Chapter 19

He started so slow. Grazes of calluses down her inner arms. A breath against the curve of her breasts. A string of kisses along her collarbone. Fleeting touches, here and there, waking every centimeter of her body as no part of her knew quite where he would touch next…and all of her clamored for a turn at his attention.

He tangled all of her in kisses, until she felt lost in them, kidnapped by sensuality, tied up and carried away in his arms, to be his.

She wanted to kidnap him, too. And so she touched him like he touched her. Teasing, elusive, everywhere that tempted her. But he made small hungry sounds. He caught her hand and pressed it against his body, until she understood he needed a harder touch, he wanted her to dig her fingers in.

Oh. Yes. Digging her fingers into those muscles made her glad she was strong.

So you could be vulnerable and strong. Lost and centered. Boneless in a man’s hands and powerful.

Who knew?

He was so thorough. He kissed the centers of her palms. He kissed the inside of her elbows. He bent her knee up and trailed his fingers all down the outside of her thigh, down her calf, to cup her heel and squeeze her foot until she made a whimpering sound and arched off the bed. He took all her toes in his big hand and rubbed them together as she sighed a moan.

That made him smile, and he kissed her upraised knee. Brushed little kisses down the inside of her thigh until his breath blew against her panties.

And her panties dampened oh-so-readily.

She tried to grab his head, but his hair was cropped so short. She tried to grab his shoulders, but they were too big, she could only pull him toward her or push him away, not grip those shoulders and hold them still. “Lucien,” she whispered. “No.” It was too intimate, too much.

He kissed up the inside of her other thigh, raising that knee, too, kissed up to her knee cap. “No no? Or no I can change to a yes?”

Her fingers dug into her sheets, and she stared up at him.

“Maybe a subject to come back to,” he said and pushed her shirt off her body. That revealed her breasts, but he didn’t reach for them right away. He kissed her belly button, his big body settling between her upraised knees so that his chest pressed warm weight against those panties. He kissed his way slowly up her belly, until she giggled and twisted at the tickle, and every centimeter he kissed his way upward, his body dragged between her thighs. Reflexive laughter and involuntary hunger, everything about her opening and softening and growing more lush at that rubbing, warm, non-invasive pressure.

Until his breath was warm against her bra. “Pretty,” he murmured, and kissed the curve of skin past the edge of lace. “I have so many fantasies about your body right now. And do you know what every single one of them have in common?” He grazed his jaw down the edge of her bra. He must have shaved just before his flight, because now, five hours later, there was only the faintest hint of prickle.

She liked knowing he had shaved just before his flight for her.

“You have to trust me with your body,” he said. “In every single one. The one where we’re at some party, and I drag you off into a closet full of furs and put my hand over your mouth and make you come, right there, and you’re a little bit protesting at first, but I push my hand under your skirt and start to stroke and you come so hard and you can’t make a sound. You see how much you have to trust me for that one?”

Those rough-skinned gentle fingers slid under her back, stroking their way to the clasp on her bra. A surge of freedom from her breasts through her body as that day-long pressure on her rib cage was finally released. He pulled the straps down her arms, stroking her biceps, and the inside of her elbows, and her inner forearms, and wrists, in his passage.

“The one where it’s a lazy Sunday morning, and you’re asleep beside me, and you look so damn pretty and I want to touch you so damn bad. But you’re asleep. So I’d have to know you’d like it, if I stroked over your shoulder and down your back and kind of worked my way into your dreams. You’d have to know I wouldn’t get mad and sulky and manipulative, if you groaned and pulled your pillow over your head and told me to go away. That it’s just a lazy Sunday morning. We’re only going to do what you want us to do. See how much you have to trust me for that one?”

He curved his big hand around her full breast and kissed the nipple, lightly.

“It’s not something you can rush, trust.” His fingers caressed her breast as if he loved the texture of it. “It’s not something you can pressure someone else into. But there’s one way to earn it, and in my experience, it always works. Every single time. Be someone that other person can trust with his life. And he’ll be so damn happy to have someone at his back. Someone at his side. Maybe even at her side.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “But it’s not my life,” she said. “A lot of people have taken care of my life.”

Lucien lifted his head from her breast to look at her.

She didn’t want to talk about this. And yet she did. It was such a nice, safe space to let him understand something about her.

“It’s…” Her hand crept to curl around her lionheart and press it over her own thumping heart. “It’s my…this is what I can’t trust people with.”

She’d surprised him, she could tell. And made him think.

“Ah.” Soft, as if what she had said had struck him right in the brain—right where he liked to analyze and figure her out.

His gaze traveled back to her chest, to where her fingers protected her heart. “This?” He grazed his own fingers over hers, big and gentle. “This right here?”

He laid his cheek against her fingers, trapping them and her lionheart, letting his ear press against her chest. “I like the way it beats,” he said. “Strong. Persistent. It never gives up on you, does it?”

