by Wren Weston
Lila stopped struggling and turned her head away. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was thinking of someone else here and there, too.”
Lila looked up. “Really?”
La Roux nodded.
“Who?”
He shook his head. “You didn’t tell me, so I’m not telling you. I think we both like our secrets.” He let go of her wrists, and took her mouth in a powerful kiss. “We don’t have to pretend like we’re in love, you know. We can just be friends and have fun when we’re together. If we forget who we’re in bed with from time to time, we can forgive one another for it.”
“Did I really say his name?”
“You didn’t so much say it as shout it. It was kind of cute, actually. It’s good that I’m not a jealous man.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you were. He drew a line, and I crossed it tonight. It’s over. He’ll never speak to me again.”
“He wanted to keep you all to himself? How selfish. He’s a fool to demand that of another highborn, much less an heir. We have our duties. My cousin never demanded that of your sister. Mentioned his interest, yes. Talked about his feelings, sure. But demanded? What was the idiot thinking, giving out ultimatums?”
“Perhaps he wasn’t thinking, not with his mind, anyway.”
“Not with his cock, either. He fell in love with you.”
Lila shrugged.
“You’re in love with him?”
Lila looked up and shook her head. “No, of course not.”
“Ah, she blushes.” La Roux chuckled and stroked her cheek. “Being a highborn is harder when your heart is turned on. Highborn like us are the lone wicks burning in darkened rooms. We’re what keeps the rest of our kind in the light. You’re not alone in that.”
“You’ve been in love too?”
“Far more in love than I should have been, and I’ve fallen out again after. I’m done staying out of the game because of my heart. Our lives demand certain sacrifices. Perhaps the more you care, the more you have to give up, but perhaps the more you care, the more good you can accomplish. It sucks, but that’s life.”
Lila breathed out a long sigh, finally understanding why La Roux had taken whole seasons off. He’d been in love, bending his career to the whims of his heart or someone else’s. He’d walked the path she might have gone down, and he’d regretted it.
She’d been right to turn away. If she’d left her family for Tristan, she would have been exiled with absolutely nothing to show for it, regretting it for the rest of her days after they inevitably fell apart.
She might not have wanted to be prime, but at least she still had her family.
She startled as La Roux jerked beside her. “Tristan? You don’t mean Tristan St. James of the Unity High House, do you?”
“What?”
“Lila, that man is nearly sixty years—”
“Oracle’s light, no, not him.” Lila groaned, turning to face him. “Yours isn’t Charlotte Weberly, is it?”
“Oracle’s light, no, not her,” he said, his chuckles infecting her. “It’s not any other member of the Weberly family. Or the Randolphs either,” he said, beginning another assault on her neck.
By accident or design, he hit the spot Tristan always found so easily.
Tristonia. Tristanopolis. Tristanville.
This time when he rose, neither of them were as serious as before. La Roux’s fingers twisted at her knee. When she giggled, he pushed into her at once.
Lila gasped at the surprise, moaned for fullness of it.
As he rocked into her, Lila spied an opening. She countered, tracing a spot on his ribs that induced him to fits.
Their night continued, paused and interrupted often by laughter.
Chapter 21
Fabric rustled.
Lila yawned in the dim bedroom and stretched under her soft cotton sheets. Though her muscles protested slightly at the movement, she relished the soreness and the lack of complications that came along with it.
She relished the restfulness, too. She’d not dreamt, not of oracles or the warehouse.
For the first time in ages, her sleep had been peaceful and deep.
She turned her head, anticipating Senator La Roux dozing next to her. Instead, she saw him standing in the middle of the room, chest bare, caught in the act of pulling on his breeches. She was quite fond of his breeches, having recently had her hands inside them, but she would rather his clothes remain off.
“You’re awake,” she said sleepily, propping her head on her arm.
“I apologize, Chief Randolph. I was trying not to wake you.”
“You shouldn’t have tried so hard before you put so many layers between us.”
La Roux froze while zipping his breeches, wrestling with a decision. Quite a hard one, from the look of it.
Her eyes dropped to the clock beside the bed. “It’s only half past seven, senator. Surely we could entertain one another a bit longer?”
La Roux shook his head. “I must apologize for leaving you so soon, but I brought a great deal of work back from Beaulac. I cannot neglect it today. I confess if I had known that I might wake up to such fine company this morning, I never would have left it so late.”
He leaned across the mattress and bent down to kiss her.
Lila turned her head away.
“No good morning kiss?”
“Champagne after a few hours of sleep.” It seemed an awful lot of bother to leave a warm bed just to brush her teeth and kiss the senator goodbye.
La Roux ignored her protests and conquered her mouth, pressing his chest against her bare breasts. The contact brought the night back to her, and seconds later, she pulled him closer with a happy moan, wondering if she might tempt him once again.
Certainly, his straining cock begged her to try.
Her hands wandered south and stroked it. It took only seconds for La Roux to give up and peel out of his breeches. His stubble raked at her neck as she curled her legs around his waist. His fingers traced between her legs.
