Lucian stared at the girl on his couch and felt the floor tilt.
She was unconscious, her breathing shallow, her face flushed with whatever poison Richard Monroe had slipped into her wine.
The red dress was torn at the shoulder, gapping to reveal skin that looked too pale, too fragile.
She had curled into herself like an animal hiding from a storm.
He should have called security.
Should have had her removed to a hospital.
Should have put his gloves back on before he touched her.
He didn’t.
He crouched beside her.
His hand hovered over her cheek, bare fingers trembling in the air, inches from her skin.
For twenty-six years, his body had been a prison.
Every woman who had ever reached for him had left him burning….
hives rising, his throat closing, his skin revolting against the simplest contact.
The doctors had called it a psychosomatic allergy.
His grandmother had called it a curse.
Lucian had simply built his walls: gloves, distance, control.
He touched her.
His bare fingers brushed her cheekbone.
He waited for the burn.
Waited for the red welts, the itching, the suffocating tightness in his chest that had plagued him since childhood.
Nothing happened.
His skin stayed clear.
His breath stayed steady.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
She stirred.
Her eyes fluttered open, dark and unfocused.
She looked at him without recognition.
Of course she didn’t recognize him.
To her, he was a stranger.
“Who are you?” she slurred.
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
His hand was still on her face, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, His hand felt cool so she leaned into the touch.
His breath caught, he lowered his head and he kissed her.
His hands moved down her waist, pulling her flush against him, and he felt it the hunger without the punishment, the wanting without the revulsion.
He didn’t sleep that night.
Neither did she, though she drifted in and out of consciousness, her body limp and pliant, her responses dulled by the drug.
At some point, it felt like he was the one drugged not her
He took her on the couch, on the bed, against the window with the city spread out below them like an offering.
He was too rough, too desperate, too big for her small frame but he couldn’t stop.
He had waited twenty-six years to touch someone without gloves, and now that he had started, he didn’t know how to be gentle.
When she finally passed out, her body marked and trembling, he gathered her against his chest and stared at the ceiling until dawn.
For the first time in his life, he slept without gloves.
…
He woke to cold sheets.
He knew when she left, he didn’t try to stop her.
The bed beside him was empty.
The pillow still held the indent of her head, but the scent of her….
was already fading.
He sat up slowly, his body aching with a satisfaction he had never known, and saw the blood on the ivory sheets.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he reached out and touched it with his bare finger …
still warm.
She had been a virgin.
The knowledge hit him like a drug.
He had been her first.
Her only.
No other man had ever touched what was his.
He got out of bed and walked to the window, naked, uncaring of who might see.
The city was gray and cold, dawn just beginning to stain the sky.
He pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
“Whitfield,” he said when the lawyer answered.
“The Monroe contract.
Status?”
“Delivered yesterday afternoon, sir.
Richard Monroe is…
eager, He is still in a haste to receive the marriage contract”
Lucian’s lip curled.
“He thinks it’s Olivia.”
“Of course, sir.
The contract specifies ‘a daughter of Richard Monroe.’ He assumed the eldest.
As you predicted.”
“Good.” Lucian looked over his shoulder at the bed, at the place where she had been.
“Change nothing.
Let him continue to assume.
Let him plan the wedding, send the invitations, choose the flowers.”
“Okay sir” He hung up.
He dressed in black trousers, a black shirt, left it unbuttoned.
No gloves.
Not today.
He walked to the bed and looked down at the blood on the sheets.
“Run, little mouse,” he murmured to the empty room.
He smiled, dark and Patient.