20. Luc
LUC
L’Appel du Vide. The call of the void. It’s that feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff filled with a sense of utter precariousness.
“What if the problem isn’t that I like women or men?” Her eyes are so dark, her fingers tight on my T-shirt—there’s no way she isn’t into this.
“Me. You like me.” My words whisper over her lips, desire making her body plaint.
The sweet abyss below beckons as it whispers jump, and I am ready to commit. Until a quiet voice pulls me back.
“Liking you isn’t the problem. The problem is me.” Eyes screwed tight, her next words fall like a torrent. “I’m sorry I said that. It was inappropriate.”
With my hand at the nape of her neck, I tighten it in her hair. Her eyes flare as she gives a little gasp, the kind that makes my gut tighten and my cock pulse. “What about this situation strikes you as appropriate?”
She blinks, perhaps as her mind plays catch-up. “I don’t want Emmy to lose her job.”
“You’re not the nanny right now, and I’m not a father. We’re just two people alone in the dark and enjoying each other.”
“Strangers, like before.” Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip, the sight of it like a magnet to my own mouth. My lips coax and tease as hers tremble. “I’m not very good at this.” Her hand falls from my shirt.
“Contrary to appearances,” I whisper, pressing that hand to my groin. I swallow her sigh as I whisper in French what a sweet little perfectionist she is.
“Later, you’ll be disappointed.”
“C’est impossible,” I whisper into another kiss, my hands sliding over her shaking shoulders.
It is impossible to be any more endeared, and I can’t blame the Armagnac.
I have drunk a little too much, but I’m not drunk.
My senses aren’t blunted. If anything, they’re heightened.
I know what I’m doing, and I know this is absolute madness.
But I also know her words seem a little too strong for just perfectionism, considering how into this she is.
I put my hands to her shoulders as I reluctantly tear my mouth from hers. “Tell me. Whatever it is you’re trying to tell me, just spit it out.”
She’s so fucking lovely, her skin so soft, and her mouth so tempting, I can barely fucking stand it.
“What your friend said about me in Paris. I think he might be right.”
I’m not sure what she’s saying as I, figuratively at least, take a step back.
“Excellent, Primrose,” she mutters. “Way to go.” She casts suddenly glossy eyes to the high ceiling.
“Stop.” I take her face in my hands and bring her watery gaze to mine. “What could there possibly be to cry about?”
“I’m not crying,” she says harshly.
“Why are you upset?” I ask, tone softening.
“Because you were kissing me until I opened my big mouth and ruined it. As per.”
As per usual? “Do you want to kiss me?”
“Do you want to kiss me? Because if you do, please get on with it.” She tilts her head, eyes falling closed.
There’s something less than stimulating about the motion, something a little grin-and-bear-it.
But then her eyes open quite suddenly, their color like the sky over a story sea.
“Provided you’re not about to push me out the door again. ”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like that? To leave.”
She straightens, and my hands fall away, hers rising and dropping with a slap to her bare thighs. “No.” She doesn’t sound at all happy about that. “Because I am curious, even if that makes me a bad friend.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want Emmy to lose her job.”
“You think I would do that?”
“Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what you’re capable of.”
I give a wolfish smile to hide my consternation, my answer purely sexual. “Aren’t you?” But how could I expect her good opinion with how I’ve behaved? “Tell me more about your curiosity.”
One shoulder lifts and falls, and the meaning behind it seems heavier than she’d have me believe. “I suppose I’m just not sure it would work a second time.”
My brow furrows.
“What happened—how you made me feel? When I, you know?”
“When you came? Panting, wrecked, and pulling at my hair?”
“When I climaxed,” she corrects primly. The color in her cheeks deepens, though she pushes on. “But I’m not sure it’ll happen a second time because I’m sexually defective.”
“Is that your professional diagnosis, Doctor?”
“It’s not funny,” she retorts. “I’m serious.”
“I wasn’t laughing at you but at your hypothesis.”
“It’s true. I haven’t—”
“Did you fake it in Ardeo?” I ask, twirling a pale lock of her hair loosely around my index finger. I already know the answer which is perhaps why my question sounds like a taunt.
“No, of course not. But what if it was a one off? What if I can’t… I don’t ever—only when I’m alone.”
Her answer bypasses my brain, affecting my body immediately. I set aside the imagery for examination later. “You can make yourself come.”
A nod.
“But with a partner… not? Only once.”
