“Good, come on.”
She grabbed his hand and dragged him along behind her while she navigated her way through various corridors, taking a side exit out onto the street.
“Does your apartment have adequate protection against the sun’s rays?” Lucian asked with amusement.
She paused and turned to face him.
“No, does yours?”
He nodded, with a wicked smile. “As much as I would love to go back to your place, and believe me it means a great deal that you invited me, I plan to pleasure you long after the dawn, so I’ll need some protection from the sun.”
Katherine’s eyes heated and she wet her lips. “Then you had better get me back to yours, Lord Nightingale.”
With that, Lucian snatched her hand back and hailed a cab with a whistle.
“As you wish, Miss. Daxton.”
Chapter Fifteen
Katherine
Silence enveloped them as they took the private elevator up to Lucian’s apartment. Katherine fought against the urge to fidget. She almost wished they could be caught up in a mad tangle of rushed and frenzied passion. It would have felt less intimate. Instead, her mind was currently running through every possible scenario as to what the man standing opposite her had planned once they stepped into his penthouse.
The anticipation was killing her. The sense of impending passion hanging in the air between them like a heavy mist was making each breath feel laboured. They didn’t say a word as they stood facing each other in the small space. Lucian was eying her like the predator she knew him to be, but she refused to react as though she were his prey.
As the elevator slowed to a stop, Katherine felt a thrill of excitement race down her spine. Lucian’s mouth curved into a smile that was loaded with dangerous intent. She kept his dark gaze and tried to make herself smile in response, instead all that came out was a quiet gasp as he took her hand in his and led her out into the large lobby. The place was clean and cool with floor-to-ceiling white marble, the delicate scribbles and smudges of pink and grey that graced its surface were the only hints of colour in the room. Walking through the simple yet imposing black door, Katherine’s jaw dropped at the view that greeted her.
His apartment was huge, open-planned, and sparse. While the rooms at Tumbricane held a touch of opulence and had an old-world charm, Lucian’s city home took minimalism to the extreme. The same white marble floor continued throughout, only broken up by a few carefully selected pieces of gleaming black furniture, chosen to compliment the immaculate white kitchen with sparkling black granite tops.
If she had been concentrating on just the room alone, Katherine would’ve shivered from the lack of warmth and life in the place. Instead, she shivered for an entirely different reason. The sparkling glow of the city lights beckoned from the wall of glass that was in front of her. She absently handed Lucian her jacket and bag as he went to take them from her, and drifted quietly towards the windows.
She thought she loved city life, seeing it laid out in front of her as if she were a goddess looking down upon the world, made her heartbeat loudly in her chest. She’d never experienced the city from such a perspective and she suddenly felt like she were some kind of voyeur, guiltily enjoying a view of a world that had no idea that she was watching. She was so high up, she doubted if anyone would even be able to make out her silhouette at the window.
“What are you thinking?” Lucian asked quietly from behind her.
Katherine’s eyes refocused on the glass to look at him in the reflection.
“It’s hard to know how I feel about this view. I’m trying to decide,” she answered honestly, “it’s undeniably beautiful and hypnotic but I’m not sure if being so apart from the bustle of the streets, the heartbeat of the city, is something to like or not.”
“You prefer to be amongst the daily grind?”
“Yes and no. I love the vibrancy, pace, and variety of city life but I can’t deny that being able to stand above it all and survey life as it happens, is oddly freeing. It’s strange. Standing right here I feel both liberated and shielded at the same time.”
“Does it not make you sad? Looking down upon all that life and not being part of it?” Lucian asked, his eyes gazing far out at the twinkling lights.
Katherine frowned at his sudden melancholy.
“Just because I’m temporarily on the outside looking in, doesn’t mean I’m not living life. I’m just taking in a different perspective.”
“And if that perspective wasn’t temporary? What if it were permanent?”
Lucian turned and looked at her, the seriousness of his expression making her long to be able to bring him back to one of his lighter moods. The darkness that seemed to reside in him constantly was almost a visible shadow hanging around them.
“I’d still be living my life, it wouldn’t mean I’d have to be alone.”
She couldn’t resist it any longer, the desire to walk into him and ground him in the moment was too strong. She placed her hands on his chest and looked up into his eyes, hoping to revive him from whatever sombre thoughts were whirling around his mind
“Aren’t you alone though, Katherine?” He asked, his arms wrapping around her.
“I have friends,” she stammered, taken aback by his directness.
“True friends? Or just acquaintances?”
“I’m busy that’s all. I have ambitions that I’m focused on and that doesn’t leave much time for nurturing relationships,” the words felt empty even as she said them.
“Reaching your goals and achieving your ambitions won’t hold the same reward if you have no-one with which to share it,” Lucian smiled softly at her, the tenderness in his eyes warming something inside her.
He had turned up to her presentation today to support her, she reminded herself. She hadn’t asked him. Not
