Knight and Stay (19 page)

He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have called you." He kissed her cheek, wishing he was somewhere else. "Sorry."

Tamara shrugged delicately. "I think we’d better call it a night."

Lucien left her there, rumpled but unravished. He wasn't accustomed to feeling guilty. The sensation made his skin crawl with distaste, and served only to strengthen his conviction that he absolutely must end this thing with Sophie right now, before it went any further.

After another sleepless night, Sophie found herself at her desk earlier than usual. It was just as well. It'd save her from needing to make banal, bright small talk as she passed by Lucien's desk when she was as mad as hell with him. Whatever there was between them, it deserved better than a cowardly brush off.
She
deserved better than this.

He'd hurt her, and she hadn't expected it of him.

Her body tensed at the sound of his door opening, his footfalls as he moved around setting himself up for the morning. She always made him coffee.

God, this was hard.
Where was the line between employer and lover?

She was still his PA, even if someone else had replaced her in the other role.

And so she made him coffee.

He looked distinctly ill tempered when she took it through and placed it on his desk, and his thanks were muttered without looking up. His fingers hit the keys of his keyboard with unnecessary force, stabbing out emails.

So that was how it was going to be.

Not only was she unwelcome in his bed, but she was unwelcome anywhere near him.

Wow.
When he turned off the spotlight of his charm and humour, being around him was suddenly a cold and very dark place.

Bitter resentment rushed through her body and her resolve hardened to armour. If the last few months had taught her anything, it was that she was no little mouse, and that loving someone who doesn't love you back was no way to spend your life.

Lucien had taught her how to live without Dan, and in doing that, he'd surely taught her that she could live without him too.

She just hadn't expected to need to re-use the lesson so soon.

Sophie sat slowly down at her desk, her glare fixed on the doorway to Lucien's office.

Do your worst, Lucien Knight. I'm ready for you.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The day dragged on until lunchtime, oppressive and brittle. She made him espresso. He forwarded emails to her. She slapped a completed analysis file on his desk. He slammed his drawers closed hard enough to cause them to collapse.

Sophie needed some time out, to clear her head. She turned politely to Lucien as she collected her coat from the stand in his office.

"Is there anything you need while I'm out? Lunch? Or... condoms maybe, for you next date?" He shot her a filthy look, and she couldn't miss the way his hand fisted tightly on the desk. "Anger management classes?" she added sweetly. She had the upper hand, for once, and it gave her a harsh satisfaction.

"Don't fuck with me Sophie."

She shook her head, measured fury keeping her voice steady. "You've made it pretty clear we won't be doing
that
anymore."

"Have I?" Lucien slammed his chair back as he stood up, his arms rigid as he scowled and planted his hands flat on the desk. "Have I? Only I don't remember sending that particular fucking memo."

The tension in the room had reached boiling point. Lucien's taut stance and expression arrested Sophie into silence. She stared at him.

She wanted to beat her fists on his chest until her arms ached, and she wanted him to kiss her until none of this mattered, and she wanted to run away and never come back.

What did he expect of her? Was she supposed to be sanguine about his new lover, accept her consignment to the role of office squeeze?

"I don't want lunch, because I'm not hungry," he said. "And I don't want anger management classes, because right now angry is all I have," he spat. "And I don't want condoms, because it seems that I'm incapable of fucking anyone but you."

The disparity between his tone and his words made it hard for Sophie to understand his meaning.

"Lucien..." she dropped her coat and bag down and walked towards him, but he held up a hand to keep her on the other side of the desk.

"Don't."

She stopped, unsure how to read him when he was like this.

"She stripped, Sophie, right in front of me. She's fucking beautiful, but she felt wrong. I put my hands on her tits, and all I could think was that I wished they were yours."

He shook his head, his face a picture of bewildered frustration. "She was naked, and I walked away because she wasn't you."

Sophie's heart twisted for him. Why did he have to fight his emotions all the time?

"This isn't what I do," he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I don't want this."

She moved around the desk, and this time he didn't stop her. He sank into his chair and sighed heavily.

"I want this," she whispered, dropping onto her haunches beside his chair. "I want you."

She kissed her way across his knuckles, one by one, her throat aching with tears.

His other hand stroked the back of her head.

"Don't want me, Sophie."

She slid up onto his lap. "I can't stop."

"Try harder," he said, but even as he spoke his arms surrounded her. His hands slipped up her back into her hair until his thumbs were tracing her jawline.

She mirrored him, her hands cradling his head close to hers. His mouth brushed her cheeks, catching the tears as they spilled from her closed lashes.

"Beautiful girl," he murmured, his lips on her eyelids, his arms sliding lower to hold her close. Sophie could feel the hard heat of him under her thighs, sensing that slow slam of sad into sexy that he seemed to specialise in. It got her every single time. She tipped her head a little, and his mouth covered hers with stifling intimacy. His kiss seemed to suck all of the air from her body and meld her into one with him. One great big tangle of tongues and hot emotions. She wrapped her arms around him and opened her mouth against his, letting him plunder and take his fill as she held on tight, swept up in him.

This was her only way in. Her only way to connect with the man behind the barricades. The man she loved. The man who couldn't love her back.

He filled his hands with her hair, great fistfuls of it as he kissed her endlessly. He eased her head back as his hips started to rock beneath her, slow and steady.

"Go and get your lunch, princess, before I eat you whole."

"I'd rather stay here."

He laughed softly, but Sophie could feel him retreating behind those walls again. He straightened her skirt and tucked her hair behind her ear, treating her to the slow glide of his thumb over her bottom lip. "Go."

She didn't move. "Can we talk later?"

He frowned, but nodded. "I'll drive you home."

