by Lucy Parker
“You’re welcome. Thanks for the use of your coat.”
“You’re an appalling card shark, and if we’d been playing for money I’d have to sell my house tomorrow, but I appreciate the distraction.” He paused. “And I wanted to apologise.”
Lily frowned. “What for?”
Alex seemed to be talking to Luc as much as to her. “Just—sorry.”
Luc inclined his head, obviously responding to some sort of obscure Man Speak.
She glanced between them. “Should I ask?”
“Please don’t,” Alex said. “Anyone who bids that aggressively is bound to have a violent streak.”
While they went to find their mother in the recovery ward, Lily dug her phone out of her bag.
An attempt to contact her mother sent her straight to voicemail, but her father finally answered on her second try. “Hi, baby.” He sounded distracted. “Just a moment.” After a couple of minutes he came back on the line. “Sorry. There’s a conference call to Seoul taking place on my desktop. I’ve left them to yell amongst themselves.”
“You shouldn’t still be working after ten o’clock at night. It’s not healthy.”
“Aren’t you preparing to spend months overthrowing Jane Grey until at least half past ten?”
“Yes, but I’m not—”
“Old?” Jack sounded amused. “I won’t be taking up skateboarding anytime soon, pet, but there’s a bit of life in the old bones yet.” There was a rustling noise, as if he were turning over papers. “Not that I’m not thrilled to hear from my pride and joy at any hour, but is there a reason you’re calling your crypt-keeper of a father at prime party hour on a Friday night?”
Lily sat down on one of the hard seats. “I just wanted to—check in.”
Jack’s voice turned sharp. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m at the hospital. With the Savages. Célie Verne had a heart attack today.” Unless the news had appeared on the stocks report, she doubted if her father had heard.
“Célie? Is she all right?”
“Sounds like she’s going to be.”
“Good. That’s good.” The pause was heavy and meaningful. “You’re at the hospital, eh?”
“Don’t start, Jack.”
He sighed. “Do I infer that a little reunion with the beauteous Célie and her humourless husband is in my future?”
She stared fixedly at a poster diagram about the sugar content of vending-machine food; she doubted if people waiting in this particular room would be that concerned with the calorie count of Dairy Milk. “Possibly.”
“Well, if possibly becomes something a little less hedging, let me know. I’ll wait until Cameron’s had time to get over the shock. Seeing me wouldn’t help. The man was always overly dramatic. Holding a grudge for decades. All those years pretending to be Lear went to his head.”
“I can see that reunion is going to go really well.”
“How did you manage to get past the family-only barricade?”
“Told them I was her niece.”
“Christ. What does that make me? Cam’s brother? Do you want me to end up in the cubicle next to his wife?” Jack hummed. “Still. Proud. Savages play by the rules; Lampreys get things done. Don’t comfort your cousin too enthusiastically. People will look at you funny.”
“That ship has sailed.”
“Lily—are you all right?”
“Yes. I just wanted to…”
“Check in,” Jack finished quietly.
“I’ll let you get back to your squabbling businessmen.” She frowned. “Go to bed before midnight.”
“Go to bed alone.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
*
She was grateful for the semi-tinted windows of Luc’s car when they got on the road without being bothered by the media. She saw a few photographers still waiting outside the main doors, probably hoping that Margo was going to make an eleventh-hour appearance.
When they reached the street by her mews, Luc turned off the car engine and they sat in total darkness.
She rolled her head tiredly to the side. He had one wrist resting on the wheel and was leaning back against the headrest with his eyes closed.
“You okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Feeling like a cross between a coiled spring and a deflated balloon?”
“Sounds accurate.”
“I’m so glad your mother is going to be okay.”
“So am I.”
Lily bit her lip. “If you’ve got enough momentum left to walk a few feet, do you want to come in?”
He opened his eyes.
“It’s late,” she said. “It’s Friday night and the traffic between here and Kensington will be nuts, and you look half-dead.”
