by Vivien Sparx
Lucien sat on the edge of the bed. “John Darrow made a choice, that’s all. He decided to sell his shares to me.”
“You mean you pressured him into selling.”
Lucien stood up again and bunched his fists deep into his pockets. He went to the window sill and stared down over the city. “It’s business, Angelica.”
Then he spun around and looked down at her.
“Sometimes business is about pressure and leverage. I used the leverage I had, and Darrow made a business decision based on the options available to him.” He shrugged.
“And that’s how you do business?”
“Sometimes.”
Angelica shook her head. “No, Lucien. It’s not just sometimes, is it? Everything is a business deal. Everything you do is about getting your way, no matter what the price. No matter what the cost.”
Lucien’s anger began to flare. “I’m a winner, Angelica. I’m not weak like my father was, or like Darrow – and I won’t apologize for that. This is what I do.”
* * *
Marvin Skinner was lounging back in a big black leather chair when Lucien walked unannounced into his office. Skinner looked up in surprise. His feet were on his desk, ankles crossed, as he dictated into a voice recorder. He kicked his feet to the ground and switched off the machine.
“Speak of the devil,” Skinner joked. “It’s Lucifer!”
Lucien sprawled into the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk and set his briefcase on the floor. His smile was enigmatic.
“What brings you downtown again?”
Without a word, Lucien reached into his briefcase. He slid the Darrow Air document across Marvin Skinner’s desk. Skinner gaped.
“Jesus! He signed it?”
Lucien nodded.
“John Darrow? You got John Darrow to sign?”
“Yes. We met at the penthouse two hours ago.”
Marvin Skinner clapped his pudgy hands together. He sprang out of his chair, eyes alight with sudden excitement. “We’re home free,” he enthused. “Lucien, Darrow Air is yours!”
Skinner went to the bar that was concealed discreetly within a tall timber bookcase and poured two whiskies. “Until we can get champagne,” he laughed. He handed a glass to Lucien and raised his own glass into the air.
“A toast,” he announced. “To Lucifer Lance.”
They emptied their glasses quickly and Skinner brought the bottle to the desk. He dropped back into his chair and scanned the page.
“How did you do it?” Marvin Skinner asked. “I thought the son of a bitch was going to fight you all the way.”
Lucien nodded. “So did I. But it seems John Darrow cares about his family. When I said his useless son could keep his cushy job, and his wife could stay on as a consultant, he began to see reason.”
“That’s how you got him to sign? The family card? Man, you’re dealing from the bottom of the deck,” Skinner shook his head. “And Darrow actually fell for it?”
“Hook, line, and sinker.”
Skinner grinned. “Okay – so what’s next?”
“We get rid of the wife and kid, of course.”
“Now?”
“Straight away.”
Marvin Skinner frowned. “Darrow isn’t going to like that.”
Lucien shrugged. “I don’t care. He’s signed the letter of intent. Even if he backs out now I can take that to his board. They’ll fall in line easily enough once they see the offer had Darrow’s approval.”
Lucien snapped his briefcase closed and rose from the chair. He stood over Marvin Skinner’s desk with his bunched fists on the polished surface and a dark shadow passed behind his eyes.
“Send an email to Darrow Air head office,” he said coldly. “I want Darrow junior and his alcoholic mother escorted off the premises before close of business today.”
* * *
Lucien returned in the early afternoon alive with a dangerous vitality that Angelica recognized. His eyes were alight with triumph as he came through the door, his body brimming with energy in need of release.
Angelica came to him with her head bowed, obedient and submissive, and he watched her with glittering dark eyes.
When she was just out of his reach she stopped. She looked up at him and parted her lips provocatively, then moistened them with the tip of her tongue. Her eyes were huge, slanted with sexuality.
But carefully concealed behind her expression, Angelica was in turmoil. A tiny shiver of fear rippled down her spine. Lucien Lance scared her. He had crushed John Darrow with callous disregard – and she wondered what her own fate would be.
Could she submit to a man who awed and terrified her?
How could she not?
Angelica realized the danger was the attraction, and as much as her instincts tried to warn her, she knew she was helpless to her desire.
He was just too much.
Too masculine.
Too compelling.
So she came to him, knowing she should try to resist, yet drawn to him as if hypnotized.
“Do you want me?” she whispered.
Lucien’s expression became fierce with his lust.
Angelica thrust a hip forward and clasped her hands behind her back as though they were chained. Her breasts were pushed forward so they pressed firmly against the fabric of her dress, he could see the faintest shadow of her nipples. She stared at him boldly – almost defiant and daring – and then she let her eyes wander down the length of his body until she saw the hardness at his groin. When she looked back to his face her cheeks were flushed and her breathing quicker.
“Tomorrow,” she promised herself in the way that all addicts do. “Tomorrow it will be different, but right now I want him so desperately.”
Lucien lunged at her, hooking one powerful arm around her waist and pulling her hard against him. Angelica closed her eyes, threw back her head. She felt his hand gather the front of her dress and inch it up her legs. When it was bunched around her waist his cunning fingers stroked and teased her through her panties. She gasped at the pressure of his touch and her lingering doubts were drowned out by the sound of her own hungry moan.
