Knight and Stay (20 page)

Tammy had been bold-eyed last night as she stripped with the expectation of sex. Sophie had none of Tammy's boldness, but she had a lion's heart of courage.
He'd just told her that they were through, for Christ sake.
She'd risked his rejection when she'd taken her clothes off, and Lucien knew her well enough to know that it wouldn't have come easy.
My brave, beautiful princess
. All of those thoughts filled his head in an abstract way, but the overriding sensation leading his body and his hands at that moment was white-hot lust.

He could no more walk away now than he could stop breathing.

Sophie's body responded to his caress, her eyelids drifting down, her lips parting a little with the tiniest of moans. It was an invitation Lucien couldn't resist.

He brushed his lips over hers when she whispered his name, once more as he squeezed the softness of her breasts and let his tongue stray between her lips. 

"Stay with me tonight," she said, her fingers slow and deliberate on the buttons of his shirt.

He knew he should say no, but the words wouldn't come as her palms slid inside his shirt and eased it back over his shoulders. He wanted to be naked. He wanted her hands on him. Christ, he was losing his mind over this woman.

"One more night, Sophie, and then no more." He needed to say it, and he needed Sophie to hear it, and to accept it. "Tonight, and I
will
walk away. Do you understand?"

Her lips trembled beneath his, and her slow tears turned their kiss salty, but she nodded.
Thank God
. Even the temporary reprieve was worth fighting for, somehow representing a tremulous pact that made it okay.

"You’d better make it good then," she half-laughed and half-cried, and he crushed her against him, missing her already.

"Count on me, princess."

Chapter Thirty

It was as if she'd opened the gates to paradise.

Lucien was parched and desperate to drink from her, to fill himself to the brim with the magical elixir that seemed to flow from her soft curves and hidden hollows straight into his bloodstream.

He lowered his head and captured her nipple between his lips, turned on as much by her groan of pleasure as by the feel of the nub in his mouth. He swirled his tongue over her as he let his hands explore her back; the delicate bones of her spine, the way it dipped then flared at the base.

He shrugged out of his shirt as he transferred his attentions to her other nipple, loving the feeling of his skin against her skin again. The sure slide of her hands over his shoulders had him pushing down her lace knickers. There would be time later to take it slow. Right now he was driven by urgent need; the need to embrace her naked body completely, to be overthrown by the mind-blowing sensation that only fucking this woman could give him.  

Sophie's shallow moans of anticipation told him that she was of the same mind, as did the way she swayed her body against his as he reached for his belt.

"I love you like this," she murmured when he gathered her to him, and he had to hold back the words that almost left his own lips as he lifted her onto the edge of the sofa and positioned himself between her legs.

He noticed how she held her breath with anticipation as he let the tip of his cock play against her entrance, and how it rushed from her body when he surged his hips forward. She might have groaned, but he didn't hear it over the animalistic sound that left his own throat. Oh, the way Sophie wrapped her legs around his thighs, and Christ, the feel of her hands pulling him in deeper. She'd regained the weight she'd dropped in her weeks of turmoil and distress and felt to Lucien all the more amazing for it; her lush velvet curves were surely designed to make a man lose his head.
Fuck
. He needed to thrust, and he needed her with him when he came.

Sophie's mouth opened wide under his when he reached a hand behind her head and pulled her into his kiss, and she mouthed his name when he reached his other hand between their bodies and massaged her clitoris as his hips found a furious rhythm. Christ, she was going to come, he could feel her body tensing and it aroused him almost beyond endurance. She clamped him with her legs, her head flung back with pleasure as he slammed himself into her. So sexy.
Bang
. So fucking, fucking sexy.
Bang
. Sophie cried out, her finger nails arcing into his skin as she orgasmed around his cock and under his fingers. Her whole body tightened deliciously, wrenching his own climax out of him with a shout of absolute, blissful, excruciating, intense release.

"Mine." The ragged word left his mouth unplanned and uncensored by rational thought as he buried his face in her neck. "Mine."

