LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  Tom looked disappointed, but he agreed.

  “We can’t break the rules, I suppose. Then there would be mayhem everywhere.”

  Lucien reached under the table for my hand, squeezing it as Karl asked Tom about his golf game. Subject changed. Crisis averted. But that dark cloud of disappointment still lingered.

  Halfway through dinner, my cellphone buzzed.

  I know who you are, a text from an unavailable number read. I can find you whenever I wish.

  The words seemed chilling. I glanced at Lucien, but he was listening closely to something Karl was telling him, not really paying attention to me.

  Who is this? I texted back.

  You’ll find out soon enough if you don’t back down.

  How?

  There was no response.

  I took a screen shot and sent it to Robert.

  I’ll take care of it, was his quick response.

  This situation was beginning to creep me out a little. It seemed benign on the surface, but sometimes it was the most benign situations that got out of control very quickly.

  “Take me home,” I whispered into Lucien’s ear.

  He nodded without asking why.

  Chapter 19

  Lucien

  She shivered when I pulled her into my arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, her face pressed hard against my chest.

  “Adrienne,” I said, lifting her chin, “are you sure? You’re not feeling bad?”

  “Just hold me for a minute, okay?”

  I slid my arms around her and tugged her tight against me. She shivered again, her arms sliding up underneath my suit jacket. I kissed the top of her head, wondering what had happened to my self-confident, badass girlfriend. She was my girlfriend, right? I wasn’t even sure about that at this point.

  Things were moving so fast. A week ago I barely knew what she looked like. And now…I couldn’t imagine spending a moment without her. I wish I knew who was sending those emails to me so that I could thank him or her for bringing us together. At least something good had come out of this nonsense.

  And that’s what I was beginning to think it was. It was just nonsense. The patent for the artificial pancreas was supposed to be granted tomorrow. After that, there was no reason why we couldn’t go public with the whole thing, no reason why we couldn’t start recruiting volunteers for the human trials. The FDA application was already on its way, and we should get approval on that pretty soon, too. Everything was falling into place. Nothing could happen that would stall the future of diabetes treatment.

  It was time to celebrate, not to worry about all this damn nonsense.

  “Take the day off tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Take the day off tomorrow. Let’s go to the beach.”

  She pulled back and looked at me like she thought I’d gone insane. “We went to the beach.”

  “No, not with my family. Just you and me.”

  A soft smile touched her lips. “Yeah?”

  “It’ll be fun. We’ll go for long walks and play in the water. Drink wine.”

  “Spend a few hours curled up in your bed?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She laughed. “If that’s all you want, why don’t we just stay here?”

  “Because, as much as I love my brother, I’d rather not have him walk in on us in a compromising position.”

  “Then why don’t we go to a nice hotel somewhere?”

  “Now that sounds like a plan. We could leave now.”

  She groaned, pressing her face to my chest again. “I’m so tired.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  She laughed again, the heat of her breath warming the skin just below my shirt. “You’re so eager,” she said.

  “Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  Adrienne was standing at the window of our suite when I woke the next morning.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “San Antonio.”

  She nodded without turning around. She was wearing one of my shirts again, this one a t-shirt she must have grabbed back at my place. It hung long over her thighs, but when she shifted, it hinted at the fact that she hadn’t bothered with underwear when she got out of bed. I went to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

  “I thought we’d have breakfast on the Riverwalk.”

  She leaned back into me. “I’ve never been to the Riverwalk.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No. I came to San Antonio once with my father, but it was years ago and he was working a case, so we didn’t have time for sightseeing. And I was here briefly when we were in the Army, but we ended up at SeaWorld.”

  I pulled her back against me and kissed her temple lightly. “Then I’m honored to be the one to show it to you.”

  She turned and ran her hand slowly over my bare chest. I was wearing pants, but no shirt. If not for my pump, I might not have been wearing pants, either. Her hand moved slowly over me, touching me like it was the first time she felt free to touch me. Her fingertips brushed my nipples, her thumb rubbing the edge of my CGM sensor. She ran her hand over my abs, her fingers doing a staccato over my muscles. And she watched her fingers move like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

  “How did we end up here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you chose my dad’s private investigation firm?”

  I lifted the hair off of her neck and slid my hands over her throat. “I picked him out of a group of four I saw on the internet.”

  “Just randomly?”

  “Just randomly.”

  “We’re here together because some reporter found out something she shouldn’t and some idiot tried to cause a rift between you and your brother.”

  “I’ve heard odder stories.”

  “I hated you that first night.”

  I didn’t know whether I should laugh or be offended. “Why?”

  “Because of the way you made me feel when you touched me.”

  I didn’t laugh. I groaned.

  “It was pretty hot.”

