Lucien had taught her how to live without Dan, and in doing that, he'd surely taught her that she could live without him too.

She just hadn't expected to need to re-use the lesson so soon.

Sophie sat slowly down at her desk, her glare fixed on the doorway to Lucien's office.

Do your worst, Lucien Knight. I'm ready for you.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The day dragged on until lunchtime, oppressive and brittle. She made him espresso. He forwarded emails to her. She slapped a completed analysis file on his desk. He slammed his drawers closed hard enough to cause them to collapse.

Sophie needed some time out, to clear her head. She turned politely to Lucien as she collected her coat from the stand in his office.

"Is there anything you need while I'm out? Lunch? Or... condoms maybe, for you next date?" He shot her a filthy look, and she couldn't miss the way his hand fisted tightly on the desk. "Anger management classes?" she added sweetly. She had the upper hand, for once, and it gave her a harsh satisfaction.

"Don't fuck with me Sophie."

She shook her head, measured fury keeping her voice steady. "You've made it pretty clear we won't be doing that anymore."

"Have I?" Lucien slammed his chair back as he stood up, his arms rigid as he scowled and planted his hands flat on the desk. "Have I? Only I don't remember sending that particular fucking memo."

The tension in the room had reached boiling point. Lucien's taut stance and expression arrested Sophie into silence. She stared at him.

She wanted to beat her fists on his chest until her arms ached, and she wanted him to kiss her until none of this mattered, and she wanted to run away and never come back.

What did he expect of her? Was she supposed to be sanguine about his new lover, accept her consignment to the role of office squeeze?

"I don't want lunch, because I'm not hungry," he said. "And I don't want anger management classes, because right now angry is all I have," he spat. "And I don't want condoms, because it seems that I'm incapable of fucking anyone but you."

The disparity between his tone and his words made it hard for Sophie to understand his meaning.

"Lucien..." she dropped her coat and bag down and walked towards him, but he held up a hand to keep her on the other side of the desk.

"Don't."

She stopped, unsure how to read him when he was like this.

"She stripped, Sophie, right in front of me. She's fucking beautiful, but she felt wrong. I put my hands on her tits, and all I could think was that I wished they were yours."

He shook his head, his face a picture of bewildered frustration. "She was naked, and I walked away because she wasn't you."

Sophie's heart twisted for him. Why did he have to fight his emotions all the time?

"This isn't what I do," he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I don't want this."

She moved around the desk, and this time he didn't stop her. He sank into his chair and sighed heavily.

"I want this," she whispered, dropping onto her haunches beside his chair. "I want you."

She kissed her way across his knuckles, one by one, her throat aching with tears.

His other hand stroked the back of her head.

"Don't want me, Sophie."

She slid up onto his lap. "I can't stop."

"Try harder," he said, but even as he spoke his arms surrounded her. His hands slipped up her back into her hair until his thumbs were tracing her jawline.

She mirrored him, her hands cradling his head close to hers. His mouth brushed her cheeks, catching the tears as they spilled from her closed lashes.

"Beautiful girl," he murmured, his lips on her eyelids, his arms sliding lower to hold her close. Sophie could feel the hard heat of him under her thighs, sensing that slow slam of sad into sexy that he seemed to specialise in. It got her every single time. She tipped her head a little, and his mouth covered hers with stifling intimacy. His kiss seemed to suck all of the air from her body and meld her into one with him. One great big tangle of tongues and hot emotions. She wrapped her arms around him and opened her mouth against his, letting him plunder and take his fill as she held on tight, swept up in him.

This was her only way in. Her only way to connect with the man behind the barricades. The man she loved. The man who couldn't love her back.

He filled his hands with her hair, great fistfuls of it as he kissed her endlessly. He eased her head back as his hips started to rock beneath her, slow and steady.

"Go and get your lunch, princess, before I eat you whole."

"I'd rather stay here."

He laughed softly, but Sophie could feel him retreating behind those walls again. He straightened her skirt and tucked her hair behind her ear, treating her to the slow glide of his thumb over her bottom lip. "Go."

She didn't move. "Can we talk later?"

He frowned, but nodded. "I'll drive you home."

She slipped from his lap, ready for lunch now, and ready to fight for him later.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Don't invite me in."

Sophie understood what Lucien was asking. He wanted her to stop, because he couldn't. But she wasn't playing that game. She turned defiantly to him in the dark. "Come inside." It was after seven, a cold winter’s night outside the warm confines of Lucien's car.

"If I come in there, I won't come out again without fucking you first."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

"Which do you want it to be?" He shook his head with a low frustrated laugh, more at his own stereotypical response than hers. "It's just a fact, Sophie, and not one I'm proud of."

God, he drove her crazy. "Why do you do that?" she asked gently.

"What?"

"Deny your feelings."

"`Why do you that?" he countered.

She looked at him steadily. "What? What do I do?"

"Overcomplicate things." He shrugged. "Read too much into things."

"I'm not." She placed a hand on his warm thigh. "Please come inside. It's too cold out here to talk." They both glanced out at the frosty, late November evening. "Coffee. You on one side of the table, me on the other, and I promise to let you leave without sleeping with me."

He unclicked his seatbelt with a resigned sigh.

"It's not your resolve that bothers me, Sophie."

In the kitchen, Sophie busied herself with the routine of making coffee, even though she didn't especially want one and suspected that Lucien probably didn't either. He was like a pent up lion prowling around the small space, and she wasn’t sure she knew how to handle him now that she had him here. She'd asked him inside ostensibly to talk, but the reality was that the invitation had been made just so she could be close to him, regardless of what they were doing.