Breaking Out

  “No,” he said, biting slowly at her ass cheek.

  She could hear the presence of others in the house. “But Lucy . . .”

  “Do you think Lucy doesn’t know what we do at night? I’ve made it quite clear to my staff that I fuck you on a regular basis, Evelyn.”

  “But what if she walks in?”

  “Mm, wouldn’t that be interesting?”

  She swatted at his arm. “No. It wouldn’t.”

  He chuckled and sighed. “I suppose I can restrain my exhibitionism to a degree.”

  She smirked and arched her brow. No matter what, Lucian would always push her sexual limits, but she loved that about him. Loved the way he pushed her to those freeing moments of surrender.

  She squeaked in surprise as he suddenly stood and threw her over his shoulder. “Lucian!”

  “Quiet.” Playfully, he swatted her ass. “You’ll attract the servants.”

  Her gaze followed the shiny floor as he carried her through the foyer and into another part of the house. She recognized the Oriental carpet as the library’s. A door slammed and the room was suddenly bathed in light as the swish of the heavy blinds sounded. Lucian used his foot to maneuver the upholstered ottoman in front of the twelve-foot paned window.

  He flipped her off his shoulder and before she could right her equilibrium, he was kissing her. Fingers roughly tugged at her clothes. She toed off her sneakers as he backed her to the ottoman.

  “Sit.”

  As her naked bottom fell onto the cushion, her back arched over the soft bench. Her legs were yanked wide and his mouth fastened on her sex, his touch dark and intense. He fucked her with his tongue and fingers until she was a puddle of wonton cries, begging to come.

  Finally, using his thumbs, he spread her folds, licked deep inside her sex and used his fingers to stimulate her clit. She came in a rush, and his mouth lapped up every bit of her excitement.

  Her eyes, which had been wedged shut, snapped open as he pulled her off the ottoman. Turning her toward him, he bent her over the cushion belly-first. She simply pressed her cheek into the cool upholstery, catching her breath as she waited.

  Lucian stripped, tossing his clothing to the floor. His bare foot pressed into the ottoman and his hand gathered her hair from her face, lifting her gaze to him. His other hand fisted his hard cock.

  Knowing what he wanted, she opened. He thrust between her lips all the way to the back of her throat. Standing, as though lunging with one leg lifted, he fucked her mouth hard. She gripped the edge of the ottoman and took great pleasure in every moan and grunt that passed his lips.

  He suddenly withdrew his cock. She wasn’t finished with him, but he had other plans. Hands grabbed her limbs and maneuvered her body. She was turned, back again arched over the ottoman, hair spilling to the floor, legs sprawled over the edge. Lucian lifted her ankles to his shoulders and she formed a bridge, palms pressing into the carpet beside her head for support.

  His cock filled her in one quick, hard thrust. Her body curved, her backside lifting off the bolster as he held her ankles wide. The angle had him slamming into her G-spot with each thrust. Half-spoken prayers and curses left her mouth with each panted breath. Gibberish slipped past her lips without thought, until she simply shouted, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” and came harder than she might have ever come in her life.

  Chapter 13

  Check

  The week passed entirely too quickly. By their second day, Lucian gave the servants some much-needed time off so that the two of them could be more at ease at the estate. Having always grown up with servants, their presence didn’t affect him the way it affected Evelyn. Used to living with a man who never stopped moving and whose presence was always requested, she found a much-appreciated silence to their days, filled with tender glances, affectionate touches, and long afternoons of making love.

  The mornings were chilly, but the days were growing warmer. They had taken to spending the afternoons out back looking over the vista.

  Lucian tried to educate her on the various types of wine, but she wasn’t impressed. All wine tasted like fruit and dried-up flowers to her palate. She wasn’t very sophisticated when it came to her palate. Food quieted hunger and drink quenched thirst. Intoxication, she discovered, was just fun. She always tended to enjoy most the bottles he had her sample last, because by that time she was drunk.

  Evelyn giggled as Lucian traced a cut strawberry over her mouth. His lips curled gently as he leaned in to lick away the berry-flavored juice. “Mm, you are delicious, Ms. Keats.”

  Head resting on his broad shoulder, she lowered her lashes and let her mind fly away, drunk on berries, wine, and all things Lucian. “Why, thank you, Mr. Patras.”

  His fingers played at the hem of her linen dress, tickling her knee with each pass. He audibly breathed in the fresh spring air. “Can you smell that? The lilacs are blooming.”

  Her lashes fluttered as she looked around for the flowers he was referring to. “Where are lilacs?”

  “Over the hill there. They were my mother’s favorite. Every year she would have the servants cut bushels of them and fill the house. She hated winter, and once the house filled with the bursting fragrance of lilac, I always knew her mood would be a little bit lighter.”

  “What was she like?” she asked, shutting her eyes once more, allowing the sun to warm her face.

  He sighed retrospectively. “My mother was like one of those paintings you see in a museum, beautiful but overlooked somehow because it was placed beside too many famous portraits.”

  “Was she sad?” She asked only because whenever Lucian mentioned his mother his voice took on a lamenting quality that pulled at her heart.

