A Perfect Storm

by Dane, Cameron

  His hand trembling visibly, Lucien wiped at the deep brackets surrounding his mouth. “Jesus fucking Christ, honey.”

  Uncertainty burned through Sophie, heating her skin. “It makes me sound kind of pathetic, I know.”

  “No,” he quickly denied, his tone gruff. “Never that.”

  “Thank you.” Relief swamped Sophie. Some of the adrenaline washed out of her, and she slumped against the dresser. She went to wrap her fingers around the edge, and her knuckles knocked something over with a clatter. Muttering an apology, Sophie turned to straighten her mess, and looked into the eyes of two smiling boys bundled to the gills in snow gear; one raven haired, and one sandy blond. “Is this Josh?” she asked, lifting the framed photo. She fingered the likeness of the boys and then looked up at Lucien. “Is this the two of you when you were kids on that hill you told Owen about?”

  “Yeah.” Rust still held Lucien’s tone, and new brightness burned in his stare. Moving as if on automatic, he came to Sophie’s side and touched Josh’s image too. “Everything was good then.”

  She handed the photo into Lucien’s safekeeping. He seemed to need it. “Before your father died?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He nodded, glanced at the image of him and Josh once more, and then set the frame to rights. “Before I made choices that weren’t the best ones for my family,” he said, his focus still on the dresser and the cluster of pictures. “For Josh.”

  Right then, Sophie couldn’t move her attention away from Lucien and the terrible ticking in his jaw. “You can’t mean the clubs. You were still a kid then.”

  “No.” She didn’t know how it was possible, but Lucien’s voice went raspier. “Other things.”

  “Like what?” she asked and then held her breath.

  Still not looking at her, Lucien wrapped his hands around either side of the dresser, bracing himself on the furniture. “My mother remarried within a year of my father’s passing. It surprised me, because I’d always thought she was a strong person, but it turned out she wasn’t good at being alone. After remarrying, she seemed to completely lose herself in this new life with her new husband. Hell, I don’t know, maybe he fucked with her head and made her that way. All I know is that I could not stand the man, and he did not have a single kind word for me. He was such an asshole.”

  Lucien clenched his fingers around the wood, and all the muscles in his arms and back flexed tauter than a drum. After a savage curse under his breath first, he said, “I was fucking thirteen and packing my backpack to run away when my mother found me. For just a few minutes, when she looked at me, it felt like I was looking at the mom I used to know, the person she was before my dad died. But rather than listen to my complaints about Donald and that I was going to run away if he stayed—Donald was the bastard’s name—my mother convinced me that going away to school was a smarter choice than running. I was crushed that she didn’t want to hear what I had to say about her new husband. Fuck, at that point, I didn’t even care about trying anymore, and I agreed to go away. I honestly didn’t want to be around my mother the way she was by then, as much as I just wanted to get the hell away from Donald. So I did. I got away. I didn’t come home much. Hardly ever. Not even for vacations.” He spared her a glance then, and the darkness radiating from him made her shiver. “That was a mistake.”

  “Why?” Every molecule in Sophie’s being pushed at her to comfort Lucien, but something in his rigid stance told her if she did, she would break him. She didn’t want that. So instead, she locked her hands at her sides and prayed some part of him believed in how much she cared. “What happened?”

  “Donald”—Lucien’s laugh was a crude, horrifying sound—“was a controlling son of a bitch. I didn’t see it at first, though, not for a long time. I just thought he was a jerk. But it turned out he fucked with Josh’s head in all kinds of ways after I went away. Josh was still young and impressionable enough that Donald’s brand of narcissistic dominance took root. I didn’t notice right away. First Josh just became quieter when we talked on the phone. He already had been that way, though, so it wasn’t unusual, just a deeper sense of the same. Then when he got older, he started to become reckless in ways that went beyond a normal teenage boy testing his boundaries, and he didn’t seem to have any sense of value about his life or others.”

