“I’ll be putting all my time into my second level proposal.”
She makes a face. “That’s too bad. Promise you’ll call me?”
I barely manage a smile.
“Ready to go?” Maxime asks.
It’s hard to hide my relief. “Please.”
He studies my face with a piercing gaze. “Everything all right?”
“I’d just like to go. I’m really tired.”
He bends down to kiss the shell of my ear. “Bear with me for another few minutes.”
Taking my hand, he leads me to his family. The closer we get, the tighter my insides twist. Cecile looks up. The smile vanishes from her face when she sees me. Hadrienne’s expression grows hostile.
“Goodnight, Maman.” Maxime kisses her cheeks. “Hadrienne.” He barely looks at his father.
I do the forced round of kisses, bidding everyone goodnight like Maxime expects of me. Maxime’s family returns the polite greeting, putting up their side of the show while Noelle only stands there with a smirk.
It’s only in the car that I breathe again. Sinking back into the cool leather of the seat, I wind down the window and drag a hand over my brow.
“What the fuck is going on, Zoe? And, don’t tell me it’s nothing.”
Taking a deep breath, I blow it out slowly. “Did you ask Sylvie to be my friend?”
Maxime looks at me. “Why do you ask that?”
“Just answer the question.”
He taps a thumb on the wheel, seeming to consider the answer. After a moment, he says, “She owed me a favor.”
His admission tramples on the heart he’s already ripped from my chest. “What exactly did you ask her to do?”
“I asked her to give you her number.”
“On that Sunday we met?” I exclaim.
“Yes.” He shrugs. “I had to cover for her to go out with a group of friends. She told her father she was visiting me.” He repeats, “She owed me.”
As if that makes it okay. My spirits sink even lower. “The day I told you I wanted to have coffee with her, did you order her to go with me?”
“I called her and told her to expect a call from you. I suggested taking you to a brasserie where you’d be safe.”
My breath catches at the implication. “Did you ask her to talk me into giving you a chance?”
“I told her to try and convince you, yes, but only for your own good.”
“How’s lying to me and pretending to be my friend for my own good?”
“Accepting your situation is for your own good. I want you to be happy, Zoe. Is that so bad?”
“Don’t you realize how wrong what you’ve done is? Are you even sorry?”
“No.” His tone is flat. “I’m not sorry for taking care of your emotional comfort.”
“God, Maxime.” Gripping my head in my hands, I groan in frustration. “You can’t keep on doing this.”
He shoots me a sidelong glance. “Doing what?”
“Betraying me. You’ve pushed me as far as I can go, do you hear me? You’ve pushed me to my limits, and God help me—” I cut off before I threaten the man who owns my life.
His voice turns hard. “God help you with what, Zoe?”
I sag back. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do the day you push me over.”
“Nothing,” he says with blind conviction. “You’ll do nothing, because I’ll always be there to catch you.”
“Please, Maxime.” I sag a little lower. “Please stop manipulating me. Why can’t you simply be honest?”
He pulls off on the side of the road and brings the car to a jerky halt. “You want honest?”
“Yes!” I’m tired. Depleted. Empty. I have nothing left to give. “Yes, damn you.”
“Get out of the car.”
My hand clenches on the door handle. “Maxime.”
“Now isn’t a time to test me.”
I open the door and get out, stumbling in the tall grass with my heels. Before I’m a step away from the car, Maxime is there, his strong arms wrapping around my waist. He pushes me forward, bending my body over the hood. Our shadows fall tall over the road in the headlights, two bodies merged as one. The stark silhouette is a lie. The truth is the invisible picture of our estranged souls.
Flipping my skirt up, he rips off my underwear and pushes a knee between my legs. His zipper makes a tearing sound. His cock is at my entrance before I have time to gasp.
“You want the truth?” he breathes against my ear. “This is the truth.”
With one, hard thrust, he buries himself so deep inside me his groin slams against my ass. My body shifts over the warm metal of his car. Grabbing a fistful of my hair, he holds me in place and gives me more truth. My inner muscles tighten around him.
“Show me,” he says as he gives me the kind of rough that makes my toes curl.
It’s no different than pushing me down and making me kneel. My body’s reaction is my bitter truth and his sweet victory. I try to deny it. I fight the pleasure that winds around my insides. I fight the lie of the picture on the ground, but he refuses to let me hide. He folds an arm around my body and pushes the heel of his palm on my clit. The harder I fight, the harder he fucks me. There’s no way but down. Falling. There’s no way out other than surrendering.
I come with a cry and a shudder, every muscle locking in pleasure, but I take no joy from it. I keep still, letting him use me until he finds his release.
“Fuck. What you do to me…” he says, caressing my hip. “Goddamn, Zoe.”
Turning my face to the side, I rest my cheek on the metal and stare with non-seeing eyes at the dark ocean. Just like that, the rebellion is over. He squashed it even before it has properly started.
He wins. Again.
Chapter 17
One year later
* * *
Maxime
* * *
The wind rips through Zoe’s long hair when I steer the boat from the jetty of our family holiday home in Corsica. The place is isolated, a pretty piece of paradise. The stretch of beach is private, meaning I can fuck her wherever and whenever I like without worrying about spectators. This weekend is ours alone. No guards. No business.
