A Perfect Storm (8 page)

With a big swallow, Owen wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “Sorry, Mom.”

Swallowing down her curiosity—for the moment, anyway—Sophie stepped in. “It’s partially my fault. I was already here admiring the bread when Owen showed up. I introduced myself, and we started chatting. I distracted him from his job.”

“You got your free pass right there, buddy.” Her voice stern, Emma then ruined it by leaning across the counter and smacking a loud, messy kiss to her son’s cheek. “Finish up that slice while I get the plate ready for you to take outside.”

Around a mouthful of bread again, Owen said, “I think Sophie wants a piece too.”

“Sweetie.” Emma pinched Owen’s lips. “Your mouth. Food. No talking while it’s full.” Multitasking, Emma then began slicing the loaf of bread while talking to Sophie. “I swear he has manners and knows how to use them.” Efficiently, she completed slicing one loaf of bread and moved on to the second. “I think the excitement of the storm has everyone a bit off kilter.” Emma grabbed a plate out of a cabinet, slid it in front of Sophie and then moved to the fridge. “Help yourself.” Coming back with jam and butter, she added, “As soon as I get this plate ready for Owen to take outside, I can make you some eggs or pancakes or oatmeal.” Disappearing into a pantry, Emma then reemerged with a jar of peanut butter and went on without skipping a beat. “I also have plenty of fruit. I can put a plate together with some cottage cheese, if you’d prefer.”

Sophie finished spreading strawberry jam on her bread, and her mouth watered. “No worries. The bread is plenty. Thank you.” Upon taking a bite, Sophie moaned as the warm, soft, sweet goodness drenched her taste buds. Mindful not to set a bad example, Sophie chewed and swallowed before saying, “I would love some coffee, though.”

“Ooh, Mom!” Owen hopped off his stool, rounded the counter, and raced to the single-cup gourmet coffeemaker. “Can I do it? Please?”

“Be careful.” After giving Owen that warning, Emma turned back to Sophie, chuckling softly as she rolled her eyes. “He loves that thing.”

Putting her chin in her hand, Sophie couldn’t help smiling at the excitable kid. “It’s a cool gadget,” she mused, remembering the first time her mother had let her feed huge chunks of fruit into a juicer. “I wish I had one myself.”

With a grin in return, Emma went back to spreading various condiments onto her many slices of freshly baked bread.

As Sophie munched on her breakfast, she watched Emma and couldn’t reconcile this openly loving mother, who flitted about the kitchen more naturally than any of those chefs who had their own TV shows, with the woman tied up last night begging for two men to fuck her and push at the boundaries of her sexual pleasure. Unlike when seeing Cale and Magnus again, Sophie couldn’t as easily transfer back to that bedroom and see Emma with her hair flowing in fiery tresses around her face, or the way her puckered nipples capped her alabaster breasts, or how she’d screamed as she came. Emma and her needs had sat front and center in that scene last evening, but now Sophie only saw the homemaker and mother within the curvy redhead.

Sophie suddenly started as the truth hit her. She had double standards. Despising the thud that hit her stomach with the realization, she absently thanked Owen for her coffee when he brought it to her and then slipped back into the dialogue running silently at mach speed in her brain. She naturally allowed that Cale and Magnus had elements of raw, sexual beings inside them but that they also functioned every day in society as professional men. But when it came to Emma, Sophie’s brain fought to keep those two pieces of Emma as separate people.

I’m a hypocrite. I don’t openly accept women as sexual entities the same way I do men
. Immediately following that loud thought came the whisper,
That’s because you don’t embrace yourself as a sexual person
. Sophie felt herself making a face.
No way
. She rejected that sentiment. She was by no means a virgin. She’d had sex. Heck, she’d even liked it. She knew how to have an orgasm. She’d even had a few while with a man. She knew how to make herself come when the need struck too. And while she might not want to do it in front of an audience, masturbating did not embarrass or shame her.
Still, though
. Her mind insidiously pushed at her.
You’ve never let go in the earth-shattering way Emma did last night. If that was an earthquake you witnessed, you’ve barely experienced a tremor yourself.

“Not true.” The sweet edge to the mocha coffee turned bitter in Sophie’s mouth, and the bread turned to stone in her stomach. “It can’t be.”

