Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Serena
Iwake before he does.
For a few seconds, I stay still, listening to the soft drag of morning traffic below the window and the even sound of his breathing beside me. Paris has slipped into pale light beyond the curtains, gentle and almost innocent, which feels deeply inappropriate after the night it just witnessed.
My body remembers before my mind can organize the details. His hands. His mouth. The way he watched every reaction like missing one would have been a personal offense. Heat moves under my skin, and I close my eyes for one second longer than I should.
Then I get out of bed before memory turns into invitation.
The floor is cool beneath my bare feet. My dress is near the chair.
One of my hairpins sits on the rug by the door, bent slightly out of shape.
The tarragon still stands in the glass on the desk, ridiculous and green and far too symbolic for an herb.
I cross to the window and open the curtains.
Le Marais rooftops stretch beneath the soft morning light, grey-blue and gold at the edges, with chimney pots, shuttered windows, and a narrow slice of street where a delivery man unloads crates outside the bakery.
The city is already moving, but quietly, as if it’s giving me a few minutes before asking questions.
Behind me, the sheets shift.
“Serena,” he says.
My name is lower in the morning, roughened by sleep, and it moves over my skin before I can defend against it.
I glance back. “Good morning.”
He watches me from the bed, one arm bent beneath his head, the sheet low across his waist. His dark hair is messier than it was yesterday, silver at his temples catching the light, and there’s something quietly pleased in his face that feels more dangerous than smugness.
“Good morning,” he says.
I turn back toward the window because looking at him in my bed is a problem I’m not prepared to solve before coffee.
The floorboards creak softly behind me. Then he’s there.
His body warms my back. One hand settles at my waist. His mouth touches the side of my neck, not demanding, not teasing, just there with the easy confidence of a man who knows exactly what happened between us and isn’t going to pretend it was less than it was.
My hand closes around the curtain as he kisses the skin beneath my ear. My breath slips.
“Damien,” I say.
He pauses against my neck. “Yes?”
“That wasn’t a complaint.”
His mouth curves against my skin. “I know.”
Of course he does.
He kisses me once more, slower this time, then lifts his head and looks past me toward the rooftops.
“You have coffee here?” he asks.
I lean back against him by a fraction before I can think better of it.
“Even better.”
“What’s better than coffee?” he asks.
“There’s a brasserie downstairs,” I say.
“Good espresso. Better people-watching.”
His hand tightens briefly at my waist. “That is better.”
“We should go before I make reckless decisions with hotel-room coffee.”
“That would be tragic,” he says.
I turn in his arms and look up at him.
“You’re very opinionated for a man in someone else’s room.”
“I was opinionated before I arrived.”
“Yes,” I say. “I remember.”
His eyes drop to my mouth.
For one wild second, I think neither of us is going downstairs. Then he steps back first, which is either mercy or strategy. I’m not sure I like either.
We dress quickly, with the strange, intimate quiet of two people finding clothes after wanting each other more than they cared about order.
I find one earring beneath the desk. He finds my other hairpin near the door and holds it out to me without comment.
His fingers brush my palm when I take it, and my body reacts far too quickly.
He sees it.
He says nothing.
That may be the only reason I survive the elevator.
Downstairs, the brasserie is already awake. Small tables spill onto the pavement beneath a striped awning. Cups clink against saucers. A waiter in a white apron moves with sharp morning efficiency. The air smells like espresso, butter, hot bread, and jam warming in the sun.
We take a table outside.
Damien orders in French before I reach for the menu. Espresso for him. Café crème for me. Croissants. Water.
I look at him. “You’re still ordering for me?”
“You can object,” he says.
“I didn’t say I wanted to.”
“No,” he says. “You didn’t.”
The waiter leaves. I look away before my smile becomes too obvious.
That’s the part that unsettles me. Not the heat.
Not the night. Not even the fact that my body still feels marked by him in ways no one can see.
It’s this. The ease of sitting across from him in morning light.
The lack of awkwardness. The way silence doesn’t rush to fill itself.
He tears the end from a croissant, places it on the small plate between us, and asks, “What are you working on today?”
“A few food notes,” I say.
“Some Paris context. Nothing thrilling.”
His gaze stays on mine. “I doubt that.”
“You doubt my work can be dull?”
“I doubt anything is dull when you’re the one looking at it,” he says.
The sentence lands too cleanly.
I lift my cup when the waiter sets it down.
“That almost sounded charming.”
“It was accurate.”
“Of course it was.”
We drink coffee. We talk about the bakery across the street, the waiter’s excellent refusal to hurry anyone, and the city’s habit of pretending beauty is accidental. Nothing important. Nothing labeled. Nothing safe enough to dismiss.
When we finally finish and stand from our table, morning has fully arrived around us. He walks me back to the hotel door, but he doesn’t come inside. He stops beneath the awning, close enough that the air changes again.
“I have to go,” he says.
“I know,” I say, though I don’t know where, and I don’t ask.
His gaze moves over my face with the same focused attention that made me reckless in the first place.
“This isn’t finished,” he says.
He doesn’t phrase it as a question. That should irritate me, but it doesn’t.
I hold his gaze. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“About some things,” he says.
Then he bends and kisses me once, right there in the open doorway, with Paris moving around us and coffee still warm in my blood. It isn’t long. It doesn’t need to be. His mouth leaves enough heat behind to make walking upstairs feel like discipline.
When he pulls away, his eyes remain on mine.
“Goodbye, Serena,” he says.
“Goodbye, Damien,” I say.
He turns and walks down the street without looking back. I watch him until the corner takes him. Then I go back upstairs.
The room looks different when I return, though nothing has changed. The bed is unmade. My notebook is still on the desk. The tarragon stands in its glass by the window. My laptop waits exactly where I left it, clean and practical and accusing. I sit and open it.
For one second, I only stare at the screen. Then my mind betrays me. His hand at my jaw. His mouth against my neck. The weight of him in the dark. The way my body answered him before I could pretend to be reasonable.
I close my eyes.
No.
It was one night.
A reckless, beautiful, intensely inconvenient night with a man whose last name I don’t know and whose effect on my concentration is already unacceptable.
I open my eyes and place my hands on the keyboard.
This is silly.
I know better than to get wrapped up in a stranger because the wine was good, the afternoon was warm, and Paris is very skilled at making bad judgment look cinematic. I have work to do. A career built on separating appetite from assessment.
I’m very good at this.
I’m very good at keeping things where they belong.
Outside the window, Paris keeps moving. I start typing, as I try to catch up.