Lucien is the sort of man who can defiantly hold his liquor. The four stiff whiskeys he has consumed have not slurred his speech nor impaired his balance but they have dampened his inhibitions so that casually leaning against the door frame to Jeans room and whispering (he thinks he's whispering at any rate) into her room is not at this given moment something he thinks of as improper.

"Jean! Are you awake?" Lucien hisses into the darken room.

He waits a pause. Then "Jean! Are you sleeping?"

From behind him an exasperated voice in forced hushed tones "No Lucien I am not"

He spins with grace considering the Whiskey and beams at her "Jean! You're still up"

"Yes! And hush yourself before you wake anyone else" she admonishes pulling off her outdoor jacket and pulling the scarf from her head "I've been over at the Sinclair's, Mavis is sick and her husband can't even boil water…" she trails off noticing how audaciously he is staring at her, as if she is a hamburger and he has just walked free from a prisoner of war camp.

"Lucien?" it's a question because she can't quite understand, but that's only her intellect that's pretending confusion, a deeper more basic human part of her knows this look that a man gives a woman, he's looking at her like she's a tasty morsel but it's not his stomach that's hungry.

"You're in my way Lucien" she tries, "It's been a long night I'm more than ready for bed"

The Cheshire cat grin he gives her tells her He is more than ready for bed too.

"I've just the thing to relax you" he says looking into her eyes.

Jean can't speak. He couldn't possibly mean…

"A massage!" he cries. "I've been studying a Chinese technique that is supposed to relive tension, stress and even headaches!"

Sitting in the chair he's dragged over from her vanity she reminds him "Keep it down Lucien, if Mattie wakes up….. It's late…uh" her words lose their strength as strong hands knead the knots of her shoulders.

Jeans slight frame is full of tension, her small shoulders seem to have little golf balls bunched under the skin, he has indeed been practicing his technique and it's easy to forget any impropriety. He is good, very good. Perhaps he's also been studying how to be a magician because his hands are magic.

As a large hand wraps the back of her slender neck entirely the other touches thumb and forefinger to temple and coxes her head back to rest against him. She stiffens at the contact be he admonishes "Don't tense up! And don't try to hold your head up, let me take the weight".

She does as she's told letting her head fall back so it touches his stomach but closing her eyes (she peeked at him though and he was staring straight ahead as if concentrating) he instructs her "breathe deeply in….. And out".

Jean does as requested big breaths in and out, her head is cushioned comfortably against his stomach, and his hands slip back down to her shoulders. He works his magic hands on the hard lumps in her shoulders trying to break up the crystalized tension there, he presses down and the relief it brings makes her groan audibly but she doesn't notice.

Lucien sure notices and it brings a cat like grin to his face, he likes that noise she just made. If he can just isolate the muscle and repeat the action he should be able to… He rolls her shoulders, squeezes, kneads.

"Hmmmm" escapes her again.

Lucien's smile is perfectly predatory as he applies pressure to the same spot and its opposite equal rewarding him with not just a groan but a shiver. That was too much, too much temptation. He was already manipulating her body with his hands and it was responding to him with trembles and moans so it seem the most natural thing in the world to lean down and kiss the nape of her neck.

"Lucien!" Jean gasped her hands flew to her mouth but otherwise she froze in place eyes huge over her hands and a high colour burning on her cheeks.

Lucien began apologising "I'm so sorry, forgive me I don't know what came over me, I'll leave you alone immediately, I'm so sorry Jean" he mumbled fleeing the room.

Jean walks silently to her own room holding her breath until the door is closed her back leaning against it. In her mind she replayed the moment, the feel of his lips against her skin, brief but fever hot, the rough scratch of his beard. She replayed his apology then whispered into the room.

"Don't be".