“You’re so sexy, Emma,” he whispered. “I’m going to devour you.”
As a baker, Lucas did everything by feel. He knew when dough was ready by the way it stretched and pulled between his fingers. His hands were strong and self-assured. Touch was his sharpest sense.
In silence, Emma looked down and watched his fingertips glide over her tender flesh. He placed his thumb and forefinger on either side of her pussy lips and opened her up slowly, revealing hot pink folds that deepened in color toward her center.
Still holding her open, he lowered his lips to her and she felt his warm breath wash over her aching clit. Moisture gathered at the entrance of her pussy and he lapped it up.
“Oh god,” she whispered. She buried her hands in his thick hair and arched her back into the mattress.
His tongue carved through her as he licked up and down the inner lips of her pussy. She could feel his beard brushing against her. He was slow and exacting, each lash of his tongue pulling intense pleasure from her body. Emma could hear her breathing quicken and become raspy.
He besieged her. When the tip of his tongue finally circled her swollen clit, Emma’s long, strangled moan bounced off the bare concrete walls of her loft. At the same time, Lucas sank a thick finger into her pussy, keeping it straight as he pressed deeper and deeper into her heat.
“So tight,” he said. “Yes. Grip me. Like that.”
She did, pulling at him as hard as she could as he began to ravish her clit with his tongue. With his other hand, he reached up and gripped her breast, kneading it hard, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger until rapture slid against the sweet edge of pain.
Still working her with his hot tongue, he pushed a second finger into her, stretching her, pulling back and forth until the friction began to set off deep tremors inside her. The minutes ticked by and Lucas’s constant rhythm summoned layers upon layers of pleasure. Emma dug her hands into the bedsheets and shut her eyes tight, panting, trying to hold back the enormous orgasm that he was building inside her.
“Emma,” he said, breathless. He pulled back. “I feel like I’m going to die.”
Trembling, she sat up and helped him take off his jeans and boxers. His cock sprang up at her, thick and dusky and glistening, the head swollen and purple. She threw him playfully back against the bed. As his legs dangled off the edge of the mattress, she straddled his chest and took him into her mouth, enjoying the feeling of his big cock sliding against her lips.
He grabbed her hips and moved his head between her legs. She slid off his cock and squealed, trying to wiggle away, but he was so much bigger and stronger than her that she had no choice except to endure it when he lifted his hot mouth to her pussy.
“Sixty-nine is so weird,” she said, still struggling. “My ass is right there. In your face.”
“Are you crazy? This is fucking sexy,” he growled. “Suck me. God, I’m begging you.”
She did. She sucked hard on the head of his cock and kneaded the rigid base of his shaft with both hands. He tasted clean, of salt and pure sex, and she couldn’t get enough. His flavor and scent existed in the deepest part of her memory, and as she went down on him, memories of their one wild night came flooding back to her along with years of pent-up longing and regret. At the same time, he feasted on her. The wet, clicking sound of his tongue on her clit drove her insane. His superior sense of touch seemed to tell him when to back off and when to push harder. The dark shadow of her orgasm grew more powerful, but still Lucas wouldn’t let her come.
When she began to tongue his balls, he hissed at last and pulled away, gasping for breath. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and Emma pointed to her nightstand. Lucas took out a condom and rolled it on as she watched. The latex strained around his thick shaft.
He picked her up and placed her head carefully on her pillow. Their eyes still locked together, she spread her legs wide open for him. He took his cock in his hand and slid his glans up and down her delicate flesh, smearing her arousal over them both.
“You are the best lover I’ve ever had, Emma,” he whispered. He leaned forward and the pink lips of her pussy crowned the head of his cock.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she replied, pressing her hands against his rigid pecs. Her fingers looked slim and delicate against his chest. She lifted her hips upward to meet him, and he moaned, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to keep his composure.
“I’m here now,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He raised himself up on his arms, showing off the beautiful sinews in his shoulders and biceps. He flexed his ass and slid into her inch by inch, raising himself up and back each time so that she could feel her pussy stretching around him. He gave her more and more with each thrust until she thought she was going to die of ecstasy, here on the end of Lucas Lavoie’s glorious cock. She had to admit it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
When he was halfway in, he reached down and drew circles on her tender, aching clit. Slick with moisture, the pad of his thumb slid over the tiny button and she began to shiver around him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
He kissed her once more, closed his eyes and slammed home. He pulled out nearly all the way and rammed into her again, crushing her body beneath his.
“Yes,” she said again, gripping his asscheeks. “Like that.”
Lucas began to fuck her hard. Her pussy, stretched to its limit around his shaft, was stuffed so tightly that she couldn’t move as he thrust into her, again and again, smacking his balls against her. His hair grew damp with sweat. Lips parted, he panted and grunted above her, fighting for breath. Outside, a winter wind rattled the windows. Inside, she and Lucas were hot and sweaty, fucking like animals, pushing the bed sideways across the floor.
With muscles built up from years of hauling flour and kneading dough, Lucas picked her up off the bed and, still buried inside her, carried her to the concrete wall by her bed. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Pinned against a cold wall and Lucas’s searing hot body, she began to lose herself: where she was, what she was doing, even her name until Lucas leaned down and whispered it in her ear along with sexy filth in two languages.
