“Croissant,” he repeats, kissing me before whispering, “Better this time, Cerise. But we call it pain au chocolat.”
He touches my lip with his index finger. I smile and bite his fingertip. I don’t want him to be frustrated with my impending departure, either. We’re both so much happier when we’re pretending it doesn’t exist.
He pulls his hand back and runs it over my breast again. “I’m pretty sure Capitaux will settle eventually.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Me, too.” He kisses me, so softly, so earnestly that something swells painfully inside my chest. It can’t just be my heart because it sucks the air from my body, too. It can’t be only my lungs because it causes my pulse to race. It’s as if Ansel has taken up residence inside my rib cage, making
everything go haywire.
“Do you have very important plans for an adventure today?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Then today you practice speaking French,” he says, resolute.
“With who?”
“With Madame Allard downstairs. She loves you and thinks we’re going to have a baby soon.”
My eyes go wide and I press both hands to my stomach. “I have not gained that much weight.” I look down at my hands and ask, “Have I?”
He laughs, and bends to kiss me. “You don’t look very different from when you arrived. Tell me how you say ‘I’m not pregnant’ en français. You can go downstairs and tell her yourself.”
I close my eyes, thinking. “Je ne . . . suis pas . . . uh”—I look up at him—“pregnant.”
“Enceinte,” he says. His eyes move over my body, and I stretch under his gaze, wondering what the chances are that he will take off his clothes and make love to me before he goes to work.
He pushes away, but I can see the tight bunching of his dress pants where he’s hard beneath his zipper.
I palm him, arching my back. “Ten minutes.”
I mean it to sound playful, but his eyes grow a little pained. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry, Mia.” His eyes search mine. “I knew I would be busy, what was I thinking? But you’re here and I’m wild for you. How can I regret it?”
“Stop,” I tell him, curling my hand around the shape of him. “It’s the best decision I made in a long time.” His eyes flutter closed when I say this, and he pushes into my palm before lowering himself over my naked body.
“It is strange, isn’t it?” he asks quietly, pressing his face to my neck. “But it isn’t fake. It’s never really been pretend.”
In a wild burst of color, images from the past several weeks pop through my vision, each one bringing such a surge of nostalgia, so much emotion. The disorienting first two weeks with him gone nearly every waking minute. The awkwardness of the first time we made love after we arrived. The renewed heat between us the night I dressed up as his maid. I would no more be able to serve Ansel with an annulment than I would be able to swim all the way home in a few weeks.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, my voice disappearing on the last word.
My sunshine Ansel returns as he pulls back with a smile, as if he knows only one of us at a time is allowed to consider the darker side to our impulsive—and wonderful—adventure.
“We’re going to have a lot of sex when I get home from work.” This time, when he pushes away, I can tell he’s determined to get moving. “Let me see the naughty side again.”
The comforter flaps over me with a burst of air, and when it settles, he’s gone, and all I hear is the heavy click of the front door.
IT TAKES A while for Madame Allard to get around to asking me whether we’re having a baby—she’s determined to cycle through her thoughts on the new puppy in the building and the fresh grapes at the corner market—and then even longer for me to convince her that we are not. Her joy over my simple sentence, “Madame, je ne suis pas enceinte,” is enough to make me want to try to order lunch in French.
But the far less approachable grouchy waiter with the wild eyebrows at the corner brasserie makes me reconsider, and instead I order my favorite—soupe à l’oignon—in my standard apology-glazed English.
I wonder how many of the people in Ansel’s life assume that I came back here with him because I got pregnant. Even though he was gone for only three weeks, who knows what the people in his life assume? And then I wonder: Has he told his mother? His father?
Why does the idea of being pregnant right now make me laugh, and then make me feel a tiny bit tingly inside? Enceinte is such a gorgeous word. Even more gorgeous is the idea of being full—full of him, and the future, and this thing building between us. Even if a baby isn’t growing inside me, genuine emotion is.
So is a glowing hope. Immediately, my stomach drops.
Impulsively, I pull out my phone, texting him, Do your parents know you’re married?
How has it never occurred to me to ask him this yet?
He doesn’t answer while I eat, and it isn’t until nearly an hour has passed and I’m a mile away from the apartment, wandering aimlessly through curving alleys, when my phone buzzes in my bag.
My mother knows, not my father. And then: Does this bother you?
Knowing he’s at work and I may only have his attention for a second, I type quickly: No. My parents don’t know. I just realized how little we’ve really talked about it.
We’ll talk about it later, but not tonight.
I stare at my phone for a beat. That’s certainly cryptic. Why not tonight?
Because tonight you are naughty, not nice.
I’m typing my reply—basically hell yes and get home as soon as you can—when my phone buzzes with another incoming message . . . from Harlow.
I’m in Canada.
My eyes widen as I search for any other explanation than the one my brain immediately latches on to. Harlow has no family in Canada, no business in Canada. I type my question so fast I have to correct typos seven times in five words: Are you there banging Finn???
She doesn’t answer immediately, and without thinking, I text Ansel for confirmation.
