47. Luc
LUC
She licks her lips, color sitting too high on her cheekbones. She is nervous and has sunk two glasses of champagne in quick succession. Dutch courage.
Not good. But now we’re here, in this room where I’ve fucked before. But never with an audience. I’ve never been a member of an audience, either. Not that I’m at all sure I can stomach it now.
It doesn’t matter.
She isn’t going to go through with this.
And if she does…
We’ll both be crushed. And we’ll both be cured.
We’re animals, I tell myself. Before Primrose, I’d probably be glad to be in his place. Animals. Bodies. Appetites. I brought her here to strip away the illusion of us being anything else.
The man closes the door—Tristain, he said was his name—and steps deeper into the room, Primrose between us, the flower between two thorns. One of them horny. The other sick to his stomach.
He takes one measured step, two, and like a choreographed dance, she backs into me. Every muscle in my body tightens, the scent of her perfume, jasmine and secrets, feels like a sensory memory. Like I’m remembering her before she’s gone.
Her gaze flicks over her shoulder, lush bottom lip caught between her teeth. I wonder what she sees in my face, what she feels in my body, her ass pressed tight to my cock. Animals. Animals. I’m not really turned on.
“I didn’t see you there.” There’s a challenge in her voice, a put-down. She’s unbothered I’m here. But beneath that lie is hurt, and beneath that, stubbornness.
Does she think she’ll go through with this?
Is she planning to?
A vicious pressure builds behind my ribs.
“You don’t need to see me. I need to see you.” When I should step away, my hands grip her hips instead. The action is firm and proprietary, and the other man smiles like he recognizes the claim. Respects it, even.
Fuck him. Just, fuck him.
He watches the way I shift, how my jaw grits. How I keep possessively close, almost as though I’m going to spin her out of his reach at the last second.
A standoff, but not quite. He smiles at it, his gaze gliding to Primrose, sandwiched between myself and a man whose name I wish I didn’t remember.
“May I?” He asks which of us, I’m not sure, hand already outstretched.
She leans into me, hesitant. My hands on her hips tighten, the way you grip the rung of a ladder, halfway up and no way down but to fall.
She nods eventually, then adds, “Yes.” Her voice is softer than she probably intends, the consonants blurring as his hand cups her cheek.
I want to intercept, but to rescue, ruin, or redeem, who the fuck knows. Not me, that’s for certain. Tension knots in my muscles as though preempting motion. Primrose knows it. Feels it. Her hand lifts languidly and she slides it to the back of my neck with a sultry sound—a taunt.
I guess that told me, right?
No need to provide her with a rescue.
His thumb moves across her jaw, her skin pale against his hand. Skin I know, skin I’ve kissed in darkness and in the sunlight. Skin that warmed beneath my mouth with a responsiveness she once believed herself incapable of.
He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything about her. How she’s terrified of geckos or how she loves cake. He doesn’t know about her whip-sharp tongue and her stubbornness, the way she cares about people or the sounds she makes when she reaches her peak.
He knows shit.
His fingers drift to her shoulder where he traces the narrow strap of her dress, his touch unhurried as it moves to the zipper at her side. The sound seems so loud as he pulls.
“Look at me,” he whispers, leaning closer. Primrose shivers despite the room’s warmth.
His mouth hovers near her ear as he says something else, something designed to soothe or seduce. But I can only see his breath stir the fine strands of hair at her neck as my mind seeks to protect itself, feeding me the images in fragments.
Lips meet skin, and my body reacts before my reason can contain it. A surge of heat, a primitive and violent refusal. Mine. The word is immediate and shameful because she can’t be mine, and this is the whole point of this lesson.
She lifts her chin, the movement exposing more of her throat to him. But it is aimed at me and the tight grip of my fingers. It’s defiance, not surrender. It’s her silent you wanted this as he presses his mouth below her ear.
I’m not jealous. A lie.
Or angry. Another untruth.
This is my fucking play.
My out. Her protection.
Our joint heartbreak.
“Beautiful.” The word is just a breath as his mouth skates to hers. A tremor runs through her and, at the last minute, twists her head, offering him more of her neck.
I step back as the cloying scent of his cologne replaces her perfume. Her hand slips from my neck, but I don’t relinquish my hold.
His kisses start off small but quickly become wetter, like he’s trying to make out with her neck as she stretches it like a fucking giraffe. Enjoyment or avoidance? It’s none of my business as jealousy eats me alive from the inside.
She trembles, her breath catching in a soft, broken gasp.
A knife twists in my gut. I told myself I could do this—that it was necessary—but every tremble he draws from her feels stolen from me.
I am seconds from tearing his hands away.
The ache is bitter, not sweet, as my fingers continue to bruise her hips.
He pushes at her dress, sliding it from her shoulders. It catches at my wrists because I can’t fucking let go. My jaw aches, and I’m almost certain the burn I’m experiencing in my throat is bile as Primrose’s body goes almost rigid.
She makes a muffled sound. Pleasure or distress?
