Page 36 of His Reward
“I can be vers if I need to be,” Lucien teased me in return.
I laughed. It was the right combination of words and gestures. The mood in the truck, which had turned tense, eased again.
“Okay, some of the guys, only some of them, mind you,” I started, “think that I’ve been spending too much time with a certain celebrity skater and that it’s affected my work performance.”
“Boston,” Lucien scolded me, sounding a lot like his mom. “You can’t shirk your duties just to spend time with me.”
“Shirk my duties?” I peeked at him before making a turn that would take us to the main street in Lucien’s beach neighborhood. “Are we in the nineteenth century now?”
“You know what I mean,” Lucien said, settling back comfortably into his seat. “There’s no way that being a firefighter means you can take a lot of time off to take care of some poor, scarred omega.”
I frowned and peeked at him again as I drove on. Was Lucien upset about his appearance? He hadn’t said anything about that so far, though his scarring was pretty severe. His ear and the side of his head were…distinct now.
“I’m still on call,” I explained. “The guys have been willing to cut me a lot of slack this past month.”
“You’re going to be in big trouble if you keep this up, though,” Lucien said.
Had he been talking to Ernie?
“It’s all good, I swear,” I said, even though he was righter than I wanted to admit. “Is this your condo here?”
The discussion was dropped as I pulled into the lot for Lucien’s building. I was a little surprised that someone as famous as Lucien only lived in a condo, but as soon as I helped him down from the car, fetched his bag, and walked him into the building, I changed my assessment of the sort of place Lucien owned.
“Wow. Look at that view,” I said once Lucien unlocked the door and opened it into a gorgeous, tastefully decorated main room with French doors that led to a balcony.
“Yeah, the view is the reason I bought the place,” Lucien said, moving into the center of the room and glancing around.
Any appreciation of the stunning view of the beach as it curved to the north and the purple haze of the mountains behind that shifted when I saw the slightly lost look in Lucien’s eyes. He looked at the furniture, the artwork on the walls, the display cabinet filled with trophies and medals from his skating competitions, and everything else like he didn’t recognize any of it.
“Okay, now it’s my turn to ask what gives,” I said.
Lucien dragged his gaze around to me and tried to smile. He shrugged, which just made him look tired. “I don’t know who this person is,” he said, then rubbed his forehead with his goodhand. “I don’t know how I’m going to keep going as if everything hasn’t changed.”
The alpha within me roared at the defeatist attitude Lucien was flirting with.
“You don’t have to know,” I said, putting his bag down and marching over to him, “you just have to keep going.”
Lucien grinned up at me. “Are you sure you don’t want a job working for a greeting card company?” he asked. “Because that’s incredibly sentimental and cheesy.”
“Yeah, well, it’s true,” I said keeping things light. I moved in close to him, closer than I’d been able to be in ages, and took his face in my hands. “You are strong, Lucien. You can do whatever you want with your life.”
I punctuated my point by slanting my mouth over his. I’d wanted to kiss my omega every day for weeks now but had been prevented, first by bandages, then by the constant presence of his mom and nurses. It was incredible to taste him at last. So much so that I got a little carried away. I parted his lips with my own and explored his mouth with my tongue. The closeness was so wonderful that I groaned with it and kissed him harder.
Only when I felt Lucien tense and moan, but not with lust, did I realize something might be wrong.
“What?” I whispered, inching back a bit but not wanting to let go of him.
Lucien had grabbed my wrists and held them tightly, but he didn’t try to pull my hands off his face, and even though he vibrated like a bowstring about to snap, he didn’t try to push away from me. “I—” he started, then bit his lip as he gazed up at me. His eyes were glassy with emotion. I waited patiently, trying to exude alpha confidence and command, and finally, he blurted, “Are you sure you want to touch me?”
My heart broke a little. It wasn’t that I thought Lucien was stronger than that. You’d’ve had to be made of stone not to beaffected when you received disfiguring wounds. None of that changed how I felt about him even a little bit, though.
“I want to touch all of you,” I said, not holding back any of the lust I felt. “I want to run my hands all over your body and smack that bubble ass of yours until you’ve got hand-shaped bruises for me to admire.”
Lucien let out a strangled sound, then burst into tears. “Dammit,” he said, sniffing and pulling back so he could wipe his eyes. “I hate crying, but you kind of just said exactly what I needed to hear right now.”
“That I still think you’re desirable as fuck and that I can’t decide whether I want to throw you over that sofa and fuck you silly or tie you up and flog that back of yours until it glows?” I asked with a sly grin.
“Both,” Lucien said, weeping even more. “Dammit, I need to stop this!” he growled, then marched over to the side of the room to grab a box of tissue.
