They're Strictly Friends (Tough Love Spinoff Book 1)

by Chloe Liese

  One hand wrapped around my waist, his grip firm and desperate. The other swept slowly down the valley of my thighs, to where I was wet and painfully empty of his touch.

  “Lucas,” I gasped.

  “Yes, darling.” He kissed me as two of his fingers finally teased along my entrance. God, his touch. Firm, teasing, impossibly perfect. Suddenly he froze and withdrew his hand.

  “Where the hell are your knickers?”

  I shrugged. “They didn’t seem important at the time.”

  His head fell back. “Christ, what am I doing?”

  I grabbed his hand and tugged it back down. “Don’t stop.”

  “Elodie, I can’t do this to you.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  Lucas sighed as he dropped his forehead to mine. “Start something I can’t finish.”

  I snuck a kiss. “Mon nounours, I’m straddling your very impressive cock. I have no concern about your ability to finish.”

  He hissed as I palmed him firmly through his trousers. “Stop, just—what did you call me? Your teddy?”

  I kissed his neck, tasted sweat and cologne on his jaw. I had a heartbeat in my core, and I’d never wanted a man this badly. I felt dizzy with need. “Oui. It’s just an endearment. You’re French is so good, Loulou, it makes me crazy.”

  He was panting, rolling his hips up to mine. “You have to stop. I can’t think while you’re on me.”

  I smiled against his skin, then bit his neck, making his hips lurch against me. “That’s the point.”

  “No, Elodie.” His hands stilled me. “We need to talk, truly.”

  Slowly I straightened, and looked at him. “You told me the truth, Lucas, and it changes nothing for me. I still want you, so much. What else could you possibly have to say right now?”

  “Just because I told you doesn’t mean…” He sighed heavily. “There are implications. This”—he gestured between us—“won’t last. I can’t give you forever.”

  I froze, then stepped off his lap. “Why?”

  “Because it’s going to get ugly. I’m not happy about my situation. I feel robbed, and resentful. I’m really angry, Elodie. I’m not going to be a pleasant person to be around when my sight loss truly picks up. When I’m clueless as to the color of my shirt or whether or not the sun’s shining. You’re not going to want to be in the same country as me, let alone tethered intimately to my life.”

  “Lucas, this is not to make light of what you’re saying. I think I understand your concerns. You are grieving, and you’ll continue to grieve. You won’t always be yourself when you do. But, Loulou, you’re not necessarily an easy person in a number of ways already, and I like you just fine. You’re not the only one with moods and weaknesses. I have them too. So we’ll learn. We’ll give each other grace and patience. We’ll fight and make up. Why don’t you believe that?”

  Lucas huffed a longsuffering sigh. “No, I…I think I’ll manage to ruin it all. Then, on top of being blind, I’ll have broken your heart and lost the…” He turned back to the piano, began playing Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem.

  Lacrimosa. Tearful. Weeping.

  “What would you have lost, Loulou?”

  He shook his head, played on. “Don’t make me say it.”

  The…love of his life? Could that be it? My heart hammered against my ribs. I wanted to cry and kiss him and drag him to bed and never let him doubt how much he meant to me.

  “Lucas, I won’t want to leave you when your sight is gone.”

  “Perhaps. But I will want you to leave when my sight is gone.”

  “No,” I said emphatically.

  Lucas threw his elbows on the keys, and a smash of discordant notes rang in the air. Then he stood and stepped toward me slowly, hands outstretched. “Elodie, you deserve much better than me—”

  “No!” I backed away.

  Lucas lunged and grabbed my shoulders. “Why are you doing this? Why won’t you just let me go?”

  “You won’t even give us a chance,” I choked out.

  “To what end?” he said hoarsely. “I’ll be miserable. I’ll make you so unhappy. I’ll hurt you.”

  I pushed against him and took a step, making him backtrack until his knees hit the piano bench. We stood there, eyes locked, breaths heavy with emotion. I’d never felt so determined about anything in my whole life. I had to convince him that he was wrong. I would convince him.

