Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
TAMSYN
Lucien pokes his head into the library sometime after nine that evening. He and Roman spent most of the day holed up in Lucien’s study doing their corporate titan routine. Meanwhile, I busied myself with a long walk around the grounds followed by a leisurely exploration of his vast book collection and a lovely catnap. Oh, and I filled out some online paperwork for my new job as an oncology nurse back in the city. It turns out that a drama-free day at Ackerley is a pleasant experience. The kind of thing I could get used to in a hurry.
He brightens at the sight of me, a steady glow of warmth that makes my insides fizz. “Ready for dinner?”
“I am.” I snap my laptop closed and get up to greet him with a proper hug. He returns it with interest, his arms sweeping me up tight against all his hard planes and making me sigh with contentment. I pull back just enough to see his face as I run my fingers through his hair. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
He takes his time lowering his head to kiss me, building the anticipation until I can’t take it anymore. So I surge up on my toes and tighten my pressure on the back of his neck, bringing him in the rest of the way. He rumbles with satisfaction, his kiss leisurely but thorough. By the time he lets me go, I’ve suffered a massive outbreak of tingles all over my body and I’m sure that I look dazed and goofy.
“Miss me?” I ask lightly, but I don’t need his answer because I already know it.
A flash of his dimples. “Not at all,” he says gravely.
I do my best to glower, but my glower hasn’t worked all day. “You’ll pay for that later.”
“I’m counting on it,” he says silkily. “Have you kept herself busy?”
“I have. What about you and Roman?”
He flaps his hand. “We’re trying to get the Vanderbilt deal figured out. But I don’t want to talk about that. I’m starving. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, let’s—” A woman cries out somewhere in the distance. “Oh my God,” I say, stiffening as I glance around. “Did you hear that?”
He frowns. “No. What is it?”
The woman cries out again, louder. We both hear it that time.
I hurry to the window, which overlooks the pool in the distance. “I think it’s coming from outside— Oh my God .”
And there it is. The rising moon illuminates the kind of illicit scene that makes me want to cover my eyes. If only I weren’t too stunned to move. Lovers on a lounge chair doesn’t quite describe what I’m seeing. There’s too much naked flesh for that, and way too many limbs. Then it all comes together, and the picture is excruciatingly clear: a big-breasted woman flat on her back, legs spread wide while being eaten out by another woman on all fours. The cherry on top? Roman standing at the end of the lounge chair, enthusiastically fucking that woman from behind. He’s got his head thrown back and there’s an expression of twisted ecstasy on his face as his many, many muscles bunch and flex. The bottom line? They all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, and my virginal eyes have just beheld the kind of extreme carnality that I wasn’t sure existed in real life.
“Oh my God ,” I say again, hastily turning away.
“What the—?” Lucien comes up behind me and peers out the window. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not again.”
I focus on him, too scandalized to get my words out for a beat or two. “Roman has two girlfriends? He’s in a throuple?”
Lucien bursts into laughter. “Roman? That’s a negative.”
“Oh, so he must be on one of those fetish dating sites,” I say, finally feeling as though I’m coming up to speed.
“Or something like that,” he says, choking back more laughter.
I blank out for another beat or two until the light bulb eventually goes on over my head. “You don’t mean that he pays for sex?”
“I’m saying nothing. I’ve already seen way more than I want to know about my brother’s personal life. I’m not putting it in the streets.”
“He’s already put it in the streets,” I cry, gesturing at the window.
“In fairness, most of the staff has gone home for the night.”
“So, he does pay for sex.”
“Let’s just say that he likes to keep things transactional. And that he gets off on sex in semi-public places.”
“Wow.” I’m not sure I was ready for this glimpse into how the rich get off. And why would Roman need to pay for sex? He’s incredibly sexy with his sandy-brown hair, easy smile and bright blue eyes. Not Lucien sexy, obviously, but more than enough to land whomever he wants, I’m guessing. “So they’re escorts, aren’t they?”
