She didn’t watch him go, frowning into her wine instead, his words slowly settling down over her like a blanket weighted down with lead.
Live a little. As if she wasn’t living now.
Well, actually, you’re not, are you? All you ever do is go to work and come home. Go out to a bar with Kahu and the others, and that’s only if you’re lucky.
The thoughts were insidious and did nothing for the discomfort sitting inside her. Yes, it was an intellectual, narrow kind of life, but it satisfied her. She didn’t have either the time or the inclination for more.
It’s been a while since you tried for more…
Laughter drifted across the room, Kahu’s, the woman’s. She couldn’t help herself; she turned to look. The blonde was leaning toward Kahu, elbows on the table, an openly hungry expression on her face. That woman didn’t seem to care about caution either. Or fear. No, she was just hungry.
Yes, well, for some people it was that simple. But she’d never been one of those people. Not since Piers had taken her desire and twisted it, used it, manipulated it.
Burned all the passion right out of her.
Sick of her thoughts, she looked down at her phone sitting on the bar beside her glass. There were already a few texts from colleagues, and a couple from a student, some meeting reminders.
God, she didn’t have time to sit around drinking by herself and thinking about Lucien North. What she should be doing was finding him and telling him her honest feelings about him, which was to back the hell off. Then she needed to get back to work and think about that instead.
Eleanor collected her phone and slipped off her barstool.
She didn’t bother with the rest of her wine.
Chapter Four
Luc lay on his back on the grass, the shadow of the pohutakawa a cool darkness over his face. He kept his eyes closed, the sounds of the city a low hum in the background.
He liked this part of the university grounds. A peaceful, grassy space with lots of trees not far from the law school. Everyone else was in classes so he had it to himself, especially nice since he’d come here to think.
Or rather tell himself what a stupid fucking idiot he’d been the day before with Eleanor.
He’d spent the whole of the previous week making sure they crossed paths, not deliberately stalking her, but whenever they were in the same area, he made sure she noticed him. And she had. It had taken a couple of days but soon it had got to the point that whenever they were in the same space, her gaze would automatically find his.
That had been so incredibly satisfying. Like he’d passed a difficult exam with flying colors or something.
Then he’d missed her lecture—he’d had to have coffee with his grandmother and missing it would have meant her worrying about him—and he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to go and apologize for his absence personally. Then she’d said she hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t there and he’d…gotten angry.
He’d had years of learning how to detach himself from his emotions, and in one second Eleanor May had brought them all flooding back to the surface again. And dickhead that he was, he’d gone ahead and said those words to her. I want to take you home and fuck you senseless.
Stupid motherfucking prick.
He’d said the words because he was angry and he wanted to shock her. Jolt her somehow. And he’d seen the flash of heat in her eyes and known she’d liked it, no matter what she said. But the satisfaction he’d gotten from that had then been ripped away by what had followed the heat.
Fear.
Oh, she’d tried to hide it from him, but he knew what fear looked like. Knew it like he knew the tattoos that covered the backs of his hands. Fear was an old friend of his and had been for years until he’d learned how to cut his emotions off. Then he’d started to recognize it in the eyes of other people every time they saw him coming. Those who ran screaming from him and the members of his squad. Some of his fellow soldiers had gotten off on the power of that fear, had loved how it gave them respect.
But not him. He knew how it killed you inside. How it reduced you. He would never want to do that consciously to anyone ever again.
Especially not her.
Christ, he shouldn’t have said those words. And yet…he couldn’t forget that heat in her eyes before fear had drowned it. She’d liked hearing him say it.
Luc groaned softly, covering his eyes with his forearm. The woman’s contradictions were driving him fucking insane. And the worst part was, every little piece of her he saw, he wanted more. He wanted to know what made her afraid and why she kept the world at a distance. Who or what had hurt her. And she had been hurt, because fear always followed pain.
Why do you want to know?
Good fucking question.
The sun crept over his legs, the heat seeping through the denim of his jeans. Ever since he’d returned from Africa he’d felt like he could never get warm enough. As if parts of him were encased in ice, frozen in shadow. Numb.
He’d thought it a blessing since numbness helped make it easier to fit back into society and try to be a normal person with a normal life. But something about Eleanor touched those frozen parts of him, thawing them slightly. Making him remember what it was like to be warm. What it was like to even be fucking alive.
That’s why he wanted to know. That’s why she was important.
She made him realize that he wasn’t numb all the way through.
Luc stared into the darkness behind his closed lids. Shit, why did he even want that? It was dangerous. There was a reason he kept all his emotions locked down. He’d had to detach from them in order to survive Charles Inza’s army, and he’d done the same when he returned so he could survive real life.
So he could be the average twenty-five-year-old Kiwi he was pretending to be and not the boy who’d commanded one of the death squads. Who’d killed people.
Beneath the noise of the city traffic and the wind in the trees came another sound, a light footfall coming closer.
