A Perfect Storm

by Dane, Cameron

  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 im
mediately had Lucien’s full concern.

  “I love you,” she told him with a growl, “but if you don’t fucking come inside me right now”—her swear word proved her base need even more than her tone, and it hit Lucien in his gut worse than if she’d shown him tears—“I will never again wake you up with a blowjob like I did this morning.”

  With a guttural shout, Lucien yanked his cock out of her ass and ripped off the condom. Once the rubber cleared the tip of Lucien’s dick, he surged into Sophie with a mighty thrust, taking her pussy to the root with something near violence. Four months into their relationship and Lucien still could not get used to the powerful shock of pleasure that shook him each time he claimed her bare. Every time she believes in me and lets me. Lucien shuddered, and the need for closer, complete contact tore another cry from deep in his core.

  Lucien covered Sophie like an animal in rut. He tucked his face into the curve of her neck as emotion got the better of him and erupted from somewhere deep within. “I love you…” The base urgency in his feelings, his first time admitting to that powerful love aloud, scratched his throat on the way out. He scraped his lips up her nape to her cheek, his chest banding so tightly he struggled for every breath. “I love you so much.”

  “I know, baby.” Breathless herself, Sophie turned her head more, and Lucien shoved her hair away from her face so he could see the truth shining in her eyes. With a brush of her lips against his jaw, she whispered, “I hear it in your voice every time you say my name.”

  “Sophie.” As Lucien tucked his cock deep into the warm, loving clutch of her body, he crushed his lips down on hers, cut up with too much emotion inside to speak more than, “Sophie…Sophie.”

  Clinging to his kiss, Sophie strained beneath him and yanked against the restraints holding her arms stretched wide across the desk. “I want to touch you.” She brushed the edge of his mouth with a kiss and darted her tongue against the seam. Her tone ragged, she said, “I need to.”

  Yes. Fuck, yes. Still tucked against her everywhere, Lucien ran his hand down her left arm to over the edge of the desk, where he unhooked the leather cuff chaining her arm to the lion’s head. Before he could even get near her other arm, she tunneled her fingers into his hair, held his face to hers, and gave him everything in one softly spoken word. “Forever.”

  Sophie trembled beneath him, and Lucien shuddered on top of her. As one, in silence, they moaned as her sex squeezed his cock in an unbearably tight, sure hold. Lucien pumped his length along the wonderful caress of her pulsating channel and shot his seed for her.

  Always craving every piece of Lucien she could get, Sophie moaned as he spilled his essence and filled her to the brim. Oh my, yes. She sank into the desk surface, happy to let Lucien crush her into the finely crafted piece of furniture. Her ass throbbed with the tender pleasure of being well-used, and her pussy still clung with joy around Lucien’s thick, buried cock. Nothing in her being wanted either one of them to move an inch—she would have welcomed with loud screams his strapping her down to the conference table and claiming her again—but the watch on Lucien’s wrist ticked right in front of her face, and she could not ignore the lateness of the hour.

  Straining her neck, Sophie glanced back at the sexy, elegantly dressed man on top of her. “You’re the one who wanted to invite him,” she murmured, referring to her brother. “You aren’t going to ease his suspicions about your motives if we are late to our own dinner and you carry me downstairs looking and smelling like I’ve been well and truly debauched.”

  Immediately pulling away, his dick slipping from her cunt, Lucien growled and snarled. “You goddamn love everything I do to you, and he fucking must know it as well as we do by now.” After tucking his prick back in his underwear, Lucien did up just the zipper on his pants and then moved to unhook Sophie’s other wrist from the desk. “I don’t know what else will convince him that my relationship with you isn’t some even more elaborate form of revenge.”

  “Time,” Sophie replied. As she straightened and her skirt settled back in place, the material softly caressed her buttocks and thighs. She cupped Lucien’s hard face and lifted up to press a kiss to his sharply angled cheek. “And patience.” Pulling back, she wiped the blush-colored lipstick she’d left on his skin. “Royce is an extremely rigid man.”

  Lucien swore and paced away from his desk. “I know. He hasn’t changed much from back in his club days.” He sent a glare her way as he shut off the TV. “Except maybe to get worse.”

  In the months since Lucien had lured Sophie to Raven Island and everything exploded around them, Royce had taken to visiting Sophie every weekend as well as openly admitting he didn’t trust Lucien and was watching him. Royce had tried repeatedly to get Sophie to walk away from Lucien, and when she wouldn’t, he had threatened to uproot his life and move to Maine if necessary in order to protect her. He hadn’t followed through on that promise yet, but when he showed up at her apartment every weekend—even though she hardly ever stayed there anymore—she sometimes felt as if he had. Lord knew Royce’s suspicions about Lucien’s motives wouldn’t be quelled when he learned Lucien intended to host exclusive weekends at Ravenstoke once a month for his most trusted sex club clientele.

