Nicky’s wary gaze flickered instinctively to the side and behind him.
“He isn’t here, Miss McKenzie,” the man’s deep and mocking voice reverberated on her already frayed nerves.
She felt some of the tension start to drain out of her in relief at knowing she wasn’t going to have to face Lucien tonight—
“He’s over there.” Dair gave a humorless smile as he nodded across to the other side of the road.
Nicky followed the direction of his gaze so fast she almost suffered whiplash, her eyes widening as she saw the gleaming black limousine parked in the shadows between two street lamps, the darkened privacy windows making it impossible for her to see inside the vehicle.
But she didn’t need to be able to see inside to know that Lucien was in there. She could sense his presence. Imagined she could actually feel the weight of his cold gaze on her as he looked across at her.
She turned back to the man standing beside her. “Are you here to ensure I don’t make a run for it?” Nicky tried to infuse some derision into her voice, but knew she had failed miserably.
This man knew it too, as he continued to look down at her with hard amusement in his eyes. “I wouldn’t advise it, not unless you really want to piss him off.”
“Any more than he already is, you mean?” she came back dryly.
“Exactly.”
Nicky sighed heavily. “Your boss doesn’t accept the word no graciously.”
He raised dark brows. “Did you say no?”
Had she? The last time she and Lucien had met he had cooked for her, taken off her clothes, and then placed her across the table like a feast, and made his own meal out of her.
She felt hot and damp between her thighs even now, just thinking of the pleasure Lucien had given her that night.
As for dinner this evening, she hadn’t said no to that either. But then, Lucien hadn’t exactly asked, had he?
Her chin rose. “Your boss is an arrogant ass.”
Dair gave a hard and appreciative grin. “Has he ever pretended to be anything else?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Stop wasting time, Nicky, and get your delectable backside in the fucking car!” The harsh familiarity of Lucien’s voice rasped across the empty street.
Nicky turned, her wide gaze becoming a frown as she saw that Lucien had lowered one of the tinted privacy windows and was now looking at her from the back of the limousine, his eyes glittering like shards of ice, the rest of his chiseled face in the shadows.
“As I said, charm personified,” she muttered disgustedly under her breath.
The scarred man beside her chuckled softly.
“If you wanted charm then you shouldn’t have annoyed me so damned much I left the restaurant without eating my dinner,” Lucien proved that his hearing was as astute as the rest of his senses. “Now get in the damned car!” He pushed the car door open and looked across at her expectantly.
Nicky felt an icy shiver down her spine. Not because she was frightened of Lucien. She knew instinctively that he wasn’t a man who would ever resort to physical violence towards any woman; why should he, when he had another form of physical torture he could use just as effectively?
No, it was herself Nicky feared, and her responses to Lucien that wouldn’t be denied.
It was the reason she had decided she couldn’t meet him at the restaurant this evening. The reason she had felt so sick, as well as feverish, at Chrissie and Fleur’s earlier. Not out of fear of Lucien—if she had been afraid of him then she would have answered his first text message. What Nicky was afraid of was what she became when she was with him. Wild. Wanton. Totally willing to give him whatever he asked for.
Whatever he asked for...
“Say please,” she called back across the street, her expression challenging, and remaining so even when she heard the indrawn breath of the man standing beside her.
Nicky ignored him; this had nothing to do with Dair, it was a battle of wills between her and Lucien. A battle of wills they both needed to somehow win, or they couldn’t continue with—with whatever it was that was between the two of them.
Lucien had told her that day at his apartment that he would give her pleasure but he would never allow her to take it. Just as Nicky now knew she would give it if Lucien asked, but she could never be subservient. Not to him or anyone else. She had come too far, had lived in fear for her own and her brother’s life for too long, to give up that control.
Even to a man that she desired beyond caution or reason.
Lucien was furious with Nicky. He didn’t remember when he had last been this angry, in fact. And that anger had begun as the minutes ticked by after eight o’clock, and he had realized she had no intention of meeting him this evening.
He had made a quick call to Dair, on duty outside the restaurant, and asked him to call the security man Lucien had requested watch Nicky for the past ten days.
For her own protection, after Nicky had told him that she felt as if she were being watched.
At least that’s the reason Lucien had told himself for having Nicky followed. At the same time as he knew he wouldn’t have been responsible for his actions, if any of the daily reports he had received on her movements had so much as hinted at her meeting or spending the evening with another man.
Luckily that hadn’t happened.
Nor had there been any reports of anyone seen watching or following Nicky, so it looked as if Lionel Jenkins had quietly disappeared to the country, after all.
The man following her this evening had confirmed that Nicky was currently at the apartment of her friends Chrissie and Fleur Donovan. That she had been there for the past hour, and didn’t show any signs of leaving soon.
Lucien had abruptly ended that call with his cousin and fired off his first text to Nicky at ten minutes past eight, believing his question mark would be enough to at least gain a response as to why the hell she wasn’t at the restaurant with him, where she was supposed to be.
