Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RAPHAEL
Her hand is still in mine when the doors open.
She steps out ahead of me and stops.
I've been watching her for weeks. Watching her pour herself out for everyone else while no one thinks to ask what she needs. Watching her disappear into étienne's orbit, into Bastien's, coming back each time with something different in her eyes.
I said nothing. I'm good at saying nothing.
But patience has a cost. And I've been paying it for longer than I should.
"Oh my god." She turns back to me, eyes wide. Then back to the view. "This is incredible, Raphael."
The pool glows blue in the dark, Paris sprawling beyond the edge, the Eiffel Tower pulling gold across the sky. Her hair lifts slightly in the night air.
"This is yours," she says. "You built this."
"I designed it. Other people built it." I move to the bar cart near the pool's edge. "Wine?"
She turns just long enough to smile at me. "Oui oui, monsieur." Already drifting toward the edge, robe trailing behind her.
I pour two glasses and carry them over. She's sitting at the pool's edge when I get there, feet in the water, looking out at the city. I sit beside her. The silk robe pools around her thighs as she takes the glass from me.
She looks out at the view for a moment. Then: "Do you bring all your guests up here in silk robes?"
"You're the first."
"I feel very special."
"You should."
She glances at me sideways, looks back at Paris.
"It's not finished yet," I say.
"I can't tell." She tilts her head, genuinely trying to find the flaw. "Looks perfect to me."
"The lighting isn't right. The far wall needs another layer."
She stares at the far wall intently. "I genuinely cannot see what you're talking about."
"You will when it's done."
"Is that an invitation to come back?"
"It is."
She holds my gaze a beat too long, then looks away. The smile fades slowly, the way it does when someone's been keeping up a facade and simply runs out of the energy—or the will—to do so.
"Raphael."
"Mm."
"Do you ever look at your life and not recognize it?"
I turn my glass in my hands. "More than I'd like."
She glances at me, surprised. Then, quietly: "I don't know what I'm doing. I look in the mirror and I don't recognize myself. Three weeks ago I had boundaries. I had a plan." She laughs, but it sounds more like a sob. "Now I don't even know."
"What do you see? When you look?"
"Someone who should feel guilty." She turns to me, eyes bright with tears she's refusing to let fall. "I do feel guilty. But I also feel… alive. For the first time in years. And that terrifies me."
A tear escapes down her cheek. She doesn't wipe it away.
"After Caroline died, I thought that part of me died too," I say. "The part that wanted anything beyond duty and keeping Emma safe. I built hotels. I raised my daughter. I went through the motions. But I wasn't really here."
She's crying now. Silently, tears tracking down her face.
"And then you walked into my home. Emma ran at you like you were already family. And you caught her."
"Raphael—"
"I watched you braid my daughter's hair.
I watched you read her stories until she fell asleep.
You treated her like she mattered, not because it was your job, not because she's a little girl who's lost her mother, but because you actually saw her.
" My voice drops lower. "Do you know how long it's been since someone saw her that way? "
I pull her against my chest.
She comes without resistance, her face pressing into my shoulder, her body shaking with sobs she's been holding back for god knows how long. I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
"I'm falling apart," she says against my chest.
"Then fall apart. I've got you."
She cries harder. I hold her tighter.
When she finally pulls back, her face is tear-streaked and raw. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Something defiant flickers through the mess.
"God," she says. "I'm sorry. I'm a disaster."
"You're not a disaster." I tilt her chin up. "You're the bravest person I know. You walked into three broken households and made every one of them better. That's not falling apart. That's carrying too much."
She stares at me. The tears are still wet on her cheeks but the look in her eyes has changed. Fierce underneath the vulnerability.
"I know where you went that night," I say. My voice comes out lower than I intended. "I know you didn't come back until morning."
She goes still in my arms.
"I'm not angry. I'm not jealous. I'm just tired."
"Tired of what?"
"Of watching them take what they want while I wait for permission." I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb. "Of being so careful with you that you forget I want you at all."
"I haven't forgotten." Her voice is rough. "I think about it every day. You carrying me to bed and not staying. Your hand on the pillow. The way you—" She stops. Swallows. "I wanted you to stay."
"I know."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because I wanted to do it right. And I'm starting to realize that waiting for the right moment means watching it pass."
She looks at me with tears drying on her face, mouth slightly open.
"Do you want me, Madeline?" I hold her gaze. "Not as the safe one. Not as the gentle one. Do you actually want me?"
"Yes." No hesitation. "I've wanted you since you carried me to bed and didn't stay."
I cup her face in my hands. Give her one last moment to pull away.
She doesn't.
I lean in slowly.
The first brush of my lips against hers is glorious. She tastes like wine and salt from her tears, and when she sighs against my mouth I feel it in my spine.
I kiss the corner of her lips. Her cheekbone. The damp trail of tears along her jaw. Taking my time. Learning the landscape of her face with my mouth.
When I return to her lips, she's trembling.
"Raphael," she whispers.
I kiss her again. Deeper, but still slow. My thumb tracing her cheekbone while my mouth learns hers. The fullness of her bottom lip. The way she opens for me. The small sound she makes when my tongue slides against hers.
I pull back just enough to look at her. Lips parted, eyes still closed, breath unsteady.
"Can anyone see us up here?" Her eyes flutter open, glancing around the rooftop.
"The surrounding buildings. Maybe."
She looks down at the robe barely covering her. Her cheeks flush with sudden shyness, and that undoes me. That she can be bold enough to follow me up here and still blush at being seen.
I stand, pulling her up with me. Then I step into the pool fully clothed, pulling her with me.
