Overcome by emotion, I look down at the floor, barely able to tell whether I’m standing or flying.
“Don’t,” he whispers hoarsely, tipping my chin up. “Don’t look away from me … I’ve gone too long without seeing you.”
“Am I dreaming, Sébastien?” I brush his cheek. “I see you. I feel you. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’m dreaming. I’m afraid I’ll wake up tomorrow and you won’t be here standing in front of me. That I’ll find myself back in a life without you. That—” my voice breaks, tears escaping. They are tears of joy and sadness because he is here. Because I have wasted so much time.
Sébastien catches one with his thumb. “I’m here.” His hands tremble as he touches my face, his fingers trying to absorb my every feature, and all the love I see in his blue, blue eyes heals me like holy water. “I’m here.”
“I thought … after I left … I thought that—”
“That I would never want to see you again?”
I nod.
“My little fool,” he says hoarsely. “I came because I need you. Because I am nothing without you. I came because I love you. You hear me? I love you.” He kisses me tenderly, recklessly, madly, senselessly. “I love you,” he whispers between kisses that feel like small fireworks exploding and illuminating me from within. “And I am not going anywhere.”
“Oh, Sébastien.” And I kiss him back with everything I have, everything I am, consuming his words, his breath, his touch, as they become my benediction. Heart, go easy on me, I tell myself. But my heart replies, This. This is life. This is love. Feel it all. Feel him and believe. Believe. Believe.
We make it to the bed blindly, lying in it, and become all tongues and teeth and hands. Our clothes fall off of our bodies along with the past, the lies, the heartache. Leaving us naked, his bare skin against mine. His heart beating against mine. His taste bursting in my mouth. We kiss until our lips are bruised and raw, and then we kiss some more. In a life full of finite moments, I find infinity in him and his love.
When we come up for air, his body is on top of mine. His weight presses me down. He raises himself on his elbows and focuses on me with glowing and hungry eyes. His gaze roams my bare breasts, the tips red and hard because of his wanton touch. I rub his hardness in my hand, feeling its heat seeping into my palm, needing him inside me.
“I need you,” I whisper huskily, wrapping my legs around his hips, pulling him closer to me.
“Wait. I just want to look at you.” He pushes away a strand of hair off my face, “You’re so damn beautiful.” He runs a finger along my cheekbone, sending delicious shivers down my spine.
“Look at you,” I say shakily, taking in every thick groove and muscle on his chest and every magnificent line of his face. He is a storm that invites you to dismiss your shelter and step outside so you can witness—feel—the beauty of his obliteration.
“Days and nights, I prayed for you to come to me. I prayed for one more glance of you. I imagined you dancing in my kitchen, on my bed as I made love to you.” Sébastien slides down a little until his mouth covers my breast, sucks it in, flicking my erect nipple before biting it. Chills and more chills roll like waves throughout my body.
I reach for his hand and bring it between my legs where I need him the most. “Tell me more …” I close my eyes, lick my dry lips as his thumb begins to rub my clit in slow, toe-curling, luscious circles. My goodness, the man knows what he’s doing.
I moan as he slides back up and laughs in my ear. “Your knees raw. Your body full of me. I would fuck you until I’d marked every part of you. I wouldn’t leave a place untouched.”
He buries two of his fingers inside my soaked pussy, and I gasp at the intensity of his punishing yet divine touch. I tremble as he starts to pump into me, each time deeper and harder, driving me close to the edge of madness and want. He traces his tongue along my neck, tasting me.
“I would make you come with my mouth, with my cock and fingers inside your cunt, and you would love every single fucking second of it. Revel in it. And that’s only the beginning of what I plan to do to you.”
I half laugh, half moan when I lose his touch. He pulls his hand out of me and cups my face, his fingers glistening with my essence. I can smell my need for him as it soaks my skin, and I love it. I grab his head, pulling him closer to mine, feeling and tasting the sweetness of his breath touching my skin.
