by Alix Nichols
“It was sexy,” she interrupts me, and I shut my mouth. “The words, your voice, the look in your eyes…”
I’m no longer listening. Her tits are bare now, rising and falling with her breath, making me dizzy. I cup them, letting them fill my hot palms. That singular feel—soft and firm at once—that perfect shape in my hands, I revel in it. And in the sweetness of her hard nipples against my skin.
Desperate to touch my lips to them, I bend down and take one nipple into my mouth. I swirl my tongue over it. She rewards me with an audible, ragged breath. I touch it with my lips, my cheek, then my lips again, then my teeth. She gasps, and arches into me. Switching between her breasts, I kiss and suck, hungry, trying to get my fill of the sweetness.
I need more. I need everything.
Dropping my hand, I begin to stroke her thighs underneath her skirt. I climb slowly, trailing the curve of her thigh, inching her skirt up until I reach her wet, hot center.
She sucks in a breath.
Pressing my hand against that sultry heat, I level my gaze with hers. It’s absurd how much I want this woman. I want her now. I’ve been wanting her since I first saw her. We made love a month ago, but it didn’t quench the craving. It wasn’t enough. I went on wanting her, worse than before. Deep inside, I know I’ll be wanting her after tonight. More than ever.
That’s the naked truth of it.
I slip my hand inside her undies, and my fingers get busy rubbing, circling, pumping. She writhes and pants. She calls my name. I remember from the last time exactly how she likes to be pleasured. So, when the spasm of her first release contracts around my fingers minutes later, I’m no longer taken by surprise, or by intense pride in what I’ve wrung from her.
Brazen, I just grunt in approval as if it was my due.
She lowers a hand to my straining cock and works my fly. Setting my erection free, she wraps her fingers around it.
“If we had a condom,” she rasps, “I’d ask you to fuck me right here against that tree.”
She points her chin to the widest tree on the clearing. Her raw words nearly drive me over the edge.
“I do have a condom,” I say, my voice coarse beyond recognition.
She stares me in the eye and nods a tiny, slow, almost imperceptible nod that means the world to me.
What happened to tender and deliberate?
Fuck. That.
She lets go of me and steps toward the big tree. I pull the condom on and follow. When her back touches it, I slip a hand under her skirt again and pull her panties until they slide to her snug little boots. She lifts one foot, then the other, helping me remove the garment. I shove it into my pocket and curl an arm around her.
In a flash, I have her pressed against that tree, my hips, my whole body pushing her up, my cock between our bodies.
Dana spreads her thighs. I wedge myself between them. My cock is throbbing in anticipation. Lifting her up a little more, I brace her where I want her.
With her name on my lips, I tease her, stroking her seam with my tip.
She gives me a dark, low-lidded gaze and hooks a leg around me. Bending my knees, I enter her. Her hot vagina opens and stretches to accommodate me. It’s a glorious feeling. When Dana starts to rock her hips, bearing down on me with her muscles gripping me tighter, I choke back a groan.
Sweat breaks along my hairline with the effort to go slow, to make it last. But her gyrating hips, her clenching inner muscles, her writhing body spur me. They goad me to go deeper, faster, harder. My blood pounds in my ears. I begin to ride her in earnest, giving her all I have while hammering in and out, my rough strokes rocking her body.
She clings to me, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
Her eyes are closed and her lips move. “Yes… Oh, God… Oh, God…”
I thrust harder still, ramming myself home, my cock, my whole body aroused to the extreme, perfectly stiff, an instrument of our pleasure. In the middle of it all, a strange, incongruous thought sails through my mind. I belong here. In her. With her.
The deep molecular bond between our bodies spills over into my very soul.
But soon that feeling is eclipsed by the rush of speeding toward our climax. Dana’s cheeks are on fire and her closed eyelids flutter. Her inner walls clamp around me, grab me even harder. She’s gripping me so hard that her fingernails slice into my flesh. I welcome that pain. Her mouth opens, but no sound leaves it—only gasps of the pleasure that consumes her.
