Page 20 of A Love So Deadly
“No…I…I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine. I asked if something was wrong. I saw it when I came in. Your distress.”
I get the strangest feeling the wordsawwasn’t his first choice. After all, my back was to him then. But I dismiss it. “Nothing. I found out someone I knew was killed. That’s all. We weren’t close. I’m sorry. I’ll keep personal business away from here.”
He gets up and comes around his desk. “Who was your friend?”
The question is so oddly put that I lie. It’s smooth and I’m not even sure where it comes from. “Someone I went to school with. She died in an accident.”
He doesn’t push it, but those eyes seem to be trying to find a way in. He’s close, so close that I’m surprised I can even speak.
“I’m sorry.”
There’s sincerity in the words, the kind we save for those who might need meaningless comfort, and I think you can have sincerity in meaningless comfort. Everyone’s lost someone, after all.
He touches me. My hair. He touches my hair, smoothing back a stray strand, and like that dream touch that sears on my leg, it burns across my scalp like he’s touching skin to skin.
My breath stutters, the heat in me flares. My insides throb and beat with a need I don’t understand.
“How’s your finger?” he asks.
“My…finger?” The moment the words tumble out, my finger throbs like it’s in his mouth. I cut it, but it’s mostly healed, and he licked up the blood and sucked it and then?—
I blink. I was thinking something…about my finger?
“Your finger.” He takes my hand and lifts it, cool fingers passing light over my palm as he runs his fingers against my life line, and then he turns it, examining the throbbing finger. “You got a paper cut on it yesterday. Don’t you remember?”
I don’t.
Wait, I do. I know something happened. And when he touches me, I’m electric and alive and he might be the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.
I want his mouth on my neck.
Biting me.
Hard.
“You…you licked my blood.”
He goes still. His eyes get so black I could fall into them and find the stars. “You remember that?”
“I think so.”
He nods and leans in closer. “Tell me about your friend who died.”
I bite down on my tongue, hard, and the pain makes the fog settling clear. “It was an accident. Why are you asking?”
Lucian steps back and circles me. “Just interested. Sometimes it’s good to share.”
“I should get back.” But somehow, I can’t get my legs to make that trip across the room and out the door.
“The RSVP can wait. My appointments are sorted already. Consider this week all about you getting to know the place, the job. Me.” He sits on that black sofa and gestures at the seat opposite. “We can start with the last part now. Drink?”
I’m up so I head to his bar. There are fancy glass bottles of imported water, and I reach for one, but decide to get him a drink, too.
There’s a decanter with rich red wine or port or something thick but no doubt alcoholic inside. He may be my boss, but I should try and win points, get him a drink.
Lucian’s suggestion of sitting down to talk about him—fucking self-interested man move if ever there was one—is one I don’t mind it because I can use it to learn more about him and even more about this place.
