Elena was deeply startled. He thought some guy gave her the heart? And she was still brooding over him or something? As if. “My mother. When I was little. Six.”
It hadn’t been the first time Elena went into foster care, but the first time she had been a baby and only knew about it from her records. Her mother had gotten her back, and kept clean enough to keep her for a few years. But by the time Elena was six, the state had had to take her away again. Elena was old enough to know what was happening that time. She had been terrified and sobbing, clinging to her mother, refusing to let go, and her mother had been crying, too, and had given her the heart. A lionheart, her mother had said. Un coeur de lion.
“Ah.” Lucien traced her fingers but didn’t try to touch the heart. His eyes lifted suddenly from their hands to meet hers. “Did she hurt you?” he asked quietly.
“No!” The denial made Elena feel dishonest. “Not really.” Sometimes she’d forgotten about Elena for so many days that Elena had gotten really hungry, but when that went on too long, eventually the state always discovered it and intervened. And Elena went into foster care again. She’d tried her best to learn how to take care of herself well enough that the social worker wouldn’t notice when her mom forgot about her, but sometimes she just ran out of all the food in the house, and there was no more money to go down and get some groceries from the little épicerie down the street on her own, and the social worker always spotted the empty cupboards right away. And also, when that happened, her mom usually despaired in herself and thought Elena would be better off in someone else’s care, and confessed to the social worker herself. It was hard for Elena to reassure her mother that she was all right and the social worker that she was all right, when she actually wasn’t all right, but very hungry and trying her best.
“Mmm.” Lucien was silent for a moment.
Then he brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her, slow and tender, but deepening as she responded, taking his time. Elena shut her eyes and let herself get lost in the kiss, fleeing old memories into warmth and sensuality.
Ah, yes. Her present moment was so much better.
My own moment. For me. I found it and I’m helping make it.
So it’s mine, and I can keep this moment, even after it’s gone.
Add it to her collection. That was the thing about beautiful moments. They didn’t have to hurt after they ended. It all depended on your attitude. You could focus on what you had, not what you lost.
And what she had, right here and now, was…a strong body, braced over hers. Biceps that swelled under her fingers. A rose tattoo that made her feel like a heroine, because it proved that she had been right—he really had always needed to come back home. The scent of him, a little salt and sea in it, as if Corsica had imbued him with it. Care. He took care with her. He always, always did.
She seized that moment. With both hands. Stroking over him, digging her fingers into his muscles the way he had shown her he liked it. Riding her hands down his back, sinking her fingers into that tight ass and pulling him into her.
A rough sound of pleasure. She pressed herself up into him, kissing his shoulder bone, kissing the join of his neck, and slipped her hand around to the snap of his jeans.
“Ah, I see,” Lucien muttered roughly, grabbing her hand and bracing off her with one forearm. “Instead of you being vulnerable to me, you want to make me vulnerable to you.”
“Not vulnerable at all.” Elena tried to explain. “Just in my power.”
Blue eyes met hers. Full of arousal but also of warmth. “I think that is exactly what I was trying to describe for you, a moment ago.”
Oh.
What a lovely thought.
To be not vulnerable at all, when she was in his power.
“And you’re right,” he murmured, shifting his big body down hers to kiss over her shoulders. “I am in your power.”
“But not vulnerable,” she whispered, stroking the shoulders that were so much bigger than hers.
He sank his face into her hair. “Hopeful.” His lips brushed the word against the join of her neck. “You make me feel as if my life has been upended to make room for something beautiful. Something like nothing I’ve ever had, and nothing I’ve ever expected. Something that just landed on me out of a clear blue sky. But I can capture it and keep it, if I’m careful.”
Really? Elena couldn’t figure out what to make of that at all. It shimmered and shifted through her, as if all those butterfly wings were giving off iridescent light.
“So I’m being careful,” Lucien whispered against the hollow of her throat, brushing his lips down, down to her breasts again. “Very careful.” He closed his lips around her nipple, as one of his hands curved under her butt and brushed with just his fingertips up to the flowering of her sex.
Elena gasped and clutched him, arching into him.
“Mmm.” A deep sound in his throat. His hand slid around her thigh to settle more generously over her panties. He rubbed, full-handed, very gently. His tongue teased her nipple. “You like that, bella?”
She drew her hands down his smooth back, her head falling to the mattress.
“Oh, good. Because I like doing it.” The heel of his palm rubbed against her center, and his fingers teased at the edge of her panties. Ventured into the little curls hidden by them. Played figure eights through those curls until his thumb settled, light as a feather, over her clitoris.
Elena bit her lip as a hungry agony surged through her, as her fingernails pressed into his back.
He kissed her, making her teeth release, taking her mouth, long and deep, like a prelude, like a promise. His fingers stroked down over the lush parting of her sex, savoring, as if he wanted to feel every effect he was having on her body.
And oh, he was such a courteous explorer. Playing with just the lips of her sex until she writhed and twisted and begged for more. Slipping just one finger a little inside her, until she arched and begged for more. Teasing over her clit as he sank one, then two fingers deeper inside her and pressed against her walls until she whimpered and grabbed at him and cursed him and begged for more more more.