“Emma. I love your sweet little pussy, ma chère.”
She couldn’t remember the night she’d spent with Lucas five years ago. The old impressions that flashed through her mind— the taste of him, the feeling of coming hard against his tongue, the shame of losing control—became erased the moment he began to pound into her, pushing the air in and out of her lungs as he pinned her against the wall.
Then he pressed his thumb against her clit, and she was lost.
She came at once. Her screams bounced against the high ceilings of the loft and she convulsed violently around him, again and again, milking him with long, agonizing spasms.
When her climax finally subsided, Lucas, wild-eyed, pulled out of her carefully and turned her around. Panting and dripping, she placed her hands flat against the concrete. He pushed down on the center of her back and bent her forward until her ass was in the air.
He kneaded her asscheeks and pulled them apart just far enough to make her squirm. She was almost a foot shorter than him, so he had to bend his knees as he fed his cock back into her. The smell of sweat and sex and latex filled the room and Emma drank it in the way she drank him in, all of her senses hungry for more.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded.
She slid a hand down between her legs and rubbed her clit as Lucas slid deeper. He gathered her hair in his fist and pulled her head back. The pain coaxed fresh spurts of arousal from her pussy and Emma felt the improbable stirrings of a second orgasm at the base of her spine.
Holding on to her hip, he began to ride her hard, smacking into her ass with the rigid muscles of his abs. He changed his angle and the head of his cock dug against the front wall of her pussy, hitting her G-spot with laser precision.
“There,” he whispered. He quickly found hi
s rhythm. Holding her in a lock that she couldn’t—and didn’t want to— escape from, Lucas pounded her until she began to feel herself losing control again.
He pulled her hair again, harder this time, putting a deep bend in her spine like the curve of a bow.
“Now, Emma. Come now,” he growled.
Her pussy exploded again, crushing him in another series of merciless convulsions. Lucas climaxed in silence, his hand grasping her hip, his cock thickening and pulsing inside her. Blood rushed in her ears as they took the long, sweet ride together.
Afterward, he collapsed against her, his solid chest pressed against her back, his arms wrapped around her waist.
“God,” he gasped. “Oh god.”
They stood together for a full minute as they caught their breath. Slowly, he slid out of her and turned her around in his arms.
She looked up at him as he held her. “I missed you,” she whispered.
He brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “I missed you, too,” he said.
At four in the morning, Emma’s alarm clock went off. She reached up and hit the snooze button. As she rolled back over, Lucas took her again in his arms, pinning her to the mattress and pressing his insistent early morning hard-on against her belly.
“Good morning, ma mie,” he whispered, gently biting her earlobe.
He reached down and brushed his fingertips against her hypersensitive clit. At the command of his touch, her body began to well up again. In less than a minute, she was slick and hot and ready.
“I want you,” Lucas said. “Then and now.”
His words brought her mind into sharp focus. She reached down and took his wrist, pulling his hand away from her.
He opened his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. “I always regretted sleeping with you. I thought you didn’t want me.”
“What?” Lucas said. “No, my god. That is not it at all.” He sat up.
“Then what?”
He brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. “I was so in love with you. But I had nothing, Emma. A temporary visa that was about to expire. No money in my pocket. What could I offer you?”
She looked down at his hand in hers. “Yourself. A text. A note. Something.”
“I thought you would be better off without me. But I was wrong to treat you that way.” He brought her hand to his lips. “It’s been five years and I can’t get you out of my mind. I told myself when I got on the plane, if you weren’t seeing anyone, I would try to make things right between us. Emma, I want you. Let me prove it to you.”
“How can this possibly end well? You live in Montreal. I live in Los Angeles.”
He gave a little Gallic shrug. “There’s an old saying. ‘L’absence est à l’amour ce qu’est au feu le vent; il éteint le petit, il allume le grand.’ It means that absence in love is like wind on fire. It blows out small fires, but it makes big fires grow bigger.”
She sighed. “That’s stupid. Just because you make it sound pretty by saying it in French doesn’t make it less stupid.”
He took her hand and wrapped it around the shaft of his cock. “Well,” he said with a wink, “I myself am stupid in both English and French. At least you can’t accuse me of misrepresentation.”
Two hours later, flushed and smiling, they staggered into the bakery and fired up the ovens. The elemental smell of fresh bread filled Emma’s nose as she began to assemble the white-chocolate petals for the cheesecakes. When the first tiny loaf came out of the oven, Lucas tore it open and fed it to her. Its crackling crust gave way to a hot, elastic center. They shared bites of bread, cups of espresso and more kisses until the morning crew came in.
At noon, the catering truck came to pick up the bread and desserts for the Governor’s Ball. Akira, Emma and Lucas celebrated with sparkling wine and ham and butter sandwiches made with Lucas’s amazing bread.
That afternoon, Emma drove Lucas across town to Santa Monica where he was staying. On Ocean Drive, the fresh sea air kissed her face as Lucas ran his hand through her hair. The bittersweet happiness of being close to him again filled her veins like a drug.