  I would not let Lucas descend to despair. We’d learn how to live and love together, and while his world grew darker, I wouldn’t let his life grow dim. How could I show him this?

  A memory flashed in my mind’s eye.

  “Play when you are angry, Elodie. Play when you are heartbroken,” my instructor had said. That was my first lesson back since Adrien’s death. “Play when you don’t think you can do anything else, for music is the language of our souls. It will always see you through, even in your darkest hour.”

  “Darkest hour,” I muttered. I stepped past the piano, where, like any serious pianist, Lucas kept piles of music in shallow shelves. Unlike me, Lucas was neurotically organized, so I easily found a stack of duets.

  “What are you doing?” he said wearily.

  I ignored him, rifling through them until I found what I’d heard him playing earlier. It wasn’t a typical duet by any means, yet I hadn’t even been surprised he knew it, like I did. Since I met him, I’d felt a kinship with Lucas—a similarity amid all our differences. We were deep lovers, yet as playful as we were passionate. But underneath our cheery facade, we both carried melancholy and grief. This piece encompassed it all.

  I slapped it on the stand. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, arranged for duet. The massive, heart-wrenching piece originally intended for organ. The first time I heard it in church, I wept. Then I swore I’d learn it.

  Lucas stared up at me. “Elodie, I know I should have told you sooner, and that I regret. You’re sad for me, and we’re attracted to each other, but that means nothing for the long run. It will be a nightmare. You have to trust me.”

  I ignored him, hands shaking as I spread the papers across the stand, not like we’d use them. Lucas probably couldn’t see in this light, and I had it essentially memorized.

  He frowned from the piano to me. “I’m not playing right now, we’re talking.”

  “This is how we’re talking,” I said.

  “Elodie—”

  “Lucas!” I wiped an unsteady hand across my nose as tears trailed down my cheeks. “Sit down and fucking play this with me.”

  “Christ’s sake.” He sat with a huff and didn’t even bother glancing at the music. “What is it I’m playing?”

  “Toccata and Fugue.”

  “Oh, bloody hell. Right, Bach in the dark. No problem.”

  “Exactly. Now, move over. I have an arse that needs room.”

  Lucas didn’t take the bait to remark on my backside. Vulnerability tightened his features. “I don’t know if I can. It’s been years. And I can’t…” He stared at the music and sighed. “I can’t see well in the dark. I can barely see anything right now.”

  I shrugged and smoothed the pages. “You’ll be all right. The written music’s only here for formality’s sake. You know it, Lucas. I heard you playing it earlier.” I began the famous opening line, eyes shut, praying Lucas joined in the bass line.

  Holding my breath, I exhaled in relief as the low notes echoed my opening run. Then Lucas played the sustained chords that would be the organ’s pedals.

  “This is madness,” he grumbled.

  “And yet we’re doing it.” I began the rapid series from the top while he syncopated the bottom notes like we were made to do this. Because we were.

  “I’ll muck it up soon enough,” he said over the music. “Trust me. I always practiced the opening most. I’d no patience for seeing the long, difficult pieces through to the end.”

  “The ending is like the beginning, Lucas. You push through the hard movements, and finish with the joy of comi
ng home. Now, stop dooming us before we’ve even started. Feel the beauty of what you’re doing. Life’s beauty is felt, not seen or even heard. It’s felt, Loulou.”

  I can’t tell you what expression he wore as I said that, because I kept my own eyes closed. I only know that he threw himself into the music with me, that two people played, with four overlapping hands, a piece we’d never once practiced together. That as the piece advanced, Lucas’s breath grew ragged, and my arms ached, though not as much as my heart.

  Suddenly he laughed. “How the fuck are we doing this?”

  I shook my head as we crossed arms. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  The sequence grew more complex, approaching our finale. Its melody returned—as I’d promised Lucas—to how it began, until we landed on the heavy minor chords. Soon came my massive arpeggios. I glanced at him and met his eyes.

  “Ready?”

  He nodded, beginning the heavy bass that offset my runs. My hands danced with his as the music grew wilder, until Lucas played its final, somber chords.

