Knight 01 Knight And Play (27 page)

“Don’t throw me in with the likes of your husband, Sophie. Yeah, I like sex, but I’m honest about what I do, and who I do it with. I don’t run around behind closed doors getting my kicks from hurting the people I profess to love.”

Whoa. Where did that come from?

“Love.” She repeated the word distractedly as if she’d never heard it before. It was something she felt she knew very little about these days.

“Yeah, love. That thing that causes nothing but misery and heartbreak, then makes people grow fat on too much ice cream and get ill-advised haircuts when it goes wrong.”

Ouch.
She was alert again now. What on earth was behind this?

“Have you never been in love, Lucien? Have you never wanted someone so much that your heart roars when you’re with them, and every bone in your body aches for them when you’re not?”

“No.”

“That’s it? Just, no?”

“What did you expect?” He shrugged and splayed his hands out to the sides. “Some sorry tale of my poor broken heart? Sorry, Princess.”

Sophie shrugged, at a loss. He’d managed to turn his term of endearment into a sneer once again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just…”

“I don’t need to label my feelings as love, or shackle some woman to me just for the sake of a big fucking party and a meaningless piece of tat.” He glanced down at her wedding ring and she covered it instinctively. It had never left her finger since the day Dan had slid it into place, and however much of a sham it seemed right now, the idea of taking it off felt like removing a piece of herself. Like her whole identity being scraped off with a scalpel.

“Don’t say that.” She defensively touched the gold band on her third finger.

“Why not? Because the truth hurts?” Lucien’s mouth twisted in distaste. “I bet your husband takes his off when he fucks his lover.”

Sophie felt his words land like punches. “Do you have to be so blunt?” she shot back at him.

“Yes. Yes I do. Because if I’m not, you’ll walk back in there and listen to his platitudes and lies.”

“But isn’t that
my
choice? Why does it matter to you what I do, Lucien?”

Lucien thumped the arm of his seat in anger and frustration. “Why are you doing this now, Sophie? Why are you doubting all the things you’ve said and felt this week?”

Sophie sighed heavily. “Because this is my whole life we’re talking about Lucien, not an episode of some TV reality show. I have to listen to him, to at least hear his side of the story.”

“His side of the story?” Lucien’s laugh held no humour. “Is that the part where he falls on his knees and you forgive him?” He gazed at her intently, and Sophie glared right back, noticing the way his throat moved as he swallowed hard. “I’ll show you his side of the fucking story.”

He reached for his laptop, opened it up, and after a few key-presses, angled the screen towards Sophie, who found herself staring at a series of photographs. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense of the images in front of her. But they didn’t
make
any sense. Not here, not on Lucien’s laptop, not in Lucien’s private jet.

Her husband, in an airport with his lover.

Dan laughing in a bar, draped over his lover.

Again on a balcony, his naked lover wrapped around him.

Not wearing his wedding ring.

Sophie couldn’t breathe, her lungs were suddenly too tight.

Unable to take her eyes off the screen, her hands flew to her cheeks in shock. After the days she’d just spent with Lucien, she’d forfeited her right to play the victim, yet still her heart shattered into a million pieces at the sight of Dan’s arms wrapped around another woman. She wanted to reach inside the screen and touch his smile, to twist his head away from that woman and make him look her way instead.

Those were the arms she’d planned to spend the rest of her life in, and his kiss was the only one she’d ever wanted on her lips.

Tears dampened her cheeks, and a great sob wrenched itself out of her body. Knowing about Dan’s affair was one thing. Having images of it forever burned onto her retinas was another. She dropped her face into her hands and cried her heart out.

Lucien closed the screen slowly and placed the laptop back on the table beside him. Watching Sophie cry was excruciating. His every instinct was to reach out and hold her. “Sophie… Princess… I’m so sorry.” She flinched when he touched her, and the look in her eyes when she raised her head chilled him to the bone.

“You’re sorry? Which bit are you sorry for, exactly, Lucien? The bit where you stalked my husband, or the bit where you used my marital problems to get me into bed? Christ, you must think I’m so stupid.” Her words came out in a jumble of tears and shaky breath, but anger held her frame ramrod straight. “You planned this. You knew Dan was cheating, and you saw an opportunity to take something that wasn’t yours.”

Lucien’s mind scrambled to keep up with Sophie’s train of thought. She’d got it all very, very wrong.

“Sophie, no.” He reached for her hands but she wrenched them away. “That isn’t what happened…”

“Really? Because that’s
exactly
what it looks like from where I’m sitting. Why, Lucien?” She dragged her hands furiously across her cheeks, smearing mascara tear tracks into zig-zags on her face. “Don’t even bother to answer. You’re no better than Dan. You’re worse in fact, because you’re fucking sanctimonious with it.” Sophie’s lip curled. “Is that your thing? Lucien Knight, honourable Viking seducer, ready to swoop in and rescue damsels in distress? Is that it?” Her fists were balled so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white. “Is it?”

“Yeah. Because I’m a regular Thor.” Lucien’s attempt at levity fell on stony ground. He paused, sighed. “I just wanted to make it better for you, Sophie.” 

Her bitter laugh echoed around the cabin.

“Well, guess what? I didn’t need your fucked up version of a fairy story to save me.”

Desolation settled on his shoulders like a weightlifter’s barbell. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t say that something about her brittle, defensive answers about her husband at her interview had rung alarm bells in his head, or that he’d been operating on pure instinct when he’d given the order to have Daniel Black investigated. He couldn’t tell her that she’d given him so much more than he’d bargained for over the last week, or that she’d changed his life just as much as he’d changed hers.

So he shrugged instead, retreating into his habitual cool demeanour. “It’s better that you know. Best that you hold all the cards.”

