Chapter 11 - In the Lion's Bed
|
The kiss wasn't gentle or hesitant; it was the collision of two years of agonizing restraint shattering all at once.
A soft cry escaped Clara’s throat as Lucian’s lips moved over hers with fierce, possessive heat. All those nights she had stood three feet behind his chair in the library while her skin burned just from his proximity—all those mornings she had watched him adjust his cuffs in the foyer mirror and ached to touch his jaw—poured into the way her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
Lucian groaned low in his chest, his hands tightening on her waist as he stood up from the sofa without breaking the kiss, lifting her effortlessly against his body so her legs wrapped instinctively around his hips.
He carried her down the dim hallway into the master bedroom, where the only light came from the snow swirling past the towering glass wall overlooking Lake Michigan.
When he set her down at the edge of the massive king-sized bed, his forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing raggedly in the dark.
"If you want to sleep in the guest room across the hall," Lucian rasped, his hands trembling slightly against the wool lapels of the coat she was still wearing, "tell me right now, Clara. Because in ten seconds, I am going to take this coat off you, and I will never let you pretend to be my housekeeper again."
Clara didn't look toward the hallway door.
Instead, she reached between them and undid the first button of his white dress shirt herself, sliding her warm palms inside the fine cotton to rest directly over the rapid, powerful thud of his heart.
"I didn't leave my key on your table because I wanted to be your housekeeper, Lucian," she whispered, rising on her tiptoes to brush her lips against the pulse hammering at the base of his throat. "I left it because I was tired of only having five minutes with you in the dark."
A shudder ripped through Lucian’s powerful frame. With swift, practiced hands, he unbuttoned her heavy wool coat and slid it off her shoulders, letting it drop to the carpet alongside her gray uniform dress, until she stood before him in only her simple white cotton slip.
When he shrugged off his torn, blood-stained dress shirt, Clara’s breath hitched at the sight of his bare torso in the silver city light. Lean, corded muscle was crisscrossed with pale old scars from a decade of surviving the underworld—a map of violence that made the gentle way he touched her waist feel almost miraculous.
He laid her back against the black silk sheets, following her down until his weight settled over her, caging her safely beneath him.
Every touch of his hands was worshipful and unhurried, erasing the ugly memory of Victor’s grip on her wrist and replacing it with fire. He kissed the hollow of her throat, the curve of her collarbone, and the racing pulse beneath her ribs, whispering her name against her skin like a prayer he had memorized in the quiet hours of the night. When they finally came together in the dark warmth of the silk sheets, Clara arched into his embrace with tears of overwhelming relief clinging to her lashes, holding onto him as if the storm outside could never touch them again.
Hours later, when the city clock towers struck three in the morning—their old hour—Clara lay fast asleep with her head resting directly over Lucian’s bare chest, her bruised wrist resting gently against his shoulder.
Lucian didn't sleep.
He lay awake in the dim glow of the skyline, one arm wrapped securely around her waist while his free hand stroked the dark silk of her hair.
On the nightstand beside the bed, his encrypted satellite phone lit up with a silent text message from Roman down at the Lake Forest estate:
Bait taken, Boss. Victor Halstead just summoned all five capos to the Lake Forest dining room for an emergency succession vote at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. He told the family you suffered a fatal stroke at the clinic twenty minutes ago.
Lucian read the message without moving a muscle that might wake the woman in his arms. His silver-gray eyes gleamed coldly in the dark.
May you like
Victor wanted a funeral at eight o'clock in the morning.
Lucian was going to make sure he got one.
