by Kitty French
He flung the balled up letter onto the passenger seat and threw the car into reverse. He put his foot down as he hit the open road, disgusted with himself for even being there in the first place. There was somewhere else he wanted to be.
Sophie lounged in the steaming bubbles and closed her eyes. If she could freeze time, she’d push the button right now. Lucien had transported her into this fairytale of magical skies and sublime sex, but the adventure had to come to an abrupt end tomorrow. Grey skies and marital discord waited impatiently for her, back in London, and the idea of seeing Dan again made her stomach roll with dread.
Her whole world had revolved around him for her entire adult life; he was all she’d known of love. But did she still love him now? She turned the question over in her head. Before she’d met Lucien Knight, she’d have answered yes in a heartbeat, but would it have been the truth? Loving Dan was her default setting, but this week with Lucien had forced her to take an honesty pill when it came to her own emotions.
Sophie reached for the dark glass of Shiraz balanced on the ledge beside the bath and drank deeply. The wine warmed her veins and fortified her with Dutch courage to continue her long overdue personal therapy session.
It was curious really, to stand back and look at the bare facts. Sophie had had an idea that Dan had been seeing someone else for more months than she’d care to admit, yet she’d allowed herself to ignore the mounting evidence. It had been alarmingly easy to consider his alternative explanations plausible rather than face the possible truth and all of its associated ugliness.
Was he aware that she knew? Did he take her lack of challenge as tacit acceptance? Hot shame flushed her cheeks warmer than the steamy bath water. How little must he think of her if that was the case?
She knew in her heart why she’d held her silence. It was simple, really.
She’d wanted him to choose her.
Then along came Lucien Knight, and at one look from him, Sophie had stopped waiting. With one touch, the scales had fallen from her eyes.
Lucien had reminded her how it felt to be adored, and how much she’d missed it.
Memories of Dan tumbled through her mind, and she let them in. Memories of the times he’d been the one taking the time to make her feel adored.
At fourteen, laughing as she rode on the crossbar of his bike all the way home from school. At eighteen, his hair too long and his big easy smile that lit her heart. And on her twenty-first birthday, nervous and down on one knee in the damp leaves as they walked through the park.
Tears slipped from beneath her closed eyelids. Tears for Dan, and for their love that once upon a time had felt too big to break.
Lucien shoved his hands in his pockets and pushed his chin down into his jacket. The cemetery was suitably bleak, and there were no flowers to cheer the grey stone that bore his mother’s name.
Would she be proud of the man he’d become? Would he have trodden the same path if she’d lived? He didn’t have any answers, or anyone to ask. She’d been gone from his life for more years now than she’d been there, and his recollections of her were all wrapped up in childish memories of wiped tears and goodnight kisses, of scraped knees and snowy Christmas mornings.
It hadn’t been a conscious decision to wrap his heart up and bury it along with his mother, yet it had somehow happened anyway. He’d stood at this same graveside all those years back, a man-child, barely a teenager, suddenly alone and bereft of love. No one had come close to melting the ice around his heart since then, though many had tried.
He’d grown up beautiful and rebellious, trouble to everyone and desired all the more for it by the girlfriends who’d littered his past.
Lucien reached out a hand and laid it against the cold, hard stone. Her face was indistinct in his mind now; she was more a feeling than an image. Her memory had kept him safe as he’d grown. She was the only person who’d looked at him and understood his heart.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. He’d come here because he needed to talk and there was no one else to listen.
What was he doing with Sophie Black? Why was he trying to save her? What the fuck did he think he was: Knight by name and Knight by nature? And if that was it, why did he feel more and more like she was the one saving him?
Without even trying, Sophie had gotten under his skin in a way that the many polished and predatory women who’d populated his life and his bed before now had never managed. Her softness and her bravery impressed the hell out of him, and finding her in his arms when he woke seemed to still his ever-present need to get up and fight.
He closed his eyes for a second in silent remembrance, and then turned and walked away.