  Lucien paused then, and Sophie could see he needed time to gather himself. He took a minute, then touched a different picture, one that had to be Josh as a young man. He nodded to himself, as if having a silent conversation, before breaking the silence again. “One day Josh told me some of the rules and ways to successfully live that Donald had drilled into him, lessons that no human should teach or enforce upon another, and it terrified me that Josh was so matter-of-fact in the way he shared this information. I knew I had to get Josh away from that man. I was in my twenties by then. Josh was already sixteen—too many years with that psycho—but I had to try.” Lucien sounded as if he was desperate to convince her. “I had to get him away.”

  “So you did.” She still didn’t touch him, but she nodded and moved closer.

  “Yeah.” He nodded too, his movements jerky. “And he seemed better. He was grateful. I wanted to watch out for him. I wanted to keep him close. When I eventually opened the first sex club, he kept asking me if he could be a part of the nightclub, so I told him what it really was and brought him into the fold.” Whipping his head to face her, Lucien added, “He was already of consenting age by then.”

  She offered him a small, she hoped supportive, smile. “I didn’t doubt it.”

  “Josh embraced a submissive role,” Lucien shared. “I thought it was his calling.” He suddenly stopped, and his knuckles turned white against the dresser. His lips parted, but nothing came out. He then seemed to lose his legs and stumbled.

  “Lucien?” Sophie lunged, making a grab for him around his waist. “Are you all right?” His skin burned, and he seemed to vibrate from within.

  Snarling in a way that changed his face to frightening, Lucien uttered, “Then it got bad, and he died. There’s nothing more to talk about.” Finding his footing, Lucien rolled out of her grasp and strode to the window, where he planted his hands against the frame. In what might have looked like a casual stance had she been across the courtyard in her room, Sophie could see that up close every line of Lucien’s lean, beautiful frame was strung tight enough to snap. He glared at her from over his shoulder. “You can leave.”

  Sophie rushed across the room just as fast and determined as he had. “There’s zero chance of me leaving you alone right now.” She rubbed her hand up the inferno of heat sweltering his back. “It not going to happen.”

  He shuddered and gripped the window frame even harder. “If you’re going to stay,” he uttered, “then you’re going to fuck me. Get one of the dildos from the wardrobe, and do it hard and fast.” Every single element of his being lay stripped bare. “I need it to hurt right now.”

  Her heart bleeding for him, Sophie touched his arm, squeezing. “Lucien—”

  “Otherwise”—Lucien flayed her open with one cutting look—“you can go, and I’ll shove the fucking toy in my ass myself.”

  Her heart cracking some more, Sophie kissed his shoulder, unafraid to tend to a wounded animal nor frightened or turned off by this new brand of fucking he needed. “I told you, I’m not leaving you.” Her choice made, her feelings for Lucien too great to walk away from, Sophie brushed another kiss against his burning skin and then moved across the room.

  Lucien’s stomach and chest rose and fell in deep waves. He had great trouble regulating his breathing. Scorching heat singed his lungs and throat, and his heart beat erratically, wildly beyond normal levels.

  As he watched Sophie select a gray torpedo-shaped dildo and a line of condom packets from his wardrobe, Lucien struggled with the damning voices in his head, their shouts filling every corner of his mind. He’d slipped from his original plan and had given Sophie too much of himself. He’d let her see parts of his person
al torment—pain and struggles with Josh’s memory he never let anyone witness.

  The deep-seated need to tell her even more had clawed at Lucien, tearing his throat to shreds in his desperation to connect completely to another person—to Sophie—and had almost won the battle. Terrible, crushing things Lucien refused to even whisper to himself in the darkest hours of the night had pushed to the surface, demanding to be spoken. In order to punish himself and frighten her, he’d taken control of the situation with an order for her to fuck him. As soon as he’d said it, a tremble had rushed through him. When Sophie agreed, Lucien’s ass channel had pulsed, and his cock had stirred, proving, whether he wanted to know it or not, he ached for this taking beyond as a means to bring his body, mind, and emotions back in line.

  In the reflection of the window, Lucien watched Sophie return to him, lube now a part of her treasures too. Innocence still haloed her in an ethereal light, something that appeared as if it would cloak her from all bad things and keep her safe. Lucien knew soon he would be the only person who would see that clean brightness, and the residual guilt from what was once good in him shoved against the demons he had embraced in order to do what must be done. They demanded payment in pain.