“Best?” She sprang out of her seat, backing away from him. “Best?” her voice shook as she opened the bedroom door. “Fuck off, Lucien. I don’t need lessons in love from someone who knows nothing of it.”

Sophie stared fixedly out of the window as Lucien eased his car to a stop outside her house. It looked somehow unfamiliar and ominous rather than like the haven it used to be. It was a little before ten, and thankfully the street seemed to be treating itself to a Sunday morning lie-in, curtains resolutely closed against the inevitably grey morning. Sophie was grateful. The last thing she wanted was an audience. Lucien in his Aston Martin stood out like a flashing beacon amongst this suburban landscape of paunchy men walking their dogs with family saloons parked on their drives.

She had no clue what to say to him. The latter part of the flight home had been hellish. After she’d seen the photos of Dan with his mistress, all she’d wanted to do was to run away and scream: instead, she’d been trapped. Lying huddled on the bed, she’d turned the events of the last week over and over in her mind. Everything she’d come to think she knew about Lucien had been wrong. He’d used her. He’d identified her as a vulnerable target and taken advantage of her to get his own sexual kicks.

“Sophie, I really am sorry.” Lucien’s voice was low and loaded with regret. “Upsetting you was the last thing I wanted to do.”

She closed her eyes against his empty words. How could he have expected those photos to do anything but hurt her? Except it wasn’t just the photographs of Dan that had hurt. Now, the fresh pain of Lucien’s deceit hurt like hell on top of it all. She’d been a prize fool to let him flatter her into bed. Any last vestige of self-esteem she’d managed to hang onto had dissolved at the thought of how easily she’d been corrupted, of the things she’d allowed to happen.

“I thought it would help you.”

“Help me?” She repeated his words slowly, turning them over in her mind. Because they made no sense. “Tell me, please - because I’m dying to know - how did you think showing me pictures of my husband with his mistress would help me, Lucien? Don’t you think that knowing he’s been seeing someone else hurts enough already?”

He sighed heavily and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I made a mistake.”

“No,
I
made the mistake, and
I’m
sorry.” Sophie heard the quake in her voice but she couldn’t hold it steady. “I’m sorry I ever laid eyes on you.” She shook her head in disgust.  “As if it wasn’t bad enough that my husband is having an affair. Now I’ve lost the only advantage I had. I’m as bad as he is.”

A bitter laugh rattled through her chest. “And you know what makes it even worse, Lucien? At least Dan looks as if he has feelings for her. He might even love her for all I know.” Her voice cracked and fresh tears tumbled uninvited down her cheeks. “What I’ve done is far, far worse. I’ve let some cold, calculating stranger screw me out of revenge.”  She choked the words out. “Screw me over, more like.”

Lucien stared at her, dull-eyed, his golden skin paler than she’d ever seen it.

“You didn’t do this out of revenge Sophie, you’re so much better than…”

“Don’t tell me what I am, Lucien,” she cut across him. “You don’t really know me at all, not in any way that matters. I did this to hurt my husband. It could have been anyone. It just happened to be you.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” he said, quietly.

“No, it isn’t. Why pretty it up? You saw me as easy pickings, and I saw you as a way to get my own back. No more, no less.”

She reached for the door, but his hands clamped around hers.

“Okay, Ms. Black. You’ve had your say. Now I’d like mine.”

She stilled because he left her no other option; his hands held her, vice-like.

“Believe it or not, I really am sorry for showing you those pictures, but I’m not one bit sorry for having sex with you. You are fucking beautiful, Sophie Black, and you needed someone to remind you of it.”

Sophie met his eyes in silence. Fierce frustration turned his blue irises smoky, and his body angled towards hers was rigid as stone. Only his thumbs moved, sliding over the pulse points of her wrists.

“You had sadness written all over your face the first day you walked into my office,” he said softly. “I wanted to take it away. ”

She wanted to look down but his eyes demanded hers.
How did he do that?
Sincerity came so easily to him, but after this morning she had no way of telling if he was just a damn good liar. Lucien had a way of looking at her that made her want to fall back in to his arms again, but wasn’t that exactly what his clever words were designed to do? To reel her in then make a fool of her?

“Newsflash, hero. You haven’t made things better. You’ve made them ten times worse.”

She saw him flinch and tried to pull her hands from his, but he held her fast.

“Can you tell me you didn’t enjoy all those things we did? Because I know better.”

He leaned closer, and Sophie stiffened.

She didn’t want him near her.

She did want him near her.

“’I know because I watched your eyes, Sophie. I watched them every time you came, and I didn’t see sadness any more.” His massaging thumbs were driving her crazy. “I saw joy, and I saw beauty. I saw you shine.”

His raw honesty melted her anger and left her defenseless. She was suddenly tired beyond endurance, and her heart ached with sadness.

“How exactly was this supposed to end then, Lucien?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I figured I could screw you happy, I guess.”

It was up there amongst the craziest, sweetest things Sophie had ever heard. How could someone so devastatingly sexy and masculine be so childlike?

“And then what? Are you planning to drop down on one knee and declare true love?” Sophie saw his jaw harden and his eyes flicker. “No, I thought not. So, let me guess… I’m supposed to go home and give Dan what for while you move on to rescue the next spurned wife?” A pulse was visible in Lucien’s clenched cheek. “Am I supposed to turn up for work on Monday as if nothing happened?”

She looked out of the window at the spattering rain. He really hadn’t thought this fairytale thing through. In all the stories she’d loved as a child, the knight didn’t rescue the princess and then hand her right back to the evil prince.

Lucien opened his mouth to answer when she turned back to him, but then seemed to change his mind and simply shook his head with a resigned half-shrug. It was just as well. There was nothing he could offer in the way of justification.