“If that’s your idea of a pickup line, it’s probably lucky you were born with that face.”
“I don’t make passes at barely conscious men who’ve just left their mother’s hospital bedside. Trix moved out after New Year’s and I have a spare room. I also have disposable razors and Pop-Tarts.”
“Well, in that case…” Luc unsnapped his seat belt. “You’re sure?”
“Mi casa, etc.”
“Then gracias, offer gratefully accepted.”
Inside the flat, she switched on the heat pump and the kettle before she dropped to sit beside him on the couch.
Tucking one leg beneath her, she took a deep breath. “Look—”
His mouth cut off whatever she’d been going to pull from her lagging brain. The jolt of sensation was a physical shock. The kiss was searching, more slow and affectionate than the explicitly sexual desk-roll in Shropshire, but still broke her breath into pieces and kicked her heart somewhere into her throat. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her into his body, tugging her lower lip between his teeth, nudging it open. His tongue slid against hers and her belly clenched down hard.
She had to pull back when the pinpoints of light behind her closed eyelids became less about hard, warm hands and lips, and more about a lack of oxygen. They stayed close together, mouths almost touching, his nose brushing hers.
“You’ve had a traumatic day.”
“Very. It’s ending on a much better note than it began.”
“It really wasn’t a pickup line.”
“I know.”
Their mouths clashed back together. He picked her up with one arm, swinging her under his body and lowering her to the cushions. His weight was heavy on her, the thick muscle of his thigh flexing as his knee parted her legs.
“Wait.” She tore her mouth away. Her heart was thumping against his palm.
His breath was equally ragged. His chin rubbed against hers as he turned his head. “No?” His voice was a husky blur.
“Yes.” She pulled the back of his shirt free of his belt and traced her fingers up his spine; he instinctively pushed back into her before he caught himself with a groan. She tried to remember why she’d interrupted his fairly inspiring moves. “But not here. I suggest we either move this down the hall or do a synchronised barrel roll onto the floor, because this is a very antisex couch. It gets extremely hostile and tries to perform an inner-spring lumber puncture on whoever’s on the bottom.”
He trailed kisses up her neck. “And you know that because…” he murmured into her ear, and nipped the lobe sharply.
She paused, feeling the light trail of hair that furred upward from his belly. “The sales guy at IKEA mentioned it. He was very conscientious.”
“Smart.” Luc kissed her again. “Saving all of your acting ability for the show.”
She had to take her hands off his buttons to let him untie her cardigan and pull her vest top over her head. He tossed them aside, and she pulled the edges of his shirt apart and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. His skin was warm and smooth, moving tautly over the joint as he shrugged the shirt off.
Her hair caught and tugged on the cushions when she arched to create a space for his hand between the couch and her
bra strap. The lace went slack and gravity took over, and his mouth followed the falling curve of her breast. His tongue curled around her nipple, and she made an embarrassing sound in her throat.
He sat up on his haunches between her thighs, his chest heaving, to remove the rest of their clothing. His coordination was impressive; the choreographers at Knightsbridge would have loved him. When he swept her legs over his shoulders and bent his head, her vocal cords started producing noise that bordered on feline. Somewhere, Jocasta’s misbehaving-client alarm was going off with a vengeance.
Running his hands up the backs of her thighs, a part of her body she’d never appreciated until this moment, Luc said indistinctly, “Antisex couch, huh?”
She managed to speak despite having swallowed her tongue. “What?”
Luc slid his hands around her waist, lifting her to kiss her belly button. “How far away is your bedroom?”
He smelled like Christmas cologne and all good things. “Too far.”
“Option B, then.”
Before she could take a breath, he rolled them off the side of the couch, twisting so that he took the fall, landing on his back on her sheepskin rug and startling helpless laughter out of her.
Sprawled against his chest, she said against his mouth, “I was joking about the barrel roll.”
