Take Me Down Read online

  Take Me Down

  Lauren Hawkeye

  Evie may feel like she doesn’t measure up to her prettier, younger sister, but she still knows what she wants—Lucas, her cousin’s sexy roommate. She’s dreamed about being with him for a long time, and on the sweltering night of her sister’s wedding, it’s clear he shares her lust. Now Evie is determined to take what she desires—even if it’s just for one night….

  Book one of Lauren Hawkeye’s Erotic Me series.

  Contents

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  The day that my sister got married was also the hottest day of the year.

  The valley in which I made my home, that tiny crevice that lay at the foot of the Three Sisters Mountains, was normally well sheltered from all but the strongest of the elements. Today however, for the nuptials of my sister, the sun had come out to play, to shower them with the golden light of celebration.

  The fact that we of the valley didn’t normally experience such heat made it nearly unbearable. Every mouthful of air that I took scorched my lungs and seared every cell in my body on its way through my being. When the sun, that blazing ball of fire, finally, finally dipped behind the proud peaks of the Sisters in late evening it brought little relief. It had done its job well, turning the breath of the valley to the consistency of warm syrup, and its inhabitants to mush.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Sweat dripped down my body, every pore oozing salt water to pool between my legs and drip off the tips of my nipples. It caused the thin cotton of my sleep shirt to cling uncomfortably to my fevered skin. Most nights I would have had no qualms about peeling off the restricting fabric that was suffocating my skin, no worries about stretching out naked on the wilted sheets of my bed with the rickety floor fan an inch from my face. But I had been obliged to open my home to relatives, to friends, to friends of friends, to whoever had congregated for Suzanne’s wedding. And I didn’t much relish the thought of running around naked when I might run into my ancient aunt Mary sans her dentures and carefully coiffed wig.

  With a heavy sigh I flopped over onto my right side from my left, tugging at the restraining cloth that covered my body. I closed my eyes, squeezed them so tightly together that I saw stars, then opened them again. I painted a picture in my head, the proverbial sheep leaping over a white picket fence, but they melted away into a marbled swirl of black and white in my mind’s eye.

  It was no use. Sleep was determined not to come my way.

  Frustrated, I rolled up from my bed. Propriety demanded that I cover my sheer nightgown with a robe, lest I inadvertently flash the aforementioned aunt Mary, or my cousin Eric, or my Grandpa Jim. My whole system rebelled at the thought of even one more layer of warmth. I was just going to get a glass of water, I reasoned. I would be quick. Mary and Grandpa Jim were more than likely snoring away in a champagne-induced dreamland, after all, and I doubted that Eric was even back yet from whatever bar he’d stumbled to after the wedding festivities had finally wound to a close.

  I should be safe. And I was thirsty. Thirstier than I could ever remember being.

  The hall was dark, the hardwood sticky with varnish heated from the warmth of the summer day. My bare feet made slapping sounds, quiet as I tried to be on the way to the kitchen, and the noise melded with the snorts and snores of my guests in a strange symphony. The tiny kitchen, though, was quiet, the hum of the ancient avocado refrigerator the only thing breaking through the thick silence. I had an odd mental picture, an image of the heat and quiet sucking me in, swallowing me whole, and so I moved as quickly as I could toward the fridge, where I knew the pitcher of cold, filtered water, my saving grace, rested.

  Cool air bathed me as I opened the door. Refreshed me. I breathed deeply, soaking in the sensation of icy fingers playing over my skin. I briefly contemplated just climbing in, curling up amongst the pickle jars and bottles of ketchup in an effort to prolong the relief, but the happiness dissipated when I noticed that my Brita filter, the cool jug that should have been full of refreshingly chilly water, was nowhere to be seen.

  A tendril of unnatural and probably uncalled-for rage snaked through my system. Where the hell was the jug? Even knowing that the heat had made me overly cantankerous, that it wasn’t really that big of a deal, I felt a tantrum threatening. Wasn’t it enough that I was sharing my tiny home for a seemingly never-ending slice of time? I had to have the entire rhythm of my life disturbed, too?

