Red Hot Obsessions: Ten Contemporary Hot Alpha Male Romance Novels Boxed Set

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Red Hot Obsessions: Ten Contemporary Hot Alpha Male Romance Novels Boxed Set Page 120

by Blair Babylon


  “Why didn’t you ask me directly? I’ve never known you to be shy,” Ariane said, looking surprised.

  “You can say that again, my dear, but it was at the beginning. I didn’t know you enough to be as direct with you as I am today. And once I got the rumor started, it was… embarrassing to ask. Anyway, now I’m asking. What happened? Will you tell me?” Caroline tried to look sheepish.

  “I’ll tell you all you want to know, but in confidence. I trust you will not breathe a word about this to anyone, right?”

  Caroline shook her head.

  “When we met, Patrick was hurting, he was still in love with his wife while I was… scared, scarred, damaged. Neither of us wanted to commit to anything. However, we’re both very young. We agreed that we would have casual sex. Sex without strings, without promises. Just sex.”

  “Oh, Ariane. Don’t you know that it never works? Sex is like bridge or golf… you can’t play well if you play casually.”

  “But it did work. It was perfect. We were good together. He would come over and stay the night when Martine had a sleep-over at a friend’s house or when she was at camp. We never had an awkward morning-after conversation because he always rushed out at five in the morning. It was perfect. It was comfortable.”

  “Oh my God, Ariane! ‘Comfortable’ is an adjective appropriate for a new pair of shoes or a bank account balance. Not for a lover.”

  “It suited me fine while it lasted. It’s in the past now. He’s finally divorced his wife. He’s back on his feet, turning a page, and moving on.” Ariane sighed.

  Caroline tilted her head sideways and looked at Ariane as if she was an alien creature. “I don’t understand you.”

  “What don’t you understand? When I moved here, I was running away from a relationship with a very violent man. After him, Patrick was perfect. A real teddy bear.” Ariane paused and made a face. “Oh no, having casual sex—or any kind of sex for that matter—with a teddy bear sounds horribly wrong, doesn’t it? But it’s not like that. What I mean is that he’s gentle, reassuring, and nonthreatening—like a teddy bear.”

  “Then we’re not made of the same stuff, Ariane. I know it’s been a while—I don’t even want to count how many years it’s been—but I still have vivid memories. I can tell you, the last thing I wanted in bed was a soft stuffed animal. I wanted a man, a real man, one who would make my blood boil and my toes curl. Hell, I didn’t want Prince Charming. Prince Charming’s a bore who never held any attraction for me. I wanted the dangerous, evil pirate who would take charge and ravish me.”

  A sad little smile crossed Ariane’s face. “I know just what you mean. I did fall for the pirate once. He was irresistibly sexy, handsome, dashing. Good heavens, he was everything a pirate should be. He also turned out to be cruel and cold hearted… a real jerk.” Ariane stood up and cleared the table as she spoke. “It did start with mind-blowing sex. My blood did boil, and my toes curled. That and his devil-may-care pirate attitude were what got me addicted to him. But then he started bringing me down any chance he got. He was a big shot and what was I? A cooking instructor in a third rate vocational school. An overweight chick from the wrong side of town. Our sex life was still wild, but it was one humiliating scene after another. And he still had me convinced I was lucky his path had crossed mine!”

  Ariane shuddered then went on. “My survival instinct took over the day he hit me. That was my wake-up call. Today, I’m thankful for the physical abuse. It slapped my mind back into place. Without it I’m not sure I would have realized how much he was messing with my head.”

  “I’m so sorry you went through all that, my dear. I knew you arrived with a broken heart, but I had no idea it had been that bad. Maybe you should stay clear of pirates. You could look for a Prince Charming but, please, not a teddy bear!”

  Ariane shrugged. She gathered up the dirty plates and went to the kitchen to fetch dessert.

  While she was out of the room, Caroline thought back to the countless times she had teased Ariane about her lack of a love life. All those years Ariane’d laughed away her questions. Never before had there been such a knee jerk reaction.