My own pleasure is building, inexorable, making me grit my teeth and drive into her like the world is ending. My balls tighten.
She lets out a shaggy, deep cry and spasms around me. Dana’s orgasm sears me from inside out, and I begin to come, even as I continue to thrust into her. A powerful, staggered release shakes me, blinds me, as its force tears through my body. I drive my cock inside her to the hilt, and just as I still, she shudders again with a whimper as she milks me.
When there seems to be nothing left in me to give, my cock pulses a few more times as Dana rides out her final orgasm.
In a haze, I feel her press a hot kiss on my throat. She says my name, whispers something in Romanian, and wraps her arms around my neck. My mind is still dim with the endorphins it bathed in moments ago, but the thought from earlier is returning to the forefront. It hits me anew, but this time as a revelation, a truth I’ve known for a while but didn’t have the guts to face.
“My sweet, my beautiful girl,” I say, crushing her to me, caressing her back, her shoulders, her hair.
My love.
21
After we’ve sorted ourselves, we head back to the hotel. I take her hand, and she entwines her fingers with mine. Our palms meeting, I fold my fingers over hers.
There’s so much we must talk about, and yet we haven’t said a word. Personally, I’m not ready yet. I don’t need days—just an hour or two to gather my thoughts. If Dana’s pensive expression is anything to go by, she must be feeling the same way.
Once inside the building, I ask if she’d like to spend the rest of the night in my room. With all the pent-up lust, I know I’ll be hard again the moment we pull the door shut behind us. The thinking will have to wait.
But Dana turns down my invitation. “Liviu might panic if he wakes up in the middle of the night and finds me gone.”
“Of course.” It’s going to be me and my thoughts, then. “I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow morning.”
The first thing I do when my head sinks into the pillow is to put my earlier revelation into truthful, unforgiving words.
I have failed.
I’ve failed to safeguard what I’d promised to Armelle—my body and heart. While my first time with Dana could be chalked up to a year of forced celibacy, that excuse falls apart in the face of our second lovemaking. And it’s not just the sex. I’m experienced enough to know that what I’m feeling for Dana is so much more than lust. It’s more than a passing infatuation, more intimate than friendship, or fondness. It’s deeper than worship.
For the record, though, I do worship her breasts along with every other part of her lovely, shapely body. Those dark, intelligent eyes that hold something infinitely sad and beautiful. The shape of her face. The timbre of her voice. Her laugh. Her scent—crisp, rich, heady—like the Paris autumn that brought us together.
I love how she’s you-get-what-you-see about her appearance, barely adorning it, never trying to correct its little flaws, never attempting to make herself look different.
For Christ’s sake, I even like the lazy way she wears her hair—combed back and tied into a knot at her nape. I know that the last thing she intends is for that hairstyle to be sexy. Except, to me, it is. It reveals the clean, beautiful lines of her jaw and her chin. It makes me ache to kiss her neck.
Once, I grew hard just thinking about her neck.
Yet, Dana’s amazing body isn’t responsible for my wretched defeat. It’s the person that she is, the love she carries in her heart that she stole mine from Armelle.
I’d known Armelle for a year when I proposed, and yet now I feel I hadn’t known her at all. She was an orphan and with no close friends. I’d never really seen her interact with other people. She did interact with me, of course. Sporadically in the beginning, more after she said yes, and we made plans to move in together.
Am I making things up now, or was there always a doubt in the back of my head? Did I fear we might turn out to be too different and end up divorcing like my parents?
Slowly, other black, subversive thoughts creep into my mind.
What if the cops are right? What if she simply dumped me in an ugly, cowardly way, choosing to “disappear” rather than tell me she didn’t want to marry me?
Impossible. Armelle wouldn’t do that to me. She loved me.
Loved? Past tense?
Oh, great, my mind is now serving up that other hypothesis, the one I always refused to contemplate. That she’s dead. That I’m struggling to stay faithful to a ghost.
