by A. Zavarelli
I aimed my pencil at the paper but not before glaring at him.
“From now on,” he recited as I scratched the words into the paper, “I will be a good girl and do what Lucian says.”
I paused to look at him. “Are you for real?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
He didn’t look like he even knew what a joke was. But that was beside the point. I wasn’t doing this. I unlocked my fist, and the pencil clattered against the desk. Lucian didn’t even blink when he opened the drawer beside me and retrieved a pair of handcuffs. That was when the air in my lungs changed tide.
“What are you doing?”
He slapped the cuff around my left wrist and locked it onto the metal drawer handle. “You can stay here until you finish. One hundred lines, nice and neat.”
“You’re psychotic,” I shot back.
“Maybe.” He offered me a grim smile. “Or maybe I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
ACE KICKED OFF HIS MOTORCYCLE boots and left them at the door while he surveyed my living room. “So you just need me to chill here?”
“Yes.” I grabbed a jacket from the hall closet and shrugged it on. Even though it was still hot outside, I was feverish. “If you hear any suspicious noises coming from the room, go ahead and check on her. If she needs the bathroom, she can use it, but she goes right back to the desk until her lines are finished.”
He bobbed his head and took up residence on the couch. “Man, you gotta get Netflix or something in this place.”
“I like the quiet.”
“It’s cool,” he grumbled. “I’ll just raid your fridge and take a nap.”
I walked toward the door before I thought of something. “Did you get Birdie out of the city?”
Ace hesitated, and he didn’t look at me when he answered. “Yep.”
I trusted him implicitly, but it felt like he wasn’t telling me the whole truth. Regardless, it was out of my hands at this point. I told Gypsy I wouldn’t keep tabs on her sister, and I meant it.
“Is she safe?” I asked.
“Yes.” Ace met my gaze this time, and there was fire in his. “As safe as she can be.”
I nodded. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Take your time,” he mumbled, leaning his head back against the sofa and closing his eyes. “It’s kinda nice here.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
I rapped my fingers against the wall between us. “It’s me, Cristian.”
There was a pause of silence, and I was almost certain he dreaded this conversation as much as I did. I’d come to atone my sins but never in the usual way. I didn’t address him as Father, and I often found myself talking to him as a friend rather than my priest. But over the years, Cristian had become both.
“I saw you at mass on Sunday,” he offered.
“I know.”
“I saw you with her.” His tone was accusatory. Protective. Even slightly scornful. He had a right to those feelings when he’d warned me against this from the beginning, but I had set my path long ago, and it was never to his standards of righteousness.
“I’m only trying to help her.”
“I don’t think you can offer her the kind of help she needs,” he replied.
“If not me, then who can?” I challenged. “As long as she’s been coming here to confess her sins, what good has that done her?”
Another pause. “I give her an ear to listen without judgment.”
“Followed by a healthy dose of atonement,” I mused. “We are not so different, Father.”
He sighed. “I would ask you how you found her, but I don’t think I want to know.”
“Anybody is easy enough to find,” I told him. “If you have the right tools.”
Cristian knew that I saw her here first. I set my sights on her in this place of worship, and that was a problem for him. Despite what he might believe, the decision hadn’t been an easy one. I’d spent months combing through the details of her life, tormenting myself over what I should do. Gypsy was my greatest controversy, and she had no idea.
“How is she doing?” Cristian asked.
“She’s a handful,” I admitted. “More than I probably should have taken on, but I’m in it now. There’s no going back.”
His shadow moved on the other side as he shifted. “What if your plan doesn’t work? What if it only causes her more pain in the end?”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I deflected. “I’m only here to teach her. Nothing more.”
“It isn’t nothing I saw in your eyes when you talked about her.”
“I’m incapable of loving anyone,” I told him. “You know that.”
“That’s what you’ve said,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it’s true. God has a way of proving our truths false sometimes.”
“Like your own.”
It was a low blow, and I immediately regretted the jab. Cristian had been struggling for some time with the vows he’d taken, and I knew he questioned his own path, even if he couldn’t admit it himself. That was the truth I saw in his eyes. The torment I recognized too well. In the end, he chose not to acknowledge my words at all.
“While you might be able to guarantee your feelings, you can’t guarantee hers.”
“She won’t fall in love with me.” I bowed my head and pinched the tension in the back of my neck. “She can barely stomach looking at me.”
He didn’t know the full extent of our arrangement, and it was better that way. His conscience wouldn’t allow him to stand by while I went about things the way I chose.
“Your presence in her life can only be a temporary one,” Cristian noted. “You think you are saving her, but how can you be certain you might not equally devastate her?”
“It won’t happen. I won’t allow her feelings to grow roots.”
“You wouldn’t be here talking to me if you didn’t have your doubts,” Cristian argued. “Tell me what it is you want to hear from me?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I can’t give you my approval.”
