by Natasha Boyd
“Is it?” he asked, pausing to slip my heels off. At his prompting, I stepped out of my jeans. His hungry gaze on the tiny pair of panties I was wearing was going to burn them right off me, showering us in floating sparks of burned silk. His hand ran up my inner thigh and then a single finger ran over the center of me.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Yes. Yes, it’s unfair. How can I think straight?”
He hooked into the side of my underwear and peeled them down my legs. “I don’t hear you asking me to stop.”
“Just don’t bite me again.”
“I can’t promise that,” he said with a dark chuckle.
He stood then, and his mouth took mine. I surrendered to the kiss, winding my hands around his neck and sliding into his hair. His lips moved over mine, urgently, nipping and tasting. I parted my lips, sneaking a taste with my tongue against his.
A guttural groan came from his throat, and his tongue came back for mine, hungry and demanding. He tasted of tart wine, sweet sin, and lifelong promises.
“Joséphine,” he uttered in that unique way of his.
If my heart were a ribbon, it would be swirling up and up and wrapping around his. “You were wrong, you know,” I managed between kisses.
“What about?” An arm locked around my waist, and his other hand tilted my head so he could take more. He drank and sucked and licked into me. I was being devoured, and I loved it.
“That I’m a woman who doesn’t need anything,” I said into his kiss. “I need you.”
Then suddenly I was airborne and deposited on the ice-cold kitchen counter. I squealed in shock.
He drew back, breath sawing in and out of his chest, lips glistening. “Mon dieu. You make me lose my mind! I’m sorry. I was ready to taste you right here. And we’ll wake Dauphine.” He pulled me off the counter as quickly as I’d landed on it and scrubbed a hand down his face. His hair was tousled and sticking up in five directions.
My heart squeezed and my body throbbed. “Go put the fan on in her bathroom. Let’s … let’s take this to your room?” My cheeks heated.
“Yes. Mon dieu, yes.” He backed up and then hurried to her room. I took a second to gather myself, then I gathered my shoes, underwear and jeans and tiptoed up the stairs. I knew we still needed to talk. And me sleeping with him right now didn’t mean we didn’t still have a lot to work out. I mean, was he moving here? Did he really buy out the developer just for me to teach my old boss a lesson? Did he mean to actually build a hotel? I thought, due to his father, that he didn’t dabble in construction. Or was he expecting me to go back to France with him? My mind tumbled around, and I felt weird and exposed standing by his bed waiting for him while naked on the bottom half.
The second level of the suite was an open loft with a half wall hiding us from below, and the bed was king-sized and sumptuous. But there was no door, nor walls, and should we really be having sex when his daughter could come up here any time she woke up?
Feeling utterly self-conscious, I slipped my underwear back on, and then sat to pull my jeans on. We should be talking realities not tumbling into bed.
Xavier jogged up the stairs. He got to the top bare foot, took one look at me, and growled.
“Non.” He shook his head and prowled toward me. Leaning down he grabbed my face and covered my mouth with a hungry kiss, then he slipped my shirt over my head and undid my bra. He pushed me back on the bed and grabbed my jeans, yanking them off the one ankle I’d managed to slip on and sent them sailing over the loft wall to the level below. “Je veux te baiser, Joséphine,” he whispered.
“W-What does that mean?” I asked.
“You’ve already heard it. It means I want to fuck you, Josephine.”
“Xavier!” Heat flashed through me.
“Oui?” he asked, then with one hand tore my underwear off.
I gasped in shock. “Did you seriously just rip my underwear off?”
“I think I have finally run out of patience,” he said, and standing up, and with one hand behind his head, pulled his shirt over and off.
My eyes devoured this strong, beautiful, loving father of a man. My gaze trailed down his defined chest, sprinkled lightly with dark hair, and moved down over his flat stomach to the vee that disappeared into the tops of dark blue low-slung jeans. I looked back up at his face, but his eyes roamed over my nakedness and ended pinned between my legs.