“There’s no need to look so smug about it.”
“Why, when it makes me feel special?” To put it mildly. And rabid for a repeat. She was so vocal, her hands in my hair, and the way she pulsed and shook. Though I suppose the astounded look on her face makes better sense now.
“I’m delighted to have played some part in your discovery, but as a man who appreciates robust evidence,” I almost purr. “I suggest we replicate the special event to test your hypothesis.” Even if it isn’t the best plan I’ve ever had, in terms of propriety.
It had taken half a bottle of premium Armagnac and a lot of wallowing to reach the point of acceptance: it would be imprudent, erroneous, reckless, not to mention borderline insane to fuck her, nanny or not.
She might be perfect in so many ways—single, sane, and with us only temporarily—but it would be the height of stupidity.
Sweetly inexperienced and with a tongue as sharp glass, I would not become a fucking cliché.
But then I’d found myself with an empty bottle when I’d needed more glass to seal my unhappy decision. Which found me in the kitchen, cloaked in darkness, and a new bottle open on the table. When who should come dancing into the kitchen but the object of my thoughts.
My desire.
I’d say it was a sign if I believed in such things.
I watched, and I drank in her expressions. Her anticipation, and dancing. Her joy in the moment. As she’d brought the cake fork to her lips, she’d made a sound of such blissful pleasure, I’d had to will myself to stay seated as a heat licked through my insides like a very talented tongue.
She was exuberant. I was in awe. And she reminded me of a lesson I should not have forgotten. Life is short. Too short for some of us. And joy is not a given but something we have to choose. And at that moment, I chose to give in.
I chose her.
“You say that now,” she says, starting up her argument again, “but you’d soon change your tune when you couldn’t make me—oh!”
Hands at her waist, I lift her to the countertop. This is inexperience talking, perhaps her involvement with lazy or selfish men. I press my palms to the counter by her sides and don’t miss the way her eyes fall to the flex of my triceps.
“Talk to me,” I coax, my voice low and soft. “Why won’t I be able to make you come a second time?” C'est des conneries! Absolute bullshit.
“I’m beginning to wonder if it was the setting,” she says, dropping her hands to her lap. “Maybe the place got me all… riled up.”
“I’m not sure I follow.” Not at all.
She lifts her head, those eyes so piercing. “Maybe it was the shock or the thrill of being at a sex club that pushed me over the edge.”
“The edge?” Into the void whispers a voice in my head. “You think you got off because you were at Ardeo?”
“Not to diminish your part in things”—she almost rolls her eyes—“but yeah. Maybe?”
What the fuck?
“Maybe I’m broken,” she adds in a tiny voice.
“We’re all a little broken, ma belle.” As I cup her cheek, the endearment catches us both off guard. I don’t remember the last time I used sweet words with a woman. “It’s called being human.”
She gives a shaky laugh. “You must be feeling very French. The English offer tea and words of sympathy, not philosophy.”
“This isn’t really a tea moment,” I say as I slide my hands under her knees to part her legs. Stepping between them, I press myself just there. “Primrose, you are misguided”—to put it very mildly—“but very, very beautiful.”
“You don’t have to flatter me.” She quirks a brow, though the tremor in her tone contradicts her posturing.
“The ways I would praise you,” I whisper the wicked taunt at her ear, relishing her sharp gasp. We’re so agonizingly close and she’s so frustratingly fuckable, even if she doesn’t seem to think so.
“This is a new version of you. I’m not sure I like it.”
A quick tug and she’s at the edge of the countertop, pressed against me. Against my cock. “Liar.”
She gives another tiny gasp as I cup her backside, bringing her closer and graze my teeth against the fleshy lobe of her ear.
I slide my lips down the silky column of her neck, then press my mouth to the gentle slope of her shoulder.
A suck. A flick of tongue, all the while, my cock strains to get closer.
She gives a tiny moan that’s a little ragged around the edges. “You’ll be disappointed.”
“Impossible,” I say with a dark chuckle.
“I’ve seen you eat cake.” Whatever she was about to say seems to die on her lips.
“The way people approach pleasure tells you everything about them. And that night aside, watching you eat cake was the hottest thing I’ve seen for a long time.
You closed your eyes as you savored it, rolled it around your mouth just for the pleasure of its flavor.
And I’m sure that sounds very familiar.” Her brows tighten a touch before I add, “Because you saw that same expression on my face as I devoured you.”
