He wants to fuck me, that’s a given.
But then what?
Every woman he’s been with who has ever wondered then what has been thoroughly disappointed. Discarded like yesterday’s trash.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I don’t? Or you don’t want me to know?”
I don’t say anything to that; instead I busy myself with the rest of the meal.
“So since we’ve discussed your childhood, from your deadbeat dad to my father discovering your mother at a hotel and whisking you and her off to the paradise of the Dumont chateau, let’s move on to something a little . . . juicier.”
I freeze, my glass of wine almost to my lips. Oh God. He’s going to ask about the night I left again.
“How many boyfriends have you had?”
I stare at him agape for a moment, then laugh, relieved at how inappropriate and yet harmless the question is. “Why do you want to know that?”
He gives an elegant shrug with one shoulder and starts to peel one of the prawns. “I would like to know if I’m bigger and better than them.”
“That’s not a fair comparison.”
“You felt my cock weeks ago. You can judge it based on that, though if we really want to make it fair, I think you should probably take a look at it too.”
I scoff, trying not to laugh but failing. “You’re unreal.”
“I’m very real. You felt so yourself. So tell me, how do I compare?”
“You’re my boss, not my boyfriend.”
“Semantics.”
From the wicked, determined look in his eyes, I know he’s not going to drop this. I cock my brow and say, “You’re bigger and better.”
He breaks out into such a wide grin that it gives me chills. The good kind. The kind that cascade down your spine and make you shiver because you’re feeling so damn much. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Almost makes up for that shrug you gave me the other week.”
I shovel rice into my mouth and smile at him.
He chuckles. “Okay. So who was your last boyfriend?”
“Oh my God,” I say through a mouthful and swallow down my food. “What’s with the questions?”
“I want to know you, Gabrielle. This is one way.”
“You just want to use this as an excuse to talk about all your sexual conquests in return.”
“I promise you, I don’t. They’re pretty much all the same anyway. Girl wants me, I fuck her, she leaves, and I never call her again.”
“And I bet you’re so proud of this, aren’t you?”
“No,” he says with a shrug. “I’m not proud. It just is what it is. I don’t have time for relationships. You know how busy I am.”
That comment shouldn’t bother me, but it does, like I was actually thinking for a moment that we had a relationship, when in reality, not only is that the worst idea in the world, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
“People make time for what’s important.”
“And what could be more important than money?” he says, wiping his mouth with his napkin and sitting back in his chair. He locks me in his gaze. “So tell me.”
I sigh into my wine, briefly closing my eyes. “I haven’t had any boyfriends. I’ve had some flings. That’s it.”
His forehead creases. “Really?”
“I have . . . issues.”
“You don’t say. Perhaps you have the same issues as I do.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I take it you don’t want to talk about it?”
“With you? No.”
“With anyone?”
He’s got me there. I shake my head but don’t elaborate. I know I’d probably be a much healthier, fully functioning human being if I talked about my trauma with someone, but the thought of even opening up, not just about what happened but what I want to do, my thoughts, my life in fear and those dark, restless nights, makes me feel like I’m bleeding dry.
“How about you, then? Let’s talk about your love life. Your ex-wife in particular.”
He squints at me and has a long sip of his wine. When he finishes, he settles back in his chair, the angle off-kilter because of the sand, and sighs.
“What do you want to know?” he asks calmly.
“Did you love her?”
He shakes his head slightly. “No.”
“Not even a little?”
“No,” he says, more adamant this time, nostrils flaring.
“Then why did you marry her?”
“I guess I was young and stupid.”
“Young, yes, but definitely not stupid. Was it all part of a long con? Did you marry her just so that you could blackmail Olivier?”
“No. I didn’t. It hadn’t even occurred to me at that time. I mean, my father hadn’t . . . It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past.”
“Right. But we can’t get to know each other unless we share our pasts. That’s what you said.”
“I did not say that.”
“Not in as many words, but you can’t expect a one-way street here. Why did you marry her? For real? Was it what you wanted at the time, or was it all your father? Your mother?” Just give me something to work with here, Pascal.
“I married her because I was told to,” he says sharply, spitting out the words in distaste.
I stare at him a moment. I suspected as much.
He runs his hand down over his pinched features. “It’s not an easy thing to admit.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“It was both my parents’ idea. Marine came from a good family, and she was beautiful, so my mother wanted those good genes and that good money to be passed along, even though we had so much more money than her family did. Enough so that it was pretty obvious Marine only wanted me for that reason.”
“So she never loved you either?”
He takes a large gulp of wine and clears his throat. “No. She couldn’t love anything. I guess we were well suited in that respect.” He pauses, his eyes seeming to count the grains of sand in the flickering candlelight. “She had no problem seducing Olivier. She thought it was great. She thought she was going to benefit from it all, as if she didn’t already have everything she ever wanted.”
“And then you showed her the door.”
He frowns. “Look. I’m not proud of it.”
“I never said you were. And what did your father have to do with this arrangement?”
