Paris Lights

by C. J. Duggan

  ‘I love you, Claire,’ he said.

  Such words should have been a dream come true – I had Liam back and now we could go home and forget Paris, forget the entire nightmare. It wouldn’t be easy but we could get through this; in time, maybe it would make us even stronger as a couple. That’s what Aunty Sue had said about her marriage, that Uncle Tom having an affair was the best thing that could ever have happened to them. I had always thought that was just ridiculous, and yet here I was. Standing before my boyfriend, trying to find the good in this situation. But as the rain fell harder, his touch left me cold and that very same numbness started growing inside me once more.

  I stepped out of his hold.

  ‘Claire, what’s wrong?’

  I wrapped my arms across my chest, blinking away the drops of rain. ‘Go home, Liam.’

  ‘But you’re coming with me,’ he said, confused by the sudden change in my demeanour.

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘So … what? You going to stay here forever? Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t afford it.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  Liam sighed, running his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘Look, I get it, you want to punish me, but you can do that in London. You can give me the silent treatment, make me sleep on the couch … we’ll move and start again, do whatever it takes. Just come back with me.’

  It was a speech motivated by anger, not love. He had gone from pleading to annoyed, like he always did. It was like I was seeing the real him, the one that had always been there, the one I chose to put up with.

  But not any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Why wasn’t I crying?

  Was this normal? I had ended it – I had turned Liam away on my own terms. I had made a life-changing decision. Shouldn’t I have felt some kind of pain? As I caught my dripping reflection in the yellow mirror of the lift it occurred to me that my heart had been broken and it was still imperfect and bitter about the world. I had chosen to try to heal it, to not have it stepped on again. So the feeling was … freedom. I had liberated myself in a way I had never done before and I felt giddy.

  Liam’s eyes had burned with rage as he’d asked me a question that really caught my attention.

  ‘Is it because of him?’ He’d gestured with his head to the hotel.

  When my mouth opened but no words followed, he’d taken my shocked silence as the only thing he needed to know. He’d grunted, shaking his head as he backed away.

  ‘Have a nice life, Claire,’ he’d said, before walking into the night.

  And I had returned to the hotel.

  The doors to the lift opened on the sixth floor. Lost in my thoughts I cared little that I was dripping a trail over the plush carpet. Liam had thought I was staying because of Louis Delarue. It was almost laughable. But more worrying was the way my insides twisted at the very thought of that he might be right. It had horrified me even as it excited me. Yep, I was definitely broken.

  Before taking another sodden step my eyes landed on the open balcony window and a familiar shadow, lazily leaning in the doorway, watching the cityscape. He didn’t look around, too fascinated by the outside world. I slowly made my way over to stand beside him, following his gaze to the golden light filtering from the apartment across the street: an opulent space filled with people laughing and drinking champagne as Madeleine Peyroux crooned ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’. I yearned to be a part of that world instead of standing here, cold and wet in the shadows.

  Then Louis tore his eyes from the view and turned to look at me. Despite the dampened air and the breeze that blew through the open door, I didn’t feel cold any more.

  He didn’t ask me about Liam, or about my dishevelled state, his eyes simply slid over my body, his mouth twitching with amusement before he looked into my eyes and, in true Louis fashion, titled his head toward the apartment across the street.

  ‘Do you want to join the party?’ he asked.

  Confused, I looked across the way. ‘What? Gatecrash their party?’ I asked in dismay, trying to imagine the likes of Louis Delarue trying to slip into a party undetected.

  Louis laughed; it was short and abrupt, an unexpected sound with its joyous notes, but more unexpected than the laugh was his hand reaching for mine to twirl me to the music.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said, before pulling me into his arms as he took the lead. There on the landing of the sixth floor in the shadows we gatecrashed the party across the street and I could feel my spirits lift, laughing as Louis spun me once more and then dramatically dipped me so quickly I feared he might drop me. He didn’t, he was far too strong for that. Breathless, my heart raced as he helped me stand, his hand still looped around my waist as we shifted to the sway of a Mélanie Laurent melody.

  We were in our own world – even the outburst of laughter from across the street did little to break the spell. I was so lost in Louis that I was having trouble remembering to breathe. Until my eyes lowered and I saw dampness spreading across his jacket.

  ‘I’m getting your suit wet,’ I said, trying to step away.

  Louis held me in place. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, but I did. I had already ruined an expensive suit of Louis’s and I didn’t want it to become a habit.

  ‘Hang on, I’ll take off my jacket,’ I said, but instead of letting me go, Louis swept his hand up under the material of my shoulders and pushed the damp garment back, drawing it down. His hands touched my cold skin, causing gooseflesh to prickle. My jacket fell into a clump on the floor. I could feel his laboured breaths blowing down on me as I stared at his chest. A voice inside my head told me not to look up, Whatever you do, don’t open yourself up to this man, don’t think about the way his hands are moving their way back up your arms, lifting your hands to his shoulders, anchoring you in place. I swallowed, trying to still my heartbeat, trying not to be distracted by the intense musky tone of his aftershave and trying not lean into his warmth. But when he stood there, unmoving, I ignored my inner voice and slowly lifted my eyes, and the instant I did I knew I was in serious trouble.

