“Minou.” He sank into her. “Yes, I really think so.”
She kissed him back eagerly, while his hand explored further under the elastic of her panties, stroked over soft hair there, slid until he gently cupped her. His hand found soft, damp openness. She shivered for him, already blooming. “Wh-what’s that?” she asked breathlessly. In the low glow of the lamp, her pupils had narrowed the green of her eyes to a thin rim.
He gave a little low laugh. “My hand.” He bent his head close to her ear, brushing his face into her hair. “Ta chopinette.”
She twisted her head to look at him, confused, and his hand made an explicit movement, illustrating the word for her.
She gasped, her body tightening around him, curling into him before it relaxed, all her muscles losing their power. Oh yes, his control of his hands was absolute.
“I meant—” she clutched into him again, pressing scattered, lost, hungry kisses on his chest, no control in her at all. But he loved it. He loved that she had no control. “Minou. What does that—mean?”
“Minou?” He let his fingers slide up and down her, parting her, every helpless clutch and slackening of her body a sweet victory. “It’s just”—He tested the precision of his fingers in a tiny, grazing circle.
Her fingernails sank into his arm.
“—a word for someone special.” When he was working on an oeuvre d’art, a sculpture, a new chocolate, a new pastry, he made sure he got things exactly to the millimeter right. He tested his tiny, grazing circle—to make sure he was to the millimeter perfect.
She made a strangled sound into his chest. Her pants hit his pectorals, warming him, dampening him.
“Minou.” Or maybe this way, the circle?
She scrubbed her head against him frantically, her face tucked down so she could watch what he was doing.
“Chouchou.” Sometimes, a circle might not be the right shape. Maybe a little brushing back and forth ...
She made a little sobbing sound.
“Coeur,” he whispered, and slid one finger deep inside her as his thumb pressed down. “Mon coeur.”
She convulsed around him, dragging at him with a sudden wild burst of strength, as she came to his hand.
So sweet, to feel her body clutching on him so desperately, to let his palm ride her gently down, to catch her as she fell. He kissed her slowly, deeply, her mouth, over her throat, her shoulders, as all her muscles came undone, leaving her body at last limp and quiet in his hold, her hands stroking vaguely over him. He stripped off her panties, shaking now himself. He always had control. He always did. But just in a minute now, he would—he would—
The towel, half-lost long ago, tangled around his thighs. He wrenched it free and threw it across the room.
She drew one thigh dreamily up his, satiated but seeming to enjoy the stroking motion, the softness of her inner thigh running along the gilded hardness of his. Her head had fallen back on the pillows. She gazed up at him langorously, her skin all pink everywhere from his touch, her lips flush and open like her sex was flush and open as he settled his against it. Putain, that look of hers, dreamy and happy, blushing and open, sated and yet offering herself to him, one thigh rubbing up and down his, opening herself further.
He drove into her harder than he meant to, a sudden violent surge. Her eyes flared wide, and she gasped, both legs coming up and tightening hard around him.
“Pardon. I didn’t mean”—
She put her hand over his mouth, and he shut it instantly. Entirely at her command. She shook her head slowly, in that tangle of hair, her eyes smoked emeralds. “Do it again.”
Braced on his elbows, he took a deep breath, staring down at her. He didn’t mean to, but he did—do it again. Even harder.
She made a little moaning sound and her hips arched up into his.
“Coeur,” he whispered again. “Mon coeur.”
“Simon,” she said, one almost strengthless hand coming up to his shoulder, drifting slowly over it and down his arm, as if she lacked the muscles to keep it up.
He always ...
He always had ...
He lost control.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Later, Simon tucked her under him, slipping his weight to the side so the bed took most of it, instead of her soft body. But he kept his hardness curved over her, one arm under her weight on the bed, wrapping her to him. Exclamation points seemed to snow softly down on him, a subsiding storm, golden flakes that fell gently against his skin and caressed it as they melted into him.
He felt exhausted, but in the best way possible, as if endorphins were releasing into his system after some merciless effort. Or as if muscles that had been working far longer than he realized had suddenly relaxed, abandoning him completely as they wallowed in the rest. Even with the open window, her small cube of an apartment was too hot on this July night, and, now that more important hungers were no longer overwhelming him, he was starving for actual food. But he curled over her just a little bit longer, because he liked it here.
He liked being snowed on by exclamation points.
He liked being part of her dream.
Ellie fell asleep, but Simon’s movements woke her again. He had pulled the towel back around himself and was sitting in her little chair in front of her easel with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, gazing at the easel as if he might eat it. He looked over at her when she rolled to her side. “I’m absolutely starving,” he confessed, shame-faced. “The running. I think I’ll try to catch that épicerie at the corner before it closes.” He glanced at the heart-rate monitor on his wrist for the time, which must be close to midnight. “Otherwise I might gnaw off a leg. Literally, in a way. My body’s breaking down muscles right now. Is there anything you would particularly like?”
For just one heart-wounding second, she had thought he was looking for an excuse to escape. But the last question meant he was coming back. She relaxed happily. “I can make some pasta. I’ve got some gruyère and petits lardons.” She had been so delighted with the presence of those last two items in grocery stores as basic staples, not as costly luxuries. “And some yogurt.”
