Because she was my student. And because I was wrongfully imprisoned in a marriage to a woman who was at best, dead, and at worst, smiling to herself at my purgatory.
Until then, I had the pleasure of seeing her for hours during which I had to pretend my body wasn’t decaying without her. Until then, I enjoyed the numerous memories of every second I spent in her presence. And if that wasn’t enough, tonight I was given the opportunity to watch as the naked imbécile I’d hired to stand still and do nothing began to flirt with what belonged to me.
Elle était la mienne. She was mine.
I brought the flask back to my lips, swearing under my breath when I realized that it was empty. Class was cut early—both because there was literally nothing else I could pick apart about her drawing and because I wanted to get her away from him—and me—before I did something stupid. Like rip his balls off for daring to look.
I went straight to my office before either of them left. I couldn’t be trusted to be alone with her. Flask in hand, I left my coat and forced myself out into the bitter cold. Alcohol and freezing temperatures were my last resort to control myself.
Pour me sauver. In order to save me.
It didn’t work.
It was open. My eyes narrowed at my cracked office door that I knew I’d left shut. Who could want anything I had? There was nothing of value inside—nothing except my sketchbook filled with drawings of her
My whole body tensed with the rush of adrenaline. It was all I could have of her, and I’d kill anyone who tried to take it from me.
Troian.
The adrenaline was quickly doused by desire.
She was here.
“Can I help you find something, Miss Milanovic?”
Elle était la mienne. She was mine.
The chills that ran up my spine announced him long before his voice did. My body froze. My lungs refused to breathe. Every sense was alert. I hadn’t heard him on the steps. I hadn’t heard the door drift open. But I knew he was there.
“Can I help you find something, Miss Milanovic?”
I shouldn’t have come up here, but he ended the class and disappeared, his frustration following him like a cloud of sexual smoke. I took my time putting my things away—going back and forth whether I should try to get my book back.
Just look down the hallway and if the light is off, then he’s left for the night.
Sure enough, the door was closed and there was no light coming out from underneath, so, I let myself in. The office was no better than his person—papers and disarray everywhere. I had the overwhelming urge to organize it.
God, I was a terrible thief. No, I wasn’t a thief. It’s not stealing to take back what was mine. My book. My heart.
One by one my vertebrae straightened into a perfect tower before I slowly turned to face him. The first thing that glinted was the flask in his hand. He’d been drinking. The second was how ragged he looked—more than normal. Like finally the emotions he’d been holding inside were seeping from his skin.
“I want my book back,” I said, crossing my arms and notching my chin up.
“What book?” He stepped into the room and immediately it felt a thousand times smaller—like the world around me was shrinking until there would be nothing left but him.
“You know what book—my copy of Les Fleurs du Mal.”
He nodded, setting the flask down on his desk. “And what makes you think I have it?”
“I left it in class last week and when I came in Monday it was gone.” He arched an eyebrow, resting his narrow hips lazily on the desk. “And then you quoted him today.”
“Je suis français, ma petite—we all quote him.”
Liar.
I felt my anger rising. First, he sent me away and now he was holding my crutch hostage.
“Professor Baudin, I want my book and I want my… the drawing… you did of me.” I stumbled over the last few words.
A shadow crossed his face; he wasn’t expecting that.
“No.”
I gaped at him. He couldn’t do that—say that.
“No? You can’t—That’s my—” I stepped toward him like I was actually going to do something about it. “You can’t keep it.”
“I can and I will.”
“Why?” I demanded, taking another step closer. “I thought you didn’t want me. Or are you just a perv and you want to keep it to jack off to later?”
The hard lines on his face cracked with a smile as he answered, “No.” I hated how the answer disappointed me. I liked the thought of him stroking himself as he looked at… remembered me. “I’m keeping it because it’s mine. I drew it.”
“But it’s of me!” I was yelling. I was yelling at my professor, and I didn’t care.
And he didn’t like it.
“And it’s the first thing I’ve been able to really draw for months!” he roared back, his hands shooting out and knocking over the metal flask he’d set down. He groaned and speared a hand through his hair and tugging on the wavy strands.
My heart thundered to a stop and then began pawing at the ground, ready to race again as I processed his words. He hadn’t been able to draw—to do the one thing that he was clearly passionate about—until me. Me. Troian Milanovic. The chemist’s daughter.
Was this what feeling special felt like?
Neither of us spoke. I didn’t know what to say. My eyes drifted down his body, only now realizing he wasn’t wearing a jacket even though he had to have been outside. And then they slid over to the flask, finally noticing that the cap had popped off of it when it fell, but no liquid had come out.
“Are you drunk?” I asked hoarsely.
He stepped back from me and let out a pained laugh—the one that was all raw and husky and felt like it rubbed right over all of my most sensitive spots. “No… I wish. Je souhaite.”
“Why? Can’t stand to be around yourself either?” I taunted, irritated that he’d moved away from me like I was a leper. “What’s your problem? Why are you always so sad?”
His head jerked back like I’d slapped him.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said sad. Maybe I should have said angry or rude or intense. But they were all because of sad.