  Sophie moved in at Lucien’s side. As she rolled a condom on the toy and lubed its length, she held Lucien’s gaze in the window. Each second they maintained eye contact, she sucked him deeper into her open caring, and Lucien had no strength to look away or will in his legs to run. Destruction would come later. He would never forget the debts waiting to be paid. But right now, Lucien would pretend he had not brought this engaging, brave woman into his world in order to destroy her. He would steal the rest of this evening for himself and use it for the thousands of nights in his future when he would be alone.

  Sophie leaned around him to put the strip of condoms and lube on the low windowsill, and in doing so grazed the pointed tips of her breasts against his arm. Lucien’s cock jumped in response, and he breathed through the shot of adrenaline her proximity pumped into his blood. Shifting until she stood almost behind him, Sophie then pressed her lips against his shoulder and teased two digits down his spine to his crack, not stopping until she’d split his crease and her slick fingertips rested against his pucker.

  With one press of her fingers against his hole, Lucien stiffened, and he sucked in a breath. Immediately Sophie brushed another kiss against his flesh, this time to his upper back, and softly said, “Tell me you still want this,” and flicked her fingers over his quivering bud.

  Every ounce of kindness from Sophie drove Lucien’s destructive needs. “Do it.” He arched his back in an inward slope and gave her his ass. “Don’t prep me with your fingers. Don’t be gentle.”

  Sophie didn’t say anything, but she did move behind him. A moment later, the rounded tip of the dildo nudged Lucien’s hole. She gave the object a little bit of pressure, and Lucien gritted his teeth when the narrow head breached his bud. Shit. Shit. The hot burn from just the small invasion licked a line of flames across the hills of Lucien’s ass to between his legs to his taint, and he welcomed the need to focus on getting through this one moment without breaking. Of letting someone take his ass for the very first time.

  Finding the pinpoint of Sophie’s stare in the window, Lucien ordered, “Do it,” and pushed his buttocks back even more.

  Her eyes softening, the sight of it making Lucien whimper, Sophie pressed her lips against his nape and said, “I will.” Without quarter, she shoved the dildo deep up his ass, and it felt as if she tore him wide open.

  Lucien roared as the fiery pain of penetration consumed his rectum, but Sophie did not slow down or retreat. Without giving him a moment to adjust, she withdrew the toy from his passage, letting the thickest part in the middle hold at his entrance, stretching his virgin opening surely farther than biology meant it to go. When he didn’t think he could take the fire a second longer without his knees buckling, she gave him relief when she let the rest of the length slide from his body. Just as fast, she forced the dildo back inside him, hard as hell this time, enough to yank another sharp cry from him and ratchet up the confusion of fluttery spasms in his untried tunnel.

  Cold sweat drenched every millimeter of Lucien’s flesh. A shiver rolled through him, but he did not know if it came from the sheen of perspiration coating his body or the second and third deep, hard shoves of that long, fake cock into his throbbing channel. Even though not an inch of Lucien’s ass welcomed this taking right now, Sophie seemed to understand that his brain and the rest of his being desperately needed this brand of fucking, and she gave it to him with repeated, rough thrusts of that goddamn big dildo into his ass. All the while, though, she brushed kiss after kiss against his neck, whispering words so softly he couldn’t comprehend them, yet slowly each one sank into his skin and embedded itself with the hurt wreaking havoc in his flaming passage. Her touch put a soothing balm on the pain and reawakened his craving for a deeper, honest connection—something he didn’t want and couldn’t afford to feel.

  Crushing the wood frame under his fingers, Lucien jammed his ass back onto the dildo, and in doing so severed the touch of her lips from his nape. His soul shrieked at the loss, but he thrust himself wildly onto the toy again and again, penetrating himself in his desperation to find oblivion and a temporary hideaway from his life. “Harder. Come on.” He snarled at Sophie in the window’s reflection, almost hating her angelic beauty right now. “I told you to make it hurt.”

