LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  I was only there an hour, browsing the shelves, eyes roving over the familiar titles and book jackets before it was time to head out, back to our laughable downtown to start selling drinks.

  The town was small enough to make it possible to get around by walking, but it either didn’t care enough or didn’t have enough funds in its coffers to build sidewalks throughout city limits. I had to cross the street several times to remain on serviceable concrete, and eventually ran out of it anyway, treading in cold, wet grass that dampened the hems of my pants.

  If I cared enough, I guess I could’ve gone to a town meeting and asked for officials to devote some of their attention to something that actually mattered to me, but I supposed I didn’t care that much.

  The lunchtime crowd at the bar was hit or miss, but when I sauntered up to cracked and gum-splotched sidewalk, there was a man lingering by the doorway, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands plunged into his pockets.

  “Waiting for me?” I called, making him turn.

  I was a little taken aback—I’d never seen his face before in my life. He definitely wasn’t from around here. That much was sure. He was tall, and handsome in a way that you might see on a men’s magazine cover. His ears had turned pink from the chill in the air, and he seemed to be attempting to jam the majority of his face down into the fine woolen scarf wrapped several times around his neck. But what I could see, I liked. He was a good-looking man. Maybe even someone I could pass the time with. Someone I could distract myself with.

  “Are you Meagan Green?”

  Dammit. Someone who knew me.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked, stopping just short of him, cocking my head, racking my brain to try and remember if he was someone I’d been with before. No. With a face like that, I’d remember it. His blond hair was neatly parted on the side, lightly gelled to lie close to his finely shaped skull. And those blue eyes…I would remember those blue eyes. We definitely hadn’t been together, but if I had it my way, we would soon. The library had been a good distraction, but I was starting to feel jumpy, and anxious—an addict in need of a fix that came in the form of thrusts, of groans, of fingernails scrabbling down backs.

  I needed to be swallowed whole.

  “My name’s Levi Morgan.” He paused, those blue eyes pinning me to the spot as if the name should ring a bell. I shrugged at him.

  “Should I know you?”

  “You…don’t know who I am?” He looked genuinely puzzled, as if the mere mention of his name would suddenly make me kowtow to him.

  “Sorry,” I said, moving around him, shoving the door open that Mr. Trenton had stopped by to unlock for me. I could’ve saved the bar owner a trip if he’d just trusted me with the keys, but he was so sure I’d squat in here if I got the chance. I couldn’t blame him. I probably would’ve.

  I glanced over my shoulder and my lips curled upward. The illustrious Levi Morgan had followed me inside of the bar. They always followed me.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in the way I’d developed that let the man I was asking know that the “something” I was suggesting was really “anything.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, and I wondered if he’d heard me. I didn’t look at him, didn’t want to let him know that he was unnerving me. If they wanted it, they usually gave me some kind of indication by now. I hoped he was going to play hard to get. I needed my fix, like the first cigarette of the morning.

  “A vodka on the rocks,” he said. “Grey Goose, if you have it. Smirnoff, if not.” He eyed the bar dubiously, not doubt wondering if I even stocked Smirnoff.

  “Don’t worry,” I teased him. “I won’t leave you hanging. I’m surprised, though. It’s not the weather for vodka.”

  “It’s always the weather for vodka.”

  “No.” I clucked and shook my finger at him, grandly dusting off a bottle of Grey Goose. It was only missing a few fingers of liquor from it. No one who frequented this bar could usually afford top-shelf liquor. I couldn’t even recall the last person I’d poured Grey Goose for. “It’s cold outside. You shouldn’t be drinking anything on the rocks, first of all. Second of all, you should be drinking something like brandy or whiskey. A nice amber liquor to warm you up.”

  Those blue eyes just didn’t crack. I couldn’t get them to warm up to me. I was already resigning myself to the fact that he wouldn’t want to be my special friend this early afternoon, and that I’d have to wait until the rest of the crowd drifted in to get what I was waiting for, when he finally graced me with a smile.

  “Fine. Whiskey it is.”

  “I knew you didn’t want stinky old Grey Goose,” I said, returning the bottle to its spot on the shelf behind me and slipping out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels. “Now. Let’s banish the cold and warm ourselves up.”

  I slid a pair of glasses down the bar and filled them generously.

  “Someone else order a whiskey?” he asked, taking his beverage and swilling it around, watching the way the whiskey left its mark on the inside of the glass.

  “I couldn’t let you drink alone, now, could I?” I hoisted my glass to him, smiling crookedly. “To Levi Morgan, who is so certain I should know who he is that he knows my name.”

  “To Meagan Green, who has no idea who I am,” he said, clinking my glass with his. The warmth I’d coaxed forward with my banter about liquor had vanished again, which left me befuddled. He was the one who had shown up here, knowing my name. I’d had no control over that.

  I took a small sip of the whiskey, enjoying the way it burned all the way down into my stomach. Levi took the whole lot of it, apparently not caring that it was more than a double I’d poured in his glass. He exhaled heavily and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, but his face didn’t fold in on itself. This was a man who knew how to drink liquor.

