“All right. One more night. Wonder what we’ll find to do.”
Nora kissed the center of his chest before laying her head on that kiss. “I have a few ideas.”
Zach had a few ideas of his own. He rolled her onto her back, and told her exactly what they were.
He always had such good ideas.
Chapter Ten
Paris, France
The return to Paris was long and uneventful. Melancholy winter sky. Desultory drizzle. Sporadic conversation. They made it to Paris in time for either a very late lunch or a very early supper. As Zach was studying the wine list, he smiled.
“They serve two vintages from Le Vignoble Delacroix here,” he said. “Something called Rosanella and another called Libellule. Shall we order a glass? We never did try his wine.”
“No, thanks,” Nora said. “You can order it if you like. It’s a little too early for wine.”
A lie. It was never too early for wine in Nora’s opinion. She wanted to try Nico’s wine, but not here, with Zach. With Nico, next time she saw him.
If she saw him again.
They left the restaurant and walked back to their hotel. With New Year’s Eve a day away, Paris was bustling with tourists. Nora clung to Zach’s hand so they wouldn’t be jostled apart by the crowds. They’d be parting ways again soon, tomorrow, and Nora knew this wasn’t only their last night together on this little quest of theirs, but their very last night together. Forever. Zach had a child now, a family to think of. For him, this was one last fling, a final settling of accounts, putting old feelings to bed for good, tucking them in, and letting them sleep forever.
It was for her, too, wasn’t it? One last little fling before she moved to New Orleans and her life settled down again? No more crazy love affairs. No more flings. No more wild nights with ex-Navy Seals, male escorts, and pretty boys from Kentucky. No more men—other than Søren, of course. No more trouble. She was done with all that nonsense.
Right?
They were in the same hotel as before, but in a different room. This one was wrapped in red and white decor like a candy cane. Nora pulled back the covers on the bed and discovered that even the sheets were red.
“Ah, it’s my color,” she said, collapsing onto her back.
Zach loomed over the bed, arms crossed over his chest.
“You’re looking at me like you’re thinking about fucking me,” she said. “Or am I projecting?”
“I was thinking, ‘If she’s going to lay on the bed, she really should take her shoes off.’ ”
“If I take my shoes off, will you fuck me again?”
“Probably. Probably even if you don’t.”
“Are you going to fuck my ass? Again? For the…” Nora paused to count on her fingers. “For the fifth time this week?”
“I had something else in mind, if you’re open to suggestions.”
Nora lifted her legs and spread them wide. “I’m open.”
With a laugh, Zach kicked his shoes off, then crawled onto the bed, holding himself over her. “You said I gave you the best anal of your life, yes?”
“I did,” Nora said, nodding. “I not only said it, I put it in writing. For posterity.”
“Did I ever tell you that no woman in the whole wide world has ever sucked my cock as well as you have?”
“You did mention it, yes.”
“I’m mentioning it again.”
“Should I get the whiskey?”
“No. Let’s do this one mostly sober.”
“Handcuffs?”
He smiled and shook his head. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “I’d like to be able to touch you this time.”
It always happened so fast with them, the way they could go from joking and flirting, everything light as air, to falling all over each other. It was Zach’s fault, really—the way he would say something out of the blue that made her remember why she still thought about him a little too much sometimes.
She wasn’t fooling herself, though. She didn’t have any ambition to steal him from Grace and run away with him. More like she knew that in another world, another place and time, they could have been very, very good together.
Funny thing was, she thought the same thing about Søren and Grace. Not that she would ever tell either of them that.
“Would you be so kind,” Nora said, “to lay on your back and get comfortable?”
Zach was so kind. He did lay on his back, but only after giving her a kiss, a long and deep one that felt a little too much like goodbye for her taste. Not that she mentioned anything. It wasn’t time to say goodbye yet. Tomorrow. Until then…
Nora straddled Zach at his waist. She leaned over and played as if she’d kiss him, but when Zach lifted his head to meet her lips, she pulled back.