“I’m not sad,” he scoffed.
“Liar.”
“Does this look like someone who is sad to you?”
“Tortured,” I whispered, feeling the gravity in his eyes pulling me down. “Who tortured you?” Sparks cracked in the air between us. I was on to something and like a fuse, I kept lighting closer and closer to the point where he would explode. “Tell me who hurt you.”
My fingers dug into my arms wanting to touch his face, to soothe the harsh planes.
“I know what it’s like to do everything and not have it be enough, Miss Milanovic,” he said with a low, strained voice. “I know what it’s like to not be enough.”
My heart swelled and ached. Even though he’d hurt me knowing that I felt the same, I ached for him.
I expected rejection. I was fully prepared for it when my right hand released my arm and extended out a few inches so that my fingertips could touch his chest. I could feel the beating of his heart and the heat of his skin through his shirt. The world was gone. I didn’t notice as the rest of it slipped away, I only knew now that nothing else existed except the two of us. I saw only him. I breathed only him. I touched only him. I existed only because he did.
And he didn’t pull away.
He stayed and kept me alive.
“You would be enough for me,” I whispered, dragging my gaze from my fingers up to his.
His head dipped until I felt the brush of his lips against the shell of my ear.
“I would be too much for you, ma petite.” His laugh was low and mocking, setting my anger and lust to a boil.
“Maybe I would be too much for you, Monsieur.” We warred with words. Strike and parry.
“You already are.” Heat gushed between my thighs. This was too much for my body, that was for sure. �
�And still I want more.”
Hope seared through my like wildfire and desire followed like suffocating smoke in its wake. I thought of those stupid finger traps—the ones you stick a finger in each side, but when you go to pull, it tightens around them and makes it impossible for you to get out of. Stupid, simple, and counterintuitive. It was like him and me—from the moment we met, something had connected us and the harder we tried to pull away from each other, the tighter—the stronger—the hold it had on us was.
Still, he would fight it.
He stepped back and the world crashed down around me again. The night. The office. What I came for.
“You should go,” he clipped, walking around his desk and yanking open the top drawer. My Baudelaire appeared in his hand.
Then he was in front of me again, pressing the book to my chest and repeated, “Go.”
I clasped the book and his hand to me. “You don’t want me to.”
His exhale was like the slice of a knife through the air. “People like you and me, Troian, we don’t get what we want.”
“Maybe that means we should take it.”
He threw his head back, his laugh like a plea to the gods to save him from me… and from himself. “Do you want me to fuck you, ma petite? You want to know for sure whether or not I would break that hungry little pussy of yours? She doesn’t even know,” he groaned while I fought to breathe. “She doesn’t even know how much I want to ruin her… how much I want to see my cock painted white and red with her desire and her blood. Mon Dieu, it’s all I can think about.”
He spun and this time both hands gripped his head.
And so the lamb sacrificed herself to the lion…
“Do you want to know what my favorite quote by Baudelaire is?” I said breathlessly, my hands making silent work of undoing my pants and slipping them to the ground.
“Tell me why I care,” he snarled, refusing to turn back to me. “Go, Miss Milanovic. Go before I do something we both regret.”
“You care because you shared yours earlier,” I informed him calmly even as my heart felt like it was firing off automatic rounds inside my chest, killing me instead of keeping me alive.
“Go.”
“You shared yours because you took my book.” My shirt landed noiselessly on top of my pants in a pile at my feet as I reached to undo my bra. “And you took my book because you wanted to know how I feel.”
Silence.
I smiled because this was it; this was the battle that I was going to win.
And Baudelaire? He was my Trojan horse.
“So then tell me, little girl,” he said angrily as he whipped around, “tell me and then leave.”
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas.
In the things we loathe become the things we love.
I stood there, naked except for my navy blue thong. I’d turned slightly so that the tattoo of my favorite quote was facing him. Goosebumps littered my skin. My nipples were pebbled against the cool air, moving raggedly up and down with my breath.
My smile grew watching him realize that everything he thought he had under control was about to be destroyed. Centuries from now, history books would record this battle as the one that Troy won.
He walked toward me to make me pay for my victory. But he looked like he was going to pay for it, too.
The tick in his jaw mesmerized me as he stopped an inch from me.
“Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas,” he spoke the words carved into my skin and desire strangled me—thick and taut around my body—like he’d just pulled out a piece of my soul. I felt it in my breasts that were heavy and aching. I felt it leaking down my thighs. I breathed it in.
“Léo…” I exhaled his name.
“Do you think I hate you, ma petite?” he asked hoarsely, reaching out with one finger and lightly tracing over the black inky letters that screamed against my pale skin.
“Do you?” I gazed at him through hooded eyes.
I’d never seen his eyes so dark before.
“I don’t loathe you, ma petite, but you will hate me after what I do to you. You don’t want me to touch you. You don’t know what you are begging for,” he murmured softly as regret darkened his classical features.
My breaths faltered, tripping and stumbling down into my lungs, drunk on desire and desperation.
