Chapter 10 - Crossing the Line
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For a long moment after the elevator descended, the only sound in the penthouse was the soft crackle of the flames behind the glass hearth and the faint drum of sleet against the panoramic windows overlooking the city.
Lucian stood near the center of the room. Slowly, he reached up and unbuttoned the collar of his white dress shirt, pulling the black silk tie free from his neck and tossing it onto the armchair.
Clara watched him from the sofa, her heart beating a steady, nervous rhythm in her throat. For two years, they had danced around an invisible line drawn by wealth, blood, and position. In the Lake Forest mansion, there were always thirty staff members, guards in every corridor, and the formal distance of Mr. Sterling and Miss Hayes.
Up here, seventy stories above the snowstorm, there were no uniforms, no bells to ring, and no secrets left between them.
Lucian walked into the adjacent master bath and returned thirty seconds later carrying a white ceramic bowl of warm water, a soft linen washcloth, and a tube of arnica bruising cream.
Without a word, he sat down right beside her on the leather cushions—close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeped straight through her clothes—and lifted her left arm gently onto his knee.
"You don't have to do that," Clara whispered, her cheeks flushing warm as he dipped the cloth into the water and wrung it out. "I can take care of it."
"For twenty-four months, you’ve taken care of every scratch, headache, and sleepless night I’ve had in that house," Lucian murmured, his deep voice vibrating right through her ribs as he pressed the warm damp cloth tenderly against the dark fingerprints encircling her wrist. "Sit still and let me take care of what is mine."
What is mine.
The possessive weight of those three words made Clara’s breath catch audibly in her throat. She looked down at his bent head—at the thick waves of dark hair falling across his forehead, the sharp, aristocratic line of his nose, and the faint silver scar cutting through his right eyebrow.
Slowly, impulsively, she lifted her free right hand and touched the dried speck of blood on his jaw—left over from the gunman he had killed for her on the train platform two hours ago.
Lucian stilled instantly beneath her fingertips.
He didn't pull away. Instead, he turned his head slightly and pressed a warm kiss straight into the center of her right palm, his silver-gray eyes lifting to lock with hers. The raw, starved hunger blazing behind his dark lashes made her stomach dip as if she were falling from the seventieth floor.
"I meant it when I got on that train, Lucian," Clara whispered, taking the second damp corner of the washcloth and gently wiping the trace of crimson from his jawline. "I thought if I stayed in your house one more hour, Victor would kill my aunt and you would put a bullet in my head for lying about who sent me."
"Put a bullet in your head?" Lucian let out a low, rough laugh that held no humor at all. He set the cloth aside, his large hands spanning her narrow waist and lifting her effortlessly until she was straddling his lap on the wide leather sofa, her knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips. "Clara, if you had shot me in the chest yourself in that foyer today, my dying order to Roman would have been to make sure you made it to the train station safely."
Clara gasped softly as his strong hands gripped her hips, anchoring her flush against the hard, muscular wall of his chest. She was looking down into his face now, close enough to smell the intoxicating blend of cedarwood, rain, and dark spice on his skin.
"Why?" she breathed, her hands resting tremblingly against his broad shoulders. "You’re Lucian Sterling. You could have any heiress, any model, any senator’s daughter in Chicago."
"And every single one of them would look at me and see a crown or a coffin," Lucian growled softly, his right hand sliding up the curve of her spine to press her closer while his left hand tangled deep in her dark hair, tilting her face down toward his. "When I saw that black suitcase sitting by my front door today, my heart stopped beating for the first time in thirty-four years. I let you walk out that door only because I knew someone was watching the driveway and I needed to see who was hunting you before I tore their throat out."
His thumb brushed across her trembling lower lip, parting her mouth slightly.
"Say my name, Clara," he commanded in a rough whisper. "You called me Mr. Sterling at the door like I was a stranger. Say my name."
May you like
"Lucian," she breathed against his thumb.
He didn't wait another second. His mouth crushed down onto hers.
