Knight and Sleigh: An Erotic Lucien Knight Christmas Novella (6 page)

Christ. It was as well that he was still wearing his jeans, because when she looked at him that way and said things like that, he wanted nothing more than to push her down and bury himself inside her.
 

As it was, he hitched her knee higher around his thigh, and watched her eyes as he positioned the ice cock against her, ready to slide inside. She was barely breathing, braced, and when he thrust the now-smooth cone of ice into her, her eyes opened wider and she gulped in a lungful of air, gripping his shoulders. Gratified, he did it again, jolting her against him when she gasped again.
 

‘You like it?’ he said, his other hand roaming over the fullness of her ass.
 

Sophie nodded.
 

‘Yes,’ she whispered, biting down on her bottom lip, her cheeks flushed. ‘Yes.’
 

Her fingers worked his jeans open and he helped her push them down, taking the rest of his clothes with them.
 

‘Kneel down, Princess,’ he said, going down with her until they were pressed against each other. When her fingers wrapped around his cock he pulled her on top of him instead, his hand behind her neck as he kissed her open mouth. He craved her, needed her, and the balance of power between them shifted in her favour when she rubbed herself on him, using his cock to pleasure herself.
 

Lucien watched her use him for a few seconds, enjoying her, and then, because he could wait no longer, he withdrew the melting icicle from her body and sliced into her with his cock. Fuck, she was cold and hot all at the same time, and her moans of pleasurable shock told him the sensation thrilled her too.
 

She was crouched over him, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, moving on his cock in a way that would give neither of them very much time because it was so fucking sensational. The ice in his hand was smaller now, but still held its form, and he pressed it against her ass, sliding it a little way in, his other hand flat on her spine holding her against him.
 

‘Fuck,’ she gasped, and he loved the passion of the profanity on her lips, her arms bracketed around his head on the floor, her hips smashed as low into his as they could be as he moved beneath her, driving himself so deep into her that he could barely breathe.
 

‘Jesus, Lucien,’ she whispered unevenly, and he could feel her body pulsing right
before she tensed and banged harder against him, her eyes screwed closed, her lips parted in bliss. He watched her come, and he allowed himself at last to come with her, letting her orgasm dictate his, her glorious, fast throb, the tangle of her apple shampoo hair in his face, the bang of her heart over his. She was sen-fucking-sational.
 

‘That was pretty damn sexy, iceman,’ she said eventually, her voice unsteady against his neck.
 

He kissed the curve of her shoulder.
 

‘I grew up in the Arctic. I know what I’m doing when it comes to ice.’
 

Sophie propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Well, I knew you built with it and skated on it around here, but I never expected…’ she glanced up at the front door, her blue eyes lit with amusement. ‘That. You know, we should probably work on getting more than five steps inside the front door before we have sex.’
 

Lucien stood up and shrugged, nonchalant as he held out his hand and helped her to her feet. Ripping Sophie’s clothes off on sight was a pretty regular occurrence wherever they were in the world, and not something he planned on changing any time soon.
 

‘Speaking of growing up here…’ Sophie, said picking up her sheet and following behind him into the living room, then her voice trailed off as he came to a standstill, his eyes fixed on the advent calendar she’d hung on the wall beside the fireplace.
 

Laying her hand on his back, she stood beside him.
 

‘The designers had left a box marked Christmas decorations,’ she said, quietly.
 

He didn’t react, just stood statue still.
 

‘There’s these too,’ she said, gesturing to the other pretty things on the coffee table, wanting him to know everything in one fell swoop so there were no more shocks to deliver. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to introduce the stored-away things to him.
 

She wished he’d speak, say something, anything. Over the past year they’d spoken freely about so many things, but hardly ever exchanged a word about his life here as a child. It hurt her that there was an area of him that was off limits to her, even after all they’d shared, but she hurt for him even more than for herself. She knew the bare bones; she knew he’d been the one to discover his mother slumped over the kitchen table with the pills in her hand when he’d been barely a teenager. She knew enough about those hard times.
 

‘Did I do the wrong thing?’
 

She spoke now because his silence filled her with trepidation. One of the only times he’d ever been truly angry with her had been when she’d pushed him to talk to her about his mother, not long after they’d met. What had she been thinking of, hanging the calendar?
 

She should have known better, have respected his right to keep part of himself separate if he needed to, even though they were so much closer now than they’d been back then at the beginning of their love affair.
 

Finally, he looked down at her, his grey-blue eyes vulnerable and raw.
 

‘It doesn’t go there.’
 

Chapter Four
 

Lucien reached the blue felt calendar down from the wall and led Sophie through to the bedroom.
 

‘I slept in here as a child,’ he said. ‘And this always hung on the wall, just here.’
 

He nodded towards the wall opposite the window, now adorned with a huge print. Laying the calendar down on the wide, ornately carved sleigh bed, he perched beside it and ran his fingers lightly over the stitched edge.
 

‘It’s beautiful,’ Sophie said, standing next to him with her hand on his shoulder. She instinctively wanted to be close, to absorb whatever he was feeling, in case he couldn’t say it aloud.
 

‘I didn’t realise it was still here,’ he said. ‘My mother made it.’
 

Sophie smoothed her hand across the back of his neck. ‘I guessed as much.’
 

Tentatively, Lucien reached inside the first pocket and withdrew a silver star made of wood. Sighing heavily, he turned the little ornament over in his palm to reveal uneven splodges of gold on the back.
 

‘She let me help her paint this. We were sat at the kitchen table, just through there.’
 

He closed his hand around the star for a moment then slipped it back inside its pocket again.
 

Number two held an ornate red glittered reindeer, and number three a forest green tree capped with white ceramic frosting.
 

