Chapter 14 #2
I pour the wine into glasses, so it can breathe. “Well, it’s a cookbook, but more than that, it’s an encyclopedic guide to 19th-century French cuisine, containing recipes, culinary history, and Dumas' personal thoughts on food and entertaining. The work was a passion project for Dumas.”
“I must read it.”
“I think I have a copy.” I look toward the living room where I have my favorite books resting in antique bookshelves. “But it’s in French. I’ll find you one in English.”
“Thank you,” she says shyly.
I sit as she serves the pasta onto plates.
The kitchen is suffused with the warmth of vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil. She’s finished the pasta with a snowfall of parmesan and a ribbon of fine olive oil, its aroma mellow and rich.
“I’m surprised that someone who doesn’t cook is so into food,” she teases.
“Well, I like to read…and eat.” I stare at her, pulse hammering, one thought cutting through the noise: I have to keep her.
“Now I need to go back and read Dumas to see if he describes food in his fiction in some special way.”
“Do you know, in his introduction to the book, Dumas apologized to posterity for not having eaten enough.”
She chuckles, delighted. “That sounds like a man I’d have liked to meet.”
I tilt my glass toward hers. “Then you’ll have to settle for me, mon amour. I’m a more modest gourmand.”
“Modest,” she repeats, clinking her glass against mine, “is not the word I’d use.”
“What do you think about the wine?”
She lifts the glass, inhales, and her smile fades into something softer. “The nose is…like the earth after rain. And…violets?”
I nod. “Truffle, leather, spice. A wine that knows its strength, but isn’t screaming it.”
She takes a sip, closes her eyes, and sighs. “It’s like velvet. Dark velvet. Strong but gentle at the same time.”
I watch her lips curve around the rim of the glass, and a pressure blooms in my chest.
She opens her eyes again, mischief dancing there. “Careful, le Comte. Good food, good wine, a little chili heat…that’s a dangerous combination.”
“Dangerous,” I echo, raising my glass to hers. “Exactly what I wanted. à votre santé*, mon amour.”
“Santé.”
The clink of crystal rings in the quiet kitchen, which combined with her presence, bright and easy, makes this one of the best meals of my life.
“This is happiness,” she declares when we sip our champagne and eat profiteroles we picked up at the bakery.
That night, we make love with abandon. I can’t get enough of her. She can’t get enough of me. As we lie in bed, I feel the words aching to slip past my lips.
“Je t'aime*, mon amour.”
Words that I can’t remember even saying to Simone because it has been so long since I felt even remote affection for her.
How has this woman, whom I barely know, stolen my heart, the one I didn’t even know I had?
I love my son, I have no doubt about that. But Tara? No. It can’t be. It’s too early. It’s ridiculous.
“Gustave,” she whispers, nuzzling against me as I hold her in the quiet dark.
“Hmm.”
“Stop thinking.”
“How do you know I’m thinking?” I brush my lips against her forehead. I love the freedom to touch her and kiss her any time I want.
“I can hear the gears turning in your head.” She slides a thigh over mine. “Go to sleep, baby. Don’t think about tomorrow. Live in the now.”
I like it when she calls me baby, which is not often. But I’m not sure if I like how she seems to not only see but also understand my turmoil.
The next afternoon, after a lazy breakfast of pastries I picked up from the boulangerie, we walk through the narrow streets of Pommard to Le Cellier Armand Heitz.
From the outside, the caveau looks like any stone building in the village, but when the heavy wooden door swings open, cool air rushes out like a sigh from centuries past.
Inside, the vaulted cellar is dim.
I inhale the dampness of limestone and old oak, tinged with the faint sweetness of fermentation. Barrels line the walls, their chalk markings whispering of vintages that are still dreams in the making.
Our guide, the vintner, dips a slender pipette, a wine thief, into a barrel, and pours a small measure into Tara’s glass. She swirls it, watches the liquid cling to the sides.
“Pommard Premier Cru Clos des Poutures,” he says reverently. “From a monopole parcel we’ve tended since the seventeenth century. Black cherry, violets, a little truffle if you wait.”
She inhales, and I watch her chest rise. Her lips part as if the bouquet itself has surprised her. “It’s like dusk in a garden after rain.”
She takes a sip. Her eyes flutter shut. I watch her as I drink from my own glass, letting the flavors roll over my tongue.
The wine is rich yet taut, dark fruit at the front—blackberry, cherry—wrapped in a subtle edge of spice.
Then the earthiness reveals itself—a whisper of forest floor, a trace of cedar and mushroom.
The tannins are firm but not harsh, like silk pulled tight across the tongue.
It lingers, a finish that carries smoke and a faintly floral nuance, as though violets were pressed into the barrel staves.
Her eyes open slowly, glowing. “It tastes alive.”
“Burgundy at its best is not merely wine,” I say, unable to look away from her. She’s bewitched me, there is no other explanation. “It’s conversation, memory, and patience.”
The vintner smiles, as though we’ve passed some test. “Wine should never be rushed. It’s a story in the making, and each sip adds another sentence to it.”
She’s slightly tipsy after the wine tasting as we walk back home.
She’s giggling, talking too much. She’s like no woman I’ve ever been with. She makes me feel young and na?ve myself, wanting to breathe in the fresh air as she does, and live life to the fullest.
We take a nap after we come home and wake up to a lunch of pate en croute and a mesclun salad she puts together with what’s available in the garden and the fridge. It’s so easy to be with her, I think again as we drink a Montrachet from my cellar, which I picked out with her.