She takes an elastic band from her wrist and binds the long tresses in a high ponytail. Then she shimmies out of her bikini bottoms and unties the top. The triangles fall away from her breasts. They jiggle when she climbs down the steps and stretches out on the front of the boat. I battle to tear my gaze from her naked body, only managing when I have to navigate through the dangerous rocks close to the cliffs.
I steer the boat to the small island not far off and anchor in the deeper water so we don’t get washed up with low tide. After yanking off my shirt, I adjust my hard-on and grab two glasses of champagne and a bowl of strawberries from the table under the awning. Armed with my weapons, I make my way over to where she’s tanning with her gorgeous breasts and pussy exposed to the sun.
She pushes up onto her arms when my shadow falls over her.
I hand her a glass. “Here you go, cherie.”
Squinting up at me, she smiles. Fuck. That smile. If my life should end now, I’ll die a happy man.
I stretch out on my side next to her, propping myself up on an elbow. “Congratulations, little flower.” I clink my glass to hers. “I’m proud of you.”
A shadow creeps over her smile. I know what’s going through her mind.
“You deserved to pass,” I say. “You did great.”
“Did I?”
Unable to resist, I brush my knuckles over a nipple. “You worked hard.”
“Hard work isn’t always enough.”
Taking a mouthful of champagne, I close my lips around the warm tip of her breast, bathing it in the fizzy liquid.
She gasps. “It’s cold.”
Letting the champagne dribble over her breast, I set the glass aside to test between her thighs. “Always wet for me.” Her reaction pleases me to no end.
“Maxime,” she chastis
es as I roll over her, making the champagne slosh over the rim of her glass onto her stomach.
I lap up the spillage. “Delicious.”
“You’re impossible,” she says with a laugh.
“Happy.” I mean it. I can’t think of a time I felt happier. I carefully push a finger into her tight heat. “Are you?”
“Yes,” she says on a sigh, throwing her head back.
“Show me.” I watch her greedily as I move my finger.
Her pupils dilate, and her blue eyes turn hazy. A soft moan falls from her lips. Leaving her glass on the side, she reaches for the elastic of my swimming trunks and pushes them over my hips. My cock jumps free, hard and aching. Always ready.
Freeing the finger I teased her with, I slide it past her lips. She curls her tongue around the tip, making my over-eager cock twitch. When I pull out, she bites down gently. My skin comes alive. Every cell in my body starts to hum. The scar tissue on my chest tingles. I catch her nape and bring her lips closer to mine as I drag a flattened palm down her belly to her sex. I claim her mouth as I rub my thumb over her clit. She goes soft in my hold, surrendering her control. I take it with the same abandonment that I took her life, tangling our tongues while I grab the root of my cock and rub the pre-cum over her clit.
“Maxime.”
The way she says my name makes me lose it. I was going to take it slow, but I slide all the way in until I hit a barrier and her back arches.
“Good?” I ask, breaking the kiss.
“Mm.”
“Show me.”
I fuck her in all earnest. Everything will never be enough. I can’t explain it. I can’t put a label on or words to it. I only know she makes me want more. She wraps her legs around my ass and slams back when I thrust. Our dance is well choreographed and perfectly timed. We’re breathing in tune. She never asked me to love her again, but the words hang in the air. It’s in the way she rolls her hips and pants as we pick up our pace. It’s in the way she holds my eyes and lets me see the desperate need burning out of control.
“You’re mine,” I say into our kiss, pounding harder into her.
She takes the roughness and gives it back with good measure, her nails digging into my shoulders as she pushes on them to flip us around. For her, I roll over. The way she rides me with her head thrown back and her breasts pushed out is enough to shatter what’s left of my control.
I lock my hands around her waist. “Come with me.”
She cries out when I roll my hips and hit that spot that makes her reach her petite mort quicker.
“Tell me, cherie.” I lean forward to steal a kiss. “Tell me how it is.”
“You know how it is.”
Pleasure coils, ready to erupt. “Tell me, anyway.”
“Perfect,” she whispers.
I explode, my body contracting as every physical sensation I’m capable of aligns in my dick. An answering shudder runs through her body. Her inner muscles clench on my cock, milking me dry.
Taking her face between my hands, I kiss her. I don’t know for how long our bodies are fused like this, our mouths and hips joined, but the shadows are longer when I finally convince myself to pull out.
She lays on top of me in a beautiful disarray of dark hair and damp skin, her breasts pushed flat against my chest.
“Perfect,” I agree. “I can stay like this forever.”
“Then let’s,” she says, splaying a palm over the ugly skin that covers my breastbone.
Joy infinitely more powerful than the climax still reverberating in my lower body bursts through my chest. It catches me off-guard, shocking me into silence. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt. Gripping her fingers, I hold her hand over my heart.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s.”
She snuggles with a content little sigh, burying her nose in my neck.
Like I said, “Perfect.”
* * *
On Sunday, our forever comes to an end, but the perfect lingers when I hold her hand as we board the ferry. The minute we step into my house near Cassis, my father calls and summons me for dinner. When I kiss her and tell her I won’t be home late, the only remainder of the paradise we shared is her tan.