“Make me yours, Sébastien. Make me yours.” I rub myself against his rock hard erection, my pussy covering him in my need. “Everything I am. This body. These hands. This heart. They all belong to you.”
He kisses me as though my lips are the air he needs to live, and I kiss him for all the seconds, minutes, hours, and days without him. Pulling away, he grips my chin, makes me look at him as he raises himself on an elbow and drags the head of his cock along my opening with his hand.
“Say it again.” He grazes my clit before sinking into me in one deep, hard thrust. Sébastien groans and bites my shoulder. Hard. I cry out in pain and pleasure, tilting my head back.
“Say it.”
He thrusts hard.
“I belong to you.”
He thrusts harder.
“Again.”
Harder and harder.
“I belong to you.”
He stops moving, my pussy contracting around him. “God sent you to me to give me life and to heal me.” He fists my hair in his hands, and says huskily, “I had given up hope until you.” Sébastien closes his eyes momentarily, opens them, and I can see they are glistening with unshed tears.
“You saved me.”
I caress his cheek as a dam of sweet emotion breaks, and I drown in tenderness for this man. I wrap my legs tighter about his hips, kissing away his tears, his mouth, his chest. Everywhere. Wanting to memorize him and the feel of him.
“I love you so much, my beautiful man. It was always you. It has always been you.”
“Fuck, Valentina,” he utters, burying his face in my neck, and we lose ourselves in the violent rhythm of our fucking. He builds a church with his body in mine, making a sinner and a believer out of me while quieting my demons. Restraint gone, he shoots us into the stars until we reach the heavens and beyond. And when we fall and crash, we are reborn on the sheets of this bed. He fucks me savagely, claiming me over and over again—baptizing me in the holiness of his body, his kisses, and his love.
My name on his tongue and his taste on mine.
We come undone.
And when I feel his seed filling me, my body full with his cock, my skin burning with his kisses, I have never felt more whole. More complete.
Sébastien
Sometime during the night, I wake up to the sensation of kisses being showered all over my body. I open my eyes and find Valentina watching me, a soft smile on her lips.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
We turn our faces to one another. I raise a hand to touch the curve of her mouth, noticing for the first time small changes in her appearance. She’s slimmer. Her cheeks hollow. There’s a trace of purple under her eyes. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“Yes, you were tired.”
“Did you sleep?”
She shakes her head, sighing. “When I came back, I woke up so many times in the middle of the night after dreaming of you, and … well,” she traces a shape over my heart, “that’s when it hurt the most.”
“I’m here, Valentina.” I pull her into my arms, kissing her neck. I wish I could erase those memories, take her pain away and make it mine. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
She buries her face in my chest and nods. “Steal me away. Take me to a place where we can start all over again. No past. No future. Just the present. Just you and me. Your body will be my shelter, my home. Can you do that?”
“The past cannot touch you anymore.”
Seconds pass in silence.
“I know. I won’t let it.” She hesitates. “I need to explain Paris … what happened tonight …”
“Not right now.” I take her hand in mine, bring it to my mouth, and kiss it. “You don’t have—”
“No, please.” She tightens her grip on my hand as her eyes implore me. “Let me explain. I want to explain and put this behind us once and for all.”
“All right.”
“William came to Paris asking me to forgive him and give him another chance. He seemed so lost and in pain. I wish I could’ve seen through his lies, but I was a fool. You see, I was living a lie, but that’s all I ever knew. Lies. They were my reality. Or maybe I chose to be blind because I was afraid to open my eyes. I don’t know. I felt so guilty, too.” She lowers her gaze to our hands laced together.
“I thought, here is my husband suffering at my hand while I fell in love with you. It made me feel unworthy. Dishonest. I thought I had betrayed my husband. I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but there was still love and commitment between us. A lifetime worth. Or so I believed. I didn’t want to leave, but I thought I owed him my loyalty. I went back home to atone for my mistakes, to make it right by William.”
