LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance (2 page)

“We’re all at this picnic,” I say, rubbing my thumbs over her hands still, looking her directly in the eye to make sure I have her full attention, “and Jacob purposely spills a glass of punch on my mom. His father comes rushing over, apologizing all over the place. My father is horrified to have drawn attention on themselves. But my mom… Jacob’s dad is so charming and so kind that she’s just swept away.”

Adrienne’s eyes widen. “They had an affair.”

“No.” Jacob was very quick in his denial. “My father is a lot of things, but a cheater isn’t one of them.”

I glanced at him and mouthed that he should chill. He shook his head and turned away, gesturing to a passing waitress to bring the bill.

“Ignore the sourpuss,” I said, focusing on Adrienne again.

“What happened next?”

“Jacob’s dad gave my mother his card. Told her to call him when she knew how much the dry cleaning would be on her white blouse. Instead, she called and just talked to him, and they became friends. He mentioned to my mother once about Jacob failing math, and she volunteered to tutor him. So then she started taking me over to their house, where she and Jacob would sit at the table for hours discussing multiplication tables and I would play quietly on the floor.”

“That sounds…interesting.”

I could see I was losing her. I glanced back at Jacob and caught him tapping his credit card impatiently on the table.
Hell
, I was going to lose them both.

“About three months into this little arrangement, my father had a heart attack.”

A surprisingly powerful sadness came into Adrienne’s eyes. I immediately wanted to ask her where it came from, but it disappeared almost as quickly as it came. I tugged at her hands, pulling them onto my knee, running my fingers over her palm and the tender skin of her wrist. A gentle smile touched her lips.

“He survived the initial attack, but my mom had to stop tutoring Jacob in order to take care of him. Jacob’s father, Karl, stopped by a couple of times to check in on them. The way my mom tells it, he even offered to hire a private nurse so that she could keep working with Jacob.”

“That’s sweet, I suppose,” Adrienne said. “A little self-serving.”

“But, you see, he was already in love with her,” I said, running my hands over her lower arms. She touched me, too, gripping my forearms so that we were holding each other in an odd sort of way. “A few months after the first, my father suffered a second heart attack and died.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said, lifting a hand to her mouth.

I tugged her hand away from her mouth. “I was very young. I don’t really remember him that well.”

“But, still, he was your father.”

“He was a bit of a loser,” Jacob said. “He was probably better off without him.”

Adrienne’s eyes widened.

I glanced back at Jacob. “A bit harsh,” I said in a loud whisper.

Jacob just shrugged.

“Anyway, Karl pays for the funeral without asking. Telling my mom that he was a good employee and he felt it was the least the company could do. And then he started sending us money every month, claiming it was part of some life insurance thing the company had. But my mom knew it was really from him personally. But she couldn’t afford to turn it down, so she kept careful account of every penny, determined to pay him back when she didn’t need it anymore. But they also stayed close, talking on the phone late at night. He helped my mom get a job at a department store, and she went back to helping Jacob with his math.”

Adrienne glanced at Jacob. “Did you like her?”

He shrugged. “Everyone likes Elizabeth.”

I leaned close and whispered near her ear, “I think he had a crush on her.”

She smiled, her eyes moving over my jaw, my throat, as I pulled back. There was definite interest there; I could feel it. I was definitely not going home alone tonight.

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“I got sick.”

Jacob groaned. “He always tells it like it was him getting sick that brought them together. But, really, I think it would have happened anyway. In fact, I’m pretty sure I nearly walked in on them making out a couple of times months before he got sick. They would have gotten together anyway.”

“Yeah, but Karl might not have asked her to marry him over my hospital bed if not for the fact that I got sick.”

“Maybe. Maybe he would have done it somewhere much more romantic.”

“Either way,” I said, falling into Adrienne’s eyes, “he proposed over my hospital bed, she said yes, and they were married three months later. And they’ve been married ever since.”

“Twenty years next month,” Jacob said. And even he seemed to have a little awe in his voice.

“That is impressive,” Adrienne said, squeezing my arm and pulling back, lifting her wine glass to her lips.

“Isn’t that an interesting story?”

“I only asked why you didn’t look alike.” Her eyes moved from Jacob’s mousy brown hair and milky green eyes to my gold curls and deep blue eyes, from his slight stature to my overwhelming height. “You could have just said you were stepbrothers.”

