Rule #29 The worst thing an off-limits man can do is make you fall in love with him.
Amelia
Ican’t see him, but I can feel him. His warm, wet tongue is sliding through my core while I’m sitting in this booth, just waiting to be caught. It’s a surreal and amazing feeling, my little secret beneath the table.
At the sound of my alarming screams, Geo has turned around. With his arms folded, he glances at the seat where Matis just sat, and then his eyes trail to the table in front of me.
His handsome face morphs with a knowing smile. Then, instead of turning around and looking back at the dance floor, he stands there and looks at me.
Now I’m being tongue fucked by my dad’s best friend while my mom’s best friend watches.
What on earth is happening?
Well, I’m about to come again—that’s what’s happening. Even though I can tell that the way Matis is devouring me under this table is not for my pleasure. It’s for his. He delights in my taste, and his mouth is more at home between my legs than anywhere else.
Oh, what’s a girl to do?
My hips jerk forward again as he tugs me farther. Soon I’ll be under this table with him.
I feel so exposed, being watched by Geo like this. And while I know that he probably isn’t aroused by me, or any woman for that matter, he still seems so invested in what’s happening. Almost as if he’s…guiding me through it.
Matis drives his tongue so deep inside me, my hips levitate off the seat. My head falls back with ecstasy. Then he replaces his tongue with two fingers, and I’m a goner.
He fucks me roughly with them, and I can hear the wet sounds of it from here. Closing my eyes, I imagine it’s his cock filling me, stretching me, plunging so deep he prods my insides.
“Fuck,” I cry out, bucking my hips under the table. “I’m coming.”
My second orgasm hits me harder than the first one. It pulses with more intensity and lasts longer. Matis’s fingers and tongue carry me through the entire thing until I’m left buzzing and panting.
When it’s all over, I melt like candle wax into the seat of this booth. They’re going to have to carry me out of here when all is said and done.
I hear a dark chuckle and open my eyes to see Geo watching Matis crawl out from under the table, fixing his shirt and buttoning up the collar where he must have loosened it.
I glance around to make sure no one else I know is here and watching us. It seems safe so far. Now that I have my wits about me, I start to worry that Geo knowing is going to be an issue.
But if he says he won’t tell my mom, I believe him.
Taking his haughty chuckle with him, he leaves us, meandering into the crowd near the bar. I glance up at Matis in the seat across from me. His lips are red and wet from what they just did.
“What’s wrong, Trouble?” he asks.
I lift my shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not fair. I want to be able to climb into your lap and kiss you in front of everyone.”
He swallows a look of regret. “It’s not you who would be judged.”
“I know that,” I mutter, looking down.
Seeing the look of disappointment on my face, he reaches over and places his fingers under my chin. “Come on, Trouble. Let me walk you home.”
At that, my heart leaps in my chest. Because if there’s one thing Matis and I do have to ourselves, it’s Paris at night.
Strolling over the Pont des Arts with a handful of macarons from Matis’s friend’s bakery, I stare up at the stars while Matis shares a story about his childhood.
I glance over at him, adoring the way he walks slowly with his hands in his pockets and his chin up high. Does he even realize how perfect he is?
“You never knew your father?” I ask when we reach the Left Bank.
Matis shakes his head. “No. I knew his name, I knew where he lived, and I know he knew about me, but he was married. Had a family. I was aware that I would never have a relationship with him, and it never bothered me.”
My brows furrow. “I couldn’t imagine that. Knowing I had a child somewhere and not seeing them.”
His head turns, scrutinizing me with curiosity. “Do you want children?”
Something about the question makes my chest grow hot. If he was anyone else asking, I’d probably shake my head with ease. No, not really. Or at least I never saw myself as the motherly type.
But the fact that Matis is asking me…it changes things. Because now I imagine something I never imagined before. Him coming inside me. Putting a baby in me. His seed dripping down my thighs. Breeding me like my instincts are telling him to.
And then…
Him with a smiling blue-eyed baby on his lap. His lips on my swollen belly. His hand in mine as we watch him or her run ahead of us at the park.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Amelia.
What are you doing?
These are stupid, dangerous, reckless thoughts that only a girl who wants her heart broken would imagine, but I can’t help myself.
It all hits me so fast. I didn’t put those thoughts there as much as they were thrust upon me by a simple question asked by this dashing man I am most certainly falling even more in love with than I was before.
The sweet pastry dust from the cookie goes down my windpipe, and I start coughing. Bent over, I work to catch my breath as Matis rubs my back with a chuckle.
“Are you all right, Trouble?”
“Yeah, it just…went down the wrong pipe.”
When I stand upright, tossing the rest of the cookie in the nearest bin, I dust my hands on my pants and hope I’ve just evaded the uncomfortable question with my near medical emergency.
We only get two steps before he asks again. “Are you sure it wasn’t my question that scared you?”
