LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  “That was all?” I demanded, putting my hands on my hips. “I interrupted a security meeting and startled you? You were a total asshole, Levi. You made me feel like shit.”

  “I didn’t mean to, Meagan.” He didn’t offer anything else, but this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

  “Don’t you dare push me out,” I warned him, pacing the floor in front of him. “Don’t you do that to me, Levi.” Maybe I’d been good at being by myself before New York City, but I was fully addicted to having that support system with Levi. He knew exactly what I wanted, exactly how to make me feel good. I even had my doubts that I’d ever want to have sex with anyone else ever again—which was a stunning revelation.

  Should I have put a ring on it, or what? When you found the person you wanted to have sex with for the rest of your life because it was that physically fulfilling, was that how people decided to marry each other? There were probably other catches.

  “I’m not trying to push you out.” Levi ran both of his hands through his blond hair, a compulsive, stress-filled gesture. “There are just a lot of things going on right now, Meagan. Things you don’t know about.”

  “Then let me in.” Once I realized the problem wasn’t me, wasn’t the sex I was always demanding, I relaxed a little. He wasn’t going to push me out. He liked the sex just as well as I did. There was something else there that was making him act like this.

  “It really isn’t your problem,” he said. “I don't want to worry you.”

  “What else am I worrying about?” I laughed, always looking for a deflection. I worried about things constantly—that Levi would get tired of the sex. That he would get tired of me. That he would decide to do a little digging and discover all of my deepest, darkest secrets. That he would make me be alone again.

  I couldn’t be alone again. I decided I wasn’t built for it anymore.

  “You should be worrying about what you’re going to do with your life,” Levi said, but it was an old, worn-out argument. It was just something to say—his own attempt at deflection.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I said helplessly, knowing I’d said it before. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Wasn’t it enough that I’d made it out of my hometown? Wasn’t it enough that I was here in New York, with Levi? “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  Levi heaved a heavy sigh that sounded like it originated all the way down in his bones.

  “It’s just something that comes with the territory, I suppose,” he said. “A price to pay for having the money that I do.”

  I sat on the bed with him, pressing against him and offering a sense of physical comfort. If he wanted to forget about whatever he was worried about and sink into me, I’d welcome it.

  What I didn’t expect was Levi stiffening up.

  “Just talk to me,” I said, scooting away to look at him. “Something is obviously wrong—so wrong that it’s affecting me. So involve me. Tell me.”

  “Have you noticed anyone around the house who shouldn’t be here?” he asked, squinting at me. “A deliveryman, maybe. Maintenance staff? Anyone hanging around outside on a daily basis? Watching?”

  A small chill worked its way up my spine.

  “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  “My security staff has let me know about a credible threat to my safety,” Levi said, “and the threat mentioned you. Did you tell anyone that you were coming to New York City with me, specifically?”

  Troubled, I shook my head. “There wasn’t anyone to tell,” I said. “I didn’t give notice at my work. My brother was my last friend I confided in, and I still hadn’t talked to him in a year.”

  “You don’t have any friends at the bar?” Levi asked. “No regulars you’ve been in contact with since moving here? Friends from school you’ve chatted with?”

  It was pathetic to admit, and I was afraid of what Levi would think of me, but I didn’t have friends. I’d been isolated over the last year, and I’d done it to myself. I hadn’t wanted personal connections to anyone—not the regulars at the bar, not the people who saw me every day in my movements between the different landmarks in town.

  “No,” I said finally, clearing my throat. “I didn’t have anyone. No friends.”

  That admission didn’t seem like it bothered Levi very much. I guessed he was much more focused on the threat than by my sad lack of friendships.

  “What about here, in New York City?” he asked. “Have you made any friends here? Anyone who knows your name outside of the staff here at the townhouse? Anyone you’ve recently connected with?”

  “I haven’t been anywhere without you,” I told him. “You’d know as well as I would if there was some weirdo creeping around. No one here knows me.”

  Levi lapsed into silence, all out of questions to ask me. I didn’t like that silence, so I tried to fill it.

  “You should go to the police, if you haven’t already,” I babbled. “You’re the one who said they were good, and you have connections within the department. I’m sure they would be able to pull strings to see what was up. Maybe they’d even deploy a squad car or two to run surveillance here at the townhouse and at your work, maybe. You could probably get someone to follow us around to help figure out who was making these threats. And it’s a big city, too, you know. It could just be some random crazy person. This world’s full of them. ”

  “The threat mentioned you by name, Meagan,” Levi said quietly. “And your brother. My contacts I’ve talked to in the police department seem to think the threat’s connected to your brother’s murder.”

  That shut me right up. We sat there staring at each other, neither of us able to follow that statement with anything. It was starting to all make sense—the throng of security in Levi’s office, the fact that the receptionist downstairs was hesitant to admit me at all, citing recent changes in policy. Something had happened. Something that scared Levi.

  “You mean someone meant to kill my brother,” I said.

  “I don’t know if they meant to kill Matt, specifically,” Levi said, gripping his hair. I wanted to take his hands and untangle them, but I couldn’t make myself move. “Another possibility is that it’s just someone obsessed with the murder. It was in the news. That kind of visibility and violence tends to bring the crazies out of the woodwork.”