CHAPTER THIRTY
All cried out and resolved to make the most of these last stolen hours, Sophie returned to Lucien’s bedroom and noticed the note he’d propped on the bedside table.
“I’ve fired up the saunarium for you. Try it, I think you’ll like it.”
Sophie wandered back into the bathroom, the note still in her hand. Saunarium? Was that the same as a sauna? She’d noticed the wooden door in there yesterday, but the tiered, planked room had been cool and dry when she’d peered in.
It wasn’t cool in there anymore.
She glanced down at the white fluffy towel wrapped around her body. Her own private spa session was too good an opportunity to pass up. She grabbed a glass of cold water then stepped inside, instantly aware of ambient heat, and thankful that she was able to breathe easily thanks to the clever mix of heat and humidity. So a saunarium was something between a sauna and a steam room, she realised. Trust Lucien to have the best of both worlds.
Sophie breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, then settled herself into the corner of the lower bench opposite the door. Her whole body felt infused with heat, as if the warmest sunshine was kissing her skin. Low lights glowed in the ceiling, turning the room into a blissful cocoon.
A sigh of pleasure left Sophie’s lips as she leaned back and willed herself to relax. Her tearful session in the bath had proved cathartic on many levels. She’d cried out of regret for the loss of trust in her marriage and sadness at her trampled hopes of forever love with Dan. She’d finally taken off her rose tinted glasses and, come tomorrow, she was ready to grab her life by the scruff of the neck and shake it, hard. She had no idea where the jumbled pieces would fall, but she refused to allow herself to be cowed by fear of the unknown.
Hadn’t this week shown her that life could be bigger and better than she’d ever imagined it to be? This fantasy interlude with Lucien wasn’t real life, but it would be a lie and a disservice to him to deny that every minute had been anything other than breathtaking.
Still, she had no idea how she could continue working for him after this week. He was hands down the most charismatic, fabulous man she’d ever met, the stuff of every woman’s daydreams, but life with him in it felt rather like having her foot jammed on the accelerator. He left her breathless and giddy, and he did things to her body that she didn’t even know could be done. She barely knew him, yet he seemed to know her inside out.
She’d climbed out of the bath, and like a snake shedding its skin, she’d left the old Sophie behind. The girl gazing back at her in the steamed up mirror was all new and shiny-eyed, and ready to rock her own world.
Sophie breathed in deeply as she relaxed back onto the saunarium bench. She was warm to the bones. Hot, in actual fact. She opened her eyes and glanced down at her towel, then up again at the doorway. She was certain no one would come in here aside from Lucien, and he was still out pursuing his mysterious business ends. Her fingers unworked the towel from beneath her arms, and with a last glance towards the door, she unwrapped it and let it fall open on the bench.
She was naked in Lucien’s saunarium.
Feeling suddenly exposed, even though she was alone, Sophie took a long slug of cold water and pushed her damp hair back from her forehead.
Thoughts of Lucien in the woods earlier crept unbidde
n into her mind when she closed her eyes. Her wrists still tingled from where he’d tied her up, and her body still fizzed with the memory of her orgasms. She glanced down at her body, flushed and glistening damp, and wondered what she’d do if Lucien were to open the door at that very moment.
Would she grab for the towel to cover up, or would she invite him in? Easy. Her feeling of ultra-relaxation morphed slowly into nerve-tingling arousal as she imagined him. Yes, she could well imagine Lucien using this room… big, bronzed and butt naked. Her hands smoothed down the length of each of her damp arms, and then settled lightly over her breasts at the thought of him undressed.
She closed her eyes and massaged her own warm flesh, slick with a sheen of moisture from the damp heat. Her nipples peaked beneath her sliding thumbs, the imprint of Lucien’s mouth fastening over them in the woods that morning seared clear on her memory. She sighed as she laid her head back against the stepped wooden bench behind her, caught up in the heated recollection of Lucien’s hands on her body. That little moan of appreciation he’d made low in his throat when he’d discovered she’d obeyed his command to leave her knickers at home. The way he’d licked her lips as he slid his hand inside her jeans and found himself cupping her bare sex. She cupped it herself now, mirroring his actions to recreate that throb of anticipation between her legs.
