by Serena Janes
His words caused her belly to contract in fear. She stared into his eyes, and saw the fury she’d been dreading.
“But if I can’t stomach what you say, I’ll catch the first flight back to France tomorrow,” he added, letting her chin drop.
“Luc,” she whispered, shocked. “I can explain everything! Please, just give me a…”
“Non! I go first,” he insisted as he began to caress her neck, his breath hot on her hair. She groaned softly and his hand moved slowly along her shoulder, down over a breast, then along her belly. Exquisite touch. Fear and desire made her entire body tremble.
Just like before. I’ll do anything he wants.
His warm hand was on her hip now, tracing her thigh downwards, then up again. Back to her belly, around to her buttock and up to the hollow in the small of her back. Her mouth filled with saliva and she groaned as she panted her want. “Luc, Luc, I’m so sorry. Let me…” He stopped her with a hot kiss to the side of her neck.
She felt a gush of wet warmth soak into her thong.
Yes, yes, yes. I’ll never escape the power of the Virgin’s cult. I’m a slave to it. I’m a slave to Luc.
He dipped his hand under the flounced hem of her skirt to explore. She spread her legs a little as she turned her head up to his for a kiss. But, like that first time, he moved his mouth, then his hand, away. Keeping control.
But she could hear his breathing grow louder, faster.
He grabbed her chin again and held it steady, his dark eyes looking deeply into hers. Then he exhaled in a groan and said slowly, in barely a whisper, “It’s still there, isn’t it?”
“What?” She couldn’t think at all, and her arms were growing numb.
“That thing between us. It’s still there.” He released her chin and began to rub his hand up and down the insides of her thighs. She started at the urgency of his touch, and moaned again as he reached higher and brushed the tips of his fingers over the wet crotch of her thong. “See?” he asked as he put his hand to her mouth and rubbed the damp fingers over her lips. She kissed them.
“We still have it,” he insisted.
Now she understood. “Yes. We do,” she whispered. All she could do was stifle a sob as she realized she was helpless in her desire for him, and he knew it. He was playing with her.
“I could take you right here,” he hissed. “I could fuck you until you scream. Just like before,” he said between clenched teeth. His free hand was on her neck now, encircling it with his strength.
“Yes,” she whispered, eyes closing, giving in to her need. “Yes, you could. I wish you would.”
She let her entire body go limp, and sensing her surrender, he released her arms and stepped back. For a few seconds she just stood there, leaning against the fridge, panting, staring at the floor. Then he began to talk.
“You broke my heart, Joanna.” He didn’t move after this confession, just stood beside her, eyes downcast. “No one has ever done that to me. Ever.”
Jo looked up at him, mute.
“I didn’t know how bad it could be.” He took a long, ragged breath and continued, rubbing his bristled jaw with one hand. “No one can explain what it feels like to have your heart break into pieces like that. It was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Jo felt her heart pounding as the significance of his words hit home.
He must have really loved her, then.
And now?
“Although we barely knew each other, I was certain that I loved you. But when you hurt me like that, I knew I hated you.” He looked at her now, and Jo saw the passion in his eyes. Her own filled with tears.
“Oh, Luc! How could I have known?”
She really hadn’t. Who would guess that her French lover of just a week would genuinely fall in love with her? It seemed so unlikely, at the time.
“I loved you, too. I love you now,” she insisted as she took hold of his hands and raised them to her face. She kissed his fingers, wetting them with her tears.
“I would never knowingly hurt you, Luc. I love you. I will never hurt you, I promise you that.”
He didn’t pull away, so she continued in a rush. “You read my letter, didn’t you? You know why I left you. And how I realized too late what a mistake that was.”
“Too late, Joanna. It was sent too late.”
“It was all I could do. I was in shock. Grief. Can’t you see that? Let me explain! Please!”
“I’m not sure that words can ever be enough.”
“What do you want me to do?” She asked in a frantic voice. “At least let me try to tell you my side of the story. Please be fair!”
“Fair!?” He blurted back at her. “What was fair about what you did to me? I acted in good faith and you threw me away once you’d finished with your little fling. Running home with your lover, back to your nice little American life. Leaving me with nothing but wreckage!
“I lost everything that was important to me. I hurt Simone, and she left me. I estranged my family, and my friends. My son barely recognizes me anymore. I lost my appetite, I can’t sleep and I can’t say there’s a single thing I enjoy anymore. Everything’s gone to shit!”
He might have been angry but Jo saw that his beautiful dark eyes were wet with tears. Her heart contracted.
She raised both hands to his face and held his head gently as if it were the most precious object in the world. Looking steadily into his eyes she said calmly, enunciating each word for effect, “Luc, I am so sorry if I caused you to suffer. I love you like I have never loved anyone. I didn’t expect to see you again, and the fact you are here right now is the most significant thing that has happened to me. Ever. I swear I will do everything I can to atone for the hurt I caused you. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy, if that’s what you want.”
