crap day at school or work, and leave them with me without anything more than a silent nod and enigmatic smile.
That was my life with Lucas fucking Pratt as my neighbor.
There were joint camping trips to deal with, neighborhood barbeques in the summer, Thanksgiving Day dinners spent together. He had this unique ability of making me feel like he was sneering at me even when he wasn’t even looking at me. Any boyfriend or girlfriend I brought to any event spent most of the time under his intense, brooding snarl of a glare. That glare was intimidating. And unfortunately, fucking sexy as all hell.
When I was sixteen, all my friends wanted him to fuck them. Everyone thought he was dangerous and brooding and arrogant and hot.
Even I had to admit, he was incredible to look at. He was all sinewy muscle and broad shoulders and perfect six-pack. He was chiseled jaw and piercing blue eyes and tattoos that seemed to somehow emphasize the sculpted form of his biceps and triceps. When I talked about him to my friends I used the term “walking cliché” with dripping sarcasm. When I was with previous boyfriends, I fought hard not to compare them to Lucas. That was a difficult thing to do. None of them had looked like him.
And I’d never been woken by any of them in the middle of the night. Naked. Groping me while they were obviously sweaty, drunk and bleeding.
That’s not the kind of thing a twenty-two year old girl should get turned on by, right?
So why the fuck was I turned on? By Lucas? My neighbor. My male neighbor. Who I despised.
What the hell was going on?
Struggling against his grip on my wrists, I bucked upward. Not a smart move, given we were both buck naked, slicked in sweat and his rigid cock was rammed to my waxed-smooth pussy.
I swear to God, I felt the tip of his erection part my lips for a moment.
For a moment, my head spun and my heart smashed like a hammer in my throat.
“Lucas,” I shouted, wishing to fuck I didn’t prefer to sleep in pitch blackness. If I could see his face, I’d feel like I had some kind of grasp of the situation.
He didn’t sound…right.
He sounded…dangerous. Really dangerous.
“Get off me,” I snarled, thrashing wilder.
His grip on my wrists grew painful. His face mashed to my cheek. His knee rammed to the inside of mine and shoved my thighs wider. His cock nudged harder at my pussy.
“What,” he growled, his breath hot on my face. “Have you done. To me?”
“Nothing, you prick,” I snapped back. “Except put up with your shit for years.”
He grew still. His hands on my wrists loosened. He lifted his head. “Ronnie?”
Confusion filled his voice. I noticed once again he was slurring.
I shifted beneath him. His cock was still nudging my sex, inching a little deeper with every move we made. “Yeah?”
With a speed and strength that was both impressive and scary, he shoved himself off me and then off the bed. “Fuck.”
His mutter tore at the darkness in the room a second before I scrambled across the mattress and smacked my palm against the switch of my side lamp.
My bedroom exploded with light.
Lucas hissed, squinting against its harsh assault on his eyes. He raised his hand to protect them against the light, giving me a very clear view of his body.
“Jesus, Lucas,” I breathed, staring at him, my heart thumping fast. “What the fuck happened to you?”
He dropped his arm, the charged energy I was used to seeing in him suddenly turned up to a million. His blue stare locked on mine. His fists bunched at his sides.