A Perfect Storm (34 page)

The deaths of his father and brother, along with his mother apparently putting a new husband above her children, tugged at Sophie’s already captured heart. “You’ve had a lot of loss for such a young man.”

“Not so young.” As he looked down at her, his smile twisted with derision, and he raised a brow. “I’m thirty-eight.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “That’s not old.”

“Too old for you,” he murmured, his tone rough again. “Christ, you’re fucking twenty-four years old and look at what I almost did to your life. What I’ve been devising and changing and refining and strategizing and plotting since before you even graduated from high school.”

Sighing, Sophie kept her hold on Lucien’s arm and her head pressed to his bicep, absorbing the way he struggled to regulate his breathing. “When pain is in control, it will drive a person to do destructive things. Your love for your brother blinded you for a little while.” Logic said she should have railed at this man the second she’d discovered his plan. She then should have punched him and stormed off this island without looking back. But normalcy hadn’t ruled Sophie’s actions from the moment Lucien had opened Ravenstoke’s door to her and she’d looked into his eyes. The confusion, passion, desire, frustration, the quick, shocking depth of attraction and devotion Lucien had stirred in her, the journey he’d taken her on that had allowed her to discover so many new pieces of her sexuality…all of it overpowered any residual anger, hurt, or need for revenge. Lucien had lived with those latter things for far too long already. Sophie would not be the person who kept that kind of destruction in his life.

Letting go of Lucien, Sophie then shifted to lean against the dresser, making eye contact with a gaze that glistened with emotion. “While I don’t like thinking I was
this close
to having this new discovery of my sexuality all over the Internet”—the images of her doing and loving all those raw, base things still flamed heat across her skin—“I can understand and forgive the motive that took you to such a dark place.”

“Thank you.” Lucien’s throat visibly worked overtime to contain the flood still inside him. His focus slid to the sealed box of ashes again, and his voice dropped to a murmur. “You would have liked Josh…before…”

When their father had still been alive. Before Josh’s mind had been changed by a manipulative animal
. “Before,” Sophie replied, nodding. In two syllables, that one word offered complete clarity and explanation.

Lucien swiped at his eyes and nose again. “Yeah.”

“I know I would have.” She took his hand in both of hers and brought it to her lips, her heart squeezing as she kissed each knuckle before letting him go.

After taking a big, unsteady breath and then exhaling and breathing in a second, smoother one, Lucien caressed the sealed box and then found Sophie’s gaze again. “I think it’s time to take Josh out of hiding in my drawer for good.”

“Any idea what you want to do?”

“I don’t know for sure yet,” he replied. “Josh and I rarely had contact with our mother after I took Josh away, so what I do is up to me. Maybe I can erect something on Raven Island somewhere so that Owen can visit him in case he wants to talk to his father.”

Aching with the recent memories of how much that little boy looked at Lucien with adoration, Sophie nodded as a tear slid down her cheek. “Maybe a place you can take Owen to tell him stories about his dad as a kid and the good times you had together.”

“Yeah.” Lucien rubbed the tips of his fingers over Josh’s name on the box. “I think I would like that.”

“I think Owen would too. He’s the way you keep Josh alive, you know?” she offered, hoping her pushiness wouldn’t shut him down. “By loving Owen and being in his life and helping to raise him the way I know Emma wants you to. You will prove how much you loved Josh by helping to shape the man his son becomes, not through…through…” She bit her lip.
Shoot.

“Single-minded revenge?” Lucien finished for her. He quirked that sardonic brow, and Sophie knew the cool individual who’d frustrated her and toyed with her boundaries so completely this last week still lived and thrived inside this more contemplative man.
Thank goodness
. Sophie wouldn’t want that guy to go away any more than this gentler man showing himself to her right now.

Sophie did her best to raise a cocky eyebrow back at him. “You’re the one who said it.”

With a chuckle, Lucien grinned and rubbed the furrows across her forehead. Just as fast as he let that lightness in, rigid lines pushed his face back to a severe place. “Goddamnit. What I tried to do to you and Royce.” Tipping his head back, he muttered another curse. “Once upon a time, I actually knew your brother and liked him. Then he got involved with Josh at the club, and the stories Josh would tell started to color me with suspicion. From there it wasn’t a very big leap to believing Royce had set out with the intention for Josh to kill himself that night.” With a blink, Lucien came back to her, shards of glass cutting the clarity in his gaze. “I fucked up so badly.”

