“But why was he there, and naked in your bed?”
Lise sighs. “He is forever trying to get me into bed. And he tried that night, but before I could do anything to get him to behave, you’d knocked, and it was too late.”
“And I thought you’d slept with him.”
“I thought I’d ruined any chance of us,” Lise replies. It had ruined us, had thrust us apart. “And Marcel tried to convince me to come home, that our parents had forgiven me, and that we’d have an easy life. I couldn’t do it.”
I can’t imagine having to withstand the pressure of a fiancé and parents. How Lise could…it amazed me.
“I tried to find you, to call you,” Lise says, “but you were never home, and I couldn’t get up the courage to come into the bar.”
“Instead you worked.” She must have spent hours every day painting, to have finished so much.
“I never stopped. I drove myself until I dropped from exhaustion. Then there was a knock at my door.” She raises our joined hands to her heart. “Colette, it was Belanger. He’d heard about my work and wanted to see for himself. I thought maybe if I showed my paintings, showed you…that you’d come.” Her voice catches, and I take her in my arms, as I’d wished I could do for so long.
“Je suis désolée,” I murmur against her hair. “I couldn’t stand thinking I’d lost you, so I avoided all chance of hearing for sure.” She would have been another Nathalie. “But now…”
“Now?” Lise asks.
“Now I feel silly,” I confide. Lise gives a choked laugh and her shoulders shake. At first I think it’s laughter, but as a sob escapes her, I realize she’s crying. I hold her close, blinking away the tears in my own eyes. She says something, but it’s muffled against my shoulder. She lifts her head and repeats herself.
“Come with me,” she says.
“Where?”
“To tonight’s reception,” she replies. “Belanger wants to meet my muse. And after, come home with me. Please, Colette?”
I won’t deny her. Not anymore.
“Always,” I say. Our lips meet, and I taste the saltiness of her tears, and her sweetness. I wish we weren’t sitting on a bench by the cemetery. She seems to be thinking the same thing.
“Let’s go home now.” Lise wipes her eyes, and her lashes are damp, stuck together so that they look like the points of a star. Bleu mauve et les étoiles. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.
We stop several times along the way, and a group of boys whistle at us as we kiss. Once we get to Lise’s, it’s all urgent fumbling, a desperate need. We don’t even reach the bed; Lise tugs me down onto the divan, pulling off her shirt. Her shoes are strewn on the floor, as are mine. I pull my shirt over my head and she tugs it away, halting me before I can undress any further.
“Let me,” she says, her hands moving to my breasts, cupping them through the lace of my bra. The warmth from her breath as she bends to kiss the swell of my cleavage makes my nipples harden, and the need rises in me so sharply that it’s almost painful.
I find the button of her trousers and wrest it open, pulling down the zipper. I don’t want to go slowly, not now. Not when I’ve regained all I thought lost. I shift away from her and slide off the divan, onto my knees on the parquet. I hook my fingers in the waistband of her trousers and underwear, and she lifts her hips without my having to say a word.
Once she’s naked, I sit back on my heels, my hand resting on her knee, gently stroking her soft skin. She’s beautiful like this, sprawled on the divan, her eyes hooded, her hair mussed. I could look at her forever.
Forever and ever.
I rise onto my knees and lean forward, pressing her legs apart. Her thighs tremble as I flick out my tongue, teasing the hollow of sensitive flesh already damp with her arousal. I move to the other side, purposely avoiding where she wants me to be. I feel her hand in my hair, her nails scraping my scalp ever so delicately.
“Please, Colette.” Her words come out with a gasping whimper, and I glance up. Her lips are parted and her chest rises and falls. Her cheeks are flushed and the pinkness spreads down her neck and her chest. Her gaze meets mine, and I lower my head. When I part her with my tongue, her head falls back and she lets out a moan.
I love the taste of her, the sweet muskiness of her scent, the way her hips tilt up involuntarily toward my mouth. I take her clit between my lips and she arches up with a wordless cry. Her whole body shudders as I suck her, and her fingers tighten in my hair. She squirms closer, and I slip two fingers into her.