Across the kitchen, a voice asked, “Did you say something?”

Sophie jerked up straight. “What?” Snapping back into reality, she looked around to find Owen now gone and Emma chopping her way through a pile of root vegetables at the table. “No. I’m sorry,” Sophie replied. Warmth filled her cheeks, and she was sure they’d turned pink. “I was just thinking out loud.”

Emma’s eyes twinkled. “I do that too.”

“Hey, babe.” Jade breezed into the kitchen, empty plate in hand. “I wanted to get this back inside before it broke. And Cale gave Owen permission to lug the wheelbarrow around to help with cleanup. Don’t worry.” The svelte woman strolled to Emma’s side. “We won’t let him anywhere near the cliffs, and he’ll always be with one of us.”

“All right. Make sure he keeps his coat on.”

“Will do.” Jade then dipped down and brushed her lips against Emma’s. She lingered on Emma’s mouth with grazes and little kisses. It didn’t take but a second for Emma to hum a throaty little noise and rise to her feet, straight into Jade’s embrace. Clearly deepening the kiss, Jade ran a hand down Emma’s back to her ass and then to her hip, touching with obvious familiarity and easy affection. Emma made another soft, purring sound and rubbed herself against Jade’s thigh.

Mentally blocked no more—at least where Emma was concerned—Sophie could now easily picture the redhead flat on her back with her thighs wide apart, and Jade with a big dildo strapped on, taking Emma until the smaller woman begged and screamed as loudly as the sounds Cale and Magnus had ripped out of her last night.

With a groan, Jade broke the kiss and stepped away. “You taste like sugar, sweetheart.” She stole another fast kiss and said, “I have to get back outside.”

While Emma openly stared at Jade’s backside as the lithe woman left the kitchen, she sank into her chair so languidly Sophie thought she might turn into syrup and spill to the floor. Emma went back to chopping her veggies, but she now wore one of those dreamy little smiles teenagers newly in love don. Much the same as she had in the aftermath of Cale and Magnus working her over last night.

What. The. Heck?

Sophie felt like a broken record, but she couldn’t help it. Those three words had popped into her head more since getting that phone call to come to Raven Island than she’d ever thought or uttered in her life. The need for an explanation about Ravenstoke pressed heavily on Sophie. Illogical or not, the urgent desire to know if anybody in this place belonged to anyone else, or did they all just trade off whenever the whim suited them, ate equally at her brain and her heart. Added to that now was a desire to know if Owen belonged to Lucien. Her gut clenched upon that possibility. If the child belonged to him, then maybe Emma did too. And as ridiculous as it was, for she did not yet know this man at all, Sophie did not want Lucien to belong to anyone else. Not romantically, not sexually, and not intimately in any way.

More than a budding sense of possessiveness or prurient curiosity drove Sophie’s need to seek answers. Every part of her being, burying itself deeper every hour she remained at Raven Island, was the knowledge that her presence was no accident. She just had yet to get even the tiniest answer as to why or how she fit.

Of one thing Sophie had no doubt. Lucien lived in the highest, most important tower in this cloud-shrouded castle. He held all the power.

That meant going straight to the man at the top for answers.

Chapter Five

Long after Lucien had given everyone permission to call it a night, he continued to clean the exterior of his home. The sun had set hours ago, and only a few strategically placed soft lights lit the first of Ravenstoke’s two courtyards. If this castle had truly existed during the times of knights and feverish land wars, Lucien imagined these long and narrow courtyards could have served for something as dainty as a place for the women to gather for tea or as brutal as a training ground for the men. Closed in deliberately by the castle’s design, the grounds offered a great deal of protection against the elements. Today one of them remained a field of grass, and this one served as a place to gather and eat on warmer evenings. That by no means included tonight.

No longer aware of the near-freezing temperatures, Lucien righted a teakwood bench, wiped it down, and wondered how much longer Miss Emerson intended to hold out before she gave up and either asked her questions or went inside. After dismissing the others, Lucien had told Sophie to go get some food and to turn in early for some much needed sleep. She’d earned it, he’d said, and he’d meant it. In the cold and damp of the day, Sophie had kept up with Lucien chop for chop and bag for bag in their cleanup. That sweet little body of hers, buried under all that clothing, had a hell of a lot of power and stamina.