Until finally she managed to get his jeans at least shoved down his butt, and his penis in her hands, until his eyes were glittering and his breathing harsh, and he surged into her hands the way she surged into his.
She wrapped her thighs around him and pressed up into him, until finally, finally, he pushed her panties off her and sank into her, slow and hard and big, his glittering gaze sweeping down to the joining of their bodies and back up to her face.
All the muscles seemed to release in her body in relief. She fell back onto the bed. And then her hips surged up, hard, hard, to take more of him.
“Oh, yeah.” His voice was harsh. Braced on one taut arm, he slipped his hand between them. He surged deep in her and pressed there, his body rocking in bare, involuntary moves against her as he held himself in tight and brushed, brushed, brushed.
Elena tried to arch and was pinned. She tried to twist, and was pinned. Until everything he was building in her, that maddening mounting wanting longing need had nowhere to go nowhere at all nowhere, pressing inside her skin until she cried out and grabbed for him wildly, her nails raking down his back, and burst with it, into a swarm of colors that fled into his hands.
She was almost sobbing as she came down.
“Shh,” he breathed very tenderly, and kissed the tears that had spilled from her lashes. “Shh, shh.” His body shifted deep in hers and eased back. The rhythm was slow and gentle. “Shh. I’ve got you.”
“Oh, God, harder,” she said and arched up into him suddenly again, with all her force.
“Oh, thank God,” he muttered, and surged into her as if his last ounce of control had snapped, and Elena wrapped her arms and legs around him and bit at his shoulder as she burst again, her body jerking with it as she squeezed every part of him as hard as she could and tried to absorb all of him as he came, too.
She had had no idea.
Literally no idea. That it could feel so good and so right to have a man in her body and to come apart in his arms.
***
After, she pulled on her top and panties again as soon as he left for the bathroom, so that she was a little less naked, when he came back. He checked maybe a tiny second when he saw that, but then just stretched out on the bed beside her, running his hand possessively over her body.
“It really is like chess,” he murmured. “You plot with your little pawns and king, and then whenever the mood strikes her, the queen just sweeps across the board and knocks you over.”
That made Elena smile. She was pretty sure a queen could get ambushed, just sweeping across the board and knocking some supposedly harmless pawn over, but she nevertheless liked the idea of being the powerful queen who swept him off his feet. “You fought the good fight,” she said kindly. “But of course you were no match for my powers.”
He laughed and twined her hair around his finger, his eyes so damn tender. He really should not look at her that way. It made her feel so cozy and happy. As if he had little wavelets of I love you lapping inside him, too.
He traced his fingers down her chain and played with her lionheart. She closed her fingers around it to keep it safe. He let his hand fall. And then he did an odd thing. His hand came back. And it closed around hers. Not trying to take the lionheart from her. Closing her hand in his so that her little heart had a double shield, her hand and his bigger, stronger one, keeping her hand safe and warm.
“It’s where you put your courage, isn’t it?” he whispered. “That’s why you don’t trust me with it.”
She gazed down at their hands, completely baffled by the easing that ran through her body. How sleepy she felt. How trusting. She brought her other hand to cover his. Her heart was now so protected by their layered hands that it felt as if nothing could ever hurt it again.
“Shh,” he murmured, looping his arm around her, shifting her to her side so that her back was to him, and pulling her snug against his body. “You’re safe here.”
As his heat sank through her and his body grew heavier, drifting into sleep, she opened her eyes and stared warily into the darkness. It was sweet, and it was important, that he was promising her physical safety.
And maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t really understood, when she told him it wasn’t her physical safety that worried her. Military men, they worried about who had their back when bullets flew, not hearts.
Hearts were supposed to fend for themselves.
But she was used to that. That was what a little girl did, after all, when her mother couldn’t fend for her. She fended for herself.
Over and over and over, it had always turned out worse for her in the end, when someone else had the job of fending for her. Never had anyone been as relieved and at peace to reach eighteen and independence from others as Elena Lyon.
Lucien’s hand slid from hers on her lionheart to curve over her belly instead. His breathing had deepened, the looseness of his body communicating clearly that he had fallen asleep.
This was really lovely, she thought firmly as she gazed at her casement window, a hint of her warm street lamp showing through the slightly ajar shutters. I’m glad we did this. It was a good experience.
And of course you know far better, Elena, than to lose your heart.
Chapter 20
The rose oils penetrated the burlap of the bag on Lucien’s shoulder, the scent of homesickness. How could it still make him homesick, when he was right at the heart of the harvest which he had always missed so acutely?
He tossed the bag onto the truck and turned to survey the field. The short, intense rose harvest was nearly an all-day affair now, a full crew in the fields. It would be a good harvest, this year. The weather was perfect.
