Knight and Stay (15 page)

"Does that bother you?" Lucien enquired smoothly.

"You're not allowed to ask a second question," she said, mostly because she wanted to avoid answering it.

Lucien raised his eyebrows for a second, and then leaned forward and dealt two cards.

Sophie reached for hers. Ten of hearts. The corners of her mouth tipped up involuntarily, enjoying the game now that she was likely to win the round. She turned the card to Lucien, who nodded philosophically and dropped his three of clubs on the table.

"Any preference?" he asked, gesturing down at his clothes with perfect assurance.

"You choose."

He rubbed his lips together in deliberation, and then started to unbutton his shirt.

Sophie swallowed her tequila.
Trust him to go straight for a big money item.
He watched her face as he popped the last button and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders onto the floor.

He settled back into the chair, thoroughly comfortable with his semi-clad state.

"Is it interrogation time again?"

"You say interrogation, I say talking."

"Let's call the whole thing off then and cut to the sex bit."

"Very funny." Sophie chewed her lip.  "Why are you so anti-marriage?"

Lucien's expression gave so little away, but Sophie didn't miss the way his grip tightened on the arms of the chair.

He shrugged. "I'll take the dare."

Sophie paused. She hadn't banked on that, and she seriously doubted that her limited imagination could come up with anything that would be out of Lucien's comfort zone, not sexually at least, anyway. The tequila wasn't helping either, she couldn't think straight.

"Umm… Sing to me!" she said, giggling.

He laughed. "Don't be fucking ridiculous."

Sophie realised with pleasure that she'd inadvertently hit on something that actually made him uncomfortable.

"I don't sing. Not for you or anyone else."

"Not even in the shower?"

"Want to come in with me to check?"

Sophie wasn't letting him off the hook. "Truth or dare. You choose."

He rolled his broad shoulders and glanced down.

"Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage, as they say. It fucks people up."

"So you
do
believe in love?"

"Only when it comes to your tits. And that was two questions. Take your dress off as a forfeit."

It was an unsatisfactory answer, but she had no chance to object as he cleverly moved her attention on with his sexy demand.

"You can't make up new rules."

He lifted an eyebrow at her lazily then pushed a card across the table.

She looked at it with trepidation, then reached down and flipped it over quickly.

"Ha!" She pointed at the queen of clubs and then at Lucien. "Ha!"

He turned over the king of diamonds and sat back with his arms folded across his naked chest.

"Dress. Off. Now."

Sophie's problem lay in her underwear. The idea of continuing this game clad only in the indecent quarter-cup bra and barely-there knickers had her reaching for her tequila yet again.

Was she brave enough?
Her only other option was to throw in the towel, and that didn't feel like something that could happen in Lucien's rulebook. Besides, she wanted to keep asking him questions. What’s more, she had to acknowledge that a part of her did want to take off her dress and let him look. A frisson ran through her body at the thought.

He watched her weigh up her options in silence, arms still crossed and a look of unyielding expectation on his face.

The dress had to come off.
She stood up, reminded of her first time with Lucien in the Gateway club in London. Back then he'd
asked
her to take her dress off rather than
ordered
her, though.

She reached for the side zip and slid it down, then shrugged the dress into a pool on the floor. Two options presented themselves. Sit down quickly, or stand there brazenly and let him drink his fill.

"Sophie, Sophie, Sophie."

Lucien's low, appreciative groan sealed the deal.

Sophie attempted the universal model pose, a hand on her hip, one knee slightly bent, and Lucien nodded a little.

"Fucking beautiful."

He stood and walked slowly towards her, and she held her breath in anticipation.

"Something's not quite right," he said, close enough to touch her anywhere he chose. Her nipples beaded for him, and the tip of his tongue touched his lips as he looked at them.

"Sit down."

Her eyes flickered to his, and he inclined his head towards the armchair. Surprised, Sophie perched uncertainly, and Lucien took his place behind her on the arm of the chair.