He narrowed his ice-blue eyes at her. “Nora.”
“Just reminding you who’s really in charge here.”
“Well, Mistress Nora…what are you orders? I’ll do whatever you command of me.” Simple words but heady when mixed with a posh English accent.
“I order you to lie there and enjoy every second while I suck your cock until you come in my mouth and I swallow it.”
“Demanding minx. If you insist. Mistress.”
She kissed him this time, rewarding him for addressing her as “Mistress” without any sarcasm. It didn’t take much to get on Nora’s good side—all she ever wanted was a little abject devotion and total erotic surrender. The simple things in life.
Zach’s erotic surrender took the form of lying on the pillow, hands clasped behind his head. The very picture of male satisfaction and contentment. Nora lifted the bottom of his long-sleeve t-shirt to unveil his lovely hard stomach. She scored his skin with her fingernails, delighting in watching the sculpted muscles twitch as she gave him pleasure spiked with pain. Scratching…rubbing…caressing…kissing… She bent to kiss and lick his stomach, going lower with every lick, every kiss, until she reached the waistband of his jeans.
“I really ought to tease you some more, make you wait for it,” she said, “but that means I’d have to wait for it, and I hate waiting for it.”
“We wouldn’t want that, Mistress.”
“You keep calling me ‘Mistress’ and I might not let you go home again.”
“I know one or two people who might object to that,” he said. But then added, because he was in a mood, “Mistress.”
Nora shook her head and unzipped his jeans. She grabbed the waistband and tugged them down below his hips. Cock wasn’t enough for her. She had to have hips, too. Especially Zach’s absolutely delectable, delicious, bitable hips. So bitable she bit them, one by one, digging her teeth into the skin, making sure she nipped the bone a little, too.
“Such a strange sensation,” he said, exhaling hard. “I can’t tell if I like it or not. All I know is I’m glad you did it.”
“Then I’ll do it again.”
And she did. Then she swirled her tongue over each of his lovely stark hip bones. She did adore those male divots where the hip met the stomach. She kissed a path across his lower abdomen. His cock was red and hard, straining, eagerly awaiting her mouth. She took it in her hand as she was licking his stomach, and stroked it slowly, happy to see his eyes flutter and close, his chin lift, his lips part. She stroked him more until she was certain he was completely lost in the pleasure of being touched, and only when he started breathing harder did she suddenly, without warning, bring her mouth down onto him. He inhaled so sharply she laughed with his cock in her mouth—which made him breathe even harder.
Zach’s face was usually composed into a mask of detached amusement, but not now. Now he was a lost man, losing himself more and more the longer and harder she sucked on him. But she needed to concentrate, so she tore her gaze from his face and went to work.
God bless him, Zach was an easy man to please. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. No sticking her finger up his ass while her other hand played with his balls, all while she was sucking his cock
, not like some men she could name, but wouldn’t (Kingsley).
All she had to do with Zach was suck and lick, then suck harder and lick harder, move her mouth up and down him, down and up him, over and over and over again until he came. If he thought she was particularly adept at it, that was because he was rewarding her points for enthusiasm. She loved his cock—the shape of it, the girth that fit her mouth so well. Sucking it was a pleasure, so much so that she was almost sad to hear him nearing climax. His breaths grew ragged and he grunted softly, giving low little moans—sounds sweeter than any music. His hands reached down, sought her shoulders… He found her hair and ran his fingers through it, found her cheek and stroked it, cupped the back of her neck and held it. She took the hint and went as deep as she could, taking him fully into her mouth until he nudged the back of her throat. She wrapped her fingers around the base of his erection, worked it and sucked him at the same time.
When Zach came, it was more of an explosion than orgasm. His shoulders came all the way off the bed and he spurted hard, deep into her throat, his hand holding her neck forcefully, not hard enough to bruise but close. Nora drank him in, the thick salty fluid, swallowing every drop. She only stopped swallowing when he collapsed onto his back, playing dead.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, while Zach watched her through hooded eyes.
