by Lia Lee
For some reason, for some goddamn reason, Tucker wanted to sit down next to her and ask what she was doing. He found himself intensely curious about the work she was doing and how she did it. Were her tools what she wanted, and did she need any others? How did it all come together, and could she truly make anything that she could design?
There was a kind of authority to Luna here. She was utterly in her element, and a part of him recognized that. It was, Tucker thought, like how he felt when he knew he had made an amazing deal, or when he had outmaneuvered a rival. There was grace and beauty here, and suddenly, he found himself aching to touch.
He shook his head, pulling back and walking away. In the kitchen, he splashed some icy cold water on his face. He shot a glance at the cabinet where the alcohol was kept, but he decided against it.
Luna was a strange woman. She was beautiful, she was tender, and her good heart was as much a part of her as her green eyes or her red hair. She made his heart beat a little faster whenever he saw her, and if it was only when she was wearing a see-through piece of lingerie, that would have been fine. That made sense after all, and there was nothing wrong with that.
However, to feel that way about her when she was simply making jewelry or tasting oysters for the very first time, that was ludicrous. It was worse than ludicrous, it was foolish, and Tucker knew that he was too old to be foolish. There was too much at stake to be foolish.
He had gone into this knowing that there were a few ways it could go wrong. Legally, things were as airtight as they could be. Any child that came of their union would be under his custody, and there was no way she could fight that, no matter what lawyer she hired with the million dollars he was going to pay her.
However, he knew that women were sentimental about children, and children were naturally attached to their mothers. Tucker could already feel that he was strangely attached to Luna, and he could only think that that was because he knew that she would be bearing his child. There were a lot of deep emotions at play here, and he had spent his entire life aware that emotions were problems waiting to happen.
Things had been so much easier before he had nearly died jumping out of a plane, he reflected, but that was to be expected.
Then he glanced towards the studio and had to admit that in terms of enjoyment, he had not enjoyed someone as much in a very long time, so that was something.
The pull that Luna exerted over him was exceptional already, and Tucker knew that it could lead to something exceedingly difficult. No, it was safer by far to simply maintain a distance. There were things that they could enjoy together, after all, and they could avoid being joined at the hip while they did it.
He was a little surprised by how the thought of doing things separately from Luna already gave him a bit of a pang, but that probably meant that he was doing the right thing.
In her studio, he could hear her singing, and when he thought again about joining her, Tucker forced himself to turn around and go back to work.
***
"Why is it that I think this gets better every time?" Luna gasped, lying back on the pillows. She had rolled away from Tucker to relieve some of the heat that had built up during their vigorous lovemaking, but almost instinctively, she kept her hand on his chest, wanting to maintain some contact between them.
"It's because I'm such a great lover," Tucker said straight-faced. "You are only now developing the skills to appreciate it."
"I would bop you with this pillow if I had any strength left to do it," she said with a small smile.
"If you have the strength to hit me, you definitely have the strength to be doing other things," he suggested, and she groaned.
"I'm not sure I can," she confessed, sitting up a little stiffly.
"That's fine," he said, kissing her forehead. "There's always tomorrow night. Or breakfast. Or just a few hours from now..."
She groaned, snuggling up next to his chest. There was something absurdly safe and lovely about being close to Tucker like this. She had no idea that she would feel like this about him, not this safe, not this at peace.
At least, that was how she felt until he opened his mouth to speak again.
"I would like you to sleep in your own room tonight," he said, and she jerked away, looking at him with wide eyes. She was still a little blown from their physical activities, and his words felt as if he had dropped ice cubes on her.
"What? What's the matter? What did I do wrong?"
Was she mistaken, or did he flinch just a little? Then it was gone, and she decided that she must have imagined it, because his face was perfectly smooth and reasonable again.
"Nothing wrong at all, but these last two nights have been a little different. I hadn't gone back to work yet, and of course that meant that I could sleep and wake up as I pleased. Things are going to be a little busier for me over the next little while, so I am going to need to sleep alone."
"Oh, I see," Luna said woodenly.
Her brain raced through all the compromises they could make, but then it ran flat into the brick wall that was Tucker's bland resolve. This was what he wanted. If he had wanted something different, she was sure he would have said so.
Luna had to quash the childish urge to ask if she could stay and cuddle for a little while, but surely that was not something that a sophisticated woman said to her lover. Anyway, she might risk falling asleep cuddled up next to him, and then he would have to wake her up to send her on her way. That would be frankly humiliating.
"Luna?"
With a hot blush of embarrassment, she realized that she had simply been staring at him. Luna covered it up with a bright smile that felt about as brittle as glass and nodded.
"Oh, I totally understand! That's fine," she said.
She fumbled for a little, looking to see where her clothes had gone, but Tucker was kind enough to offer her a robe. It was obviously his, dark blue and velvety, and she wrapped it around herself as if it was a protection of some kind.
