Chapter 34
Knife’s heart sank to his feet when he saw her text.
“Can you let me know when you leave the clubhouse to head home, and then meet me somewhere? The mall parking lot will work if that’s okay with you. We need to have a fast conversation.”
She’d sent it an hour earlier, but he’d left the phone he used for her in his truck, so he didn’t see it until he was ready to head home.
And he knew what this meant. She was going to tell him this wasn’t working.
So he didn’t respond to her right away. He drove home, got on his bike, and then told her he was headed that direction.
Because once they were no longer an item, he wasn’t going to be able to go back home right away. He packed some clothes, knowing in his heart he’d be spending the week at the clubhouse. He kept clothes in his room, and an extra set of his toiletries, but he’d need more.
She merely texted back, “I’ll be in the SUV, near PF Chang’s.”
It took him twenty minutes to get back to the mall, and she was already there, parked as if she was going inside, standing in front of her Audi.
His wolf wasn’t ready to accept it, which meant he couldn’t push him all the way down. The wolf needed to hear the words coming out of her mouth.
Knife was mostly numb. He’d been worried about exactly this — about her having to face the fact they can never be a traditional couple.
She’d known it from the beginning, but knowing it and experiencing it were two completely different things.
He pulled up and killed the engine, took his helmet off, but stayed on the bike. Distance was his friend right now.
Also, being able to make a fast getaway.
She was going to end it, and he’d let her. For both of them.
She was about to slice his heart open, and he was going to let her, because she needed the closure and his wolf needed to hear the words coming out of her mouth.
She didn’t say anything at first. Just stood under the parking lot lights, arms wrapped around herself like she was holding her own pieces together. When she finally spoke, her voice was raw.
“This isn’t working.”
She said it simply, but he saw the storm in her eyes.
“Every goodbye breaks something inside me,” she continued, “and today was…”
She took a steadying breath. “I saw you with your brothers, and I get it. They’re your found family.” Another breath. “And I’m out of bounds. I thought it would be okay, but it isn’t, and I can’t pretend it is.”
He couldn’t argue with anything she’d said. She was right, but that didn’t make this any easier.
He’d never told her how he truly felt about her, and it seemed he needed to, at least once.
“I love you,” he said. “And I know you’re right. I know being in love isn’t always enough. If you ever need anything, I’m here. A text or a call, and I’ll come.”
He watched her take it in, saw the extra emotions hit, but she didn’t say it back.
She held his gaze for a dozen heartbeats and then turned and walked into P.F. Chang’s without looking back.
He started to hang around to see if she had dinner plans with someone else, or if she was eating alone, but his wolf wanted to leave. To get far from her.
And the wolf was right. A clean break meant driving away.
So he put his helmet on, threaded through traffic on the interstate and over the ridge cut, and then blasted down side roads to the clubhouse, where he ordered Chiquita to blow him, and he drank a damned Pbr tallboy while he enjoyed her mouth.
He wasn’t sure he could come, so he told her to go slow.
If he didn’t tell her to stop, she’d stay on her knees for hours, giving him the slow, leisurely blowjob he’d demanded.
Her mouth would keep him hard, but he’d probably have to hurt her before he’d get off, and the way he fucking felt, that might not even be enough.
It would have to be enough eventually, but nothing about tonight could possibly be right.
He’d been prepared to leave his brothers, but only if they could last three months. Clearly, they couldn’t, and that’d been her motherfucking choice.
He got to keep his brothers, so why was he so goddamned gutted?
- - - ? - - -
The motherfucker had told her he fucking loved her.
And he hadn’t argued that they could make it work. He’d totally taken it in stride, like she meant nothing.
While telling her he fucking loved her.
She ordered the Kung Pao Chicken and asked for it to be extra spicy because she wanted to fucking hurt. While she was at it, she ordered a dynamite roll, flaming red wontons, and chili-garlic green beans.
And the house-made ginger beer.
She didn’t want to go home, so she’d sit here and eat.
The little spa she liked an hour north of Manhattan was able to slot her in, so she’d be flying north in twenty-four hours. She’d be thoroughly pampered for the next three days while being fed world-class meals.