A better man would ask.
A better man would stop this.
The man she loves wouldn’t have brought her here in the first instance.
As though hearing my thoughts, she turns her head, licks her lips and gives a soft moan, her blue eyes burning with a thousand fuck yous.
My attention snaps back as he pulls at her dress, snagging at my wrists. I force my hands to lift as everything inside me screams.
Her dress falls and the fucker in front of her stares at her like she’s Christmas.
He shakes his head, almost coming back to himself.
And the sound Primrose makes as his palm slides up her leg is so impossibly small it can hardly be categorized as a breath.
I feel it, not hear it, all vibration through the bones of my hand as I brace again.
He’s methodical, thumbs mapping the seam of her thighs. Her head tips back against my chest, hair working loose and scented by whatever she washed it with. Something sweet and floral, it makes me want to bury my face in it when she stretches against me, her eyes falling closed.
She could be anywhere in the dark. Less in her body. Drowning in sensation. And the mouth sliding down to her breast could be anyone. He could be me.
It should be me as another tiny, breathless hitch echoes through her body to mine. The realization spreads through me like wildfire: This isn’t pleasure. This is distress.
He either doesn’t hear it or chooses not to. But either way, rage detonates inside me.
“Enough.” The word is ragged, my nostrils flaring like a bull as I hook my arm around her waist and simultaneously seize him by the shoulder. I push him so violently, he stumbles.
“What the hell?” he protests, only just keeping his balance. His attention jumps to Primrose, but she pivots and buries her face in my chest. Her whole body is fucking trembling, and I did this. Me. I should be flayed alive for putting her through this.
My lips swipe her hair before I set her gently aside. I advance on him, head lowered, fists clenched, every civilized thought burned clean out of me.
He takes one look at my face and retreats, getting to the door before I get to him, slamming it behind him before I can raise a fist.
The sound of the lock turning in my fingers is so deafening. I turn to the sight of her, heels and pale satin underwear.
I rush at her—she rushes at me—as we collide, her hand cracks across my face with enough force to knock my head back. But it doesn’t slow us down as her hands seize my shirt and mine her waist. Our mouths fuse, and there isn’t an ounce of tenderness in this kiss.
As fury shines wet in her eyes, we maul each other.
There’s no other word for this congress.
Her teeth catch my lip, my hands driving into her hair, pulling on the pale silky strands to hold her immobile.
She makes a broken sound against my mouth, and I eat it as grief tears through me. I fucked up. I’m fucked up.
I kiss her harder as though the thoughts will stop.
She’ll leave. Of course she will.
So I won’t stop as my arm locks around her, and I crush her to me.
“Primevère.” Her name sounds dragged from the depths, and she answers by biting my lip. Relief is not gentle. It does not wash through me. But need explodes.
“I hate you,” she moans into my mouth.
“I know.” She tastes familiar and strange all at once.
“I hate that you did this to me.”
“I know.” My voice breaks against her throat. “I know, mon coeur.” But I can’t bring myself to say I’m sorry.
“Don’t.” She shoves at me, but I’m back in an instant. I feel uncontrolled, like I’ve stepped out of myself. Like this is happening but not to me.
My hand slides under her knee and I lift it. It locks around my waist as she fucking climbs me—like the tale of the tree in the garden, the hose trapped between fit to burst. I stagger to the other side of the room, setting her down on a dresser.
Breaths ragged and hearts beating the same tune, her teeth scrape over my neck. My shirt is open, the buttons lost. Misery and need still permeates the air between us.
Her breasts press into me, her underwear nothing but tissue paper. I take the weight of them in my hands, and she makes a broken noise as I clasp them tighter than I mean to.
“This means nothing,” she gasps, closing her eyes tight as mine watch while I rasp my thumbnail across the hardened peaks.
“Nothing,” I agree, lowering my mouth to trace the rise and fall of her breath. Nothing and everything.
Her back arches. Such a sight. I press my fingers into her mouth, and she sucks hard, but she won’t look at me. So I slip my wet fingers down her chest and under the elastic between her legs.
She cries out. Bucks. Her thighs trembling around my hips.
Eyes still closed.
“Look at me,” I plead, fingers sunk deep inside. Curling. Rubbing. Making her shake.
A gray-blue flash, there and gone in an instant. I press my hand to her throat and hold her there. Add another finger and begin to fuck her with them.
“I thought I had lost you,” I whisper, putting my forehead to hers. Breathing her in, every tremble. Every withheld gasp.
“You threw me away.”
The fist around my heart tightens because she’s right. And wanting this, wanting me, isn’t the same as forgiveness.
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you,” she whispers, knocking my hands away as she reaches for my belt.
Hot hands fumble. She pulls me out, hot and hard, then wets her lips, thirsty for this.
With the grace of a queen, she settles back against the dresser, thighs wide, already coated with her pleasure.
“Do it.” Like a taunt, she slides a finger between her legs.
“Fuck me,” she whispers as her body offers everything.
And her eyes promise me a world of pain.