Elena was working with Layla, Malorie, and Allegra, who had all come out for a few hours on this Saturday morning. They all had other jobs, but everyone liked to sink their hands into the roses. Elena wore a floppy straw hat—the Rosiers always had plenty of those lying around—and a light, loose white long-sleeve shirt. Not a man’s shirt, a pretty, feminine cotton thing. She’d known how to dress to work in the fields, but he’d noticed she paid pretty careful attention to her attire even when harvesting flowers. Not a T-shirt and jeans kind of person. It was hard to imagine her as an ugly duckling, but he guessed she could imagine herself that way quite vividly, having lived it, and didn’t want to go back to it.
The same way he didn’t want to go back to that lost young man who had seen all this rose-filled valley and all the people he loved in it ripped out from under his feet.
He ran his hand over the top burlap bag, watching Elena. She was smiling very happily as she worked.
It was hard to look away from her when she smiled. It warmed him, down to his toes, in an intimate and private way he wanted to get used to.
Roses and happiness. All grown up now, the ground under him no longer the precarious thing it had become when he was a teenager but made solid by the stamp of his own feet.
Maybe he could be some of who he had once been and all of who he still was. Maybe it wasn’t an impossible synthesis.
“I told the others I’d make this into a trust,” Matt stopped beside him to say gruffly.
Lucien stilled.
“So this valley wasn’t just for me and my children.” Matt gestured. “So it was for all of us. I want to stay in charge of it. But I want to keep it for the whole family.”
Lucien understood that. The need to be in charge, and the need to use that command on behalf of others rather than for himself—it was the essence of being a good officer.
“It’s going to take a lot of sitting down with lawyers to hammer out something that can work well for generations. And a lot of convincing of our grandfather, who sees the valley as being safer if it’s held in just one pair of hands. But we’ve been stalled up until now because the attorney said that until we could track you down and find out your official, legal identity, it would be hard to set up a trust to include you.”
A trust that included him. Too many emotions came surging back—the love and loss, the ache and confusion and wanting. He still had no idea how to deal with his cousins and their determination to count him as part of the family, even when they knew he wasn’t, even after he himself had left them for a place of belonging he could count on.
Over and over, they made it seem as if he had just been a screwed up idiot at nineteen. And he could always have counted on them, if only he’d believed he was worth them. Just because he’d gone away didn’t mean they weren’t still there when he got back. J’y suis, j’y reste.
“You’re not still mad at me?” he said roughly. Remember, Matt? You were the only one who acted sane last weekend and snapped my head off.
“Of course I’m still mad at you,” Matt growled. “You fucking idiot. But you still get to be part of the goddamn family.” Matt glared at him, the slanting sun framing his dark half-curls and big shoulders, his jaw thrusting out so hard it drew the eye even backlit.
“Hell,” Lucien said, all he could manage.
Matt reached out suddenly and gave him a huge bear hug, punched him on the shoulder, and stomped off again.
Merde, his cousins were impossible. They kept acting so much like…his cousins. He really had been a fucking idiot at nineteen, hadn’t he?
And yet he was proud of who he had become, thanks to that stupid-assed act of running off to join the Legion. He’d saved lives in more ways than one. Not only the literal life and death of the battlefield, but given other lost men direction, to find their place in the world.
His cousins could forgive him. Almost as if…he should forgive himself.
He looked toward Elena, who was dumping her apron of roses into the burlap bag at the end of the row, her face absorbed and happy as she cupped the roses and let them spill through her fingers. Just watching her, the emotional pressure eased enough that he could take a long breath and let it out. Given h
ow pretty she was, there was no big surprise to the fact that she had attracted him from the first moment he saw her. What was surprising was this other thing that had started growing, also from that very first moment—that sense of perfect rightness, as if home had come to find him.
“We could use someone with your skills at Rosier SA,” a deep voice said from beside him. He looked around. Raoul. Funny how his cousins’ approach didn’t trigger his alertness sooner. As if, even after all these years, he knew all the way to his bones that he could trust them.
“My skills?” Lucien said dryly. “War?”
“Logistics of supply chains, leading men, evaluating dangerous situations, making sure things keep working no matter how fucked up beyond all recognition a situation gets. Yeah.”
“Seems as if you and Damien and Uncle Louis have that covered, Raoul.”
Raoul looked brooding. He rubbed the back of his head, in a move that made him look like a wolf that wanted petting and was having to do it himself, and then he glanced across the fields at Allegra, who presumably was a good petter. “Lucien. I’m fucking tired. I was stretched across this whole globe for fourteen years, and when I come back home and insist on cutting back, what happens? Shit flares up around the world, and I end up out there again anyway trying to make sure it’s handled right. Because we don’t have anyone else who can do it as well as I can.”
Yeah, that was pretty much the story of Lucien’s life, handling the shit that flared up all around the world, and aiming for promotions so he could make sure to be the person who handled it right.
“We’ve gotten more and more international in the past twenty years,” Raoul said. “But we have a responsibility, you know? I mean, we could be one of those fragrance companies, that exploits the small farmers around the world as much as they can and then dumps them the instant the political situation in their country starts to get tricky.”
Lucien’s eyebrows drew together. “We could?” Since when? From his grandfather’s days, at least, the Rosiers had made a principle out of doing the right thing by the less privileged, even if they paid a higher cost than the person who did the wrong thing.
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