Not Lola.
In fact, it feels natural to text Ansel first . . . holy crap we have mutual people, a shared community now. My fingers shake as I type: Did Harlow fly up to Canada to visit Finn this weekend?!
Ansel replies a few minutes later, They must have texted us at the same time. Apparently she arrived wearing nothing but her trench coat.
I nod as I type my reply: That sounds like Harlow. How did she get through security without having to take that off?
No idea, he says. But they’d better not be trying to steal our costume game.
My blood simmers deliciously in anticipation. What time will you be home?
I’m here with the dragon until around 21:00.
Nine o’clock? Immediately I deflate, typing OK before slipping my phone back into my bag. But then, a thought occurs to me: He wanted me to be naughty? I’ll give him naughty.
LATELY, ANSEL HAS been texting me around dinnertime—when he’s working and I’m home. The routine has only been going on maybe the past four days when our schedules land like this, but somehow I know to expect it around seven, when he takes his evening break.
I’m ready, in the bedroom, when my phone buzzes on the comforter beside me.
Don’t forget what I want tonight. Eat dinner. I will keep you up.
With shaking hands, I press his name to call him, and wait while it rings once . . . twice . . .
“llo?” he answers, and then corrects to English. “Mia? Is everything all right?”
“Professor Guillaume?” I ask in a high, hesitant voice. “Is it an okay time to call? I know it isn’t your office hour . . .”
Silence greets me across the line and after several long beats, he cle
ars his throat, quietly. “Actually, Mia,” he says, voice different now—not him, but someone stern and irritated at the interruption, “I was in the middle of something. What is it?”
My hand slides down my torso, over my navel and lower, between my spread legs. “I had some questions about what you were teaching me, but I can call back if there is a better time.”
I need to hear his voice, to get lost in it to find the bravery to do this when he’s not expecting it. When he may be sitting across the table from someone.
I can almost imagine the way he leans in, pressing the phone flush to his ear and listening carefully for every sound on the other end of the line. “No, I’m here now. Out with it.”
My hand slides up and back, fingers pressing to my skin. I pretend it’s his hand, and he’s hovering over me, watching every expression as it passes over my face. “Earlier today in class,” I start, my breath catching when I hear him exhale forcefully. I search my memory for some rudimentary law terms from my poli sci class two years ago. “When you were talking about judicial politics?”
“Yes?” he whispers, and now I know he must be alone in his office. His voice has gone hoarse, goading, deep enough that if he were here I can just imagine the way the sunshine would melt from his eyes and he would pretend to be hard and calculating.
“I don’t think I’d ever been more wrapped up in a lecture before.” I hold my phone between my ear and hunched shoulder, sliding my other hand up and over my breast. My breasts . . . Ansel loves them in a way no one ever has before. I always loved being able to move around them easily. But under his touch, I realize just how sensitive they are, how responsive. “I’ve never enjoyed a class as much as yours.”
“No?”
“And I couldn’t stop thinking . . .” I say, pausing for effect but also because I can hear him breathing and I want to dive into the slow, deep cadence. I feel something inside me ignite with want. “I was thinking what it would be like if you would meet with me outside of school.”
It’s several tight, pounding heartbeats before he answers. “You know I can’t do that, Miss Holland.”
“Can’t because of the rules? Or because you don’t want to?” My fingers are moving faster now, sliding easily over skin that has grown slick with the sound of his voice, the sound of his breath through the line. I can imagine him sitting behind a desk, his hand clutching himself through his zipper. Even the thought makes me gasp.
“Because of the rules.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. “Also, I can’t want to. You’re my student.”
Without meaning to, I moan quietly, because he does want it. He wants me, even when he’s drowning at work and miles away.
How would it feel to really be his student, or to be one of the girls on the métro, watching him, wanting him? What if he really were my teacher, and every day I had to sit, and listen to his quiet, deep voice, unable to move forward, catch his eye, run my hands up his chest and into his thick hair?
“Mia, you’re not doing anything . . . inappropriate right now, are you?” he asks, stern voice back in place. It’s the first time I can’t see his face when we’re playing like this, but already I know him well enough to know he’s pretending. His voice is never stern with me, even when he’s upset. He’s always even, always steady.
My back arches off the mattress, sensation pooling and warming in my thighs, low in my belly. “You want to hear me?” I ask. “Do you like to imagine me doing this here in your bed?”
“You’re in my bed?” he hisses, sounding irate. “Mia! Are you touching yourself?”
The thrill of the game spins through me, making me dizzy and nearly high. I remember the way he looked over me this morning, conflicted, wanting to take me before he left for work. I remember how his mouth felt on my neck when he climbed into bed last night, how he pulls me against his chest, spooning me every night. And then, when I barely whisper, “Oh, oh, God,” I hear his rumbling groan on the other end and completely fall to pieces under my own hand, pretending it’s his, knowing how much better it will feel when it really is his, later.
And he can imagine me now, because he’s seen me do this.