"Good night," she said, and when she glanced back, she could see that he was already getting ready for bed.
"Good night, little one," he said, and Luna knew that his mind was already on other things.
His indifference left a hot coal in her throat, one that only seemed to get brighter and hotter the farther she got away from him. There was a small voice inside her telling her to run back and demand more, a better explanation at least, or some kind of compromise, but she pushed it down again. She was not going to do that. She was not going to act like some idiot who couldn't live without the attention of the man she was with.
Besides, she thought, I am not even with him, am I? We're not dating at all. We're just... that is, he's just using me to get the child he wants. As soon as he has that, he's going to send me away. Don't forget, this is a limited time engagement.
She got back to her room. She had been using it as a dressing room for the last few days, but now she was faced with the reality of actually sleeping in it for the first time. It was large and quite beautiful, but in that moment, it felt ridiculously cavernous to her, too big, too many echoes. Reluctantly, she stripped off the robe and hung it up before reaching for one of the ivory silk nightgowns he had purchased for her. The bed was perfectly comfortable, but it felt lonely, so ridiculously lonely that Luna couldn't stay in it for more than a few minutes. She tossed and turned, and every moment, she expected to reach out and to be able to touch a man who wasn't there.
I can't sleep like this, she thought, and she rose up from the bed.
He had bought her a robe as well, but she ignored where it hung in her closet. Instead, Luna fetched his robe instead, even if it nearly touched the floor when she shrugged it on. She knotted the belt firmly around her waist, and wrapped about with what felt like a vestige of his scent and his warmth, she sighed. It was better. It was not the real thing, but it was better than nothing.
Luna padded her way down the hall to her studio. There were strong lights in there that made it as bright as day, and
she spent a few hours going over her designs, trying to find the perfect combination of features that would make the ring that she wanted to make for Tucker truly sing. She wasn't there yet, but she was getting close. She realized that it might be one of the most ambitious pieces she had tried yet.
I am not sure he deserves something this nice, Luna thought mutinously, but with a shrug, she knew that there was no one else she wanted to make it for. Tucker was wrapped up in the ring's design, and by the time she finished it, he would be the only one who could wear it, who she would feel right about wearing it.
She worked until her eyes started to water and her hands started to shake. Luna knew that if she pushed it much longer than that, she was going to find herself making stupid mistakes, and there was no reason for that. She dreaded the thought of going back to her large and empty bedroom, but there was a long chaise lounge pushed against her studio's wall. It was too short for Tucker to stretch out on, but it should be perfect for her. There was even a folded throw tossed over the end that she could spread over herself for a blanket.
In the end, it was far from the most uncomfortable bed she had made, and no worse than some of the better ones. In the dim light, she finally felt herself drifting off, her eyes closing almost reluctantly. Despite the comfort of the chaise and throw, she found that her dreams were thin things and ugly. In the morning when she woke up, she had memories of people she liked mocking her viciously and leaving her behind, though afterward she could not make a great deal of sense of any of it.
Chapter Eleven
Over the next few weeks, Luna found herself thinking wistfully back to the first days she had spent in Florence with Tucker. Those days had acquired a strange glow all their own, and though she sometimes wondered if she was idealizing them, they were certainly different from what they did now.
She awakened in the morning and she made her way down to the café he had introduced her to that first day. She ordered food to go, and most of the time, when she made it back to the flat, she could hear Tucker showering. She left two pastries for him, and she took her own food to the studio to eat it.
Then Luna worked. She usually liked to work on several projects at once, and she tried that now. However, no matter what she designed or how clever her designs were, she kept going back to the ring she plotted for Tucker. There was something obsessive about that design. It haunted her the way that no other design had, and at some point, she realized that she would have to finish it before she could truly work on anything else.
As Luna worked, she could hear Tucker coming and going. He had his own office in the flat, but more often than not, he would go work at the branch of his empire that was contained in Florence. There was something strangely soothing about listening to him converse with his contacts in casual Italian, and more than once, she found her feet slowing by his door, not to eavesdrop, but simply to feel his speech cascade over her. Luna knew very well that she was acting like a lovesick little girl, but it was hard to prevent it.
She would go down to a small nearby bistro for lunch, or she would order something. She might nap from time to time. The days seemed very long, even when she filled them with work that she loved. Near evening, Tucker would finally appear, looking tired or triumphant, irritated or bored, but he would always smile at her.
“All right, little one, ready for some dinner?”
She had heard once that the best way to keep a man interested was to deny him frequently, but she hated that advice. Why would she deny him something that for once, they both wanted? She would nod, and then he would sweep her away.
For the next few hours, it would feel as if someone had turned on the light in a dark room. She and Tucker would talk about whether they wanted to eat out, or stay in, they would talk about how their days had been, they would smile and touch, and things felt... so good that she could have cried.