Sophie heard Lucien's possessive words and they welded themselves to her heart.

Yes, I'm yours. Completely, utterly yours.

How I wish you were mine too.

Chapter Thirty-One

Sophie settled herself against Lucien's chest as they dropped down together onto the sofa. "Do you want some dinner?"

"No." He stroked her hair.

"Coffee?"

"No."

"Cake?"

"Only if I can smear it all over you and then lick it off."

Sophie harboured no delusion that he was joking; she was instantly transported back to Norway, laid out on Lucien's dining table wearing nothing but his dessert.

"I don't want food or drink. This isn't a date."

She sighed heavily. She didn't ask what this was then, because she knew the answer.

This was goodbye. The best, longest, sexiest goodbye kiss ever.

"Come upstairs?" she whispered, and felt his smile against her neck.

"Now that, Sophie Black, is a much more enticing offer."

Sitting snug behind Lucien in the bathtub half an hour later with her legs wrapped around his hips, Sophie scooped up foamy water in her cupped palms and trickled it over his broad shoulders. He massaged her calves as he lounged idly against her, his eyes closed and a small relaxed smile on his lips as the water ran in rivulets down his chest.

"Feels nice?" She murmured it against his cheek, letting her fingers follow the water to stroke his nipples into stiffness.

"
Nice."
He echoed the lamely inadequate word with a crooked half smile. It was warm and steamy in the bathroom, gilding Lucien's skin with a damp sheen. It was impossible to look at him and not to want to touch him, and Sophie wasn’t holding herself back. She wanted to imprint him on her hands and her memory forever. If this was to be her last time with him, then she was entitled to be greedy.

He leaned forward for a second to top up the warm water, and Sophie's eyes rested on the monochrome lone wolf tattoo that lay across his shoulder blades. It was beautifully detailed, a solitary, restless animal with hungry, watchful eyes.
Much like the man he resided on.

She curled her arms around him when he settled back down.

"Why the wolf?" she asked.

Lucien didn't answer straight away. Instead, he squeezed soap into his hands and smoothed the resulting lather over her bent knees, massaging her skin in broad circles.

"He reminds me of home."

"But you can't see him."

Every trace of his nostalgic smile had gone, replaced by a faraway melancholy. "I don't need to see him to know he's there."

Sophie felt that she knew so much of Lucien, and yet so little too. There was a great, yawning sadness in him that she sensed but couldn't reach. His relationship with his homeland seemed so complex, a love-hate relationship that she couldn't quite grasp. The few occasions she'd tried to push him for information had ended badly, and she didn't want tonight to go the same way.

Not our last night together.

Besides, Lucien was already keen to move things along. He clearly had plenty of ways in mind to make the most of their evening. He'd asked her to fetch the glass dildo he'd once given her, and right now it lay submerged somewhere beneath the warmth of the water.

He sat up and eased her around and over him so that their positions were reversed, a slippery manoeuvre that he pulled off with aplomb. Sophie found herself cradled against his chest. She wriggled herself comfortable, deliciously aware of his cock against the small of her back.

"One hell of an impressive way to change the subject, Mr. Knight," she said, gratified to hear him laugh under his breath. He reached for the shampoo and tipped a little into his palm rather than reply, then smoothed the apple-scented cream over her hair.

"I love the smell of this stuff." Lucien inhaled deeply as he massaged the shampoo into her skull with slow, rhythmic movements that made Sophie sigh as her eyes closed reflexively. "It smells of you."

She was glad then that that her eyes were closed and glad of the damp, steamy room too, because they disguised the tears that welled up at his words. He had no right to be so damn romantic when he denied that romance even existed outside of fairytales.

No one except Sophie’s hairdresser had washed her hair for her since she was six years old. It was an unexpected and distinctly sensual experience having it done for her by Lucien, somewhere between an intimate massage and a loving gesture.

He was unhurried, scooping up all of her hair, making a thorough job of it, spinning it out until she was deeply relaxed under his touch. Then he picked up a glass from a nearby shelf to wash away the lather he'd created, rinse after rinse of cascading warm water and tender hands as she tipped her head back and let him minister to her.