Excellent timing!
Disgusted with myself, I toss and turn, and dig deeper and deeper into the mess that is my heart until two things become clear. First, I’m in love with Dana. It’s a fact. And second, I need to make peace with what that means. I’m a fickle, undependable sort that gives up easily.
Not a very flattering self-image, huh? Especially compared to that of a guy who’s all about loyalty and sticking it out…
But I’ll have to learn to live with it.
At breakfast the next morning, Liviu is in great spirits. To my relief and gratitude, he provides the lion’s share of the conversation, including during the drive to the Gare Montparnasse.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to resort to financial blackmail to get Dana to come with me to Bordeaux. Her failure to say no on the phone hadn’t been an oversight. It had been acceptance.
As our high-speed train streaks southwest to the Atlantic coast, fatigue gets the better of me, and I shut my eyes, letting the rhythmic sound lull me to a hazy somnolence.
But my restless mind keeps me awake.
Last night, I was so wrapped up in myself and my distorted relationship with Armelle, I forgot that Dana is in a twisted relationship of her own. What if she doesn’t want to hear my declaration? What if she doesn’t share my feelings? What if she chooses to stay with my rival?
Not Nico. Nico is finished. Whether he shows up again or not, Dana will never get back together with him. The man is a jerk and she knows it. Besides, she never loved him.
But Marius… Marius is the opposite of a jerk.
He’s an angel. A denizen of heaven. But down here on earth, I’m up against Dana’s personal saint.
From what I’ve heard so far, he was a really nice guy. He’d done nothing wrong, and he will never do anything wrong. Because he’s dead.
Part III
22
Daniela
We get off the high-speed train at the Saint-Jean Station, conveniently located in central Bordeaux.
Thomas explains that the jamming session at Fred’s house will begin in about an hour after we’ve all had a quick lunch of sandwiches and pastries. We can either take the tram all the way or walk along the Garonne River to the pretty Place de la Bourse and then take the tram.
I opt for the latter.
“Excellent choice.” Thomas beams. “You’ll get to see the most architecturally impressive square in the city.”
I voice my enthusiasm, but Liviu seems less keen.
“There’s something you might like, too,” Thomas says to him. “The Water Mirror in the middle of the square.”
While we stroll, taking in the imposing, well-kept buildings and the elegant riverscape, I can’t help teasing our proud Bordelais. “It took us only two hours to get here from Paris.”
“Yes.” He narrows his eyes. “Sooooo?”
“I’m afraid Bordeaux is part of ‘The Suburb,’ whether you like it or not.”
He releases a frustrated sigh. “I’m going to pretend you never said that. For all our sakes.”
“Why?” Liviu asks.
“Because if you repeat what your mom just said in front of my friends, or in front of any native Bordelais for that matter, you’ll be banished from the city for all eternity.”
Liviu’s eyes widen for a split second, before he realizes Thomas is joking.
His cheeks reddening, he says, “Ha-ha,” and turns away to gaze at the Garonne.
A few minutes later, we reach the majestic Place de la Bourse.
I ooh and aah at the classical splendor of the buildings lining the Water Mirror and at the size of the reflecting pool.
“Woo-hoo!” Liviu shouts as he lapses into childhood again.
He jumps into the inch-deep water, and races across the pool.
I open my mouth to order him to stop, but Thomas takes my hand in his and draws me to him. “Don’t. It’s sunny and warm today. We’ll put his shoes out to dry in the garden while we’re jamming.”
He interlaces his fingers with mine. “Next time we come here, I’ll give you a proper tour of the city.”
That simple gesture and his promise confirm the change I’d sensed in him yesterday. His hesitation and doubts are gone. Unless I’m completely wide of the mark here, he’s ready to let go of Armelle, ready for a new relationship. With me.
Oh, Thomas!
I let go of his hand. I don’t want Liviu to see us like this, even if I suspect he won’t mind. He likes Thomas a lot. Mami likes him just as much. My friends like him, too.
