Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“Your sarcasm is lost on me, big man,” I murmur, taking in the way his eyes skim over my lips, his hand up my thigh until his fingertips brush my underwear.

Like he’s been shocked or something, he sits back up. Focusing on the television absently, he works my feet.

I’m still barely able to breathe as I pick up a fresh charcoal from the tin on the back of the sofa and get back to drawing him even though all I want to do is straddle him and let him fuck me raw.

With one last glance over his portrait, I close the pad. I’m about to put it back in the bag when an envelope falls out of it, slipping to the wooden floor silently.

I move so quickly to look for it that I practically fall off the bed with a loud thud that echoes around me even as I get on my hands and knees to retrieve it. The fucking thing has slipped all the way to the middle of double bed. With my bump, I’m unable to reach it. I get up and start trying to push the bed, but the frame is solid wood and heavy enough that the strain is making me feel sick.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lucian pulls me back, holding me a little too close to him. It feels odd, but there’s something about it that doesn’t have me running for the hills. “Aren’t you meant to be taking it easy?”

“Excuse me?” Pushing away from him, I get back on my hands and knees.

Fucking taking it easy?

“What are you doing?” He pulls me to my feet again, an angry frown marring his normally unreadable expression.

“You need to stop touching me. It’s getting creepy as fuck, and in case you’ve misinterpreted things…yes, I like an older guy. But not your kind of old.” Shaking him off, I go to the head of the bed as he stands looking at me by the footboard with a horrified grimace on his face.

Whatever…he’s a weirdo anyway.

“What?” I ask when he doesn’t deviate his stare, the expression non-changing. “Since you’re determined to be here, at least give me a hand.”

I push the bedside table to the side. It happens all too quickly when I spot the cut-out panel in the wall. Pushing the top corner, I pop it out and look inside the cavity of the wall.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I’ve never seen so much hard cash in my life. My heart starts racing with all the thoughts that cross my mind about why my mother would have hidden this money.

She left me a couple of accounts with very generous contents, but they were entrusted to my father until I turned twenty-one. Which of course, by then he’d tied most of it up in investments and funds.

I rummage around until I catch a shiny glimpse beneath a stack of cash. Again, I can’t fucking reach it with my short arms.

How the fuck did she manage to stash all of this? It’s not like she was any bigger than me.

“Can you help me?” I stand, holding my belly with a deep exhale. I’m laying it on thick because his look of horrification is morphing into worry. “I can’t reach that far back and there’s this box…”

He gets to it quickly, probably so I don’t overdo it and go into labour or something. His eyes widen as he pulls out a silver jewellery box with roses etched all over it. The expression on his face gives me pause. My aching heart throbs a bit more.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmur.

Lucian looks up at me, his fingers tracing the etchings as though he’s reacquainting himself with them rather than seeing them for the first time.

“It is.” There’s a solid second where I think he’s going to take the box and run, but then he hands it to me.

“Thank you.”

I’m terrified and excited all at once. But still, all I can think about is the envelope under the bed.

“Can you do me another favour?”

“What’s that?” His chuckle reminds me of Leo. His eyes are a striking blue rather than Leo’s green, but the dark hair and the aristocratic chisel of their faces is almost identical. Homesickness knots my insides, but my mind goes back to one thing—the envelope.

“I dropped something, and it went under the bed. I can’t reach it.” I rub my belly with one hand while still holding the box to me.

“You’re more like your mother than I thought. Cra

fty.” There’s that laugh again—sad and humoured all at once.