He knelt down at the end of the bed and with a hand on each ankle, pulled me down toward him. “Still want to get dressed?” he asked.
My breath was fast and shallow. I shook my head. I wanted to be naked with this man more than I wanted to breathe.
“Say it.”
“No.” God, no. He’d just fucked me with his eyes and his words, and I felt on the verge of an orgasm and he’d barely touched me.
“Bon,” he said and spread me open, his face coming within inches of me. His breath was hot and cool at the same time. I squirmed. “Please,” I begged.
“What is it, mon ange. What do you need?”
“Please kiss me there.”
He hummed. “Mmm,” he said and then pressed a small closed mouth kiss right on my clit.
I bucked.
“Just a kiss?” he asked and did it again.
“No.” I sobbed a breath. “More.”
“Tell me.”
I gasped as his hands pressed my legs farther apart. My body was weeping and quaking for him, sparks shooting all over my skin like it was too tight for my bones.
“Tell me.”
“I-I want your tongue.”
“Ah, a French kiss? Oui?” He chuckled, and then licked me long and slow.
“Yes!” My back bowed up. “Oh, God.” The words dragged out of me in a deep and guttural sound I barely recognized I was capable of making. Every slow swipe of his tongue had my body chasing his mouth, arching my hips toward him. My hands came to his hair, grabbing. His tongue kept coming, repeatedly, maddeningly slow, like he knew I was close, but winding and winding until I couldn’t breathe. “Please.” This may have started with him begging me to be with him, but I was the one begging now.
Especially when suddenly he paused.
I looked down, blinking, and watched him suck two of his fingers into his mouth and then slip them just inside me. “Oh, shit.” My head dropped back. “Xavier. Please.”
“Comme ça?” He slid them in farther and pressed upward, and his hot mouth closed over me again.
I whimpered and arched, fire licking and flaring through my body with increasing speed, a hungry ache growing stronger.
“Oui,” he muttered against me.
The ache grew, dark, fierce, and aching, from deeper and deeper within me. I wanted this man, his body, his heart, his passion, his fears, his hurts, his temper, his frustrations. I would take it all.
“I need you inside me,” I managed, using my grip in his hair to lift his head. “Please, I need you. I’m so close. And I want, I need you with me. Don’t let me fall alone.”
He didn’t argue. He stood and undid his jean and pulled them and his underwear off. His erection bobbed stiff and huge and then he was leaning over me and crawling up my body. Hooking under my arms, he hauled me farther up the bed, and without stopping, he was suddenly over me and entering me in a long, slow, and deep thrust.
A sound ripped from his chest, joining mine, and his head flew back, exposing his throat. “Joséphine.”
I slipped my hands up his hard arms and over his shoulders and wrapped around his neck.
His eyes blinked open, and he focused on me as if through a haze.
“I’m here,” I whispered, my hand curving on his cheek. “Make love to me.”
“Always,” he said and withdrew agonizingly slowly before sliding back in. The pressure and fullness of him had me gasping. He did it again, his eyes having trouble focusing. “I love you, Josephine.” His forehead creased, sweat beading. He thrust into me again, slower, harder. And dragged out. “I love you so much. My heart began
beating again from the moment I met you. Even before you knew. But this will kill me, I know it.”
My eyes burned with tears, and I stroked my thumb down toward his lips, brushing across them. “No. No it won’t. I won’t hurt you.”
“Love me, Josephine. Please.” He thrust and withdrew and thrust again. “This is me begging. Love me.” He shifted his weight to one arm and used the other to slip down my side and bring my leg up, pressing me even farther open.
I groaned. “I do. I do love you.” In seconds I was back at the edge. My muscles strained tight, my breath caught in my chest and prickles racing across my skin. “God, Xavier. You feel so good.”
He picked up speed, his arm trembling, his jaw tensed tight, his eyes flashing. Words in French I didn’t understand fell fast and desperate from his lips.