Lise stiffens, her toes curling on the parquet, pushing herself against my mouth. My hand is soaked with her orgasm. She’s breathing hard when I sit back, her eyes closed, and I raise myself onto the divan next to her. She cups my cheek, and I turn my head to press a kiss into her palm.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Her eyes flutter open and I don’t even need her to say it; her eyes say it all. But she does.
“I love you.”
About the Author
Alyssa Linn Palmer is a Canadian writer and freelance editor. She splits her time between a full-time day job and her part-time loves, writing and editing. She is a member of the RWA, the Calgary RWA, and RRW (Rainbow Romance Writers). She has a passion for Paris and all things French, which is reflected in her writing. When she’s not writing lesbian romance, she’s creating the dark, morally flawed characters of the Le Chat Rouge series and indulging in her addictions to classic pulp fiction.
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
First Love by CJ Harte. Finding true love is hard enough, but for Jordan Thompson, daughter of a conservative president, it’s challenging, especially when that love is a female rodeo cowgirl. (978-1-60282-949-7)
Pale Wings Protecting by Lesley Davis. Posing as a couple to investigate the abduction of infants, Special Agent Blythe Kent and Detective Daryl Chandler find themselves drawn into a battle over the innocents, with demons on one side and the unlikeliest of protectors on the other. (978-1-60282-964-0)
Mounting Danger by Karis Walsh. Sergeant Rachel Bryce, an outcast on the police force, is put in charge of the department’s newly formed mounted division. Can she and polo champion Callan Lanford resist their growing attraction as they struggle to safeguard the disaster-prone unit? (978-1-60282-951-0)
Meeting Chance by Jennifer Lavoie. When man’s best friend turns on Aaron Cassidy, the teen keeps his distance until fate puts Chance in his hands. (978-1-60282-952-7)
At Her Feet by Rebekah Weatherspoon. Digital marketing producer Suzanne Kim knows she has found the perfect love in her new mistress Pilar, but before they can make the ultimate commitment, Suzanne's professional life threatens to disrupt their perfectly balanced bliss. (978-1-60282-948-0)
Show of Force by AJ Quinn. A chance meeting between navy pilot Evan Kane and correspondent Tate McKenna takes them on a roller-coaster ride where the stakes are high, but the reward is higher: a chance at love. (978-1-60282-942-8)
Clean Slate by Andrea Bramhall. Can Erin and Morgan work through their individual demons to rediscover their love for each other, or are the unexplainable wounds too deep to heal? (978-1-60282-943-5)
Hold Me Forever by D. Jackson Leigh. An investigation into illegal cloning in the quarter horse racing industry threatens to destroy the growing attraction between Georgia debutante Mae St. John and Louisiana horse trainer Whit Casey. (978-1-60282-944-2)
Trusting Tomorrow by PJ Trebelhorn. Funeral director Logan Swift thinks she’s perfectly happy with her solitary life devoted to helping others cope with loss until Brooke Collier moves in next door to care for her elderly grandparents. (978-1-60282-891-9)
Forsaking All Others by Kathleen Knowles. What if what you think you want is the opposite of what makes you happy? (978-1-60282-892-6)
Exit Wounds by VK Powell. When Officer Loane Landry falls in love with ATF informant Abigail Mancuso, she realizes that nothing is as it seems—not the case, not her lover, not even the dead. (978-1-60282-893-
3)
Dirty Power by Ashley Bartlett. Cooper’s been through hell and back, and she’s still broke and on the run. But at least she found the twins. They’ll keep her alive. Right? (978-1-60282-896-4)
The Rarest Rose by I. Beacham. After a decade of living in her beloved house, Ele disturbs its past and finds her life being haunted by the presence of a ghost who will show her that true love never dies. (978-1-60282-884-1)
Code of Honor by Radclyffe. The face of terror is hard to recognize—especially when it’s homegrown. The next book in the Honor series. (978-1-60282-885-8)
Does She Love You? by Rachel Spangler. When Annabelle and Davis find out they are both in a relationship with the same woman, it leaves them facing life-altering questions about trust, redemption, and the possibility of finding love in the wake of betrayal. (978-1-60282-886-5)
