Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
éTIENNE
She's wearing white lace. Nothing else.
The fabric is sheer enough to be obscene, barely there, clinging to her breasts, her hips, the curve of her stomach. A mockery of innocence. She's kneeling on a bed I don't recognize, in a room that seems to shift at the edges, looking up at me through her lashes, lips parted, waiting.
"Is this what you wanted?" Her voice is honey and sin.
"You know what I want." I watch her breath catch. "Show me what you've learned."
She crawls toward me across the white sheets, movements slow and deliberate, her back arched to display herself. When she reaches me, she sits back on her heels and places her hands on her thighs, palms up. Offering herself.
"I've been practicing," she murmurs. "Like you taught me."
"Show me."
Her fingers move to the lace, pulling it aside to expose her breasts. She cups them, thumbs circling her nipples until they peak, her eyes never leaving mine.
"Is this right?"
"You know it is." I grip her chin, tilting her face up. "What else did I teach you?"
Her hand slides lower, between her thighs, and she gasps as her fingers find her center. She's wet. I can see it glistening on her skin, can smell her arousal in the heavy air.
"To touch myself only when you allow it." Her voice is breathy, strained. "To wait for your permission."
"And did I give you permission?"
She freezes. Her hand stills. "No."
"No." I sit on the edge of the bed, spreading my legs. "Come here."
She moves instantly, positioning herself across my lap like she's done this a hundred times. Her bare skin is warm against my thighs. She shivers when my hand comes to rest on the curve of her ass.
"You touched yourself without permission," I say. "What happens when you break the rules?"
"You punish me." There's no fear in her voice. Only anticipation.
My hand comes down once, sharp, and she cries out, her body jerking against my lap. I soothe the sting with my palm, feeling the heat bloom beneath my touch.
"Again?" I ask.
"Please." She's panting now, squirming. "Please, I need—"
"What do you need?"
"You." She looks back at me over her shoulder, eyes dark and desperate. "I need you to teach me. I need you to show me how to be good."
Another slap. Harder this time. She moans, grinding against my thigh, and I feel myself harden at the friction.
"You want to be good for me?"
"Yes. Always. Only for you."
I pull her upright, positioning her in my lap so she's straddling me, the lace bunched uselessly at her waist. I pull her close enough to whisper against her lips.
"Then ride me. Show me what I've taught you."
She sinks onto me with a gasp, and the heat of her, tight, wet, clenching, makes my vision blur. She begins to move, slow and deliberate, the rhythm I've trained into her body.
"That's it," I murmur. "Just like that. You take me so well."
"Only you." Her nails dig into my shoulders. "I only want—"
She falters. Something shifts in her expression, a flicker of hesitation that shouldn't exist in my fantasy.
"What is it?" I grip her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes. "Say it."
"They..." She bites her lip, still riding me, her hips never stopping. "They make me feel good too."
The words are ice water.
"Who?"
"Raphael." She gasps as I thrust up into her. "Bastien. They touch me and I—"
"No!" I flip her onto her back, driving into her with a force that makes the bed shake. "You're mine. Say it."
"I'm yours," she whimpers, but her eyes are unfocused, seeing something I can't see. "But they—oh god—they make me feel—"
"Feel what?"
"Wanted." Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, but she's arching into me, meeting every thrust. "They make me feel wanted in ways that—"
"I want you." I'm pounding into her now, desperate. "I want you more than they ever could."
"Then why won't you show me?" Her voice breaks. "Why do you only want me like this? In dreams? In the dark?"
"Stop." I cover her mouth with my hand. "Stop talking."
But even as I silence her, even as I drive into her until she's screaming against my palm, I can see them. Shadows at the edge of the room. Raphael's steady gaze. Bastien's knowing smile.
Watching.
And the worst part—the part that makes me fuck her harder, desperate to drown it out—is that some treacherous part of me doesn't want them to leave.