And then rent a car and drive into New York, or maybe just pay someone to drive her.
If she was going to live out of a suitcase for months, she needed to get started on her packing list. She had tons of microfiber travel clothes, the trick was making sure she had some clothes for after-work, too.
- - - ? - - -
A month later, Tuesday’s plane landed in Paris, and she made sure she had the translation app on her phone ready. She knew enough French to survive in airports and restaurants, but having another way to translate made this much less stressful.
Her wolf hated big cities, and it hated airplanes even more.
Cora had managed to get her an invitation to run with a pack just north of Manhattan for the full moon, and she’d changed in her hotel room a few times to sleep through the night, but it wasn’t enough for her inner animal.
But it wasn’t the first time her wolf had to survive in cities, and probably wouldn’t be the last.
She’d taken the Paris alpha wolf a bottle of Jack Daniels.
A lot of alphas in Europe require a small gift for allowing her to visit their territory, and that usually did the trick.
She was told not to bring her phone for the meeting with the alpha, but thankfully, his wife could translate back and forth for them.
Four days later, the app on her phone had gotten quite a workout. She’d talked to the restaurant owner on the phone before she left, but she hadn’t talked to the head chef, who was an asshole.
A lot of chefs are, so she could handle him fine, but he wouldn’t slow the fuck down while ranting in French, so even words she knew, she couldn’t understand from his mouth.
But then, when the job was nearly done, he’d gone and offered to show her around Paris, and she’d wanted to accept because she’d been physically attracted to him from the start, but she doesn’t fuck her clients.
He’d just looked her over, assessing her, when she’d told her phone she doesn’t mix business with pleasure, and it’d translated it into French.
“You are fired.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have that authority.”
“Exactly. This means I am not your boss, and thus we may fuck, but first, I show you Sainte-Chapelle, and you will understand light differently after. We have dinner at my favorite bistro, and then we shall see cabaret at Crazy Horse.” He shrugged.
“And then? Perhaps we fuck, perhaps we do not, but you will see the Paris that tourists do not.”
She stared at him, and he said, “I shall pick you up at five o’clock on Saturday. Do you wish me to come to your room to get you, or will you be waiting outside your hotel?”
There was nothing wrong with spending an evening with clients; she just couldn’t get romantically involved with them. Or sexually involved.
But he wasn’t demanding sex. Just suggesting an evening together.
Plus, he was being nice.
“I’ll be waiting outside.”
- - - ? - - -
Tuesday was actually a little disappointed when he was more charming away from work, since the asshole thing had been working for her in ways she wasn’t prepared to examine too deeply.
He picked her up at five exactly and took her to the ?le de la Cité, to the Palais de Justice…
And then she understood why he hadn’t tried to describe Sainte-Chapelle, other than to say she’d define light differently, which she’d thought was an odd translator snafu, but it hadn’t been.
She stood in the upper chapel and just looked around.
Awestruck. The world went silent as color poured down from every direction.
Deep blues, glowing reds, and brilliant golds fractured across stone, skin, and the air itself.
The light didn’t just illuminate the space, it defined and altered the space.
She forgot to breathe for several long seconds, feeling suddenly small while she witnessed such glory and beauty.
She wished she could tell Knife about it, and shut down that train of thought before it could grow. She was in Paris with a charming asshole of a man, in a magical building of light and architecture.
“You understand now,” the charming asshole said, watching her face.
“Oui,” she said.
Later, when he took her to what he called his favorite bistro, she wasn’t sure what to think about it.
Twelve tables on a cobblestone side street in the 11th arrondissement that she’d never have found without him, and might spend the rest of her trip trying to find again.
No menu, just a chalkboard inside with six items on it.
The owner knew him by name and brought wine without being asked.
He ordered for her without asking, which she clocked as presumptuous, but then forgave when the food arrived.
First, ?ufs mayonnaise — hard-boiled eggs with house-made mayonnaise that made all the difference in the world. She’d long ago learned sometimes the simplest dishes were the ones that exposed a kitchen most completely.
Then the blanquette de veau arrived, and she could only close her eyes in bliss.