Fuck
. Lucien winced at the sudden sharp, internal tug that brought his balls to life. He couldn’t help imagining all of Sophie’s strength wrapped around him and matching him thrust for thrust in an all-night fuck session that left them both depleted of electrolytes and unable to walk in the aftermath. And if she could build herself up a head of steam during sex like he could goddamn feel her doing right now, Lucien might have to reevaluate his assessment and say she would put him into a coma by the end.

Jesus
. Upon thinking that one word, a different kind of pain immediately rammed itself into Lucien’s gut and slammed him back to reality.
Coma
. Damn it. Lucien squeezed his eyes shut, and his chest banded tight enough to make his next breath painful and difficult to manage.
There is always a job to do. You have not earned respite. You can never turn it off.

No longer in the mood to let Sophie control how long she would dog his ass while she gathered her courage to speak her mind, Lucien spun and found the young woman wiping down the matching bench some dozen feet away. The second he made eye contact with her, she dropped her focus fully to her task.

Growling, Lucien threw his towel across the courtyard and stalked Sophie until just the bench stood between them. Her sapphire gaze widened. She even reared back, but Lucien no longer gave a shit that he might be intimidating her.

“I have fucking felt your judgmental stare drilling a hole into the back of my head all day, Miss Emerson,” he snapped through clenched teeth. “So unless you’re trying to psychokinetically perform a lobotomy on me, goddamn spit out whatever it is you’re clearly itching to say.”

“Hey!” Sophie rounded the bench in a flash and shoved her wadded-up cloth at Lucien’s chest. “I have not judged you. I have not judged one single gosh-darn thing about you or your island or your castle or your employees, Mr. Cabot. Don’t project your labels onto me that you’re maybe secretly feeling yourself.”

Lucien threw up his hands. “I feel no shame in what I do or how I live my life.”

Fire lit the blue in Sophie’s eyes. “And what is it that you do, exactly?”

The tingle of success warmed Lucien’s loins once more. “Be more specific,” he said, rocking his weight back on the heels of his heavy boots.

Sophie’s pupils flared, and a deeper flush pinked her cheeks.
Damn it
. Another minute and Lucien would have to adjust his cock. Her visible passion for information fueled his blood.

Moving in closer, sharing her life force, Sophie looked up into his eyes and crossed her arms beneath her heavily covered breasts. “Are you telling me you’d be willing to talk about how you earn a living, were I to outright ask?”

“Try me.” He crossed his arms right back at her and quirked a brow. “But you only get one question, so ask me what you really want to know.”

“You have to promise to answer it honestly,” she pressed.

Smart girl
. “I will.”

Rather than blurting something out, Sophie studied him openly from top to bottom, her stare narrowing as she did. After a prolonged minute, when she still didn’t speak, Lucien switched to clasping his hands behind his back in order to combat the urge to fidget. And he never fidgeted. Ever. Others did not sweat him out.
He
sweated other people out. It was part of what had once upon a time allowed him to successfully build and own ten nightclubs along the East Coast. Not to mention keep the fact that they were fronts for extremely exclusive sex clubs out of the public eye.

Sophie finally opened her mouth but then just as quickly snapped it shut without saying a word. Lucien nearly buckled under that intense blue gaze that seemed to be memorizing every visible inch of him. In order to get her to stop staring, Lucien almost shouted at her to just ask about what she’d seen Magnus, Emma, and Cale doing last night, as she’d so obviously wanted to do all day long. If she could not build her courage enough to question him, Lucien feared it would confirm that he had intimidated her too much last night. If that turned out to be the case, best he know now so he could figure out how to heighten and draw out her sexual curiosity again.
And quickly.

Just then the drops of mist thickened and became a drizzle. Before Lucien could mutter “Fuck,” the drizzle kicked into a downpour of fat, almost warm raindrops.

Sophie squeaked and yanked the hood of her sweatshirt over her head, just as Lucien shouted, “Come on!” and grabbed her gloved hand. “It’s officially time to call it a night!”

The knitted fabric covering Sophie’s hand sent chilly dampness into Lucien’s palm. Cursing under his breath, Lucien tugged Sophie across the yard to a door that opened to the back end of the kitchen. Once inside, he slammed the cold outside and spun to face Sophie in the shadowed mudroom.