Nicky hadn’t so much as acknowledged that first text.
Anymore than she had acknowledged the email he had sent her earlier today, although Lucien had hoped she might appreciate the irony of his having chosen the same restaurant as he had for their very first evening together.
He had even smiled a little to himself as he wondered if that email might make Nicky think of that other night. And if those memories had made her panties damp.
After all his procrastinating and fighting against himself, because he knew Nicky was trouble with a capital T, when he had finally caved and given in to his hunger to see her again, his need to make love to her again, Lucien hadn’t imagined, not for one single moment, that Nicky would simply ignore him rather than coming to Petruccio’s this evening.
No doubt Nicky would tell him that was his bloody arrogance talking, and probably it was, but that didn’t make her own infuriating behavior any less unacceptable.
His simmering anger had turned to a burn when he fired off his second text, giving Nicky five minutes to respond, after which...
After which Dair had phoned and told him that Nicky had just left her friends’ apartment, but that she appeared to now be traveling home on the tube rather than heading in the direction of Petruccio’s.
Lucien had sent Nicky one last message before storming out of the restaurant. Dair had wisely taken one look at his face as he opened the car door for Lucien to get into the back of the vehicle, and hadn’t said a word, but merely nodded as Lucien rasped out Nicky’s address, before closing the door behind him to get into the front of the car beside the driver.
In keeping with Lucien’s coldly furious mood, it seemed, it was raining and dark outside, rendering the London streets relatively empty of traffic as well as people, and so the limo had parked outside Nicky’s apartment before she had even arrived home.
Lucien’s anger had only increased as he sat and simmered over the way Nicky had deliberately ignored his email earlier today, just as she had ignored
the three text messages.
Even the relief of seeing her walking down the street, her head bent against the wind and the rain, didn’t lessen that fury. And it blazed to an inferno when she made the comment that had caused his usually taciturn cousin to first grin, and then chuckle outright when she openly challenged Lucien.
Not much made Dair smile, and yet Nicky, with her stubborn will of iron, had somehow managed to do it.
Just as she now remained standing across the street with her chin raised defiantly.
Despite Lucien’s instruction for her to get in the car with him.
Despite the intensely muscled man standing at her side ready to catch her if she should attempt to run—his intensely muscled head of security.
And with an obviously increasingly furious Lucien sitting in the car just yards away.
She was openly defying him, daring him to do something about it.
This tiny scrap of a woman, not much more than five feet tall, wearing a fitted cream sweater beneath a brown leather jacket, with the slenderness of her hips and thighs clearly visible to him in black figure-hugging jeans, her red curls having curled more than ever in the dampness of the falling rain, was openly showing her defiance of him in every inch of that delicious and tensed body.
Was it any wonder Lucien wanted this woman so badly?
So why the hell was he even attempting to control her, when his own control was shot to hell, and would no doubt continue to be so until he got this woman out of his system?
The burning anger drained out of him as if it had never existed. “Okay, you win.” He sighed his impatience. “Get your delectable ass over here and get in the fucking car. Please,” he added pointedly.
Some of the tension left her own shoulders, the challenge lessening in her eyes. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“You’ll never know how hard,” he muttered under his breath.
She gave him a rueful smile. “It doesn’t cost you anything to be polite.”
Just seeing this woman again was playing havoc with Lucien’s usually steely self-control. “I’ve said please, now are you getting in the car or aren’t you?” he rasped harshly.
“I am.” She nodded as she crossed the rain-wet street to the limo, Dair quietly following her footsteps.
Lucien slid across to the other side of the car to allow Nicky to get in beside him, waiting until after Dair had closed the door behind her and was back in the front passenger seat before speaking again. “My apartment?” he prompted huskily, not allowing himself to so much as touch Nicky again. Not yet. If he touched her now, even once, he couldn’t guarantee what would happen next.
And for all her defiance of a few minutes ago, her almost jauntiness as she crossed the road, Lucien could feel Nicky’s nervousness now that she was completely alone with him in the back of the limo. Even so, she hadn’t hesitated to let him know tonight that she responded to being given a choice rather than orders or instructions.
That being the case, she was the one who had to decide what happened next.
Did Nicky want to go back to Lucien’s apartment with him? Even knowing what would happen if she did?
Hadn’t she known this would happen from the moment she had received his email earlier today? Hadn’t she known exactly how he would react to her ignoring that email, and the texts that followed this evening? Just as she had known, despite her earlier defiance, that the outcome of this evening was inevitable?
By ignoring the email, and going to Chrissie and Fleur’s this evening instead of meeting Lucien—and feeling sick the whole time she did it—hadn’t she known exactly what Lucien’s response would be? Hadn’t she even hoped for this, rather than the icy silence of the past week?
Of course she had.
Lucien’s arrogance annoyed her intensely, even infuriated her—as her defiance seemed to infuriate him. But that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t seem to resist him either.
