Chapter 4 Beneath the veil

Celeste didn't remember sitting down, she didn't remember her knees giving way or how the edge of the armchair caught her just in time to keep her from collapsing completely. All she remembered was the look in Lucien's eyes, that calm, that storm and that truth.

Her father, Claude Moreau, had worked for the Devereux empire the night he died and he was an insider as Lucien's exact words, her stomach twisted violently.

Lucien didn't speak again,he simply stood there with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders tense and his gaze locked on her like he was waiting for her to shatter,she was already breaking.

"You're lying," she whispered, but the protest rang hollow. "You're trying to confuse me and twist me."

"I'm not," he said quietly. "I have the records that your father wasn't just an accountant,he was feeding us internal reports from a competitor in Milan."

"No," she choked, "That's not... he would never"

"He was promised a seat at the table," Lucien continued,"The board, and a full stake but someone found out the night before the merger was supposed to close, everything blew up and his name was leaked, that's why he...."

"Stop talking!" she shouted, springing to her feet.

He flinched, but didn't move toward her.

"Do you really think I need your permission to grieve him?" she hissed with her eyes blazing. "You think dropping this at my feet will make me forgive you? Make me yours?"

Lucien's voice was ice, "I don't want your forgiveness."

"Then why tell me?"

"Because hating me for the wrong reasons will destroy you," he said. "And I can't let that happen."

The fury in her chest twisted into something messier and her throat tightened with tears welling despite her fight to hold them back.

She wanted to hate him and she needed to hate him, but the man in front of her wasn't just a monster. He was carrying the same ghosts and suddenly, she didn't know who she was fighting anymore.

Lucien stepped toward her, slower this time, as if careful not to spook her,and his hand brushed hers, but she let him and shehated that she let him.

"Come with me," he said with his voice low. "There's something you need to see."

They walked in silence through the long hallway of the penthouse with footsteps echoing off glass and stone and he stopped in front of a set of double doors at the far end of a solid wood, unlike the rest. Lucien unlocked it and the lights flickered on slowly.

Celeste stepped in with her breath catching, It was a private study, with warm wood-paneled walls, grand fireplace,shelves lined with books, vintage cameras, and Photos. Then she saw the picture of her father in suits smiling with Lucien's late father, Henri Devereux, shaking hands and leaning over plans. Some were candid, others taken professionally,but in every one, he looked... involved, important and respected.

She reached out, touching one in disbelief. "This isn't real."

"It is," Lucien said, "Your father wasn't a victim,not completely,he was ambitious,loyal and smart."

"Then why did he... "

"Because ambition isn't always rewarded and someone betrayed him but I still don't know who."

Lucien moved beside her with his tone quiet and reflective. "My father trusted very few people and Claude Moreau was one of them."

The name felt foreign on Lucien's lips,Claude,as if her father had lived in a completely different world.

Celeste stared at the photos until they blurred and everything she thought she knew about her family had just been undone, just then her legs gave out again and this time, she didn't resist when Lucien caught her. She buried her face in his chest, and for the first time in years, she let herself cry, not for the man she lost, but for the truth she never had.

It was sometime later when she opened her eyes she's realizing they were still in the study and she was on the leather sofa with Lucien sat beside her, silent and watching the fire dance in the hearth.

"I don't know what to feel," she admitted.

"You don't have to feel anything yet."

She turned her head and his expression was unreadable, but softer than she'd ever seen it.

The room seemed heavier and quieter, then she noticed the space between them shrinking and his hand rested near hers on the cushion with their fingers not touching but close enough to feel the heat.

"You said I'm your obsession," she said, voice nearly a whisper. "Is that what this is about?"

Lucien looked at her slowly, then down at her lips.

"No. This.. " he reached out, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, "isn't about control."

"Then what is it?"

He hesitated and then, without answering, he leaned in. This kiss wasn't like the last one,It wasn't desperate and it wasn't angry but It was soft, slow and devastating.

Her mouth parted for him, and he took his time exploring, tasting, claiming and his hand slipped to her waist pulling her against him. Her heart pounded, but her body leaned in, greedy for more.

His mouth trailed down her neck, and a gasp escaped her lips.

"Lucien," she whispered, half warning, half plea.

He stilled, but didn't move away.

"I want to touch you," he said. "I want to know what you sound like when you stop pretending to hate me."

She swallowed, every nerve on fire.

"You're playing with me," she murmured. "And I'm letting you."

"Then stop me," he dared.

But she didn't, because the truth was, she didn't want to, not anymore.

Lucien's hands moved under the silk of her dress with his palms hot and sure against her thighs. She gasped as he lifted her into his lap and lips never leaving hers. The fire crackled beside them, casting flickers of gold across their skin.

"Tell me to stop," he murmured, kissing down the column of her neck,"Tell me you don't want this."

She whimpered instead her hips pressing into him.

He groaned low in his throat and slid his hand higher and his fingers ghosting over her panties. Her breath hitched.

"Lucien.. "

His eyes met hers, dark and hungry.

"I need to taste you."

She was already trembling, but she nodded.

He laid her back gently on the couch, lifting her dress slowly and torturous lying until it pooled around her waist. His eyes moved over her with reverence and heat, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst. He kissed down her stomach and whispering her name like a vow, and when his mouth finally found her heat, she arched with a cry and her fingers digging into the leather as his tongue worked slow, delicious circles.

Her body obeyed him and reacted to him, he didn't rush,he savored and built her up then tore her down, and when she came undone, gasping and shaking beneath his mouth, it wasn't hate she felt, It was surrender. She lay breathless with the fire painting lazy shadows on the ceiling. Lucien pressed a kiss to her thigh, then leaned up beside her with her lips swollen, hair tousled and eyes soft.

"I didn't plan for you," he said. "You're the one thing I didn't see coming."

She turned her head, studying him and for once, there was no mask and no armor, just a man who looked like he didn't know how to fall in love but might have already started. She touched his face, and he leaned into her palm.

"Why me?" she asked.

Lucien hesitated.

Then his answer came, "Because even when you hated me... you made me feel alive."

She didn't sleep in her room that night but she slept in his and wrapped in satin sheets and silence with warm against his chest. Her body marked by his mouth and her soul marked by something she couldn't name.

She woke before him with light spilling in through the glass walls and she smiled for a fleeting second, but the second shattered when she saw it. An envelope lying on the nightstand and her father's name written across it in Lucien's handwriting. She reached for it with her hands shaking, Inside there was a single page and she began to read, and then her breath caught.

Because the letter wasn't from Lucien, It was from her father, one she'd never seen before.