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.”
I blink, unsure why that surprises me. “She does?”
He looks far too amused. “You know, you really should just talk to her one day without all the fancy interrogation tactics.
The two of you have a lot in common. She’s also raided your mom’s old collection of K-dramas. Or maybe it’s yours.”
I know Eden and I have a lot in common. Books, and philosophy, and tea . . . and Lucien. Precious Lucien. Precious Eden.
They will be beautiful together, I know. Pure, precious, and happy.
“My mother loved them, and I couldn’t bear to throw them away.” I smile, then give him an arch look. “They’re far too sappy for my taste.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucien says, and his dimples are definitely toying with me now. The sight of them makes my chest throb—and my erection go absolutely nowhere. There’s just enough sass in his voice to warrant a little lesson in manners.
If he were mine.
He must see something of what I’m thinking in my face because a tremor runs through him, and he glances away. “Anyway, the kimchi’s not too bad. Bit of ketchup and it’d be totally edible.”
Pardon? I’m pulled out of my thoughts. Even for Lucien, that’s . . .
Settling back in my chair, I release his hand and catch his wrist again. I yank him forward so he’s off balance and press down in warning. “You put ketchup anywhere close to my mother’s recipe, and I will empty a bag of rice on the kitchen floor and make you pick up every last grain with a pair of tweezers between your teeth.”
Lucien’s mouth drops open, and he seems caught somewhere between laughter and horror. “Your creativity is a little frightening sometimes, you know that?”
I know that I want to press him into the wall and choke his laughter with my tongue.
He was your patient, I remind myself. He was for years. You have far too much influence over him. It would be unethical.
But images of the last time my weakness overcame me are quick to spring to mind. The day his stupidity reached new heights—literally—and he somehow convinced Beau to race up that cliffside. Without gear, without a plan to get down.
Without his brain, apparently.
I made him repay every minute of the unbearable hours he’d terrified me. I tortured him until tears tracked down that cheeky, bratty face and his dimples tucked themselves away in apology. Until he was unbearably hard, throbbing, and mindless with the need to come. Until he apologized, and begged me so sweetly, and my raging fear slaked itself in his torment. The grateful little whimper he gave when I finally allowed him release has gotten me off more nights than I can count. The way he snuggled into my side as I tended him afterwards . . .
“What are you thinking about?” he asks in a low, husky voice.
I glance up to find his eyes stuck on my lap, those parted lips sucking in air and taunting me with the pink slickness just inside. Of course, from the angle he’s now standing at there’s no hiding the erection pushing at my slacks. Damn it.
“Eden,” I lie smoothly, and hate myself when he flinches.
“Right.”
I watch his throat bob as he swallows, feeling filthy. A prince of muck and shame. He deserves better than this, better than me. If only he didn’t believe he was in love with me. If only he recognized this for what it was and let me go, then I wouldn’t need to keep pushing him away.
“You didn’t fuck Eden,” I blurt, and his tense, hurt expression swings back to me in disbelief.
Immediately, I want to bite my tongue off. I need to push him away. To unclamp my grasping fingers from his heart. To finally snip the last threads of hope that tie him to me. I need to free him, the way he deserves to be freed. I should mind my own business.
But I’m tired, and rumpled, and sore.
And terribly deficient.
Unlike Eden, Lucien doesn’t stammer. He blinks once, then looks at me from under lowered brows.
“Not with my cock,” he admits. Then his voice lowers, becomes hushed. “I fucked her with my mouth. I fucked her until she came on my tongue.”
He says it like a confession, like he’s whispering to a priest of some forbidden communion. His eyes are on my face, and I wonder what he hopes to see. Jealousy? Anger? I have no right to either, though both suck at me like diseases preying on a weak constitution.
“How did she taste?” The insidious question slips out of me, but the need of knowing is an instant obsession. I’ve imagined it, many times. Every time she crossed and recrossed her legs while she read in the firelight, when she had the audacity to sass me about the library, when she knelt at my feet like she was born to it. I’ve imagined her taste, her smell, the sounds she would make.
How pretty her lashes would look tangled with tears.
Lucien’s blue eyes darken, and I can see the lust and more than a hint of vindictive satisfaction lurking behind them.
“She tasted like she wanted me.”
Releasing his wrist, I catch his shirt and tug, so he’s forced to bend down further over me. “Tell me how wet she was.”
Stroking down his cheek with my other hand, I ask, “Did she soak that beard of yours?”
Lucien shivers, but he traps my eyes. “Over and over.”
I was right—my sweet soldier is taunting me.
“She wrapped her legs around my ears and grinded on my tongue. She begged me for more. She begged for my cock.”
Jealousy clutches at me. It’s not fair, not fair at all given my decision—but I’m furious that he had her and I did not. That she had him, when I would let my soul expire to do the same. My hand drops to the seam of his jeans where he strains against the thick denim. I rub him roughly through the fabric, and he gasps in shock, bucking into my hand.