The Road to Her by KE Payne. Sparks fly when actress Holly Croft, star of UK soap Portobello Road, meets her new on-screen love interest, the enigmatic and sexy Elise Manford. (978-1-60282-887-2)
Shadows of Something Real by Sophia Kell Hagin. Trying to escape flashbacks and nightmares, ex-POW Jamie Gwynmorgan stumbles into the heart of former Red Cross worker Adele Sabellius and uncovers a deadly conspiracy against everything and everyone she loves. (978-1-60282-889-6)
Date with Destiny by Mason Dixon. When sophisticated bank executive Rashida Ivey meets unemployed blue collar worker Destiny Jackson, will her life ever be the same? (978-1-60282-878-0)
The Devil’s Orchard by Ali Vali. Cain and Emma plan a wedding before the birth of their third child while Juan Luis is still lurking, and as Cain plans for his death, an unexpected visitor arrives and challenges her belief in her father, Dalton Casey. (978-1-60282-879-7)
Secrets and Shadows by L.T. Marie. A bodyguard and the woman she protects run from a madman and into each other’s arms. (978-1-60282-880-3)
Change Horizons: Three Novellas by Gun Brooke. Three stories of courageous women who dare to love as they fight to claim a future in a hostile universe. (978-1-60282-881-0)
Scarlet Thirst by Crin Claxton. When hot, feisty Rani meets cool, vampire Rob, one lifetime isn’t enough, and the road from human to vampire is shorter than you think… (978-1-60282-856-8)
Battle Axe by Carsen Taite. How close is too close? Bounty hunter Luca Bennett will soon find out. (978-1-60282-871-1)
Improvisation by Karis Walsh. High school geometry teacher Jan Carroll thinks she’s figured out the shape of her life and her future, until graphic artist and fiddle player Tina Nelson comes along and teaches her to improvise. (978-1-60282-872-8)
For Want of a Fiend by Barbara Ann Wright. Without her Fiendish power, can Princess Katya and her consort Starbride stop a magic-wielding madman from sparking an uprising in the kingdom of Farraday? (978-1-60282-873-5)
Broken in Soft Places by Fiona Zedde. The instant Sara Chambers meets the seductive and sinful Merille Thompson, she falls hard, but knowing the difference between love and a dangerous, all-consuming desire is just one of the lessons Sara must learn before it’s too late. (978-1-60282-876-6)
Healing Hearts by Donna K. Ford. Running from tragedy, the women of Willow Springs find that with friendship, there is hope, and with love, there is everything. (978-1-60282-877-3)
Desolation Point by Cari Hunter. When a storm strands Sarah Kent in the North Cascades, Alex Pascal is determined to find her. Neither imagines the dangers they will face when a ruthless criminal begins to hunt them down. (978-1-60282-865-0)
I Remember by Julie Cannon. What happens when you can never forget the first kiss, the first touch, the first taste of lips on skin? What happens when you know you will remember every single detail of a mysterious woman? (978-1-60282-866-7)
The Gemini Deception by Kim Baldwin and Xenia Alexiou. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but lies. Book six in the Elite Operatives series. (978-1-60282-867-4)
Scarlet Revenge by Sheri Lewis Wohl. When faith alone isn’t enough, will the love of one woman be strong enough to save a vampire from damnation? (978-1-60282-868-1)
Ghost Trio by Lillian Q. Irwin. When Lee Howe hears the voice of her dead lover singing to her, is it a hallucination, a ghost, or something more sinister? (978-1-60282-869-8)
The Princess Affair by Nell Stark. Rhodes Scholar Kerry Donovan arrives at Oxford ready to focus on her studies, but her life and her priorities are thrown into chaos when she catches the eye of Her Royal Highness Princess Sasha. (978-1-60282-858-2)
The Chase by Jesse J. Thoma. When Isabelle Rochat’s life is threatened, she receives the unwelcome protection and attention of bounty hunter Holt Lasher who vows to keep Isabelle safe at all costs. (978-1-60282-859-9)
The Lone Hunt by L.L. Raand. In a world where humans and praeterns conspire for the ultimate power, violence is a way of life…and death. A Midnight Hunters novel. (978-1-60282-860-5)
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