He smiled at her, and her heart flipped over. It was such an open, relaxed smile, so different from his usual controlled tension. He was naked but for a towel, showing all that spare long body, the narrow waist and strong shoulders and not an ounce of fat on him anywhere, it made her want to hide her curves under a sheet how little fat he had. His hair was flopped over his forehead every which way, and ... he was smiling at her. As if he liked every curve about her. “That would be perfect. I’ll just go get something to supplement it.”
“Perfect” seemed a little generous from one of the world’s top chefs toward boxed pasta with gruyère grated over it. And yogurt for dessert. She wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging that generosity to her. It seemed to indicate he was willing to put up with a lot to spend more time with her.
He went into the bathroom and came out pulling on his running clothes, grimacing as their old-sweat dampness hit his skin. She started to push out of bed, feeling around for her shoes.
“No, I’ll go.” He smiled at her again. The tenderness in it seemed to just wrap her up and tuck her back into the bed. “Don’t get dressed.”
Oh. She subsided, clutching the sheet to her chest, her heart thudding against the heel of her palm. That made him smile again. She hadn’t even known he had it in him to look so relaxed and so very, very happy. “I’m sorry I don’t have more food in the place,” she offered as he pulled on his running shoes. “I just moved here last week, and it’s so small, there’s not much storage.” She had mostly been eating pastries since she got here, to tell the truth.
“I like it.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob, his gaze drifting to the corners of the small space and back to her, as if he was following light back to its source. “It’s full of a dream.”
They ate the midnight supper on her bed, for lack of a proper table. Simon came back with tw
o full bags, cherries and peaches, packages of ham and the kind of charcuterie you couldn’t find in the States, some more cheese, and a baguette for which he was very apologetic. Something about its crust being mou. “I’ll feed you better than this next time. I promise.”
Next time? Maybe her fiancé had just ceased to exist, like the figment of her imagination he was. She blinked as Simon pulled his shirt back over his head, stripping immediately naked again, in front of her, as if there was nothing to that at all, while her mouth dropped open, not even remotely accustomed to the impact of that body being unveiled. He didn’t even notice. He laid his clothes over her windowsill to dry and wrapped a towel around his waist again. Then started preparing sandwiches to accompany her pasta, with the efficiency of a man who could not wait anymore. She marveled a little at his discipline in not biting into one of the peaches while he worked, given how starving he clearly was. He might be starving, but he ate when the meal was ready, and with her, not while she was still draining the pasta.
Simon acted embarrassed from time to time—at the fact that he was feeding her packaged ham and a stale baguette on her bed rather than taking her to a nice restaurant, at how much he ate—nearly the whole pound of pasta, to start. But he seemed to have fun, too, grinning sometimes like a boy camping out.
She had fun. The night lights and soft noises of Paris coming through her open window. Someone to share it with. Him. He seemed to center himself in the middle of her dream and make it true. Like its lodestone.
When they finished, he gathered the sheet up carefully from each corner so nothing spilled out, took it to the window, and shook out all the crumbs. Turning back, the sheet floated open between them, a fine white separation.
That suddenly enveloped her completely, as if she had been kidnapped by a ghost. Only this ghost was warm and hard, all real through the sheet. He toppled her back onto the bed, laughing, and let her pull the sheet off her face, as he held her tight, his face just above hers, his body pressing her into the bed.
He was laughing, but his focus grew slowly more intent, as his eyes traced over her hair, her face. He pulled one arm out from under her and slid the other one up so that her head was cradled on it. His breaths grew deep.
He drew one finger very carefully down her arm, the whole length of it, over her shoulder, down past her elbow, down the side of her forearm to her wrist, watching the path of it with absorption. “You know, I’m such a geek, that I really might touch every millimeter of your skin,” he said ruefully.
Her breath came in on a little rush. His eyes lifted to hers, focused on what he saw there. The ruefulness faded away before a fascinated wonder. “To see if you react differently to this—” he drew his thumbnail faintly down the inside of her wrist, making her shiver and stretch. “And this—” he repeated the gesture ... a millimeter to the left. “Or this.” He used his whole thumb, a broad stroke of the slightly callused pad.
She made a little shivering sound of pleasure, her eyes closing, her face turning into the arm that curled under her head. When she opened them again, he was watching her. That intent look of his, but something so much softer in it.
“Just to give you fair warning.” He lowered his head.
From her open window the next morning, he could see rooftops and a narrow glimpse of street below, and lines of casement windows with iron balcony railings. It seemed a very ordinary view to him. He remembered her ecstasies about it on her blog. “Are you going to tell him?” he asked without looking around, his voice absurdly grim.
Absurd because there was no him to tell, but her willingness to admit that right now would mean—whether she was playing or not. Whether she was even thinking about letting him keep her vivid happiness in his life. Or whether he was the French chocolatier who completed a food blogger’s perfect Paris postcard. He liked being part of her dream, but not if he didn’t have any dimensions in it beyond “French lover.”
