Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MADELINE
Aplane cuts across the Paris sky, its lights blinking steady against the darkening blue.
I track its path from the terrace of Raphael's hotel suite, watching it climb toward somewhere else. The champagne in my hand has gone warm, but I keep holding it because it gives my fingers something to do besides tremble.
Twelve hours ago, I was standing in Dubois's office convinced I'd ruined everything. Now Sophie is asleep three floors down, and Emma has already planned tomorrow's breakfast order, and Luc showed me his newest drawing before bed. A bird with four wings, which he explained was "more efficient."
I'm still here. They still want me here.
The rest of me hasn't quite caught up to that.
The door slides open behind me. Bastien appears with a fresh bottle, topping off my glass before I can protest.
"Twenty minutes is a long time to stare at airplanes."
"I'm not staring. I'm thinking."
"Thinking with your face pointed at the sky. Very philosophical." He settles against the railing beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. "Raphael sent me to check that you haven't scaled down the building."
"The balcony is twelve stories up."
"You're resourceful. We've established this."
I take a sip of champagne I don't taste. Through the glass doors, I can see Raphael and Etienne in the living room. Raphael at the bar, Etienne by the window with that rigid posture he gets when he's feeling too much for his body.
"Sophie informed me," Bastien says, following my gaze, "that I'm allowed to date you now. Apparently she and Emma discussed it. There was a vote."
Warmth blooms behind my ribs. "A vote?"
"Luc abstained because he was busy drawing, but Sophie counted that as implicit approval." He drains his glass. "So. Official permission from the under-ten crowd."
I laugh before I can stop myself, and some of the tension in my shoulders releases.
"Come inside," Bastien says, softer now. "It's cold, and Etienne keeps looking at the door."
I let him guide me through the glass doors, his hand warm at the small of my back.
The suite is all soothing lighting and cream furniture, the kind of deliberate luxury that whispers instead of shouts. Raphael looks up when we enter, his expression settling when he sees me. Etienne turns from the window, and the full weight of his attention presses against my skin.
"She's intact," Bastien announces, depositing me on the sofa. "Mildly hypothermic, but intact."
"I wasn't cold."
"Your nose is pink."
"That's the champagne."
"The champagne made your nose cold?"
"Shut up."
Raphael hands me a fresh glass, his fingers brushing mine on the stem. Deliberate. I don't pull away.
"To getting through today," he says, raising his own glass.
We drink. Paris glitters through the windows, and for a moment I let myself just be here. In this room. With these men who chased me to London and stood beside me in that office and haven't once made me feel like a problem to be solved.
"Strange," I say, setting down the glass. "A month ago, you were my employers. Now..."
"Now we're three idiots who chased you to another country because we couldn't stand the thought of you leaving." Bastien shifts closer on the sofa, his thigh pressing against mine. "Romantic, really. In a slightly unhinged way."
Raphael settles on my other side, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body through his shirt. "What he's trying to say is that we've been thinking about this. All of us. For weeks."
"Thinking about what?"
"You." Raphael's voice is quiet. "How to make this work. Whether we're allowed to want what we want."
"And what do you want?"
Bastien is the first to break the silence.
"I want you." He says it plainly, no performance. "I didn't see it coming—which is embarrassing, honestly, given that I spend my life looking at things. But somewhere it stopped being complicated and just became obvious. I'm in love with you. I don't know what to do with that except show up."
My throat tightens.
Raphael's hand finds mine, his thumb tracing slow circles on my palm.
"I love you too," he says, quieter than Bastien but no less certain.
"You're the first person since Caroline who made me believe I could have this again.
A family. Something real. I didn't think I was capable of it anymore, and then you walked into our lives and proved me wrong. "
Two confessions landing in my chest like a held breath finally released.
I look at Etienne.
He's still by the window, still holding that whiskey, his jaw tight.
"Etienne," I murmur.