A normal student wouldn’t have heard it, but of course he wasn’t a normal student. And he’d been in situations where his life had depended on being able to hear the slightest of sounds.
Fuck. It had better not be Maddy. He didn’t think he could deal with another of her come-ons right now.
The footsteps stopped near him, a familiar perfume threading through his senses, and he felt a moment of dizzying relief. Because the perfume wasn’t Maddy’s usual grapefruit body wash but something more sophisticated. Subtle. Complex.
Luc didn’t open his eyes. “Hello, Professor May.”
“How did you know it was me?” She sounded irritated.
Slowly, he removed his forearm and opened his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the sudden influx of midday summer sun. Focusing on the woman standing beside him. And for a second she looked like she was surrounded by a corona of light, blonde hair a halo around her head. Beautiful. Delicate. An unearthly being.
Her cool gaze regarded him with a certain amount of dispassion and he felt warmth beginning to uncoil inside him, wanting to see that heat again in her eyes. “How did I know it was you? Because of your perfume. Chanel No. 5. Your favorite.”
“Really? And how do you know it’s my favorite?”
“Because you wear it every day.”
“Oh. How predictable of me.”
“I’m not complaining. It’s a very sensual scent.”
Her forehead creased, clearly not liking him pointing that out. But too bad. She knew how he felt about her, no point in hiding it now. “I take it you didn’t come over here to finally admit your feelings for me,” he said.
She snorted, holding her briefcase in front of her like a barrier between them. “Hardly.”
Of course he hadn’t expected her to, not even when he’d challenged her with it the day before. She was a guarded woman and he suspected getting her to admit to anything would be difficult.
But shit, he’d spent all of the previous week making sur
e it was him she looked for whenever she walked into a room. And he’d done it. And now he wanted more than merely a look.
He wanted to hear her say it.
Slowly he sat up. “Then what? Because if you want an apology, you’ll be waiting all day. I’m not apologizing for the truth.”
“Yes, well, there are some situations where the truth is not required.”
“You’d rather I lied?”
“I’d rather you kept it to yourself.”
“You asked me for the truth, Professor. I gave it to you.”
Her mouth thinned. “Then you need to pull back on the truth, Mr. North. Because next time you’re so frank with your views I’ll have no qualms about taking this to the dean.”
She was serious. He could see that. And if she’d shown him no signs of interest whatsoever, he would have done what she asked. Because that was one of his rules: he never pushed himself where he wasn’t wanted. He may be a killer but he wasn’t a rapist.
It was a small distinction, but vitally important. Especially since that rule had been the only thing that separated himself from the other soldiers.
The only thing that kept him from being a monster.
Except Eleanor May hadn’t been entirely unaffected by him. He’d seen the flush in her cheeks when he’d taken her hand. The flare in her gaze when their eyes had met. And despite the fear that had come after it, that small flash of response when he’d told her exactly what he wanted to do to her.
Whether she liked it or not, she was interested.
Yet he could almost see the walls behind her eyes. The barbed wire and the broken glass set on the top of those walls. Keep out. Go away. Trespassers will be shot.
He wanted to know why those walls were there, why she was hiding. And he’d be fucked if he let those things scare him off.
“You know what I think? I think you’re afraid.” He put his arms around his bent knees. “The only thing I can’t work out is whether it’s yourself you’re afraid of or me.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You’re really kind of an arrogant shit, aren’t you? Why on earth would you think this has got anything to do with fear? Me going to the dean is a perfectly reasonable response to being confronted the way you confronted me.”
There was no point in arguing with her. She was a lawyer, she probably had dozens of arguments she’d trot out to deflect him. To protect herself.
If he wanted to get past those walls of hers, he was going to have to use a different method.
He didn’t look away, holding her gaze with his. “I would never hurt you, Eleanor. Understand that right now.”
Her mouth opened then shut and she abruptly looked away.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted to look at her because she was so fucking beautiful. Delicate jawline. High cheekbones. The sun in her hair turning it into the spun gold from a fairy tale.
He wanted her, Christ, so much. Perhaps he hadn’t appreciated how badly until this very moment.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, continuing to look out over the rest of the grass.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
She let out a little impatient breath then tilted her head, looking down at him, her gaze sharp as a blade. No fear this time. Only those walls. “I’ve seen your file,” she said conversationally. “King’s boy, aren’t you? Head prefect. Top of the class. Rich family. Good-looking and, like I said, arrogant as hell. You don’t give a shit about the rules because they don’t apply to people like you, right?” Her tone was cool. “I don’t know you, Lucien, but I’ve seen many boys like you go through this law school and in my experience you’re all exactly the same. You think you know everything. You think you’re God. You think every boy wants to be you and every girl wants to be in your bed.” Her mouth curved in a faint smile. “Well, honey, I hate to break it to you, but you don’t know everything and you certainly don’t know me. So stop playing little-boy games and back the hell off.”