She shook her head.

He pressed a kiss between her fingers, against her breast. “Who gave you the glass heart? Did he hurt you?”

Elena was deeply startled. He thought some guy gave her the heart? And she was still brooding over him or something? As if. “My mother. When I was little. Six.”

It hadn’t been the first time Elena went into foster care, but the first time she had been a baby and only knew about it from her records. Her mother had gotten her back, and kept clean enough to keep her for a few years. But by the time Elena was six, the state had had to take her away again. Elena was old enough to know what was happening that time. She had been terrified and sobbing, clinging to her mother, refusing to let go, and her mother had been crying, too, and had given her the heart. A lionheart, her mother had said. Un coeur de lion.

“Ah.” Lucien traced her fingers but didn’t try to touch the heart. His eyes lifted suddenly from their hands to meet hers. “Did she hurt you?” he asked quietly.

“No!” The denial made Elena feel dishonest. “Not really.” Sometimes she’d forgotten about Elena for so many days that Elena had gotten really hungry, but when that went on too long, eventually the state always discovered it and intervened. And Elena went into foster care again. She’d tried her best to learn how to take care of herself well enough that the social worker wouldn’t notice when her mom forgot about her, but sometimes she just ran out of all the food in the house, and there was no more money to go down and get some groceries from the little épicerie down the street on her own, and the social worker always spotted the empty cupboards right away. And also, when that happened, her mom usually despaired in herself and thought Elena would be better off in someone else’s care, and confessed to the social worker herself. It was hard for Elena to reassure her mother that she was all right and the social worker that she was all right, when she actually wasn’t all right, but very hungry and trying her best.

“Mmm.” Lucien was silent for a moment.

Then he brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her, slow and tender, but deepening as she responded, taking his time. Elena shut her eyes and let herself get lost in the kiss, fleeing old memories into warmth and sensuality.

Ah, yes. Her present moment was so much better.

My own moment. For me. I found it and I’m helping make it.

So it’s mine, and I can keep this moment, even after it’s gone.

Add it to her collection. That was the thing about beautiful moments. They didn’t have to hurt after they ended. It all depended on your attitude. You could focus on what you had, not what you lost.

And what she had, right here and now, was…a strong body, braced over hers. Biceps that swelled under her fingers. A rose tattoo that made her feel like a heroine, because it proved that she had been right—he really had always needed to come back home. The scent of him, a little salt and sea in it, as if Corsica had imbued him with it. Care. He took care with her. He always, always did.

She seized that moment. With both hands. Stroking over him, digging her fingers into his muscles the way he had shown her he liked it. Riding her hands down his back, sinking her fingers into that tight ass and pulling him into her.

A rough sound of pleasure. She pressed herself up into him, kissing his shoulder bone, kissing the join of his neck, and slipped her hand around to the snap of his jeans.

“Ah, I see,” Lucien muttered roughly, grabbing her hand and bracing off her with one forearm. “Instead of you being vulnerable to me, you want to make me vulnerable to you.”

“Not vulnerable at all.” Elena tried to explain. “Just in my power.”

Blue eyes met hers. Full of arousal but also of warmth. “I think that is exactly what I was trying to describe for you, a moment ago.”

Oh.

What a lovely thought.

To be not vulnerable at all, when she was in his power.

“And you’re right,” he murmured, shifting his big body down hers to kiss over her shoulders. “I am in your power.”

“But not vulnerable,” she whispered, stroking the shoulders that were so much bigger than hers.

He sank his face into her hair. “Hopeful.” His lips brushed the word against the join of her neck. “You make me feel as if my life has been upended to make room for something beautiful. Something like nothing I’ve ever had, and nothing I’ve ever expected. Something that just landed on me out of a clear blue sky. But I can capture it and keep it, if I’m careful.”

Really? Elena couldn’t figure out what to make of that at all. It shimmered and shifted through her, as if all those butterfly wings were giving off iridescent light.

“So I’m being careful,” Lucien whispered against the hollow of her throat, brushing his lips down, down to her breasts again. “Very careful.” He closed his lips around her nipple, as one of his hands curved under her butt and brushed with just his fingertips up to the flowering of her sex.

Elena gasped and clutched him, arching into him.

“Mmm.” A deep sound in his throat. His hand slid around her thigh to settle more generously over her panties. He rubbed, full-handed, very gently. His tongue teased her nipple. “You like that, bella?”

She drew her hands down his smooth back, her head falling to the mattress.

“Oh, good. Because I like doing it.” The heel of his palm rubbed against her center, and his fingers teased at the edge of her panties. Ventured into the little curls hidden by them. Played figure eights through those curls until his thumb settled, light as a feather, over her clitoris.

Elena bit her lip as a hungry agony surged through her, as her fingernails pressed into his back.