"I don't—" He sets down the glass with more force than necessary. "I don't know if what I feel is love. I've never been good at naming these things. The last time I thought I loved someone, I destroyed it with eighty-hour weeks and forgetting what mattered."
"Then don't name it," I say. "Just tell me what you feel."
He takes a step toward us. Then another.
"I feel like I can't breathe when you're not in the room," he says, and his voice is rough, scraped raw.
"I feel like the weeks you spent in someone else's home were a particular kind of torture I invented for myself.
I feel like watching Sophie trust you, watching her smile again, watching her become the child I always wanted her to be—" He stops.
Swallows. "I feel like you've opened something in me that I spent forty years keeping locked.
And I don't know if that's love, but it's everything I have.
It's all of me. And I'm terrified of it. "
"You're all insane," I manage. My voice cracks.
"Probably." Bastien's hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. "But you haven't run yet."
"I'm not running."
"No?" His mouth is very close to mine. "What are you doing, then?"
"Staying," I whisper. "I'm staying."
He kisses me.
Not gentle. Not tentative. He kisses like he's been waiting weeks for permission, one hand sliding into my hair, the other gripping my waist. He tastes like champagne and want, and when I gasp against his mouth he deepens it, his tongue sliding against mine.
Then Raphael's mouth finds my neck, trailing heat down to my collarbone, and I'm caught between them. Bastien's hands tugging my blouse free, Raphael's lips mapping the curve of my shoulder.
I open my eyes long enough to find Etienne.
He's still by the window. Still watching. But his breathing has changed, his chest rising faster, and when our eyes meet I see the control starting to thin.
Bastien's mouth moves to my throat. Raphael's hand slides up my ribcage, his thumb brushing the underside of my breast through my bra, and I moan, soft and involuntary.
Etienne's hand tightens around the empty whiskey glass.
Bastien is pulling me to my feet, walking me backward, his mouth never leaving mine.
Raphael follows, his hands working the buttons of my blouse from behind, and by the time we cross the threshold into the bedroom my shirt is open and Bastien is unzipping my skirt and the cool air hits my bare stomach.
The bedroom is golden light and white linens. Paris spread beneath the windows. But I barely see any of it because Raphael is unclasping my bra, sliding it down my arms, and Bastien is kneeling to pull my underwear down my thighs.
"Beautiful," Bastien breathes, looking up at me.
His mouth closes around my nipple and I cry out, my hand flying to the back of his head.
Movement at the edge of my vision. Etienne has followed us into the bedroom, but he doesn't approach. He settles into the armchair by the window, legs spread, hands gripping the armrests. The baby monitor glows on the side table beside him.
He's going to watch.
The thought sends heat pooling low in my belly. The most controlled man I've ever met, sitting in that chair with his legs spread, watching other men touch me.
"He told us," Raphael murmurs against my ear, his hands sliding down my sides, thumbs brushing the edges of my breasts. "Before you came in from the terrace. He wants to see everything we do to you."
Bastien guides me toward the bed, his palm hot against the small of my back. "Everything," he repeats, and I can hear the grin in his voice. "Every sound you make. He wants to watch you fall apart."
"Then let him watch," I say, and pull Bastien down onto the bed with me.
I climb onto the mattress, hyperaware of how exposed I am. The cool air against my bare skin. The slickness already gathering between my thighs. Two men stripping behind me, and a third watching from the chair with eyes that track every movement.
Bastien reaches me first. He runs his hand down my spine, slow and possessive, and I arch into the touch. Then he leans down and drags his tongue along the same path, from the base of my neck to the curve of my lower back, and I shudder.
He turns me onto my back, and suddenly I'm looking up at both of them. Bastien lowers his mouth to mine, kissing me deep and filthy while Raphael's lips trail down my stomach, his tongue dipping into my navel, tracing lower.
Raphael's mouth reaches my hip bone. He bites down gently, then soothes it with his tongue, and I whimper into Bastien's mouth.