When she says that she might still love him, jealousy makes me see red. Punch-a-hole-through-the-fucking-wall red. But then her next sentence cuts through the angry haze in my mind. I frown. “What do you mean by ‘or so I believed’?”
“I’m about to get there, and it gets really juicy.” She chuckles sadly. “I came back to the States. To my life in Greenwich. And for a while, it seemed everything was working even though my heart wasn’t in it.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Say it.” I grin. “I want to hear you say it.”
She rolls her eyes, smiling nonetheless. “Because I loved you then. Because I love you now. Happy now?”
“Extremely,” I say, feeling like I just won the Nobel Prize. I’m about to tell her to continue when the memory of coming home and finding her gone hits me in the chest like a grenade. So I ask her the one question that has kept me awake many nights wondering where it all went wrong. “Why didn’t you say goodbye?”
“I tried. Before I left, I went to your apartment, but you weren’t there.”
“Sophie needed me to babysit her kids.” I sigh, a sense of sorrow laying siege to my heart. “To think that maybe I could’ve—”
“Don’t. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. It’ll only drive you crazy to think like that. Trust me, I know.” She gives me a quick peck on the lips. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, little cracks started to show.”
Valentina tells me about William’s reaction when he found out she wanted to work, and how things seemed to go downhill from there. What she overheard and saw happening between William and his sister at the party, and what happened in their bedroom. When she reaches that part of the story, it takes every ounce of power I own not to get out of this bed, go in search of that fucking piece of worthless filth, and destroy him. But the concern I see in her eyes calms me down.
She takes my hand, placing it on her cheek. “I wish I had been braver for you, for me, but at least something good came out of it. I finally realized what kind of man William truly is. I think I needed to see it to believe it and to wake up. If I hadn’t, maybe I would’ve never broken free of the weird hold he had on me.” She smiles. “So now I’m free. It’s over. Truly over.”
“I still would like to kill him,” I rumble out, unsatisfied that the bastard got away unscathed.
“Don’t. There’s nothing more important to William than appearances. What happened tonight is punishment enough.” She stares at me for a moment too long. “My God, I love you so much.”
“Good,” I say, dismissing William. He doesn’t get to come between us anymore, not even his memory. “Because I need a lot of loving.”
“Oh yeah?” She raises an eyebrow, a seductive light flashing in her gaze. “How much are we talking about here?”
“Oh, I don’t know …” I say, playing dumb, enjoying myself more than I should.
“Shall we play Hot and Cold to find out?”
“Now that’s interesting … How do you plan on—”
She smirks. She moves to kneel, encasing my hips with her legs, hovering over me. My cock stirs awake at the sight of her slim body branded by my hands and lips. She watches me, a sly smile on her face, as she glides her hands over her tits, touching her nipples and playing with them.
“Hot?”
I clear my throat. “Getting there.”
“Oh yeah?” She leans on my chest as she lowers herself on my cock, and begins to rub her cunt on it.
“Hot?”
“Warmer,” I groan, my hands going to her hips as she continues to torture me. But it’s the reckless woman with laughter in her eyes that drives me to fucking perdition.
She taps her chin, seemingly thinking of her next play. “Hmm …”
When she moves away from me to kneel next to my legs, I want to cry like a damn baby. “Come back and finish what you started, minx.”
“Nope.”
All coherent thought leaves my mind when Valentina takes my cock in her hand and brings it to her mouth, sucking and licking the head.
I curse slow and long.
“Warm?” she asks sarcastically, her lips grazing my dick.
“Fucking hell, woman.” I cover my eyes with an arm. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“Maybe,” she says, giggling. “Am I doing a good job?”
“I’d say.”
She runs her tongue along my length slowly, making me feel every single torturous second of it. “Excuse me. I don’t think I heard you. Did you say warm?”
“Hot,” I breathe. “Hot.”
She giggles.
“I thought so,” she says before going to town, and fucking me with her mouth.