This time Sophie grazed her fingers along the harsh planes of Lucien’s face, working to soothe the tension and judgment there. “I think once he calms down, Royce will understand too. He might have done something similar if the roles were reversed and something had happened to me.”

“Shit.” Lucien rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and pressure appeared to lay itself heavily on his shoulders once more. “I have to fix things with Magnus and the others too.”

“They’ll come back.” Nothing but pure confidence ruled Sophie’s tone. “They love you.”

Glancing at her sideways, Lucien started to pace. “I don’t deserve it.”

As he passed by her, she grabbed his hand. “I think you do.” Leaning against him, she grazed a kiss against his cheek. “And more.”

In a flash, he shifted and stole a fast, hard kiss. Bruising her already sensitive lips, he uttered, “Christ, honey,” and stepped away, prowling again. “I should… I shouldn’t leave things… I shouldn’t have kicked Owen out of his home. I need to call him, all of them, and hope they’ll come back.”

Watching him move like a caged beast, knowing now he did this when deep emotions he didn’t want to expose wouldn’t allow him to remain still, shredded what little remained protected in Sophie’s heart. “They will,” she assured him, her entire being aching for him. “This is their home. With you.”

“Jesus”—his voice was ragged—“I hope so.” He suddenly veered sharply toward the door. “I should do that…something…”

When he shook his head and did a quarter turn, now making a beeline for his phone, Sophie said, “Lucien,” in a firm tone.

He jerked to a stop and swung around to face her, a fiery glint in his stare. “What?”

His clear impatience spiked daggers of uncertainty in her, but Sophie forced herself to hold her ground and not let adrenaline make her voice squeak. “It’s okay to breathe and not assert control every second you are awake.” She even inhaled and exhaled, encouraging him in every way possible to accept and believe.

Lucien wiped at the brackets lining his mouth, and she could not miss that his hand still trembled. “It’s so fucking hard to let it all go and trust in someone other than myself to make things good for the people I’m supposed to take care of and protect.” He grabbed the door frame and clenched the wood in his fingers. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

Empathy filled Sophie’s being, making her hurt. “I know.” His vulnerability spurred the need to give him something equally difficult to share, something deeply private, something frightening to say. Only one thing filled Sophie’s heart and mind, and just the thought of speaking it pounded through her with the force of a freight train and left her throat thick and her mouth dry.

You can’t truly have him if you won’t give him all of yourself
. Sophie took her own advice and breathed. And even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t tear her stare away from the open intensity in Lucien’s eyes. “I don’t want you to respond to this right now,” she started, rushing her words. “Not until you can get through losing Josh all over again and find yourself in a better place. But I want you to know, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t feel it. I don’t think I can.” Every pulse point in Sophie’s body skittered like crazy, but she didn’t blink or look away as the words spilled from her soul. “I love you, Lucien. It’s crazy, I know. I shouldn’t feel it with such certainty so fast, but I do. I feel it in here.” She put her fists to her belly and her chest. “I needed you to hear it. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think it’s important for you to know, right now, as you work toward getting your family back. You can believe in me. I love you, and unless you kick me out, I’m not going anywhere. Heck”—nervous laughter bubbled out of her—“I think I proved I probably won’t leave even if you do kick me out.”

She ran out of steam just as Lucien said, “Jesus Christ,” and ran his hand down his face again.

Sophie’s legs went a little weak too. “I know.” She took a step toward the bed, needing to sit down.

Lucien stopped her with one utterance. “Jesus, Sophie…”

She whirled on him, her heart in her throat. Tears filled her eyes, and she could hardly find her voice, but she whispered, “Say it again.”

Lucien’s pupils flared, the black nearly drowning out the tawny color. “Sophie.” He took a step toward her, and a familiar wickedness lit his eyes and growing smile. “Sweet Sophie.”