When they were together in the evening, eating, smiling, and sharing, she felt complete. She felt safe, and she felt happy. Luna had never really considered before what that might truly feel like. She had always balanced on the edge of poverty, too close to the edge to truly feel safe and secure anywhere. Because of the constant hustle and bustle, she had not had the time to make the connections that might have cushioned her from some of the worst life had to offer.
She knew that it wasn't the money, no matter what Tucker might cynically assume. Her mother had always said that you might as well marry a rich man as a poor man, but it would not have mattered if Tucker had cash or not. There was something about sitting with him, talking with him, that made her feel as if someone had her back. Perhaps that was the most important thing, the thing that made her smile.
The transition to Tucker's enormous bedroom might be swift and hungry, or it might be slow and nearly seductive, but every night, she found herself in his arms. If the hours she spent laughing with him were heaven, she had no idea how to even define what he made her feel in bed.
Luna had never thought of herself as a particularly passionate woman.
After feeling a complete lack of response to the boys and men who had tried kissing her or touching before, she even suspected that she was frigid. Well, if she were frigid, Tucker had what it took to thaw her out. In his arms, she felt as if she was made of liquid fire, melting and open, pliable and needy in his arms.
One night, she saw deep claw marks in his shoulders, and she gasped out loud.
"What is it?" Tucker asked, instantly alarmed. Sometimes, she thought he had never quite gotten over taking her virginity. There was always an element of concern when they were in bed together, but perhaps that was the way he was with all of his lovers. She pushed the thought away, because the idea of him with other lovers was terrible.
She pointed wordlessly, and he rose to inspect the scratches in the mirror. When he came back, Tucker was chuckling.
“I suppose I'll be wearing those for a few days," he said, sprawling back in bed with her. "Don't worry, you didn't break skin at all."
"But I hurt you," Luna said hesitantly, biting her lip. "I... I never wanted to hurt you."
"Like you could," he said with a soft kiss, and it wasn't until later that she thought of how indifferent his words had been.
"Still..."
"Don't fret," Tucker said, kissing her again. This time, the kiss had less to do with comfort and far more to do with the heat that was rising up between them. "If I decide that your adorable little claws are too dangerous, I'll simply tie you up before I pleasure you."
The mix of sensuality and practicality in his words brought a surge of heat up in her body, and he chuckled when she whimpered.
They made love again, but then came the point in the evening that Luna was growing to hate above all others. Eventually, sooner or later, and sometimes much later, there would come the point where Tucker would sigh and say something about needing to be up all too soon, or not wanting to wear her out. It was never direct. It was never, ever cruel, but she knew it for what it was.
She was being dismissed, and every night, Luna had to bite back tears before calmly leaving. She thought at first that this was simply the way things worked in Tucker's circle, but eventually, Luna decided that no woman would put up with this, not any woman that Tucker truly loved. No one would consent to this humiliating display, and she shivered a little.
Luna found that she couldn't go back to her own room, no matter how many days went by or how used to the new days she became. Instead, she would find her way to her studio again and the small chaise there. Sometimes she would work long into the night, but more often, she would tuck herself into her tiny bed and stare blankly into the darkness, hoping that sleep would take her. It felt like something was breaking inside her, but she refused to name it, and she refused to give in to it.
She looked up from her work one morning, aware that she was menstruating, that there was no child this month. When Luna brought it up to him, nervously, worried about an explosion of temper, Tucker had only shrugged it off.
<
br /> "I'm not enough of an optimist to think that this could all be handled in one day in a month," he said. "I am painfully aware that we are not looking at something that I can control like a boardroom or a ship. Relax. It only gets more difficult if you tense up."
He had been nothing but solicitous, and somehow, that had made her feel even worse. She didn't know how long this could go on before something broke inside her, but all she knew was that when they resumed their attempts to have Tucker's child five days later, she was almost so desperate to touch him that she forgot about anything else.
Then at the end of it, she went back to her place in the studio, and she remembered all too well.
***
Tucker thought things were going fairly well, all things considered. He was a little disappointed when Luna shyly told him that things hadn't come to fruition the first month, but he hadn't expected it.
He had finally created a balance with the girl herself, he thought. Thinking about the first days they had spent together, there was still a part of him that wanted that, that wanted beautiful walks along the boulevards, explorations and laughter. That was the part of him that wanted to make Florence truly theirs together, and that wanted to spoil her utterly.
Sometimes, that voice was incredibly seductive. It always seemed like it was the most seductive when she silently rose from his bed and went to her own. The wrench that he felt when she got up to leave never seemed to get any gentler, and more than once, he had almost caved into the weakness to ask her to stay. Sleeping with her had been something exceptional, a kind of peace he had never dreamed about, let alone thought could be a nightly occurrence.
However young and inexperienced Luna was, however, Tucker knew that it would not be very smart to let her know that she had that kind of power over him. It would be too much, especially when there was the prospect of a child on the way.