“Well, you have vocal issues. Who could tell?”
She dug her elbow into his ribs and he grunted. He was smiling when he kissed her again, which was such a relief after the horrendous evening that she could overlook any rude comments. He deepened the kiss, his hand twisting in her hair, supporting her neck. Lily rocked into him, shivering as he ran the pad of his thumb down the line of her spine.
“Fuck,” he said suddenly against her cheek.
“Yes, please.”
“I don’t have anything.” His chest and belly rose rapidly beneath her questing fingers, and he swore again when she ventured lower.
“I beg to differ,” she said, grinning, and he caught her wrist with a strangled laugh.
“Protection, smart-arse.”
She pushed her hands against the floor, straightening her arms on either side of his ears. “You don’t keep one in your wallet?”
“I keep credit cards in my wallet. I’m not sixteen years old and I’m not that optimistic.”
“Well, thanks to your middle-aged pessimism, I’m going to have to get up. And I’m naked.”
He pulled her back down and kissed her neck. “Oh, I noticed.”
“And so will the Bradleys across the street. I forgot to close the curtains.” She spotted her handbag on the coffee table. “Balloon animals.”
Luc paused with his lips on the underside of her chin. “Another of your infamous circus skills? I think the acrobatics might be more useful right now.”
She managed to grab the bag without leaving the circle of his arm. Plunking it down on his chest, she sat back on his hips and searched through the accumulated mess until she found the condoms. “The sixteen-year-old males at CTV—some of whom are chronologically thirty-five—had a habit of making condom poodles. It wasn’t safe to leave them alone with anything inflatable. I confiscated these the same day I auditioned for you.”
He swung the bag aside and sat up, which did delightful things to his abdominal muscles. “You brought condoms to the audition?” He took the box from her. With his free hand, he caught hold of her ankle and tugged her leg to hook around his waist. The slide of their skin prickled the sensitive nerves of her inner thigh.
“The only reason they would have left the bottom of my bag that day was if I’d filled them with water and aimed at your head.” She rested her cheek against his shoulder. She was starting to feel shivery and clenched her teeth so they didn’t chatter. The adrenaline fog that had taken over in the wardrobe department this afternoon was clearing, the room sharpening. Awareness was setting in of exactly whose chest hair was tickling her. There was a sprinkling of freckles under her cheek. There was rustling of foil.
She hadn’t been nervous about sex in a long time.
This was Luc, and this suddenly felt very—different.
“Okay?” he murmured in her ear. Gently, he smoothed her hair, his fingers lingering on her skin, and nuzzled a kiss on her temple. “Lily, we don’t have to—”
“No.” She ran her hand over his chest, stroking over his heartbeat. “I want to.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I know.” She pulled his mouth back to hers and he kissed her for a long time, slowly at first and then increasingly deeply.
His lips travelled back down over her collarbone and breast before he looked into her eyes. The muscles in his supporting arm were taut as he started to push forward, stopping when she winced.
“Lily?” It was barely a rasp.
“Yes,” she said thinly, on a sharp breath. Her legs quivered around him. “Move.”
He did, hooking her knee higher so he could thrust deeper. His first movements were slow and careful, a rhythm her body found and followed easily, but the friction quickly became so intense it was almost uncomfortable.
Her senses narrowed to the feel of him, hard inside her, agonisingly tense around her, the clamminess of her palms and the wetness between her thighs, the low sound of her name. Her breath hitched and she scrunched her eyes shut, grinding her hips into his and making uncontrollable little sounds in her throat.
He held her tightly, one arm still circling her waist, the other slanted up her back. They caught at each other for snatches of kisses when their mouths crossed paths, but their lips were constantly moving and murmuring over ears and jawlines and beads of sweat. She leaned into him, twisting her forehead against his as the pressure built.
“Lily.” He shuddered, his fingers digging into her curves.
It wasn’t a distant battle for satisfaction; it was…together. Her and him, and them together.
