Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
BASTIEN
I'm reviewing acquisition notes when Bernard's car pulls up.
I already know she's coming. We all agreed at the party. Schedule adjustment. Milan. She'll come to you a week early.
I understood what étienne was handing me. What I didn't understand was why.
Now, watching her climb out of the car through the gap in my curtains, I'm starting to.
She moves wrong. That's the first thing I notice. Not the confident stride of the woman who left here last time, but something more tentative. Held together. Like she's afraid of what happens if she moves too fast.
I open the door before she reaches it.
"Madeline."
"Hi." She doesn't quite meet my eyes.
I take her bag. She lets me, which is unusual. Normally she insists on carrying her own things. Today her hands stay at her sides, fingers curling and uncurling like she doesn't know what to do with them.
I step back to let her in. "Luc's at his mother's until Wednesday."
The information lands between us. I watch her process it. Empty apartment, no child, no buffer.
"Oh," she says. "I didn't realize."
That was unusual too. She was always across the kids' schedules; across all our schedules, really.
"Claire takes him the second week of each month," I reminded her. I set her bag at the foot of the stairs. "Your room is ready for you."
She nods. Still not looking at me.
There are shadows beneath her eyes that weren't there yesterday. A pallor to her skin that suggests she hasn't slept, or if she did, it wasn't restful.
"You look exhausted," I say.
"I didn't sleep well." She looks away when she says it.
"Luc won't be back until Wednesday. There's nothing urgent." I gesture toward the stairs. "Rest. I'll be in my study if you need anything."
She hesitates, then seems to deflate slightly, the resistance going out of her shoulders.
"Go," I say. "Sleep."
She goes.
I return to my study and pretend to work while my mind turns over the puzzle of Madeline. She left the party fine. She arrived this morning destroyed. Whatever happened in between left her looking like a woman who'd been taken apart and hastily reassembled.
I have my suspicions. But I'm patient.
Around three, I climb the stairs on quiet feet. Her door is slightly ajar. I push it open an inch.
She's asleep on top of the covers, still in her clothes. Curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Her hair has come loose, spreading across the pillow. Her face is unguarded in sleep, restful, unlined.
Whatever happened, it followed her here.
I pull the door closed and go back downstairs.
By evening, I hear her moving around. Water running. Footsteps. Then the padding of bare feet on the stairs.
She appears in the kitchen doorway, looking slightly more human than before. Still tired, still fragile, but present.
"I slept too long," she says. "I should have—"
"—You needed it." I don't look up from my papers.
She leans against the counter. Looks around the kitchen like she's orienting herself.
"I was going to cook," she says eventually. "If that's okay."
"You don't have to take care of me."
"I know." She doesn't turn around. "I want to."
There's a need in her voice to be useful, to be doing something with her hands. I recognize it. It's what I do when I'm avoiding something.
I let her cook. Let her fill my kitchen with the sounds of chopping and sizzling. Let her pretend she's fine.
But by the time she's standing at the stove, hands shaking so badly she can barely hold the wooden spoon, I know I can't wait anymore.
I move closer. Don't touch. Just position myself behind her, close enough that she can feel the heat of my body, my breath stirring the loose strands at her temple.
Her spine straightens.
"Your hands are shaking."
"I'm fine."
"You've said that three times today." I keep my voice low. "You don't seem to realize I can tell when you're lying."
She sets down the spoon. Turns off the burner. Her fingers grip the counter edge.
"You left the party yesterday looking overwhelmed. You arrived this morning looking destroyed." I watch her hands tighten on the counter edge.
She doesn't answer.
I step closer. "At Raphael's?"
Her shoulders tense differently than I expected. Not guilt. Something else.
"Nothing happened at Raphael's. He's kind. Gentle." A pause. "He carried me to bed once, when I fell asleep on his couch and that was—" She stops. "That was all."
I process this. If not Raphael, the options narrow.
"You were at his apartment all night?"
"I went back after the party. Couldn't sleep." She's speaking to the stove, not to me. "And then I got a text."
"From?"
Her silence tells me everything.
"étienne."
She flinches. Full-body, impossible to hide.
I step back. Lean against the opposite counter, giving her room to turn around. She does, slowly, her back now pressed against the stove's edge.
"He texted you in the middle of the night..." I'm piecing it together. "Said what?"
"He lied." Her voice is flat. "Made something up to get me there."
