45. Luc
LUC
Rose stands at the mirror, fastening an earring. Her hair is swept up, leaving the delicate line of her neck bare. The dress I picked out for her, chosen with tonight in mind, clings to her figure like poured silver.
She looks beautiful. Young. Hopeful. She looks like mine.
The words rise with such certainty that a flare of anger bursts through me. She can’t be mine, regardless of what was said. Regardless of feelings.
She meets my eyes in the mirror. Waiting. Watching. A tiny pinch between her elegant brows. “You okay?”
She knows I’m not. Though I’ve tried since yesterday to seem like I am, and she’s allowed me the comfort.
“Yes.” I cross the room and settle my hands on her waist. “I—”
“I know it’s a lot,” she begins, not for the first time, to attempt to manage my feelings. My fears. “We don’t have to make any decisions now. We should maybe just take every day as it comes. Enjoy what we have.”
“Yes,” I say again, and put my lips to her shoulder. Enjoy what we have while we have it. Which won’t be much longer.
Three small words? I couldn’t even keep my declaration to that. Maybe that’s what happens when you’ve been bewitched by love. Yesterday on the couch, we turned a summer diversion into a promise. Desire into complication. A present into a future without any prospect.
“What I’m trying to say is I know you’re worried—I am too. But we don’t have to come up with the answers right now. Do we?”
“Mon c?ur.” My heart. I stiffen, surprised by my choice of words. She sees it too, so I pivot to another topic. “I can’t believe all this time you spoke French.” I try not to make it sound like a reprimand. But, fuck. I should’ve paid more attention instead of hiding behind my mother tongue.
“I’m sorry.” And she looks it. Truly. “I thought I was being clever. In the beginning, at least.”
“Because I was Monsieur le dick head?” I don’t have it in me to be angry. Not today.
She gives a small smile. “You were insufferable.”
And now I must make her suffer. The realization is an aching bloom inside my chest. The place where my heart should be. There is no comfort to be had.
“And later,” she adds, picking up a brush and flicking it across her cheek. Looking at her face so she doesn’t have to look at me. “The things you said to me started to feel like tiny treasures. Pearls of truth and feeling. The things you wanted to say but couldn’t.”
Shouldn’t.
“I knew if I told you I understood, the spell would break, but I didn’t mean—”
“Come now. You’re taking too long to get dressed.”
A flicker of hurt crosses her lovely face before she turns, and I find her in my arms again. “Does this evening, this surprise outing of yours, have a timeline?” She studies my lapels as she slides her fingers over them.
“Oui. So hurry. The jet is waiting.”
“Do I need my passport?” she jokes.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Really?” Her head rears back, confusion giving way to something sultrier. “Do I need to pack my jammies?”
My answering chuckle sounds a little dark, though I shake my head. “The flight is only an hour.”
“An hour to where, I wonder.”
“I told you,” I murmur, allowing a lock of her hair to fall over my knuckles. She’s not the only one afraid to look. “It’s a surprise. And we’re late.” I should regret the playful tap to her ass. The familiarity. Maybe I will later. “So get a move on.”
“You should’ve chosen a dress that didn’t require such dramatic makeup.”
“I chose very well.” And not just the dress. I lower my mouth to hers before she can speak again. I kiss her as a coward kisses the woman he loves. That’s to say deeply enough to say everything he can’t. And briefly enough to deny it to himself.
PRIMROSE
The villa reveals itself slowly, appearing then disappearing behind a wall of trees as the car climbs. First, its tiled roof, then a row of illuminated arches, until finally, it appears, its magnificence spreading across the hillside above Nice.
The South of France.
A billionaire’s playground.
I swallow, my mouth dry from the glass of champagne I drank on the jet.
Not much longer, I silently soothe. Not that I’m eager exactly to discover what tonight is about.
More like concerned. I’ve asked, of course, but Luc has been enigmatic in the extreme.
He’s been distant since yesterday afternoon.
Every glance my way seems different, and every conversation we’ve had feels like we’re skirting around things.
It's little wonder I have this nervous swirl in my stomach.
I know that’s my fault he’s in his feelings.
I let him believe I didn’t speak French, and a lie by omission isn’t any less of a lie.
He probably feels disappointed. Maybe even tricked.
The bottom line is, I invaded his privacy.
It’s not that he regrets loving me, I tell myself, but that I stole his opportunity to tell me in his own time.
It’s a persuasive theory. And I tell myself I believe it.
The villa’s gates, high and ornate, open to a gleaming procession of cars. Low purring engines and blacked-out windows, their expensively logoed keys handed over to valets in dress pants and white shirts.
As the car in front of us pulls to a stop, one red-soled heel emerges through the slit of a gown that appears to be made from fishing net.
