The Vessel - Jenika Snow Page 0,23

would have said this before now but somehow feeling like it would have been out of place.

He lifted one broad shoulder, and I found it curious that he didn’t seem sorrowful with me bringing it up or in general. Maybe they had a strained relationship?

“Were you close with your father?” I didn’t know why I asked. It was none of my business, and I should have known from the lack of emotion on his face when I brought it up that it was probably a topic he didn’t want to delve into. But I wanted to be closer with Lucius, to get to know him.

He leaned back in the chair and watched me for a little bit, and I wondered what he was thinking. “No,” he finally said. “I wasn’t close with my father at all. In fact, he saw me more as a business transaction.” His words had shock filling me.

“A business transaction?”

He gave me an unamused smirk. “Meaning he wanted an heir. I was a means to an end for him. He didn’t have me because he saw himself being a father, because he loved me or the idea of children. He had me, because he needed someone in line for his Blacksmith throne.”

That broke my heart. It really did, and I didn’t know what to say in response, didn’t know how to verbally make him feel better, so I said nothing at all.

“And my mother, or lack thereof, had been a surrogate, a woman simply hired for the sole purpose of giving my father what he wanted… a child. An heir.” He cleared his throat, seeming very uncomfortable. “And that’s what he’s trying to do from the grave now, what he’s trying to push my hand at.” Those words were whispered so low I almost didn’t hear them.

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but I could assume, could guess that his father was trying to force him to do what he had done. But to make someone have an heir? The idea seemed so barbaric it made my stomach clench. But it wasn’t just that it was a bastard move by his father, but because the very idea of Lucius with a woman, touching her... connecting with her in that way, having a baby out of obligation, had jealousy moving through me.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said in response to what he revealed about his father. Although I could tell Lucius was used to keeping his emotions in check, I had seen the flicker of something pass over his face when he told me about his father. And I didn’t need to do a bunch of digging to know that a man like Francis Blacksmith was probably all business.

The thought of having a child for the simple fact of having somebody blood-related to run the business seemed so abhorrent to me. A child wasn’t a pawn, but it was clear Lucius’s father had seen him as just that. I didn’t know what was happening between Lucius and me, but what I felt for him was unlike anything I experienced before.

It was something I wanted to delve deeper into, even if that scared me.

14

Lucius

We found ourselves in the living room, or as my father called it, the drawing room. I sat on the leather armchair, brought my bourbon glass to my lips, and took a long drink, listening to Elise talk about her mother and aunt. I liked this part of her, this easygoing, almost playful side. She was on her second glass of wine, and although she nursed the hell out of it, I could see the rosiness in her cheeks. I knew that’s why she was being so talkative, the alcohol moving through her veins and giving her a little bit of courage.

And I ate it up, absorbed the light that came from her as if it were the sun and I’d been starved for it my entire life.

I liked all aspects of her, all parts that made her up. I enjoyed the shy, silent part of Elise, the part that called to my masculine, protective side. But I also liked this part of her, when she laughed easily and smiled freely, where her cheeks were blushed and her eyes glossy.

I started a fire as soon as we’d come in here after dinner, and the sound of the crackling broke up the silence. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. I kept finding myself looking at her, just staring at her face, at the way the shadows played