“You’re going to miss me, aren’t you?” she asked him.
He reached up, grabbed her sweater, tugged it off.
“I already do,” he said.
After they made love, Nora took a shower. When she turned off the water, she heard Zach’s voice in the hotel’s sitting room. He was laughing at something, laughing hard.
“Zach? You all right?” she called out.
He didn’t answer. She put on the hotel bathrobe and went to find him. He lay on the sitting room sofa, phone to his ear. When he saw her, he waved her over. Nora sat on the sofa and rested her head by his chest.
“You have to hear this,” he whispered. He hit the button for speakerphone.
Nora listened. Then she heard something like the peep of a bird. Then a second later, another one.
“He has the hiccups,” Zach said. “First hiccups.”
Hic. Nora laughed in delighted surprise.
“Fionn,” Nora said to the phone. “Hold your breath and count to ten.”
“That never works,” Zach said. “Grace will have to pull his earlobes.”
“I have to pull his what?” Grace asked, her lilting Welsh accent filling the room.
“It works,” Zach said. “Pull his earlobes.”
“They’re tiny. I’ll pull them off. Wait. He’s stopped.”
“You scared them out of him by talking about pulling off his earlobes,” Nora said.
“I cured Zachary’s hiccups once by telling him someone named Jon-Franz-something-or-other called looking for him, but I’d forgotten to get his number.” Grace giggled.
“You’re lucky I didn’t throw you in the Thames for that.”
Grace said, “I can swim.” A pause, then, “Shall I ask how the trip is going, or would that make me a glutton for punishment?”
“Not great,” Nora said. “I know Zach told you about our ‘mission.’ ”
“Sounds like it didn’t go as planned.”
Nora gave Grace the lowdown on Nico, how he reacted to the news, the drunken phone call, asking her not to tell Kingsley about him. She left out the part where Nico, drunk and suffering, had said something about her being too beautiful. That was private, between her and Nico. Plus, she knew it was, as he had said, the wine talking. The wine and the grief. And probably the anger, too. Zach had said he might try to take his anger at Kingsley out on her. What better way to insult Kingsley than by sleeping with one of his lovers? Sons had been getting revenge on their fathers by seducing their stepmothers since time immemorial. Freud had been onto something.
Good thing it had been Nora on this mission. If Nico had tried that with Juliette, she would have run him over with the Range Rover, backed up, and done it again.
“I can’t say I’m too surprised,” Grace said. “Wonder if we’ll be going through this again in ten or fifteen years.”
“Hope not,” Nora said. “Once is enough for me.”
“I better get this little lad off to bed,” Grace said. “You two behave. Or not. The Lord knows I have no right to tell anyone to behave.”
Nora left Zach alone to give his love and goodbyes to Grace and Fionn. She went back into the bedroom. When Zach came in, she looked up from the bed.
“Kingsley never got to hear Nico hiccup,” she said. “Or see him take his first steps. Hear his first word. Teach him to swim. Take a bath with him and get pissed on in the face.”
And more. There was more she thought about but couldn’t say out loud. In the lamplight, she looked up at him, stricken. He pulled her head to his shoulder.
She sobbed, hard, deep, and long. She’d thought she’d run out of tears after the first time she’d held Fionn, but those were only the first waves as the hurricane built. And here came the storm.
“You can say it,” Zach whispered against her hair. “It won’t hurt me.”
“Søren didn’t get to hear his hiccups. Søren won’t see his first steps and won’t hear his first words. He won’t teach him to swim or how to play piano.” Her voice broke on “piano” and after that she couldn’t talk anymore, her lungs were heaving too hard. Zach rubbed her back, kissed her head and let her cry for a few minutes.
“You’re going to make yourself ill if you keep crying this hard. Please don’t vomit in the five-star hotel,” Zach teased.