“I’m in love with you,” he said.
“You can’t be serious. You’re just visiting.”
“Who said I was just visiting?” he said. He pointed to a busy street corner. “This is me. Stop here.”
She pulled up to the curb in front of an empty storefront whose windows were covered with brown paper.
“You want proof that I’m serious about us?” Lucas asked. “Look up, ma mie.”
“What?”
Emma looked through the windshield. Above the store window hung a sign, done up in blue and white. Emma gasped as she read it.
Lucas smiled. “They told me Americans can’t pronounce boulangerie. So I settled on ‘Lavoie Bakery.’ I don’t think it has the same ring, but what do I know? Whatever the case, we open in July.”
She was confused. “So…you’re opening…another branch?”
“No, ma mie. I sold the one in Montreal. This is home now.” He took her hand and kissed it. “It’s been a long time for us, Emma. Tell me. Will you be my girlfriend?”
She was quiet for a moment, too overcome with emotion to respond.
“What do you think?” he asked. The vulnerability in his eyes made her heart ache.
This is insane, she thought.
“Yes,” she said.
Their kiss outlasted the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. By the time they made it out of the car and upstairs into his apartment, the sky was deep blue and aching for stars.
“You know,” she said, unbuckling his belt as he walked backward into the bedroom. “‘Lavoie’ is no walk in the park for Americans to pronounce either.”
“Too bad,” he said with a smile. “The sign’s already paid for. Everyone will just have to learn.”
THE ONE WHO CAME INSTEAD
Tamsin Flowers
She came from New York, but it seemed to Karen that Paris was the coldest city on the planet. At least whenever she’d been here, which was only twice. She pulled her coat collar up around her neck against a wind that continued to insinuate itself through all the layers of her clothing. On a dull day, the city turned a uniform shade of gray, though it was never for a moment anything less than breathtaking.
Would it be the same if I lived here, she wondered, or would a winter’s day simply make me long for spring, with its sunshine and blossoms?
The Centre Pompidou loomed up ahead of her like a giant birdcage emerging from the mist. It was larger than she remembered but essentially the same—a giant grid of steel girders and pipes with a glass tube of escalators snaking up the side. She remembered riding up those escalators seven years ago, leaning back against Elliot’s chest as he stood on the step behind her. The view should have been stunning by the time they reached the sixth floor, only it had been foggy that day as well. But they weren’t there for the view—they were there for the art. And for each other—on one of the broad galleries, looking out toward the mist-shrouded spires of Notre Dame, Elliot had kissed her for the first time.
She could still feel the pressure of his lips against hers, taste the salt on them from the croque monsieur he’d had for lunch. Seven years had passed and she could still remember what they’d eaten for lunch that day. She couldn’t, however, recall whose idea it had been to come back here, seven years on, when they would both be thirty.
“Whatever happens, Karen,” Elliot had said. “Whether we’re still together or single or with other people, we should still come back here. Just to remember this day. Just to see how the other’s doing.”
“But we’ll know that, if we’re still together,” she’d said, convinced, as one always is at the beginning, that the thing’s going to last forever.
It hadn’t lasted forever. Two years was all they’d managed before his job and her family had torn them apart. It had ended grumpily and for two years after that Karen had believed she never wanted to lay
eyes on him again. But time thaws even the coldest cut and now she wondered if he would remember their promise that day. She didn’t expect him to be here—even if he did remember, he wasn’t going to fly thousands of miles on a first-love whim. She was only here because her job involved European travel and it had been easy to jiggle her schedule to accommodate this particular date. To be in Paris on the day she was supposed to be.
So did that mean she secretly hoped he would come?
Her heart was pounding by the time she reached the top of the fifth escalator. Every man ahead of her or behind her on the way up received a second glance. Just in case he was Elliot. She wondered how much he would have changed in seven years. Would he be easy to spot, instantly recognizable? She looked the same. She hadn’t changed her hair and if there were some tiny crow’s feet appearing at the corners of her eyes, they weren’t visible from a distance.
She walked out into the wide gallery, almost scared to run her eyes along the length of the windows until they rested at the very spot where she and Elliot had exchanged that first kiss. There was no one there. A harassed-looking woman with two young children battled her buggy onto the down escalator. An elderly couple were whispering together over coffee at one of the tables. She didn’t remember there being a café here before, but it made sense to make the most of the view.
Karen checked her watch. She was ten minutes early, so why not have a coffee and stare out for a while into the gray mists? All the while, she kept checking the top of the escalator and the line at the counter. Just in case Elliot appeared after all. The coffee scalded her tongue, but she was too nervous to take her time with it. She finished the drink quickly and then paced slowly up and down along the window for a few more agonizing minutes. When she next looked at her wrist, it was a quarter after the hour. He wasn’t coming and she’d never really believed that he would.
But still she scanned the faces of the men coming up the escalators toward her as she snaked down. Between the fourth floor and third floor, a man passed her who made her look again. It wasn’t Elliot but there was something in his face she knew.
The One Who Got Away Page 9