Her gaze skates away, but I bring her attention back, my finger pressed to her cheek. “The truth is, I’ve thought of little else since the night I dropped to my knees in Paris.”
Her teeth come down on her bottom lip, a slash of red highlighting her cheeks this time. “That sounds like a very strange kind of apology for pushing me out the door.”
“I want you. I want to taste you again. Let me.” Need claws at my insides. I want this so fucking badly.
“Is this your attempt at being nice?”
“I told you, Primevère.” My words sound a touch rough as I lean in. “I am never nice.”
Her mouth opens to the pressure of mine. It’s a delicately first meeting that melts into tease and want and hot, aching breath as I gain carnal knowledge of her mouth.
The best kind of kissing.
“What are you doing to me?” she whispers.
“Seducing you.” I kiss my way down her neck as her fingers slip into my hair. I grunt as she pulls the strands, the resultant hot throb lighting me up inside, the moment intensifying as a consequence. “Is it working?”
“It’s madness.” She shivers as my hand span her ribs, sliding the soft cotton of her T-shirt higher. I growl when I find bare skin. “Is that why you brought me to Spain? Because you think about that night? About me?”
My hand halts. I pull back, and her expression reminds me of how she looked in my Paris office. Chin high. Haughty. Unapologetic.
How lovely she’ll look on her knees.
“You are here because you tried to force my hand.” She swallows a gasp as my thumbs slide up the soft underside of her full breasts, finding her nipples. “And I’m a very, very sore loser.”
Her laughter is velvet dark as she relaxes. Melts. Gives an almost breathless moan.
“But now that we find ourselves here…” My voice sounds hoarse as I press into her, my cock notching instinctively where she’s hot. “In this kitchen, this moment, it would be a shame to let it pass.”
Her gaze turns wary. “I can’t spend a month in this house with you after you find you can’t… that.”
I give a soft chuckle.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s cute that you think so.” My left hand trails lower, my thumb ghosting between her legs. “Je veux te bouffer la chat,” I whisper roughly, my grip on the moment turning tenuous.
“I know what chat is,” she whispers, her body chasing my touch.
“Then you should also know I want to eat it. Lick it. Suck on it until it’s shiny and slick and you’re writhing under me.”
“We don’t even get along.” This time, her words are almost all moan.
“Maybe that’s part of the magic.”
“God, I hope not. I don’t want to spend my life having sex with men I don’t like.”
“You like me,” I whisper, pressing my lips to her neck as I slide my thumbs along the inside of her thighs. “More than you care to admit.”
“You’re delusional,” she says, tipping her head back as though to deny the way she slightly opens her legs. “And this is a very bad idea.”
“Not true.”
“We shouldn’t—” Her body makes a pre-emptive motion, and my mouth begins to move before engaging my brain.
“If I can’t make you come, you can leave.” Her body jolts, her eyes a fiery flash as she pulls back a touch.
“Say that again.”
I don’t immediately answer as I slide my thumb across her luscious bottom lip, peeling it open a little.
Her breath hitches. “If I can’t make your eyes roll to the back of your head.
” I lick the seam. “If I can’t make you explode on my tongue a second time, right here, right now.
” I deliver a teasing kiss. “You can go back to your life. To your vacation.” My words, my lips taunt.
“And we won’t ever speak of what’s passed between us. Not to each other. Not to Emmy.
But when I do make you come.” I pull back a touch, and her body twists to mine like a flower seeking the sun. “When you’re wrung out and spent, and I’m wearing your scent like it’s my new cologne, you will stay for the whole month.”
Gambling is a fool’s pastime, unless you know the deck is stacked.
“A month,” she says with a soft, sensual laugh. “I already agreed to that.”
“But I want no more sullenness. And when I disprove your hypothesis, and if you’re a good little girl,”—I ignore the violent roll of her eyes—“I’ll show you all the ways you’re not broken by making you come again and again.”
“You’re absurd.” Yet her foot hooks behind me and slides up my thigh. Her softly pouting mouth is a provocation. The softening of her body is an invitation.
“Absurdly hard.” I tilt her back, pressing my lips once more to her neck. “Just as you’re wet for me now. Aching,” I add in a whisper, feathering kisses to her soft skin.
“You’re joking.” Her eyes are dark as she puts her hand to my chest. “Right?”
“I want you, Primrose. I’ve wanted you from the moment I set eyes on you, and every day since. The only thing that’s changed is that I don’t want to fight it any longer.”