  “Do you think it was just because we were strangers? Because we both knew it was just an act?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was because we’re soul mates.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe in soul mates.”

  “Too bad. I do.” I rubbed her neck again. “Don’t try to analyze everything so much.”

  “That’s what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  I lifted her chin and kissed her. “Go put some clothes on. I’m going to show you the Riverwalk, and we’re going to relax. Forget about all this; forget about the emails and the threats and whatever else. Let’s just pretend that we’re a normal couple on a brief vacation on a Tuesday morning. Okay?”

  Her smile was back, that smile that had melted my heart from the moment we first met.

  “Okay.”

  I watched her cross the room, slipping a pair of well-worn jeans from the bag we’d stopped by her place to pick up last night. I liked them, liked the way they looked on her. So much better than the dresses that made her so uncomfortable. It was time I got to know the real Adrienne.

  I was looking forward to it.

  Chapter 20

  Adrienne

  “It’s almost peaceful down here.”

  Lucien smiled like it was a secret he had known all along. And I guess he probably had.

  “Better than hanging out at my office all day, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  He cut a corner off of his waffle and offered it to me. “Peaceful and great food, too.”

  “Okay, enough patting yourself on the back.”

  He just smiled like he’d created this entire place just for me. And that made me smile because I could almost believe he would have if he’d been given the opportunity.

  We were sitting in an outdoor café on the Riverwalk, sipping the most incredibl
e cinnamon lattes and eating food I would never indulge in under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal circumstances, were they? This was me and the guy who made my heart do funny things in my chest whenever he looked at me. I never thought I would find a guy who would make me feel that way. When I was in the Army and my fellow soldiers were greeted at the airport after a deployment by lovers who cried when they jumped into their arms, I thought that was a romance that couldn’t be sustained over the long run. It was great then, after a long absence. But things would be so different in a couple of months or even a year after their departed soldiers were around the house, bored, getting on their nerves.

  I could almost imagine Lucien waiting for me in a hangar somewhere, roses in his hand, an anxious expression on his face. I could almost imagine that I had finally found my reason to stay alive and come home in one piece. I could almost imagine that he could be my person back home, my one.

  “What?” he asked, a slightly puzzled look coming into his eyes.

  “I was just thinking that the Riverwalk is beautiful and all, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the inside of the hotel room again.”

  “The hotel room is…”

  It took him a second. But then he smiled. “Waiter!” he called, pushing his plate away and reaching for his wallet. I laughed, almost feeling like a carefree teenager for the first time. Ever.

  The hotel we were staying in had a lobby that opened onto the Riverwalk. It was crowded—I guess some sort of conference was happening in one of their conference rooms—but we managed to bypass the chaos and make our way to an empty elevator. Lucien pulled me into his arms as the doors began to close, but then someone stuck a hand between the doors and barged his way onboard.

  “Sorry,” the guy said, a knowing look in his eyes as he tried not to look too closely at us. But he wasn’t the only one. A woman called out for someone to catch the door as it began to close again. Lucien, the gentleman that he was, pushed the open button on the panel.

  The woman was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She dragged one of those fancy suitcases with the attached handle behind her. She smiled shyly at Lucien when he asked what floor. Turned out our new companions were on two different floors, both below ours, so we were in for a bit of a ride.

  Lucien slipped my hand into his, intertwining our fingers and rubbing my palm suggestively with one of his fingers. I glanced at him, but he was focused intently on the floor indicator above the doors.

  “Business or vacation?” the man asked.

  “A brief vacation,” Lucien said.

  “Lucky you,” he said. “I’m at the conference. Have to give a speech later tonight.”

  “Hope you don’t have stage fright,” Lucien said. “I hate giving speeches at conferences. The entire audience would often prefer to be somewhere else.”

  The man laughed. “Isn’t that the truth.”

  The elevator door opened, and the woman, who’d been silent and intent on staring at the doors, stepped off without so much as a glance over her shoulder. There was something odd about the way she moved, the way she behaved. I don’t know why it bothered me. She just seemed…well, rude. Maybe that’s what it was.

  When the elevator stopped two floors later and the man started for the doors, he was polite enough to lift a hand to us. “Enjoy your time off,” he said with a little wink meant—I was pretty sure—for Lucien.

  The moment the doors closed again, Lucien pushed me against the back wall and slid his hand under my t-shirt.

  “I thought they would never leave.”

  I slipped my fingers along the waistband of his jeans and tugged him closer to me.

  “They’re gone now.”

  He groaned, his lips brushing against mine with a delicious sort of hint that made my heart skip a beat. But then the doors opened for a third time, disrupting the moment.

