Chapter 67
PAIGE
We sleep in the next morning.
I don’t know the last time that happened. But it does. Rafe leaves bed to grab coffee and a bottle of orange juice from the kitchen, bringing the entire pitcher straight up, while I open up the windows to let the Italian sunshine in.
Despite the healing cut in his lip and the lack of sleep, he seems lighter than I’ve ever seen him. He doesn’t move like he’s covered in bruises.
He returns to my side, pulling back the covers to start leisurely running his hands and mouth all over my body. It’s a slow, exquisite kind of torture.
“I can take my time,” he says with his face against my ribs. “Do you know how much I’ve wanted to savor you?”
I reach up, hands stretched behind my head. “You have?”
“Yes.” He runs a hand down along my bent left leg, tracing a soft pattern along my skin. His eyes follow the movement.
“You’ve always liked my legs. And my hair,” I say. “I think that was the first thing that gave you away.”
“Couldn’t help myself.” He grips my hips and kisses over my ribs, and my tattoo. He moves over the curve of my breast, just barely teasing a nipple, before his eyes return to mine. “But that wasn’t the only thing.”
“Hmm?”
He runs a thumb over my lips. “I hated this part of you the most, and then it attracted me the most.”
I can’t help but smile. “I know.”
He looks down, smoothing a hand over my stomach.
“Whenever I got to hold you in public, I’d wrap my arm around your waist and feel you breathe.
And this.” His fingers smooth over my tattoo, tracing the wave.
“I love this. Every time I’ve gotten a look at it, it’s made me want you even more.
” He leans down and kisses the curve between my tits.
“And these, fuck. When you went tanning topless…”
My smile widens. “I have been cruel to you.”
“A real brat,” he agrees, and starts kissing down my hip. “It was exactly what I deserved.”
We were meant to be getting out of bed.
Instead I watch him watching me, eyes glued between my legs like I hold all the secrets to the universe. He eats me out slowly, methodically, lazily. Like it’s not ten a.m. and we haven’t both ignored calls from journalists, and assistants, and colleagues.
Like this is his priority for the day.
I lock my hand in his dark hair and tell him through clenched teeth that I’ve wanted him for too long, too.
He looks up at me with triumphant eyes. “When?”
“Oh God, early. Do you remember the massage?”
“Do I remember the massage,” he mutters, and kisses my inner thigh. “Yes. I do.”
“Why did you leave, then?”
“Because my cock was rock hard and it was inappropriate. I went to shower and jerk off,” he says, and then bends to close his lips around my clit.
With the simple admission and the newfound suction, it takes me less than a minute to come. He licks me through all of it.
Afterward, I lie in his arms. “Really? You really jerked off to me?”
“I’ve come to you often these weeks.” There’s amusement in his voice. “You were the one to tell me to do it.”
“I was? Oh.” I turn my face against his chest, a blush rising up on my cheeks. “The toy and panties.”
“And your perfume,” he says. “I know it was a fuck-you, essentially. But you’re not getting those panties back.”
A blush spreads across my cheeks, and I can’t help but smile in delight. “And the toy?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Do you think I did? No. I did fist myself with those panties, but the toy… I wanted to be inside you or nothing. Even when I told myself it wasn’t going to happen.”
I shake my head slowly. “Wow. You’re so… I… wow.”
“I still love making you speechless,” he says with a wide grin that highlights the wound in his lip. It looks better than last night, but he hasn’t exactly been careful with it. He insists he doesn’t want to be.
“What do we do now?” I ask him.
He reaches out and wraps a lock of my hair around his finger. “We live our life.”
“With everyone thinking we’re not in love, and meanwhile…”
“They’ll figure it out eventually,” he says. “Things changed.”
I dig my teeth into my lower lip. I feel light and floaty, emotions like helium balloons inside me. I could fly.
“They did,” I say. My hand is pressed flat against his chest, and I can feel the steady beating of his heart. “But don’t we at least have some work to do? The entire world is probably writing about us now, even if my uncle won’t continue with the lawsuit.”
“Yes. And I don’t care.”
“Your designers, your brand.” My eyes widen. “Sylvie! She knows we’ve been lying to her and Leelyn for weeks!”
“About that,” Rafe says, and he’s grinning. “She already knew.”
“What?”
“Apparently they both saw through our act from the beginning. They’ve just been taunting us. That massage offer? They were expecting us to turn it down.”
I stare at him open-mouthed for a second before laughing. “Oh my God. Well, they definitely underestimated how competitive we are.”
He grins back at me. “Yes, they did.”
“We have dinner with her and the others tonight. That will be… interesting,” I say.
“I think they’ll be happy for us,” he says. His hand is still in my hair, brushing through it with reverence.
“And all your friends, too. They were so nice to me, and they still think we don’t like each other.” I cover my face with a hand. “Your sister is so nice. Amber is, too. I might poach them both. Is that okay?”
“You’re my family,” he says, and circles his fingers around my wrist to pull it away. “You can’t poach what’s already yours.”
I have to blink a few times. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like I’ve belonged anywhere. He just looks at me like he understands, and there’s no tightness in my chest. The lightness remains.
“Thank you for the watch you gave me,” I finally say. “I don’t think I thanked you properly at the time.”
“You were half delirious with fever,” he says. “And very honest.”
“I was? I don’t remember…”
His lips curve. “No. You wouldn’t. But it was the first indication I had that maybe you were feeling the same things I was.”
“Oh.”
“And the watch… I ordered the design in denial of what it would mean. What you meant to me.”