  Something had happened. Someone had cracked Ariane’s shell, and she was scared of being scalded again. She shouldn’t be. Life was about feelings. If you shut them down, you might as well kill yourself.

  Ariane walked back in with a brand new smile pasted on her face and, God bless her heart, she had her magical crème caramel.

  Caroline wondered what had broken open Ariane’s world again. It could be Patrick’s moving on, or it could be that Peter guy. Or a combination of both events? One way or another, she would find out what had happened. She so wanted to see her Ariane happy. But if she was going to meddle, she needed to know first, if this Peter was a nice guy and second, why Patrick had dumped Ariane.

  For the time being, she would make Ariane laugh by telling her about the latest power shift she had witnessed in the playground of the school across the street from her window. Watching those kids reminded her of some board meetings she had attended… No one ever changes, she always thought. Just the location and size of the playgrounds.

  Chapter 3

  Charles

  SATURDAY NIGHT WAS CHARLES’S NIGHT to party. The week had been rough at the studios. He was in a touchy situation because of the war between the show’s two scriptwriters.

  One of the scriptwriters was gay, and Charles had spurned his advances. The man held a grudge and wanted to get rid of Charles. He’d been coming up with a different plot that would kill off Charles’s character every single week.

  The other writer was Nathalie, the funniest young woman Charles had ever met. Nathalie had taken an instant liking to Charles and was in his corner. She kept reminding the production that Charles’s contract didn’t end until the fall. She pointed out that as long as they had to pay him they might as well use him, and so far she’d prevailed.

  So while her colleague was slashing his throat in a dark alley, driving him off the highway without a seatbelt, or choking him to death with a handful of peanuts, Nathalie was including Charles in more and more scenes. He had so many lines, he was having a hard time keeping up.

  The issue was not the length of the script—he had a fabulous memory and could learn by rote miles and miles of text. He had done so every single day when his part had started to grow in his first American soap opera. The problem was the way he said the words. Even if his character—the American cousin—had to have an accent when he spoke French, he still had to be understandable, and Charles often wasn’t. He was getting better, but he wasn’t there yet.

  The pressure was slowly building. He had to improve real fast, or his character would really be thrown down some cliff on a cloudy night.

  Jean-Michel and Ariane had been taking turns making him rehearse and “E-NUN-CI-A-TE” the French words he would have otherwise slaughtered. To thank them for their hard work, Charles was taking them out for dinner and dancing. He was dead tired and wanted nothing more than to go to bed, but it would do him good to let off some steam during an evening away from his character.

  So there he was, having a glass of wine in Ariane’s dining room on this lovely May evening, enjoying the breeze coming in from the wide open door and windows, when Ariane decided that, while they were waiting for Jean-Michel, they might as well work on Monday’s scenes.

  Charles paced and recited his text, and Ariane corrected him while paying her bills. The woman was incredible. Did she always multi-task? The question made an image pop into his head. A vision of Ariane in bed with a man, making love and writing out a grocery list. The image was so funny, and he was so tired, that he lost it. He laughed so hard he had to lean against the wall and sit on the floor.

  “What could possibly be so funny?” Ariane asked, looking up from her checkbook and smiling. “Poor baby, you’re slap-happy. Come on, breathe. You’re crimson. Do you want a glass of water? Breathe, you look like you’re about to burst.”

 
; “What’s the matter with him?” Jean-Michel asked as he walked in. “We could hear him laughing from the street.”

  “I don’t know. He was saying his line, and then he started to laugh. There’s no stopping him. Look at him! He’s contagious. He makes me want to giggle, too, and I don’t even know what’s so funny.”

  “Come on, tell us! We want to laugh as well,” Jean-Michel said.

  Charles caught his breath. “You know how Ariane always multi-tasks?”

  Jean-Michel nodded. “She’s a woman. Women do that.”

  “So I had this vision of her in bed with a man, and…” The end of his sentence was carried away by the wave of laughter washing over him.