The veal had been cooked so slowly it was far past tender, suspended in a cream sauce so carefully balanced it tasted like it’d been reducing since before she arrived in Paris.
The vegetables were soft and yielding, the rice a perfect supporting element.
She ate slowly and just fucking experienced it.
“You’ve had this before,” he said, and she didn’t think it was a question, but she couldn’t be certain with the language difference. She had her phone propped up off to the side between them, translating what they both said into the other language.
“I’ve made it,” she said. “But I’ve never had it quite like this.”
The tarte tatin arrived warm, with a dollop of crème fra?che that cut through the caramel the way it was meant to, and she sat back and accepted that it was perfect. Impossible to improve upon.
“You don’t just design menus like an artiste. You cook,” he said.
“Oui. And you are undoubtedly a pain in the ass for any restaurant to please, but I can see why this is your favorite place.”
And then came the show.
The translator app had said Crazy Horse, and she’d figured it would be whatever that was in French. But it wasn’t. She stared at the sign, a crazy anachronism in the middle of Paris.
She’d heard cabaret and assumed it’d be like the topless Vegas shows, but she’d been wrong.
The Vegas shows are about spectacle. Elaborate costumes, with the audience kept at a safe distance.
But this theater was damned near intimate, the stage close enough she could see every detail of every bare nipple — but also the way the lighting treated the dancers’ bodies as more than mere decor. They were art and movement in a way American productions had never shown her.
Also, the dancers weren’t typical provocative showgirls. This was true talent with years of training behind it. And the choreography showcased what beauty can look like when it’s treated with grace and respect. It was geometry and shadow showing off the female form.
This was an artistic production, eons above mere spectacle — and yet it was also bawdy and hilarious. She kept one earbud in and let the translation app do its work, and she was really happy for it. Despite the artistry, the show didn’t take itself too seriously.
Once back outside, walking through Paris at night, he told her, “If you come home with me, I will cook you breakfast in the morning.”
She didn’t have to make sure he knew this would just be sex. For one thing, they didn’t speak the same language. For another, she lived a continent away. Also, this job was nearly done, and then she might never see him again.
So she merely smiled and said, “Well, how can I turn that down?”
He lived just off the Place de la Bastille, and his apartment was high enough up, you could see the opera house from his windows.
She wondered how they’d get to the sex without a whole lot of conversation, but it turns out, his arrogant asshole nature came right back to the forefront once he had her behind closed doors, and her inner masochist was pleased.
He directed her like it was his natural right — hands firm on her hips, voice low and commanding in rapid French she mostly didn’t need translated. He touched her without hesitation, without asking, confident she would open for him. Melt for him.
Which she did, because the charming asshole had skills.
He wasn’t a sadist, just a man used to being in charge.
And he played rough. He wasn’t completely uncaring as to whether his partner was into it, but he was mostly chasing his own pleasure.
But despite her three more-than-decent orgasms, she stared at his ceiling afterward feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Hollow.
But that wasn’t his fault. It was her own fault, for letting Knife’s last words to her get under her skin in a way she couldn’t just walk away from.
But she could put it away, and she did. Again.
And slept surprisingly well.
She was awakened to the sound of a knife chopping rapid-fire, the sun barely lighting the outside world.
Twenty minutes later, she sat down to a meal of ?ufs en cocotte, each in an individual ramekin. Eggs baked in cream with mushrooms, thyme, and an entirely decadent little taste of foie gras.
They ate it with warm bread brushed with melted butter she had a feeling he’d made from raw cream.
Her coffee seemed to have more cream in it than coffee, and was in a handleless cup she thought closer to a bowl than a cup. He dipped his bread into his coffee, so she did the same, and decided this was the best breakfast she’d had since arriving.
She told him so, and the arrogant tilt of his smile said he’d never doubted it for a second. For a happy, fleeting moment she let herself enjoy the simple pleasure of good food and good company.
Then memories returned — the way Knife had fed her steak from his fingers while she hung in his ropes, his enjoyment of the Korean…
The warmth in her chest twisted into something sharp and aching, but she pushed the memory down, took another sip of coffee, and determined to enjoy her morning in Paris with this charming asshole who also enjoyed good food.