LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance (8 page)

I got into the car, my arms crossed over my chest as he climbed behind the wheel and tore out of that driveway much faster than he should have. It was a miracle he wasn’t pulled over as he pushed that luxury car to its limits, speeding around the expressway like it was a racetrack. When we pulled through the security gate behind which stood his house, I was about ready to explode.

“I don’t need to be here if you have your own security.”

“You of all people should know what a joke a gated community is.”

“It’s all the security you probably need tonight.”

He ignored that jab and climbed out of the car, leaving me there alone as he went into the house through the side door. I followed a minute later, realizing I really had no other option. I found him in the living room, pouring himself a healthy swig of vodka from a bottle on the bar at the back of the room.

“When you hire a security team, you kind of need to tell them everything pertinent to your situation.”

“I did.”

“I don’t remember my father mentioning anything about the fact that you’ve been fucking your sister-in-law.”

He turned and looked at me as he drank from the tumbler he’d just filled, but he didn’t acknowledge what I’d said.

“It seems to me when someone’s threatening you and the threats can be traced back to your brother’s computer, information like that might be important.”

“I’m not fucking her.”

“Doesn’t sound that way to me.”

“Sure you’re not allowing your own feelings to cloud your judgment?”

My hands turned into little balls of fury at my sides. I turned slightly, in part because I didn’t want to look at him and, in part, because I wanted to find something nice and solid that I could throw at him.

“Why did she come to Kemah?”

“You saw her. She was high.”

“But she didn’t come to see Jacob.”

“Lynn has issues,” Lucien said, his tone changing slightly. “She was in a car accident a couple of years ago that left her with chronic pain. She uses things she shouldn’t in order to deal with it.”

“But why you and not Jacob?”

“We’re friends.”

I snorted.

“Don’t believe me,” he said, turning back to the bar. “I don’t care what you think.”

“Good.”

I turned and headed back toward the kitchen, trying to pretend like I didn’t have a knife protruding from my back. It didn’t matter that his words hurt. Didn’t matter that seeing that woman touching him, reaching for him like he was the only thing that mattered to her, made my soul feel like it had been exposed to heat for too long, like it’d become this shriveled, useless mess. He was just a case. This was just a case.

But then he was grabbing my arm, forcing me against the wall, his mouth hunting for mine. The taste of vodka on his lips, the feel of his hands on my hips as he lifted me up, raising me to his level, desperation bruising my lips. My hands tangled themselves in his lapels, holding on for dear life. I responded to his kiss for a moment, wrapped myself around him in the seconds it took before the hurt reminded me that this was not right.

I pushed at his shoulder, his jaw.

“Stop.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against my chin, his lips sliding down over my throat. “I’m sorry,” he said again as he pressed his face against my breasts.

I hit his shoulder, and it felt so good I did it again.

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know.”

And then he carried me upstairs, and I let him, my body wrapping itself around him, my head resting against his shoulder, my lips sliding over his throat.

He laid me on the edge of his bed and stepped back, kicking off his shoes and sliding out of his sport coat. The shirt came next, lifted over his head despite the buttons that ran down the front, exposing that Hollywood-worthy chest and perfect abs. The devices that kept him healthy came out of his pockets, the clip of his insulin pump unhooked and wrapped around the device, abandoned on the side table. And then his hands moved to the thin button that kept those dark trousers around his waist.

I went to him then, pushing him back into a convenient chair that happened to be behind him, covered, in true bachelor fashion, in abandoned clothes. He fell back, his eyes tight on me as I knelt in front of him and tugged at that button. I pulled it open, pressing my lips to the bare flesh it exposed just below his navel. He groaned, his hands coming to mess up the simple hair clip that had taken me fifteen minutes to perfect in my hair.

I pushed his hands away and looked up at him.

“Trust me,” I said.

He nodded, laying his hands quietly on the arms of the chair.

I slid my fingers under the flap of material that hid his zipper. Slowly, one tooth at a time, I pulled the tab down, my lips again grazing the tender skin under his navel. I could feel him watching, could feel the hitch of his breath when my fingers brushed his erection. The zipper separated easily, a hot knife in butter. And then my fingers were under the band of his briefs, my nails scraping across the hair that grew at the base of his shaft.

I glanced at him, watched as he closed his eyes and settled back for the ride.

I took him in my hands, touched him the way I imagined he might have touched himself as a young boy just learning the miracles of pleasure. I found myself wanting to know what he was like then, an awkward boy without the confidence that would come with manhood. I found myself wanting to know so much more about him than simple curiosity might desire. I wanted to know all the experiences that had made him the man he was now. I wanted to know who’d broken his heart, who’d made him smile, who’d taught him the dangers of love and who’d taught him the pleasure of trust.

But right now I just wanted to see pleasure in his eyes and know I was the one who gave it to him.

He tried to touch me again as I offered him that pleasure, as I tasted him in the same way he’d tasted me the night before. I pushed his hand away as I ran my fingers over his balls, as I listened to the low growl that slipped from deep in his belly all the way to the tip of his tongue. He moved his hips, encouraging me to touch him where he needed to be touched. I tried to obey, but there was so much of him and only so much of me. But he seemed happy enough with what I had to offer.

