“SHE ISN’T GOING TO SEEanything else?” Gypsy asked quietly. “Is she?”
She sounded defeated, and it reflected my own dark mood since we’d left Emmanuel’s mother’s house.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t think she will.”
She’d done a noble thing by keeping Emmanuel and raising him, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t spent her whole life resenting him for it anyway. There was nothing I could do to change that. It was another strike against Emmanuel, and if the prosecutor got a whiff of it, there would be a shitstorm.
The trial was coming up, and I didn’t feel as prepared as I should have been. I knew the reason for that was sitting beside me in the passenger seat. I’d told myself I’d be able to manage both, but I wasn’t accustomed to dividing my attention.
Regardless, when we came to a stop in the driveway and I glanced over at her, I couldn’t regret it. My time with her was limited, and maybe it was a little selfish, but I wanted to enjoy that just as much as I wanted to help Emmanuel.
I still believed I could do both. I just had to find a way.
ISPENT THE WEEK FOCUSINGon my studies, and with every passing day, I was surprised how much I actually enjoyed it. I didn’t know why I’d put it off for so long, but Kate made the course better than I’m certain anyone else could have. She never talked to me like I was less than her, and in fact, she was always quick to point out my strengths. During her animated discussions, she’d told me multiple times how well I was progressing. I was breezing through the course, and with our one-on-one time, I’d probably even be ready to test by the end of the month.
Lucian had asked me several times if I’d considered the next step. He even mentioned college, but I wasn’t sure about any of that. I told him I was taking things one day at a time, and he accepted that answer for now.
We had settled into a comfortable pattern, and it surprised me how easily I’d adapted to domesticated life. Every morning, we sat down to breakfast together. Every evening, we had dinner together. We slept beside each other, and sometimes showered together, and he read to me in a deep, lulling voice that I’d grown to revere.
I found myself thinking about him often throughout the day, wondering what he was doing. Wondering what came next. When exactly was he going to pull the cord on us? His contract said two years, and I thought about that date often. Would he just wake up that morning and tell me my time was done and I had to leave?
I dreaded it, and I resented it. But when I looked into his dark eyes, those feelings melted and gave way to warmth. He wore his stress on his face. The tired lines from the years he’d been battered by the system and his work. He wanted so badly to help Emmanuel, but I could tell from the constant tension he’d been carrying that he didn’t know if he could.
I’d driven to his office a few times this week after class to see how I could help, and he’d given me meaningless tasks to pacify me. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more, I just wasn’t sure how.
Today, when I found him sitting at his desk, bone-weary and exhausted, I knew the thing he needed most wasn’t office work. When he looked up and saw me standing there, some of the tension bled from his face, and it made me feel important.
I still didn’t understand how I could have that power over him. How could he ever find any comfort in me? But for some reason, he did. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to abuse that power or trust.
I walked around his desk and rested my hands on his shoulders as his head fell back against me and his eyes closed.
“You work too much,” I told him as I began to massage his shoulders.
He sighed, and his eyes fluttered open for half a second. “That’s the life of an attorney.”
Maybe that was true, but I think there was always an exception, and Lucian was it. He had dedicated his whole life to helping his clients.
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“What you’re doing right now feels pretty good,” he murmured. “You can keep doing that.”
So, I did. I massaged him until my hands started to cramp, and even then, I kept going. But I wanted to do more to relieve his tension. He’d been avoiding physical contact between us, either from his own guilt or exhaustion, and I missed that intimacy between us.
There was one thing I still hadn’t done for Lucian. He’d never asked, and I never offered because when this started, I wasn’t in the habit of giving up my power. But right now, it was exactly what I wanted.
I needed to kneel before him and worship him the way he worshipped his God. I needed to feel the push and pull of his doubts and his desires, followed by the inevitable caving in to temptation. There was never any moment more powerful than when I felt him succumb to me. When he’d forsaken his values and dived headlong into the sins of my flesh.
I dragged my fingers through his hair and bent to kiss his throat. He hummed a sound of approval that vibrated against my lips and stirred the devil inside me. His dick was solid and heavy, already straining against the black material of his trousers when I walked around to face him. I kneeled between his parted legs, and he reached down to touch my hair, petting it beneath the palm of his hand while he watched me.
“You are so goddamned beautiful, Gypsy,” he murmured. “If I could remember you like this… just like this… I could die a happy man right now.”
My lips tilted up at the corners as I fondled his throbbing cock beneath the material. “You don’t have to remember it. I’m right here.”
A fleeting sadness passed over his features, and I latched onto it. At that moment, I wondered if he regretted his decision to send me away. I told myself there was hope. If he was sad, then it meant things could change. He could still realize he didn’t ever have to let me go.
I wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. It was difficult for me to express my emotions, and I often found I was better at showing them. That was my exact intention when I unzipped his pants and drew out his swollen flesh.
He was so hard it felt like it would be painful, and the fat head of his dick was already dripping his arousal. I squeezed the clear liquid from the tip and sopped it up with my tongue. Lucian jolted with an agonized grunt, strangling the sides of his chair as his entire body shuddered.