Fuck, she was strong. And so goddamn sure of herself. Pity she was wrong about him on just about every count. Yes, he’d been to King’s College, one of Auckland’s most elite private schools. Had been head prefect. And yes, his father’s family was rich. But that was it.
She only saw the mask he’d perfected over the years he’d been back in New Zealand so he could fit in. Yet that wasn’t all he was.
Killer. Monster.
Luc forced away the cold voice in his head. Focused instead on the burst of adrenaline that had flared through him at the challenge in her tone, like a spike of flame over frozen ground.
Little-boy games. Like fucking hell.
“Sit down, Professor May,” he said with quiet force.
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“I said, sit down.”
She gave a dismissive kind of laugh. “Oh I don’t think so. This conversation is over. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to.”
No, she wasn’t going anywhere. He hadn’t finished.
Luc reached out and closed his fingers around her ankle before she could move. She was wearing tights, even in the hot summer sun, and through the nylon he could feel the warmth of her skin and the electricity that hummed between them. The electricity he’d felt the day he’d taken her hand and introduced himself.
She stiffened, every line of her almost vibrating with tension. She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on the path ahead.
Warm. Fuck, she was so warm. Vital. A shaft of dazzling sunlight in a dark, dank cave. The feel of her seeped through his palm and moved up his arm. And he knew if he kept hold of her, it would move farther still, going deeper inside him, lighting him up. Shining into the dark, cold heart of him.
What would it feel like to have her in his arms? To be inside her? Wrapped up in all that sunshine? He’d had fantasies about her, so many fucking fantasies. Yet he suspected that the reality would be so much more intense.
Oh God, he had to have this. He had to have her. Somehow, some way.
He moved this thumb, unable to resist, a single stroke near her anklebone, and he felt the tremble that went through her in response. Faint, but there all the same. He looked up. Her face had set into hard lines, her jaw tight.
“This conversation is not over,” he said quietly, letting steel thread through his words. The steel he never used in this particular world because as he’d learned, this particular world couldn’t handle it. “In fact, we haven’t even had a conversation. What we’ve had is you making assumptions about me. Patronizing me. You tell me I don’t know you; well, you don’t know me either. You don’t have the first fucking idea. So why don’t you sit down and let’s actually talk.”
Then, very deliberately, he let go of her ankle and sat back.
For a moment she didn’t move, staring down the path. Other people moved past them, a few in groups talking amongst themselves, a few alone with their headphones in, listening to their music players.
The sun was warm, the tension between them sharp and bright.
“If we talk,” she said in a voice almost devoid of expression, “will you leave me alone?”
Luc put his arms around his knees, lacing his fingers together. “No.”
“Then where’s my incentive?”
Shit, she wasn’t going to give an inch, was she? He shifted on the grass. “I respect you, Professor, you have to understand that. And I respect the job that you do. So here’s your incentive. While we’re in class, I’ll back the hell off. I’ll be a model student. You’ll have no cause for complaints at school, I promise.”
Finally she glanced down at him. “If you really respected me, you’d never have approached me in the first place.”
Fuck, if she thought that look was going to quell him like any other student, she had another think coming. He’d faced down Charles Inza, the warlord who’d recruited him, with the barrel of a Kalashnikov pointed straight at his head. The day his family had been killed and his childhood ripped from him. He’d been twelve.
One cool, gray-eyed woman was nothing.
He met her, stare for stare. “Like I said, I’m not apologizing for being honest with you. Perhaps you could respect me by giving me the same honesty.”
Her jaw hardened. “I did. Or are you one of those guys who thinks no really means yes?”
When he’d first been press-ganged into the army, there had been women. Refugees the soldiers had found, any woman really, and they’d been fair game. Those women had said “no”, there was no “yes” about it. They’d screamed the word. And the first time he’d seen what had happened to those women, what the other soldiers had been capable of, he’d puked his guts out. They’d beaten him for that. Beaten him within an inch of his life when he’d tried to stop it, when he’d refused to have any part in it himself.
By that stage, Inza had grown to value his mind too much to outright kill him. But there were other punishments. Other ways of teaching him that no was a word without meaning in the militia.
It had meaning now. It was sacred. And it was going to kill him to say it, but he had to. Because he knew down deep in his bones that if he didn’t give this to her, didn’t mean it absolutely, he would never pierce those walls of hers. Not to mention it would kill what was left of his soul.
He looked into her eyes, looked right into the heart of her. “Tell me no and I’ll leave you alone. I will never speak to you, never look at you, never bother you again.”
That familiar burning intensity flamed in Luc’s eyes and she knew he meant exactly what he said. Meant every word. And that it was important to him.
The way it had never been important to Piers.
No, God, she couldn’t think that. Luc couldn’t be different. Once she started thinking he was, then…
He wasn’t touching her now but she could feel the imprint of his fingers around her ankle, feel the shock of heat that had rushed through her. Proprietary. Dominant.
Sit down, Professor May.
Living in Shadow (Living In…) Page 4