As I knelt there, I reached under my own skirt and pulled my panties away. As they slid down my thighs, I let him go and moved slowly up the length of his body, brushing my lips over his belly, running my tongue briefly around the rim of his navel. Slowly I climbed on top of him, working my panties out of the way until they caught around one ankle as our lips met.

“Fuck me,” he whispered as he stared up at me with wonder in his eyes.

“I plan on it.”

He groaned as he pulled me close, kissing me with one of those kisses that made my heart pound out of control and my toes tingle. I wanted him inside of me with an almost desperate need, like a drowning man reaching for a lifesaving piece of debris. He pulled my skirt out of the way, ran his hand between my legs, his fingertip pressing almost roughly against my clit. And then he guided himself to me, brushing against me like his lips against my shoulder. I lowered myself against him and…
Oh, dios mio!

I settled back, raised my face to the ceiling. And then I began to move, controlling the motion until he was touching me in every place deep in my belly that was screaming for relief. His hands moved over my thighs, my breasts, clutching them through the material of my dress. I laid my hands over his and looked at him, watched him watching me. The way he looked at me threw me off for a second, making me hesitate in my movement. And then he pulled me down to him again, and I was lost, caught in a wave of pleasure that I knew would end.

But, Lord help me, I didn’t want it to end.

Lucien

I was watching her again, but I knew she wasn’t asleep this time. Her eyes were closed, but she was dancing her fingers over mine, playing a rhythm against me that only she could hear.

“Can I ask you something?”

She made a sound that could have been a sigh. Or it could have been a yes.

“Has it always been just you and your father?”

In an instant I went from holding a soft, pliant woman to gripping a stone. She slid her hips over and turned onto her back, looking at me with that cautious stare that was becoming so familiar.

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I want to know more about you.”

“Why?” she repeated.

I ran my finger slowly over her bare belly, bringing it to a rest right in the center of one nipple. “Why do you think?”

“Did you have an affair with your sister-in-law?”

I groaned, but I didn’t pull away, despite the fact that I wanted to. I bit back my anger and took a deep breath.

“No.”

“Then why did she say those things? Why did she come all the way to Kemah to see you?”

I lay my arm on her chest, resting just below those beautiful breasts. “I never slept with her. But she’s been trying to talk me into it for more than a year. She’s…she’s not a nice person. She used to be, but she changed. The car accident, Jacob, everything falling apart around her… It’s changed her.”

“And Kemah?”

“I don’t know. She said she had to tell me something, but she was so high, I have no idea if it was real or just a delusion brought on by the pills.”

Adrienne looked up at the ceiling. “You should have told my father that.”

“It’s family stuff. I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Everything matters. Someone’s sending you threats.”

I nodded, more because of the concern I could hear in her voice than because I agreed with her. Family was family. I was always taught to protect family over everything. If Jacob found out about the way Lynn had been coming on to me, he would never forgive me. I never would risk that.

“No,” she said.

“What?”

She looked at me. “No, it wasn’t always just me and my dad. I had a mom. A sister.”

Her voice changed when she said that. And the kaleidoscope of sadness that I’d seen in her eyes from that first night in the bar was back. I waited. I didn’t want to push her. But I slid my hand over her ribs, let her know I was there.

“My dad was a cop. My mom used to worry so much whenever he went to work. She was always so afraid that one night we would get a knock on the door informing us that he’d been shot in the line of duty. But it wasn’t about him the night the knock finally did come.”

She reached up and brushed a piece of hair out of her face. She was staring at the ceiling like there was something important up there.

“Amelia, my sister, was an incredible nuisance. She always wanted me to play with her, always wanted some sort of attention. That night, I was trying to color in my favorite coloring book, and she kept coming over, begging me to help her with her Barbies. I hated Barbies. Hated the whole dress-up thing. My dad always said I was born missing that gene that makes girls want to dress up and wear makeup and whatever else. But Amelia, she had it in spades.”

She bit her lip as it began to quiver. I slid my hand over her side, drawing her closer against me.

“My mom suggested that we all get into the car and go get the ingredients for this new chocolate cookie recipe she’d just found. My mom was one of those women who was always buying those housewife magazines, clipping recipes and trying them out. And Amelia loved helping her out. But, again, that was just not my thing. I elected to stay home. I was nine, so staying home alone was a new thing. I took every opportunity I could, even if they were just going to be gone for a few minutes, like a quick trip to the grocery store.”

“But they never came back.”

She shook her head, a single tear rolling slowly down her cheek. “A drunk driver hit them before they were even half a mile from our house. They both died on impact.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, rubbing her hair against the pillow where she lay. “I should have been in the car. If I’d been in the car—”

“You’d be dead, and your father would have been alone.”

“Maybe I could have seen the drunk driver coming. Maybe I could have warned my mom.”

“And maybe you’d be dead, too.” I touched her face, pulling her close to me. “It sucks. You shouldn’t have lost your sister and your mom. I shouldn’t have lost my dad. He was only thirty-seven, you know? None of it should have happened. But we have no control over these things.”