Sophie felt there was a poignant symbolism in his actions, in the gentle way he handled her. Almost as if he wanted to let her know through his careful attentions rather than his words that this evening meant as much to him as it did to her, that this wasn't easy for him either.

She opened her wet eyelashes slowly at the sound of Lucien placing the glass down on the ledge beside the bath. She turned and caught his gaze as he looked at her, and the unguarded emotion in his eyes stopped her breath. And then it was gone, replaced as if it had never been there by raw desire that darkened his air force blue eyes to midnight.

"Thank you," she whispered as he drew her against him. Coils of anticipation unfurled in her belly as his mouth touched hers. She slipped onto her side in his arms, and as his tongue moved into her mouth, his knee slid between hers in the warm water.

Something about the heat of the room and the closeness of their wet, naked bodies heightened the intimate sense of this being the way they should be. Natural. There were no clothes to get in the way, no desks to bend over, or even beds to lie on. They were cradled together in the cocoon of Sophie's tub, and Lucien's hands moved easily over her body as he bit his way slowly across her bottom lip, corner to corner, small nips just the right side of painful as he twisted her wet hair around his hands. His thigh pleasurably pinned her legs apart, although he seemed in no rush to touch her there. He touched her everywhere else instead.

A brief, skilled shoulder massage, a circlet of fingers around her throat, then he moved lower, to her breasts. He drew soapy circles around her areolae with his index finger as he blew lightly over them, cool air that stiffened her nipples before he sucked them inside the sudden, damp heat of his mouth. His fingers twined with hers for a few seconds, and he raised her hand to his face and kissed her palm.

Watching him, Sophie's heart splintered like cinder toffee. Water spiked his closed eyelashes into delicate spiders on his cheekbones, and as his open mouth moved silently against her palm, he looked like a man saying his prayers. Sophie wished she could hear them, and wished that they were the same as her own.

When he reached under the bubbles, she knew what was coming next. The glass of the dildo had taken on the heat of the water; she felt it when he touched it briefly against her mouth, then trailed it down her body, making a slow sweep as he hooked his calf over hers to hold her legs open. Not that he needed to. Sophie wanted Lucien beyond all rhyme and reason, full of insane longing and delight when he at last stroked the warm, bulbous glass over her clitoris. The knowing hint of a smile touched his lips again.

"Feel
nice
?"

He laid the glass column flat against her flesh, its raised swirls massaging the length of her sex as he twisted it in his fingers.

Nice?
Now she understood his mocking repetition earlier. Nice was nowhere near the right word for this sensation of finally being touched where she most needed it, and Lucien knew it full well.

Just as he knew she needed more, and gave it willingly. 

He kissed her neck as he slowly pushed the dildo inside her body, its oh so hard, oh so warm solid presence filling her until she moaned with deep, deep satisfaction.

The last time Lucien had used the dildo had been under very different circumstances. Shackled to his bed, he'd plunged the glass phallus into ice and shocked her into orgasm. Tonight he went to the opposite extreme. He held her rather than shackled her, and used the unyielding, warm glass to build steady, sublime sensations that left her breathless.

His other hand roamed over her bottom, his deliberate fingers tracing the sensitive dip between the curves. Sophie didn't stop him. Tonight she was his, and he was hers, and there were no taboos. When his finger pressed gently against the tightness of her rear, she turned her head and kissed him, a silent invitation that he accepted, shifting slightly to give himself more room to touch her. And then he had her filled twice over; the slow glide of glass between her legs, the gentle probe of his finger behind her.
Incredible
. More than incredible. Sophie fought her orgasm as it started, because she wanted to stay in that one moment forever. Pleasure so exquisite that her entire body thrummed with it, and emotions so expansive and consuming that she didn't know where Lucien ended and she began. Her ecstatic surrender was inevitable when his thumb moved up over her clitoris. As defeats went, it was one hell of a way to go down.