Breaking Out (The Surrender Trilogy 2)

He filled her with his hot release. Her body fluttered and he began to rapidly pump his hips off the couch, thrusting into her deep. “I want one more orgasm from you, Evelyn.”

Lifting from her wilted pose, she covered him. Crying out as he drove her to the pinnacle quickly and she easily climaxed. When she came, it was hard and forceful. She cried out and collapsed onto his shoulder, replete, tiny shockwaves of the aftermath jerking her body in tiny spasms every few seconds as she came back down.

The thump of his heart thudded against her ear. She smiled into his chest and giggled. “I’m gonna need another shower.”

His chuckle was a slow rumble that expanded the smirk on her face.

She loved him.

Chapter 4

Sneaking Around the Knight

“Okay, read me the next one,” Lucian said as he sat behind his messy desk, reading glasses perched low on his nose, and made notes in his ledger.

Evelyn took a deep breath. “Cllll . . . Clep . . . Cleptone . . .”

“Clapton.”

“Clapton In . . . Indeew . . .” She blew out a frustrated breath.

“Take your time.”

“Clapton Indeew . . .”

“It’s a soft U, like in under or umbrella.”

“Clapton Induss . . . I don’t know it.”

“That’s because you haven’t sounded it out yet. Don’t get frustrated. Take your time. Remember how ies sounds at the end of a word.”

He was so patient with her. She looked at the statement again. “Clapton Indust..ar..ies.”

“Now put it together.”

“Clapton Indust-ar-ies . . . Clapton Industries!”

“Very good!” His eyes creased softly at the sides as he gave her a praising smile.

She grinned proudly from the club chair pulled close to his disordered desk. Lucian was a perfectionist and neat in everything except the way he kept his workstation.

This had become part of their Sunday morning routine. Lucian would order breakfast, they’d eat, she’d change into one of his shirts from the week that still carried his scent before the cleaners could wash it away, and she’d read through a stack of invoices as he recorded the names in his ledger. It was a task that would probably take less than ten minutes for him to do on his own, but it was good practice for her. She had come a long way from the illiterate girl she was when they met last fall.

He added the name into the ledger and placed his pen in the crease of the binding. It took Evelyn a while to realize most people did their bookkeeping on computers. Lucian told her he preferred the feel of the pen between his fingers and the appeal of the leather-bound ledger. She liked seeing him like this.

Stretching, Lucian let out a wide yawn that ended with a manly, animalistic-growl-type howl. “Let’s do the rest later. Why don’t you take a break? I have to make a few phone calls.”

Evelyn left the invoices on the chair and stretched as well. There was no use putting the organized stack of paper on his desk. That thing was like a black hole.

As she snuggled onto the sofa and mindlessly hit buttons on the remote, she considered how much her life had changed from the endless struggle to survive it once was. Here she sat, toes warm in a thick pair of wool socks, fire burning in a glass insert ten feet away, television at her disposal, and a bracelet worth God only knew how much weighing down her wrist. It was bizarre.

She came across some Sunday morning cartoons and put the remote aside. Adult programs bored her, although she did enjoy the Gilligan’s Island reruns. Having never gone to school or lived in a real house, she simply couldn’t relate to the shows women her age usually liked. Once she watched a court show where two friends fought over a pedigreed dog, and she wanted to reach through the screen and strangle them both. Some people just didn’t know what real problems were.

Lucian spoke softly in the background, his velvety voice mingling with the pings and whizzes coming from the television, accompanied by her occasional giggle. A scraggly character showed up and her mind wandered to faces from her past, one in particular.

No matter how she tried to forget about Parker, she couldn’t let him go. He’d hurt her the last time they spoke. His disapproval held more weight in her conscience than she was comfortable admitting. He basically accused her of being someone seduced by money. Of course he didn’t know how deeply she had grown to care for Lucian at the time he made his accusation, but there was no excuse. His words hurt. They weren’t true, but it took her a long time to convince her bruised pride of that.

Lucian tried convincing her that Parker only said those hurtful things because he was in love with her and jealous, but that wasn’t true either. She and Parker had known each other for almost ten years. He’d come to the tracks when she was just a girl, probably around ten or twelve. Evelyn never knew when her real birthday was, so keeping track of her age was always a challenge. She assumed her age to be closer to twelve because she recalled that was the year she had just started to develop and get hair where she had none before.