  “Are you going to tell me why it’s so important that I know your name, or am I just going to have to figure it out myself?” I asked. “I’m a modern woman. I can Google things.”

  “You really don’t know who I am?” He peered at me, as if he were trying to figure out if I were making fun of him.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I really don’t,” I said. “If you’re a famous actor, sorry. I haven’t been in the mood for watching movies in a while. And I don’t have cable, so…”

  “I’m not an actor,” he said quickly. “It’s just…is there somewhere we can go?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Somewhere we can go? What’s wrong with here?” The pit of my stomach stirred. Was this going to happen, or what? I’d tear that scarf off, first. Warm those ears with my mouth.

  “I really need to talk to you,” Levi said.

  “About who you are.”

  “About who I am, I guess,” he confirmed.

  I held my arms out. “You have the floor, Levi Morgan. Just say what you need to say. You have my undivided attention.”

  He frowned, but opened his mouth. However, the door opened, cutting him off abruptly as a trio of men burst in, huffing with the cold, a flurry of coats shrugged off, hats pushed up. I noticed that Levi hadn’t gotten rid of his outerwear, my mind still willing him out of that scarf, trying to unwind it with powers I didn’t possess.

  “What can I get you, gentlemen?” I asked, smiling at Levi’s discomfort. He wanted privacy, though I couldn’t quite grasp what was so private about a person’s name and why I didn’t know it, and it somehow delighted me to deny him.

  “Beer, and keep it coming,” one of the interrupting patrons grunted at me, and I made a show of frosted cold mugs, artfully poured suds from gleaming taps I’d polished a few days ago, relishing the power I had in this moment.

  I liked feeling of all those eyes on me. I always liked it. There was something affirming about it. That I was important. Worthy.

  The mystery of just what Levi wanted was enough even to distract me from the thing I usually wanted the most while working here. The customers ebbed and flowed, drinking their
beverages fast and slow, and the mystery remained, a tantalizing anticipation.

  “Do you get a break at any point?” Levi asked, holding my eyes in his intense gaze while I poured him another shot of whiskey, even though he already had a double in his glass.

  “I can take a break whenever,” I said, batting my eyes at him. “Whenever you want.”

  “What I have to say…it’s best done away from prying eyes.”

  “You’ll see,” I said, busying myself by wiping down the bar with a rag. “There’ll be a lull before dinner. No prying eyes, then.”

  When that lull came, I found myself nearly as eager as he was to see what he needed to say, but it was Levi who was coy this time.

  “Maybe there’s a better place we could go?” he suggested, fidgeting with his glass. I didn’t know the man, but the way he sat at the bar, the way he still hadn’t taken his outerwear off, and the way he carried himself made me doubt that he was the kind of man who ever fidgeted.

  “What’s better than here?”

  “Is there a restaurant near here?” he asked. “Maybe it would be better to say over dinner.”

  “If you want to take me out on a very romantic date to the pride of our town, McDonald’s, then be my guest,” I said, laughing at him. “You should probably just say what you came here to say, though. I’m dying to know.”

  Levi flinched at that, and I found myself even more confused than before. Just what was going on here?

  “When was the last time you talked to Matt?” he asked, trying but failing to meet my eyes.

  “What did you say?” My amused befuddlement faded a bit. “Matt?”

  “Yes, Matt. Your brother. When was the last time you talked to him?”

  I shook my head slowly. “It’s been a long time. Do you know Matt? Are you a friend of his?”

  “I did know Matt.”

  I swallowed hard, but there was something in my throat, blocking me. Some obstruction that had suddenly formed at Levi’s use of the past tense.

  The door to the bar opened, accompanied by a pair of patrons and a puff of cold air.

  “We’re closed!” I yelled, charging around the bar toward them.

  “Closed? But the door was open.”

  “Come on, Meagan, we just want a drink.”

  “The bar’s closed. I said it’s closed. There’s a gas leak. You can’t be in here. The whole town could go up. I’m saving your lives. Really. Just go.”

  I all but pushed them back out the door as I babbled, then shoved it shut, locking it. I turned around and leaned against the glass, staring at Levi from across the bar.

  “I think you’d better say what you came here to say,” I said. “Right now, this is as good as it’s going to get.”

  “There isn’t an easy way to say this….”

  “So just say it.”

  “I knew your brother in New York City,” Levi said. “He worked for me. He was my bodyguard. But he…died. He died saving my life. I thought someone would’ve alerted you, your family.”

  “There isn’t a family,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, aware of just how cold the glass of the door was at my back but unable to step forward to get myself away from it. “There’s only me.”

  “That’s why I thought you would’ve known me,” he said. “I thought your brother would’ve mentioned he was working for me.”

  I shook my head, beyond words. Matt was…he was dead. I hadn’t heard from him because I hadn’t contacted him. He’d told me he’d get me to the city in a year, and I hadn’t heard from him because I wanted him to focus on that. I needed him to get me out of here, needed for him to succeed so I could escape.

  And he was dead. He had died in his efforts. Now I really was alone. There wasn’t any kind of hope for me anymore. I’d die if I had to stay in that house. I just couldn’t do it. I would rather fall asleep in the alleyway behind the bar and stay asleep, eyelids frozen shut, some stupid, small-town tragedy who would be forgotten by the New Year.