When I had taken her down to the wine cellar, with undisguised enthusiasm, she perused the wines gathered over decades, bottles from my grandfather’s time mingled with my own choices.
“This”—I ran my hand along the racks—“is my true indulgence.”
She whistled low as she looked around. “I thought art was.”
“Art is for the soul. Wine is for the body. Together, they balance. Non?”
“Yes.”
I kissed her there. Made love to her on the table, hungrily, thirstily.
I want her to the point of madness—and not only for sex but for conversation and companionship.
After a late lunch, the sun shines warm as we walk to the river that borders my land. It runs shallow but clear, catching the light in glittering ripples.
“We must,” she announces suddenly.
“Must what?”
She doesn’t answer, just strips naked without hesitation, laughing as she wades in.
“You’re mad,” I say, but I follow, shedding clothes until I plunge into the cold water. “Holy fuck, Tara, it’s cold.”
“No, it’s not…it’s just right.” She floats on her back, her face up, her eyes closed.
Her laughter echoes across the banks, and when I catch her, pulling her close in the water, it feels like I am whole.
Her skin is slick against mine, her joy infectious.
We kiss, half-drowned, both breathless with laughter and want.
She swims away from me, splashing me. We play like children for a while, but the want is inescapable.
The cool current teases my skin, but it’s Tara who’s got me burning hotter than hellfire.
Her tits sway gently with the ripples, her nipples hard little buds begging for my mouth.
Her hips are curves I could worship for a lifetime, and that ass—mon dieu, that ass—is a masterpiece, round and taut, begging to be gripped, slapped, devoured.
She wades toward me, her eyes locked on mine, and I can see the hunger in them, which makes my cock throb like a heartbeat.
Her body moves with a primal grace that makes my breath hitch. When she’s close enough, her fingers graze my chest, tracing the lines of muscle like she’s memorizing every inch of me.
Her touch is electric, sending jolts of lust straight to my erection, which is already aching and throbbing, ready to plunge into her hot, wet depths.
“Gustave.” Her voice is low and sultry, like sex itself.
She presses her body against mine, her skin slick and warm, her curves molding to me like she was made for me. Her hands slide down my chest, over my abs, and finally wrap around my cock, stroking me with a slow, deliberate rhythm that makes me groan like an animal.
“Oui!” My fingers dig into her hips as I pull her closer.
Her tits press against my chest, her nipples rubbing against my skin, and I can feel her wetness against my thigh, hot and inviting. I tilt her head back with one hand, kissing her like I’m trying to reach her soul.
Her lips part, her tongue tangles with mine, and I can taste the honey-sweetness of her desire.
She moans into my mouth as she rubs her clit against my thigh, sending shivers through her body.
My cock pulses in her hand, desperate for more. She pulls back, her eyes dark with lust, as she guides me to the riverbank.
The water laps at our feet now.
I turn her so her back is to me. I bend her over onto the grass, her ass presented to me like an offering.
I can see the glistening folds of her pussy, swollen and ready for me. I knead her ass cheeks, spreading them apart. She gasps when I lean down and lick her.
I bury my face between her legs, lapping at her pussy like a starving man, my tongue flicking her clit until she’s moaning and writhing, her hands clawing at the grassy riverbank.
“Gustave, please,” she begs, her voice trembling with need.
I straighten, positioning my cock at her entrance, and she pushes back onto me, taking me inch by inch, until I’m buried to the hilt inside her.
She’s so tight, her pussy clenching around me like a velvet fist, and I see stars.
I pull her back onto me with each thrust, sliding in and out of her dripping wet cunt.
The water sloshes around us, its coolness a stark contrast to the heat of our bodies.
Tara’s moans echo across the beatific landscape, her tits bouncing with every thrust, and I can feel her clenching around me, her orgasm building.
I lean over her, wrapping one arm around her waist, my other hand reaching around to pinch her nipple. She cries out, her body trembling as she comes, her pussy milking me like she’s trying to drain me dry.
But I’m not done yet. I flip her onto her back. Immediately, her legs wrap around my waist.
I plunge into her again, deeper this time, hitting that sweet spot that makes her scream.
Her nails dig into my back, her hips bucking against mine, and I’m lost in the rhythm of our bodies, in the way she feels around me, in the way she looks up at me like I’m hers.
When I finally come, it’s with her name on my lips, pulsing deep inside her, filling her. She clings to me, her body trembling with aftershocks.
We’re both breathless, spent, and utterly wrecked.
But we don’t say the words that I can feel pulse between us.
We don’t need to. The way our bodies move together, the way she looks at me, the way I feel when I’m inside her—we know, this is love, raw and unspoken.
Later, we lie on the grass to dry, the sun warm on our skin, the river whispering nearby. Tara props herself on an elbow to look at me.
“You really hide yourself away here, don’t you?” she asks softly.
“Yes. Here, life is simple.”
“And you like that?”
I look at her, admiring the flush in her cheeks, the tangle of her hair. My heart swells in a way that frightens me. “Yes. Especially with you,” I confess.
The weekend passes like a dream. Mornings with coffee and croissants from the village bakery, afternoons wandering vineyards, evenings curled on the sofa with a bottle of wine, and her head on my shoulder.
For once, I am not calculating appearances or weighing risks.
For once, I am alive.
* Vault or cellar; often used for wine cellars/tasting rooms, but also for vaulted spaces like jazz clubs or cabarets in Paris (French)
* The butcher shop (French)
* Bakery (French)
* To health (French)
* I love you (French)