"And when you got there..."
She can't meet my eyes.
"He offered at the party that you could come to me early," I say slowly. "Schedule adjustment. Milan. Very generous, I thought." I watch her face. "Except he knew he'd already have had you first."
I lean back against the counter. With Claire I would have felt this differently. Sharper. But looking at Madeline now, all I feel is the need to understand what he did to leave her looking like this.
"Did he make you feel good?"
She stares at me. "What?"
"Simple question."
"I—why do you want to know?"
"Because I want to understand what I'm looking at. You arrived here looking shattered. Either he hurt you, or he didn't."
"He didn't hurt me."
"Then he made you feel good. And then he got… cold?" I push off from the counter, step toward her. "Sent you here still wanting?"
The sound she makes is somewhere between a gasp and a whimper.
"He shut down," she whispers. "After. He just... arranged for me to be brought here and then he—" She shakes her head. "He sent me away."
Of course he did.
étienne Laurent, so terrified of wanting something he can't control that he'd rather destroy it first. Touched her and then couldn't handle what came after, and now she's standing in my kitchen and her hands won't stop shaking.
I step closer. She presses back against the counter, but there's nowhere to go.
"I'm not him."
She looks up at me.
"I don't need you to be mine, Madeline." I stop just short of touching her. "I just want you here. Present. Not still in his apartment while your body stands in my kitchen."
Her breath shudders out.
"Can you do that?"
She holds my gaze, her jaw working slightly like she's choosing between two different answers.
"Yes."
I reach out and brush my thumb along her cheekbone. She goes very still. The way she receives it, careful and a little stunned, tells me more than anything she's said since she arrived.
I slide my hand to her jaw and tilt her face up.
I look at her, reveling in the fact that the world has not yet pressed its full weight into her.
I can feel the distance between us in my own steadiness, in the contrast of my calm against the slight tremble in her jaw.
She hasn't lived enough years yet to know how to want without it showing on her face.
I've lived enough to find that devastating.
The pulse at her throat. The slight part of her lips. The way her eyes drop to my mouth and come back up like she's asking without asking.
"Then stop thinking about him."
I close the last inch between us and kiss her like I have nowhere else to be.
Not like before. The first time was a question. This is an answer. Unhurried, deliberate, my hand still cupping her jaw as I relearn the shape of her mouth, the way she tastes, the small catch in her breath when I slow down instead of speeding up.
She melts into me, hands fisting in my shirt.
When she whimpers against my lips, I pull back just far enough to watch her face.
"No one to hear you here." Her eyes flutter open, dazed. "Be as loud as you want."
She pulls me back down.
This time there's nothing careful about it. Her mouth opens under mine, hungry, and I lift her onto the counter. Her legs wrap around my waist immediately, pulling me closer.
"Tell me what you want," I murmur against her throat.
"I want—" She breaks off when I bite down on her pulse point. "I want to stop thinking."
"About him?"
"About everything."
I pull back far enough to look at her. Hair coming loose, lips swollen, chest heaving.
"Impatient." I pull the sweater over her head, let it drop. "I bet he was impatient with you."
She nods, barely.
"I'm not impatient." I trace the line of her collarbone, watching goosebumps rise. "I like to take my time."
I unhook her bra. Slide it down her arms. Let my gaze travel over her.
Her breasts are perfect. Full and soft, nipples peaked. Her waist curves in, her hips curve out, and her skin is smooth—unmarked, the body of someone who hasn't yet learned to armor herself.
"Did he tell you how beautiful you are?"
She shakes her head.
"He should have." I cup her breasts, feel her arch into my hands. "You're exquisite."
I lower my mouth to her nipple and she cries out—loud, uninhibited. I take my time, learning what makes her gasp, what makes her moan. Her skin tastes like vanilla and salt.
"Did he use his mouth on you?" I ask against her skin.
"No—he—there wasn't time—"
"Wasn't time?" I pull back, look at her. "He had you in his apartment in the middle of the night and he didn't take the time to taste you?"
She shakes her head, flushed.
"His loss."
I sink to my knees.
Her eyes go wide. "Bastien—"
"Lift up."
She does, and I pull her jeans down her legs, her underwear following. She's bare now, spread on my kitchen counter, and I take a moment to just look.
The curve of her thighs. The wet shine of her arousal. The way she trembles under my gaze.
"Beautiful," I say. "Every part of you."