  “…checking a to-do list?” Jean-Michel asked. He let out a squeal of laughter.

  Charles watched Ariane grin, start to laugh at herself, and then turn scarlet as a man’s voice by the door said, “He does have a point, you know. Your to-do lists are a bit obsessive.”

  Charles looked for the source of the voice. Standing there with a very insolent smirk pasted on his face was this nice-looking guy who was vaguely familiar. Charles recognized him but had no idea who he was.

  He looked at Jean-Michel for a clue, but his lover had lost it, too. He was laughing so hard, he had tears running down his face. It took a few moments before he was able to speak again. “Charles, you’re killing me. You have no idea how funny you are”—he breathed in—“to say that when Patrick is around.”

  Charles had heard all there was to hear about Patrick. The single, sexy baker who raised his daughter alone and had had no known lover in the past decade. Patrick who, according to the gossip started by Madame Caroline, was Ariane’s secret lover. Well, now was as good a time as any to find out if there was any truth to what the old bat was saying.

  “So Patrick, tell us. Does she prepare lists for you?” Charles asked.

  “Absolutely. All the time,” Patrick said without any hesitation.

  “Patrick!” Ariane was frowning.

  “Just last week, you sent me three different lists for my bread baskets…”

  “You know very well that’s not what Charles is talking about,” Jean-Michel said, interrupting Patrick.

  “I’m a gentleman,” he said, winking at Ariane. “And a gentleman never tells.”

  Thinking that maybe if they got him drinking, Patrick would tell, Charles invited him to go to dinner with them.

  “Sorry, I can’t. I would love to, but I promised Martine I’d take her to the movies tonight. For once she wants to do something with her old man, so I’m not going to turn her down.”

  “What about Tuesday night? There’s a free Mika concert to celebrate the passing of the new law allowing same sex marriage. Will you join us? The three of us plus a hundred thousand others are going dancing on the Place de la Bastille.”

  “We are?” Ariane asked.

  “We are,” Jean-Michel and Charles said together.

  “That sounds like fun,” Patrick said. “Sure I’ll go with you.” Then he turned to Ariane and said, “I wanted to talk to you. But I can wait. It’s nothing urgent.”

  “After my lunch with Madame Caroline tomorrow. I’ll be here all day doing my accounting. Feel free to come anytime.”

  “I’ll try. Otherwise I’ll see you Tuesday night. Bye, guys.” He left, looking disappointed.

  Charles and Jean-Michel waited to hear the heavy building door close before they jumped on Ariane. “So, pray tell, are you two just friends or what?”

  “This is obviously classified information, and I’m not gonna tell.”

  “A woman could do worse,” Charles said.

  “Funny, that’s precisely what Madame Caroline said to me over lunch. Maybe you two should meet and talk it over!”

  “Perish the thought,” Jean-Michel said as he closed the windows. “Ariane, you’re raging mad. If those two ever got together, it would be like a gossip nuclear explosion. We would never survive. Come on guys, let’s go out. I’m famished.”

  Chapter 4

  Peter

  THAT SAME SATURDAY NIGHT, PETER was at his desk in his home office in New York trying to finish grading his students’ finals, but his mind kept going back to Paris and to Ariane.

  During his last day in Paris, Peter had been kept very busy. He first met with Nathanael, the young French mathematician the Dean had asked him to court for her. Everyone agreed that this young man, who had just turned twenty-four, was simply amazing. Nevertheless, many members of the scientific community didn’t yet think of him as one of the top contenders for the Fields Medal to be awarded in 2014. The rule was that the prize, which is only awarded every four years, could only go to mathematicians under the age of forty. So, no matter how impressive Nathanael’s work had been, the jury could very well decide to look more favorably upon the work of older possible recipients who were running out of time.

  Marsha, the Dean who had been closely following Nathanael’s work because it was in her own field, was of the opposite opinion. Hence she had invited him to come to New York for the 2013/2014 academic year as a visiting professor in the school of mathematics where Peter taught.