“Do we have control over anything?”

“Yeah.” I ran my thumb over her bottom lip. “We have control over what we’re going to do right now. We have control over whether or not we’re going to go to sleep now, or if we’re going to find other, more interesting things to do.”

She laughed, the sound more melancholy than joyful. “Is that all you think about?”

“I’m a man lying in bed with a beautiful, naked woman. What do you think?”

She chuckled, amusement coming into her eyes. “If you don’t stop saying things like that, I might start believing you.”

“Then I’ll be very sure not to stop saying them.”

I kissed her and sighed when she returned my kiss. She moved closer, her body slipping underneath mine. I had to reach down and adjust my pump, but then I tugged at her hip and encouraged her to slide her leg up over my hip. I liked getting tangled with her, liked the feel of her warm body against mine. I don’t know when we finally moved apart, when she tucked her head into my chest and fell asleep. It felt like one thing just naturally flowed into the other.

But when she was gone, I became aware of her absence. I reached for her without opening my eyes, but my hands came away empty. I rolled onto my back, resting my hand over my eyes to shade them from the light streaming in through the windows.

“Adrienne?”

There was no answer.

I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair, groaning as every muscle in my body protested against movement. I stumbled to the easy chair in the corner and grabbed a pair of sweats, shoving my pump in the pocket as I headed for the door.

I found her downstairs, working on a computer at the breakfast bar. Jacob’s computer.

“What are you doing?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I mean, what are you doing with Jacob’s computer?”

She sat back on the high stool and crossed her legs, looking like a wet dream in my button-down shirt.

“We traced those emails back to Jacob’s IP address. I wanted to see if there was any possibility that they actually came from his computer, or if I could find evidence of a hacker in there somewhere.”

“And have you?”

“No on both counts.”

“Good. Go put it back where you found it.”

“He texted me this morning,” she said, pushing her phone toward me. “Wanted to know if you were okay.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said you were fine. Then he asked if we’d gotten your low home safely.”

I padded over to the refrigerator and took out a carafe of orange juice, pouring us both a glass.

“What did you say to that?”

“Nothing. I thought that was something you should probably respond to.”

“Go put the computer away,” I said, setting the glass of juice in front of her. “I’ll call him and deal with that.”

She closed the lid on the computer and stood, kissing my cheek before heading off through my house. I watched her go, thinking how good she looked here. Natural. Like she belonged in this place, walking these hallways.

I left my phone upstairs, so I grabbed the landline and dialed Jacob. He answered almost on the first ring.

“How’d you know?”

“Her car was parked out in front of the restaurant.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Obviously she’d have to have gotten there somehow.

“She was intoxicated, Jacob. I couldn’t take her to the table like that. Karl would have blown a gasket.”

“Why was she there?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did she know we were there?”

And that was another question I didn’t know the answer to. I felt like a CD with a scratch, a broken record repeating itself over and over again.

“I don’t know.”

Jacob was quiet for a minute. “Well, next time, tell me the truth. Don’t have your girlfriend text me and lie to me.”

“What’d you tell Mom and Karl?”

“What Adrienne said. That you weren’t feeling well and wanted to go home. But I think they kind of assumed it was more about you and Adrienne wanting some privacy.”

“That’s not completely untrue.”

“Yeah, well, I’m headed your way in an hour or so, so you might want to get it out of your system before then. Or move it upstairs.”

“Yes, Daddy, sir.”

Jacob just groaned and hung up on me.

Adrienne came back into the room and curled up on the stool again. She had this way of sitting that reminded me of a cat making itself comfortable in a sunbeam. She tucked her legs under her and stretched her back, then rested her arms across her knees as gracefully as a ballet dancer doing a pirouette. It was fascinating to watch.

“Everything okay?”

I nodded, returning to the refrigerator to get some food. Some fresh strawberries and a tub of yogurt.

“My sister got kicked out of school.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Yeah?”

“Turns out that was why we were all called down to the beach house for the weekend. My mom told me while you were getting dressed last night.”

“What are they going to do?”

“My mom suggested we give her a secretarial job.”

“Now probably wouldn’t be a good time.”

I grabbed a couple of bowls and carried everything over to the breakfast bar. “This will be resolved in a couple of days, right?”

“Hopefully. But someone’s making threats against you. Do you really want to bring your eighteen-year-old sister into that atmosphere?”

“Not really.” I handed her a bowl of yogurt. “But what do I do? Mom thinks she needs to understand the consequences of not getting an education.”

“Make her get a job at a fast food restaurant. A couple of weeks of asking, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ will probably teach her that faster than working under her two adoring brothers.”

I laughed, the image that idea produced almost too much.

“I should call my mom and suggest that. She might actually go for it.”

Adrienne smiled, clearly enjoying the image, too. And then her phone rang. She said maybe two words, and then she jumped off the stool.

“I have to go.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“We might have a lead.” She turned on the stairs and looked down at me. “Stay here. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Adrienne…”

“Trust me.”

She came back down a few minutes later, dressed in a pair of black slacks and a white blouse, and kissed me softly.

“I’ll be back.”

And she was gone, just like that.