  Not that Sophie had any concerns that Royce would force his way into those weekends. Sophie had learned as much about her brother through his refusal to discuss Josh or how he’d come to be a member of a sex club as she would have if he’d sat down on her couch and spilled his guts. Royce’s inability to talk about any of the men in his life, and his always claiming he didn’t have anyone special when she’d asked him about it over the last half-dozen years, made so much more sense to Sophie now. She’d always thought Royce’s discomfort had come from not fully embracing his homosexuality. Now, in his silence, she knew better.

  From her position at the desk, Sophie murmured, “Josh’s death changed Royce too.”

  For a moment, Lucien froze. Sophie had grown accustomed to his tense response. He still wasn’t completely used to people mentioning Josh so freely.

  “I know that,” Lucien finally replied. The rigidity took a few more seconds to leave his jaw and stance. “Now.”

  Sophie rushed across the study to him and pecked another kiss to his lips. “I know you do.”

  Clinging to her, prolonging the connection, Lucien kissed her cheek and then her temple. “Thank you. It means a lot that you do.”

  With one step back to give them space, Sophie made a face as lube slid down her crease. Her thighs also stuck together with the aftereffects of sex. “But as much as you kept my clothes almost free of wrinkles, it’d probably be a better idea for me to go clean up and change before meeting our guests.” As she moved to the door, she looked back at him from over her shoulder. “Better not to rile Royce’s mood any more than necessary.”

  Lucien’s bark of laughter filled the study. “If Royce has arrived while I had you”—his amber gaze, mischievous now, slid to the desk—“otherwise occupied, and Magnus went downstairs to greet him, he’ll already be closed up tighter than a clam before I even say hello.”

  “You swear you can’t think of any other reason why Royce and Magnus would be so adversarial like this?” A while back, Lucien had confirmed only that Magnus had also harbored feelings for Josh when Sophie had asked for some clarification on the matter.

  “Trust me”—Lucien went from grinning to scrubbing his face—“Josh would have been plenty reason enough to cause friction.”

  Quirking her brow at him, Sophie muttered, “Should be an interesting dinner.” In addition to Royce and Magnus, Emma, Cale, Jade, and Miranda would be in attendance. Owen was spending the night with a friend on the mainland.

  Lucien leaned his hip against his desk and crossed one leg in front of the other. “As long as I have you sitting next to me, I’ll get through it.”

  Sophie’s heart thumped in triple time, and she beamed. Under Lucien’s loving attention, she couldn’t help it. “Count on it.” She winked at him, o
nly because she knew it would make him smile. “I’ll be right back. It won’t take me but a minute to clean up.”

  She stepped one foot out of his study, but he softly called her back with a “hey.”

  Her hand on the doorframe, she looked back at him, and her stomach did loop-the-loops, as it always did when she looked upon his handsome face. “Yes?”

  Lucien looked right back at her without wavering, and sure enough, his smile lit up the entire office. “My sweet Sophie.”

  As she had from the moment he’d said her first name, she knew what he meant. Blowing him a kiss, she replied, “I love you too.”

  Wearing a secret smile, Sophie spun and made for their bedroom. She didn’t get halfway there before Lucien caught up to her and captured her with a deep, taking kiss.

  Nobody had to ask what had kept them when they showed up to their own dinner party fifteen minutes late.

  The truth lit Sophie’s eyes and Lucien’s smile for anyone who looked to see.

  Loose Id Titles by Cameron Dane

  Dreaming in Color

  A Perfect Storm

  * * * *

  The FOSTER SIBLINGS Series

  A Fostered Love

  Something New

  * * * *

  The HAWKINS RANCH Series

  Demon Moon

  Falling

  ReneCade

  Knowing Caleb

  Becoming Three

  Quick to the Hunt

  * * * *

  The QUINN SECURITY Series

  Finding Home

  The Ultimate Kink

  Saying I Do

  Breaking Logan’s Laws

  Cameron Dane

  I am an air force brat and spent most of my growing up years living overseas in Italy and England, as well as Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia while we were stateside. I now live in Florida once again with my big, wonderfully pushy family and my three-legged cat, Harry. I have been reading romance novels since I was twelve years old, and twenty years later I still adore them. Currently, I have an unexplainable obsession with hockey goaltenders, and an unabashed affection for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.