“But what would the fun have been in that? Besides, we’re not just stepbrothers. ‘Step’ implies angst. But we’ve never shared a bit of bad blood.”

“True,” Jacob said, inclining his head slightly. “As long as he remembers I’m the older brother in this little arrangement.”

“How could I forget? You never fail to remind me.”

Adrienne laughed. “You certainly sound like siblings.”

“Do you have brothers or sisters, Adrienne?” Jacob asked.

Again, that flash of sadness burst into her eyes for a brief second. But it disappeared so quickly that if I hadn’t seen it before, I might have thought I’d imagined it.

“No,” she said.

“Well, not only do I have to contend with this one,” Jacob said, jabbing a thumb in my direction, “but we have a little sister, too. She’s eighteen and she thinks this one over here roped the moon for her.”

Adrienne looked at me with something like a new appreciation. “Yeah?”

“She adores him, too. He just doesn’t like to admit it because then it might mean he has a heart.”

Jacob busied himself trying to get the waitress’s attention again, purposely ignoring me. I focused on Adrienne again, wondering if I’d lost her there. Some women seemed to like Jacob’s aloofness. His soon to be ex-wife not the least of them.

“So,” I said, leaning in close to get her attention, “would you like to come back to the house with us? I have a lovely bottle of Chateau Margaux that is pretty exquisite. It’d probably make that stuff you’re drinking taste like a cheap wine cooler.”

She glanced at Jacob, then back toward the bar.

“I hardly know you,” she said.

“I’m not a bad guy. And my brother will be there to supervise.”

She smiled at that last bit, her eyes moving to Jacob. I was really beginning to wonder if she had a thing developing for him. But then her eyes moved back to mine, and she sighed softly.

“I have to warn you, I have pepper spray in my purse. And a rape whistle. So you better keep your hands where they belong.”

“Certainly,” I said, raising my hands from where they’d been moving slowly over her knees. “I won’t put them anywhere you’d rather they didn’t go.”

That smile was going to be the end of me. The way she looked at me, the way her lips curved just the tiniest bit at the corners to reveal the slightest bit of a dimple in her right cheek. I wanted to press my finger against it, wanted to slide my tongue over it. And those lips… I could almost taste them already.

“Okay,” she said on a little bit of a sigh

I raised my arm and caught the waitress’s attention immediately. Once paid, the three of us slipped out of the bar into the cool, dark evening. I tossed my keys at Jacob.

“You drive.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he did as he was told, pressing the button that unlocked the doors on my Mercedes S550 sedan. I could have directed Adrienne to the front, given her the comfortable leather passenger seat, but I opened the back door instead, climbing in beside her as Jacob shot me a dirty look in the rearview mirror.

“Wouldn’t you rather sit up front with your brother?” Adrienne asked as I slid close to her on the slick seats, resting my hand on her bare knee.

“Why? He knows where he’s going.”

Before she could shoot another look in his direction, I touched her jaw with my knuckles and tugged her chin toward me. Her lips parted just slightly, her eyes going almost crossed as she tried to focus on me. And then our lips touched, just the lightest brush. I pulled back to catch her reaction, but her eyes were closed and her lips were still parted. I took that as permission to move in for a deeper kiss and didn’t see any reason to let her down. I pressed my lips to hers as my hand moved slowly up over her knee, my fingers brushing the soft cotton of the hem of her dress.

She didn’t touch me. In fact, she brushed my hand back down onto her knee even as she turned in to me. She kept her hands in her lap, kept her lips softly parted, but not opening to me as I tried to deepen the kiss. I wanted to taste her, but she was responding to me like a child kissing her grandmother.

I pulled back, and she glanced down at her lap, her expression unreadable. I looked over my shoulder and caught Jacob watching us in the rearview mirror as we pulled to stop at a red light.

“He’s watching,” I whispered softly against her ear.

She immediately lifted a hand to my jaw, her fingers cool, her palm damp against my cheek. But she drew me down to her, and when our lips touched again, she responded a little more readily, her full lips parting enough for me to steal a little taste of the wonders that were hidden within.

I wondered where she’d had her first kiss, how many times she’d been kissed thoroughly, as a woman should be. I wondered when she’d last felt the touch of a man, when she’d last wanted someone so desperately that she was willing to do something crazy, like making out in the back of a car being driven by her lover’s brother. I wondered if she was spontaneous in her desires or if she was the type who wanted to know the when, the where, and the how of everything she did.