She comes with a sob, her walls clenching around me, and I follow her over the edge—
I wake with a gasp.
The room is dark. Silent. My heart is pounding against my ribs, and I'm achingly hard beneath the sheets, the remnants of the dream still pulsing through my blood.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Across the room, Sophie sleeps. Small. Steady. Unbothered by the wreck her father is in the other bed.
Putain.
"They make me feel wanted in ways you won't let yourself."
Even in my own fantasies, I can't have her completely.
I slip out of bed and cross to the window. The grounds are still dark, dawn barely touching the horizon. My reflection looks haggard. Hungry.
I stand there for a long time. Then I hear it.
Footsteps in the corridor. Soft. Deliberate. Someone walking past my door.
I don't move.
A door opens down the hall. Closes.
Then, much later, faint through the old stone walls. Not words. Just sounds. A voice that might be hers, muffled and broken. A low murmur that could be anyone.
Could be?
I know exactly who it is.
I go back to bed and stare at the ceiling, hands flat at my sides, and control my breathing the way I control everything else.
In. Out. Measured. Even.
Somewhere down the hall, she is with someone who isn't me. Possibly… two someones?
I don't get up. Don't cross the room. Don't knock on her door. The restraint costs me something I can feel in my chest, a physical pressure behind my ribs, and I hold it there because holding things is what I do.
I don't sleep again.
By the time the first light creeps across the gardens, I've showered, cold, and dressed in clothes that feel like armor. Sophie is still sleeping. I watch her for a moment, this child I would do anything to protect, and try not to think about what kind of man I'm becoming.
The kind who lies awake listening.
The kind who can't stop wanting something he refuses to claim.
The dining room is half-full when I arrive. Families at round tables, children's voices. I scan the room, locate Sophie with Emma and Luc near the windows, and then…
Madeline.
She's at the coffee station, reaching for the carafe at the same moment Raphael does. Their fingers brush. Neither flinches. She laughs at something he says, soft and easy, and when she turns to add cream, Bastien appears at her other side, murmuring something that makes her bite her lip.
The three of them move together with an ease that sets my teeth on edge. A language I don't speak.
Then I see it.
Madeline tilts her head to listen to Bastien, and her collar shifts.
I see a bruise at the base of her throat.
Small, dark, unmistakable. Raphael's thumb grazes her shoulder, casual, and Bastien doesn't tense.
Doesn't look away. Just keeps talking, his hand on the small of her back like it belongs there.
They both touched her last night.
And neither of them minds.
The confirmation of what I thought I heard through the wall, what I already suspected from the dream before I heard it, lands like concrete in my stomach. I could have gotten up. Could have walked down the hall. Could have been part of whatever happened behind that door.
Instead I lay in the dark and chose not to know.
And now I know anyway.
I take my seat at an empty table. Order coffee I don't want. Cut my omelette into precise squares I don't eat.
"Papa." Sophie appears at my elbow, surveying the breakfast spread. "The croissants are acceptable, but they've put honeydew in the fruit salad. Honeydew is a filler fruit."
"Then don't eat it."
"Obviously."
She slides into the seat beside me. My attention stays fixed across the room.
"You're doing the thing with your jaw," Sophie says, not looking up from her croissant.
"What thing?"
"The thing you do when someone at work disappoints you."
I don't respond. She follows my gaze, then turns back.
"Interesting," she remarks.
"Eat your breakfast."
The vineyard tour is an exercise in controlled proximity. I keep my distance.
At one point the guide asks us to pair up for a tasting exercise.
Sophie takes my arm with the formality of a duchess being escorted to dinner.
Across the vineyard, Madeline is crouched beside Emma, helping her smell the grapes, and Raphael stands behind them both, his hand on Madeline's shoulder while he listens to the guide.
A family. They look like a family.
My hand tightens on my wine glass until the stem creaks.
"Papa." Sophie's voice is sharp. "You're going to break that."
I set the glass down.
