Chapter 40
Forty
“Okay, I’m just going to say it, because no one else will,” Eve said into the silence of Antoine’s departure. “I understand you’re upset about your mother, but it wasn’t his fault. That was totally uncalled for.”
Cally swung on her, tears in her eyes. “My mother is dead because of him!”
“No,” Eve said quietly, “your mother is dead because of Belle.”
“Yes, and Belle did it for him!” Her arm flung out, finger extended in accusation toward Antoine’s room.
“Still not Antoine’s fault.”
Cally planted her hands on her hips, glaring. “I didn’t even think you liked him.”
“Antoine?” Eve shrugged a shoulder. “He’s okay. I’d like him a lot more if he wasn’t sleeping with the girl I can’t stop thinking about.” She closed the book on her lap and set it aside, then crossed her legs. “Go and apologize.”
“Apologize? To him?” Cally tried to hold onto her anger, but the guilt pushed through. Damn it.
“Antoine just lost his territory, right?”
Cally wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “I s’pose.”
“And this house, where he’s lived for decades.”
“Yeah.” That just twisted the knife deeper.
“All because he refused to hand you over.”
Damn Roberto for that.
She’d lost sight of it in the news of her mother, but she could only imagine Antoine’s rage at that attempted manipulation.
There’d never been a question of what he would do.
He never would’ve surrendered her; he was too possessive, too bound to her, and she to him.
She was his. No matter what Roberto threatened, Antoine would burn before he gave her up.
The thought of Roberto trying to use her as leverage made her blood boil. Her fists clenched, nails digging hard. “That bastard Roberto needs to die.”
Eve inclined her head. “He does. Then Antoine did that sweet French thing where he calls you ma chérie, and you told him never to do that again.”
Cally blinked, her jaw slack. “Oh, fuck.” It came out as a breath, her shoulders slumping, her anger deflating. “I can’t believe I said that.” She stared at the pattern in the carpet, and the circle of white paint that wasn’t coming out anytime soon. “He’s not even going to want to see me.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Girl, you’re a witch-taekwondo badass, his bonded whatever-it-is, hot as hell even when you’ve been crying, and all vulnerable and teary. He’d never turn you away.”
“Right.” Cally nodded. “You’re right,” she said again, then took a breath and straightened her shoulders. But she’d told him not to call her ‘ma chérie’! What had she been thinking? She bit her lip as her resolve weakened. “What about the spells?” That was good procrastination.
Eve gave her a flat look, seeing straight through it. “Nice try. Go on, get out of here. I’ll keep working.”
Cally gestured at her face, at her eyes she knew were red. “I can’t go in there like this.”
“Best time to go in if you ask me,” Eve said matter-of-factly. “Tears lend authenticity—he’ll know you mean it.” She picked up her book again, and opened it to her previous page. “If you’re still here when I look up again, you’ll get my foot up your ass.”
With that tone, she probably wasn’t kidding. Cally crossed to the door, then paused with her hand on the handle. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Whatever.”
Cally managed a weak smile as she pulled it open. Her steps faltered with Antoine’s door only a short distance away.
Shit. He’d have heard all that.
Had he been listening? She worried at her lip. How could he not have been?
Cally shook her head. It was too late now; she still had to face him.
For the first time, she knocked on their door. His door.
“Come in, ma ch—Cally.”
Well, that just made it worse.
He stood near the bed, shoulders slumped, head down, fingers stuffed in his jeans pockets, his T-shirt tight across his lean chest. A few days’ beard growth on his clenched jaw, and a line of worry on his brow. As irresistible as ever, and the raw hurt in his gaze squeezed her heart painfully.
I put that there.
She turned and closed the door behind her, using the action to prepare herself, and the click of the lock was like the starting gun.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the door. It sounded so inadequate. She faced him and tried again. “I like it when you call me ‘ma chérie’. I was an idiot for telling you not to.”
His head had come up, watching her, a flicker of vulnerability in the tightness of his expression. “You used to call me a monster, and I have never felt more like one than when I had to tell you your mother died because of me.”
“I lashed out because I was angry.” She took a pace toward him. “Eve set me right. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Perhaps not,” he said, voice husky, “but I am still responsible, however indirectly.” He swallowed hard, his throat working. “I do not blame you for your reaction, ma ch—” He cut himself off, and pressed his lips together.