There was a lot I wondered about her, not the least of which was what she had hidden under this simple dress and whether I was going to get to find out anytime soon. If there was one thing Jacob was right about in his teasing, I rarely had trouble getting what I wanted. And tonight, this beautiful creature was exactly what I wanted.

I slid my hand over her hip and drew her closer to my side, stealing a little feel of her ass as she turned in to me just enough to allow me that little bit of access. She reached back and tugged my hand away, but I think her actions backfired just slightly because she dropped my hand back on her knee, inches away from the bottom edge of her skirt. I slid my hand under the material quite easily, impressed by the strength I could feel in the muscles of her thigh, by the curves that were created as much by intense exercise as by the nature of her sex.

She tried to move my hand again, but this time I wasn’t going to be so easily deterred. I pulled back, breaking our kiss, aware of the anger flashing in her eyes. But I just smiled, moving close to nibble at a tender piece of flesh made vulnerable by the way she was holding her head. She smelled of roses and vanilla, of all the lovely things about spring. And she tasted like freshly scrubbed skin, like a woman who knew how to care for herself.

She pressed her fingers into my hair and tugged, trying to get me to back off her throat. I did, but I captured her lips again with a determination that caught her by surprise. She opened to me, allowed me to invade her, to explore all those hidden treats that hid inside of her. She even responded a little, her tongue doing this brief dance with mine that only made me want more. I gripped her upper thigh and tugged her even tighter against me, aware of the quickening of her breath as her breasts were forced against my chest. I was also aware of her hardened nipples, of the arousal she couldn’t hide. And that made me more determined than ever to coax her into offering me all the delights she had to offer.

Unfortunately, my house was closer to the bar than I would have liked. I felt the car slow and pause at the security gate, heard the guard call a greeting to Jacob. And, just a few moments later, the familiar sound of the garage door opening.

“I think we’re at your house,” Adrienne said as she twisted away from my touch.

I watched her tug her skirt back down her thighs, even caught Jacob trying to steal a peek. I smiled softly, pleased with the direction the evening was taking.

I just hoped things would continue this optimistically.

Adrienne

I slipped into the bathroom the moment we were inside the house. I almost couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, at the smudge of lipstick on my mouth and the loosening of the tie that kept my dress in place. I wanted to wash my face, wanted to erase the evidence of what had just happened in the back of that car. That wasn’t me. I wouldn’t make out with a guy I barely knew. If I’d done that in the Army… But this wasn’t the Army anymore, was it?

I did the best I could at repairing my makeup—
God, I was actually wearing makeup!—
and retied the thin ribbon around my waist. Then, with a deep breath, I stepped into the narrow hallway off the kitchen.

I could hear them talking, could hear Jacob warning Lucien that he could be asking for trouble with me.

“You don’t usually bring your one-night stands home.”

“Well, maybe I’m hoping this won’t be a one-night stand.”

“You don’t know anything about that girl.”

“What did you know about Lynn before you took her home the first time?”

There was a touch of silence. Then Jacob said, in that surly voice of his, “Lynn and I were different. And I didn’t pick her up in some bar.”

“No, you picked her up in some hotel restaurant. Like that’s so much better.”

“Yeah, well, considering the way things have ended up, perhaps it wasn’t better. And maybe you should learn something from my mistakes.”

Silence fell again. I chose that moment to make my presence known, stepping through the archway between the narrow hallway and the kitchen. Jacob saw me first, and he had the respect to let his eyes fall to the floor. Then Lucien turned, a bottle of wine in his hands, and he smiled.

“Here’s that Chateau Margaux I told you about.”

“Sounds good,” I said with a soft smile. “Will you be joining us, Jacob?”

He started to shake his head, but Lucien said, “Of course he will. It’d be rude to run off without having at least a single glass of wine.”

Jacob shot his younger brother a dirty look, but he didn’t argue. He simply walked to one of the many beautiful distressed wood cabinets and took out three large wine glasses.

It’s my habit to notice everything about my surroundings. I served a tour in Afghanistan, so being observant had been a matter of life or death. But I’d been taught the skill of observation when I was a child, too, by my father. He was a detective for the Houston police department. His idea of entertainment was to create fake crime scenes and see how long it would take me to pick out the clues the ‘suspect’ left behind. So I found myself looking around the kitchen, noting the door we’d come through, the archway to the hallway that I’d just come from, and another archway that led into the spacious living room that I could see just past the breakfast bar. I also noticed the expensive appliances, the fancy pots hanging from the ceiling above a butcher block-topped island. I wondered which of these guys was the cook.