Warmth spread through her, and she could not break away from the prison of his stare. “Again.”

“Sexy, adventurous Sophie.” Lucien stalked her with every word he spoke, his masculine beauty and open gaze something to behold. “Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.” He reached her, and wrapped her in the sure strength of his arms. “My Sophie.”

As Lucien toppled her onto the bed and covered her with his wonderful, strong frame, Sophie promised him, “I love you,” once more.

Lucien reciprocated in the only way Sophie believed he could right now. He brushed her hair off her face, lowered his lips to hers, and with light twinkling in his amber gaze, he whispered, “Sophie,” again. He kissed her with such depth of emotion she felt the love sink all the way into her and tag every corner of her being. “Sophie.”

She had never loved her name more.

Epilogue

“Oh God, Lucien.” Sophie gasped, and Lucien absorbed the tremble in her thighs as he once more slowly fed his sheathed cock into his woman’s perfect ass from behind. “It’s too much.” She looked back at him, and the natural glow shining through the minimal makeup she wore made her stunning in his eyes. “You’re going to make me come.”

Her snug rear passage surrounded every inch of Lucien’s length. Biting back a shout of pleasure, he caressed the smooth hills of Sophie’s buttocks and pushed her limits with another withdrawal and measured, deep slide all the way into her fluttering, responsive ass. “Not yet, honey,” he told her, even though every time he watched his shaft pierce her beautiful pink hole, and felt that tight heat encase his cock, he quietly lost a little more of the hold on his control. Gritting his teeth, he looked up at the TV and inched into her to the root again. “The story isn’t finished yet.”

“I don’t care.” Rather than watching the product of her and Miranda’s hard work on the high-def screen right in her line of sight, Sophie pushed the side of her face into the surface of his desk to which Lucien had bound her wrists to the knockers adorning the two lions’ heads attached to the desk legs. As he filled her rear tunnel again, she gasped and went up on her toes in her high-heeled shoes, saying in a high voice, “You already watched it twice.”

“I know.” Lucien somehow kept the strain and need out of his voice as he took her quivering channel again, his cock killing him with exquisite joy and the need to pound fast and hard in her ass. “But I’m proud of you.” Only Miranda’s voiceover sharing William and Jude’s story came through the TV, but Lucien knew Sophie’s imprint as a producer existed in much of the text, look, and tone of the piece.

Sophie’s entire body shook in her obvious efforts not to move or muss her clothes—Lucien’s command when he’d tied her to the desk after she’d come into his study to taunt him with her secret that she wasn’t wearing any panties to their small dinner party. They were celebrating not only the telling of William and Jude’s tale, but after holding back the airdate of the original story in order to research Calliope’s life at Raven Island, Sophie and Miranda had discovered that Calliope had not only found one man to love, but in fact she’d had two, and that the three of them, along with William and Jude, had made something of a secret family for themselves at Ravenstoke for the entirety of their lives.

When Lucien split Sophie’s rear open with his cock once more, Sophie groaned something low and needful, and her rectum clutched Lucien in a vise-tight hold. “Please…” She circled her ass on his penetration as if trying to steal even more of him. Christ, she loved it when he took her ass. “It’s too good.”

Her inner thighs were slick with her arousal, and the exposed, plump folds of her pink pussy proved her excitement to Lucien too, not to mention messed with his tenuous grasp on sanity.

Heat burned Lucien’s skin, making him wish he’d stripped rather than simply taken his cock out of his underwear and pants. With Sophie’s simple black skirt neatly lifted against the small of her back and thigh-high black stockings caressing much of her legs, she created a picture of an innocent, pretty girl who did not yet understand her sexual power. In immediate response to Sophie’s position and the image she created, Lucien’s shaft twitched and swelled within the confines of her ass. He shook his head, silently ordered himself to focus, and nudged his cock through her reddened ring again.

“You can take it a little bit longer,” he said and wondered if he spoke to convince her or himself.

“I can’t…” Sophie’s body heaved as she struggled to breathe, and her voice was stripped bare. “You’ve wound me too tight.” Blonde waves covered half her face. As she looked back at him, too much light showed through the blue in her eyes and immediately had Lucien’s full concern.