“Gods, you’re already wet.” He laughed, his tongue sliding over hers as his cock entered her, thrusting slowly as he sucked on her lips. “I could get used to this.”
Lila grabbed at her headboard, a headboard that had not been broken overnight.
Her body answered his strokes anyway, and the orgasm built.
Back arching, toes curling, her mouth opened as he pumped. He watched her like a cat as she finished, then moaned toward his own conclusion.
“You didn’t yell for your lover this time,” he said, kissing her forehead, his stubble tickling her skin. “Perhaps I have earned my own place in your esteem.”
“Perhaps,” she said, a bit sad that she had not called out.
La Roux’s head flopped between her breasts, and he let out a sigh of frustration, his auburn hair tickling her chin. “I should have finished my work earlier. I promise I won’t ever leave my work so late again.” He stood reluctantly, fishing his clothes from the pile on the floor before stepping into his breeches.
Lila crawled atop her blankets in a sleepy, naked pile, studying La Roux’s every muscle and ridge as he bent and searched. “I’m not some fifth or sixth heir with nothing better to do than pine for a man’s touch, senator. I have an office to clear out and another to get in order.”
“That’s right,” he said, finding his shirt. “I’d nearly forgotten that you’ll have a brand-new office in the move. A much bigger one, I suspect. That should be fun, shouldn’t it?”
“An office is an office. I didn’t expect you to remember.”
“You should expect more from your suitors, Chief Randolph. I must admit that I like the idea of you as prime. The Randolphs are one of the most conscientious highborn families in Saxony. I believe you’ll continue the trend. You might not want to be prime
, but I suspect it will be good for your family and for Saxony.”
Lila chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s as if you’re trying to talk me into it.”
“I didn’t know you needed to be. I’m not trying to talk you into anything, though. There’s a difference between talking someone into something and being supportive of her decision and taking an interest. I’m guessing your former lover wasn’t—”
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore. It seems unfair.”
“All right.”
“You’re not even supposed to know about me becoming prime.”
La Roux winked. “I’ll keep your secret, madam, as long you promise to keep your bed warm for me.” He wandered around the room, his shirt and breeches open, snatching up his cravat. “Are you going to do that today, then? Move offices?”
“I suspect it will take me longer than one day, but I’ll at least start sorting out my office.” She finally slipped out of bed, plucking a silk crimson robe from her bathroom door. Slipping it around her body, she left it open and untied. Her breasts exposed, she leaned back against the window, eyeing him from head to toe as he finished dressing.
The senator narrowed his eyes. “You are a horrible tease, Chief Randolph.”
“Call me Lila. And I’m not teasing you, and you know it.”
La Roux licked his lips. “No, you aren’t, Lila. You’re just making it exceedingly difficult for me to leave.”
“Oh, and how am I doing that, senator?”
“Dorian.”
He prowled toward her. Unzipping his breeches, he pulled his cock from the folds of his boxers.
Lila smirked. “Oh, so—”
Dorian didn’t wait for her to finish her thought. He grabbed her thigh and lifted her leg, then thrust into her. His green eyes glowed. “You know very well what you’re doing to do me, and you’re doing it very well. Am I matching it?”
Before she could answer, he grabbed her ass and lifted her off the ground. Then he dove into her again. Her back smacked against the cold wall as he fucked her, but she didn’t care.
For now, at least, nothing in the world existed but Dorian and his stiff cock. Tristan, her mother, the assassin—everything dropped away from her mind. She wrapped her legs around Dorian, gasping as he thrust again and again.
She lifted her chin, coming in panting moans.
After his last thrust, he let her down, then took her mouth as roughly as he’d taken her body.
“Gods, you’re fun.” He chuckled, zipping up his breeches once more.
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Have dinner with me.”
Lila fiddled with his collar. “When?”
“Tonight.”
Lila thought back to everything on her to-do list. Now that she knew her mother or another matron might be behind the Baron, she had a new point of investigation. She couldn’t spend her whole day and night working on the case, though. She had to eat sometime.
Besides, Dorian kept her mind off other things. Or, more correctly, other people. She refused to waste another tear or thought on Tristan DeLauncey. Dorian had been right about a lot of things. Being with someone who understood her and supported her was a relief. “Why don’t you join my family for dinner? I’m sure the chairwoman would enjoy meeting you.”
Dorian’s eyes crinkled. “I would love to have dinner with you,” he said, then leaned in toward her ear. “I’d love having dessert as well. And breakfast. I’ll sneak in a bottle of Sangre, and we’ll fuck all night long and on into the morning. You’ll have to shove me out of bed to get me to leave.”
He kissed her once more, then gathered up his coat and slipped out the door.
Lila finally tied her robe. On the way to the shower, she paused to turn on her desk computer. Her hand brushed the metal casing as she turned to leave.
The metal heated her skin.
She pressed her hand to the casing once more, mouth slack at the heat radiating from it.