“We’re not in denial now,” I say.
He shakes his head slowly. “No, those days are well and truly over, Paige. No lies between us now. We can still play games…”
“We’re good at those,” I say, and reach down to brush over his stomach.
“Very. But you and I?”
“Same team,” I murmur. It feels strange, all this closeness. Strange in how new it is and amazing in how good it feels. I’m on the precipice of something I’ve never experienced before. And it doesn’t make me want to run.
I lie back down on his chest and let my fingers trace the scar on his torso. “I have a husband.”
He chuckles. “Yes. You have for months.”
“But it feels different now. I have a husband, Rafe.”
His smile is so warm it’s like the sunshine outside. “Yes, you do, darling. And I have a wife.” He brushes my hair back, eyes still watching me. Like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever had.
Basking in this bliss doesn’t entirely erase what he told me last night. The pained confession. I don’t believe that he has let go of all of it in the span of one night. He might have tabled those emotions, but…
He has so much survivors guilt, he’s drowning in it, and it’s not something I can kiss away. Not something I can love him out of.
“I think both of us need help,” I say.
His smile softens, and his eyes land on my ear. He runs a finger along the outer rim. “I know.”
“We can help each other,” I say. “With… with all of it. But we should also find therapists or experts.”
My grief and my panic attacks. His grief and his guilt.
He nods. “What happened yesterday won’t happen again. Not when I can see how much it hurts you.”
A breath escapes me, and my hand on his hip brushes against his half-hard erection lying against his stomach. “Thank you.”
“Where do you want to live?” he asks.
I blink. “You live in Paris most of the year, right?”
“Yes. But I have a private jet and multiple properties. Do you want to move back to Gloucester?”
I must look like an owl, the way I blink at him. “You’d move there?”
“For you? Yes.”
“This was all I had to do to get my way? Love you?” I ask, shifting down along his body. I kiss his scar.
“All I had to do, she says,” he mutters. “As if that’s not… oh.”
It’s something I haven’t done yet. Haven’t had the opportunity to, but there’s no time rush now. So I kiss the salty length of him and listen to his labored breathing.
And when I take him in my mouth and he tells me how good I am, how pretty I am, how I’m the best wife he’s ever had and the only thing he wants, I decide it doesn’t really matter where we live.
We’re late to dinner.
He lets me drive the boat, sitting on his lap, my hands on the steering wheel. His voice is calm and steady in my ear. The lake is glittering in the setting sun, the August wind against us still warm.
Docking is harder.
Rafe and I do it together and then walk hand in hand up the steps to Sylvie’s gardens. Her villa is more modest than Egeria, but it has a killer terrace, right out over the water.
All the designers are there.
Everyone has seen the news—they must have. But no one brings it up. Rafe keeps his arm around my shoulders after dinner, absently playing with my hair as Leelyn and I talk about our shared obsession with reality television.
It’s easy in a way I never knew it could be.
Afterward, I find myself alone with Sylvie by the dock. Darkness has settled over the lake like a comforting blanket, and the heat has died down.
I’m halfway through my third Bellini and can’t stop smiling.
“Sorry,” I tell Sylvie. “About all the lying. It wasn’t… We didn’t…”
She waves a hand. “Don’t mention it, chérie. You just keep him on his toes, all right?”
“I will.”
She sinks down on the chair beside me and stretches out her black-clad legs and loafers. “You two have reminded me of how Leelyn and I were in the beginning, you know. It’s been delightful to watch. See, I fought her so much, too.”
“You did?” That surprises me. The legendary designer and her wife seem like they can read each other’s minds.
“All the time. I didn’t want to give in to her, you see.
And she wasn’t willing to accept whatever arrangement I offered her.
What had worked so well for me in the past.” Sylvie turns to me with a raised eyebrow.
“I am emotional, Paige. It’s one of my greatest strengths in designing.
But I am also guarded, like with a fence, you see? ”
“I do see,” I say.
“Leelyn looked at the fence and said ‘I will have you without it, or not at all.’ I hated her in the beginning. I wanted her, but I hated her.” She reaches into the inner pocket of her jacket and finds a slim cigarette. “You still don’t want one?”
“No, thank you.”
“Living comes with risks, you know. This is one of them.” She puts it to her lips. “Leelyn is another for me. Because love is a risk. But it is worth it. And I think it’s worth it for you and Raphael, too, if you’ve agreed to put down the fences, yes?”
It feels hard to look at her. She has read us so correctly, and right from the start. “We have agreed to put down the fences. Yes.”
“Thank God,” she says, and takes a deep drag of her cigarette. “What took you two so long?”
“It was complicated.”
“Of course it is complicated,” she says. “You married a man you hated for business. Love is complicated in the best of times, and you two? Not best of times. But now, well… I am happy for you. Very happy, in fact.”
“How did you know?” I ask. “Rafe told me you knew from the start that we were pretending.”
“Of course I knew. Neither of you is a trained actor, and I have a very good eye. I say that not to brag. It is the truth.” She holds up her cigarette.
“I know him, right? And now I think I know you. But you two had a marvelous time pretending.” Her eyes glitter. “And I’ve had so much fun watching it.”
That makes me laugh. “Sylvie!”
“You enjoyed the massage, did you not? That was when I knew.” Her eyes glitter in the near dark. “You could have refused me, both of you. But you did not. There was hope.”
I draw up my knees and look across from her to where Rafe is talking to Leelyn and Vittoria. His eyes meet mine, and he smiles.
“There is hope,” I agree.