She saw Lucien’s eyes darken as he looked down at her wearing only her white lace bra and panties. “I should have guessed you would be wearing white.”
“Why?” She eyed him curiously.
He looked up at her briefly. “Because it’s who you are. Pure and virginal, Nicky.”
Her cheeks blazed with color. “I’m not—”
“I don’t mean physically, Nicky,” he drawled hardly. “You’re aged in your twenties, so of course you aren’t a virgin. And I wouldn’t want you to be,” he assured dryly.
“Then I don’t understand...”
“Innocence isn’t just physical, Nicky, it’s a state of mind, and you’re still untouched in so many ways.” Lucien placed his hands beneath her elbows and lifted her up onto the table before stepping in between her parted thighs. “Life hasn’t had the chance as yet to scar you enough for you to have become jaded or cynical,” he continued talking as he nuzzled his lips against the soft fullness of her breasts.
“Both my parents are dead!” Nicky reminded. Her mother had died when she was eleven, and she may not have actually seen her father gunned down, but she had certainly suffered the sudden loss, and the consequences of his death; she and her brother had been on the run from those consequences for almost six years.
“And I’m sorry for your loss,” Lucien murmured softly. “But death is an inevitable part of living.”
“And is the fact that Lionel Jenkins’ is a lecher also an ‘inevitable part of living’?”
“He’s gone from your life too,” Lucien rasped harshly as he continued to kiss and nuzzle against her breasts. “Forget him.”
Easy for him to say, when he wasn’t the one who was still out of a job, and soon to be evicted from her home too—
“Who did give this to you, Nicky?”
She looked down and saw that Lucien held her heart-shaped locket in the palm of his hand. “My father, shortly before he died. There are photographs inside, of my mother and father together, and my brother Neil.”
“Ah.” Lucien placed the locket carefully back between her breasts, relieved to learn it hadn’t been a present from a previous lover. If it had been then it would have had to go, and he would have replaced it with those diamonds he’d imagined her wearing. He had no intentions of looking at something another man had given Nicky every time he was inside her.
“It was his last Christmas present to me just before he died,” Nicky added huskily.
Lucien was aware he had caused her sudden sadness, and he was just as determined to be the one to wipe those shadows from her eyes. He unfastened her bra before removing it completely. “Lean back on your hands and let me look at you,” he encouraged gruffly as his gaze feasted on the breasts that were still surprisingly full, despite her weight loss, and tipped with plump pink nipples. Succulent nipples that he was shortly going to enjoy devouring. “And don’t move.”
“Bossy much?” Nicky’s cheeks were blazing with color even as she did as he asked.
His eyes glittered as he placed his hands on the table on either side of her before leaning over her. “You already knew that when you came back here today.”
Yes, Nicky had known that. And still she had come back for more. She must be a glutton for—
“Lucien...!” she gasped her pleasure as his mouth latched onto one of her nipples before sucking deep and hard.
Heat swept through the whole of Nicky’s body, her already damp panties becoming even wetter, releasing the heady smell of her arousal.
She arched her back, pressing upwards, wanting more, so much more—
“I said don’t move.” Lucien pulled back, looking down at her between hooded lids until she relaxed her spine and resumed leaning back on her hands. “Better.” He nodded his approval as he reached up to grasp a handful of her riotous red curls in his fingers, just short of pain as he tugged back until her throat was arched. “I’ll give you pleasure, Nicky, all you can take,” he promised harshly. “But don’t attempt to take from me unless I ask you to, do you understand?”
“What if I want to touch you too—”
“Your turn will come,” he nodded, his eyes glittering intensely. “But right now I’m going to pleasure you, okay?”
It was more than okay with Nicky.
She wanted this man. Wanted Lucien—
Oh my God.
Lucien had obviously grown tired of waiting for her to answer him, as he now suckled one of her engorged nipples into the heat of his mouth, at the same time as his fingers moved aside her panties and touched the swollen folds between her thighs, stroking once, twice, before thrusting two fingers hard and fast into the slickness of her channel.
Nicky was already so aroused, just from looking at him and being watched by him, that she came almost immediately. Two, three thrusts of those knowing fingers inside her, that hungry sucking on her nipples, and she began to shudder and shake, groaning as she was catapulted into an orgasm so hard and so fast it completely took her breath away.
Lucien gave her no chance to recover from that orgasm as he ripped and then pulled the silken panties off her completely before lifting her legs up onto his shoulders and burying his face between her thighs, parting her red-gold curls with his fingers before lapping up and swallowing the flow of her juices. His tongue began to lathe her swollen folds, licking and probing, then centering on her hard and ultra-sensitive clit, sending her into another, even more intense climax within seconds.
“You’re moving again.” His lips glistened with her juices as he raised his head to glare when her arms threatened to collapse and no longer support her.
“I can’t help it,” Nicky gave a groan of protest as she attempted to do as he asked.
“Try.” His eyes glittered as his hands moved up the length of her waist before cupping both her breasts, squeezing and massaging her swollen nipples between fingers and thumb.
