A Perfect Storm (12 page)

Lucien sat there gripping the arms of his chair, all the while silently calling Magnus every foul name known to man. At the same time, the joyous shrieking in all different kinds of voices assaulted him from the window. Those voices coiled through his body, calling him to give up his game for a little while and just have some fun.

But maybe he didn’t have to entirely let go of his plans for Sophie. As Magnus had pointed out with such irritating insight, letting Sophie see another side of him could benefit him when he next pushed her to a place that would challenge her sexual comfort. If she saw a lighter side of him, her trust would come that much easier.
Yeah
. Lucien got up, strode out of his study and down the hall, feeling a hell of a lot better now.
This could work tremendously to my benefit.

He traipsed down the stairs, grabbed his coat, and came astride Magnus in the solarium that opened to the back of the house. Magnus grinned, and his fucking gaze downright twinkled. The man opened his mouth, but Lucien spoke over him, muttering, “Shut it.” Lucien still had plenty of murderous looks to spare and shot one at his dearest, most annoying friend. “Don’t you goddamn speak one gloating word.”

Magnus chuckled instead. The sound grew louder with every step they took. By the time Magnus shoved open the glass door, his guffaws thundered across the sky. Everyone outside spun in their direction and then froze in place.
Shit
. Sophie stared at them from a dozen feet away, and Owen grinned so big it looked like he might split his face open.
Goddamn
. Lucien’s heart pounded much too fast. He fucking couldn’t believe it, but he didn’t know what to do next.

Sophie could not believe her eyes. Her throat went dry at the austere, elegantly dangerous sight of Lucien, but she did not dare trust her vision to accurately send information to her brain that Lucien had joined them outside. Nothing she’d seen in him so far indicated anything other than a man who enjoyed a certain kind of play—fun that involved mind games and adult conversations where simple sentences had multiple meanings. From what Sophie had observed in Lucien to this point, she hadn’t thought him capable of innocent, simple playing. Everything he did appeared to serve a dual purpose, with both avenues benefitting him.

And God, none of that even took into account that this was the first time they’d come face-to-face since doing what she’d done for him at her window last night.
Ho boy. I still feel him watching me
. Sophie trembled. Lucien looked right at her; sparks of deep topaz warmed his penetrating stare, and Sophie’s belly fluttered. No doubt existed in Sophie’s mind that Lucien mentally stripped her out of her many layers of clothing where she stood. In his mind, he obviously had put her back in her bedroom, riding that dildo to screaming release. Her cheeks burned with the shared memory, but her sex throbbed much deeper inside, overriding the embarrassment.

With every drawn-out second he stared, Lucien seemed to somehow chisel his face even more solidly with lines of unforgiving granite, while his gaze continued to burn.
He liked what I did. It turned him on
. As soon as that thought hit Sophie, another piled right on top of it.
But he doesn’t like that it did.

Only a few seconds had passed since the men had stepped outside, but it appeared as if Lucien had locked himself in place. Sophie held her breath, wondering if, when he released the rigor holding him still, he would spin around and go back inside. Just then, an enormous snowball pelted Lucien right in the face.
Owen
. The boy stood a handful of steps away, his green eyes wide, his lower lip sucked between his teeth, sweating out his fate.

The ball had broken apart on contact; icy clumps of snow rolled down Lucien’s face and into the neckline of his wool coat. He scooped up a particularly large piece of slush clinging to his collar and flicked it onto the ground. His gaze then flashed, and a wicked smile—but one so very obviously, sweetly fake it stopped Sophie’s heart—appeared. Lucien shouted, “You will feel my revenge!” then charged across the space between himself and Owen. He swiped the boy off the ground and tossed Owen over his shoulder, to screeches of laughter from the kid, and flung them both into a pile of snow Cale had fashioned for the boy. Lucien twisted to take the full brunt of the fall but quickly fake-wrestled Owen into the snow. He swooped piles and piles of fluffy white flakes onto Owen, while dramatically vowing to bury him at the bottom of the mound.

In between Owen shouting “Mommy! Mommy! Help!” the kid howled with laughter and attacked Lucien with equal washes of snow. Nearly overshadowed by the high-pitched tones from Owen, another deeper sound clawed through Sophie’s heart: Lucien’s laughter; something hearty and from his soul. Something genuine and real. It was beyond silly, but Sophie’s throat started to constrict where she stood.