  “That’s so messed up.” I drew my knees up to my chin and hugged them, wanting to feel smaller for some reason. “My brother wasn’t famous. He didn’t know anybody famous. He was just trying to do his job and protect you.”

  Protect Levi so Levi would pay him, so my brother could bring me to the city.

  My ever-present anxiety and guilt gave a surge, reminding me that I was responsible for my brother’s death. If I’d been stronger, I would’ve been able to remain in my hometown, maintaining the house until we could figure out, legally, what to do with it. I should’ve been patient, but I’d been desperate to get out of that house. I’d forced my brother to think he had to take on a dangerous job in order to give me what I wanted.

  I hated this anxiety, and my old solution to cope reared its head. My savior was right here with me, well within arm’s reach. I didn’t have to feel like this. I refused to feel like this. I could do something to make myself feel better.

  I let go of my knees and crept back across the bed until I was sitting in Levi’s laps, my legs unfolding until they were wrapped around him. I hugged him close, and he held me after a couple of beats, stroking my hair. He froze when I kissed his neck.

  “Really?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Really, what?” I answered.

  “We’re talking about a threat that I’ve received—a very specific threat—that might be related to your brother’s death, and you want sex?”

  I stiffened in his lap but didn’t make a move to leave it. It was warm and comfortable, and even as he fussed at me, I could feel his cock stir within his pants. I was very sure I could win him back over.

  “It’s a stress reliever,” I sugg
ested. “Wouldn’t you like to blow off some steam?”

  “Do you even care that Matt died?”

  My anxiety screamed inside of me. I was a heartless bitch, a worthless leech, a wretched, twisted, broken person. I didn’t have real feelings. I was ruined forever—irredeemable. A whiney, crybaby, weak victim.

  A murderer.

  I was all of those things, because I kissed Levi on his mouth, anyway. I kissed him hard, bit his lip when he tried to pull away, grinned when he shoved me away a half second before covering my body with his own, ripping our clothes off, and shoving his cock in me—roughly. It hurt, and I wanted it to, as my body quickly adapted and responded, slicking me from the inside out, building up to that inevitable release.

  Levi didn’t make a single sound, just breathing angrily through his nose, not kissing me, not grunting, nothing. He held one of the posts on the bed with one hand and had the other planted right next to my face, balled in a fist.

  I could feel that he hated me in this moment—that this was the very definition of a hate fuck, jagged and angry, out of breath but over too fast to get sweaty.

  My eyes rolled helplessly into my head as I came, gritting my teeth, trying not to cry out, trying to match that quiet intensity that Levi had. He stilled his thrusts as my body clenched and just watched me as I came apart.

  There was the light, sure, the one I craved, but the darkness was there this time, too. I thought I’d banished the darkness by coming to New York City with Levi. I thought he’d chased it away, but there it was, that maw open inside of me, and I realized that it had always been there, just disguised.

  It would always be a part of me. I would never be anything different from that giant, needy nerve ending. And I would never be worth a damn to anyone, least of all to myself.

  I was losing it. I was losing my goddamn mind. If I lost it in New York City, the only place I’d ever wanted to be in the world, it would all be over. If this place couldn’t work its magic on my broken life, no place would. I’d be faced with the reality that I’d never get it together. I’d never heal.

  Levi withdrew, and I realized he hadn’t come, just like the first time we’d ever had sex. He’d gotten me off because, for whatever reason, I needed it, and now he knew. He knew, and I couldn’t cope.

  “I’m not a bad person,” I said, wiping a single tear away. It wasn’t fair that my body felt so good but my heart felt so shitty.

  “I know you’re not a bad person.” Levi sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands.

  “I am sorry that my brother was killed.” I was so sorry that I couldn’t properly work through my emotions about it. It was as if my brain short-circuited and my body had to take over—and my body dealt with it in the only way it understood how.

  “I’m sorry that I said that. I know you miss your brother. I know that people grieve in different ways.” His hands muffled his voice.

  We stayed silent for a long time, Levi unmoving, as I shook with sobs. I hurt badly, and as that afterglow faded, regret took its place. Why couldn’t I have been a normal person? Why did all that bullshit have to happen to me? Why did my brother have to die? Why had Levi come to my hometown in the first place?

  If he’d never come, I still would’ve been there, coping in the best way I knew, keeping that maw at bay. I was a survivor, no matter how ugly that survival happened to be. I was still alive, anyway, but now I felt like dying.

  My traitor fingers reached for Levi, my mind shutting down in favor of my body handling things. My body knew how to close that maw a little, if only for a while. And Levi was sitting right there, naked. He could get me there. He could give me what I wanted to make this hell inside of me behave for a little bit.

  I smoothed my hand down over his arm and he flinched as if I’d burned him.

  “I meant what I said, when you first got here,” he said, taking his face out of his hands, looking at me. “I was afraid I was getting addicted to you. But I figured something out, too.”

  “What did you figure out?” My voice sounded dead to my own ears, just my lungs forcing air out of my mouth, my tongue shaping the syllables against my teeth, a soulless instrument parroting a real person.