She laughed and it hurt almost as much to laugh as it had to cry. Slowly she sat up and swiped hard at her face.
“Stupid man. Not you,” she said to Zach’s look. “Søren. Has he not figured out yet that I know him? That I know he will be in pain every day because of this.”
“Because he can’t have Fionn?”
Nora nodded. “And when he hurts, I hurt. But I wouldn’t change it for all the money in the world. Why? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I’m the stupid one”
Miserable and exhausted, Nora lay her head on Zach’s lap as he stroked her hair. “What am I going to do? About Nico? And King? And Fionn and Søren and you and Grace and us and the…the world? Any ideas?”
Zach laughed, still stroking her hair. “I have one.”
“What is it? I’ll take it.”
“If we hurried, we could make the very last train from Paris to London. We could be home by midnight. You could spend a little time with Fionn.”
“Will he tell me what I should do?”
“If he takes after Søren, he probably will tell you what to do.”
As soon as Zach suggested it, that they could go to London right then, Nora knew that was exactly what she needed—to hold Søren’s son in her arms again.
Nora dressed while Zach took a quick shower. They packed quickly because they’d barely unpacked at all. When they dropped their key off at the desk, Nora said, “Sorry. We only needed it for an hour.”
Chapter Eleven
London, England
They made it to Zach’s house three minutes after midnight. He and his family lived in a two-story townhome on a street in London with not one but two antiquarian bookshops. This, she surmised, was not a coincidence.
“You did warn your wife you were bringing the woman whose ass you’ve been hitting all week back to your house tonight, didn’t you?” Nora asked, noticing the house was completely dark.
“Sent her a text,” Zach said, fumbling with his keys on the steps. “She didn’t reply, which means she’s already asleep.”
“I’d hate to wake her up.”
“I wouldn’t,” Zach said, grinning. “She’s been alone with a baby for days. She’ll weep with joy just to hear full sentences again.”
In the entryway, he hung up their coats and switched on the light in the fro
nt room. Baby toys on the coffee table. Baby books on the floor.
“Home sweet home,” Zach said. He kept his voice low as they went through the house and up the stairs. He peered into a half-open doorway. “Dead to the world,” he whispered to Nora.
“Fionn?”
“Grace.”
He took her one more door down, to Fionn’s nursery. A lamp in the shape of a yellow hot air balloon sat on the dresser, filling the room with tender light and heavy shadows. Zach went straight to the crib, leaned over and whispered, “There’s my boy. Come here, lad.” Nora watched, her chest tight and her stomach in knots, as Zach carefully lifted Fionn and wrapped a striped blue and white blanket loosely around him.
Nora didn’t even realize she was moving her feet until she was there, by Zach, her hand resting lightly on the back of Fionn’s tiny blond head. His hair was like pure silk, spun from pale gold. Her eyes filled with tears as Zach dropped kisses on his son’s sleeping forehead. Fionn’s head was turned to Zach’s chest so Nora couldn’t see his face.
“Feel better yet?” he asked.
“Getting there.”
“Here. Take him. When you have a sleeping baby in your arms, all’s right with the world.”
“I don’t know about—”
Gently, but with the confidence of a natural father, Zach passed Fionn to Nora. She winced as Fionn’s slight weight—Nora’s handbag weighed more the child—settled into her arms. Zach made it look so easy, like a holding a baby was as simple as snuggling a stuffed animal. But Fionn wriggled in her arms and his weight was uneven and his head seemed too big for his fragile little neck and—
“You better take him back—”
“Relax. It’s fine,” Zach said. “Sit in the rocking chair. That’ll make it easier.”
“What if I drop him?”
“We have carpeting.”
“Zach.”
“Babies bounce. And you won’t drop him. Sit.”
He pointed at the white rocking chair. Normally she was a fairly graceful woman but she suddenly found she didn’t know how to hold something and sit down at the same time.
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