His upper lip quivered slightly as a tear spilled from the corner of one eye and ran down his cheek. Jo couldn’t bear to see him in so much pain. Instinctively, she put her arms around him and held on as if she could absorb all the hurt from him.
“Luc, my love, it’s going to be alright. We’ll make it alright. We will. You’re my only lover. I have no other—I want no other. I want only you…”
She babbled inane, soothing words, stroking his hair, the back of his neck, holding on for dear life, until she felt his body begin to relax.
Suddenly he stepped out of her grasp. “What’s that music?” he asked as he cocked his head at a blues refrain coming from her speakers.
Puzzled at his change of tone, she needed a few seconds to recognize the tune. Why’d You Lie?
“A Canadian musician, I think,” she said as she felt herself being pulled into his arms. To her astonishment, his body began a slow rhythmic rocking in time to the guitar.
Jo grew light-headed with relief. She hung onto him as he led her into the living room. He seemed oblivious to her clinging body, lost in the music, but she didn’t care. Just to be able to feel him holding her was enough.
He was a good dancer, pulling her more tightly against him. She responded, rubbing herself along his chest and belly, rotating her hips into his pelvis until she was rewarded by the thrill of his erection.
“I didn’t lie to you, Luc,” she whispered, rubbing his broad back. “I would never lie to you. What happened was beyond my control, at the time, and I sincerely regret not being able to think clearly enough to do the right thing by you. I beat myself up every day for what I did. I love you so much.”
He kissed her neck then, her cheek, and, when she turned her mouth up to his he took it with a hot sweetness that made her gasp. The music pushed them forward, into each other, raising them into a mutual letting go of themselves and everything they’d been carrying with them in the long months since they’d last been together. Hot, wet, delicious kisses, cries and moans, they melded into the turning union of the Yin and Yang.
The song ended and Luc scooped Jo into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
The lights
of the city illuminated the room. They could see the shine in each other’s eyes as he gently laid her on the bed and settled beside her. She opened herself to him as quietly and serenely as a flower, and he came to her silently, dignified.
They held each other tenderly, touching and kissing with a restrained passion that stretched over hours. They undressed each other slowly, respectfully, then climbed under a blanket. Hands, skin and mouths were their only means of communication, yet Jo was certain they had never spoken to the other so honestly, so clearly.
At some point Luc was inside her, she realized, and she had been coming and coming but she didn’t know when it had started. Everything was no longer her but them, and she thought she’d fainted only to regain consciousness as Luc, looking down at her with his dark eyes as she rolled and moaned and whispered underneath him on the bed.
Then they slept.
Chapter Fourteen
At midnight they were awake and hungry enough to get up. Jo wrapped herself in a robe, lit some candles, and laid the food out on the table. She explained the cheeses, all from Canadian dairies, and the wild smoked sockeye salmon as she watched Luc eat. She had no appetite, and he had to coax her to have anything at all.
“It’s your turn, now. I want hear what you have to say,” he said somberly as he filled their wine glasses.
The festive part of the evening was over, she realized.
“Of course,” she began. She took a deep breath and blurted, “My father died. You know that. But you can’t know what it did to me.”
“Eat this,” he said, holding out a piece of cheddar. “Then tell me,” he nudged.
“Tell me,” he repeated, solemnly chewing, his eyes never leaving her face. He’d pulled his jeans and black T-shirt back on, and the dark color gave him a sinister air in the candlelight. There was no music now. Just the sounds of the city below them.
“For a while there I thought I’d lost everything. My strongest parent, the number one support in life, my confidante. I was his special girl. Can you see? No one will ever love me like that again,” she whispered emphatically as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “Completely unconditional love.”
He nodded solemnly.
“But I also lost James. He loved me but I had to send him away. I hurt him and it was terrible.” She paused for a moment, looking out the window to collect her thoughts.
“And then there was you,” she added hesitantly as she lowered her gaze to her hands and began to fidget with a ball of tissue. “I also lost you. And that was the worst of all.”
When she looked up, Luc was still staring at her steadily. She continued. “I kept my job, obviously, and I voluntarily gave up my home to transfer up here. But all of my emotional security was gone. And when I came to enough to realize what I’d done to you I was horrified. Excruciating guilt and horror. I hated myself. My stupidity.”
“Go on.”
“The clearer my thoughts and memories, the more I suffered. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. What I assumed was a temporary infatuation, just lust, seemed to grow and grow and consume me with longing and guilt and remorse and a million other emotions.”
She paused to blot her tears with the tissue and take another sip of wine. Seeing as he wasn’t going to interrupt her, she went on, taking the piece of salmon he’d put on a cracker for her.
“I dreamed every single day that I would look up from my desk and see you standing there in front of me. I fantasized that you would reach me by email, letter, telephone—to tell me that you loved me and that everything would be all right. It was silly, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Eat the fish.”
She did, then blotted her mouth with a napkin, took a deep breath and carried on.
“I didn’t know how to find you, you see. James went into my bag and took the card you gave me. He destroyed it. You’re not on any of the social media. Your name just doesn’t register when I try an Internet search. It’s like you’re invisible.”