She slipped from his lap, ready for lunch now, and ready to fight for him later.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Don't invite me in."

Sophie understood what Lucien was asking. He wanted her to stop, because he couldn't. But she wasn't playing that game. She turned defiantly to him in the dark. "Come inside." It was after seven, a cold winter’s night outside the warm confines of Lucien's car.

"If I come in there, I won't come out again without fucking you first."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

"Which do you want it to be?" He shook his head with a low frustrated laugh, more at his own stereotypical response than hers. "It's just a fact, Sophie, and not one I'm proud of."

God, he drove her crazy.
"Why do you do that?" she asked gently.

"What?"

"Deny your feelings."

"`Why do you
that
?" he countered.

She looked at him steadily. "What? What do I do?"

"Overcomplicate things." He shrugged. "Read too much into things."

"I'm not." She placed a hand on his warm thigh. "Please come inside. It's too cold out here to talk." They both glanced out at the frosty, late November evening. "Coffee. You on one side of the table, me on the other, and I promise to let you leave without sleeping with me."

He unclicked his seatbelt with a resigned sigh.

"It's not your resolve that bothers me, Sophie."

In the kitchen, Sophie busied herself with the routine of making coffee, even though she didn't especially want one and suspected that Lucien probably didn't either. He was like a pent up lion prowling around the small space, and she wasn’t sure she knew how to handle him now that she had him here. She'd asked him inside ostensibly to talk, but the reality was that the invitation had been made just so she could be close to him, regardless of what they were doing.

She wanted his time, and his attention, and his love. Two out of three were relatively easy, but love seemed impossible. He'd expunged the word from his vocabulary. He didn't like to say it, and hearing it made him flinch. But she wanted to say it, and she wanted him to hear it; to know he was loved, even though she knew that the likelihood was that he'd react badly.

Coffees in hand, she changed her mind and led him through to the living room. She couldn't face another summit at that kitchen table.

Lucien followed and sat down at one end of the sofa. She took the other.

"Lucien..."

"I want you to stop working for me."

Wow.
His unexpected, quietly spoken statement hit her head on.

"But I don't want to stop working for you," she said rapidly, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

He placed his untouched coffee down on the table and turned back to her.

"Sophie... it's run its course. This thing going on between us has to stop, and it won't stop if we still see each other every day. I can't work with you without wanting to fuck you."

"Are you firing me?"

Lucien pushed his palms into his eye sockets. "What else am I supposed to do?"

"Carry on as we are?" All thoughts of declaring love now paled into insignificance by comparison to the urgent need merely to hold on to what they already had.

He shook his head. "It won't work."

Sophie moved closer to him, afraid to touch him. "Don't do this."

He turned his head towards her, and the look of pure desolation in his storm blue eyes hurt her heart.

"I mean it, Sophie. Don't come into work tomorrow. Or the next day, or the one after that. I'll write you an amazing reference. I'll pay you until you start somewhere else. It doesn't matter if it's weeks or months. Just don't come in."

Every word of his speech landed like a razor blade slicing her flesh, and anger and frustration battled for space in her head. He didn't mean it. His eyes and his body and his kiss told her that he didn't want her out of his life, yet his stubborn head wouldn't let his feelings get a look in.

There was only one way Sophie knew to cut through all of his crap.

She stood up and unbuttoned her blouse.

"Don't do that," he breathed, as she peeled it from her body and dropped it one the floor. He'd taught her many lessons, including how to embrace her own beauty, and in that moment she turned the tables on him. Pupil to teacher. As he'd taught her how to be a confident lover, now it was her turn to teach him how to have the confidence to love.

He dropped his head into his hands when she let her skirt fall to the floor beside her blouse.

In just whispers of dove grey lace, she stepped closer to him and stroked his head.

"Look at me, Lucien."

She felt a heavy sigh leave his body before he lifted his head, his eyes dragging slowly up the length of her body. Her fingers smoothed over his hard, proud cheekbone as she waited for his gaze to reach hers.

But it didn't.

His tormented eyes lingered on her breasts as he drew his top lip in between his teeth, and then he moved onto his knees in front of her and buried his face against her abdomen. His arms slid around her hips, holding her captive as she cradled his head to her body, letting her hands smooth and soothe him.

He breathed her in deep, and Sophie ached for him. What the hell was it that held him back? Why did he torment himself like this? She wanted to make it better for him, to find the right words to unlock his heart. But right there and then, just holding him seemed the most important thing.

And so she held him.

Lucien breathed in the scent of Sophie's skin, lost in how good she felt in his hands, and how good she made him feel in hers. Did she have any idea how powerful she was? He knew that he needed to leave, but there was no way he could leave her like this. The soft roundness of her bottom filled his hands, and the silken curve of her stomach warmed his face. He wanted to bury himself in her and never come up for air again.

Eventually, she eased her body back from his just enough to allow space to lower herself to her knees.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Her brave, unwavering gaze met his as she reached behind her back and unclipped her bra.

He'd seen her naked enough times now to know how she'd look, but watching her offer her sweet, wholesome and utterly fuckable body to him was something he wanted to remember forever.

"You said you wanted it to be me last night," she murmured, and she reached for his hands. "I'm here now." She lifted his hands to her breasts, and closed her eyes when his fingers made contact with her skin.

Christ, he was in trouble.
Everything he'd hoped to feel with Tammy last night crowded in, and so much more besides. His cock strained hard against his clothes, but his chest ached too, heavy with need for this woman, a need that was somehow more than physical. It was alien to him, terrifying and yet compelling.

Her rose nipples stiffened beneath his thumbs and her flesh filled his palms. She opened her eyes, and the raw vulnerability there seared him.