Nicky wanted to reach down and grasp Lucien’s already tousled hair as his mouth returned between her thighs. Instead she settled for just watching him. Watching his hands on her breasts, her legs draped over his shoulders as the long, wet length of his tongue stroked slowly over her folds and sensitive clit. Again and again, until Nicky was poised on the brink of yet another orgasm.
She screamed out her pleasure as she watched his tongue snake up inside her, seeking and then stroking against that same sensitive bunch of muscles he had touched with his fingers in the restaurant so many months ago.
And still he didn’t stop, stroking with his tongue, again and again, pinching her nipples, until Nicky cried out as she tumbled over the edge of pleasure again.
She lost count after that of how many times Lucien took her to that edge, holding her there briefly, before allowing her release. Over and over again. Until her voice was hoarse, and her ears rang with the sound of her own screams.
“No more,” she finally pleaded weakly, the tears wet on her cheeks. “Lucien, please, no more!”
“We stop when I say we stop—and I haven’t had nearly enough of the taste of you!” His face was flushed, his lips swollen, eyes hot as he looked down at her to part the red-gold curls and press his thumb against her clit.
“I can’t. Lucien, I really can’t—”
“You shouldn’t have made me wait so long, Nicky,” Lucien ground out determinedly. “Maybe then I wouldn’t be so—” He stilled suddenly, having looked up and seen the tears wetting her cheeks. “Did I hurt you?” he prompted sharply.
“No. No, of course you didn’t hurt me.” She smiled weakly. “I just—I’m not used to this degree of—the pleasure was just so intense—you gave me pleasure in places I didn’t even know I could feel pleasure!” she acknowledged weakly.
Lucien straightened abruptly as his haze of need and lust parted long enough for him to be able to see Nicky’s flushed and tear-wet face, her eyes dazed with satiation rather than those previous dark shadows.
Her nipples were also red and swollen from where he had twisted and pinche
d them. There were marks on the softness of her hips where he had held her down. The red-gold curls between her thighs—as evidence that her hair wasn’t naturally fiery red?—were damp with her juices and his saliva. Her clit was swollen and exposed, and the entrance to her channel was red and glistening.
He had lost control.
He had waited too long for this woman’s capitulation, and he had lost control, damn it.
Something Lucien had sworn would never happen.
Not for any reason.
He stepped back abruptly. “Get dressed,” he rasped tersely as he turned away, his gaze falling on the ripped panties lying on the floor before he quickly snatched them up and threw them in the bin.
Shit, shit, shit, he really had lost control. Fifteen years of being in complete control, and he had lost it the moment he got a taste of Nicky.
Totally.
To the point that nothing and no one else had mattered except her and the complete satisfaction he had found in giving her pleasure, over and over again.
It was a breech in his defenses Lucien knew he couldn’t allow. Not when losing control could put Nicky’s, as well as his, life in jeopardy.
This had to stop now.
Right now.
“Lucien, don’t you want to—”
“Don’t I want to what?” He turned on her viciously, jaw clenching as he saw Nicky was now sitting up on the table but still completely naked. The heaviness of her breasts pouted temptingly forward above her slender waist, those red-gold curls damp between her thighs. “I thought you said you’d had enough?” he sneered.
She looked hurt at his obvious anger. “But you haven’t—you didn’t—”
“Just say what you mean, Nicky,” he taunted hardly.
She chewed on her bottom lip before speaking quietly, her gaze not quite meeting his. “You didn’t come.”
“No, I didn’t,” Lucien confirmed derisively. “And I’m not going to either.”
She blinked. “I don’t understand...”
Lucien forced a mocking smile—when the truth was, his control was held by such a thin thread at the moment he daren’t let Nicky so much as touch him right now. “I’ve already gotten what I wanted, Nicky—your complete surrender.” He gave a derisive shake of his head. “Another lesson, if you like, that it really isn’t wise to play with men who are out of your league. Men like Jenkins and me.”
“You aren’t in the least like him—”
“Oh but I am, Nicky,” he assured mockingly. “What was it you said? ‘Men like me like to play with people like you’, just because we can?” He shrugged. “You’ve just been played, Nicky.”
Nicky stared at him for several seconds as she realized exactly what he’d said. “You bastard!” She jumped down from the table and began to gather up her clothes.
Lucien knew he was a bastard.
And right now he was a lying bastard.
Because he wanted Nicky so badly at this moment he knew he couldn’t be in the least gentle, that he would take her any way he could get her. In every orifice. Up. Down. Any damned way he could get inside her.
Not going to happen. Not when this woman was capable of making him lose control so completely.
He gave and took pleasure, and then he walked away. And he never, ever lost control.
With Nicky he knew he had not only done that but he was in danger of not being able to walk away.
Which meant he had to make her walk away.
He gave a disinterested shrug. “You came here to thank me for helping deal with Jenkins. Consider it done. Your thanks has been duly accepted—and very much appreciated—and now you can leave.”
Nicky’s face was burning with humiliation and the heat of the tears falling down her cheeks as she hastily pulled on her clothes, wincing slightly as the fabric abraded against her sore and aching flesh; the jeans were especially uncomfortable without her panties.
The panties Lucien had shredded in his haste to get a taste of her...