  No longer caring who I woke, I slammed the fridge door shut. Glowering at the ancient and offending appliance, I felt prickles at the backs of my eyes, poky ones that surely signaled an impending flood. Mortified at the lightning-quick change, I sniffed, determined not to actually cry over something as simple and as stupid as a missing jug of water.

  At least the tears drowned the anger.

  I knew that if I took the time to stop and to poke at my feelings, I’d find that my reaction wasn’t based on the missing water at all, that the missing jug had been the tip of the iceberg at the end of a long, emotional day. The pinnacle of my misery. The response to the mixed feelings that I was experiencing over Suzanne’s marriage.

  I loved my sister, and I was happy for her. Happy that she’d found the love of her life. However, the newest event in the perfect life of Suzanne only served to reinforce the feelings of inadequacy that had circulated throughout my being for as long as I could remember. The fact that she was younger than me and had, as Auntie Mary had ever so helpfully pointed out, “beaten me to the altar” only rubbed a steady stream of salt into an already-tender wound.

  Not that it was a race. And I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get married, either…or at least not until I met that special someone. It was more that the huge change in my sister’s life made me question the state of mine, and though in reality I knew that her own life was far from perfect, I still felt that, in comparison, my own was wanting.

  I shook my head to clear it of the nasty, festering images. That was all beside the point. My problem right now, at that moment, was that I was overheated, dehydrated from the glasses of wine that I’d sipped throughout the evening, and I wanted a damn glass of cold water.

  Crinkling my nose, I looked at the stainless steel sink. It looked like I’d be stuck with tap water. I’m not a snob, nor am I one to hop on a trend, but I detest tap water. At least, I detested the tap water available to us in the Bow Valley. Full of minerals and other fun things from glacier melt, it had a rusty smell and a sharp, metallic taste, and I could only get it down my throat by pinching closed my nose and chugging. Not that I had any other option, I thought as I reached up high in my cupboards for a cup. I knew it wouldn’t kill me—it was perfectly safe, in fact. But gone was my vision of enjoying glass after glass of clean filtered water while lying in bed with the fan in my face.

  “Excuse me.” The low and unexpected voice from behind me sent a shock wave rioting through my system. A screech escaped my lips and I dropped the glass that was lightly clasped in the tips of my fingers. It seemed to fall in slow motion to the floor, a delicate arc through the thick air before shattering on the linoleum in fireworks of white.

  I pressed myself back against the counter, stepping on a shard of glass in the process, while my eyes frantically searched through the dark for the person who’d terrified me so. I could feel the blood oozing out of the slice that I’d inadvertently carved in my foot, hot and wet against the sticky linoleum, taking my initial fear with it as it flowed.

  “Y-y-yes?” I couldn’t see who, exactly, was approaching me slowly across the kitchen floor. I heard the noise, the gentle clink, of one object and then two being placed on the central island but even with the glow of my neighbour’s porch lights filtering faintly in through my smudged windows, it was just too dark. But he, and it was
a he, I was sure, was too tall to be my cousin Eric, and certainly too large to lay claim to the title of my wizened grandpa Jim.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He continued his approach slowly, as if to give me time to get used to the idea. The closer he came, the more I could see…and the more I saw, the more I liked. He was tall and well muscled, and the muscles weren’t all that hard to see, since all that he wore—in deference to the heat, I supposed—was a pair of cutoff sweats.

  “D-d-don’t w-worry about it.” He smelled male, not like cologne but rather that musky odor that the males of the species seem to emanate from their every pore. A nagging familiarity tugged at me—I felt that I should recognize him—and yet I didn’t, and that made me still a little wary, even though my house had been turned upside down with guests.

  So I continued. “No o-o-offense, but, um, w-who are you, e-e-exactly?” As I spoke I shifted and let out a small cry. The sliver of glass that I had stepped on had clung to my sweaty foot, and now was imbedded in the tender underside.