My legs are shaking and I’m crying out into the phone, riding through the wave of heat, of slick pleasure sliding across my skin. I say his name, some other things I’m not sure are even coherent but just knowing he’s listening, and it’s all he can do—he can’t touch or see or feel—prolongs my release until I’m spent and gasping, my hand sliding to my hip and then down to the mattress beside me.
I smile into the phone, drowsy and satisfied . . . for now.
“Mia.”
Blinking, I swallow and whisper, “Oh, God. I can’t believe I did that. I’m so sor—”
“Don’t go anywhere,” he growls. “I’ll be there soon to take care of this . . . this indiscretion.”
I’VE DRIFTED OFF waiting for him when the door slams open, the knob hitting the plaster of the wall just on the other side of the bedroom. Startled, I sit up, pushing my little skirt down my legs, rubbing my eyes as Ansel storms into the bedroom.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roars.
I scoot back to the headboard, disoriented and heart pounding as my brain slowly catches up to the adrenaline racing through my bloodstream. “I . . . you told me not to go anywhere.”
He stalks toward me, stopping at the side of the bed and tugging his tie loose with an impatient jerk. “You broke into my house—”
“The door was open—”
“—and got onto my bed.”
“I . . .” I look up at him, eyes widening. He looks genuinely upset, but then reaches forward, reminding me it’s all a game by gently sweeping his thumb across my bottom lip.
“Mia, you broke about a hundred university rules and several laws tonight. I could have you arrested.”
I push up onto my knees, sliding my hands up his chest. “I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”
He closes his eyes, moving his fingers to my jaw, down my neck to my bare shoulders. I’m wearing nothing but a short skirt and underwear beneath, and his palms slide over my breasts before he pulls his hands back, forming tight fists.
“You don’t think I notice you in class?” he growls. “Up front, your eyes on me the entire hour, lips so full and red all I can think about is how they would feel on my tongue, my neck, my cock?”
I lick my lips, bite the lower one. “I can show you.”
He hesitates, eyes narrowing. “I’d be fired.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
His conflict feels so genuine: he closes his eyes, jaw tight. When they open again, he leans in and says, “If you think of this as rewarding you for breaking into my house . . .”
“I don’t . . .” But he sees the lie in my face. I’m getting everything I want and my dark smile makes him growl, cup my breasts again with rougher hands.
My skin rises to meet his touch, and inside, my muscles and vital organs twist as if being wrung out, pushing heat down my chest, into my belly where it pools low, down between my legs. I want him so much I feel restless and urgent, this elemental need clawing in my throat. I dig my hands into his hair, holding him to me and barely letting him move a breath away from my skin.
But it’s all a ruse. He pulls free of my grip easily, leaning back to look at me with convincing fire in his eyes.
“I had a lot of work on my desk when you called with your little show earlier.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Being near him makes me liquid, my insides slithering and molten.
His eyes flutter closed, nostrils flaring. “What do you think it did to my concentration, knowing you’re here thinking of me, touching skin that could be mine to touch?”
With his eyes anchoring mine, and to make his point, he slides a rough hand into my underwear, two fingers searchin
g, dipping inside and finding me soaked. “Who made you this wet?”
I don’t answer. I close my eyes, pushing into his hand before reaching to grip his wrist and fuck his fingers if he won’t move. I’m on fire, everywhere and especially here, drowning with a clawing need to come, for him to make me come.
With a jerk of his arm he pulls his fingers from me and reaches to push them into my mouth, pressing my taste onto my tongue. His hand grips my jaw, fingers curled into the hollow of my cheeks to hold my mouth open.
“Who. Made you. Wet.”
“You,” I manage around his intrusive fingers and he pulls back, plucking at my bottom lip with an index finger, a thumb. “I thought about you all day. Not just when I called.” I stare into his eyes, so full of anger and lust it takes my breath away. They soften as I continue to hold his gaze, and I can feel both of us stutter in our roles. I want to melt into him, feel his warm weight over me. “I think about you all day long.”
He can see the truth in my expression and his eyes drop to my lips, his hands spread gently across my sides. “You do?”
“And I don’t care about the rules,” I tell him. “Or that you have a lot of work. I want you to ignore it.”
His jaw tenses.
I say, “I want you. The semester will be over soon.”
“Mia . . .” I can see the conflict in his eyes, and does he feel it, too? This longing so enormous it shoves everything else inside my chest into a tight corner? Our time together is almost over, too. How can I possibly be away from him in only a couple of weeks?
What are we going to do?
My heart turns, pounding so hard it’s no longer a safe rhythm. It’s cymbals crashing and the deep heavy pulse of the bass drum. It is thrashing beneath my ribs. I know what this feeling is. He needs to know.
But is it too soon? I’ve been here barely a month. “Ansel . . . I—”
His lips crash over mine, tongue pushing my mouth open, tasting, rolling up against my teeth. I press up, hungry for the flavor of him, of man and ocean and heat.
“Don’t say it,” he says into my mouth, somehow knowing I was going to put something sincere and intense out there. Pulling back, he searches my eyes frantically, pleading. “I can’t play rough if you say that tonight. D’accord?”