At lunch, I end up at the far end of the table, Sophie beside me, Madeline and the others in their closed circle.
"You're not eating," Sophie observes.
"I'm not hungry."
"You're never hungry anymore." She frowns. "Are you sick?"
"No. Just tired."
"You're always tired too." She pokes at her food. "Madeline says adults are tired because they don't let themselves feel things, so all the feelings get stuck inside and make them exhausted."
"Madeline said that?"
"She says it's better to just feel things, even when they hurt. Like ripping off a bandage."
I look across the courtyard at Madeline, who's laughing at something Raphael said, her head thrown back, throat exposed. The bruise is visible even from here.
She feels things. Openly, generously, without armor.
Maybe that's why they gravitate toward her.
Maybe that's why I can't.
I'm standing at the edge of the terrace, watching the sun sink toward the hills, when she finds me.
"Etienne."
I don't turn around.
"The children are getting ready for dinner," I say. "Sophie will need help with her hair."
"Sophie already did her hair. She's teaching Emma a braid she learned from YouTube."
I can feel her behind me, waiting.
"You've been avoiding me all day," she says.
"I've been busy."
"You've been hiding."
I turn. She's standing a few feet away, arms crossed. The setting sun catches the gold in her hair, and for a moment I'm back in the dream. The amber light. The white silk. The way she looked at me before she started looking past me.
"I'm not hiding," I say. "I'm maintaining an appropriate distance."
"From me? Or from all of us?"
"Does it matter?"
Hurt crosses her face. Or frustration.
"I thought you might want to talk about—"
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Etienne—"
"Something happened last night." The words come out colder than I intended. "Don't insult me by pretending it didn't."
She goes still.
"I saw the bruise on your throat. The way they touched you like they had the right." I hold her gaze. "You didn't choose just one of them, did you?"
"They do have the right." Her chin lifts. "Because they asked. Because they showed up. Because they didn't spend weeks pushing me away and then act wounded when I found comfort somewhere else."
"Comfort," I repeat. "Is that what you call it?"
"What would you call it?"
I don't answer. Because the words that want to come out are too honest. Jealousy and desire and something dangerously close to grief.
"Etienne." She steps closer. I can smell her perfume, see the pulse in her throat. "Talk to me."
"I heard you last night." The words leave me before I can stop them. "Through the wall."
The color drains from her face.
"I lay in bed twenty feet away and listened. And I didn't get up. I didn't come to you." My voice is steady. My hands are not. "Do you understand what that cost me?"
"Then why didn't you—"
"—Because I don't share." The words crack out of me. "I have never shared anything in my life. And I don't know how to start with the one thing I want most."
She stares at me.
"No one's asking you to—"
"—Aren't they?" I laugh, bitter. "You spent last night with both of them. Together. And now you're here, asking me to talk about my feelings like we're going to fix this with communication."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Everything." I step closer. Close enough to see the gold flecks in her eyes. "I don't compromise. I don't share. And I don't participate in whatever arrangement you're building with them."
"Then what do you want?"
You. Only you. All of you. Mine.
"It doesn't matter what I want," I say. "Because I won't take it."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Does the difference matter?"
She stares at me.
"You know what I think?" she says. "I think you're terrified. I think you want something you can't control, and instead of dealing with it, you're pushing me away so you don't have to feel anything at all."
"You don't know what I feel."
"Because you won't let me." Her voice breaks. "You won't let anyone."
Footsteps behind us. Raphael's voice: "Madeline? The children are asking for you."
She holds my gaze one more moment. The invitation to stop her. To say something that matters.
I stay silent.
"Coming," she calls over her shoulder. Then, quieter, just for me: "When you figure out what you actually want, Etienne, let me know. I'll be waiting. But I won't wait forever."
She turns and walks away. Raphael's hand finds the small of her back as they disappear inside.
The sun sinks below the hills. The terrace empties.
And I stand alone in the gathering dark, telling myself this is exactly what I wanted.