A Second Chance at Paris

by Cole McCade

She needed a twelve-step program.

  Ion nuzzled her shoulder. “You don’t have to answer right now.”

  “Mm.” She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper. “It’s probably not smart to talk about the other women you’ve slept with while in bed with the latest.”

  His chuckle shook them both. “Are you the jealous type?”

  “Never really thought about it.”

  “Then don’t start now. There’s no comparison.”

  She looked up at him, wishing…wishing he could say that if he knew her. Knew there’d been no comparison years ago, either—because she hadn’t measured up. He hadn’t known she was alive. She bit her lip. “Why do you do that?” she asked, a flush heating her cheeks. “Keep pushing like that…over and over.”

  “Because it’s beautiful, watching a woman discover her limits.” His lips grazed her throat. Her breath caught when he found a spot he’d bitten to tender sensitivity. “In the end, it’s not about me. It’s about you, and how much you can take.”

  She shivered, and told herself yet again it was the chill. Not what he’d done to her body—and the havoc he’d wreaked on her heart. It meant nothing. She was just one in a long line of women. Another notch on his bedpost. Just because he was a sensitive, attentive lover didn’t mean anything except he was good with his hands. And tongue. And…

  How much you can take.

  She didn’t know if her heart could take much more.

  Ducking her head, she hid against him. “You’re full of lines. One day I’ll believe them.”

  “Not a line. Just how I am.” His lips grazed her throat with his curving smile. “You’ll never believe I’m not putting on some Rico Suave act, will you?”

  “One day. Maybe. Some time around the eventual heat death of the universe.”

  “Sounds like that gives me time to convince you.”

  “Not so much.”

  “I had no idea the universe was so short-lived. Should I get my affairs in order?”

  “Sure. Things should at least be neat before they’re blown to cosmic dust.”

  “So did you—”

  Celeste groaned and thunked her fist against his chest. “If you ask me if I saw stars, I will hurt you.”

  “How do you know I wouldn’t like that?” he growled.

  She blinked and pushed back to eye him. He was lazy as a giant wildcat, eyes heavy-lidded and sleepy, hair tousled and mussed. She couldn’t stop her possessive flush; she’d done that. “You’re a complete deviant, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “What can I say? You bring it out in me.” At her skeptical look, he laughed. “Seriously. I’ve had a lot on my mind. You’re the first thing to clear my head.”

  “See? That’s how you flatter a girl. Heartfelt honesty. Not all that poetry.”

  “Then I shouldn’t—”

  “No.” She touched her fingertips to his lips; fond, giddy warmth bubbled in her chest. “Just no. Quit while you’re ahead, Shakespeare.”

  His eyes softened. He kissed her fingertips before gathering her closer and touching his lips to her brow, lingering. Celeste closed her eyes and let herself just be, savoring this as long as she could. As long as she could hold on to the fantasy, before reality broke it to pieces.

  If she was honest with herself, she should leave. She needed to prepare for tomorrow’s workshop. Something non-explosive. Her “talk” with the conference administrators had set that limitation pretty quickly. Which meant she should work up a presentation, maybe dig up something on that new planetoid beyond Pluto. Her reputation had probably taken a hard hit with this morning’s disaster, and if she wanted anyone to even think about hiring her she needed to be flawless for the rest of the week.

  Later. She had time. She’d spent so long with her head in the clouds, but right now there was nowhere she’d rather be than grounded right here.

  With him.

  His sigh barely broke the stillness, a whispering part of the deep blue night. “I don’t know anything about you. Except that you love the stars…and I like the way you feel right now.”

  “You could ask,” she murmured.

  “Where are you from?”

  It took everything in her not to stiffen, remaining relaxed in his arms. How could she answer that? She didn’t want to add another lie to the list, but if she said Bayou’s End or New Orleans, he’d ask questions. She exhaled shakily, searching for some kind of middle ground. Anything to keep from deceiving him again.