  The last D minor echoed in the room and faded until the only sound was our breathing, jagged and spent. My inhale, his exhale, perfectly syncopated, as our hands had been. Even our breaths were attuned to each other.

  Lucas turned toward me, cheeks stained with tears. “I’m not sure I liked that.”

  “Liked what?” I asked quietly.

  He brushed a loose curl behind my ear. Then, as he kissed my cheek, he whispered the truth. “Feeling alive again.”

  I sighed as he kissed the corner of my mouth. “That’s unfortunate. I had plans to spend quite a lot of time feeling alive with you.”

  A growl, and the creak of the bench as Lucas sprang up from it, was all the warning I had. Suddenly I was inverted over his shoulder, watching the first floor fade from view as he marched us up the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” I cried happily.

  “Talking with you, as promised,” he said. “Just not with words. At least not tonight.”

  Eleven

  Lucas

  This was exactly what I’d been afraid of happening—that despite every effort I made, I’d still fall headlong for Elodie. Selfish and weak, I’d keep her for myself, even for a fragment of time.

  Out went every justification for protecting her heart and mine. To hell with how it would hurt us when that day came, and my world as I knew it became a sheet of black. I wanted every part of Elodie, for as long as I could. Quirks and sharp temper, high expectations, and a penchant for comforting me with enormous baked goods. I wanted her tangled-up idioms, her slips into French profanity, the way she left little piles behind her like a trail of breadcrumbs that without fail led me to her.

  I wanted the fragrance of jasmine and honeysuckle to perfume my bed. I wanted to walk shoulder to shoulder with her every day into work, laugh and torture her with my in-office neuroses and bastardly demands. I wanted to watch her mind unfurl complex problems, to take her places we’d never been. I wanted to hike and ski and bike the world with her.

  I wanted Elodie Bertrand in every corner of my life, and not a single thing between us, for as long as I could, which wasn’t nearly as long as I liked. But when I’d told her the truth, so she could understand why forever was never going to be ours but a little while could be, she’d solidly rejected that. And I just couldn’t figure out how to fight off my need for her before I’d convinced her this was the only way.

  Stubborn, beautiful woman.

  I threw her down on the bed, then flipped on every bloody light in the room. It wasn’t romantic or atmospheric, but I had to see her. Every gorgeous bit of her. She squinted and smiled cheerily.

  “You’re fortunate I’m such a confident woman, Loulou. Not many women like a spotlight on their nakedness.”

  “Ah, but you’re not most women.”

  I splayed my hands on either side of her. Our eyes met, and the air thickened. She was so torturously beautiful. Her hands drifted to my side and slid underneath my shirt. My stomach tightened, and my breath caught. My whole body burned for her.

  Slow down, mate. Savor her.

  Leaning slowly, I kissed her, gentle tastes of her sweet, full lips. She opened for me like I was all she wanted, her fingers flying up my chest and slipping through my hair, then tugging gently. Our tongues met once, twice, as she wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me flush against her.

  “Christ, you’re strong.”

  She smiled against my lips. “Yes. And I’m very determined.”

  I let my body press into hers, kissed her deeper, gloried in how perfectly we fit. “You think I don’t know that?” I said. “I’ve seen you in action. You’re a force of nature at the office.”

  She yelped. “Wait, Lucas, stop!”

  “What? What’s the matter?” I sat up and tried to redirect blood flow from my cock to my brain.

  “This can’t get in the way of our work,” she said. “We have to set up some rules.”

  I groaned. “Well, my knob was absurdly hard, but you’ve managed to deflate it quite handily. Work will do it, every time.” I dropped next to her on the bed. “All right, let’s have it, then.”

  She stared at me in confusion and tried not to laugh. “Don’t you have any expectations or restrictions? You’re going to have the run of the place soon, after all.”

  I tilted my head to the side, smiling at her because I couldn’t help but do so when I looked at her.

  “No, El, I really don’t. You did the training, you know we don’t have boundaries around relationships and colleagues. So long as the work doesn’t suffer, we’ll be fine.”