  He searched my face, and then glanced at my mouth so briefly I might have imagined it, and just as his head began to lower, something inside me snapped.

  ‘Bonne nuit!’ I said very loudly and a little frantically, jumping back and turning to scuttle down the hall to my room.

  Chapter Thirty

  I fumbled through my bag – it was infuriatingly deep and impossible to locate a room key in an emergency, and this was definitely an emergency. I glanced up the hall to see Louis casually approaching. Shit, come on, come on.

  It was too late, he had arrived at his door grinning like the Cheshire cat as he swung his key around his finger. I didn’t have the time or patience to pay any attention to him since, as I searched, my mind was screaming, I nearly kissed Louis Delarue … holy shit, I NEARLY KISSED LOUIS DELARUE!

  I upended my bag, and lipstick, compact, passport, tissues, purse and coins went flying.

  ‘You forgot this.’

  Louis dangled my jacket in front of me as I crouched on the floor. The thought of how it had come to be off in the first place tinged my cheeks with pink as I grabbed it from his hand. Only then did I feel the lump in the pocket of my jacket and discovered the key I had been looking for. Ugh!

  I shoved my jacket and the junk back into my bag, thinking I really needed to calm down. Be cool, Claire, nothing happened. I had enough sense to know the difference between a good idea and a bad one, and no matter how tempting it was to erase the memory of Liam with a frivolous, meaningless conquest, I knew that I was most definitely not that kind of girl. I couldn’t let such a fantasy drive me in anyway, even if the very thought gave me an unexpected thrill. I stood, hooked my bag over my shoulder and looked directly at a very amused-looking Louis, leaning with his back against his door, getting his own kind of thrill out of knowing I was frantic and fumbling because he had made me so. He was just the kind of man to enjoy making those around him s
quirm. Cocky bastard.

  I shoved the key into the lock.

  ‘Are you always running from something?’

  I paused, his words raising the hairs on the back of my neck, not because he managed to push my buttons like no other man, but because there was a definite element of truth to them. I had run from my mundane existence in Melbourne to follow a boy and his dreams halfway around the world, and now I was running from that life too. I wasn’t that girl any more, but now I didn’t know who I was. Maybe I was a girl who should take risks, act out and not think twice about the repercussions – it had gotten me to the sixth floor after all, and the night had not been a total disaster. If I remembered rightly, I had had a nice time, and even more so in the arms of a man … they just didn’t happen to be Liam’s.

  I turned, meeting Louis’s eyes across the hall. There was a new voice inside my head, a new feeling building in me – it wasn’t one of fear, or caution: it was one of adrenalin and sheer, mind-numbing stupidity that saw me drop my bag and take three short steps to push him hard against the door, grab the lapels of his jacket and pull his mouth to mine. It took him only a second to recover from his shock and slip his arms around me, pulling me against him and kissing me so feverishly I thought I was going to lose my mind. I opened my mouth to him, moaning softly, my hand flying up to glide through the thick curls of his hair. He spun me around and my back slammed into the door, driving the air from my lungs. The action only made me more determined to bring him close to me. As if reading my mind, Louis scooped me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing more than a feather. I wrapped my legs around him, feeling the hard length of him grind against me with the most delicious friction. My hands found their way under his jacket, my nails digging into his back through the thin fabric of his shirt as he nipped playfully at the nape of my neck, tasting and sucking on my skin, groaning in approval as I clamped my legs tighter, moving against him.

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ I breathed, my eyes closed as if to deny what was happening, that Louis was not hard and wedged between my thighs.

  ‘You want me to stop?’ he whispered into my ear, biting the lobe and making me gasp. He pushed his hips forward, just in the right place. I opened my eyes just as his head pulled back a little, looking at me as if asking permission.

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  Louis smiled, seemingly pleased by my fervour as he once again lowered his mouth to mine, this time more slowly. His tongue entered my mouth much more tenderly, teasing, deepening our kiss in a way that drove me mad – in the best possible way. This was exactly what I had needed, to forget about my ordinary life and just live in the moment, and if that involved being fucked up against a door in Paris, then that was what I would do. Shutting my mind completely off, I lowered my hand to where Louis’s belt looped through his trousers, yanking it free to access his fly. It’s amazing what you can achieve quickly when you really want something; apparently I was far more desperate for what was inside Louis’s pants than what had been at the bottom of my handbag.

  Just as I lowered the zip, Louis let go of my legs and I slid back down the door with a yelp of surprise. Had he changed his mind? But before I could even worry further, Louis had spun me around, placing the palms of my hands on the glossy paint of his door; his back pressed against me, burning through my dampened top, as he kissed my neck. I went to move my hand to his soft hair, but he gripped my wrist and guided it back against the door.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he whispered in my ear; the feel of his hot breath against my skin making my insides twist. There was something so insanely hot about being exposed like this, between our two worlds, neither inviting the other into their bed – we were in between, touching, tasting, testing one another. Louis’s French mutterings only served to make me burn more for him, and damn him, he bloody knew it too.