  “Los Angeles, most recently,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Guess I’m like you. Can’t call just one place home.”

  “Did your family move around like mine?”

  “No…not so much. It’s just me, my sister, and Dad. Mom died when I was younger.”

  His hands clenched against her back. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She smiled slightly. Her memories of her mother were as faded and tattered as an old photograph, but she still remembered the fresh, cool scent that had clung to her when she’d come in from the garden. Ophelia took after their mother, short and vivid and energetic, while Celeste had always been more like their father. “I still miss her, but we had Dad…and each other. Sometimes I feel bad that my older sister had to play mom sometimes, but she was always there for me.”

  “I have a sister like that. Scheherazade,” he said, warmth unmistakable. She vaguely remembered Scheherazade: tall, dusky, carefree wildness paired with polished grace. She’d been a senior by Celeste’s freshman year, so far out of her social sphere she was barely a glimmer on the edges. “She was the one who kept me and my little sister from being lonely when we’d move to a new place every few years.”

  “I don’t think I could do that. I like having a home to love. One I can keep.”

  “As do I. Which is why I ended up here.”

  “What made you decide on Paris?” she asked.

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “I won’t.” When he snorted, she grinned. “Maybe a little.”

  “I went on a field trip with my high school. One night, we took a midnight boat tour of the Seine. I went up to the top deck to watch, and as I saw the city slide by, the way the lights shone on the river…” He trailed off with a thoughtful sound, that rolling voice hypnotizing her, painting her memories in vivid color. “I knew I wanted to feel the way I did right then, for the rest of my life. I’d never be able to call anywhere else home.”

  That night. That night when he’d stood next to her, and she’d wondered what he was thinking as he looked out at Paris. Now she knew, and it made her ache all the more. She’d been there for that moment, when he’d decided something so important to him—and he didn’t even know the woman in his arms was the girl who’d stood at his side, longing for him with a pain that had never quite faded.

  She drank in the faraway look in his eyes, like he was dreaming wide awake. “That’s beautiful, Ion.”

  Something in those vivid eyes closed over, shuttering away. “It’s just history.” A subtle tension edged his voice and hardened his shoulders, making a lie of his lightness when he continued, “I’m supposed to be asking about you.”

  “Right,” she said faintly, stung. What had she said? “What else did you want to know?”

  Silence. But then his eyes cleared, and he looked down at her with an almost apologetic smile. “Did you always want to be an astrophysicist?”

  “Always. My dad was. I wanted to be just like him.” She remembered trailing him around his lab, five years old and clinging to his lab coat, wanting to touch everything but afraid she’d break it. But when she looked up Ion was watching her strangely, brows knitted. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “How many more questions before you tell me to shut up?”

  She pursed her lips, making a great show of turning it over. “…three. Three’s your limit.”

  “Then I’d better make them good. What do you do for fun when you’re not stargazing?”

  “The usual. Netfli
x. Facebook. Window shopping for things I can’t afford.” She shrugged. “I like going out to live music venues, when I can. Piano bars, blues clubs, open mic nights. I love the energy of it. Karaoke, too.”

  He laughed. “Karaoke? Seriously?”

  “Shut up.” She thwacked his chest again, laughing. “It’s a thing with my sister. She loves singing. I’m horrible, but she’s a real nightingale. It’s kind of our girls’ night thing. It’s fun.”

  “Not sure I believe that.”

  “You should try it.”

  “Maybe one day,” he said, but his tone said never in a million years. She grinned.

  “All right, Mr. Stuffy. What do you do for fun?”

  “I haven’t had time for fun, lately.” He toyed with her hair. “Though I do amuse myself by carrying strange women off boats.”

  “I bet you think you’re funny.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  She chuckled and nuzzled into the warm slope where his neck blended into his shoulder. “Why haven’t you had time?”

  “Work, mostly. Book deadlines, and a problem with translations. My agent and I have been handling damage control, but this reporter’s been hounding me. Wants an exclusive, and she’s dead set on punishing me until she gets it. I hate interviews. I hate being on camera. I like my private life to stay private.”