She surrendered to him.
Lucien found the zip at the back of her dress, tugging it down and pulling the straps off her shoulders. It fell to the floor and she stood in just white bra and panties. Lucien circled behind her and Angelica’s body tensed, anticipating his touch but uncertain when it would come.
Suddenly, maddeningly, he seemed in no hurry. Angelica kept her eyes closed, trying to sense the nearness of him.
“Tell me a fantasy,” he commanded. Her head turned toward the sound of his voice. He was standing close to her left. Angelica’s mouth was dry. Nerves fluttered in her belly.
“What kind of fantasy?” she asked.
“Your kind of fantasy,” Lucien insisted. “Tell me what you think about. Tell me what turns you on.”
“I don’t have a fantasy.”
“You’re lying.” Suddenly his hand cupped roughly at her breast and he squeezed the soft flesh through the sheer lace of her bra. Angelica winced in shock but the pain was so exquisite, and she was so hungry for his touch that she groaned, wanting more.
“Every woman has a fantasy.”
Angelica swallowed hard and licked at her lips.
“Tell me!”
And slowly, encouraged by the sensual slide of Lucien’s hand down across her taut abdomen, Angelica began to speak.
“I’m in a rainforest,” she said in a breathy whisper, her eyes closed and her heart thumping within her chest. “It’s so beautiful! Everything is so green. The trees are huge, their trunks moss-covered. The trees reach high overhead so that it feels like I’m staring up at a beautiful vaulted ceiling – like in a cathedral.”
As he listened, Lucien eased his hand down Angelica’s body with slow insolent mastery, his fingers like a caress across the flat plane of her stomach.
“I’m on a walking trail. The earth is baked har
d and tiny jewels of warm sunlight filter through the treetops. All around me are vines and leafy ferns. I can hear birds calling. The rainforest feels like it’s alive,” Angelica said softly. “I can hear a stream somewhere just ahead and I’m walking towards it.”
Lucien’s hand rested at the waistband of her panties for a moment – and then slipped inside.
Angelica trembled and gasped. She sensed her own damp arousal.
“Then what? Tell me what happens,” Lucien demanded.
Angelica swallowed. “When I get to the stream there is a young man. He’s crouched by the water’s edge, filling a drinking bottle. He sees me and he stands up.”
“What does he look like?”
“Strong. Muscular,” Angelica breathed. “He has broad shoulders. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, but he’s been sweating. The shirt is damp against his chest and back.”
“What do you do?” Lucien encouraged. His voice was thickening and becoming husky as his fingers inched closer to the heat between Angelica’s legs.
“He smiles at me,” Angelica answered. Behind her eyes the fantasy was so real she could almost breathe in the humid rainforest air and hear the sounds of the stream as it rushed and bubbled over mossy rocks.
“He has a friendly face. His eyes are blue. He’s watching me – admiring me.”
Now Lucien’s fingers were bunched low inside Angelica’s panties, beginning to explore and part the moist lips of her. Angelica’s skin burned. Instinctively she parted her legs and felt the sudden glide of his fingers.
“Do you go to him?” Lucien asked. “Do you give your body to this fantasy man?”
Angelica shook her head slowly. “He comes to me,” she said. “He doesn’t speak. We don’t exchange a word. Everything we say is with our eyes.”
Now it was becoming harder to keep the images clear in her mind. Lucien’s fingers were a relentless tease and taunt. Angelica writhed her hips from side to side in encouragement.
“He peels off his shirt and my hands are all over his broad chest, hungrily feeling the muscles in his shoulders and down across his abdomen. Then he takes me in his arms and kisses me. God!” Angelica groaned suddenly, “it’s the most erotic, sensual kiss I could imagine.”
Lucien murmured small sounds. He felt Angelica’s body begin to rock against the cupped palm of his hand and he gentled his touch to prolong the agony of his teasing. Angelica sighed in frustration.
“He leads me to a tree and I realize I am suddenly naked,” the tone of her voice rose in wonder. “I wrap my arms around the trunk and cling to it like it’s a life preserver. I can feel the man’s hot hands all over my body. When I look back over my shoulder he is behind me, naked now and magnificently hard with his lust. I feel myself starting to melt. I close my eyes. I can … I can feel the stiffness and the heat of his body. He’s… he is pressing against my back, and then I feel him push… and… and then….
And then the fantasy in Angelica’s mind dissolved, torn apart by a shuddering surge of white light that exploded behind her eyes. Her body seized, locked in the force of her release, and she fell against Lucien, breathless and shaken.
Lucien carried Angelica to the sofa, laying her unresisting down onto the cool leatherwork. His hand hunted between her legs. He ripped off her panties and tossed the shreds of lace on to the floor.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
Angelica’s eyes fluttered open, milky and unfocussed and dreamy. He stared at her for a long moment as his hands roamed the softness of her body, and when he saw the first flicker of renewed desire begin to light her eyes he leaned down and kissed her.
His mouth was blatant and intense, his lips humming with his own desire.
Firm, smooth lips moved Angelica’s, at first skillful and seductive but becoming harder and more demanding. Her mouth met Lucien’s willingly.
