Read Online When I'm With You: Part VII by Beth Kery - Free Book Online

her upper arm.
    “I am so good,” she answered groggily. “But hungry.”
    “Hungry?”
    “I hardly ate anything at dinner. Emile will think I’m so unappreciative. If he thinks poorly of me, it’s all your fault,” she told him, pressing a small smile to his skin.
    “I hardly think Emile and Richard are ones to judge the idiosyncrasies of two people . . . so involved with each other.”
    Her warm breath seemed to cease at his pause.
    “Lucien?”
    “Yes,” he said, stroking her back now and once again wondering at her softness.
    Another pause.
    “Have you ever been in love?”
    His caressing hand slowed.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “I don’t know. I mean . . . I wouldn’t know for sure if I was.”
    “I’m no expert on the matter,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “But I do believe a person knows it, deep down, if they are. It’s just a matter of trusting that feeling, isn’t it?”
    For the next minute, he couldn’t be sure if she slept or was thinking. She didn’t move as he caressed her, and her breathing was warm and even on his chest.
    “Who was the man who died?” she asked suddenly, her clear voice startling him from his private ruminations about her earlier question.
    “What?” he asked, bewildered.
    “I heard Herr Shroeder tell you that someone was dead last night. He implied he’d been in prison, and you called him a sick fuck,” she mumbled, sounding very sleepy. “I just remembered that I wanted to ask you about it. I’d forgotten with everything you told me about your mother, and the terrace . . . and the restaurant,” she added lamely.
    Her ear was pressed against his chest. He hoped she didn’t feel his increased heart rate.
    “Remember I told you that a very important witness had informed Herr Shroeder that Helen Noble likely knew details about my mother’s identity and possible whereabouts?”
    “Yes.”
    “The man who died was that witness.”
    “And he was in prison?” she asked, sounding a little less sleepy now.
    “Yes.”
    “What for?”
    When he didn’t immediately respond, she lifted her head from his chest. “Lucien?”
    “Rape.” He expelled the word bitterly. “Worse than rape.”
    He felt her mounting concern swelling in the silence.
    “Did that man . . .
rape
your biological mother?” she whispered.
    He winced. He put his hand on the back of her head and guided her back down to his chest. He’d tried to prepare himself for it. But when he heard the thick dread in Elise’s voice just now, he knew he was a fool for thinking he could accustom himself to such an ugly truth.
    “I’ll never know for certain, until I find her . . . or until I speak with Helen Noble.”
    “Oh,
Lucien
—”
    “Not now, Elise. Please,” he whispered hoarsely when she tried to lift her head again. “Let me enjoy this moment with you. Let’s not ruin it.”
    He felt her open her lips, but perhaps she registered a hint of his pain, because her lips closed again next to his skin. He hugged her tighter, and she reciprocated. Something swelled inside him, thick and hot, when he felt how she squeezed him with an almost desperate strength.
    “I want to help,” he heard her say in a strangled voice.
    “You are,” he assured her gruffly, trailing his hand along her spine, pressing her to him even more tightly. “Your being here with me is all the help in the world.”

Read the conclusion of Elise and Lucien’s red-hot romance in
    Part VIII of WHEN I’M WITH YOU
    WHEN WE ARE ONE
    Available from InterMix on April 23, 2013

Keep reading for a taste of Beth Kery’s sexy romance
    SWEET RESTRAINT
    Available now from Berkley Heat

T he man sitting in the driver’s seat of the car parked in an abandoned parking lot near the Cal-Sag Channel was a keg of dynamite about to blow. In fact Randall Moody had come here on this cold January Chicago night to ensure that he did. He wanted to be the one to toss the igniting match in his own good time, however, and