  “I thought translations were the publisher’s job?”

  “They are. But they couldn’t get foreign distribution in countries that claimed the series was too subversive, so I did it myself.”

  “Subversive?” She arched a brow. “What are you writing? Handbooks for inciting a revolution?”

  “No. Just stories about a girl who doesn’t listen when the world tells her she can’t be anything she wants. Anything.”

  “Oh…Ion.”

  She loved that—the fire in his voice, the determined set of his jaw. That he would work so hard to encourage young girls in a world that so often told them to mind their place, proper girls don’t do that, that’s for boys, this is a man’s industry… She wished she’d had someone like him when she was struggling to carve her foothold. Astrophysics was more progressive than many sectors, but she’d still had to prove herself worthy of playing with the boys—and she often still found herself trivialized. She didn’t let it get to her. She had her family’s support, and her own fierce insistence that nothing would keep her from what she loved.

  But when she’d been a girl and less certain of herself, she would have loved Ion’s books. A reminder that she could do it, no matter what.

  She kissed his jaw. “I like that—that you care. Maybe I should read your books.”

  “I’d be embarrassed if you did.” He caught her mouth in a lazy kiss, trailing into a nip that tried to rouse her sluggish body with a fresh spark. “Still have two questions left,” he murmured, their lips parting. God, if she wasn’t so exhausted…

  She pushed the thought down. “Fire away.”

  “Favorite book?”

  “A Wrinkle in Time.”

  “Physicist parents and astral exploration. Noticing a theme here.”

  “I’m a one-trick pony.”

  “Do you really want to talk about tricks after…?”

  “Shut up!” She choked on a laugh and shoved him. “Ask your third question so I can either fall asleep or call a cab.”

  He sobered, watching her intently. “Why would you call a cab?”

  Because I shouldn’t stay. Because I didn’t want to assume, but God…I don’t want to go.

  She lowered her eyes, fidgeting. “Is that your third question?”

  “That doesn’t count.” He wouldn’t let her escape—cupping her cheek with a heated hand, coaxing her to look at him. To look into those eyes that could make her say yes to anything. “Stay, Cel.”

  As if I could be anywhere else.

  “Ask me your third question,” she murmured.

  “All right.” A rough thumb traced her cheekbone. “How long are you in Paris?”

  “Until Sunday.”

  “So a little more than five days.”

  Her stomach rolled. She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch. Five days, and this would be just a memory. “…yeah.”

  “Will you let me see you again?” he asked softly.

  “That’s four.”

  “Cel.”

  She couldn’t answer. Her voice froze, tied up in ropes of longing and hurt and guilt. She knew what she should do. Stop this. Break it off now, before she got too attached. She would be horrible if she didn’t. If she spent the week with him, lying to him, never telling him it’s me. Mary. The dorky girl who lived in your shadow; the geek who orbited your star but never got close enough to get burned.

  But he was waiting for her to answer, and she didn’t know how to tell him no when she’d waited so long to say yes.

  “Maybe,” she choked, hating herself for it. “Just don’t show up at my workshops again. I don’t want to cause an international incident.”

  The warmth lighting his eyes made the deception worth it…almost. Maybe she could have this for the rest of the week. Then they’d part ways, and no one would get hurt.

  Except her.

  “If I’d known you’d react so strongly to me…” he teased with a low laugh.

  “Like chemicals in a vacuum.” She dredged up a smile. “I’m not usually a one-night stand kind of girl.”

  “I believe this would be more of a one-week stand.”

  “Pedant.”

  “There you go with those big words.” His smile faded. Dark eyes searched deep, until she wanted to squirm and hide. “Are you all right with this, Cel? Really?”

  “It’s just two consenting adults, like you said.” She tried to be flippant, but failed. Her shoulders sagged, and she rested her brow to his chest. “I don’t know. I feel a little weird about it. I just…don’t have much experience with this sort of thing. I’m bad at relationships.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true. I let my job get in the way.”