"It's your hair," he murmured, resting his hands on the curve of her neck, his thumbs rolling on her backbone. "I want it down." Her hands moved to unpin it, but he caught them and laid them back in her lap. "Let me."

Sophie closed her eyes as his fingers moved over her hair, slowly removing the pins one by one. It was an act of tenderness, so out of place in the theatre of their sex games that it brought a lump to her throat. This was what had been missing from her marriage, too. Scorching sex was all well and good, but she could have lived forever with Dan's missionary style if he'd shown her even a fraction of the sensitivity that Lucien did right at that moment.

She heard the tinkle of pins on glass, then felt the strength and warmth of Lucien's fingers working through her hair. Mussing, freeing, caressing. He moved from the arm of the chair and dropped to his knees between hers, then leaned back a little to survey his handiwork. His eyes roamed over her hair, her face, then lower, to her exposed breasts.

"Now you're perfect."

He dipped his head first to one nipple, then the other. The lightest of kisses, the briefest swirl of his tongue before he lifted his face to hers and kissed her mouth. His hands slid into the hair he'd just unpinned, his kiss tasted of tequila and tenderness and desire.

He'd done it again.
Blindsided her with his contradictions: one minute the lustful Viking and the next her romantic hero. He kissed her until she couldn't think straight, until her arms wound around him of their own accord, until all thoughts of anything but how very much she wanted him left her head.

And then he stopped and retreated to his own chair.

"I believe it's my turn to ask a question," he said.

She swallowed, already mourning the loss of his touch.

"Tell me your wildest sexual fantasy."

Fuck
. Before Lucien, her wildest fantasy had been sex that lasted more than ten minutes and guaranteed that she'd get to her own orgasm before Dan climaxed and rolled over.

And since Lucien, the idea of fantasies seemed absurd because he was one great big living fantasy, and he made her think and do things that were all well above and beyond any that her sheltered imagination could conjure up.

"Honestly?" she said, embarrassed. "I don't have any."

Lucien looked incredulous. "Everyone has fantasies, princess."

Sophie shook her head. "Our lives are very different, Lucien."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that before I met you my life revolved around the weekly shop, the TV guide and scrubbing the bath. I was someone's wife, someone who expected dinner on the table and clean clothes in his wardrobe. I typed building extension reports for a lecherous boss whose wife I picked out Christmas presents for. Any fantasies I had mainly involved someone else cooking my dinner and no alarm going off in the morning."

Whoa. Where did all of that come from?
And how wildly inappropriate, given her state of undress.

"And you have to ask me why I'm anti-marriage?" Lucien arched his eyebrow.

Sophie huffed softly. She'd walked right into that one.

"Anyway, that's my truthful answer."

He shook his head, probably shocked by her provincial dullness.

"We need to work on that, Ms. Black. Come on over here so I can take off your bra."

"You haven't won the round yet."

He rolled his eyes and then dealt out two cards, turning first hers and then his own, scowling at her delighted laugh. Tequila was the best drink in the world. Even though she was sitting there in next to nothing, she was able to draw competitive joy from winning.

"You lose, Mr. Knight."

He rolled his shoulders with a decidedly bored look on his face. "I’m going to make this really easy."

He stood and unfastened his trousers, sliding them off along with everything else except for his black Calvin Cleins.

Dear God.
If he ever wanted to try his hand at male modelling, agencies would be fighting in the streets for him. One shot of him like this and women would queue to buy
anything
he was selling.

He sat back down and looked at her expectantly.

"Now will you come over here?"

"You can't take off my bra unless I lose."

"Get over here."

"But I haven't asked my question yet."

"Sophie..." Lucien's voice dropped to a warning growl, far too sexy to resist, and Sophie made her way over to him and let him tug her down sideways into his lap.

He was warm and solid beneath her curves and his erection pressed pleasurably against her bottom as she curled up and made herself comfortable.