They reposition me on my hands and knees. Bastien kneels in front of me, tilting my chin up, and behind me I feel Raphael's breath against my inner thigh.
Then Raphael's tongue slides through my folds, and I jerk forward with a cry.
"Eyes on me," Bastien murmurs, holding my face steady. "Let me watch you while he does that."
Raphael licks me like he has all the time in the world. Long, slow strokes, circling, teasing, never quite giving me enough pressure. My thighs are shaking. My arms are trembling. And Bastien is watching every flicker of pleasure cross my face, his thumb tracing my lower lip.
I pull back from his hand, gasping. "Etienne—"
My eyes find him across the room. He's leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on where Raphael's mouth meets my body. His jaw is tight. His chest rising and falling too fast.
Bastien's fingers slide between my thighs from the front, finding my clit while Raphael's tongue works me from behind. The dual sensation makes me cry out, my hands fisting the sheets.
"Is this for us?" Bastien asks, circling my clit. "All of this?"
"Yes." The word comes out broken. I hold Etienne's gaze. "Yes. All three of you."
Etienne's hand moves to his thigh, pressing down hard against the visible strain in his trousers. The sight of him struggling, fighting his own need, makes me clench.
Raphael pulls back, wiping his mouth. His lips are glistening. "I need to be inside her."
I hear foil tearing, feel him gripping my hips, the blunt head pressing against my entrance.
"Please—"
He pushes inside me in one slow stroke. I'm so wet he slides in easily, but the stretch still makes me gasp, my fingers fisting the sheets as he seats himself fully inside me.
"God." Raphael's voice is strained. "You feel incredible."
He starts to move. Deep, rolling thrusts that hit something inside me that makes my arms shake. Bastien shifts to my side, his mouth finding my breast, sucking my nipple and grazing it with his teeth.
I moan, loud and unfiltered, and I hear Etienne's sharp intake of breath from across the room.
"Don't let her come yet," Bastien says, releasing my nipple. "Make her wait."
Raphael slows, and I whimper at the loss of friction, my hips trying to push back against him.
"Patience," he murmurs, one hand sliding around to cup my breast. "We're going to make this last."
"Etienne." His name tears out of me. "Please. I want you here."
"You have them." His voice is rough, strained, but he doesn't move.
"I want you." I reach toward him. "I want your hands on me. I want your mouth. I want—"
"Tell him what you want," Bastien encourages, his fingers sliding back between my thighs while Raphael fucks me slow and deep. "Be specific."
"I want you inside me," I gasp, looking at Etienne. "I want to feel you. I want all of you at once. I want to be so full I can't think—"
A sound escapes his throat. Almost a groan.
But he still doesn't move.
Raphael's thrusts push me higher, Bastien's fingers circling my clit, and I'm climbing toward something that feels like it might shatter me.
"She's asking you," Raphael says, his voice tight. "And you're just going to sit there?"
"Please." I'm past pride now. "Etienne, please, I need you—"
Bastien pulls back, and Raphael withdraws. Before I can protest, Bastien is positioning himself behind me, pushing inside, thicker than Raphael, stretching me differently.
He fucks me harder than Raphael did. His hips driving into me, his hands gripping my waist. Raphael moves to face me, tilting my chin up, kissing me deep, and I'm caught between Bastien's body and Raphael's mouth.
I turn my head toward Etienne.
"Please," I whisper. "I can't—I need—"
I hear the clink of his belt buckle.
My head snaps up. Through the blur of pleasure, I watch Etienne rise from the chair. Watch him unfasten his belt with slow, deliberate movements. Watch him free himself, already hard.
Bastien slows inside me, holding me on the edge, waiting.
Etienne wraps his hand around himself and strokes, his eyes never leaving mine.
"You want this?"
"Yes."
"You want all of us?"
"Yes. Please."
His expression shifts. The hunger finally winning.
"Then hold still," he says, his voice dropping low and commanding. "And let me show you what that means."
He climbs onto the bed.