  “You’re addicted to me. Well, maybe not to me, specifically. But to sex. You’re addicted to it.”

  “People aren’t addicted to sex,” I snapped, snatching my hand back and yanking a sheet over my naked body. Thank God for anger. If not for anger, I probably would’ve died a long time ago. “People are addicted to booze, to heroin. Not sex.”

  “People are addicted to sex,” he contradicted, not a trace of anger in his voice. “You’re addicted, Meagan. I can’t count the number of times we’ve had it just since you’ve been in the city. That’s a lie—I tried to keep count, in the beginning, just because I thought it was so phenomenal. And I lost count at a hundred. You haven’t been here much longer than a month, Meagan. It’s insane. How many people have you had sex with before me?”

  I laughed in his face. “Aren’t we supposed to have this conversation over drinks?”

  “Meagan, how many?”

  “A lady never tells, and a gentleman never asks.” The truth was that I’d lost count long ago, just like Levi had lost track of how many times we’d had sex. I imagined some belt in my mind with dozens and dozens of notches nicked in its leather, dreaded the number of times I’d thrown myself away to a man whose face I couldn’t even remember.

  “If you’re not going to be honest with me, then we can’t do this,” Levi said. “We’re not going to work if we can’t trust each other.”

  “It’s not complicated, what we have,” I raged at him. I wrapped anger around me like a protective blanket. If not anger, despair would drown me. “You have more money than you know what to do with. I’m a convenient distraction—a housewife who doesn’t nag, a trophy wife who doesn’t ask for money, a whore you don’t have to pay. What’s wrong with enjoying sex? What’s wrong with enjoying lots of sex? I’m good at it, it makes me feel good, and I know it makes you feel good. What’s the big goddamn deal, Levi?”

  “What we have is the most complicated thing in the world,” he argued. “This, right now, doesn’t feel good. It’s not feeling good to not understand what’s going on in your mind when you react to every different provocation the same way—with sex. I’m afraid for you. If we’re being perfectly honest, which I encourage, I’d say that I’m afraid of you, sometimes.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Who’s afraid of a little sex?”

  “It’s not about the sex,” he said. “Not really. There’s nothing wrong with sex, however often or not a person engages in it. But Meagan, when I told you your brother had died, you jumped my bones right in a public space. And when I was trying to talk to you about a threat I’d received that could very well be linked to Matt’s murder, you threw yourself at me again. What am I supposed to do with that? It’s not an appropriate coping mechanism.”

  Too close. Levi was too close. My entire body clamped down on a gag of panic, and I glowered at him, trying to hang on to that anger. It was draining quickly out of my body, and I needed it now more than ever.

  “If you don’t want to have sex with me, then just be a man and admit it,” I said hotly. Good—that was good. I had to stay angry. “Don’t accuse me of having an addiction just to cover up for yourself.”

  “That’s the thing, Meagan,” Levi said. “I do want to have sex with you. I love having sex with you. I look forward to the next time even if we’ve just had sex. But I don’t know if you’re all there some of the time when we do have sex. Like right now. I don’t think what we did right now was healthy sex.”

  Too close. Too close. My brain fought my body and it was all I could do to try and stay quiet and still.

  “There are places you can go to get help for this,” he continued, looking at me, those blue eyes seeing more than they probably realized. “You can talk to someone. There are therapy groups, completely anonymous, free
and easy to go to. We can probably look them up online. You could go to a meeting—I could go with you, if you wanted—and you can just sit and observe for the first time, see if there’s anything there, see if you want to stick around.”

  Self-righteous anger warred with a strange longing, which coupled itself with fear. I couldn’t pick which emotion to feel. I hated the idea of group therapy, of sitting down with a bunch of strangers and weeping about how I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, so to speak. There was nothing appealing about that.

  But there was that small chance that I’d be given the key to getting better, to becoming normal, to closing that fucking hole inside of me that sometimes seemed like all it wanted to do was gobble me down, and it would wreak havoc until it got its wishes.

  Normal was what I wanted, but sex had seen me through so much. It had been the root of all my problems, sure, but it had also helped me survive through them. It terrified me to admit that sex was a problem to anyone, least of all to myself. I couldn’t lose it. It was my identity, my most personal and profound offering.

  It was the only thing that I could rely on in times of crisis. It was the only thing I had.

  “Don’t push me out,” I told Levi again, and then I got up, put my clothes on, and walked out on him.

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t have a single person in this city except for myself. There was Levi, but he had convinced himself that I was crazy, in need of behavioral adjustment and psychological help.

  He was probably spot on, but I refused to admit it, refused to give him the pleasure of being right.

  Admitting it would mean I’d have to do something about it, and I wasn’t prepared for that.

  I walked aimlessly, not a place in the world I had to be or could be, realizing that this was really the first time I’d communed with New York City without Levi by my side.

  I thought I’d be more excited about it. I’d wanted this city to solve all of my problems for me. I’d wanted to leave my past in my hometown and strike out on a future free from guilt and drama and strife, but all of those bad feelings still welled inside of me, always present, woven into the fabric of my very being.