Lucien ran a finger beneath one of Sophie's bra straps. "It's almost a shame to take this off." He eased one strap down and then the other. "I like it." His hands moved around her body to open the clasp, and Sophie suddenly didn’t care in the least about fair play. Having him peel off her underwear was screamingly sexy.

They both looked down as he cupped her breasts in his hands, circling her nipples with the pads of his thumbs.

"I'm ready for your question now." He looked up into her eyes, no doubt fully aware that there was very little chance that she'd be able to string a coherent sentence together at that moment. She cast around in her lust-addled mind, badly wanting to prove him wrong.

"Why don't you have any pets?" she squeaked, then immediately groaned.
Where in Gods name had that thought come from, and why, how had it left her mouth?
She pressed on regardless. "You know... a dog, or a cat... or a goldfish, maybe?"

He rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

"Do I look like the sort of man who has time for pets, Sophie?"

She didn't answer, pink-cheeked and more than aware of the weirdness of trying to conduct a conversation about domestic animals whilst sitting on his raging erection.

"I had a dog when I was a kid. A husky."

His quietly spoken words changed the mood abruptly. In her mind’s eye Sophie could clearly see the small blond haired child running across pristine arctic snow, his silvery, wolfish companion barrelling along beside him. It was a joyful image, yet the feeling that accompanied it somehow wasn't, and Lucien's face told her that his memories weren't happy ones either.

She touched his cheek and tilted her head up to his, and he unreservedly accepted the distraction. His tongue slipped into her mouth and kicked up the heat from tender to crazy hot; hungry, open mouthed kisses as his arms locked vice-like around her frame and held her captive. Sophie could feel the swell of him hardening.

"Let me fuck you now?" His fingers moved between her legs, stroking her through thin silk. "Let me fuck you now."

Sophie could hear the need in his voice as much as the want, and it melted her more than ever. She stood and stepped quickly out of her underwear. As he did the same she paused for a second's thought, then added an extra cushion to the seat for height, before sitting down on the deep armchair and spreading her thighs.

"Sit here." She patted the velvet seat-pad between her legs, and he looked quizzical for a moment. "Please?"

Lucien didn't question her, and she was grateful. She wanted to give back to him, to soothe him, to take back her question that had raised unwelcome memories.

He settled back against her with a sigh. The additional cushion had raised her bottom enough for the line of her shoulders to be higher than his, and he massaged her ankles when she wrapped her legs around him.

Sophie revelled in the width of his chest, letting her fingers linger on the tightness of his nipple until he sighed, caught somewhere between relaxed and turned on as he rested his head back against her shoulder.

"Feels good, princess," he murmured, his hips already rocking a little in anticipation of her hands moving lower.

Sophie touched her mouth to his ear. "Maybe this is my sexual fantasy," she said, letting her hands enjoy him. "A Viking sex god at my disposal."

"Would you like me to dress in fur and drag you by the hair?" he murmured, and Sophie kissed the corner of the lazy smile that touched his lips.
The idea wasn't anywhere near as much of a turn off as it probably should have been.

She shifted a little to one side of him to give herself easier access to his cock with one hand, brushing her fingers along his thigh, making him wait.

"Show me how you like it," she whispered finally, her teeth on his neck as she curved her hand around his erection. "Show me."

He groaned with appreciation, a guttural sound low in his throat as his hand closed over hers on his shaft and started to move.

"Like this?" she asked, not that she needed to. His pleasure was clear from his shallow breathing and his chewed lip.

His grip was firm around hers, firmer than she might have been singlehandedly, and all the more erotic for it. She watched his face; the low frown of concentration over his closed eyes, the way his lips parted as his hand pumped hers, steady strokes, finding his rhythm. His chest rose and fell sharply, the staccato drumbeat of his heart clear beneath her palm.

"Lucien..." she breathed his name, encouragement to take what he needed. He was close; his shallow gasps of pleasure and tight, jerky hand motions told her so.

His cock glistened between their sliding hands, impossibly rigid and straining.

"Fuck, Sophie...Sophie..." Lucien gasped. "Don't stop..."