  Sophie put her hand on the small of his back, and the power she held over him in just that tiny contact jolted him to a stop. As Sophie gently eased the silicone shaft all the way back into his ass, holding it inside him until his hole sucked in tightly around the narrow base—the unusual sensation making him gasp and grunt—she looked at him in the window and penetrated him in a way that went far deeper than the toy in his body. “You’re hurting, Lucien.” Behind him, she knelt down and kissed her way across his buttocks, leaving lines of nerve endings shivering in her wake. Her trek continued around his hip to the front of his thigh, where she then flicked her tongue against the sensitive skin of his lower belly, making the taut flesh quiver. She stopped with her lips poised just above the tip of his rearing length, and his cock jerked toward his stomach. She lifted her lush, desire-filled gaze to his, and the beauty glowing from within the blue punched him in the chest. “You’re hurting plenty already.” She licked a bead of early seed pearling in his slit and added, “I wish you wanted it to stop.” With that, she blinked, taking that light-filled, warm stare away from him, and sucked his cock into her mouth.

  Unfathomable pleasure burst through from the warm cocoon of Sophie’s mouth around Lucien’s dick. A hoarse shout erupted as the tentacles of joyous sensation heightened his awareness of the dildo tucked all the way up his ass. With each gentle vacuum of suction Sophie delivered to his cock, she then swirled her tongue around the shaft in the most shiver-worthy fashion. Every time she licked that circular line around his prick, Lucien’s passage squeezed in kind, and it was as if she somehow had her tongue deep in his ass and was licking that pattern into the sensitized walls there too.

  Sophie moaned around a mouthful of Lucien’s cock, and the delicious, soft vibrations had Lucien jerking and pushing more of his length toward her throat. With another moan, she grabbed on to his hips, digging her little fingernails into his haunches in a way that made Lucien groan. She began to bob with fuller strokes, taking him deeper each time. Lucien’s slit barely grazed her throat each time she sucked him into her mouth, but the repeated hints of paradise she gave him, only to take them away, swelled his sac with more seed than if she’d pushed him down once and swallowed.

  Pulse after pulse throbbed the whole way through Lucien’s body, and the sight of sweet Sophie with her mouth wrapped around his cock only pushed his heartbeat into hyperdrive. Slipping deeper under the spell of everything that was her, Lucien threaded his fingers into her hair and gently tilted her head back, loving the way his fingers
tangled in the silky blonde tresses. As she looked up at him, the blue in her eyes burned with something beyond sexual desire; they seemed to possess confidence and knowledge. About him.

  No. Sudden panic altered the thread of Lucien’s need. His fingers in Sophie’s hair changed from a caress to a hard grip, and he started thrusting his cock deep into her mouth, fucking her in any way he could as a means to regain the upper hand. Except Sophie not only accepted the rougher handling, she moaned and flexed her fingers into his hips to hold him to her. She watched him with such brilliant, pure light in her gaze—as he shoved his dick against her soft palette time and again—he almost couldn’t bear to see it without cracking.

  The intense connection, something far outside of Lucien’s boundaries, pushed him out onto a paper-thin ledge. He shuddered to a standstill, his cock taking over her mouth. While still looking up at him, Sophie reached behind Lucien, pulled the torpedo dildo out of his ass, making him cry out as the silicone thickness licked unimaginably good fire along every inch of his anal walls. Leaving his hole gaping and clenching, hungry, she pushed the damn thing back into him, stretching and filling him so fucking deep and completely once more. When she then pulled off from his dick, pressed a soft kiss against his rigid, crimson length, and parted her lips with the clear intention of sucking him off deeply again, Lucien ordered, “Don’t,” and pulled back, his only thought to retreat into the shadows where he could hide until he regained control.

  His cock screamed for a home and release, and he only got harder on the scent of sweet honey dripping from Sophie’s pussy. As he grabbed a condom off the windowsill, he ordered gutturally, “Get on your hands and knees,” and then dragged her down to the floor with him, unable to give her a chance to say no. An unnatural desire for violence gripped Lucien, one that needed darkness or he risked terrible exposure; a loss of his soul that would soon kill him. But not yet. Not now. Not like this.