There was none of that determined and remorseless lover to be seen in the man who now watched her dispassionately between narrowed lids from across the kitchen.
If it weren’t for her aching and satiated body, Nicky would have thought she had imagined the wild intensity of Lucien’s lovemaking a few minutes ago.
As it was, she knew it had happened. Just as she knew that it had meant absolutely nothing to Lucien. That she had been nothing more than a challenge to him.
Now he just wanted her out of his apartment, and out of his life, with minimum fuss.
She straightened, fully dressed again now. “Could you at least tell me how to get out of here?”
“I’ll walk you through to the elevator.” He nodded coolly, standing aside to wait for her to precede him out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
Nicky paused to look at him searchingly as she drew level with him. “Lucien, why—”
“Leave it, Nicky!” Lucien warned harshly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw as he looked down at her coldly.
She gave a shake of those red curls, tears glistening in her eyes. “I don’t understand you.”
Lucien smiled bleakly. “I don’t want you to understand me, Nicky, I don’t want any woman to ‘understand me’. All I want from you now is to leave.”
Before Lucien changed his mind and swept her up into his arms and carried her off to his bedroom, keeping her prisoner there until he was completely sated.
Maybe in a week, a month, a year, he might even be able to let her out again.
“Fine.” Nicky nodded abruptly as she raised her chin and walked out of the room ahead of him, only the trembling of her bottom lip, as Lucien walked beside her down the hallway, to betray that she was on the verge of tears. Tears she obviously refused to allow to fall in front of him.
Because she believed he was a bastard. A cold, unfeeling bastard, who had just used her to prove a point.
Because that was what Lucien wanted her to believe.
When in reality Nicky scared him more than anything, or anyone, ever had in his life before.
And there had been so many scary things in his life before Nicky...
Chapter 6
“You do realize you’re going to stir a hole in the bottom of that coffee cup in a minute, don’t you?” Chrissie teased lightly.
Nicky’s fingers immediately fumbled with the plastic stirrer and she dropped it into her coffee, slopping some of the hot liquid over the rim of the cup and onto the table.
She took several seconds to mop up the sticky liquid with the paper napkins before looking up at Chrissie. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit of a mess today,” she excused ruefully.
“So I can see.” Chrissie nodded ruefully. “So I could hear in your voice earlier when you telephoned, which is why I’m here now meeting you for lunch.” They were seated in a coffee shop close to where Fleur and Chrissie ran their herbal shop together. “What’s up, Nicky?” she pressed worriedly.
The look of concern on her friend’s face was almost Nicky’s undoing, but she managed not to break down as she drew in a few deep breaths. “Do you remember Lucien Wynter?” Just saying Lucien’s name was enough to cause Nicky’s hands to start shaking again. She slipped them beneath the table so that Chrissie couldn’t see how badly they were shaking.
She hadn’t seen or heard from Lucien in four days, not since that day in his apartment, when—when—
“Lucien Wynter?” Chrissie looked totally blank. “I don’t think— Oh yeah.” Her brow cleared. “You mean the guy who gave the lecture that day at uni?”
The guy who gave the lecture that day at uni...
How innocent that sounded.
Except Nicky knew there was nothing innocent about Lucien. Or the time she’d spent with him.
That evening at the restaurant had been bad enough, but she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that day at his apartment for a single moment since it had happened. She felt hot all over, her body aching every time s
he thought of the things Lucien had done to her. The intensity, the single-mindedness of his lovemaking. He had been so focused on her pleasure that nothing else had seemed to matter to him for that brief time.
And afterwards he had thrown her out.
Nicky had cried for hours when she got home that day, her body exhausted with pleasure, completely satiated, her emotions raw and totally exposed. In the same way her body had been so totally exposed to Lucien just hours earlier.
And it had all been just another game to him. A cruel and hurtful game that had left Nicky feeling both hurt and humiliated.
She hadn’t gotten out of bed for two days afterwards, not wanting to see or speak to anyone, just wanting to stay hidden beneath the bedcovers. To forget what had happened. To forget Lucien.
“You’re starting to scare me now, Nicky.” Chrissie frowned. “You look terrible and—”
“Thanks.” Nicky was well aware of the way she looked. She hadn’t regained any of the weight she’d lost the week before, she wasn’t wearing any makeup today, and her hair needed washing.
But at least she had managed to get out of bed yesterday and today—that was an improvement on the two previous days.
“You know I’m not being horrible,” Chrissie grimaced. “I’m just worried about you. You’re talking about some guy we met almost a year ago and haven’t thought of again since. You still don’t have a job—” She broke off with a frown as Nicky gave a humorless smile. “What?”
“I do have a job.” She nodded. “I just don’t know if I want it. It’s complicated.” She winced as Chrissie’s brows rose. “Maybe I should just tell you everything, and then maybe you can help me decide what I should do?”
“From the look of you, I think probably only you can decide that,” Chrissie said slowly. “But, yes, I do think you need to at least talk to someone.”
Nicky drew in a deep breath and began to talk. Once she began she didn’t seem able to stop, telling Chrissie everything, from the very first day of Lucien’s lecture. She omitted nothing, the words just tumbling out of her.
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