“I do know. And I won’t regret it. All I regret is the emptiness I feel, the loss of every cell of oxygen when you make me leave. Don’t make me leave.”
His fingers moved along the side swell of my breast.
“You should be thanking me for making you leave. Just like I made ce connard leave you that night at the bar. I’m only trying to save you, Troian. I’m only trying to save you from me. I’m not a good man,” he warned. “I have nothing I can give you.”
“I don’t need saving. And I don’t believe that.” I sucked in a breath as his fingers pushed into my aching skin, literally trying to push my buttons. “You’re just lonely… just like me. You’re hurt… just like me. You’re broken… just like me. And just like me, you know what we have is something that can’t be stopped.
“Just because you can’t stop a tornado or a hurricane, ma petite, doesn’t mean you don’t run from it.”
I shuddered. “You know neither of us are capable of running… only fighting.” His fingers froze. The moment drifting in slow motion to a complete halt. “Whatever kinds of broken you and I are, the jagged edges are a perfect match. I won’t regret this, Léo… I’ll never regret this with you.”
I watched him shudder as he touched me, like every second we were in contact pulled him farther apart.
“Last chance, ma petite. Please… this is your last chance to escape this… to escape me.” Resignation weighed his words. I was afraid I’d lost the fight—that I’d given my all and it still wasn’t enough—just like every other time.
“I don’t want to escape,” I declared as I grabbed his wrist and turned to him, holding it hard against my breast so he could feel the broke beats of my heart. My teeth dug into my lip for a moment to stifle a moan. “I want too much… I want you.”
He looked at his hand like it had betrayed him. Like it was the hand that took the money for betraying Jesus to the Romans, like it was the hand of Brutus that stabbed Caesar, and like it was the hand that would sacrifice the lion for the lamb.
“Comme tu veux.” As you wish.
Only in our world would the words of defeat sound like a battle cry.
A second later, his mouth was on mine and all thought was gone.
This wasn’t Twilight. The lion wouldn’t fall in love with the lamb.
The lion would destroy the lamb and the lamb would come willingly.
I was panting when he pulled back from the kiss. I didn’t know how long he’d held my mouth captive, but my lips were swollen and tingling and my entire body licked with fire. Emotions and insecurities wracked my body when he stepped back from me. There were papers all over the desk and even the floor, books missing off of the bookcase to my right; and then there were the books sitting on the small couch behind me that I’d been in the process of going through when he came in. Suddenly, the mess of the office didn’t bother me—instead it comforted me that I wasn’t alone in my disarray.
I wondered if his office back in Paris was like this. I wondered if he’d done this with other students before. I wondered if the woman who hurt him had been one.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, afraid I might beg him to please not send me away again. He stood frozen like the statues he taught us about, hard, harsh, and brittle, staring at my body. I fought the urge to apologize or to make light of the fact that I knew I wasn’t much to look at, especially when he’d screwed Giselle just a few weeks ago. Anxiety, embarrassment, and arousal ran rampant as I shifted my weight.
Then he was back in front of me. The hand that had been on my side now tipped my chin up to make me stare into his eyes.
“Parfaite.”
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I didn’t have to hear the hushed word for my insecurities to be crushed and then incinerated by the desire raging in his gaze. I felt my heart thunder against my chest.
He wanted me… so much that it was destroying him not to take me.
“Parfaite, ma petite. Parfaite. Toute la mienne.”
I hoped I could make it. Every word in French that slipped from his mouth made my sex clench harder with the need to come.
To force me to swallow the torture, his lips reclaimed mine and this kiss was punishing. His tongue was hot and firm as it pressed against my lips, demanding to be let inside. It was hungrier and more desperate. My hands curled into his wrinkled shirt and pulled myself tighter to him. I felt every inch where the coarse fabric rubbed on my naked skin. It made me even wetter.
That kiss became my world. Tilting and turning, it wasn’t steady. But it was all I had to hold on to.
I arched harder against him. Every inch of my body was too sensitive, like after a sunburn, even the brush of his clothing was painful; it hurt and it made me angry.
I broke the kiss and pushed back, gasping. “Take them off,” I demanded, even though I was in no position to. “I want to see you.” I couldn’t take being the only one naked. Again.
Léo looked at me with that irritated desperation that I was becoming addicted to. He didn’t want to obey my commands. But at the same time, he needed me like I needed him. It made him lose control over things he should have control over and he hated that.
And then his mouth tipped up in an arrogant, punishing smirk—like he knew what he was about to do could torture me further. He wanted me, but he’d always been better as self-control. I, on the other hand, was needy and desperate. My soul recognized something in his and my body wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d claimed all of it.
But then he began to undress and my mouth and all my thoughts dried up.
His shirt was the first to go and while it was covered in wrinkles, the skin and muscle it hid beneath was nothing but flat and hard and smooth. I took in greedily the wide planes of his chest that sculpted down over his stomach that was tightened into way more than six knots. The only trace of hair was the trail that led from his abdomen down below the waistband of his pants. Without the shirt hanging out in front, I could see the huge bulge of his arousal pushing heavily against the khaki fabric.
The Fall of Troy Page 21