  The man moved fast. Within seconds he had gripped me by the waist, lifted me over the snowfall of shattered glass, and up to a sitting position on the island. While holding me steady, hands tightly pressed against my flesh, he gingerly swept aside the worst of the chunks before turning back to me.

  In the dim light, I made out the hint of a smile. “I’m insulted, Evie. Don’t you remember me?” And as he spoke, I did. The recognition whirled me back to the summer before, when I’d spent a weekend at my cousin Eric’s house, and had a brief, intense and unrequited love crush on his roommate Lucas.

  Now it seemed that Lucas was standing in my kitchen, naked but for a pair of brief shorts, pressing against the flesh of my open legs. And I was nearly naked, clothed in nothing, and I mean nothing, but a see-through nightie and sweat.

  I couldn’t decide if I was exhilarated or mortified when my nipples contracted painfully, poking against the sheer cloth in a way that must have been noticeable, even in the dark. Noticeable just like the deep carmine flush that stained my cheeks, the curse of the fair complexioned.

  He was waiting for me to respond. “I…” Surely I wasn’t going to stutter, not now. I’d nearly kicked the speech deficiency ten years ago in high school, and it only very rarely, at my most nervous moments, haunted me now. Taking a moment to smooth out my tongue, I began again.

  “Of c-course I remember you,” I managed, incredibly aware of the hard body invading my personal space, heating up the flesh that cooled in the air of the fridge. “Lucas. Eric’s friend. I didn’t know you were here.” That sounded dumb, I thought. What kind of woman doesn’t know who is staying in her house?

  I thought of Suzanne, and of my parents, and nearly grimaced. A woman with my family didn’t know anything, it seemed, but I didn’t want to get into my family dynamics. Instead I spoke again.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. I was just getting a glass of w-water.” I looked down as I spoke, trying to avoid eye contact with the fantastic male creature, knowing that it very well might make my stutter worse. But looking down brought my vision in line with a certain large bulge in the crotch of the sweat shorts, and that didn’t help matters, either, so I looked up again. Looked up, and was confronted by eyes that glowed nearly yellow in the night, but that I knew to be the gold of aged whiskey by day.

  “You didn’t wake me.” I dared a glance straight on, into those topaz eyes, and found them waiting to meet my own. “I was actually kind of hoping that you’d still be awake when I got in.”

  “W-w-why?” Oh, that stupid stutter. Not only could I not say something cool and collected, but what I did manage to spit out sounded mangled and harsh.

  It was a moment before he replied. And he didn’t actually answer my question when he did, choosing instead to tuck a strand of my long hair, newly back to its natural chestnut, behind my ear.

  “You look different.” My breath caught in my throat at the light touch. “More…natural.”

  Natural? Was that a compliment? Self-consciously I smoothed a sweaty palm over the lock that he’d moved. It had been blond last time he’d seen me, and I’d covered my face with twice as much makeup as my sister had made me wear tonight. Still, I didn’t think I was heinous or anything. Just…well…I just didn’t put as much effort into my appearance anymore.

  I refused to feel self-conscious about that.

  Even if I did, a bit.

  Lucas interpreted the emotions running riot over my face. “No,” he told me, again raising a hand to my temple, and this time not moving it away. “It’s better.”

  “It is?” I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but he’d had no interest in me during that brief weekend a year ago, when I thought I’d been looking my best. I couldn’t see why he’d have even noticed me now.

  The thought that he might be noticing me caused something dark to twine itself in a sensuous dance around my body, now shivering a bit despite the heat.

  The right corner of his lips lifted, just the tiniest bit—a sardonic little smirk. It was a familiar look, one that I’d dreamed of a million times.

  I’d never thought that I’d see it this close.

  My breath, now coming in short huffs, caught and held as I waited for him to do something. Say something.

  He didn’t. Hugely disappointed, I tried to move, to disentangle myself from my uncomfortable seat on the counter.

  He didn’t move. Confused, I looked into his eyes. Something akin to adrenaline but even more potent washed over me in a tsunami of sensation as I recognized, even with my limited experience, the intent that lingered there.

