His Absolute Proposal: An Illicit Billionaire Love Story (Elise, #3) (23 page)

"We need to go under something," Lucent said, mysterious and vague.

"Under what?" I asked.  When he didn't answer, I prodded more.  "The house?"

"Technically this is a part of the house," he said.

"What are we going under, then?"

"After all this time, I find it curious that you still have very little idea how to exercise patience."

"I can be patient!" I said in protest.  "I just don't know where we're going."

I didn't know why I was leading us there, either.  Granted, there wasn't much of a need for directions.  Straight, and down; that's the way we were headed.  My shoes scuffled against the floor, fighting against the slope for some semblance of regular balance.  Behind me, Lucent placed his hands on my hips, holding me as we walked.

"I wish you weren't so mysterious sometimes," I said.

"It's part of my allure," Lucent said.  I couldn't see him, but I was certain he had a wicked grin on his face.  "Dashing, mysterious, and devilishly handsome."

"Nope!" I said, laughing.  "Only mysterious."

He swatted my rear, sending a reverberating smack echoing through the passageway.  I jumped and squeaked, instinctively trying to get away from him, but he grabbed my hips again and pulled me close.

"Please note that I'm refraining from giving in to my baser needs at the moment, Miss Tanner," Lucent said, whispering a low growl into my ear.  "But, by all means, give me a reason to shove you against the wall, wrench your pants down your legs, and have my way with you right here and now."

"I hardly think I've done anything so dreadfully wrong that you need to resort to such brutish behavior," I said, adding a hint of playful snobbishness to my voice.  "We're both civilized here, Mr. Storme."

"I don't want to be civilized," he said.  "I want to fuck you.  I also hope to show you something beautiful beforehand.  All things have a time and a place, though I admit my patience is wearing rather thin at the moment."

I played into his hand, smiling to myself.  When he squeezed my hips hard and pulled me against him, I gasped, acting surprised, but, oh, I loved it.  I loved being close to Lucent.  I loved his voice, listening to him.  I liked when he called me Miss Tanner, and I enjoyed his artful affections, and I also loved when he gave all of it up and went straight towards striking a more carnal chord.

"I love you," I said, squirming and pressing hard against him.

"I love you, too, you beautiful nymph.  Now, move.  Step forward.  We're almost there."

I did as he asked, stepping with him, both of us moving forward.  Slow, silent, and languorous, we went onwards, together, as one.

It wasn't long before we reached the end of the passageway.  Only a few minutes or so.  A room opened up past that, the confinement of our tunnel giving way to a more vast expanse of space.  It was hard to see much of anything down here, but something twinkled and sparkled from the ceiling.  Once we stepped into the room, Lucent guided me towards a couch of sorts in the center.

A couch, yes, for sitting, but... of sorts, because it looked more like it was for laying in.  It had all the trappings of a regular couch, complete with seatback and armrests, but it spread out twice as wide, almost like a bed.  On the outskirts of the room stood a small refrigerator and some sort of LCD panel.  Not much brighter than the tunnel, I couldn't see all that well, but I spotted a set of speakers hanging from each corner of the room, too; four total.

Lucent sat me on the couch and vanished towards the LCD panel.  He tapped at it, bringing the display screen to life.  He slid some bars up and down with his fingers, doing this and that.  The lights grew dimmer, and then non-existent, though for some reason the ceiling seemed to brighten in an odd way at the same time.  The speakers came to life, low, playing soft, ambient music.  After, his last quick trip away from me before returning, Lucent went to the mini-fridge and opened it.  Light flared through the room, practically blinding compared to the darkness around us.  He took out a tiny bottle of wine and two chilled glasses, bringing them both to me on the couch.

He sat next to me and I sat next to him.  He toyed with something in the armrest, and a little table zoomed up and out of the floor at either side of us.  I didn't even know where he got it, but there was a corkscrew... somewhere.  From the table on his side?  Lucent used it to open the bottle of wine, then poured us both a glass.

I sniffed at my wine, curious.  It smelled fragrant and sweet, with a slight floral vanilla scent to it.  I took a quick sip, rolling it in my mouth to test and taste it.  This, Lucent had taught me, was the proper way to first indulge in wine.  You needed to give it a moment, let the flavor sink into your mouth, and then allow it to trickle down your throat as you swallowed.  Granted, if we were following proper wine etiquette, we also should have let the wine breathe a bit first, but I wasn't patient enough for that at the moment.

