DAGGER #2
“I told you, you have to say the words, mon feu.”
“Batard.”
“You want me to stop?”
When she didn’t answer, I removed my fingers.
Her nails dug into my forearm. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“You know what I want, darling. Ask me nicely, and I’ll give you what you need.”
“Touch my clit.”
My rock-hard cock pulsed, and I pressed my thumb on her bundle of nerves. “Do you know how much time I’ve spent imagining touching you like this? Having you beg me to get you off? Every single day, Maelle. That’s how often I’ve fantasized seeing you like this.”
“Killian,” she groaned. “Please don’t stop.”
I brought my mouth to her ear. “If you were mine, I’d use my teeth to remove your chemise.
I’d start at your ankle, and I’d take my time making my way up your body.
When I reached your beautiful pink pussy, you’d beg me to lick you.
Then I’d hold you open, and I wouldn’t stop, not even if you told me to, not until you’d come so many times you couldn’t remember your own name. ”
She was riding my hand now, taking what she wanted.
“And then?” Her teeth were clenched.
“Then I’d turn you over.”
“Mon Dieu.”
“You’d be on your knees, and I’d be so far inside you, you’d feel me for a week.” I curled my fingers, and she clenched around them. “You’d let me. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you beg me to fuck you, mon feu?”
“I would.” Her hand came up to my face again, hunting for my mouth, and I dropped my head to her collarbone. “Killian, please—”
“What more do you want?” I asked, wishing my mouth was where my hand was.
She came on my fingers, hard, with her forehead pressed to my shoulder, my name on her lips, and her fist twisted in my shirt.
I held her until she stopped shaking and rolled away from me.
I picked the pillow up off the floor and put it between us. Then I lay awake with my hand still wet from her. As much as I wanted to bring my fingers to my mouth to taste her, I didn’t. If I had, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist spreading her legs and devouring her.
She fell asleep before I did.
When we’d finished breakfast, Rémy invited us to tour the grounds with him.
He walked us through the vines, gesticulating the entire time, and switching between French and English mid sentence.
As we passed different parcels, he’d tell stories about when each had been acquired, what had originally been planted there, and what was there now.
He went on to say that the pruning was early this year and he had opinions about it, and about the neighbor’s pruning, and about the neighbor.
“That’s where Maelle fell asleep when she was six, setting off a search conducted by every worker on the property.”
She shook her head. “That didn’t happen.”
Rémy chuckled. “That’s not what your father says.”
“He tells many lies. Try not to follow in his footsteps.”
The two teased each other endlessly but kindly, laughing freely and often, like Alena and I had done when we were younger and our parents were still alive.
In my line of work, trust was earned, never given, which meant I’d have to get to know Rémy a helluva lot better before I decided whether I could or not.
One thing going for him was how much he loved Maelle.
Nobody could’ve faked that for an entire morning.
However, it told me nothing about him outside of that relationship.
At the top of the hill, he sent Maelle ahead to look at something in the next vineyard, and it was so smoothly done I nearly missed it.
“She’s never brought anyone here,” he said, watching her go. “Not once, in all these years. So.” He looked up at me, and for the first time all morning, he challenged me. “Whatever you are, tread carefully.”
“Understood.”
“Bien.” He squeezed my shoulder, and his grin returned. We continued on as though he’d been explaining the principles of growing grapes to me.
I liked him better for it, and I hated that his warning was something I worried about myself. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Maelle.
Her father caught up with us at the cuverie and took over the tour.
He talked about the vats, the vintages, and the domaine’s history. He told it like a man who’d built all of it with his own hands, rather than having inherited it. Rémy let him, and within ten minutes, I understood their arrangement.
I listened the way I’d been trained, to what was said and to what wasn’t.
In an hour of talk about Valais, its future, and its legacy, he hadn’t mentioned his daughter once.
Everything was about his nephew. Through all of it, she stood beside me and didn’t react once.
I gave her my support by leaning closer and brushing her fingers with mine.
“I like him,” Bertrand said at one point, motioning to me. “You’ve finally shown some sense in choosing him.”
Maelle drew in a sharp breath but recovered quickly. It was more difficult for me to keep my mouth shut than to defend her, but I did, reminding myself this was about the mission.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“The UK.”
“Have you been to France before?”
“I have, but not as often as I’d like,” I said. “Most of my contracts keep me in Geneva or Zurich. What about you?”
“I’m only away from Valais when it’s necessary. There’s too much work to be done for me to take a holiday.”
“What about business travel?”
“Again, only when necessary.” He looked over at Maelle, noticing her scowl like I had. “She has always been contrary, this one,” he said, gripping my shoulder.
Her fists clenched at her sides.
I stepped away from Bertrand and put my arm around her. “Are you okay, mon feu?” I asked quietly enough that only she could hear me.
“There are times when I want to kill him,” she mumbled under her breath.
While I wouldn’t go as far as murder, I could envision myself punching him for disparaging his daughter. I’d enjoy every minute of taking him down on her behalf.
Except, for now, keeping Bertrand happy was part of our job. That he was also the man in the photographs with Géraud made it easy to smile at him without any warmth behind it.
As we were headed inside for lunch, Marthe passed us in the courtyard, looked once at our joined hands, and muttered something in French that made Maelle bite back a laugh.
“What did she say?”
“That you’re too big for the house and I should have chosen a smaller one.”
“Tell her I’ll duck.”
“So, Rourke,” Rémy asked during the meal, “how did the two of you meet?”
I told him the version Maelle and I had crafted, about a client I couldn’t name, a detail I couldn’t describe, and a week in a city I wasn’t at liberty to mention.
Rémy waved his fork at me. “The fertilizer invoices are more interesting. Try again.”
I gave him the story he asked for.
“Maelle’s client booked a week at a villa in Provence. I had the security set up before the party arrived—gates, staff, the drive. On day three, I retrurned to my room, which was locked, and found a bottle of Meursault on my pillow with a card.”
“A card?” Rémy asked.
“It said, ‘Your east gate closes but does not lock. Cordially, the concierge.’”
Rémy laughed and turned to Maelle. “You broke into his room?”
“The gardener did,” she said. “I do not climb walls in linen.”
“I rehung the gate,” I said, “and told myself that was the end of it.”
“It was not the end of it,” Maelle said. “The next morning, he canceled the hot-air balloon ride I’d scheduled.”
“Only because it was the kind of thing that would announce to the entire valley exactly where my client was.”