Sophie caught her lip between her teeth and gasped softly as she slipped her fingers inside her slick folds, one knee lifted on the bench.
She was so warm, and so open, and completely caught up in her own private re-enactment of the morning’s events beside the waterfall. Jesus, he’d tied her up, anyone could have seen. Her fingers sought her clitoris as she recalled Lucien on his knees pushing his tongue into her sex. He’d licked her here… it had felt like this… Sophie arched as she touched herself, her fingers as insistent as Lucien’s dexterous tongue had been. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as the sensations intensified.
“Need a hand, Princess?”
She yelped with surprise as her eyes flew open and her fingers jumped away from her body. She’d been too far down the line to ecstasy to notice the door opening. She ought to be mortified – the old Sophie certainly would have been - but he was naked, and the molten heat in his eyes told her not to be, as did the erect curve of his cock against his hard, smooth abdomen.
Had she conjured him up by the power of thought alone? He stepped inside and dropped to his knees between her legs.
“Carry on.”
She looked down into the dangerous gleam of his eyes as he laid his head against her inner thigh. Gold on cream. He was close enough to reach out his tongue and lick her, yet he didn’t.
“Tell me what you were thinking of just now.”
Sophie took a huge fortifying gulp of water. Just a few days ago she’d have played things differently, but right now she willed herself to match his boldness. She tipped a little of the cool water onto her fevered skin and they both watched the rivulets run down between her breasts.
“I was remembering.” She let her hand fall casually back between her legs.
He dropped a languorous kiss onto her thigh. “Hmm. Tell me more.”
“I was thinking about this morning… in the woods…” She watched him run his tongue over his lips as she opened herself with her fingers. She could feel his breath on her clitoris.
“Which part?”
She reached out a fingertip and traced the full, damp curve of his lower lip, then touched herself. “The part where you put your hand inside my jeans to check if I was wearing knickers.”
He lifted an approving eyebrow. “I liked that part too.” He kissed the back of her fingers. “What else?”
Sophie could barely get her breath. She was hot, and wet, and desperate for him. She kept her voice steady, with an effort.
“I was thinking about how your tongue felt on me.” She circled her clitoris with her fingers as she spoke. “I was imagining you licking me. Right here.”
“Here?” He followed the movement of her fingers with the faintest trace of his tongue, making her shudder with pleasure.
“I love the taste of you,” he murmured. “Keep talking.”
That wasn’t so easy with his mouth a whisper away from her sex. “I was thinking about your hard, beautiful cock inside me.” He groaned, his heated mouth so close to her, letting her know how much her words were turning him on. It was a heady feeling. “About you fucking me hard against that tree.”
His control snapped, and he replaced her hands with his own between her legs, his fingers splayed on her thighs to hold her open. His thumbs slid inside her as he lowered his head to make slow, hypnotic love to her with his mouth, shockingly intimate and mind-numbingly erotic. She wanted it to last a lifetime, but he had her in seconds. Breathless with exquisite pleasure, she watched and felt him worship her. His eyes flickered up and connected with hers as he held her in his mouth while she came. Dangerously dark and glittering, their grey-blue depths were heavy with the promise of a long night ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
They dressed for dinner.
Lucien looked like James Bond’s sexier brother, lethal and dripping with sex appeal. Sophie felt as if she’d stepped onto a film set and been unwittingly cast as his lucky love interest. But of course, as in all the best Bond movies, she was only Lucien’s leading lady until the adventure ended.
The food was divine, yet they barely tasted it.
Her knee touched his as she reached for her wine.
His fingers brushed hers as he refilled her glass.