  She frowned. “Really?”

  “Really, but clearly you have concerns. So, go ahead. I’m all ears.”

  Sighing, she stared up at the ceiling. “Well, first off, no flirtatious banter; your banter makes it hard for me to think straight, and I can’t afford that. Second, no inuendo, especially in meetings; I get excited, and then I start thinking very filthy things. And obviously, no sex in the office.”

  I snorted in laughter, but when I saw her stern expression, my face fell. “You’re serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious, Lucas! Our work would undoubtedly suffer. Sex right before a presentation, sex when an important client calls. Or what happens if I’m bent over your desk and—”

  “Right,” I interrupted. “No offense, darling, but we’ve yet to even have sex in the first place. You talking about me taking you in all these places, most notably my desk, then telling me I can’t…” I scrubbed my face, trying to erase the mental picture of how smashingly hot that would be. “How about we agree I’ll respect your boundaries, try to follow them dutifully, and that can be that?”

  “I’d say we have an agreement, then,” she said on a smile.

  I pulled her my way and yanked her leg over my hip. This felt so natural, like all the months of subtle touches—sandwiched on the sofa for board games, sidling up to each other lawn bowling, shoves and prods over trivia, hard hugs goodbye—all coalesced and built into this perfect completion of who we’d always been, who we were supposed to be. Friends, yet so much more.

  When she pressed a soft kiss at the base of my throat, I shivered. Slowly, I slipped my fingers under the hem of her shirt, revealing wide, soft hips. A shadow at the apex of her thighs.

  “Did you at least buy knickers?” I whispered. My hand swept over her legs along her smooth skin.

  She smiled and blushed. “Yes, but I found I rather liked not wearing them when we were out shopping.”

  “You’re going to be the death of me.” When I pressed my hands along her hips, felt her strength and curves, her beauty finally mine to touch, her muscles flexed and her breath hitched.

  “I might…” She cleared her throat. “I’ll start my cycle soon. It might come while we’re together. Maybe you don’t want to—”

  I silenced her with a kiss. “I couldn’t care less about that. Only that it’s comfortable for you.”
/>   She bit her lip and peered up at me through her lashes. “I don’t mind it, but I bleed…badly. I have PCOS—polycystic ovary syndrome—so it’s rather grim for about a week.”

  I knew her cramps were terrible, but I hadn’t known she had an underlying condition. PCOS was no joking matter. “I’m sorry it’s so painful. I hate seeing you hurt.”

  “Thank you, but it’s all right. I get through it.” She kissed my lips, my jaw, along my throat. “And I’m also very ready for you.”

  Her hand found mine and guided me to touch her. Our eyes met. I felt like an inexperienced boy all over again, a nervous wreck. My mind blanked as I lifted her nightshirt from her body.

  Oh God, I was ruined. Elodie was the muse for every sculptor and painter. She was a goddess.

  Silky skin, full breasts, rosy nipples that tightened as the cool air hit them. My eyes traveled down her long, voluptuous body that screamed all woman. I pressed her thighs far apart, revealing her, glistening wet, the small dusting of curls shaped into un ticket de métro—a neat rectangle that pointed straight down.

  “Christ, you’re beautiful,” I muttered.

  I stood up and slowly unbuttoned my shirt. Not a performance but a focused task. Our eyes held the whole time I did it, and she smiled. My skin felt hot, my body aching to press skin to skin against her perfection. Next I made quick work of my trousers. My cock sprang free, and I watched her, memorizing her expression as she gazed at me.

  Her eyes grew wide as her mouth fell open. Then she covered her face.

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Exactly how to make a man feel like he’s measuring up.”

  She snorted as she separated her fingers enough for one sapphire eye to peek through. “You’ll break me in half, Lucas. You’re huge!”

  Yuuuge, it came out. Her accent was thicker, and she was flushed. Her eyes locked on my length, and her tongue wet her lips.

  I blushed spectacularly. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that, but coming from Elodie, it felt different. It mattered to me that she was pleased, if a little daunted; that I was what she wanted. That was all I cared about.