Especially so in the back of this luxurious car that smelled of leather and Lucien’s expensive cologne—along with that earthily male smell that was uniquely Lucien. He also looked pulse-poundingly handsome in his black evening suit and white silk shirt that emphasized the broad and muscled width of his shoulders and tapered waist.
Add in the sheer powerful presence of Lucien, and Nicky knew she had lost this battle.
Her chin rose as she met the burning intensity of Lucien’s gaze. “Your apartment,” she agreed huskily.
Lucien continued to meet her gaze as he pressed the intercom button on the armrest by the door, issuing instructions to his driver before speaking to her again. “Get over here,” he instructed harshly as the car engine purred to life and the car moved smoothly forward. “Please,” he added grimly as Nicky didn’t move.
Nicky found it even harder to resist a polite Lucien than she could the bossy and domineering one. Leaving her bag on the seat behind her, she scooted across the distance between them before moving up and over so that she was straddling Lucien’s thighs.
Making her instantly aware of the rigidness of Lucien’s arousal pressed between her denim-clad legs.
“If I’d known saying please would achieve this result, then I would have used it earlier,” he murmured with satisfaction as his arms now clamped about her like steel bands.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” she snorted knowingly; this man was a law unto himself, and asking anyone, for anything, didn’t come naturally to him.
“No, I wouldn’t have,” he acknowledged ruefully. “Is that the reason you stood me up tonight? Because I didn’t say please?”
Pressed so intimately against the heat of Lucien’s body, the evidence of his arousal so taut against her, Nicky knew there was no room—literally—for dishonesty between them. Not when so much about her life, about her, was already a lie...
She drew in a deep breath. “Partly.”
“And the rest?”
“Because…you’re just...you’re too much, Lucien.” She gave a sigh of resignation as she looked down at his chest. “I can’t think straight when I’m with you. And then when...when you touch me, I can’t think at all.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“A very bad thing,” she nodded exasperatedly as she looked up at him in the dimmed interior of the car. “What happened that evening at the restaurant, and again in your apartment last week,” heated color warmed her cheeks just talking about that, “that was all because of you, no one else. I really don’t do this.”
“This?”
“Whatever it is that happens between the two of us every time we’re alone together.”
“Desire? Want? Need?”
“All of those things, yes,” she nodded. “And I don’t like the feeling. I don’t...I just don’t like feeling so out of control.”
“And you think that I do?” he scorned.
“I don’t know what you think about anything, that’s another part of the problem.” She looked at him appealingly.
“Don’t you think spending more time with me might take care of some of that?”
“I would think that might depend on what we were doing during the time we spent together.” She sighed. “Look, I just want you to realize, to know, that I’m not that woman. I don’t have wild flings with men who are richer than God. And I certainly don’t like this feeling of losing control, all sense of myself, whenever I’m with you.”
“And I didn’t like losing control with you last week. Nor do I pursue women in the way that I’ve pursued you tonight,” he bit out harshly. “That isn’t my style at all, and I don’t like it any more than you do.”
Lucien had pursued her tonight, Nicky accepted. Maybe he had done it in his usual arrogant style, with demands rather than requests, but he had still come after her.
She gave a shake of her head. “Then maybe we should just stop this right now? Both just walk away—”
“That’s no longer an option, Nicky,” Lucien stated hardly as his arms tightened about her.
“I let you walk away months ago, and again last week—”
“You asked me to leave last week,” she protested. “Actually, you threw me out,” she added accusingly.
His nostrils flared, his jaw tight. “What happened that night—it was—” He gave an impatient shake of his head. “I didn’t want you to go. I just—I lost control that night. I hurt you.”
“I told you that you didn’t...” The only thing that had hurt Nicky that night had been Lucien’s cold rejection of her afterwards. A rejection he now seemed to be implying, as Chrissie had suggested might be the case, that had been for her own good, as much as his...
“I lost control,” he insisted.
“So did I, Lucien.” She reached out tentatively to touch his rigidly clenched jaw. “So did I,” she assured him softly.
He turned his head with a groan as he placed a kiss in the palm of her hand. “It’s never happened to me before.”
“I won’t break if it happens again, Lucien.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I’m really not that fragile.”
He breathed raggedly. “Be sure, Nicky. Because once I take you, I don’t know when—or if—I’ll be able to stop.”
Was Nicky sure she wanted this? To be taken by Lucien, in that raw and primal way that drove her out of her mind?
Oh yes, she was sure. Very sure.
Lucien may be the most mercurial and difficult man she had ever known, but even so, being with him far outweighed the misery, the bleakness, of not seeing him at all.
She held his gaze as she slowly and invitingly leaned towards him.
Lucien’s mouth hesitated a hair’s breadth away from taking hers. “I was tested last month, and there’s been no one else since.”
Nicky laughed softly. “I haven’t been with anyone since I was twenty.”
“Twenty?” He looked stunned.
“Twenty,” Nicky confirmed ruefully.
“Do you use contraception?”
Her brows rose mockingly. “Don’t you even try telling me you didn’t come fully prepared this evening, because I won’t believe you!”
Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) Page 9