41. Sourdough Puff Pastry #2
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again and again. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, baby. My sweet Marie. I’m here to fix it, I promise. I’ll get on my knees. Follow you like a dog. That’s why I’m here, don’t you understand? Here to do whatever it takes to make it right.”
“B-but there’s—there’s n-nothing to do, Lucas.” The tears kept coming, but slower now, tempered by his touch and the utterly addictive scent of him that I’d never quite been able to get out of my nose.
His hands slipped to the sides of my face, and he tilted my head back so I was forced to look up at him, to see the remorse that seemed to consume him as much as my pain consumed me.
“What do you need?” he asked in a voice so gentle, it might have been the wind.
“Is it still Daniel you want? Because if it is, if that’s what you really want—fuck—I’ll make it happen.
I’ll arrange his divorce. I’ll undo it all, I swear it.
I will cart him back to France, send him through a year of rehab, and I will make my brother be good to you if it’s the last fucking thing I do.
I don’t care if you choose me, Marie. I just want you to be happy. ”
I blinked up at him, hardly believing what I was hearing. “I…he didn’t tell you?”
Lucas’s brow furrowed as he searched my face. “Tell me what?”
I took a shaky breath, tasting salt on my lips. Through the trees, the river gurgled on the bank below.
“I had lunch with Daniel before I left for France. He wanted to apologize, to explain about Emma and the wedding. And I told him—” I gave a waterlogged laugh.
“I said I was never in love with him. Not really. Just like I told you, I was in love with the fantasy I’d built up in my head.
The real Daniel is…well, he is who he is. But he’s not the man for me.”
Lucas stared at me, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
“I don’t want anything from him,” I continued, the words coming easier now.
“From any of your family. Not from you either. Because people can exist without wanting things from each other, Lucas. They can just be in each other’s lives.
Live for the kindness. For the good moments.
Help each other. Even—” My breath caught. “Even love each other.”
Ever-so-gently, his thumbs traced my cheekbones. “Love?”
My breath came out in a shudder, but I nodded. “That’s all I ever wanted from you anyway.”
Lucas was quiet for so long that I wondered if he had actually heard me. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
“God, if that were true.”
He kissed me then, fierce and desperate.
My hands fisted in his sweater as I kissed him back, even as new tears streamed down my cheeks.
He seemed to sip at them as they fell, his mouth feathering across my face before returning to my mouth as he backed me off the path, under the cover of a massive willow tree.
“You want me to love you, sweet Marie?” he asked as his hands gripped the folds of my skirt. “Well, I do, baby. I love you so much, I can’t breathe without you. I’ve been walking through life like a ghost since I returned to that empty room.”
I gasped as he lifted me, encouraging my legs to wrap around his waist as he kissed me again. The layers of clothes didn’t matter as he pinned me against the tree, holding me to its solid trunk, grounding me down to its roots.
“I told myself I’d give you time,” he murmured as his erection found my core through denim and cotton. “I’d wait until you were ready. Until you missed me. Until you asked me back into your life.” His voice cracked. “But you didn’t.”
He rocked against me as wind whistled through the trees.
My throat burned, my hands twining around his neck, fingers through his hair. “Lucas?—”
“I couldn’t stay away,” he said, eyes locking with mine, wide and wild. “I needed to see you. To know . You said I didn’t have a right to you anymore, but that doesn’t change a fucking thing in here.” One of his broad, capable hands flattened over my chest, just above my heart.
The simple gesture nearly cut that heart in two.
I needed to be closer. Even pinned here, with the weight of his body trapping me against the tree, it wasn’t enough. Hurriedly, I reached between us, my fingers finding the button of his jeans. They trembled—not from hesitation, but from the weight of what I was allowing myself to feel.
“You want to love me?” I asked. “Then do it, please. I don’t want to fight this anymore either.”
His groan was deep, wrecked, a man undone. “You know what it does to me when you beg.”
Gently, he unraveled my legs from around his waist, set me back on the ground, and dropped to his knees. The cold dawn nipped at my thighs as Lucas pushed my skirt up and tucked it around his shoulders. His fingers hooked my simple black underwear to the side.
“Lucas—” I gasped.
“Hush, baby.”