We’ve fallen into an easy rhythm, Zoe and I. She’s adapted. All is good. I feel good. My mood sours, though, when I walk through the door of my parents’ house and find Alexis in the foyer with a glass of wine in his hand.
“Brother.” He gives me a cool smile. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
He’ll never forgive me for the lesson I taught him. Together with his envy of my first-born status, it’ll be a rift between us for the rest of our days. Not that I care. It’s not as if there were ever any brotherly feelings between us before.
I hand my coat to the housekeeper. “Is that a problem?”
Alexis smiles at the young woman. She’s new. They never last long with my mother. “I’m just surprised you were able to tear yourself away from Zoe.”
“There you are,” Maman says, exiting the kitchen. “Come on, Max. Help me carve the lamb.”
Throwing a taunting smile over my shoulder at Alexis, I follow my mother to the kitchen.
She pats my cheek. “It’s good to have both my boys at home for dinner. That old table is too big for just your father and me.” She smiles. “But soon, it will be filled with grandchildren.”
Ah. That explains her happy disposition. Me, I’m apathetic about it. It’s a duty, like the business. “Don’t start, Maman.”
“Oh, no. You’re not going to deny me that pleasure.”
I take the carving knife from the wooden block on the counter. “Don’t expect anything too soon.”
She pours gravy into a serving bowl. “You’re not getting any younger.”
For a moment, I think about children. I think about a boy who’ll follow in my footsteps, and a girl who’ll inherit Maman’s fate. I won’t say I’m unhappy with my life, but I’m suddenly not sure if the family future is a gift or curse. Before Zoe, I wouldn’t have even posed the question, but she has a way of making me look at things through her eyes, seeing them differently.
“Don’t you want children?” Maman asks with big eyes.
“Of course, I do.”
She dries her hands on her apron, her posture relaxing visibly. “Good. The honeymoon is over. It’s time to focus on family and making babies, but you shouldn’t forget the business. You’ve been neglecting it, allowing Alexis to fill your shoes. Your place is at the head of the family, Max. Don’t let worldly distractions make you forget that.” She points a finger at me. “You’re the one who’s supposed to take over your father’s business. Alexis can’t run it like you can.”
I arrange a slice of meat on the serving platter. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“I have news you don’t already know,” my father says from the door. He tilts his head toward the hallway. “Join me.”
Maman throws her hands in the air. “Seriously, Raphael? We’re about to sit down for dinner.”
“The lamb is already dead,” he says. “It’s not going anywhere.”
Maman switches on the warming drawer with a scoff. “Make it quick. I’ve slaved over this meal all day.”
My father kisses her cheek when she scurries past him. “You’re the one who said Max should pay more attention to the business.”
“Were you eavesdropping on our conversation?” Maman asks with a teasing smile.
My father kisses her again, this time on the lips.
She shoos him away.
Alexis leans against a wall when we exit, sipping his wine. He watches me from over the rim of his glass, his gaze following my progress as I follow my father to his study.
“What’s up?” I ask when I’ve closed the door.
Father shoves his hands into his pockets. “Damian Hart is out.”
My mind jolts into action, considering the implications. “Since when?”
“This morning. I’ve just heard from Z
ane.”
Hence the last-minute call to come over for dinner. “Is your informant still on the inside?”
“He got out a week ago.”
“That’s a coincidence.”
“He bribed the parole committee.”
“Let me guess. You provided the bribe money.”
“Of course.” My father walks to the wet bar. “We need to keep tabs on Hart now more than ever. Da Costa is just the man to do it.”
“If Hart doesn’t play into our hands, I’ll have to pay him a visit.”
“With his sister.” He lifts the carafe. “Scotch?”
“Thanks.” I tense when I think about putting Zoe in such a position. What incentive does she have not to tell Damian the truth now that she knows I won’t kill her brother? “The fact that she’s living in France as my mistress should be enough to convince Hart to keep the business relations good between us.”
“She’s a means to an end, son. Don’t forget that.” He pours a stiff shot of Scotch and hands me a glass. “We’ll use her as we must, any way we have to.”
I don’t fucking think so. Zoe is my responsibility. I own her, body and soul. I’ll decide what’s best for her and how her future will evolve, not my father or anyone else.
My father brings his drink to his lips. “I want Alexis in on the deal.”
My fingers clench around the glass. “What deal?”
“The diamonds. I want you to teach him the ropes.”
Suspicion goes off like an alarm bell in my mind. “Why?”
“You’ll have your hands tied up with the business here when you take over in a few months.”
When I honor the deal my father has made, he can finally retire. “The deal with Dalton is the crux of our business. Everything depends on that deal. Alexis can work with the Italians and run the docks.”
“No.” My father slams his glass down on the desk. “The Italians are your responsibility. Trying to escape it will give them the wrong idea.”
“I’m not trying to escape it. I’m just saying Alexis is in a better position to deal with the taxes.”
“Leaving you free to deal with Hart or to make sure no one else gets close to his sister?”
Diamonds in the Rough Page 13