Yep, God is good.
“SÉBASTIEN?”
I caress her back, drowsy and content in the aftermath of our coupling. She’s warm under my touch, and so delicious. “Hmm?”
“Talk to me about thunderstorms.”
My fingers grow still. “Why they bother me so much?”
She nods.
“Remember what you said about the painting I gave you?”
She frowns. “Yes. It made me hurt for you.”
“You weren’t far off. That painting was about a woman I loved very much. Her name was Poppy.”
“I see,” she adds tentatively. “Can I ask what happened?”
I sigh, pulling her closer in my arms, trying to feel her around me. I need to know she’s here now more than ever. “A drunk driver ran a stop sign. She didn’t even make it to the hospital.” I pause to sit up, running my hands through my hair. “She was a little over three months pregnant.”
Valentina sits up as well and hugs me from behind. “I’m so sorry, Sébastien. So sorry.”
“It rained all day, but it only got worse as I drove to the hospital. I was supposed to go with her, but something came up and I had to stay back in London. It should’ve been me, Valentina. Me. The man hit the driver’s side. If I had been driving like I was supposed to, she would still be here. She deserved to live.”
I stare out of the window, noticing dawn tinge the sky in soft pink, lavender, and vanilla colors. The eyes of my mind take me back to that day. “For the longest time, I wanted to die just so I could be with them. In my lucid moments, I waited day in and day out for them, expecting to wake up from a nightmare and find her lying next to me, her feet tangled around mine. And when she didn’t come, I searched for her in my dreams. A smile. A glance. A sigh. It didn’t matter. Sometimes I got lucky. Then the morning would arrive and with it the never-ending pain. The pillow would be soaked with tears and the sheets covered in my body’s yearning.”
Valentina tightens her arms around me and kisses my back. She doesn’t say a word, and she doesn’t have to. Just knowing that she’s here is more than enough. It’s everything.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“But you did, and that’s what mat
ters. And she isn’t gone. Her memory lives.” She lets go of me and shifts her position so she’s straddling my lap. She places a hand over my heart. “She’s here. And she will always be.”
“What did I do to get so damn lucky?”
She kisses my nose. “I think it should be me asking that question.”
I wrap her hair in my hand and make her look at me. “Come back to Paris with me. My flight leaves in two days.”
“What?” She blinks a couple times.
“You have nothing keeping you here.” I shower her face with kisses, needing to taste her. “Let’s get out of New York and go back home.”
She places her hands behind my neck, her fingers cradling the back of it. “But what about William? I need to get a divorce.”
“Easy. You get a lawyer and deal with him over the phone. When you need to fly here to sign papers, you—”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have nor want William’s money, so I won’t be able to pay for any of those things. My aunt left me enough to live modestly for a couple of months, and I will take that money because it’s rightfully mine, but—”
“So you move in with me, and I’ll pay for everything. God knows I have more money than I’ll ever need.”
She bites her lower lip, slightly shaking her head. “I can’t let you do that for me.”
“Is it the money?”
“Yes, that’s part of it.”
“Get your job back with Mr. Lemaire, and help me pay the bills then. I don’t want to own you like that, Valentina. I don’t want to be your jailer. I just want to love you freely and without any restrictions. I want to be your equal partner.” I rest my forehead against hers. “I’m a simple man, Valentina. I don’t ask for much. Just the woman I love in my arms, a warm bed, and a roof over us. Let me take care of you and love you,” I add softly, wiping some of the tears starting to roll down her face. “That’s all. For as long as you let me.”
“You wonderful, wonderful man. But there’s more. Most of my life I have depended on a man. Being with William has been my crutch.” She catches herself and grins through tears. “Had been my crutch. I felt safe being married to him, and even though our marriage has been over for a very long time, I kept holding onto its safety net, onto him. But now that it’s over, I need to prove to myself that I can stand on my own two feet and be fine. Learn how to fight my own battles rather than give in to fear.”