  My brother was dead, and all I could think of was wanting to die, too.

  I’d tried. I’d really tried to have hope over the past year. It hadn’t been easy, but Matt was the one who’d kept me going. He’d said that he was going to get me out of here, and I’d put my trust in that. Now there wasn’t anything to hope for. Nobody to trust. The thing I feared the worst was still out there, ever present in my mind.

  “Meagan?” Levi was standing right in front of me, approaching me without me even noticing.

  My world was imploding and I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed Levi’s face with both of my hands and yanked it downward, kissing him deeply. He yanked his face away just as quickly.

  “What was that?” he asked, his chest heaving up and down. “What was that, Meagan?”

  “Fuck me,” I demanded. “Now.”

  “No.” He stared at me like I’d grown an extra head.

  “You don’t want to fuck me?” I needed to vanish. I needed that hole to throw myself into. I was imploding, and it was the only thing that would save me. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. But he had to do it.

  “You’re…very attractive,” he said hesitantly, “but this isn’t the place or the time. I just told you your brother is dead and you want to—”

  “I want to fuck,” I said, pulling on my own hair in frustration. “Just…fuck me. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

  I launched myself at him again, my fingers clawing at the front of that coat he’d never removed. He jerked away, but I had him by that scarf, digging my nails into the soft fabric, wishing I had the strength to rend it to shreds. Levi held his hands up even as I dragged my tongue up his neck, desperate for the reaction I craved.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t understand what you’re doing, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I don’t care if you hurt me,” I said, kissing his throat, his jaw, his chin, his mouth, a kiss for every syllable. “Just fuck me.”

  “Meagan…”

  I kissed him full on his mouth, pushing my tongue in-between his lips. He resisted for a long moment before giving in, his tongue flaccid in his own mouth, letting me probe his mouth to my heart’s content. Only I wouldn’t be content. I couldn’t be content. I needed this. I needed him.

  “Fuck me.”

  “It isn’t…I just…Meagan…”

  “Save me.”

  Those were somehow the magic words, because Levi began kissing me back, pushing me back against the cold door, ravishing my throat, working his warm hands beneath my shirt. Without warning, he ripped his pants open, then did the same to mine, before lifting me, wrapping my legs around his waist, using the freezing door behind me to prop us up. With one hand pressed against the glass beside my face, Levi used the other hand to guide himself inside of me.

  It was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed, and it still wasn’t enough.

  He started moving inside of me, and I tried to give myself over, tried to lose myself to that irresistible tide. I tried to disappear into the opening maw, focused on the pulse of each thrust, held on for dear life as Levi grunted into my neck, burying his face there as if he were afraid to look at me.

  He put his hand between us and found my clit, rubbing in time to his thrusts, and I banged the back of my head against the door in the rush of climax, not caring about the pain or the cold or the loss or the horror or the helplessness.

  I didn’t care about anything in that void, and that was what I needed. It was all I needed.

  I came back to myself slowly, aware that Levi had stopped thrusting. He simply held me against the door, one hand cupping the back of my head where I’d hit it.

  “It doesn’t even hurt,” I lied.

  “It looked like it hurt.”

  “Why did you stop?” I was in that sticky afterglow, the one I hogged. I usually wanted to be alone for this feeling, hoarding the time when I felt sated and free, but I didn’t mind that Lev
i was there, holding me, still inside of me.

  “You came.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I don’t need to. You seemed like you needed to.”

  “You can keep going,” I said, my eyebrows knitting together. I didn’t know how to react to this situation. Men were only eager to sleep with me so they could get their rocks off. The vast majority of them didn’t concern themselves with my pleasure.

  “I’m good.”

  “But you didn’t come.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  He sat me down gently, pulling out just as softly, doing up his pants without looking at me. I watched him, absolutely flummoxed, standing with my pants undone, exposed and not caring.

  “What now?” I asked him. He looked up, those blue eyes as soft as I’d seen them.

  “Your brother told me to help you. So tell me what you need. I’ll take care of it.”

  He stood there and looked at me, a stranger whom my brother had died for, a man I’d had to beg to be with me, who’d guided me to completion and forgone his own conclusion.

  A man who had answered my plea to save me.

  Maybe it was the fact that I was still standing there, my pants completely open. Maybe it was the cold door still at my back, making me shudder. Maybe it was the fact that my brother was dead. Or maybe it was the curtains of my afterglow parting at last and letting the light shine on my piece-of-shit life.

  “Take me to New York City,” I demanded.

  “Fine,” Levi said easily. “We can leave as soon as you want. My jet’s on call at the airport the next town over.”

  I burst into tears.

  Chapter 4

  The next time I was self-aware, I realized that I ensconced in a strong pair of arms. I struggled when it dawned on me exactly where I was—trapped in a man’s grip inside my hell house.

  “You sort of fell asleep.” Levi’s voice calmed me a little bit, but I still couldn’t keep my stomach from churning. I didn’t want to be here. It didn’t matter that there was still daylight filtering in through the windows. It was the same nightmare in the light or the dark.