As Emma, Jade, and Cale threw themselves into the splendid fray, Sophie thought she might cry. She ducked her head down just as Magnus joined her. He murmured, “It’s a beautiful thing to see, isn’t it?”

Without asking of whom or what he spoke, Sophie knew this big, intimidating man spoke with such gentleness about Lucien laughing and smiling. “It’s like… I don’t know… It’s stupid, but my heart is hurting inside with the joy he’s experiencing. He doesn’t do this enough, does he?” Her attention still riveted to Lucien, Sophie smiled, yet it almost felt sad as she watched Lucien gently toss Owen into the pile of snow again. “I don’t get the feeling he puts a lot of stock in simply being carefree and happy, and that today I’m witnessing something very rare for him.”

“Very astute,” Magnus shared. She glanced up just in time to see him raise his brow at her. “You are seeing something of an anomaly.”

“But why?”

“Now for that”—Magnus shifted and began walking backward, still facing her—“you’ll have to find a way to gain Lucien’s trust and let him tell you himself.”

More mysteries. Sophie growled and shot Magnus a surly look.

Magnus barked with laughter, and it transformed his intimidating face. “That almost made you look and sound just like him.”

“Stop insulting me”—Sophie scooped up a handful of snow and charged Magnus—“or I’ll make you pay with a face full of snow!” Winding up, she hurled her snowball straight at the big man.

Magnus ducked just before the snowball reached him, and the solid wad of snow slammed squarely into Lucien’s back. Lucien spun and zeroed in on her. The wickedness of that smile drilled into her, making Sophie grin and shiver. She swiped up another handful of snow, screaming with the same kind of joy she’d shown with Owen, just as Lucien declared his revenge and flung a giant snowball at her.

Oh. It. Was. On.

* * * *

Tears spilled down Sophie’s frozen cheeks, yet she rolled deeper into the now mushy snow anyway. “I give! I give! I give!” Breathless, exhausted from laughing, she pushed up her hands in surrender so Owen would stop tickling her. “You’re the winning king, and Lucien is your most stalwart knight.” She wiped her eyes and sucked in great gulps of breath. “I concede our castle to you.”

“Hey!” From his position lying on the ground, Magnus shouted while shooting Sophie the stink eye. “You can’t give up our territory without a bigger fight.”

Owen leaped over other strewn bodies to Magnus. “You cannot speak”—he sliced his plastic sword across Magnus’s neck—“or I will have my knight kill you dead again!”

Magnus jerked dramatically, held his neck, and gurgled once more, as he’d done minutes back when Lucien had slain him the first time. All of the other “dead” laughed along with Owen. Sophie soaked in the boy’s happiness, and she absorbed Lucien’s too. He seemed a completely different man during these two hours in which he’d devoted all of his attention to playing and making Owen the center of his world. His obvious love for the boy became so instantly clear that Sophie had begun to wonder if maybe Lucien really was the child’s father. Except the boy didn’t call him Dad. Yet Sophie didn’t see how Lucien could love Owen any more if he was the kid’s father. Then again, all of these adults adored and doted on Owen. Cale had shown equal fatherly attention earlier in the day, and Magnus had behaved similarly once he’d joined them. It went without saying that Emma loved him as a mother would, but so did Jade. If Owen didn’t so resemble Emma, and if he hadn’t told her outright that she was his mom, Sophie would be hard-pressed to figure out to whom he belonged.

Her body suddenly tingled all over. Sophie jerked her focus up to find Lucien studying her.

“You look so serious all of a sudden, Miss Emerson,” Lucien said, slipping back into that too-in-control tone. “Whatever are you thinking?”

His slide back into that calculating, twinkling stare thudded Sophie down to earth. “I was wondering how a queen without a castle survives.” With an exaggerated grimace, she pushed lightness into her tone. “Particularly when every square inch of her clothing is soggy from playing in the snow.”

“I have pull with the king. If you play your cards right”—Lucien extended his hand, and the softly sensual teasing once again took over his voice—“I can probably get you a warm room and bed in our kingdom.”