The man who appears by the woman’s side looks more like her grandpa than her date.
He could quite easily be one of my patients.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Some women just like older men. And others like men with one foot in the grave.
Our car pulls to a stop next. An attendant opens the door and offers me his hand. As I take it, I glance up at the house where figures move like ghosts behind gauzy drapes. Luc rounds the car, and the man passes my hand over in a motion that makes me feel uncomfortably like a chattel.
“Shall we?” Luc suggests.
I nod, my mouth still dry and my mind a mess as we climb the shallow steps to the entrance. The night air smells of jasmine and expensive perfume, with just a hint of sea brine, the ocean dark in the distance.
Inside, the vaulted hall is washed in candlelight, and in the place of a reception desk stands a beautiful woman in a black silk suit.
“Bienvenue, Monsieur du Beaumont.” She indicates a velvet-lined box on an Art Deco-era table. “Please, your phones,” she adds as her eyes move over me, swift and assessing.
Luc surrenders his phone without hesitation. Meanwhile, mine remains firmly in my tiny clutch.
A secluded villa.
Discreet cars.
Guests dressed to be admired. And for ease of undressing, I suspect.
This isn’t the club in Paris, but it is the same vibe. The same scene.
We’re back where we began.
I glance Luc’s way, waiting for the explanation that must surely be coming. Some words that will explain something that feels like an ill fit right now. He poured his love into me, for gosh sakes! In a language I wasn’t meant to understand.
It might’ve been easier if he’d been angry instead of the maddening kind of polite that I told myself was disappointment. But right now, his expression gives me nothing as he plucks a couple of champagne glasses from a passing tray. He presses one into my hand.
“I don’t have a phone,” I say to the woman in the suit, employing the kind of imperiousness that doesn’t invite further comment. I jerk my head toward the grand-looking staircase, and a mildly bemused Luc follows.
“Did you make elite membership, or something?”
“Pardon?” He sounds impossibly French. I find myself wondering if it’s on purpose.
“Just…” I glance around at the walls the color of old champagne, the crystal sconces, the ambient light, the frescoed ceilings.
Antique furniture is paired with expensively tasteful contemporary art as couples spill from nearby rooms, music that’s all velvet bass and suggestion curling through their conversations.
“You know what I mean. This place.” I note how his eyes alight on something behind me.
I glance over my shoulder and see nothing amiss.
A woman. Two men. It’s not like they’re naked.
But then in my mind’s eye I see the way her hands rested possessively on each.
Oversized gold keys change hands at a bar.
And, next to us, a velvet rope cordons off a staircase that leads down.
My stomach turns in on itself.
“I understand where we are,” I say quietly. “What I don’t understand is why.”
For one tiny second, his eyes meet mine, and I glimpse something in that blue gaze that looks like pain. It vanishes so quickly I guess I imagined it.
He brings his glass to his mouth and slides a hand into the pocket of his evening pants, all insouciance. He doesn’t look at me then, not completely, composed and faintly bored. He was like this the night we met, dismissing me as beneath his notice.
Only now, it’s more like he can’t bring himself to look at me. And there’s something about the way his fingers flex around his glass that makes me wonder if he wants to take hold of my hand and flee.
“You said you wanted to test the hypothesis,” he says smoothly.
Those blue eyes bore into me, corkscrew sharp. For a moment, his gaze is all I can concentrate on. But then I remember, and I realize: he’s using my words used against me.
I find myself leaning closer, the height of my heels bringing me closer to getting in his face. “You want me to have sex with someone else?”
“It’s what you wanted,” he answers smoothly. “And here,” he adds, raising his glass as though to highlight the magnificence of the place, “you can be openly desired while you safely take the kinds of risks that make you feel alive.”
What in the fairy-tale fuck?
“And you thought you’d bring me here without asking me first?”
“If I’d told you, you would have had time to overthink.
To worry about what it might mean. Wonder what other people might say about you.
What I might think. You would’ve said no before you knew what you were saying no to.
” He sounds so reasonable. Almost thoughtful.
If you discount the part where he’s brought me to a sex club without my permission.
“If I want to take risks, I’ll stick a fork in the toaster when the bread gets stuck.”
“Primrose.” He makes a disappointment of my name. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“And water is wet.”
His brows lift.
“Facts,” I snap. His reasons are bullshit and his explanations utter crap.
Leaves dropped over dog poo to hide the offense.
This isn’t about curiosity or other men or giving me the opportunity to spread my freaky wings.
I’m not even sure this is punishment, even though he made it quite clear weeks ago that he’s into that kind of stuff.
He’s brought us back to the beginning, trying to reduce what we have to bodies and appetites. Because if that’s all this is, then what he said didn’t mean anything.
And I’ll hate him for it. For doing this to us.