“He said it was the right move. I was young, but it was good to show the world that I was ready to settle down . . .”
I raise my brow. “You don’t think your father had this all planned from the start? That he wanted you to marry Marine so that he could blackmail your cousin?”
He sighs and runs his fingers along the tablecloth. Oh, how the tables have turned here. He thought he could get me to bare all and he’d be exempt. “Maybe. Probably.”
“Just another pawn in his game.”
His eyes blaze as he glances at me, but he doesn’t say anything.
We lapse into silence, occasionally glancing at each other, until all the food and wine is gone.
“How about dessert?” he asks me, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet.
I look around. I don’t see any dessert.
Oh. It’s sexual, isn’t it?
I give him a wry look as he comes to my side of the table and holds out his hand for me. “Just trust me.”
“I’m no one’s dessert, Pascal,” I warn him, but I feel shaky inside, as if I might go back on my word.
The corner of his mouth curls into a grin as he stares down at me. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Come on.”
He gestures with his open hand and cautiously places mine in his. He wraps his strong, warm fingers around me and helps me to my feet.
He doesn’t let go as he leads me away from the table and to the beach, right to the water’s edge.
“We’re going swimming?
” I ask.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Come this way.”
Still grasping my hand, he takes me along the water past the cliffs and bare rocks that slide into the sea until we round a corner and come to another long expanse of beach. There are a few houses at the water’s edge here and there, but farther down there is a low building right on the sand with disco lights, and I can hear the soft thump of EDM music.
“Are you taking me to a rave?” I ask suspiciously. “You know I’m still in bare feet.”
“Just getting dessert,” he says.
We walk down the beach for what feels like forever until the music is louder and the building is upon us. It’s a beach bar with a casual vibe and only a few patrons. Most of them are in chairs sprawled across the sand, drinking beer, while a few girls are dancing around them, lit up by the colorful rotating lights. There’s a DJ in the corner who looks like he’s giving it his all, even though the crowd is small.
Pascal leads me over to the bar, where we take a seat on high stools that sink a little into the beach. “Dos sangrias, por favor,” he says to the bartender.
“You speak Spanish?” I ask him.
“Barely,” the bartender says in English. I look at him and see he’s got a twinkle in his eye like they’re longtime friends. Pascal obviously frequents this place when he’s on the island, although this doesn’t strike me as Pascal’s scene either.
“What?” Pascal says to me, reading my face. “Beach bars are my favorite, and Manuel is the best bartender on the island, isn’t that right?”
I’m not sure that Manuel understands Pascal’s French, but I think he gets the gist anyway because he pours an insane amount of brandy into each of our glasses.
Pascal then puts his hand on my knee and leans in closer to me, and my heart seems to stop, because the closer his eyes get to me, the more arresting they are. They hold me in place until I can’t breathe, can’t move. “You should let me surprise you every now and then.”
He gives my leg a light squeeze and then backs off, taking the drinks from the bartender and handing me one. “Here’s to this part of the night. No more talking. Only dancing.”
I bite down on the straw to keep from laughing. “Excuse me. It sounded like you said dancing.”
“You don’t think I can dance?”
“It’s not that I don’t think you can, it’s that I can’t.”
He sucks back on his drink thoughtfully, and I have to tear my gaze away from his lips before he catches on. “When was the last time you went dancing?”
I try to think. Eventually I admit, “Never.”
His brows go up. “Never?”
“My school wasn’t a party school,” I tell him. Actually, it was an online school that I did out of my own shitty apartment in the Bronx. It was all I could afford. But he doesn’t have to know that.
“You didn’t go out with friends? You’re young, Gabrielle.”
I glare at him. “Not every young person cares about friends and partying. You don’t have any friends.”
He blinks and moves his head back in surprise. “Were you trying to make that a low blow?”
“Was it? Does anything hurt you?”
The bartender clears his throat, and we both look at him in unison. He quickly starts wiping down the counter, pretending to mind his own business.
I suppose it does look like we’re a bickering couple who might just have a throw down in his bar.
I give Pascal a sheepish, quasi-apologetic smile and suck down the rest of my drink.
“I can’t tell if alcohol is making you more relaxed or more angry,” Pascal muses after a moment.
“You have that effect on me,” I say under my breath.
“We’ll see.” He turns to the bartender and says something in Spanish. Before I know it, I not only have another sangria, but there’s a shot in front of me.
“What is this?”
“It’s either going to make you like me more or make you like me less.”
I pick it up and sniff it. It smells strong with a hint of sweetness. “That’s quite the gamble.”
“A risk I’m willing to take.”
Shots are never a good idea, but I’d just given Pascal the very accurate impression that I haven’t had a lot of fun in my life, and I’d like to show him otherwise.
Hell, I’d like to show myself otherwise.
I raise the glass and take back the shot in one go. It burns beautifully, and I immediately feel the warmth of it encompass me.
“You took that like a champ,” he says once he’s done his, wiping his mouth.
“Maybe I’m stronger than I look.”