She gasps as the warm water rises around us, her robe floating up around her waist. I pull her against me, her body weightless, her legs wrapping around my hips.
"You're insane," she breathes. "Your clothes—"
"I don't care about the clothes."
I kiss her again and this time I stop being careful. Her mouth opens under mine, wanting. The water laps around us as I walk us deeper, until we're chest-deep and hidden.
Her robe has come undone and floats open. I slide my hands beneath it and the first touch of her bare skin makes my hands tighten on her waist harder than I intended.
She notices. Her breath stutters against my mouth.
Good.
I trace up her sides, my thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts. She shivers.
"I've been making myself walk away from you for weeks," I tell her.
"Stop walking away," she says.
I lower my mouth to her collarbone, tasting chlorine and skin. When I take her nipple into my mouth she arches against me, fingers tangling in my wet hair. The water moves with every shift of our bodies.
I switch to her other breast and she whimpers. Her hips rock against me.
"Please," she breathes. "Touch me."
I slide one hand between us, beneath the water, and find her pussy bare and slick. She cries out when my fingers stroke through her, her head falling back.
I circle her clit, slow and deliberate, watching her face. "Like this?"
"Yes. God. Don't stop."
I ease one finger inside her, tight and hot, then two, curling forward, and her whole body shudders.
Her thighs clamp around my hips, breath fracturing into small desperate sounds.
I work her deeper, my thumb pressing against her clit while the warm water moves with every stroke, the sensation of it amplifying everything, making her gasp in a way I wasn't expecting.
She clings to my shoulders, nails digging in. "More. Please, Raphael."
I press harder and feel her clench around my fingers, getting wetter with every stroke until she's shaking, her moans unraveling into the night air above us.
She comes with her face buried in my neck, her pussy gripping my fingers, the water rippling out from us toward the glowing edge of the pool.
I don't give her time to recover.
I turn her slowly. Hands on her hips, unhurried. She goes without resistance and when she's facing the city, both hands finding the pool edge, Paris spread out below her in every direction, she goes very still.
"Oh god," she breathes.
I press my mouth to the back of her neck and feel her shiver. Run my hands up her sides, her waist, the curve of her breasts just above the waterline. Letting her feel the city in front of her and me behind her and nothing else existing beyond those two things.
"Raphael." My name in her mouth like a question.
"I have you." I press closer, letting her feel how hard I am against the small of her back. "Hold on."
She tightens her grip on the pool edge.
I push into her slowly from behind and she arches, a long broken sound leaving her throat, her hips pressing back to take me deeper. The angle is different here, deeper than before, and I feel it in my chest when she gasps my name.
I stay still. Just buried inside her, both of us breathing, Paris glittering in front of her like it was arranged for exactly this.
"Look at it," I say against her ear. "Don't close your eyes."
I start to move.
Long, deep strokes, one hand splayed flat against her stomach feeling every thrust from the inside, the other wrapped around her hip holding her exactly where I want her.
The water moves with us, warm resistance against my thighs, and she is so tight and hot around my cock that I press my forehead to her shoulder and breathe through it.
She moans and pushes back harder.
I reach around and find her clit and her whole body jolts forward.
My cock driving deep while my fingers circle and press, and the sounds she makes are nothing like the composed woman who sat across from me at that table tonight.
Loud and unguarded and shaking, her hips rolling back to meet every thrust.
"Right there," she gasps. "Right there, Raphael, I'm going to—"
"I know." I drive deeper, my lips at her throat. "Let me feel it."
She comes hard, her pussy clenching rhythmically around my cock, her whole body shuddering, a long broken moan spilling out over the rooftop and into the open night. I feel her peak and wrap both arms tight around her and tip us both backward into the deeper end of the pool.
The warm water swallows us whole. One suspended second of blue silence, her body against mine, Paris glittering above us through the surface, weightless and strange and perfect.
We come up gasping.
She spins to face me, hair plastered across her face, eyes wide. Neither of us speaks. Just breathing, the city reflected in the water around us, her hands pressing flat against my chest like she needs to confirm I'm real.
I pull her back to me and kiss her slowly. She wraps her legs around my waist and when I push back inside her she breaks the kiss to exhale.
"You feel so good," she sighs in satisfaction. "God, you fill me so—" She stops. Her hips roll to meet me.
I move slowly. Deep. My hands in her wet hair, her forehead against mine, watching her face because I've waited too long not to.
"Tell me how it feels," I say against her mouth.
"Full." Her breath fractures. "Don't stop. Whatever you do, don't stop."
I drive deeper and feel her clench around my cock, her legs locking tighter, pulling me in further.
I come with my face buried in her neck and her pulse against my lips and her fingers pressed flat against my heart.
When I finally pull back she's looking at me differently. Undone in a way that has nothing to do with the sex.
"There you are," she says quietly. "There you are."
I push the wet hair back from her face.
Neither of us speaks for a long time. Just breathing, her chest against mine, the water holding us both.
Eventually she tugs at my soaked shirt still plastered to my chest. "You're going to have to explain this to housekeeping."
I smile. A real smile. The kind that reaches my eyes.
"It's worth it," I say.
I pull her close, turning us so her back is against my chest, both of us facing the view. The Eiffel Tower sparkles in the distance. She settles against me and neither of us moves to change it.
I wrap my arms around her. The water laps at our shoulders.
We stay like that until the sky begins to lighten at the edges. She doesn't ask what happens next. I don't offer answers I don't have.
I hold her tighter and watch the dawn come.
Whatever this costs, I'll pay it. But I'm done pretending it isn't happening.