“Wine?” Jacob asked, handing me a glass Lucien had just filled.

Our fingers brushed as I accepted. He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he backed away.

“Let’s go in the living room,” Lucien suggested, holding his arm out for me. I moved into it and reminded myself not to stiffen as he laid his hand on my back and guided me in that direction.

Jacob settled on a large, overstuffed club chair. I eyed the other club chair, but Lucien guided me to the couch. I sat against the arm, twisted a little so that my back was against the armrest and I was facing Lucien. He did the same, turned slightly so that we were facing each other instead of the room, as the furniture placement had intended.

“What do you do for a living, Adrienne?” Jacob asked.

I glanced over at him, chewing on my lip a little. “I work at a law firm downtown.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows rose. “Are you an attorney?”

“No. I’m a researcher. I’m the one who goes through the law library and finds previous cases that can potentially help or hinder a client’s case.”

“Sounds interesting. Do you like it?”

I shrugged. “It can be interesting sometimes. But it’s usually pretty boring.”

“Have you thought about going to law school?”

“What is this, Jacob? A job interview?” Lucien asked, his hand suddenly sliding over my knee. I glanced at him, but he was focused on his brother.

“Just curious,” Jacob said, setting the wine glass he’d been holding on the side table, untouched. “You never really gave her much of a chance to say anything before.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked, waving my free hand. “I’m an open book.”

Jacob’s eyes moved slowly over me, and then he looked away, almost like he was embarrassed to be caught showing a little normal male behavior.

“Are you impressed with this house?”

“Jacob!” Lucien said.

I slid my hand over his thigh. “It’s okay.”

I sat forward a little, holding the wine glass between both hands now. “I understand that you’re concerned about your brother, Jacob. But I also know that anything I might say right now wouldn’t set your mind at ease. I won’t disrespect you by saying I didn’t notice the expensive suits you’re both wearing, or that I wasn’t impressed by the obvious expense of the car or the house. I did notice. I do realize you must have money. And I am impressed because I come from a background that could never compare to the world you live in.” I had Jacob’s full attention now. He was watching me closely, his eyes focused on my eyes and nothing else. “But I will also say that I like you, and I like your brother. And I’d like to get to know you both better, not just because of your money, but because you fascinate me and Lucien is an amazing kisser.”

Jacob’s expression didn’t change, but I was still sure I saw surprise in his eyes. He sat back, his eyes moving from my face to Lucien’s.

“Are you happy now, brother?” Lucien asked.

He didn’t wait for Jacob to say anything. Instead, he slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me back against him.

“You liked my kiss?” he asked, his lips close to my ear.

I twisted a little to see his face. As I did, he moved in for the kill, stealing my lips before I could even catch my breath. He took my wine glass from my hands and set it on the long, narrow table that stood behind the couch, his hand moving over my jaw and into my hair at the base of my neck. I turned in to him to find a more comfortable position than the one I was in, and that encouraged him to draw my thigh up over his legs.

I hadn’t made out quite like this since I was in high school, sneaking around behind my father’s back. He thought I was a good girl. If he knew half of what I’d done before going off to boot camp, he’d probably have a stroke.

Lucien’s jaw was moving a little, encouraging me to open to him. Almost on instinct, I did. I opened, and he was touching me in places I’d never been touched. The man knew what he was doing when he slid inside of me. He didn’t just shove his tongue in my mouth and hold it there. He didn’t just wiggle it around. He had a purpose. He knew that touching the roof of my mouth would make my belly quiver. Somehow he knew that running his tongue along the length of mine felt like the finest caress on my thigh. I’d never shared a kiss with someone who was so well versed in the art of seduction. It was doing things to my sense of control that I wasn’t sure I liked.

And then there were his wandering hands. Despite the fact that I had my hand pressed against my thigh to keep him from making much progress, he still managed to get his hand under my skirt and slide it up along the back of my thigh, his fingertips moving high enough that they teased the bottom edge of my panties. I shifted slightly, trying to make it difficult for him to touch me there, but he was determined. And my resolve was growing weak.