  “You weren’t always Miss Consulting Astrophysicist. You dated in high school, right?”

  She laughed, muffled against his chest. “Nerds don’t date, Ion.”

  “Nerds date. I dated.”

  “You’re not a nerd.”

  “Absolutely a nerd.” He chuckled, throaty voice rolling over the sound like velvet on sand. “I was even in the nerd classes in school. You should have seen me then.”

  I remember. I remember everything about you. The way he’d listened with such focused attention, absorbing every detail. The quiet dedication to his work. The way he’d captivated everyone, when he’d stood before the class and spoken of the books that ignited the light inside him until he shone so bright he burned.

  But she couldn’t say that. Any of it, and she bottled it up inside her like she had as a girl. Instead she said, “I’ll bet you weren’t that bad. But you can’t be a nerd.” She leaned over him. Her body pressed into his, the angles of him unyielding and hard-cut, as she fumbled toward the nightstand and came up with her glasses. She brandished them triumphantly. “No glasses.”

  “There are these magical inventions called contacts.” He sat up—and she’d swear he deliberately slid his body against hers, firm planes of his chest hot against her side as he pulled the nightstand drawer open and retrieved a pair of rimless titanium glasses. “Still wear these sometimes.”

  “You didn’t have those in—” She stopped herself from saying you didn’t have those in high school. Shit. Shit. “Um. You didn’t have those in your book jacket photo.”

  His brows rose as he set his glasses back in the drawer. “Thought you’d never read my books.”

  “Um…” Oh God. Think of something. Think of something. “I…I looked you up after you manhandled me off a boat.”

  “I didn’t manhandle you. You were limping and being stubborn.”

  “You manhandled me into not being stubborn.”

&
nbsp; He plucked her glasses away and set them back on the nightstand—then, growling, tumbled her back, body fitting to hers, tangling together. “I’m about to manhandle you into not talking anymore.”

  “Still—” She sucked in a breath as his fingers slipped down her body, found the sore, soft heat of her, and delved inside. The electric-hot pain of it shot through her; she arched her neck with a cry, fighting to even speak. “Still… manhandling… oh, Ion…”

  “Still talking,” he murmured, gaze fierce and fiery as he stroked and teased and left her writhing until her body screamed. “I suppose,” he said as he sank down to kiss her, as he dragged her into the thoughtless dark heat of passion again, “I’ll just have to manhandle you a little more.”

  * * *

  When the mattress shifted beneath her, Celeste opened her eyes drowsily to watch Ion get up. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but wasn’t surprised after what he’d done to her—over and over, until she was sore to the point of numbness.

  Past her sleep-fogged daze, she peeked at him through her tangled hair; he rose lithely, slid into a pair of dark linen pajama pants, and crossed the room to the broad glass-topped wireframe desk facing the windows. The desk was as starkly minimalist as the rest of the terraced, single-room space, empty save for a laptop, a notebook, a stack of papers, and a few pens. He sank into the desk chair and flipped the laptop open, powering it on with a musical chime that faded when he tapped the keyboard.

  Rubbing at her eyes, Celeste sat up, dragging the sheet against her chest. “Ion?”

  He glanced up with a distracted smile. “Go back to sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Writing?”

  He nodded, gaze returning to the laptop, the screen’s light gilding his face in silver. “Tends to flow better at night.”

  “Oh,” she slurred, still not wholly awake, fighting back a yawn. “Okay. C’n I see?”

  “Not yet. First drafts are for my eyes only.”

  With another quick smile, he focused on the screen; his long, elegant fingers flew over the keyboard. She watched him for a moment, then looked away studiously. She didn’t want to interrupt. She’d never known any writers, but she’d heard they could get a bit…tetchy if someone distracted them when they were on a roll. The last thing she wanted was Ion upset, shattering this sweetly lingering warmth.