  The meeting had gone very well. Nathanael was already sold on the idea of moving to Manhattan for a year. Peter had sealed the deal when he stressed that all the major Manhattan schools would certainly consider Nathanael if he made his interest known. But Peter’s school had the advantage in that Nathanael had not needed to ask. He was being courted by a Dean who had dedicated her entire life to the same field of research. In his school, Nathanael would be like first violin in a tiny elite orchestra instead of the third fiddle to a philharmonic.

  Peter had then met with the Dean of the Paris University, which was part of their exchange network. Since neither of them had a specific agenda, it was a very relaxed meeting. They spent a nice couple of hours getting to know each other and agreed to meet again soon, especially if Peter did come back to visit Paris as he planned.

  There had been just enough time to drop by Ariane’s school to say goodbye before meeting Mary at the hotel and taking a ride to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to go back home.

  Peter could hardly believe a week had passed already since he had dropped in on Ariane on his way out of Paris. She had been in the middle of one of her Monday afternoon classes. All the attendees were young adults, and she had felt confident enough to leave her classroom unattended for a short while since she was just stepping into the adjacent room.

  Peter had kissed her goodbye and left very frustrated because she had remained aloof. Nothing like the Sunday morning kiss when he had obviously knocked her socks off. Probably the presence of her students on the other side of the door. Unless she had still been recovering from the hour he had spent alone with her after the end of the weekend workshop.

  For him, it had been an hour of absolute bliss. Empowered by the knowledge that she was ready to let him in, he had savored bringing out her passionate side. He had shamelessly caressed and teased her to bring her very close to the edge several times and purposely left her desperately hungry for him. He wanted her impatiently awaiting his return.

  Furthermore, Ariane had to know right from the start who was going to be in command of her pleasure from then on. Peter didn’t know what she had experienced before, and he didn’t really care. The only thing that mattered was that, from then on, she would be his and his only.

  He couldn’t wait to be back in Paris, but he had to stay put another ten days. He would have to go through all the graduation events and the commencement ceremony, but then he would be free to go to her. The only question was how much time he would need to stay in Paris.

  He wasn’t sure how long it would take to make Ariane his the way he intended to. He was hoping he could do it in three months, and then he could come back with her to New York in time for the fall term. But what if three months were not enough to obtain her complete surrender? What if she refused to abandon her entire life and place herself entirely a
t his mercy by moving to New York? He was pretty sure he could buy himself more time by joining the exchange program and staying in Paris as a visiting professor for a term or two. But it was too late to get an invitation for the fall term. He had already received his schedule for that period. He would just have to hope for the best. She seemed so receptive to his touch when really he had barely started exploring her body. He would probably learn her ways and teach her his ways in a few weeks. He looked forward to doing so.

  In the meantime, he had finals to grade, papers to finish, a suitcase to pack. The next day he was having lunch at his sister’s. She was going to try to do the soufflé with cheddar instead of whatever cheese Ariane had used. He was curious and wondered what the deal was between Mary and her cave man. He smiled, remembering all the nicknames Charles had found for him during the course of the weekend. Each one had been appropriate, but Cro-Magnon had been the most interesting. Peter recognized that he was probably an intellectual snob to have been surprised that a young and un-educated two-bit actor like Charles knew the name of the early Homo sapiens sapiens. Go figure where he had learned that, but it certainly was an appropriate moniker for that strange creature his sister had fallen for.

  Chapter 5

  Patrick

  PATRICK HAD LOOKED FORWARD TO Tuesday night all week. Come to think of it, he had never been anywhere with Ariane. It would be their first date.

  How strange would that be? He had made love with her for years, and he knew her body like the back of his hand. Had he possessed any artistic talent, he could have painted her from memory and drawn a pleasure map, placing special hues on her most sensitive places.

  But aside from her body, he was not sure how much he truly knew about her. He knew her favorite pastries, her favorite colors, her fondness for animal prints. He also knew Ariane was a kind soul. She was devoted to Madame Caroline, the old grinch who owned half the street.

 

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