“I know.”
We were both quiet then. He took it upon himself to redirect the conversation. “How is your health?”
“It’s fine.” My fingers bounced against my thigh, a nervous pattern that I couldn’t recall making before. “I’m tired. But fine.”
“And you are still certain of your course with that matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can offer you only this,” he said. “Do what good you can while there is time.”
“I’m trying.”
“God will light your way.”
I smiled into the darkness. “I hope for your sake, Father, he will light yours as well.”
“I HAVE TO PEE.”
Ace gave me a bored expression as he uncuffed me from the desk. I was free, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. While I went to the bathroom, I contemplated my potential escape options, but they were limited to spraying him with water or throwing a bar of soap at his head. Nothing in this bathroom would be useful, and the man was a tank.
“You might as well just suck it up and do it,” Ace told me when I came back out. “You’re only delaying the inevitable. He won’t let you go until it’s done.”
“You sound like you know from personal experience.”
“That’s because I do.”
I arched a brow at him. “Did he make you write lines?”
“No, worse. He made me go to school.”
He locked me back to the desk, but my curiosity wouldn’t let him go. “What could he possibly have over you?”
“He saved my life,” Ace said. “I owe him more than I could ever pay him. The least I could do was get my shit together if that made him happy.”
I looked up at the beefy man who sounded mild as a kitten whenever he talked about Lucian. “So you finished high school?”
“College,” he corrected.
&nb
sp; That information shocked me. Maybe it was a stereotype, but I’d just assumed the huge biker dude probably didn’t have much going on in that head of his other than beer and broads.
“What’s your degree?”
“Diesel mechanics,” he explained. “It was a two-year program. Now I got my own shop, make a decent living, and give some of the boneheads from my club something to do with their time. No complaints on my end.”
“Huh,” I mumbled.
“Yep. I’m going to go take a nap. I suggest you get to writing.”
“Wait,” I pleaded.
He sighed. “What?”
“Can’t you tell me just a little bit about Lucian?”
“That’s for him to tell you.”
“I’m not talking about his darkest secrets.” I rolled my eyes. “I just… I don’t know anything about him really.”
“He’s a good dude.” Ace shrugged. “That’s all I can really say.”
“Good?” I snorted. “He gets criminals off. How is that good?”
Ace crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Have you ever considered that maybe you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, little girl?”
“What do you mean?”
“He defends accused criminals. There’s a big goddamn difference. Now give that some thought before you go tossing out bullshit statements.”
His body language warned me we were in choppy waters here, but I was finally getting somewhere, and I couldn’t stop now.
“You were innocent?” I pressed.
“Yes.” Ace gritted his teeth. “Even if you find that hard to believe, not everyone who gets tossed in the can actually deserves it. You might be surprised if you did your research.”
I toyed with the pencil on the desk as I thought that over. “So he just takes on cases of people he thinks are innocent?”
“I can’t answer for him. All I can say is Lucian does what he thinks is best. He’s a damn good guy who got dealt a shitty hand, and I stand by his choices whatever they may be.”
“Shitty hand?” I looked up at him, desperate to know what he meant by that.
“You’ll have to ask him about that,” he said.
I groaned, and Ace smirked. “You know, you’re a little brat. But I kinda think you might be good for him if you can get your own head out of your ass and see him for who he is.”
And with those sweet parting words, he left me on my own.
Hours had come and gone, and I still hadn’t written my lines. I knew I wasn’t getting out of it, but I was desperate to prove that I couldn’t be so easily controlled. Lucian had yet to return, but when he did make an appearance, I would show him that his orders weren’t the rules I lived by. At least for a little bit.
Honestly, I was tired, and this position was uncomfortable. My arm was cramping, and I wanted to go to bed. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation I had with Ace.
He believed Lucian was a good guy, deep down to his core. But everything Lucian had shown me so far pointed to a control freak who lived a regimental lifestyle and wouldn’t know the definition of kindness if it slapped him in the face.
I found it difficult to reconcile the two wildly different accounts of him—how the media portrayed him versus the one his close friend gave. Either he was a piece of shit criminal attorney with no morals, or he was a selfless justice-seeking one-man army for the innocent. He couldn’t possibly be both. I wanted to find out more about him, but so far, he hadn’t given me the opportunity to do it. That key from his office was still hidden in the bedroom, and it couldn’t stay that way for long. I needed to get in there and poke around, but with him accounting for every hour of my day so far, it was easier said than done.
“Still trying to prove a point, I see?”
Lucian’s voice startled me, and when I turned, I found him hovering in the doorframe, his dark eyes moving over me with a tiredness I felt deep in my bones.
“I could write the lines.” I shrugged. “But they would be a lie. We both know I’m not going to do what you tell me all the time.”