His gaze lingered on her lips as she tested the golden cloudberry puree drizzled around the perfectly set pannacotta.
“This is delicious.” She savoured the chilled, velvet cream in her mouth.
Lucien inclined his head as he sampled his own dessert. “It’s missing something.” He pushed his chair back and headed around the table with his dessert plate in his hand. “What do you think?” He spooned a little of his pannacotta into her mouth, his eyes on her lips. He was in full-on predator mode, and a thrill of anticipation rippled down Sophie’s spine.
He rested against the table, and she placed a deliberately casual hand on his leg as she swallowed her mouthful of the faultless dessert.
“Mmm. I see what you mean…”
Lucien’s eyes dropped to watch her hand slide up his thigh. In seconds, he pulled her onto her feet against his body.
“You know, I think it needs to be sweeter,” he said, and slid down the zipper on her dress.
It pooled on the floor, leaving Sophie outrageously turned on and wearing only her knickers and black suede high heels. His eyes roved over her body, and his tongue touched his lip in concentration as he switched her around to perch on the table. Lucien’s fingers were already working open the buttons of his shirt, and he threw it aside a moment later and shifted her to sit more securely on the edge of the table.
It was cold and smooth beneath her bottom, even more so when Lucien dispensed with her knickers a second or two later. He moved in close between her legs, his mouth over hers.
“You should tell the cook to add a little more sugar,” she said, massaging his erection through his trousers.
“Hm.” Lucien dipped his finger into his dessert and wiped it across Sophie’s lower lip. She snaked out the tip of her tongue to taste it, and met his tongue there already doing the same thing. His arms were braced either side of her body as she tilted her head back to let him do a thorough job on her mouth.
“That tastes a little sweeter already,” he murmured.
“Not enough, though?” she asked, fully aware that it wouldn’t be.
He shook his head, rueful. “Not quite.”
Sophie nodded, then dipped her own fingers into the pannacotta and painted her peaked nipples until they resembled the Alps outside the windows. “Would this help, do you think?”
He lifted an approving eyebrow. “Let me check.”
He lapped each of her nipples cle
an, and the connection between his hot tongue and the cold dessert on her flesh made Sophie sigh with pleasure. His cock was as hard as rock under her hand.
“Well?” she whispered, besieged by the rampant lust in his eyes when he straightened.
“It’s almost there.” He reached behind her, and in one swift move he swept the entire contents of the dining table onto the floor.
Everything besides his pannacotta.
His warm hands spanned her waist and shifted her backwards on the table, and he spread her legs wide. Sophie knew full well where he was headed, and her body trembled with anticipation. She bit her lip as his fingers dipped into his dessert, and her body tightened with erotic shock as he smeared the chilled cream between her legs. He paused momentarily to admire his handiwork; a layer of thick peaked swirls that covered her modesty in the lewdest possible way.
“Taste me.” She was halfway to begging, and that cocky half grin touched Lucien’s lips.
“Say that again.”
“Please, Lucien. Taste me.”
Lucien dropped his head, a slow drag of his tongue up the entire length of her sex. Sophie’s stomach twisted as she watched the cream transfer from her body to his tongue. “Better?”
His hand splayed on her stomach. “It’s fucking delicious.”
His thumb massaged the cream into her pubic bone, a whisper away from her clitoris, and when he finally dropped his head and devoured her, the switch from playful to deadly serious had her almost coming on the spot. His tongue and lips were all over her sex. Sucking, lapping, licking her clean.
Sophie dropped back onto the cool tabletop and pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks, closer to orgasm with every stroke of his tongue. He pulled her to the edge of the table and unbuckled his trousers, then thrust his sheathed cock inside her without any need for preamble.
Sophie was hot, wet and ready, and he was gloriously hard, fast and filthy. She came almost as soon as he slammed into her, and Lucien came seconds after. It was too intense to last more than that couple of moments, but they were easily the sexiest moments of Sophie’s life.