Someone had been on her desktop.
How on earth had she not heard it?
Logging on quickly, she immediately pulled up her snoop programs and left them to their work. Her eyes strayed to her palm, still innocently perched in its slot above the speakers.
Snatching it up, she walked around the room, letting it search for novel signals. When she came to her silver coat of arms, the screen flashed red, digital needle waving.
She leaned over the sculpture, searching the back. A tiny audio bug hid behind a wolf’s head.
She frowned, leaving it where she found it, and continued on. La Roux had placed another bug behind her bedside table, another in her bathroom, and another underneath her desk.
Was La Roux listening? Was she on transcription mode while he tended to more important things?
Lila left the bugs alone and connected her palm and desk computer via a cable, letting the snoop programs evaluate the device. While they worked, Lila stepped into the bathtub. As the water poured over her, she smeared herself with a thick layer of apple-scented soap.
La Roux was the Baron after all. He’d fucked her merely to bug her bedroom and gain access to her computer. She’d been nothing more than a tool.
Lila was getting sick of feeling like that.
She had invited the man to her room so she could sneak a peek at his palm, but she wouldn’t have slept with him for it. She wouldn’t have pretended an interest she didn’t have.
Lila lathered herself again, her skin turning pink as she scrubbed harder and harder. How had La Roux even managed to hack BullNet? He was a senator. Where had he learned the skills to penetrate government servers?
The answer came quickly. His matron was a Masson. He must have received a different sort of education among his kinsmen, one unlike the senators of Bullstow. And as a Masson, he’d had access to Xavier Masson’s ID, likely taken on a visit to the family compound.
He’d stolen from a dead boy, his own cousin nonetheless.
Lila thought back to the files on her desktop. Luckily, she’d encrypted all of them. She’d also hidden the most important files on star drives, placing them in her desk’s secret compartments. They were safe there, far safer than in her computer. You had to know where the compartments were to find the seams. You also had to know how to open them, else you’d end up frustrated, with sore fingers and bloody nails. And even if La Roux had managed to break into the desk and find the drives, he’d still have to unencrypt them.
Lila rinsed off and hopped out of the shower, donning little more than an old militia t-shirt and a fluffy robe. She quickly worked her way through the desk’s compartments, finding that all her star drives were still secure.
As she replaced the last compartment, the results from her snoop programs flashed onto her screen. La Roux hadn’t gotten far in his infiltration, but he’d left behind a tangle of snoop programs. A window popped up, prompting Lila to delete them, offering to restore her computer to what it had been the night before.
Lila hit cancel and yanked the cable from her palm. He’d not hacked into it at all. He’d merely snuck a GPS sensor and an audio bug inside the casing.
She drummed her fingers on her desk, unsure how to use the sabotage to her advantage.
She’d figure something out on the way to the security office.
Lila hopped up and ventured to her closet. Now that she knew that La Roux was the Baron, her job had become much simpler. She couldn’t believe that he had used his childhood nickname as an ID, but people often made such stupid mistakes.
Like sleeping with people when you should have known better.
Gods, everything he’d said the night before had likely been a lie.
She opened her closet, and a string of curses flooded from her mouth. As predicted, the insufferable, tartan-clad idiot from the nigh
t before had cleared out her entire closet. Every militia uniform had been tossed out, and a sea of monochromatic crimson surrounded her.
Lila fetched a pair of black trousers from her hidden compartment and added a crimson sweater and her old crimson woolen coat, clothes she might have worn a month before. Then she donned a pair of new boots, snatched up her palm, and bound her damp hair in a twist.
She gave a last glance to her abandoned wine glass. Biting her lip, she poured the dregs into a small vial and snapped the lid closed.
She’d walk the sample over to the security office, assassin be damned. She had more important things to do than remain locked inside the great house.
Shoving her Colt into her coat pocket, she fled from the room.
At the top of the stairs, she ducked behind a door as she spied Alex pacing along the base of the staircase, a duster poised in her hand. Waiting to be paged, waiting to be intercepted, waiting to hear Lila recount every detail from the night before.
Lila waited too.
The front door quietly chimed a few moments later.
The slave retreated.
Lila darted from her hiding spot, sneaking through the empty kitchen and into the scullery.
Exiting through the back of the great house, Lila avoided the patrols and jogged toward the security office. The fog hung so thick that she could barely make out the buildings on the street. She tied her coat more tightly, longing for the warmth of her blackcoat, so thick that the chill would not have touched her.
But the privilege of wearing her blackcoat had been taken away. She’d never be allowed to wear it again outside of her own bedroom.
Shoving open the still-broken metal door, she marched into the security office. As it was a couple of hours after shift change, few people scrambled about. She nodded to the man at the front desk and rode the elevator to her office, nodding to the receptionist, who had just poured cream into her morning coffee.
The pair exchanged brisk nods.
Sergeant Jenkins sat at his desk as she entered his office, already tackling a pile of work. He looked up at her in confusion and annoyance, then opened his mouth to speak.