“They wouldn’t be a lie,” he corrected. “They would be a goal. An intention. And it’s up to you whether or not you want to be the kind of person who follows through with your intentions.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I could come up with way better intentions than that.”
Lucian closed the distance between us, his fingers grazing the strands of hair around my neck. “Something you should know about me, pet, is I don’t bend or break. You can write the lines, or you can sit here until you do. Those are your options, and your defiance won’t change it. Is it worth your discomfort to prove a point that means nothing to me?”
I looked up at him, a maneuver that forced me to acknowledge his dominance over me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you misbehaved, and it needs to be corrected.”
“No.” I closed my eyes and blew out a breath. “I mean why are you acting like you’re my father or something.”
“You don’t have a father.” The heat of his hand disappeared from my neck, and when I met his eyes again, they seemed almost black.
“Everyone has a father,” I answered.
He shifted away from me. “In your case, he was merely a sperm donor.”
A rush of heat exploded into my chest as I slammed my hand down on the desk. “Don’t pretend to know me or my life.”
“I do know your life, and I won’t pretend otherwise, pet. It would be of no benefit for me to lie to you.”
“Yet I know nothing about you,” I shot back. “How is that fair?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and examined me with wary eyes. “What do you want to know?”
It felt like a trick question, so I proceeded carefully. “Why do you defend… people you think are innocent?”
“Because someone once defended me when I needed it,” he answered darkly.
“You were in prison?”
“Yes.”
A blanket of ice wrapped around me as my mind went wild trying to imagine what had happened. I wanted to ask more. I wanted answers desperately, but since I’d opened that can of worms, his whole demeanor had turned to steel. His eyes were arctic, and at that moment, his formidability scared me. I was too afraid to push him for the answers I needed.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No,” I whispered.
He left the room and took my wits with him. I picked up the pencil and wrote one hundred lines.
Nice and neat.
SHE WAS QUIET WHEN I finally took her to bed, and after the day’s events, I expected more of a fight when I nestled her against my body. But there wasn’t a fight to be had. And even though I knew I shouldn’t, I breathed her in. She still smelled of coconut oil and sunshine. Paradise, if there was such a place. It was ironic, considering she had been forged in the depths of hell.
My lips were inches from the vulnerable skin of her throat, and my dick was relentless. It had been since her arrival into my home and my life, and time had not calmed that. Constant fatigue was a close companion of mine, and I considered that eventually, the tension would wear off and my fading health would replace the growing need inside me.
I could only hope that was the case. We weren’t a week outside of our marriage yet, and already I wanted to break my vow that I wouldn’t take her. That was never part of the plan, and logically, I knew it wouldn’t help her. But logic wasn’t a factor when I pulled her closer and allowed her to feel the heat of my cock pressed against her ass.
She stopped breathing for a second, and I did too. I didn’t know why I was tempting my resolve when I was so tired, and she was soft and pliable against me. But when her lungs filled with air again and her beating heart calmed, she didn’t move.
Neither did I.
“YOU CAN PICK ONE DRESS from your closet to wear today.”
I swung my gaze to the bathroom door, where Lucian was already dressed in a black three-piece suit. He lo
oked sharp. Tall, powerful, and devilishly handsome. My cheeks heated when I thought about the night before and his cock pressed against me. His warmth wrapped around me. I hated that I didn’t pull away, and even more so that I didn’t want to.
“Thank you,” I answered.
He told me what he’d come to say, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he lingered for another minute, his eyes on my body. I was still wrapped in a towel, and even though he’d seen most of me already, I felt exposed. Nervous. But something else too.
After the first few days, I’d assumed he hadn’t taken an interest in me that way. His behavior was at odds with what I typically received from men. He didn’t eye fuck me. He didn’t try to touch me at every opportunity. And the initial ground rules he’d set in place left me with the impression that he felt he was more of a role model than anything else. But this was different. His eyes were darker. Warmer. More predatory and less protective.
I squeezed my thighs together. He cleared his throat. “Make sure whatever you pick is modest and appropriate for the office.”
And with that, he disappeared just as quickly as he’d arrived.
After applying the finishing touches to my hair and makeup, I settled on a form-fitting red Armani sheath dress and gold Valentino heels. The color combination worked well with my skin tone, and the hemline came to just above my knee, so he couldn’t say it was inappropriate.
I joined Lucian at the table for breakfast—oatmeal and fruit—and he read the paper while I attempted to corral my rampant thoughts. The silent war waged on until we arrived at the office, where he gave me a quick rundown of what he expected me to say when I answered calls while I settled into my space behind the desk.
“If anyone calls regarding Emmanuel’s case, I want them patched through immediately,” he instructed. “If I’m not available for some reason, then it’s imperative you take thorough notes of their name and contact information. Do you understand?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes, boss.”