“I might call you a little sprite, but I know you’re stronger than you look. You said you’re harmless until threatened, and I don’t take that mildly.” His eyes rake over me. “I don’t take any of you mildly. You’re a force to be reckoned with.”
I’m not sure if he’s saying that because he knows that kind of comment means something to me and I’ll eat it up like candy, but either way, I needed to hear it. And I needed to hear it from him.
Shit. Maybe the alcohol is making me like him more.
You’re going to sleep with him, aren’t you?
I try to bat that thought out of my head.
But it doesn’t surprise me.
And more than that, it doesn’t scare me.
It should. He’s Gautier’s son. Yes, he’s also my boss, but that part is so minor, since I only took the job for one thing. The fact that he’s Gautier’s son, that he’s nearly as wicked, that his vile blood runs through Pascal, that should terrify me beyond all hope.
And yet as more drinks come and the music gets louder and I start feeling looser, with my actions, with my feelings, the fear drifts away. I let myself look at him longer, not caring that I’m being blatant about it. He seems to enjoy it. He seems to enjoy all things that involve me.
What happens after you sleep with him? The voice comes back. What happens when you sleep with him and then you leave with your mother, never to return?
Better yet, what happens if I sleep with him and then kill his father?
He wouldn’t survive that.
I might not survive that.
I’m no assassin. I don’t know what I’m doing. I know I’m a little bit crazy and in over my head. I know how wrong this is, how risky it is, how if I’m not careful, it’s poised to fail in a way I’ll never get out of. I’m just driven by this obsessive, debilitating need to make Gautier go away, to erase my whole past, to erase everything I was and start anew. I need it in order to breathe, to live. I can’t spend my days in fear—the only thing that has kept me going since I left is the very fact that I planned to take care of him. That’s probably the only reason I’m alive.
“Uh-oh, you’re going to the dark place,” Pascal says, getting to his feet and grabbing me by the elbows, hauling me up. “There’s only one way out of the dark place.”
“You know about the dark place?” I ask, almost whispering, and it’s then that I realize, holy fuck, I’m drunk as a skunk.
“I’m the mayor of the dark place,” he tells me. He leads me away from the bar to the middle of the dance floor, which is just a patch of sand with disco lights on it. There’s no one else around. The bar is empty except for the DJ and the bartender.
“A few more songs, down tempo,” Pascal yells at the DJ. “You know I’ll make it worth your while.”
The DJ shrugs and puts on a new track, something with a very heavy, low beat.
“This is how we get out of it,” Pascal says to me, wrapping his arms around my lower back and holding me close to him, his lips going for my ear. “This time we can get out of it together,” he murmurs, and I feel a rush shoot down into my core.
This is a bad idea.
This is danger.
Or maybe I’m the dangerous one?
“Put on some Rüfüs Du Sol,” Pascal yells at the DJ. Then he smiles down at me. Lopsided, kind of sweet. I think I�
��m seeing double of him. “And you, you put your arms around me.”
I do as I’m told.
As he holds me tight, his hard-on pressed against my thigh, I put my arms around his neck and let him grind into me, moving to the music with each heavy, bass-loaded beat.
This feels nice.
Not just the evidence of how much he wants me but the way our bodies meld together so seamlessly. It doesn’t feel awkward. It feels real. Like all this time, this was what was supposed to happen.
“Do I dare ask what’s going on in that head of yours?” he says, his forehead resting against mine as we sway.
I close my eyes and drift with the movement. “I’m not quite sure myself.”
Everything starts to get just a little bit swimmy, a little bit dizzy. My feet feel like they’re sticking to the sand.
I sink into his arms.
Down.
Down.
Down.
CHAPTER TEN
PASCAL
Ow. Oh God. My head.
Motherfucking Manuel.
That Spanish bastard should have cut us off when he had the chance. All that extra brandy in the sangria is creating a punishing jackhammer in my head that triples in pain every time I open my eyes.
I should have stuck to whiskey.
But whiskey didn’t feel right last night. I wanted to drink whatever Gabrielle was drinking, and I wanted her to enjoy it. Seeing her enjoy something has given me life.
The moment she stepped off the plane in Palma, it was like seeing the sunrise for the first time. She just lit up from within, and every bit of darkness that hid in her deepest parts was banished away, if only for a few moments.
It caught me off guard a few times, stole the breath from my lungs, made me feel something I’d never felt before. Something for her. It was in her smile, the way she literally let her hair down in the car and let it dance free and messy and wild.
I want to be the man who makes her like that on his own. I want her free and messy and wild in my bed. I want to see that sunrise again, that blinding light, to feel the joy move through her.
Last night, I was sure that was going to happen.
It wasn’t my plan, per se.
Yes, I was trying to woo her. Impress her, at any rate. If we’d ended up having sex, that would have been an added bonus. My main goal was just to get her to open up to me, to let me see the things she deems too dark for me to know. You’d think after all that I’ve told her, every depraved and wicked part of me, she would have felt comfortable enough to finally tell me who she really is and what she really wants.
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