Two can play this game
. Somehow managing to hide the trembling in her fingers, Sophie slipped her hand into Lucien’s. “As a member of royal society, I have to maintain a semblance of dignity.” Lucien’s heat radiated through their handhold, and the warmth snaked up Sophie’s arm. Not looking away from him, she whispered, feeling a bit breathless again, “If I allow you to assist me, can I count on you to be discreet?”

“My dear Miss Emerson.” Lucien tugged her to her feet and right into his arms. His amber gaze mocked in a way that sent a deeper tremor through Sophie to her core. “You should never be so foolish as to count on my discretion.”

Sucking in a shallow breath, Sophie made a weak attempt to pull away from Lucien.

Locked on her, Lucien immediately tightened his hold around her waist. “Scared again?”

Sophie opened her mouth to snarl a disagreement, but right then, Owen said, “Mom, did Daddy like to play in the snow like this when he was a kid?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Emma replied. From her peripheral vision, Sophie saw the redhead plant a kiss to the top of her son’s head. “You would have to ask Lucien. He’s the only one who would know.”

Lucien let go of Sophie, his arms falling dead to his sides. Sophie watched the ruddy color from the morning of play drain from the man’s face.

Whoa.

Chapter Seven

Goddamn fucking shit.

Lucien swallowed down every shout he wanted to roar in Emma’s face. He had already sickened himself with the knowledge that he would eventually share private stories about Josh with Sophie, but he’d decided to save that for a time when it would best serve to ensnare Sophie deeper into his plan.

This was why he never should have come outside. This was why he should have made a better effort to seclude Sophie from the daily running of his home. He should have taken better control guiding and manipulating what he allowed her to do and see, and when those things happened.

Lucien glanced at Emma, and an apology lived in every inch of her face. Lucien’s attention drifted down to Owen, and the kid’s hopes for just a little bit of information filled his stare. The greenish hazel shade, which swirled enough gold within to match Josh’s eye color more closely than Emma’s, cut through Lucien’s heart.
Shit.

“Your dad did like to play in the snow when we were boys,” Lucien finally shared. Memories of better days assaulted his thoughts and thickened his words. “We used to have this giant silver saucer that we would use to ride down the hills in our backyard together.”

“Cool!” Owen spun and grabbed his mother’s coat. “Mom, can we buy a silver saucer too?”

As Emma tried to explain to the boy that there wasn’t really anywhere they could use a toy like that on Raven Island without sending someone over a cliff, Lucien turned back to Sophie and the thousand questions she tried to hide by averting her gaze.

Crap. It’s not like she hasn’t figured out at least the basics on her own by now.

The truth of that didn’t make it any easier to push the information past Lucien’s raw throat. “Owen is my nephew,” Lucien shared, the confession snapping her attention back up to him. “Yes, we share blood. My brother is his father.”

Sophie’s pupils flared and nearly drowned out the ocean of blue. “That’s what you almost let slip to me last night.”

Lucien shoved his hands into his pockets to cover the fists he kept making. “Yes.”

After opening and closing her mouth twice without a peep, Sophie—Lucien could see the wheels turning as she carefully chose each word—finally said, “Owen is your nephew, not your son, but he lives with you.”

“No,” Lucien corrected, keeping his voice low, although it was clear the others had already engaged Owen in another game. “He lives with his mother, who happens to work for me.”

Sophie’s cheek sucked in, as if she chewed at it from the inside. “But your brother…”

“Josh.” He filled in the name for her.

Nothing significant registered on Sophie’s face or changed her straightforward curiosity. She just nodded and said, “But Josh doesn’t live here.”

“No.”

Clearly still gnawing on her inner cheek, Sophie looked to Owen. Her gaze softened as she stared at the boy; when she came back to Lucien, her brows furrowed together, and she started rubbing at her neck. “So your brother”—she stopped with her lips pursed together for a moment—“I mean Josh…”

“Is dead,” Lucien finished for her in a clipped tone.

All that dewy empathy Sophie had let slip when looking at Owen immediately shifted to Lucien. “I’m so sorry.”

Sophie reached out, but Lucien stepped back before she could touch him. The move away from her came automatically to Lucien, an instinct to reject any useless attempt to comfort. He could not control his mind and body’s effort to recoil and shield itself from attempts to weaken him with kindness or suggestions that he move past the loss.