  “She wanted nothing more than to be happy, but for some reason she needed my father to be present for that.”

  “Did they not have a good marriage?”

  “My father saw everything in life as either a merger or acquisition. My mother was no exception.”

  “You never got along with your father, did you?”

  “No.”

  There was no way she was touching that. “Tell me a happy memory from your childhood, Lucian.”

  He eased back, his hand gliding to her hair and pulling gently in a way that made her sleepy. “When I was nine we went to the circus. Isadora made a big stink about the animals being mistreated. She has something of a bleeding heart for creatures that can’t defend themselves. I was unimpressed with the idea of watching a bunch of acrobats. Mostly because I was going through a bratty stage and I was irritated both my parents were absent.

  “Louis, our old butler, had driven us. When the show began I was unprepared for the fanfare. There is something about the circus that’s simply . . . majestic. Real people climbing to heights that hurt to look at and performing feats that no ordinary man could do. I was entranced the moment it started.

  “It wasn’t the lion tamer that impressed me. He had a whip and a chair. Had he gone at the beast on his own, perhaps then I would have found his performance more remarkable, but no. It was the young woman on the tightrope that fascinated me most.”

  Evelyn smiled, trying to imagine a young Lucian at the circus. It didn’t compute. In her mind he was born middle-aged, a smaller version of his intimidating self, holding a swirled, pinwheel lollipop, and swimming in a too-large power suit.

  “Why the tightrope?”

  “Her feet were so small. She held a stick, but required nothing from anyone else. I remember glancing around. Clowns raced on tricycles, an elephant paraded over the sandy ground below, people shouted and clapped as an acrobat did cartwheels and flips. No one seemed to see her but me.

  “To my left, Toni bounced on Louis’s knee, cotton candy chapping her cheeks in sticky pink. I watched the woman on the tightrope tune out everything and focus on getting from one end to the other. It must have been a hundred feet w
ide, the tent. I feared she’d fall. There was a net, but I wanted her to succeed, stay above the others. I wanted her to walk on the narrow line because no ordinary person could. I think I held my breath the entire time.

  “When she reached the center point, she fell. I jumped to my feet only to realize it was part of the act. She caught herself with her legs and hung as someone tossed up a paper fan, a parasol, and a unicycle. She used her teeth, hands, and feet, whatever she had in order to hold the items and right herself. I was blown away. When she reached the end of the rope I felt such overwhelming pride and happiness for her accomplishment. Then she climbed down and I actually saw her up close. She was no more than twelve, a child.

  “That evening, I returned home dreaming about running away with the circus and feeling more inspired than I ever had before. It was the first time I actually grasped the concept of inspiration. I went in believing the show would be for babies and I saw performances that mimicked dreams. The scent of roasted nuts, hay, and sugar, colliding with the smells of animals and people all crammed into an enormous tent. I loved it all, from the East Indian music to the glitzy costumes.”

  She smiled at him, loving the way his voice took her there, to a place she had never seen. “It sounds magical.”

  “That’s a word for it. Magic.”

  “I’ve never been to the circus. I used to think of Patras Hotel as the big top.”

  He glanced down at her, laugh lines creasing his eyes. He’d gotten some sun. “You did, did you?”

  “Mm-hm. I loved watching the fancy performers put on a show for the ordinary people. I was in awe at the glamor of such life.”

  “And how does it feel to be a part of all that glamor now?”

  “I feel like I’m playing, a little girl allowed to try on fancy costumes and make believe I belong.”

  His brow creased and his smile faltered. “You do belong, Evelyn.”

  Her lips curved softly, appreciating his effort to convince her otherwise. “No, Lucian. No matter how much I dress up and put on airs, I’ll always be the girl born in an alley.”

  Lips pursed, he whispered, “Then I will always be the little boy afraid of my dad and sad for my mother.”

  They sighed. Lucian lowered himself to rest his head on his arms and stared at her. After a while he said, “People change, Evelyn. We all grow and adapt and learn. Eventually we all break out of the mold we were assigned to and find a better fit. You never fit at the tracks. I see them and I see you and there is a difference, whether you see it or not.”

  She said nothing. Was there a difference? She’d hated living on the streets and did everything she could to escape, but did she fit here, with Lucian? The problem with being homeless was never truly knowing what home felt like. The warm feeling she got when around Lucian was the closest she could guess to what having a home felt like. Belonging.

  Once Parker had read her Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Perhaps she was Goldilocks. Everything she tried was either too big or too small, too hard or too tight. She wanted nothing more than to discover what it truly felt like to find just right.

  They made love under the warming March sun, the cooling breeze rich with the scent of lilac. Later they napped and awoke for a quiet dinner followed by some television and a quiet game of chess that led to the two of them making love before they made it to their room. For as nice as Lucian’s bed was, they never seemed to make it there.

  It was a perfect week. Whatever had been stressing Lucian seemed to stay in the city. Evelyn was afraid of what would come when they returned home. She hoped whatever the cause of his tension, it was concluded and irrelevant now. Lucian always had so many deals going on. These past few days were how she always wanted things to be.