Me? I’m beyond the liking.
I’m falling. In fact, “sinking” would be a more appropriate metaphor. I’m waist-deep in quicksand, fighting to pull myself out.
Fighting? Really?
The shocking answer hits me so hard I almost sway on my feet.
All the other men I’ve been with since Marius, I was able to keep them at arm’s length emotionally. But with Thomas, my resistance is lame, half-assed. I haven’t been trying hard enough. And I’m about to quit trying altogether.
Is Marius watching this from heaven?
Can he see me letting him down like this, replacing him, allowing another man to take his place in my heart?
Does he feel betrayed?
I’m miles away as we catch a tram, which takes us to Fred’s house. When Thomas rings the doorbell, my head is such a tangle of hopes and misgivings, it’s a struggle to focus my attention.
“You OK?” Thomas asks.
I skew a smile and nod.
“They’re really nice, you’ll see.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “They’re stoked to meet you and Liviu.”
A man in his early thirties flanked by two other men of about same age opens the door. They hug Thomas, shake Liviu’s hand, and eye me with friendly curiosity.
Right. I guess that’s my cue to step forward from behind Thomas’s back, and let them greet me.
“This is Dana,” he says.
Drawing in a fortifying breath, I exchange cheek kisses with each of his buddies. Right cheek, left cheek, only once, same as in Paris.
Phew. Done.
The tall blond one is Fred. He’s the owner of the garage that hosts the trio’s jamming sessions. He works at town hall.
The curly-haired guy with glasses, Yacine, is a software engineer.
The smiley one, Phil, is a baker.
Turns out he’s also Thomas’s brother-in-law since June.
“But I was his friend first and for much, much longer,” Phil explains. “I still sometimes think of Julie as ‘Thomas’s bootylicious big sis.’ ”
Thomas raises an eyebrow. “If you weren’t her husband, I’d challenge you to a duel for those words.”
Phil grins.
Fred gets Liviu a pair of dry socks and slippers, and ushers everyone to the kitchen. Spread out on the table in the middle is a lovely selection of sandwiches, soft drinks and pastries.
“Hungry?” Thomas asks Liviu and me.
We both nod.
Halfway through the m
eal, the doorbell rings. Fred lifts his shoulders to convey he has no idea who that might be and exits the kitchen.
While he’s gone, Thomas pulls a small plastic box out of his pocket, opens it, and hands it to Liviu.
My son’s eyes widen as he stares at the contents of the box.
“Shush,” Thomas whispers, pointing to Fred’s glass of cola. “Drop it in there.”
Eyes bright with glee, Liviu shows me what’s in the box. A spider. Eww.
“It’s fake,” Thomas whispers, “but very realistic.”
He looks at Liviu and tilts his head toward the glass. Grinning, Liviu shakes the spider into it.
“That’s mean,” I hiss to Thomas.
“No, that’s fair,” he says. “Fred pranked me much worse than this last time.”
Fred returns with a young woman whose features bear an unmistakable likeness to Thomas.
“Nat?” He stands up. “What are you doing here?”
“And hello to you, too, big bro,” the woman says before rounding the table to cheek-kiss me and Liviu. “Hi! I’m so happy to meet you!”
I throw Thomas a panicked look.
He spreads his hands in apology before turning to his sister. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to sit in on your jam, of course,” she says. “Why else?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “You don’t like the kind of music we play.”
“People change.” She shrugs. “Tastes evolve.”
Fred sips the beverage in his glass, slowly emptying its contents. I squirm with sympathy, anticipating his reaction when he reaches the point where he can see the bug at the bottom.
Thomas turns to Phil. “Is that your doing? Did you let slip to Julie that I was bringing Dana along? Is that how Nat found out?”
“Leave him alone.” Nat—Nathalie, I presume—picks up a chocolate éclair. “Instead, appreciate the self-sacrifice of your other sister, who was dying to come here. But she’s having lunch at home with Maman instead.”
“It’s no self-sacrifice,” Thomas says.