‘They’re all so beautiful,’ Sophie said in wonder. She wasn’t offering platitudes. Lucien’s mother’s decorations were incredible, intricately detailed and perfect, but more than that, they were cherished.
 

‘She was brilliant, creative,’ he said, his voice hollow and low. ‘She was always painting, and her laughter filled any room she was in. I never missed having a sibling, because life with her was always full of colour and warmth.’ He laughed, an empty, desolate sound. ‘She shone bright, even in a place as cold and relentless as this.’
 

As he spoke, he pulled each of the advent gifts from their pockets, sharing them with her when she’d expected him to shut her out. Sophie controlled herself as she felt tears welling yet again at the poignancy of the unexpected moment. She didn’t want to adulterate it with any sentiment of her own.
 

As Lucien neared the final, largest pocket, he slowed. It was fuller, and his fingers lingered over it. A card poked out of the top offering a glimpse of a hand drawn reindeer on the front, and sønn written above it in cheery red paint. Treasured family mementos, precious beyond measure.
 

Lucien was still hesitating. Sophie looked up at his faraway expression, hovering somewhere between remembrance and regret. She knew how much he hated to lose control, to unravel emotionally.
 

‘Why don’t you leave that one until later?’ she said quietly. Then, a little more firmly, ‘I could really use your help to get that tree in place.’
 

She sensed his uncertainty and his reticence, and her every instinct was to step in, wrap her arms around him and shield him from pain. Lucien was such an assured, vital man that he’d never acknowledge nor understand Sophie’s instinct to protect him, but it was there nonetheless.
 

It didn’t matter that he was well over six foot of pure, lithe muscle, and God knew he had the kind of presence and beauty that stopped people in their tracks. Sophie saw behind the smoke and mirrors to the beating heart of the intensely private man inside. Lucien had her unquestioning loyalty because he’d given her his own from the first
day she’d encountered him, and she loved him as fiercely as her own heart knew how to, all the way from the outside in.
 

When he looked up at her, she didn’t see the cocky, assured man the rest of the world saw. She saw the teenage boy who still missed his mother, the grief he did such a watertight job of suppressing ninety-nine percent of the time exposed in his over-bright eyes.
 

‘I didn’t know this was still here,’ he said, shaking his head slowly, not even aware that he’d already told her the same thing.
 

‘Come on. I need you,’ she said, holding her hand out. Lucien took it, pressed his lips against the back of her fingers, and then let her lead him out of the bedroom.
 

As Christmas trees went, it really was pretty spectacular. The soft, creamy lights the interior designer had artfully arranged around the twigs looked a million times prettier buried amongst the heavy green boughs of the spruce and turned the glass baubles into jewelled balls of light. Lucien had watched her from the sofa at first, then joined her to thread the garland of tiny, painted birds amongst the branches.
 

She’d slipped on one of his soft shirts to work in, citing the threat of the sharp pine needles as mitigating circumstances, and he’d kissed her hair as he’d buttoned the front and folded back the cuffs for her, acquiescing.
 

‘I know what you’re trying to do, Princess,’ he said, as an afterthought, letting her know he was not fooled by her for a moment.
 

‘Then let me.’
 

Sophie stood on tiptoe and laid her hand on his cheek as she kissed him, loving and languid. ‘I love you,’ she said, holding him close, soothing, and then easing back. ‘Now go and get me a glass of wine while I finish this.’
 

She watched him walk away towards the kitchen, the lone wolf inked across his golden back shifting as his muscles moved. God, she loved him.
 

‘You’re not on your own any more,’ she whispered, knowing he wouldn’t hear her but hoping he knew it anyhow.
 

The brand new julebukk Lucien had placed on the mantel that morning now had a straw friend in the form of its much more well handled compatriot, and Lucien had spent the hours before dinner going through the other boxes in the trunk. The one marked Personal effects still sat unopened as they finished their bottle of wine on the sofa after dinner. He pulled it towards them resolutely and lifted the lid, revealing a stack of photograph albums.
 

‘We don’t have to,’ Sophie said right away, already anticipating that it might be too much.
 

Lucien slid down onto the floor and picked up the first album, his back against the sofa where Sophie lay propped up on one elbow looking over his shoulder.
 

‘It’s okay,’ he said, opening the book on his slanted thighs. He turned his head and kissed her hand where it rested on his shoulder, then lifted the layer of protective tissue to look at the black and white photographs beneath it. Baby photos, his mother cradling him in her arms on the doorstep when she came home from the hospital. His second birthday party. His first day at kindergarten, satchel in hand.
 

He shared snippets about the people in the images as he flipped the pages; friends, family, and most of all about his parents. She learned the little things that were really the big things; that he’d lost both of his front teeth in a sledging incident when he was five years old, that his faithful husky had slept on his bed, and she saw him laughing as he played in a crystal clear mountain lake in summertime, his mother flailing her
arms in the air as he splashed her. The ordinary innocence of the pictures moved her greatly, simple moments captured before the family ruptured and Lucien’s life had changed forever. Seeing them helped Sophie to understand him more, as if he’d swung open the door to his ice fortress and invited her to come and look inside.
 

‘You look so alike there,’ she said, reaching down and touching the final image in the album.
 

 She’d seen the same picture on the desk at Lucien's lodge when he'd first brought her to Norway a little over twelve months ago; a snow scene, mother and son looking straight into the photographer’s lens and laughing. Had his father taken it? She didn’t ask. His memories of his mother were mostly happy ones, but as can often be the case with strong-willed fathers and sons, that relationship had been difficult.
 

Closing the album and returning it to the box, Lucien placed the lid on the contents and picked up a brandy glass from beside him.