Ensnared (Brutes of Bristlebrook, #1)(114)

“Kimchi,” I breathe.

I lean forward, taking the tray from him. Stunned, I take a bite and need to stifle a groan. The fermented Korean staple is sour, spicy, and tangy, and it brings with it a rush of homesickness so strong I’m almost dizzy with it. It’s ridiculous, in a way, because I am home. But it’s nostalgia of a different kind—for a time, and certain moments, and people I haven’t seen in far, far too long.

I taste it slowly, rolling the flavors and feelings over my tongue before I swallow. To my surprise, tears prick the back of my eyes.

“Is it okay?” Lucien asks, shifting, after the silence stretches longer than manners call for. “I’ve never made it before, but Eden found the recipe in one of the pantry cupboards and we made it together. We— I mean, she thought you might like it.”

My breath leaves me heavily, caught on the chest-twisting picture of Eden and Lucien working together in the kitchen to make something so sweet and personal just to make me happy. Just because I might like it.

Eden’s brilliant, sharp eyes caress my mind. Her sumptuous hair. Her quick wit and kind concern.

The glorious effortlessness of her submission.

I set the tray onto the desk, needing some distance from their heartless, thoughtful gift.

Damn her. And damn him. I am not a selfless man—they shouldn’t torment me like this.

They should take one another and run far, far away.

Reaching out, I catch Lucien’s wrist, pulling him over to me. He follows easily, that awkward tension in him falling away as soon as I take charge, as it always does. Lucien stands over me, but through that one touch, he’s at my mercy.

The power of it, the heady awareness that I can do anything I want to him, seeps into me. He would let me. He would let me take him to his knees and fuck his pretty mouth until I came down his throat and he would say nothing but thank you. I could pull him into my lap and just hold him, for hours, and he would stay there happily.

Or he would have, before Eden.

Now, I’m not so sure. He indulged my foolish, selfish, impulsive request not to fuck her, and I am both mortified and darkly satisfied that he did. But his patience with me has to be wearing thin, and as much as the psychologist in me tells me it’s for the best, that I should continue backing away, the man in me wants to claim him now. I want to claim them both, to demand their affection and tangle the three of us into such a knot that none of us could ever be unsnarled. I want to undo my hard work, unswear my vows, and abandon my resolution to leave them unbroken.

But that truly would be foolish, not to mention selfish beyond all belief.

His skin is warm under my chilled fingers, and I stroke the vulnerable flesh at his wrist. The pulse there kisses my fingers with swift little presses.

“Thank you both, Lucien.”

I watch his throat bob. Unable to help myself, I link our fingers together and squeeze gently. After a moment, he squeezes back, a dazed expression crossing his face. He leans against the desk, as though needing the support.

“I used to make kimchi with my parents,” I venture in a mild voice, though I know I’m inviting him in when I should be pushing him out. “It was my mother’s recipe, and it was important to her that we all contributed. She said it was like holding our culture in our hands. She left a lot behind when she came here, but she’d joke that some things were sacred. It didn’t matter if we were having bibimbap or caviar, we’d almost always have kimchi as well—and it had to be kimchi that we made ourselves, by hand, together.”

Lucien’s mouth curves on one side, just a little, teasing me with a dimple. That chill he’s been keeping between us melts like sugar on my tongue. “I don’t know how I feel about caviar and kimchi.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing, I promise you.”

I look back at the screens, but I don’t see them now—just memories of my mother grinning up at my father, her hands deep in a messy bowl of cabbage the color of a burnished sunrise. My father sweating every time he took a bite, because my mother also liked her kimchi to be as hot as the sun, and he had never had a head for heat.

Lucien has never been afraid of a little heat, though.

“You don’t talk about them much.” There’s more than a hint of a question in his voice.

“Don’t I?” I say, though I know it’s true. Then I add more quietly, “I think about them often.”

Lucien presses our palms together more fully, and my stomach does a low, hard flip.

“I miss mine too.”

Hesitantly, he strokes a thumb over my hand where we’re joined, and I know I should pull away now. This is getting too close.

But I don’t. Not just yet.

Surely I’m breaking no vows by just holding his hand. I’ve come far closer to breaking them in the past. A little hand holding is nothing.

“Why haven’t you made her recipe since we’ve been here?” he asks.

Because I have no family to make it with.

Strange, I never made it with Soomin, either. She had always had her own recipe, and she preferred to make it herself.

“It takes a long time to make,” I say instead. “And I wasn’t sure anyone else would have a taste for it.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Lucien disagrees. “And Eden likes it. She loves Korean food.”