  Lucien practically dragged me down the hall to our room, dropping the card key to our suite twice before he finally managed to get it into the lock. I pulled away as we went inside, rushing ahead of him even as he reached for me.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I grabbed my overnight bag and locked myself in the bathroom before he even managed to get his key out of the door and follow me into the bedroom. There was another item Theresa had suggested I buy when we went shopping for clothes last week, and that I had hesitated over. But now I was glad I’d bought it. I quickly stripped out of my clothes, laughing when Lucien pounded on the door.

  “You’re killing me!” he called through the thin wood.

  “Be patient.”

  “I don’t think I know how to be patient.”

  I laughed again even though my hands were shaking as I slipped out of the simple cotton bra I’d been wearing. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I wasn’t even sure he would care. But I’d paid good money for it, and I thought I might as well wear it once.

  And I really liked it when Lucien looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. I was hoping he would look at me that way now.

  But I struggled with it, so unused to wearing such feminine things that I wasn’t sure where, exactly, the straps were supposed to go. When I finally got everything where it felt comfortable—even if it was wrong—I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I almost didn’t recognize myself. I looked…pretty.

  I hesitated before stepping into the bedroom. Lucien had pulled back the lovely down comforter on the bed and stripped out of his jeans and t-shirt, sitting in what I was sure he thought was a provocative pose at the end of the bed in nothing but his briefs. And it was a heart-thumping sight. But I was so nervous that I couldn’t muster even a small smile.

  “This is what…”

  He started to speak, but the words fell flat as his eyes drifted over the black push-up bra, white camisole, and black panties I was wearing. Whatever he’d been about to say turned into a simple, “Wow.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He stood and slowly started to approach me.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He touched his thumb to my chin, lifting my face to his. “I love it.”

  My knees went weak. He lifted me and carried me to the bed, his touch so tender I thought my heart would pound right out of my chest. And then he was kissing me, his mouth so familiar on mine, yet still a new adventure, a new experience that I knew I never wanted to believe was too familiar.

  His hands hesitated as they moved over my bare hips. His chest was already heaving as he pressed it down against me, as he prepared to love me. I tugged at his body, pulling him as close as I could physically get him, wanting to feel the weight of his body on mine even as he tried not to crush me. He didn’t understand how comforting his weight was, how good it felt to welcome him against me, to welcome his touch. I wanted him with an ache that was so much more than physical. I wanted him close to me because he made me feel alive, made me feel safe in a way nothing had done since the night my mother died.

  There was no longer a need for games between us. We’d known each other such a short time, but there was something so right about the way we were when we were together. I didn’t need to know him to feel how flawless his touch was, to realize how that touch had the power to heal something deep in my soul I hadn’t even known was broken.

  I wrapped my legs around him and pushed at his briefs, running my hands against his ass, lifting my hips to feel the gloriousness of his erection against my clit. His mouth moved over my throat, his tongue tasting things that stood up and screamed at his touch. His hands rolled my panties down, trying to get them out of the way while refusing to allow me to move the few inches away that would make the process so much simpler.

  We needed each other. I could feel his desperation in his kiss. When he finally got my panties out of the way—a little rip on one corner did wonders—he was inside of me so quickly that it was like that was the place he’d always been meant to be. I cried o
ut, arching up against him, tears filling my eyes for reasons I didn’t understand and didn’t want to analyze.

  Was this what it felt like to be in love? Or was this an intense lust that could be confused with an emotion I’d never really felt before? Was this man the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? Or would this soul-shattering connection turn into something else as time passed?

  I wished I knew. I wished I could see the future. I wished that I could lose myself in this moment and not have to know what was to come. If I could live right here, right now, for the rest of my life, I was pretty sure I would die in the happiest moment possible. No fears. No one else to interfere, to deny approval. No one who could pull us apart.

  This was what I wanted. This moment. This man. This reality.

  Chapter 21

  Lucien

  “We could stay a while longer.”

  Adrienne snuggled her bottom against my hips as her hand slid over the top of my arm where it rested against her belly.

  “My dad would come looking for me if I didn’t show up tomorrow.”

  “What did you tell him about today?”

  “That I was following a lead.”

  “In my case?”

  “Yeah. But I’m pretty sure he knew I was lying. To him, the case is closed.”

  “Why?”

  She glanced back at me. “Because he thinks you were threatening yourself for some reason.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  She shrugged, her shoulders rubbing against my chest. “He’s had other cases where CEOs did things like this to generate publicity before a big product release or a stock sale or whatever.”

  “I don’t have anything like that coming up.”

  “You’re going public with the artificial pancreas.”

  “Not for a while yet. We need to secure the patent and get approval from the FDA for the human trials, first.”

  She shrugged again. “It’s not his job to know the why. It’s his job to know the how, and he thinks he does. He thinks he knows the how. You were sending the emails yourself from your own computer.”