  It was wonderful to be with someone who loved her without expecting anything in return. All of her life she’d survived on a formula of trade, tit for tat. No one ever gave without wanting in return. Sadly, that even applied to her mother. But Lucian seemed to simply want . . . her.

  For the first time in her life she felt like she belonged to herself. It was a new and extraordinary feeling.

  They visited Pearl one afternoon. That was the only downside to their week. As usual, Evelyn left in tears. Her mother showed no gratitude for the shelter she’d been given. She never acknowledged Lucian with anything more than scorn and often blamed Evelyn for her misery as well.

  Evelyn didn’t know how to make things any clearer. They were helping her. Pearl would’ve died last winter if not for Lucian and Dr. Sheffield. There was not a doubt in her mind that if her mother ever returned to the streets and her hard way of living, pulled between selling herself for drugs and being so stoned she’d sometimes sleep in her own waste, that she would wither away to nothing and die. How a return to such a pitiful existence tempted her mother, she would never understand. But it remained one of Evelyn’s greatest fears.

  Before Lucian, the only thing she was given in this life that was solely hers was a mother. It didn’t matter how sick or screwed up Pearl was. She was hers.

  In a life of uncertainty, that one absolute made a world of difference. Even Lucian, no matter how much she depended on him and trusted him, could never be as bonded to her as her own mother. Emotions changed; genetics remained the same forever.

  It took months for Evelyn to finally trust Lucian enough to believe he wouldn’t someday suddenly turn her away and leave her desolate with nowhere but the shelters to return to. She wasn’t sure when exactly she gave him that trust. She just knew one day it was there when before it wasn’t. And even now, old insecurities sometimes reared their ugly heads.

  Although Lucian would likely tire of her eventually and move on—a thought that caused her physical pain—she knew he would never let her return to the streets. He would never just up and abandon her. But, being a realist, it was one of the reasons she knew she needed to return to work.

  She was approaching a time to make a decision about her life. She couldn’t simply exist through him. She needed her own identity. That didn’t mean they had to split up, it was just something she never had and knew she wanted. Evelyn wanted to be as independent as that acrobat from Lucian’s childhood. She needed to know she could do it on her own.

  She desired that sense of self without the stress of hunger, survival, and constantly seeking shelter. She watched women her age every day go about their lives with a sense of purpose. Evelyn wanted to find out what her purpose in this life was. It couldn’t be to simply satisfy Lucian and protect her mother. She needed to do something for herself, and that need knocked more and more as she adjusted to the security of her new life.

  She had some ideas requiring her to meet with a few dealers about her jewelry. Patrice and the girls at the salon had commented on her work and asked her to make them bracelets.

  She mentioned her plans to Lucian about maybe selling her items and asked him if he thought it was a good idea, trusting him to tell her if he thought it was stupid. He didn’t. He said he would think about it, but then went on a tangent about production and marketing and stuff that had nothing to do with the creating and design aspects. Suddenly feeling in over her head, she decided to just make trinkets for friends for a while.

  Friends. She had never really had friends. The realization had her smiling several times throughout the week as she let it sink in. Lots of things were sinking in that week, things she never spent much time reflecting on in the city. Perhaps it was the peacefulness of the estate that helped her see things a little more clearly.

  She’d come such a long way from where she was. Like Lucian said, she was breaking out of the mold. Even Parker had found himself a job. Everything just seemed so . . . perfect. And with that sense of perfection came a stark and frightening paranoia. Nothing lasts forever.

  They were due to return to the city tomorrow. While she was sad to leave the estate, Lucian now seemed high-strung, almost hyper.
Perhaps he was getting cabin fever and anxious to return to work. She wasn’t used to seeing him that way. He was nervous, but also euphoric, as though something big was on the horizon.

  She watched him throughout dinner, wondering if he had heard from a colleague, maybe gotten some good news about a deal or something. They finished dessert and he cleared away the plates with an asinine grin on his face.

  She laughed. “What’s with you? You’ve been grinning like that all day.”

  He stilled as if to consider her statement. Shrugging, he said, “I’m happy.”

  As he cleared the rest of the dishes, he paused to brush several kisses to her lips whenever he leaned over the table, but every time she tried for more he pulled away.

  “I’m going to go change into sweats,” she said, standing and carrying the last dish to the sink.

  Lucian stilled.

  She looked at him, trying to make sense of his mood. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course. Do you want to have a match after you’re done?”

  “Sure.”

  He turned and kissed her slow and long, leaving her head a little fuzzy as she walked upstairs. After slipping into an oversized white crew-neck sweater and a pair of navy blue yoga pants, she pulled up her hair and headed down to the library. Music was softly playing and the lights were dim.

  She paused at the door when she saw the candles flickering from the sconces on the walls. “You’re trying to throw off my game by distracting me with ambiance, aren’t you? I’ve gotten too good for you. I knew I would.” She buffed her nails on her shoulder. “Prepared to be defeated.”

  He chuckled and pulled out the heavy, ornate chessboard. Evelyn settled onto the floor across from him as he lifted the lid off the velvet-lined box and carefully removed each ivory piece. She was always white.