  “I…” I couldn’t spit out an intelligible word. He watched me quietly for a moment longer, the silence itself becoming a sound, a screaming roar that hurt my ears.

  “I thought you were thirsty.” Here he moved a bit, just a bit, to reach behind me with a leanly muscled arm. The cords in his forearms stood out in high relief as he grabbed hold of a pitcher, one that sat behind me on the counter and that I hadn’t noticed earlier, when I was cursing both the world and marriage in the same breath.

  I no longer cared about the water. I suspected that no matter how much I drank, my tongue would remain thick and my mouth, dry.

  “It should still be cold. I took it out just before you got up.” Reaching again with that long arm, he removed a clay cup from the cupboard, one I’d formed in pottery class long ago, and poured a stream of cool, clear liquid into it with careful precision.

  “Here.” He offered it to me. My fingers brushed his own as I accepted the cup. One sip, then two, greedy gulps that slid down the parched desert of my throat and felt like heaven. Before I knew it, the cup was nearly empty. Abashed, I handed it back to him, raspberry staining my cheeks.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was hoarse, thick with something I didn’t fully comprehend. “I d-drank it all.”

  Lucas swirled the cup in large hands, examining the contents as if they held the secret to the mystery of life. Those cat eyes were again raised to look into my own dark blue ones, which seemed rather dull in comparison.

  “No.” His voice was as thick as my own, gravelly almost, like coarse grains of melting sugar. “There’s a sip left.”

  Though I already felt greedy, I was thirsty enough to look longingly at the cup. Tauntingly, he lifted it up, up and up to his own lips as my gaze followed his movements.

  That little smirk was again cast my way before he tipped his head back, Adam’s apple bobbing as the last drops of delicious wet were poured into his mouth.

  Though he absolutely deserved that last sip, after I’d gulped the whole glass, glutton that I was, I was a trifle annoyed that he’d shot that little look my way before consuming the dregs.

  Taunting me.

  Damn it, arousing me.

  I was more than a little surprised, startled out of my annoyance when he leaned in, planting both palms flat on the counter on either side of me, snug in against my hips.

  Lips that I’d
kissed in my mind more times than I would care to count came closer, then closer still, until they were no more than a breath away from my own.

  “Want it?” The words, the voice, the suggestion staggered me. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do. My body replied for me, opening, welcoming, and he moved that last fraction of an inch, flesh against flesh, kiss to kiss.

  Once, twice, three times our lips touched, lightly, but charged with something that made my blood sizzle. Still hesitant, I clenched my fists tightly at my sides, to better keep from threading my fingers through his thick, tawny hair and making a fool of myself, but his hands were at my hips, and our fingers tangled as our mouths pressed ever closer.

  My lips parted beneath his, following his lead. The smallest surge of moisture traveled from his tongue to my own, that last sip of water.

  Oh, I’d wanted it, that was for sure. But now I could tell that it wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

  A moan escaped my lips as I allowed myself to let go just one little bit, let myself enjoy the moment more than I thought was wise. As soon as the noise had issued from my throat, however, he drew back again. His flesh, slightly sticky with sweat, still clung to my own, but I wondered if I’d made the wrong move, turned him off somehow.

  But no…he’d simply reached again for the cup that had held the water. For the pitcher that was still half-full of blessed wetness, the sight of which again made my throat scratch with thirst.

  Again, he poured with studied concentration. I wanted that cold water badly, nearly as much as I wanted another kiss, but I didn’t dare ask. I’d already had more than my fair share of the first cup. When he held the cup to neither my lips nor his own, however, I still didn’t expect what he did next.

  The chilly stream cascaded over me, shoulder to hip, a delicious splash that cooled my skin while causing my thin cotton gown to cling as tightly as it could. A gasp escaped me when I realized that, instead of drinking the water or offering it to me for my own consumption, Lucas had upended the cup between our closely pressed chests, drenching our torsos with a blessedly cool, sensuous shower.