Then his body was on mine, his hips moving, his mouth devouring my lips, my chest. Somehow in my arching up, he managed to suck a nipple hard into his mouth as his pubic bone ground into me.
That was it. I snapped and soared.
His hand was across my mouth, and I screamed into it, my body convulsing and dissolving.
His hips slammed into me, taking the movement of my hips bucking involuntarily and using it to his advantage. It was brutal, almost violent. Then he froze, buried so deep, I was pinned, immobile, and probably bruised but quaking with the beauty of it. I blinked my eyes open. The hand across my mouth fell away to support him and leaving me gasping. I watched as the agony of his ecstasy ripped across his face, his head thrown back, teeth bared and tendons in his neck straining as he poured himself into me. I’d never seen anything so arousing or more beautiful. This man was mine. Mine to keep and hold and love and protect. I’d never hurt him or allow anyone to either. I’d protect his heart no matter what. Forever.
Temples wet with sweat or tears, and heart thundering, my fingers soothed up the damp skin of his throat and around to the back of his neck, pulling him down to me. “Come here,” I whispered. He offered no resistance, his arms weak and trembling, folding down until his body covered mine, his face turning into my neck.
Chapter Fifty-Four
I became slowly aware of daylight behind my eyelids and the tickle of small finger pads walking slowly up my arm. The bitter and delicious aroma of coffee hit me next. Then the sound of a soft rustle of paper turning over as if someone was reading the paper.
Then a whisper. “When will she wake, Papa?”
“Dauphine, let her sleep.” Xavier’s low voice came from behind me. I was still in his bed. Oh my God, and Dauphine had found me here!
I inhaled sharply. I’d slept so deeply it was an effort to open my eyes. They focused slowly on Dauphine’s face not three inches from mine and bearing a huge smile.
It was impossible not to return that smile, even if my body felt boneless and heavy like a sack of potatoes.
“Dauphine, leave her.”
“She’s awake.” She clapped her hands together. Then she leaned closer and whispered to me. “You fell asleep in Papa’s bed.”
“Mmm,” I managed, then stiffened. Was I naked? Was I covered? I took stock and concluded that though my arm and one foot was exposed, the rest of me was warm. I rolled onto my back, careful not to dislodge my modesty and turning my head to see the other side of the bed. Xavier, shirtless in just his jeans, leaned up against the headboard, a newspaper open and hiding his head. He folded a side down and peered at me, his blue eyes ringed with a pair of black reading glasses.
“Bonjour, you are awake.” He gave a small smile.
“And you wear glasses?”
“I don’t like to travel with my contacts.” He lifted a shoulder.
“I didn’t even know you wore contacts.”
“Is it going to be a problem?”
“God, no, you look inc—” I bit my lip, glancing toward Dauphine who was watching my every move and word. “Um. You look lovely.” I cleared my throat. “Very distinguished. Hot and nerdy. Um, it, ah, does it for me.”
He smirked. “Is that right?”
I nodded. “You should, you know, wear them a lot.” I bit my lip.
He inhaled noisily.
“Papa. Now that Josie is awake, what about the plan—”
“Dauphine.” He dragged his eyes from mine. “Not now.”
“What plan?” I looked back to Dauphine.
She scrunched up her face and worked her lips between her teeth, like she was busting with a secret she was dying to share. “Are you hungry?” I asked, taking pity on her misery and trying to distract her. I’d have to ask Xavier what that was about later. “I’m starving.” On cue, my belly growled.
“We have been up since very early,” she said. “It is lunchtime already in France. But we saved a little bit for you, in case you were hungry. But just a little bit because we have a plan today to—”
“Dauphine, why don’t you go down and make sure everything is ready for Josie,” her father said. “We will come down in two minutes.”
She gave a long sigh and nodded and stomped down the stairs.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you. Last night, when we were …”
“Making love?”
“Yeah. You said your heart started beating again when you met me, and then you said even before I knew. What did you mean?”