And... well...

"Do you like it?" he asked.  I saw a faint hint of a grin on his face in the dimness of the room.

"I have no idea what this is, but it's the most delicious wine I've ever had.  It's sweet, but a little tart.  I like it a lot."

"Icewine," Lucent said.  "It's for special occasions.  I'm glad they kept a bottle in reserve down here."

"I'm not sure this is a special occasion," I said.  "I kind of think it's not a special occasion at all.  We sort of crashed your parents dinner and invited ourselves here for an overnight stay.  I mean, I suppose that's special in a way, but I'm not sure it's a good sort of special."

Lucent chuckled, then sipped at his wine.  "No, not that, Miss Tanner.  This particular occasion is special because of where we are."

"Um... we're in a room?" I offered as a guess.  "It's a secret room.  It is a rather nice room, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure it's very special, either.  I do like it!"  I didn't want to sound ungrateful, but, um... a room?  A room was a room, really.

"Perhaps," Lucent said, a coy grin creasing the corners of his lips.  "This particular room has one slight nuance to it that makes it different from most any other room you shall ever have the pleasure of inhabiting, though."

"I think you're keeping a secret from me again," I said, staring at him and doing my best to pout.

Lucent snuck close and kissed the pout from my lips, though.  Apparently I wasn't allowed to pout; not now and not here.

"Look up," he said.

I glanced up, rolling my head back and resting it on the back of the couch.  Something glistened and shivered in the light from the ceiling.  It looked more than a little strange, to be honest.  The light shone from one particular spot directly above us and slightly to the left.  My eyes turned towards it, staring at it.  It looked almost like a regular ceiling light, but trapped... behind something?  And not a full light, either.  More like a sliver.  A quarter of what it should be, glossy and shimmering.  Every so often, it faded from view, blocked out by a moving shadow.

"The ceiling is weird," I said.

"Yes.  Weird is definitely a word you might use to describe the ceiling," Lucent said.

I pointed towards the shimmering light.  "Can you make it less dim?  Brighter?  Is there a switch somewhere for that?  I can't see very well."

Lucent almost died.  He almost died and apparently it was my fault.  He choked on the sip of wine he'd just taken.  Choking and sputtering, rolling to the side, he managed to somehow neatly place his glass of wine on the side table, and then...

He kept choking, but at some point it turned into a roar of laughter.  I... um... I panicked, and then I stared at him.  That was about all of what I felt right now.  Panic and confusion and staring and...

Lucent swallowed hard, forcing himself to calm down.  Tears and redness covered his face, and when he turned to look at me after finally stopping his choked laughter, he grinned wider than I think I'd ever seen him grin before.

"Well..." he said.  From the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes I could tell he was trying not to laugh again.

"I don't know what you think is so funny," I said, huffy, glaring.  "It wasn't a bad question!  If you turned the lights up I could see everything better."

"Possibly true," Lucent said.  He slipped closer to me, wrapping his arm around me.  Smiling and kissing my cheek, he pointed to the light again.  "Unfortunately it's impossible to do as you ask, Miss Tanner.  That," he said with emphasis, waving his hand toward the light, "is the moon."

I blinked and stared at the light.  The moon?  Um... I was almost certain that wasn't the moon.  Or, it shouldn't be the moon.  How could it be the moon?  We'd definitely gone down.  We were underground at the moment, of that I was sure.  And the moon was obviously not underground.  In fact, I knew quite well that the moon was high up in the sky.  Which, here, would make it high above the...

Oh God.

"What makes this room special," Lucent said, reading my mind, "is the fact that the ceiling is essentially made up of fifteen billion gallons of water.  Note, there's a very thick piece of protective glass between us and the lake, and everything is incredibly secure and safe, so there's no need to worry."

I heard him, yes, but after his initial words, everything kind of just went in one ear and out the other.  I stared up at the ceiling, watching the flickering shimmers.  Belatedly, I realized it wasn't just the moon as a light, either.  Little glimmers of sparkling starlight flickered here and there, almost imperceptible.  What I'd thought were shadows blocking out the light before, were, um...