“Ma chérie,” she finished for him. “Say it, please.”
He didn’t, and the silence between them stretched.
Her frustration flared. “Damn it, Antoine. It was a shock, all right? I thought it was Nico, until I learned it wasn’t.
But for you to just come out and tell me you knew…
That it was Belle…” She let out a breath, and forced herself to take a slower one.
“My mother is dead, but she died a long time ago. Yes, it will always hurt. Yes, I want to hate Belle. But I have you, and part of me knows that if Belle hadn’t done…
what she’s done… I wouldn’t have you. It’s you I want.
No one else.” She took another step as he watched her, too many emotions playing across his face to know his thoughts.
“You want to run? Leave all this behind, and just… go be us? I’d come with you in a heartbeat.
” She let her chin come up, defiance in her eyes.
“You want to stay and fight? I’m by your side.
I have power, Antoine. I will use it for you. ”
“You have always had power. That, I have never doubted.”
She stopped before him, almost close enough to reach out and touch. “What do you want? Revenge? Peace?”
“You strip me of my resolve,” he said quietly, almost reverently. “Entombed in that box, some days only the promise of vengeance sustained me. But more often, it was the thought of you that kept me from madness. Nothing is more important; for you, I would give up everything.”
“I’m not asking you to give up anything.” She reached up to cup his cheek, his stubble rough beneath her fingers. “Take it all. Take me too.”
Antoine fell silent, going still, his shoulders bunched and his very presence darkening.
“Somehow, Roberto has learned what you are,” he said at last, barely-held anger in his voice.
“That is why he tried to claim you for himself. I won’t allow it.
” His face hardened, eyes turning from blue to red. “You’ll never be his.”
“Damn right.” She let her fingers trail from his cheek down over his collarbone to his heart, then pressed her palm there. “I’m yours. No one else’s, only yours. Body, heart and soul.”
His hand covered hers, pressing it harder to his shirt, his chest rumbling as he made a noise low in his throat, possessive and primal. It was the only warning she had.
He bent, caught her mouth with his, and the kiss was fierce, almost punishing. She clutched at his shirt, answering him with her own whimper of need, and the fabric tore beneath her grip.
“You forget your strength, ma chérie.” His fingers slid between the buttons of her blouse, ripping until the cloth fell away in tatters, and she gasped at the suddenness of it. Her bra was next, snapped open, and his palm found her breast.
She lifted her chin for another kiss as heat rushed through her, and he paused only long enough to pull the tattered remains of his shirt away, before cupping her face in both hands.
She moaned at the feel of his lips and tongue, running her fingers down across his chest, over the ridges of his stomach, then tucking them into the waistband of his jeans, pulling him closer.
Some sixth sense must’ve warned him, because he pulled back, expression serious. “Not the belt,” he admonished. “It’s a favorite—”
It stretched taut at her pull, then parted with a snap, the buckle swinging loose. Buttons pinged off as his jeans surrendered, ripping half down one thigh, and he wasn’t wearing underwear. Her eyes gleamed, her smile widening.
“J’y crois pas!” He took a pace back, collecting the frayed ends in each hand, and stared at her in astonishment.
“What was that?” She raised an eyebrow in challenge, slipping her arms free of the remnants of her bra, and let it fall to join the rest of their ruined clothing.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, the tone too flat to be an exclamation; he was translating for her.
“Buy another one.”
“It’s been out of stock for nine years.”
“Shut up, Antoine. Right now, I don’t care.” She grasped both sides of his jeans in her hands, and pulled with all her strength. The denim ripped like paper, leaving him naked and her laughing with delight.
He set his hands on his hips. “I would have taken them off if you’d asked.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Au contraire, that is precisely where the fun lies.” He knelt before her, placing a kiss on her stomach as his fingers flicked open the button of her jeans.
Her breath caught at his tenderness, and she slipped a hand into his hair.
He tugged them over her hips and pulled them down, and she shifted her weight to free one foot, then the other.
He leaned forward and placed more kisses over the first, and her panties joined the jeans on the floor. “See?” he said with a wicked smile. “Revealing you will never not be fun.”
He rose to his feet, so close that she had to look up to see his face. She thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he cupped her cheeks, wiping away the stains of her tears with the balls of his thumbs. “On the bed, ma chérie. Face down, if you will.”