Prologue #2
“One hour,” I tell him. “We go, you see Elise, and we leave. If your father so much as raises his voice, we leave. If your mother starts on either of us, we leave. If you look at me once and say you want out, I will get you out before she finishes blinking.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that for me.”
“I know. I’m choosing to. For us .”
He lets out a long, exasperated breath. “Amor.”
“Don’t amor me.” I abandon the stool and hoist myself onto the cold marble island, scooting across the polished surface until my knees hang over his side.
He steps into the space between my thighs, bracing both hands on the countertop.
Those golden eyes darken a shade with reluctant heat as I loop my arms around his neck, trying not to drown in the clean warmth of him and the faint trace of his cologne. “Come with me,” I whisper. “For Elise.”
His jaw flexes as he dips his head, lips brushing my ear. “You’re not playing fair, baby.”
“I’m not trying to.” My toes curl at the tease of his breath, and I brush my thumbs through the damp hair at his nape. “I’m trying to win.”
He withdraws a fraction, one brow lifting. “Win what?”
I arch mine in return. “You. Your sister. Dinner with your terrifying family without committing a felony.”
His mouth curves despite himself. “That last one might be beyond you.”
“Probably.” A teasing grin tugs at my mouth as I lock my legs behind him. “But my family has already adopted you, so if the Navarros try anything, I can outsource the felony.”
Amusement fractures the severity of his face. “Your family would love that. ”
“They’d bring snacks.”
“And bail money?”
“Obviously.” I loosen my arms from around his neck and lean back on my elbows. “We’re not animals. We have you to bankroll the operation.”
His thumb hooks the knotted drawstring of my shorts, winding it once around his finger, a quiet reminder that he knows exactly what he does to me. “And here I thought you married me for my heart.”
“Please.” I give him my best offended look. “I married you for your devastating eyes and the free legal counsel.”
“No love for my personality?”
I tap a finger against my chin, pretending to consider it. “You’re tolerable on good days.”
His mouth grazes mine, that faint smile still in place. “Am I? Fuck, I’m this close to forgiving you.”
My breath ghosts over his mouth. “For being right?”
“For using that mouth against me.” His fingers tighten around the drawstring, reeling me flush against his chest. My nipples pebble where they brush him, and the brief friction sends heat skittering through me.
“I’ll go to the dinner.” His voice drops, the joke thinning around the edges.
“Just… please stay with me through it, amor.”
I cradle his face. “Fine,” I tease, even though my voice has gone softer than I intended. “Since you’re begging so beautifully, I’ll stay beside you through every step. The dinner. Your family. All of it. ”
His eyes hold mine, dark with want and too much love for one person to know what to do with. In them, I see everything I still can’t believe is mine. Safety. Devotion. The impossible warmth of being chosen again and again.
My husband. My midnight sun.
“And when we have children,” I add, forcing lightness into the words, “they’ll be beside you too. A whole little army, ruining your peace and inheriting my excellent felony instincts.”
The ache that flashes in his eyes mirrors mine, and a familiar devastation cleaves through me.
Children .
We’ve spent almost three years trying for a baby, and every month found a new way to hurt us. Three years of telling myself not this month did not mean never. Three years of watching my period come and feeling something inside me collapse.
I hadn’t known infertility could be this bleak. This monotonous. This skilled at turning hope into something I almost resented needing.
The ovulation tests. The bloodwork. The ultrasounds. The medications. The measured voices of doctors explaining what my body was doing, what it wasn’t doing, what my injury might have changed.
The same ending, again and again. My husband holding me while I cried until there was nothing left in me.
Now we are preparing for IUI.
The first real step past tests, scans, and timed sex. Dr. Moreau says we will start with my next cycle: medication, monitoring, then the procedure when my body is ready.
I want to be brave about it. Optimistic. Reckless with the belief that maybe this is where science, timing, and all Xavier’s defiant hope finally meet us halfway.
I push the ache down and keep my hands on his face, because when he looks at me like this—like I am loved beyond reason—I can almost forget the hurt that comes with wanting.
An indecipherable emotion flickers through Xavier’s expression, gone too quickly to name. His attention narrows to my lips. “That merciless mouth of yours,” he breathes. “You have no idea what it does to my restraint, amor.”
“Shameless,” I chide.