He nodded. “There are reasons for that. I’ll explain later.”
“I thought I was beginning to lose touch with reality. After awhile I wondered if I hadn’t imagined you—my phantom French lover.”
They smiled at each other.
“And then I got Anna’s letter. So, with her prompting, I wrote to you—to see if I could make happen what wasn’t happening at your end.
“And I wrote to Madame G. too. Mostly to apologize for running off like that, but also in the hope you’d pass through Martel again this summer. And that she’d let you know, maybe, that my intentions were good ones.”
He handed her another bit of cheese, Oka this time, and she took it.
“But I got no answer.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Madame G. died,” Luc said.
“No!” Jo started in her seat. More tears sprang to her eyes. “When? How?”
“Shortly after you last saw her. Her heart.”
“I’m so sorry.” She was, too. The old woman had been kind to her, and her death was one more loss. She put the cheese down, unable to eat anything more.
“I’m sorry, too. We quarreled, you see. About you.” Luc’s face was grave. “And I’m afraid my last words to her were not kind ones.”
Jo sighed deeply. “This doesn’t get any easier.”
“No, mon Cherie. It doesn’t.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Tell me what happened with my ex-wife.”
“I think you should be telling me,” Jo countered. “All I know is that one day I find a letter on my desk with a Cahors postmark. I almost wept with relief, until I saw it wasn’t from you. How did she know about me? About us, I mean?”
Luc shrugged. “I told her, naturelment. I’ve always trusted Anna. I guess I felt she was the only person in the world I could still trust, and so I told her everything. She suggested I take a road trip on my bike to try to get you out of my head. I went to Morocco.”
And Spain! Jo winced as she remembered the pain of seeing Luc with that blonde in Ronda. But she didn’t want to mention she’d been there. Not yet.
“And she just interfered? Wrote to me all on her own?”
“Yes. While I was away.”
“And when you found out what she’d done?”
“Like I said, I trusted her. She’s usually right. I just went with the flow. She booked my flight and here I am.”
“When did you receive my letter?” She had to know if it was before or after blondie on the bike.
“Not until I got back to the office after my vacation.”
Jo felt the prickling tension leave her body and she sank back into her chair.
“So you haven’t had much time to process all of this.”
He shook his head. “A few days.”
“Did my letter change how you felt about me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” His expression told her nothing. She began to feel very tired.
“I can’t let myself trust you yet, Joanna.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “That’s going to take time.”
“I understand,” she said softly. Reaching over the table she raised his hand to her lips. “Let’s go back to bed. We both need to sleep.”
Being in bed with Luc was an experience that both thrilled and terrified Jo. First of all, she’d never really imagined what it would be like to be in bed with him and not be having sex. It felt odd, somehow, to be laying naked beside him, under the covers, motionless, waiting for sleep.
He might have been sleep-deprived and ready to pass out, but she’d never felt more alert in her life. As she sensed him slipping into oblivion, her mind raced through replays of the previous few hours, anticipating what the next day would bring, and worrying, worrying, worrying…
What if, after all we’ve just said to each other, he decides to leave anyway? And if he doesn’t, how long will he stay? And where do we go from here?
She wished she could just relax and be happy for what sh
e had—the sexiest man alive, whom she loved more than she believed possible, sprawled out naked beside her in a beautiful penthouse overlooking the still waters of English Bay. His regular breathing should have calmed her, but she couldn’t stop thinking, thinking, thinking…
Unable to get comfortable, she got up, put on a flimsy nightgown and sat down in an easy chair beside the bed. From there she could watch him sleep.
She saw that his ring finger no longer bore the pale indent of the wedding band he’d cut off for her in France. The fact he wore it long past his divorce was proof to Jo of his fidelity to his family. Not only was she in love with him in every way imaginable, he was a good man, to boot.
As perfect as I’ll ever find.
The sheet had slipped down around his chest and she noted the fineness of his strong shoulders, sharper now that he’d lost some weight. The Yin and Yang tattoo on his bicep seemed to pulse with meaning in the semi-dark. Now she knew its significance. She didn’t have to ask him, but intuited, somehow, that what was important to him was the very harmony—sexual and spiritual—that the two of them shared. A continent and an ocean couldn’t weaken their bond. The Black Virgin was right.
Once I tasted the thrill of giving myself over to my lover, completely—to fuse with him, to become a part of him—I could never settle for anything less. I can’t lose him again. I can’t.
Despite her fear, she must have dozed off because she was startled by a strange noise. It took a moment for her to understand that Luc was grinding his teeth as he slept.
Her heart went out to him as she thought of all the pain and worry he must have been suffering on her account.
Of course he’s not going to just drop all of his insecurities about me. After what I’ve done to him it’s enough that he’s here. I can’t expect too much from him. I need to just love him, and give him time to heal.
Just then he awoke. She saw his arm reach out for her, and when he realized he was alone he sat up and looked around the room, alarm on his face.
“Ah. There you are. What are you doing over there?”