I pointed.  "Is that a fish?" I asked.  "There's fish up there?"

"Yes," Lucent said, smiling and proud.  "This lake is a wonderful fishing spot."

"I... but how?  How is it like this?"

"It's like this because I wanted it built like this," Lucent said.  "The hardest part was figuring out a way to keep the glass on the lake bottom clear of dirt and debris.  I have to admit that the solution to that problem took a lot of thought.  I think the end result is worth it, though.  Don't you agree?"

"Lucent, we're under a lake," I said, as if maybe he hadn't realized it yet.  "We're under a lake and we're laying in a couch, sipping at wine, looking up at the stars and the moon and the water and... and fish!  There's fish, Lucent.  Look, there's a little fish right there.  He's swimming past us right now."

He chuckled.  "Indeed there is."

"Do the fish know we're here?" I asked.  "Do you think it bothers them?"

Lucent furrowed his brow and pursed his lips.  "You know?  I've never thought about it before.  I'm sure it doesn't.  We must be as interesting a spectacle to the fish as they are to us, I imagine."

"I like that," I said.  "I think that's nice."

Lucent smirked at me, but gladly allowed me my strange thoughts.  Yes, perhaps they were strange, but I liked my thoughts because they were my own.  I liked that Lucent liked my thoughts because they were mine, too.  I liked that he accepted me, no matter how confusing or strange or sometimes difficult I was.  I liked that he didn't ever seem annoyed or frustrated with my curious questions, that he just... he answered them, simply.  He considered them, even if maybe there wasn't much of a reason to consider them.

He gave them importance, he took them seriously, because he thought I was important; all of me, everything.

"I do think this is a special room," I said.  "It's beautiful.  It's like your butterflies."

"I suppose it's similar in many ways," he said, smiling.  "I hadn't thought about that before."

"Similar but different," I added.  "It's nice.  It's like a natural hideaway.  I mean... I know that the butterfly garden isn't natural, and this room, um... it's not exactly natural, either.  That's just what it reminds me of.  It doesn't seem intrusive.  It seems nice."

Lucent's butterfly garden.  Or, not his exactly, but he secretly owned the building.  We'd... we'd gone there last winter, too.  He had a hidden room built into a side area of the gardens, with an office of sorts inside.  He said it was for trying to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, somewhere he could go to escape and think and work.  I didn't know how anyone could ever work there, though.  Every time we'd gone, we... well, we never worked.  We cuddled and lay in one of the hammocks and watched the butterflies or pretended to watch a movie on the small TV there.

I loved Lucent's secret things.  That thought suddenly struck me hard, though.  How?  How could I love those secret things, but then be upset at finding out his other secret things?  Yes, they were different, and also he told me about the butterfly garden room, he showed it to me, but... still...

"I'm sorry," I said.  "I'm sorry about getting so upset before about you keeping some secrets from me.  I... Lucent, I do like some of your secrets.  I like this secret.  I like the butterfly gardens, too.  I like your little secret room under your office at Landseer Tower.  I bet I'd like the secret tunnels at Jessika and Asher's home if I saw them under different circumstances, too.  I don't think it's fair of me to like some of your secrets, but not the other secrets you have."

"There's nothing to apologize for," he said.  "Secrets can be good and bad.  Occasionally, secrets can simply be secrets, and neutral or inconsequential.  I don't want to keep secrets from you, Miss Tanner.  That was never my intent."

"You would have told me, wouldn't you?  Eventually, I mean?  You would have told me about... about your illegal things?  Maybe?"

"I'm uncertain," he said.  "It's something I've struggled with.  If I'm being honest, I would have preferred you never found out.  I'm unsure if I would have told you."

"I understand that it can be hard," I said.  "I know it can be a struggle and it can be difficult to say.  It's like saying 'I love you,' you know?  It's supposed to be hard, not easy.  It's hard because it means something.  It means a lot.  You need it to be important, and important things aren't always the easiest."

"I believe that's true," he said.

"I think you would have told me eventually," I said.  "I know you say you wouldn't, and I guess now we won't ever really know for sure, but I think you would have.  Sometime.  You would have because it's important.  And, yes, maybe it's kind of a bad secret in a lot of ways, but I think maybe sometimes the bad secrets are the most important ones."