I’d forgotten that Jacob was sitting just a few feet away from us. I forgot where I was and what I was doing for much longer than I wanted to admit. He was an amazing kisser, and the warmth of his hand moving up my thigh made me want to forget more than just where I was. I pressed my hand to the center of his chest and felt his heart pounding underneath. When was the last time I’d been close enough to a man to feel something that intimate? Too long. So when his mouth moved over my chin, when I lay my head back so that he had free access to my throat, I wasn’t thinking about having an audience. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I barely knew this man. All I was thinking was how good it felt and how desperately I wanted it to never stop.

I buried my fingers in his hair, drew him closer to me even as he made his way farther down my throat to the narrow valley created by my bra and the crisscross of the front of the dress. My nipples were straining, desperate for him to take them into his mouth. I almost moaned in relief when his hand came up and wrapped itself around one of my breasts, the pressure of his palm against my nipple offering just a little relief against the building need in my lower belly. I squeezed my thighs together, a soft moan coming from deep in my throat as my clit responded to that little bit of relief.

I don’t know what it was. He was quiet. He didn’t say anything as he stood and slipped out of the room. But something made me aware that Jacob was no longer there a moment before the sound of a door slamming reverberated through the house.

“Lucien,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.

He either didn’t hear me, or thought it was simply a lover’s utterance. He continued to work his way down my chest, his hand making my cleavage look huge as his lips grazed across the rounded top of a single breast.

“Lucien,” I repeated, a little louder, a little less breathy arousal in my voice.

When he still didn’t respond, I pressed my hand to his forehead and pushed him back enough so that I could scoot out from underneath him. I climbed to my feet and tugged at my dress, putting it to rights as I wished I had a sweater or something to pull on to cover my hardened nipples. It was embarrassing, the evidence of arousal on my body.

“What are you doing?”

“Jacob’s gone.”

“So?”

I twisted around and looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes. “There’s no point in putting on a show if the audience has left.”

“I can think of a reason or two.”

I ignored him in favor of picking up Jacob’s untouched wine glass and swallowing most of the liquid in one long gulp. The wine was good, just as he’d said it would be. But I was never one to stop and sip something just for the elegance of the moment. I took a breath, then finished the glass in another gulp.

“You could stay the night,” Lucien said. “He’ll expect to see you over the breakfast table.”

“I think not.”

“I’m paying you quite well to be convincing, Miss Garcia.”

I set the glass down very carefully, not giving in to the desire to shatter it. Then I turned and studied his charming smile, wondering if it really worked on most girls. You’d think they’d see through it, see the slimy jerk that existed just under the surface, the one who thought he could hire my father’s security firm and expect extra favors just because I was pretending to be his girlfriend so that I could get close to the people around him.

Starting with his brother.

“You’re paying me to provide security. And to find out who might be out to sell your corporate secrets. You’re not paying me to sleep with you.”

“But you can’t tell me you weren’t enjoying yourself,” he said as he climbed to his feet, towering over me like Jack’s giant. “I can tell when a woman is enjoying what I have to offer.”

“Yes, well, I’d have to be made of stone not to respond to a guy sticking his tongue down my throat. But that doesn’t mean you get any more out of this relationship than what we agreed to. Speaking of which, when do you want me to show up at your office?”

“Tomorrow,” he said immediately. “No point in putting it off. I’ll leave word with security—”

“No, don’t do that. I want to see what happens when I show up cold.”

“To make sure the security guards aren’t breaking protocol?”

The idea seemed to surprise him. It shouldn’t, if the things he’d told my father were true.

“All right,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. “They should call upstairs, get permission from my assistant to allow you up. Try to get there about two o’clock. Jacob and I have a set of meetings that should take all morning, but we’ll probably be having lunch about then. I want him there when you show up.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want a ride?”

“No. My father should be waiting down at the security gate.”

I headed toward the front door, stepping through another archway into the marble foyer. He followed, his hand sliding over the small of my back. I stepped away, but he was a stubborn man. He just moved up behind me again, this time running his hand not just over my back, but along my hip, too.

“Save it for tomorrow,” I said, taking hold of his wrist and pulling it away from me.

He leaned close, his expensive cologne surrounding me in a masculine cloud.

“You like the way I kiss. You admitted it.”

“Doesn’t mean I want your hands all over me when we’re alone.”

I ducked around him and slipped out the front door before he could say anything else.