“Um, no,” I reply without much conviction. “I mean, no, it wasn’t your question. I don’t mind that question.”
“Then what is the answer?” he persists with a devilish smirk.
I spin toward him, walking backward as I turn the attention back on him. “Why are you asking it?”
“I’m curious.”
“Okay, well, you first,” I reply. “Do you want kids?”
He carries himself so casually. As if this question, asked in this setting, between two people who are not really dating and not having sex but doing everything else and definitely can’t be together publicly…although they want to…isn’t incredibly fraught. Well, his coolness sort of grates on me.
“No,” he says so plainly I want to scream.
“No?”
“I’m fifty-three, Amelia. I think that ship has sailed.”
“My dad was fifty-eight when I was born.”
Matis chuckles. “Are you trying to convince me to want children?”
“No,” I mumble. Turning back around, I stare straight ahead as we continue walking. I can’t help but feel a sense of disappointment that our dreams don’t align. Unlike me, he didn’t just have a vision of some fictional future where we not only get to be together, but we get to grow a family.
Seeming to notice the way my mood has soured, he reaches out and grasps my hand in his. “You know, I never wanted children because I never met anyone I wanted to have children with.”
My throat tightens with emotion as I slow my steps and glance back at him. His silver-blue eyes shine in the streetlamps.
Is he saying this to me for a reason? To toy with me?
Or to tell me something?
When I don’t respond, too focused on the tone of his voice and the feel of his hand in mine, he stops walking, pulling me to face him.
“So answer the question.”
I can’t breathe. Does he know what he’s doing to me?
Without even thinking, I hear myself whisper, “Yes.”
Our eyes meet, and the sparkling Eiffel Tower in the distance doesn’t hold a flame to the intensity between our eyes at this moment.
Then, out of nowhere, I feel a surge of anger. Yanking my fingers from his, I turn on the cobblestones and march away.
“Amelia,” he calls out in confusion.
I don’t respond. My lower lip trembles as I continue my wrath-filled stomp with my arms folded tightly over my abdomen.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, jogging after me.
“Nothing.”
I barely notice, but in his erratic concern, he reverts to French. Pacing quickly beside me, he carries on with his questions of confusion.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Où est le problème?”
I swear he does this on purpose, sounding even sexier in his native language. So I stop in my tracks and turn toward him with fervor.
“You can’t do that, Matis!”
“Do what?”
“Flirt with me!” I snap, knowing very well I’m not making much sense, but the emotions are bubbling up inside me, and I just need to let them out, in whatever erratic puzzle of disjointed thoughts they come to my head.
He holds his hands up with a quizzical wrinkle between his brows. “D’accord, mon trésor.”
“No, stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“Stop being so…ugh! Perfect!”
“I don’t know what to say, Amelia. Tell me what I did wrong.” The gentle apologetic tone of his voice seeps straight down to my heart, making this so much harder…and yet easier at the same time. He wants to know why I’m mad…then I’ll tell him.
“You are making me fall in love with you, Matis. You ask about children, and God help me, but I imagine it. I see a version of us that will never exist. Then you make comments about only wanting them with someone you care about and toy with my emotions, making me think it could be me. But it’s not just sex to me, Matis. It’s my life. My heart.”
My voice shakes as I clutch my fists to my chest, begging him to see and truly feel what I’m trying to convey.
His hands fall to his sides and his brows relax.
“I am falling in love with you,” I sob. “I thought I was in love with you before, but that was nothing compared to how I feel now. And I have no clue if you feel the same or if this is just a game to you. I heard you tell Julian that you love me, but do you love me? Am I still too young for you? Will you ever change your mind about being together? And I know…”
Tears fall from my cheeks, and I wipe them away in embarrassment.
“I know you said you’d break my heart. You did try to warn me, but—”
He cuts my words off. Closing the distance between us, he takes my face in both hands and pulls me so close my lips brush his. There is vehemence in his eyes as he holds me and halts my words.
“I love you. Of course I love you. I have no excuse for my behavior other than I am terrified by these feelings. If I’ve ever let you believe this was a game to me, I am worse than I thought.
Amelia, I have never ever been with a person who had me envisioning my future with them.
Not like you. We haven’t even had sex yet, and I’m already imagining this… ”
A gasp flies from my lips when I feel his hand press against my belly. The feeling is like heaven, and the vision it produces in my mind brings tears to my eyes.
Suddenly, he pulls away as if my body burns him. He turns, clutching his hair in his hands. “God, what am I doing?”
Then, as quickly as he jolted away, he’s back, pulling me into his arms and kissing me with ferocity.
And nothing could be a better illustration of what this is like for both of us. It is terrifying, the intensity of our emotions, the quickness with which we’re building this relationship, the forbidden barriers still in place reminding us that it won’t be that easy.