“Again: no comment.”
“Will I get to meet them?”
“Absolutely not.” His jaw tightens. “And you’d better not have seen anything you shouldn’t have seen. I don’t want you making eyes at my brother.”
I did get a glimpse of an impressive dick, and I do enjoy the flinty light of jealousy in Lucien’s eyes. But we’ve got enough drama around here already without anyone throwing any more logs onto the fire. “Absolutely not. There’s only one dick in my life, and I’m very happy with it.”
“Smart girl,” he says, bringing me in for a quick kiss before taking my hand and starting to lead me out of the room. “Let’s go.”
But a sudden flash of white at the tree line behind the pool startles me. “Wait,” I cry, pointing. “What’s that?”
He quickly looks, but it’s already gone. “I don’t see anything. What was it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, now starting to doubt myself. Did I see anything at all? There’s no sign of movement out there. Just black and an impenetrable wall of trees that looks like the leading edge of the forest in all those nightmare fairytales. “I just saw something white dart by.”
“It was probably a white-tail deer,” he says, his expression clearing. “We have them around here.”
“You think?” I say, peering out again. “It seemed bigger than that. I thought it might be a person.”
“A person ?” He shakes his head. “I beefed security way up. No one can get on or off the property without us knowing about it. Don’t worry.” He eyes me closer when I nod without saying anything. “You didn’t think it was Ravenna, did you?”
“No,” I say, determined not to let my vague and hovering fears ruin our evening. Even though I kinda did think it might be Ravenna out there. I force myself to smile. “It’s fine. I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“You just wanted an excuse to take another look at Roman’s dick,” he says darkly.
That gets me. I laugh, anxieties forgotten. “I did not! So he’s never been married?”
“Nope. And I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Where are we going?” I say when he leads me away from the front door and toward the door that leads to the wine cellar. “I thought we were going out to dinner?”
“I’ll take you out some other time. Not tonight with the press and paparazzi lurking around outside the gates.”
“Oh, true. So you’re taking me to the dungeon?” I say, eyeing the craggy steps and relative darkness leading down below with healthy trepidation.
“Not if you behave.”
I gasp when we get to the bottom. Not because of the presumably thousands of bottles of wine honeycombed into the racks on the other side of the sliding glass doors, but because of an enclave off to the side. He’s had his staff set up a romantic little dining area amidst all the stonework, with wingback chairs, a white-clothed table and dozens of flickering candles. Amidst all the gourmet offerings on display, I see lobster, thinly sliced beef, all sorts of cheeses and breads and a fantastic display of pastries and fruit. The whole setup reminds me of the night he treated me to a surprise dinner in his cabin back on the cruise, and I can’t contain my girlish excitement.
“This looks amazing , Lucien.”
He seems pleased with himself. “You like?”
“I love. It’s like the world’s sexiest man cave down here. I see you’ve been keeping your house elves busy again.”
A flash of amusement as he holds my chair for me, and I sit. “House elves?”
“It’s a Harry Potter reference.” I laugh as I watch him sit and reach for the bottle of champagne chilling in a nearby bucket. “I can see you’re deficient on your pop-culture references.”
“You’ll have to help me with that.” He quickly pours us both a glass and raises his in a toast. “To…?”
I give it a quick think. “Me eventually seeing all the hidden corners at Ackerley?”
“Nice. To you feeling at home at Ackerley. I plan to take you horseback riding next. Show you the barn.”
I nearly spit out my refreshingly crisp swallow of champagne. “Your barn ?”
He gives me a funny look. “Where do you think I keep my polo ponies?”
“I’ve seen no sign of a barn around here.” Honestly, I don’t know why I’m still incredulous about this vast estate. I’m underdressed while eating lobster in his wine cellar. Naturally, he’s got horses hidden somewhere.
“You haven’t seen it yet.”