Then his mouth was on me, his heated tongue moving with slow, steady strokes that built pressure until I was arching, gasping, coming apart at the seams.
“I missed this,” he murmured as he feasted. “Missed you.”
I was close.
So close.
But it wasn’t enough.
“Stop,” I panted, tugging at his shoulders. “Lucas—stop. Come here.”
He looked up, lips slick, breath uneven, a typhoon brewing behind that blissful expression.
“I need more.”
Immediately, he stood, picking me up by my thighs in a single fluid motion that had me back up and legs around his waist, this time reaching between us in a frenzy to release his thick erection into my waiting palm.
“Marie,” he choked out. “Christ—baby—we don’t have a?—”
“I don’t care,” I said as I angled my hips to take him.
His entire body jolted as he slid deep inside. “Oh, shit, ” he gasped. “ Fuck. You feel— Jesus .”
“No,” I said with a smile. “That’s me.”
He grinned, and I swore, the sun didn’t need to come the rest of the way out.
His hips began to move. Slowly at first. Then faster, and harder, finding a rhythm that seemed to come from the heartbeat of the earth itself.
The bark scratched at my shoulders, the cold air bit my thighs, but all I could feel was him.
Lucas groaned against my throat. “You were supposed to hate me. Supposed to forget me.”
Another thrust—deeper this time. “You were never supposed to let me in again.”
My fingers dug into his coat, moans escaping me with every hard, wild movement, every word he spilled into the curve of my neck.
“But I couldn’t stay away,” he went on. “Couldn’t stop wanting you. Dreaming of you. Needing you.”
He grabbed my chin, his pace faltering just long enough to kiss me on an animal groan. Then he pressed his forehead to mine.
“Say it,” he demanded. “Please, God. I’m the one begging you now, Marie.”
Another thrust that made me sob. Then one more that nearly unraveled me.
“Tell me what’s in your heart.”
The orgasm coiled inside me, furious and tight.
And just before it hit—when the pleasure crested and the world blurred—I let it go. I let everything go.
“I love you.”
The words broke from my lips on a cry, and the second they did, his whole body seized.
And Lucas Lyons, family patriarch, oldest son, master of his carefully curated universe, lost control.
He came with a groan that echoed against the trees and off the water, like a wild call to bury himself in me and never come out. “Marie,” he called again and again into my neck, my cheek, every part of me his mouth could reach. “Marie.”
He was still trying to catch his breath.
“I love you, Lucas,” I said again as I smoothed his hair and stroked his face, urging him to stay with me. “I do.”
“My God, Marie,” he said just before his lips found mine one last time. “I don’t think love even begins to cover what we are.”
He sounded almost sad. But for the first time since I’d seen him, I smiled back, soft and content.
“Maybe,” I told him, lost in my own sweet haze. “But it will have to do.”
When we had finally caught our breaths, Lucas helped me put myself back together, then guided me back to the main trail in silence, as if neither of us wanted to disturb the odd sense of finality that had settled over us.
There were still things to say.
Truths that had to be told.
As we reached the main road, I opened my mouth, prepared to tell him the biggest secret I had, the most important one of all. Unfortunately, I was met with a rueful, surprisingly boyish expression that made me want to kiss him all over again. It was very distracting.
“I should probably apologize for not wearing a condom,” he said. “Though, would you think less of me if I said I’m not sorry at all? That a caveman part of me kind of loves the idea of you barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen?”
Oh, God. Did the man have ESP?
“It’s…fine,” I managed. “I knew what we were doing.”
This was it. This was when I should explain the return to loose gowns, the nursery I was building on the top floor, and the baby names I had only just started to contemplate as I fell asleep each night.
But before I could find the words, the sound of wheels on cobblestones interrupted us. A Peugeot appeared around the bend, driven by Elise Favreau, a local woman who sold herbs at the weekly market.
“Marie!” the older woman called out cheerfully through her window. “I have a new tea for you at the market. Raspberry leaf—it’s very good for the baby, n’est-ce pas ? Come to my stand, and I give you a drink, okay?”
She drove on with a wave, leaving Lucas and me like statues on the side of the road.
Lucas turned slowly, his face suddenly pale.
“Baby?” he asked. “What…baby?”