“You were able to have a coherent thought during that? I must not have been doing a very good job.”
My cheeks heated. “Trust me. You did a great, great job.”
He preened, and then folded the paper away and took off his glasses, more was the pity. “The day I called Tabitha—the day you quit your job—I was on screen. Tabitha had stepped away for a moment, but you came home, crazy, mad, spitting fire and throwing your high heels. Undressing. Seeing you … it was like someone suddenly plugged me in. And then you arrived, and we met. And I … I fought it. I fought it so hard, but I was drawn to everything about you. Your spirit. The way you were with Dauphine. The way you could make me laugh at something absurd. Even the way you knew how seeing my father affected me. I wanted to share everything with you. It was terrifying and addictive. And I know I was harsh sometimes. Pretending you didn’t affect me. Making sure you couldn’t see how much.”
“Oh, Xavier. And here I thought you hated me half the time.”
“No. Hated the way you made me feel like I could lose control. I pride myself on my control in every arena. And then suddenly it all meant nothing.”
Xavier folded the paper away, and then scooped his linen button down off the floor and held it out to me.
Holding the sheet to my chest, I sat up and took it gratefully. “Thank you.”
“Pleasure will be all mine, I can assure you. Come on. Dauphine waits.” He chuckled then leaned forward and pressed a lingering kiss to my forehead before jogging down the stairs. To my left, my jeans, shirt, underwear, and purse were all neatly on a chair.
I saw what he meant two seconds later when I went to the bathroom and saw that you could see my nipples through the shirt. I shook my head and took it off. After a quick rinse, I slipped on my bra before buttoning up the shirt again and then pulling my jeans on. I opened a small hotel toothbrush and toothpaste package. I wondered when Xavier and I were going to talk about our relationship. It was one thing admitting you loved each other and having amazing sex, but logistically what did that mean? Was there any permanence in that? I wanted to be with him, but there was no way I could see him living here anymore than I could see myself living in the South of France—
I spat the toothpaste out and rinsed my mouth out with water several times so as not to ruin the taste of breakfast. Me, living in the South of France?
All that gorgeous architecture. Amazing food. A wonderful man. A wonderful family. A vision of my mother and Mrs. Pascale sipping wine on her patio and discussing art flashed through my head. But what if we broke up and I’d moved to the other side of the world? My chest grew tight. I’d be alone and I’d feel so dumb.
I grabbed my ph
one that was tucked into the back pocket of my jeans and sent a group text.
If I moved to France, you would visit right?
Or if I had to come back because it didn’t work out, you wouldn’t think I was an idiot?
Am I crazy to move to France to date a guy?
Not that he’s asked me to go.
I’m freaking out.
I chewed on a piece of skin next to my thumb nail as I waited for an answer to any of the five rapid fire texts I’d sent. There was a knock at the door.
“Josephine? Are you okay?” Xavier asked, concern and something else in his tone.
“I-I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be right down.”
IS ANYONE AWAKE???? I texted.
Mer: Bitch. Seriously? Is it not enough that you get a hot French billionaire to fall in love with you, but now you have to wake us up at the crack of dawn to crow about it?
Sorry. I’ll wake up for you when you need relationship advice. Please help.
Mer: Go to France and fuck his brains out, and ask him to marry you, and have lots more little Frogs. Yes, we’ll miss you, and yes, we’ll visit. Good night.
Tabs: ditto.
“Ugh!” I muttered. I splashed cool water on my face and finger combed my hair and then opened the bathroom door.
Xavier sat on the end of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, dread on his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his face morphing to slight disappointment when he saw I was fully dressed. “Are you sick?”
“No.”
A flush spread across his cheeks, his lips were pale. “Do you want to leave?”
I swallowed and shook my head. “No.”
“Do you … regret anything between us?”
“No. Never. Never,” I repeated with a frown.
“So you still want us, Dauphine and me?”
I blinked and nodded. “Yes. But logistically, I—”