“If you say so,” I say, shaking my head. All this dizzying wealth is too much for me to absorb. I’m in dire need of fortification at this point, so I help myself to a selection of meat and cheeses. He does the same. After a delicious bite or two, I work up the courage to ask him something I’ve always wanted to know. “Do you ever talk about your parents? You know everything about my parents, but you never talk about yours.”
He lowers his head and suddenly seems very focused on slathering his beef with horseradish. “You never asked,” he says lightly.
“That’s because you’re a closed book,” I pointedly. “I can barely get you to talk about anything in your past. Don’t deny it. That night we sat together on the plane, you deflected the conversation back to me every time I tried to ask you something about your personal life. Oh, and remember that time that it was like pulling teeth for me to even get you to tell me that you’d been to Monte Carlo before? There are probably CIA operatives who aren’t as close-mouthed as you are.”
Wry smile. “True.”
“So…?” Maybe it’s not a fair request. I’ve already read about his family online, so I know the major details. It’s just that our relationship has developed at breakneck speed, and there’s been no opportunity for us to catch our breath, much less discuss our formative years with each other. The upshot is that I don’t know a thing about the people who raised him into this fantastic man because he’s never let me into this part of his life. And I really hope he will. “Tell me.”
He takes a thoughtful pause while he finishes chewing. “My father died shortly after I got married. Which he warned me not to do, by the way. He and Ravenna never hit it off. Probably because he saw through her. Anyway, he had a stroke.”
There she is, folks, showing up at our romantic dinner. Freaking Ravenna. I should’ve known. Serves me right for asking about his past. Still, I’m just curious enough about his life to tolerate her presence for a minute or two.
“I’m sorry. And your mom?”
A longer pause. He clears his throat and sets his knife down. “I never talk about her.”
I can see why. The topic seems to be taking a big and important chunk out of him. “You will with me,” I say quietly. “When you’re ready.”
There’s no smile, but he hits me with a steady beam of his warmth. “There’s that titanium again.”
I grin and accept the compliment. For once. “Just a little. As needed.”
He nods, his attention drifting somewhere far away where I can’t buffer him from his painful memories. “She died when I was thirteen.” He clears his throat. “She left in the morning when I was headed off to school. She wanted to do some Christmas shopping on Fifth Avenue. She liked to drive herself into the city even though we had a driver.”
“You know what? Why don’t we talk about it some other time?” I finally say when he shows no sign of continuing.
“It’s okay. She, ah…she never came back.” He suddenly looks young and lost, as though he’s regressed to the teen he was when it happened. “We were, ah…we were frantic overnight. Someone found her the next day. In her car in some parking garage. She’d had a medical event. Probably a heart attack. My dad had made us go to school. They called me and Roman to the office to tell us. I got pulled out of an English quiz on The Great Gatsby .”
Oh, God. The internet didn’t say all that, of course. It just mentioned that she died suddenly of natural causes and had a massive funeral. No wonder he never talks about it. I’ve also lost my parents, true, but I was a little kid, too young to remember much when Mom died and an adult with some wisdom and maturity when Dad died. I can’t imagine the trauma to a thirteen-year-old.
I study his downturned face, my heart aching for him. I’m so sorry I asked right now and ruined this lovely dinner. But I’m glad to know. There’s no way I can understand this complicated man without knowing what he’s been through. What’s shaped him.
“I’m sorry, Lucien.”
He shrugs and tries to rearrange his expression into something less grim. “What can you do?”
“What was she like?” I say, determined to salvage the mood. “Tell me something fun about her.”
This generates an immediate grin. “She was great with presents. That morning before she left, she said she was going to grab a few final things for me and Roman. But we later discovered that she’d already bought all our gifts and had them wrapped and ready to go. The only shopping she got done that day was a trip to Harry Winston for herself.”
I laugh, liking her already. “I admire her priorities.”
“Indeed,” he says, a new gleam in his eyes as he reaches for the side table and comes back with a large black velvet box—flat, but about the size of an album—that I hadn’t noticed before. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”