Until the finale. She’d never had a quick trigger, even when she was going it solo with mechanical assistance. It took some mutual handiwork, once he’d regained the use of his brain and motor skills, to keep things fair and equal.
Her hips arched violently, pressing up into his curled fingers, and she covered her mouth to muffle a stream of four-letter words.
While she was trying to catch her breath and stop orbiting somewhere around the ceiling, Luc let his forearm fall across his eyes. “I might have known you’d be hard work in every respect.”
Without turning her head, she patted consolingly in his general direction. “B for effort, but A+ for execution.”
“What do you mean, B for effort? I think I’ve got carpal tunnel.”
Lily jerked and clutched at her ribs. “Don’t make me laugh. My abs feel like I’ve been doing the 30 Day Shred for about three years.” The sheepskin rug felt like heaven on her bare back as she stretched. She rolled onto his chest and smiled down at him. “And I’m not sure you should be capable of saying anything at this point, except maybe ‘Thank you, universe,’ or ‘My God, is this woman even human?’”
His arm slipped around her and his sleepy grey eyes crinkled. “I thought that went without saying.”
Reaching behind her, she felt around in her abandoned bag for tissues. He took care of the unsexy but necessary, then pulled her back into his arms and kissed her, his mouth warm and lingering.
She sighed against his lips. “I suppose we’d better move. Do us all a favour and stay between me and the window. Marta Bradley does her neighbourhood watch routine on Friday nights, looking for so-far-nonexistent thugs and hooligans, and if she’s going to cop an eyeful, it should be of you. You’ve got a nicer butt.”
Luc raised his eyebrows and bent forward to look over her shoulder. “Demonstrably untrue.” He yawned. “Why are we moving, again?”
“Shower, toothpaste, memory-foam mattress for your decrepit back.” She squeaked when he lazily snagged one of the fallen couch cushions and whacked her on her inferior behind. “Joke, Old Man Time, joke. But I’m not
sleeping on the floor. I’m fairly sure that walking tomorrow is going to be difficult enough. Interpret that correctly and reinflate your ego.”
“Hey.” Luc sat up and caught her hand in his. His hair was tousled and there was a definite element of male smugness in the air. But his expression was suddenly serious. “We do need to talk about that.”
“About your ancient yet surprisingly agile back?” she asked lightly, tugging her hand free. She knew they needed to talk, and tomorrow she would need to think about quite a lot of things, but right now she just wanted to sleep in cosy, cuddly denial.
“Among other things.”
“I know. But not tonight. I’m not sure how you’re still conscious, but I don’t think either of us is in the right headspace to—”
“Turn the afterglow into an autopsy?”
Despite the note of tension, she smiled. “You’re so my kind of person.”
“Mmm.” Luc nipped at her ear. “Who’d have thought?”
He stood in one swift movement, totally naked, tossed her equally nude body over his shoulder and carried her out of the room. She wheezed and grabbed hold of his ribs to steady herself.
“Point taken,” she said to the base of his spine. “Mocking the elderly is insensitive and not funny. You clearly have the body of a twenty-year-old and the maturity of a six-year-old.”
“I’m not sure that fantastic sex has the best effect on you.”
“Yeah? Well, when Tarzan did this to Jane, she at least had leaf and loincloth support and wasn’t in danger of being smothered by her own breasts.”
“Bedroom?”
“Last door on the right. The blood is rushing to my head.”
In her bedroom, he flipped her back upright and lowered her to the bed, and she rolled over to turn on the lamp. “For the record,” she said, flopping back with a sigh and letting her limbs loll, spaghetti-like, “if you’re going to recreate an iconic scene, I’d prefer you think Richard Gere and Debra Winger, not Van Gogh’s Miners’ Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal.”
The mattress depressed as he followed her down, resting his weight on his hands. He ran the tip of his tongue between her lips, taking things from casual peck to full snog in two seconds flat.
