Chapter 7
Branson
Lucien emerges from his bedroom and his scent hits me like a brick wall. A solid mass of seduction. A thick haze of arousal. It wafts down the hall and singes my mind before I so much as lay eyes on him.
I hear his footsteps on the floor as he approaches. He treads lightly, bare feet padding on timber. I take several deep breaths to prepare myself before he appears in my field of vision.
It doesn’t help.
As always, the second I see him, my feet are swept out from under me and my knees go weak.
He’s beautiful always, but with signs of his approaching heat written all over his features, it’s almost too much.
It’s almost impossible for anyone to look like he does.
A seraph in human form. A blond halo of hair that’s overlong, ends in curls on the back of his neck, and falls carelessly, seductively, into his eyes.
Spun gold so pale that in certain light, it looks silver.
His eyes are the kind of blue I typically only see when I lie flat on my back in the woods and look up at the sky. That, along with his sweet, heart-shaped face, had me convinced I’d been introduced to an angel when I first met him.
Then he started talking.
The second he opened his mouth, I knew I was in trouble.
Deep trouble. Lucien Leigh is brimming with barbed intelligence and simultaneously capable of saying and doing things that leave me scratching my head.
His presence is effervescent. It renders me a speechless, sullen fool able to do little more than patrol the perimeter of the rooms or buildings he’s in.
I’ve been agitated since I scented him at the cabin, unable to rest peacefully since I sensed his oncoming heat.
I’ve gone back and forth, fighting a cacophony of internal voices that all say different things.
On the one hand, I know he didn’t plan this.
He didn’t want it, and it kills me because even though he isn’t mine, I’m protective of him.
I don’t want a damn thing happening to him that isn’t what he wants. Not now. Not ever.
Even if that thing is me.
Hand on heart, I did everything in my power to get him off the mountain and back to the city, so he’d have choices about how to manage his heat.
I did. I swear I did. I want that for him.
Even now, if there was some other option, I’d offer it to him, though it would pain me in a way I’m not sure I’d ever recover from.
At the same time, there’s an old, animalistic part of me witnessing Lucien’s unfolding heat and basking in the rightness of it.
The correctness of my being here at the same time as him.
The serendipity of the snowstorm. The kismet of the monumental mistakes that delivered a simmering, glistening Lucien to me.
I’m not proud of myself for thinking like this. I’m tied up in knots, but every time Lucien smiles—or snaps—at me, something in my center turns to mush. It’s hard enough for me to fight it when he isn’t going into heat. Now, it’s all but impossible.
“How are you this morning?” I ask.
I heard him get up several times in the night. At one point in the early hours of the morning, he stood at my door and whimpered softly. I’m loath to ask about his well-being in any more detail because my previous mention of bodily functions was not well received.
“I’m hot,” he replies with a belligerent little pout that makes my knees weak.
His lips are swollen, stained dark with heat, and his eyelids are heavy.
He looks like a sultry Old Hollywood movie star and has the attitude to match.
He’s wearing a tight white tank and pale-blue cotton pajama pants.
The pants are twisted at his waist, and his erection is clearly visible.
It has been since yesterday. There’s a bulge in his pants.
Small, but solid. A mouthful, a handful, no more.
I salivate at the sight of it, and my dick goes harder than it already was.
I turn my back to him and quickly palm myself into a more comfortable position. It doesn’t help.
“Coffee?” I offer.
He makes a face. “Ew. No.”
“Try having one sip, please, Lucy,” I suggest. There’s an odd wisp in my voice that I haven’t heard before. Something indulgent where something hard usually lives. “It will stop you from getting a headache from caffeine withdrawals.”
To my surprise, he takes the mug from my hands begrudgingly and takes a small sip, swallowing with a little shudder that lets me know his appetite is truly lost and the next stage of his heat is approaching.
“Twenty-four hours to go,” I tell him. “Give or take an hour or two.”
He glares at me, and as he does it, I notice the tiniest shift in him. It affects his posture. Parts of him tense, pulling as tight as the string of a bow. He’s been like that for days, but now, in addition, something has gone lax. His body is ripening. His ligaments have started to loosen.
It won’t be long until he’s dancing for me.
A wild, inner part of me wakes. My dick thickens more.
A loud, jarring thud sounds above me.
Common sense says it’s snow falling from a branch of a tree and landing on the roof.
We’re in the middle of a snowstorm, and it’s been dumping down for days.
It’s to be expected. Instinct tells me something or someone is approaching my mate.
Rage and fury bloom in my chest. Their force is sudden and shocking in strength.
I react instinctively, leaping in front of Lucien, growling and snarling as I bare my teeth at nothing.
It dawns on me distantly that what I thought earlier is no longer true. If there were some way someone could get to him now, to take him back to the city and away from me, I wouldn’t let them.
That time is over.
That time has passed.
If anyone tries to get near Lucien now, they’ll have to come through me to do it.