She reached the palm of her hand up and pressed it flat against his chest, feeling Lucien’s heart kicking against the cage of his ribs.
She felt his fingers back between her legs, gliding across the smooth wetness of her, touching and probing freely now that she was naked. He found the stiffened bud of her and Angelica’s mouth fell open.
“Touch yourself,” he said. “I want to watch you.”
And she did.
Without resisting, without the blush of shy embarrassment, her hand reached down to herself, feeling the familiar sensitive parts of her body, and Lucien watched her with blazing eyes as he stood and undressed.
Through the swirling haze of her desire she saw him standing over her, and her soft lips curled into a smile when she saw how hard she had made him.
Then he was between her legs, splaying her wide and bending her knees.
Angelica felt the weight of him on the sofa, then the weight of his body as he covered her.
“Yes!” she panted in his ear. “Take me. Use me for your pleasure.”
Lucien took her exactly in the way she wanted; he was forceful, insistent; demanding. He filled her with a thickness that felt total and absolute, and she cried out as he plunged himself into her again and again while her fingers clawed at his broad back and Lucien’s breath sawed in his throat.
He swept her away in an all-consuming torrent of lust until the sweet torture could not be endured a second longer. Lucien threw back his head. His eyes were shut tight. Angelica made a small cry of surrender – and then they were peaking together, Angelica’s body convulsing around the surging pulses of Lucien’s release, her face flooded red and her lips parting in a ragged sob.
Later, Lucien ordered champagne and a fruit platter, and they sat facing each other on the bed with the silver tray and their drinks between them.
Lucien refilled their glasses watching Angelica as she nibbled on a strawberry.
Her hair was tangled loosely over the naked skin of her shoulder, rippling and swaying with each new movement of her body.
Lucien reached out and brushed the hair aside and Angelica looked at him quizzically.
“It was covering your breast,” he murmured.
She giggled and then she stretched, yawning like a cat, her hands raised above her head, holding the pose longer than necessary. The lift of her arms drew her hair away from her breasts and accentuated their firm rounded shape, and she saw the appreciation in his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” she asked coyly.
Lucien sipped at his wine. “I was marveling at your beauty,” he said softly, “and I was thinking how glad I am that your boyfriend was crazy enough to be lured by Penny. I would never have met you otherwise.”
Angelica went very still.
The expression on her face froze.
Numbed shock began to spread like icy tentacles through her body. The blood drained from her cheeks turning her skin pale as marble – and then the loathsome slithering tentacles uncoiled in the pit of her stomach so that she heaved with sudden nausea and had to fight to control it. She stared, her eyes vacant and unseeing, as the monstrous enormity of deception suddenly struck her.
“I never told you her name,” Angelica said, her voice empty and raw. “I never said her name was Penny.”
Lucien stared at her unblinking.
Angelica felt herself swaying. Her hand flew to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. She felt the wrench of his dreadful betrayal tear at her soul.
Lucien reached out for her. “Angel. Please listen. It’s not what you think.”
The touch of his hand jolted her. She made a choked moaning sound and lurched away. She stumbled from the bed and the floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
“That first morning,” she gasped, her eyes brimming with tears. “The phone call I heard you making. You were talking to Penny, weren’t you!”
Lucien eased himself off the bed. “Yes,” he admitted. “I told her to break off her affair with your boyfriend Duncan.”
“And she did? Just because you told her to?”
“Penny works for me,” Lucien sighed. “She wa
s one of my spies inside the bank where you worked.”
“Spy?” Angelica was incredulous. “To do what?”
“To get information. I put her there to seduce the head of your department so I could get details about Darrow Air’s financial structure. I had no idea that it was Duncan – and I didn’t know you even existed. It was just business.”
“Business?” There was an edge of hysteria in Angelica’s voice now. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “You destroyed my relationship!”
Suddenly she flew at him, her eyes wild, her anger and the pain of betrayal giving her a strength that caught Lucien unprepared. She clawed at his cheek and her nails raked a bloody line before he was able to clench at her wrists and wrestle her to the ground.
She was screaming and crying as she struggled. “You bastard! You selfish bastard!”
“That’s why I told Penny to end it,” Lucien shouted into her face. “That’s why Duncan came back to you. I wanted you to make the choice. You could have had him back and walked away from me. But you didn’t – because you wanted this instead!”
Finally Angelica went very still beneath him, the only sound was the ragged rasp of her breathing. Lucien stared into her eyes; all the fight had gone from her.
He rolled away, touched at his cheek. His finger came away wet with his blood.
Angelica stood and slowly went to her bedroom. She put on her black strapless dress and found her purse under the bed. She tucked it under her arm. She was cold – impossibly cold – but she walked with her back straight, her steps careful and precise. As she passed Lucien’s bedroom she began to cry again and she had to hurry before the waves of desolation dragged her to her knees. She felt old – old before her time – and in the entryway mirror she glanced at her reflection and noticed how red her eyes were, how waxen her features – how ravaged she looked.
She heard him coming down the hall. She sensed his eyes on her.
Angelica turned from the mirror and walked out the door, closing it quietly behind her.