How the hell Frenchmen had gotten the reputation for being so good at casual affairs, he did not know. He, personally, was merde at them, and he felt an icy dread that he was about to find himself forced into the role.
She sat up slowly in the bed, drawing up her knees and pulling the sheet around her. Now he did turn his head enough to see her face. She looked at a loss. Her hair spilled around her shoulders in exuberant waves that had been tangled into a mess by his hands, and her face was flushed from—him.
I’m not going into that pigeonhole, Ellie. And if you don’t like it, you should have looked before you leapt, because I do long-term impossible goals pretty damn well.
“I ...” she said slowly, and his hands clenched over her balcony railing.
She climbed out of bed, taking the sheet with her, clutched to her chest, and he followed that movement involuntarily. Wistfully. The sheet draped softly, precariously between her body and his, and left her entire backside naked. Within grabbing distance. Why the hell had he started this conversation? Ah, oui—he had thought she would confess all.
Where had the humor in that farcical fiancé gone?
“I—I don’t know if we need to bring my fiancé into this at all, really,” she said.
His hands tightened on the railing. He drew in a breath, pulling the blow inside him, deep, keeping his outside still, controlled. “Ah. I beg your pardon. So it was that kind of evening.”
Her eyes flickered. “No, I didn’t mean—” She floundered to a stop. Gave her head a shake and gathered herself. “I mean, what kind of evening was it for you? Are we ... are we dating?” Her voice dropped to a shy, scared whisper.
What the hell? Why scared? Was she afraid she had just attracted the attention of an insane stalker? The only difference between the way he felt right now—ready to pursue carefully and relentlessly a woman who barely knew him—and the way a stalker felt was the degree to which she wanted or resisted the attention.
Probably a pretend fiancé counted as resisting.
“We’re not dating,” he said flatly.
She reached out and closed her hand around the easel. “Oh.” She looked as if he had just struck her.
“You’re cheating on your fiancé. I believe it’s a time-honored tradition: the affair in Paris.”
She blinked. Her eyes sparkled suddenly. “Like a story!”
A hard spear of rage drove through him. This was fun to her, wasn’t it? And it was completely outrageous for him to have played on that sense of fun starting out and now be furiously wounded by the same thing.
“Not like a story.”
She pulled her lip in under her teeth nervously. “No?”
“Here’s an idea: think about it a little bit and tell me if you figure out any differences between our situation and a story.”
She mulled that over so long, he went to the door and put his hand on the knob, which, being hard metal, was safer to strangle.
“I’m real?” she offered tentatively.
He stared at her grimly. And waited.
She shook her head definitely. “You are not real. There’s no way you can be. You’re too perfect.”
He gaped at her, dumbfounded, fury growing so powerfully even he had a hard time controlling it. He wasn’t real? What the hell? How much more real could he be? His muscles ached everywhere from having added thirteen kilometers extra onto his twenty-kilometer run the night before, a radical violation of his training schedule that was probably going to ruin his chances at the Vichy triathlon next month. He sure as hell felt real to him. “As opposed to your fiancé?”
She nibbled more on her lip. “Cal’s not perfect. I mean—there’s that French nurse.”
He was going to kill her. His teeth bared. “You’re well-suited, then.”
She startled, clearly having forgotten somehow, even in the midst of this discussion, that she should perhaps not throw stones at cheating fiancés.
At least he could have beaten out a real fiancé. Especially one who flirted with his nurse. Instead of which, he was boxing with someone els
e’s daydream. He scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling drained, as probably befitted a man who had run thirty-three kilometers, stayed up all night making love, and then discovered he was second best to a fictitious fiancé who had been run over by a damn moped. “So where does that leave us?”
She nibbled on her lip some more. She was going to drive him crazy, nibbling on her lip like that, with only that barely clutched sheet between him, and her entire back and fesses exposed to the air just where he couldn’t see. “Where exactly do you want it to leave us?”
He began to dress quickly. Someone preferred to work with a safety net while she left her partner venturing out over some drastic drops, didn’t she? On the other hand, he could see why she had a right to not want to let that sweet, soft vibrancy of hers hit any brutal rocks below. He looked at her a long moment. “I’ll tell you what. You let go of that fiancé of yours, and throw yourself at me, and I promise I’ll catch you.”
He jerked the door open and headed downstairs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Why hadn’t she just told him? What was wrong with her? She could have enough courage to uproot her life and move to Paris, but a gorgeous man showed some interest in joining her in that dream, and she hid behind a fiancé who couldn’t even dodge an old lady with a baguette?
The odd thing was that fiancé over there in—she needed to look up some Paris hospital names—flirting with nurses, was starting to feel very reassuring. Like the teddy bear she had hidden between the bed and the wall last night, but which was now safely back on her pillow, something she could hold on to, that kept her world from becoming entirely topsy-turvy.
If she just returned to single and available status all of a sudden ... she would be working without a chute. And if she hit the ground in broken bits this time, there would be no friends or family to bake her cakes, to take her out clubbing, to help her bounce back.
It was all very well of him to say he would catch her. But—if he didn’t—he would be just fine.
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