He answers by taking my mouth. His hand slides to the back of my neck, angling me exactly how he wants me, and the first sweep of his tongue turns the rest of my sentence into a gasp.
My fingers spear into his damp hair, holding on as the kiss changes shape between us—heat and relief and all the fear neither of us knows how to say out loud.
Desire narrows everything to the island beneath me and Xavier standing between my legs. The taste of him floods my senses. The heat of him anchors me. His body is solid against mine, and I kiss him like the world has gone under and his mouth is the last habitable place left.
Hungry. Messy. Consuming.
Still not close enough.
When he finally releases my mouth, my breath is uneven and his is no better. For a second, we stay like that, foreheads almost touching, his fingers flexing at my waist like he is trying to remember where we are and resenting the effort.
Then his hand drops to the hem of my shorts.
I lift my hips to help him, my pulse tripping because Colette, our housekeeper, is away on her annual holiday in Marseille, and there is no one here to walk in on us this time.
The memory almost makes me laugh.
Last year, she found us half-dressed against this same island, screamed as if she had discovered a crime scene, and Xavier carried me upstairs with my shorts still caught around one ankle.
Four years in this house, and the woman still hasn’t learned that my husband and I are a public decency risk wherever marble, walls, or locked doors are involved.
God, I hope she never does.
My teeth catch my lower lip as he eases the fabric down my legs. The question on the tip of my tongue escapes before my courage can desert me. “Are you hopeful?”
His hand stills, a minute tension gathering in his forearm.
“About the IUI,” I clarify, softer now. “Are you?”
His throat moves with a swallow. “Terrified,” he admits, and the answer steals whatever breath his mouth left me with. “Hopeful too.”
A knot beneath my ribs loosens by a painful degree.
That’s all I need.
He tosses my shorts somewhere behind me and parts my thighs wider. I roll my hips into his hand and meet his gaze with a smirk, anticipation blooming into defiance.
“But right now,” he murmurs, “I keep thinking about Maison Verre.”
“Maison Verre?” I ask, though my body already knows exactly where he is taking this.
His thumb strokes the inside of my thigh. “You sitting across from me pretending those dates were platonic. Looking at my mouth like you weren’t imagining it between your legs.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You’re a shit liar, amor.”
A laugh slips out of me, breathless and shaky, but it dies the second his fingers hook into my panties and pull them aside, his knuckles brushing my clit with a pressure that makes my thighs tense around him.
Fuck.
My head falls back, breath coming apart in my throat.
“I remember the bathroom stall,” he continues, his voice dropping. “Your hand over your mouth. Your thighs shaking around me. My name trapped in your throat while you tried so hard to stay quiet.”
“Xavier.”
“You were terrible at it.” His thumb circles my clit, slow and devastating. “I heard every sound.”
A low gasp slips from me.
He watches me like he has no intention of missing a single thing.
“Well,” I manage, my voice embarrassingly thin, “our anniversary is coming up. We could always recreate it.”
Xavier leans closer, his mouth hovering a hot breath from mine. “In Seychelles?” His fingers move with maddening ease. I moan. “You want me to fuck you in some expensive bathroom while half the villa staff pretends not to hear?”
Heat punches through me. My excitement cresting all over again.
“I was thinking more terrace. Ocean view. Stars. Romance.”
His mouth curves. “I can be romantic after.”
“After what?”
“After I remind you why you never stay quiet for me.”
The words unravel me. I grind into his hand because I can’t stop chasing the pressure, can’t stop wanting him.
His breath drags rough against my mouth. “So fucking wet for me, baby.” His fingers slow just enough to make me whimper. “Tell me you want me.”
“Yes,” I breathe. “I want you. Please. Xavier, please.”
His eyes darken.
That seems to be the end of his patience.
He pulls his hand from my panties and lifts me from the island like I weigh nothing, my legs locking around his waist on instinct. The loss of his fingers makes me whimper, and the hard press of his cock against me does nothing to help.
“I should thank Colette for taking a vacation.” His palm lands sharp against my ass, wringing a moan from the back of my throat. “No one to interrupt while I make you scream my name in every corner of this house.”
I laugh, dazed and idiotically happy. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m devoted,” he corrects. “There’s a difference.”
I hold on tighter while he carries me out of the kitchen and toward the stairs, still laughing, still aching, still so intoxicated by him that I never want it to end.