He kissed her, making her teeth release, taking her mouth, long and deep, like a prelude, like a promise. His fingers stroked down over the lush parting of her sex, savoring, as if he wanted to feel every effect he was having on her body.

And oh, he was such a courteous explorer. Playing with just the lips of her sex until she writhed and twisted and begged for more. Slipping just one finger a little inside her, until she arched and begged for more. Teasing over her clit as he sank one, then two fingers deeper inside her and pressed against her walls until she whimpered and grabbed at him and cursed him and begged for more more more.

Until finally she managed to get his jeans at least shoved down his butt, and his penis in her hands, until his eyes were glittering and his breathing harsh, and he surged into her hands the way she surged into his.

She wrapped her thighs around him and pressed up into him, until finally, finally, he pushed her panties off her and sank into her, slow and hard and big, his glittering gaze sweeping down to the joining of their bodies and back up to her face.

All the muscles seemed to release in her body in relief. She fell back onto the bed. And then her hips surged up, hard, hard, to take more of him.

“Oh, yeah.” His voice was harsh. Braced on one taut arm, he slipped his hand between them. He surged deep in her and pressed there, his body rocking in bare, involuntary moves against her as he held himself in tight and brushed, brushed, brushed.

Elena tried to arch and was pinned. She tried to twist, and was pinned. Until everything he was building in her, that maddening mounting wanting longing need had nowhere to go nowhere at all nowhere, pressing inside her skin until she cried out and grabbed for him wildly, her nails raking down his back, and burst with it, into a swarm of colors that fled into his hands.

She was almost sobbing as she came down.

“Shh,” he breathed very tenderly, and kissed the tears that had spilled from her lashes. “Shh, shh.” His body shifted deep in hers and eased back. The rhythm was slow and gentle. “Shh. I’ve got you.”

“Oh, God, harder,” she said and arched up into him suddenly again, with all her force.

“Oh, thank God,” he muttered, and surged into her as if his last ounce of control had snapped, and Elena wrapped her arms and legs around him and bit at his shoulder as she burst again, her body jerking with it as she squeezed every part of him as hard as she could and tried to absorb all of him as he came, too.

She had had no idea. Literally no idea. That it could feel so good and so right to have a man in her body and to come apart in his arms.

***

After, she pulled on her top and panties again as soon as he left for the bathroom, so that she was a little less naked, when he came back. He checked maybe a tiny second when he saw that, but then just stretched out on the bed beside her, running his hand possessively over her body.

“It really is like chess,” he murmured. “You plot with your little pawns and king, and then whenever the mood strikes her, the queen just sweeps across the board and knocks you over.”

That made Elena smile. She was pretty sure a queen could get ambushed, just sweeping across the board and knocking some supposedly harmless pawn over, but she nevertheless liked the idea of being the powerful queen who swept him off his feet. “You fought the good fight,” she said kindly. “But of course you were no match for my powers.”

He laughed and twined her hair around his finger, his eyes so damn tender. He really should not look at her that way. It made her feel so cozy and happy. As if he had little wavelets of I love you lapping inside him, too.

He traced his fingers down her chain and played with her lionheart. She closed her fingers around it to keep it safe. He let his hand fall. And then he did an odd thing. His hand came back. And it closed around hers. Not trying to take the lionheart from her. Closing her hand in his so that her little heart had a double shield, her hand and his bigger, stronger one, keeping her hand safe and warm.

“It’s where you put your courage, isn’t it?” he whispered. “That’s why you don’t trust me with it.”

She gazed down at their hands, completely baffled by the easing that ran through her body. How sleepy she felt. How trusting. She brought her other hand to cover his. Her heart was now so protected by their layered hands that it felt as if nothing could ever hurt it again.

“Shh,” he murmured, looping his arm around her, shifting her to her side so that her back was to him, and pulling her snug against his body. “You’re safe here.”

As his heat sank through her and his body grew heavier, drifting into sleep, she opened her eyes and stared warily into the darkness. It was sweet, and it was important, that he was promising her physical safety.

And maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t really understood, when she told him it wasn’t her physical safety that worried her. Military men, they worried about who had their back when bullets flew, not hearts.

Hearts were supposed to fend for themselves.

But she was used to that. That was what a little girl did, after all, when her mother couldn’t fend for her. She fended for herself.

Over and over and over, it had always turned out worse for her in the end, when someone else had the job of fending for her. Never had anyone been as relieved and at peace to reach eighteen and independence from others as Elena Lyon.

Lucien’s hand slid from hers on her lionheart to curve over her belly instead. His breathing had deepened, the looseness of his body communicating clearly that he had fallen asleep.

This was really lovely, she thought firmly as she gazed at her casement window, a hint of her warm street lamp showing through the slightly ajar shutters. I’m glad we did this. It was a good experience.

And of course you know far better, Elena, than to lose your heart.