  Louis’s hands moved along my bare thighs, lifting the fabric of my skirt, gathering the material to expose my underwear, then following the lacy edge of the waistband around to touch the skin below my navel. My hands were placed firmly on the door, anchoring me in place when all my knees wanted to do was give way. Louis used his foot to make me stand wider, to open myself up to him. I dropped my head back into the crook of his neck, his heavy breathing in my ear matching my pained gasps as his hand dipped lower, stealing inside the thin fabric to slip his fingers inside, one and then another, pressing his way into the most intimate part of me, working me slowly, then more frantically.

  ‘Louis,’ I gasped, almost as a plea as I worked my hips against his hand.

  His other hand peeled down the front of my top, and one of my breasts spilled into his palm. He cupped me, squeezing the aching bud that was already hard from the chill of my damp clothes. I craned my head back, kissing Louis so passionately as his hands worked, drawing me closer and closer to the edge, an edge there was no coming back from – not that I really wanted to.

  ‘Do you think about me being inside you?’ His words were strained, his accent so thick I could have come just by hearing it.

  ‘Yes,’ I cried, breaking the rules and letting my hand fall from the door to clamp onto his forearm, pushing him deeper into me.

  ‘Do you like that?’ He breathed out a laugh, moving faster. Harder.

  ‘Oh God, yes.’

  I could feel his hardness pressing against my rump; I wanted to touch him, taste him, take him inside me, do all manner of wicked things with this man, but I was paralysed by my own ecstasy, as I started to come hard, unable to hold in my cry as I gripped the door and Louis’s arm, rocking into his rhythm and melting from the mind-blowing pleasure that rolled through every part of my body. Louis didn’t tell me to be quiet, he whispered words of encouragement as I fell apart, so completely and so loudly on the safety of the sixth floor, all until we heard the lift ding and the sound of doors gliding open.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Holy shit.

  Diving to my door, straightening my clothes and wrestling with the key that was still in the lock, this time I had no trouble letting myself in. I managed a glance back to see Louis looping the last of his belt back into place, pulling his jacket together as he waved at whoever had stepped out of the lift. Closing my door, I fell back onto it, breathing heavily, frightened and reeling from what had been the biggest, most shattering orgasm of my life.

  I heard the muffled voices out in the hall, eternally grateful that Louis was the one that had distracted the intruder. The person didn’t stay long, apparently delivering a message, and their footsteps faded back down the hall. I stayed with my ear pressed to the door, lingering until I heard the lift.

  Should I open the door? Was Louis still out in the hall, waiting for me to reappear? I hadn’t heard his door close. But if I opened mine, what would he think? Would it be weird if I didn’t say goodnight? Or at least have some kind of exchange with him – his tongue had just been in my mouth, and the man just released years of pent-up tension with only his masterful fingertips. I wasn’t sure what the Michelin-star equivalent for orgasms was, but he deserved at least three stars for making me come so hard – I had all but forgotten my own name.

  Just as I wondered what I should do, I saw a shift of shadow move against the strip of light beneath my door and I held my breath. My heart was in my throat, and I felt giddy at the very thought of hearing him knock. I placed my hand on the door, ready to rip it open and drag him into my room and my bed without a moment’s hesitation. I wanted more, I wanted him, if only for the night – I could be damned by the consequences later. I watched the shadow remain in front of my door, pause for a long moment, until the unexpected happened: the footsteps moved away, taking the shadow with them, and I heard Louis’s door close.

  He. Didn’t. Knock.

  I blinked, confused and completely and utterly deflated, as I gingerly twisted the handle and opened my door a crack, peering out into the empty hall and fixing my gaze on the infamous door that, much to my amazement, didn’t bear the evidence of claw marks in th
e white paint. Just thinking about it made my cheeks flush in mortification. The way I had moaned and begged for more, the way I was so wanton and at his mercy. Who the hell was I? I quickly closed the door, snipping the chain across and suddenly thankful that he hadn’t knocked – he was probably recognising the interlude for what it was.

  A diabolical mistake.

  I stood at the kitchen sink, violently scrubbing the last of the pots in the ultimate black mood. Turns out I really wasn’t the kind of girl who was mentally equipped to deal with hot, heavy and casual hallway hook-ups. I wasn’t the kind who sent boyfriends packing and then danced with mere acquaintances in the moonlight. Far from it. How was I ever going to face him? Had London not meant the possibility of seeing Liam I would have been half tempted to flee back there, but that would probably be exactly what Louis would expect, and I had a bit more pride than that. Although having worked through breakfast and lunch without so much as spotting him, it seemed that I was not actually the one doing the avoiding.

  Tasks complete, I longed for a walk, to take advantage of the blue skies and sunshine that would hopefully lift my mood, but as soon as I passed a smiling Gaston and stepped out to the kerb I saw Louis’s Audi, unmoved from last night. I went to ask Gaston if he had seen him today, but thought better of it. We should all be rejoicing that the lion was still in his den; hopefully he would be there for the rest of his stay. If he aimed to hide from me for the rest of his time here, maybe I really had taken one for the team. My anger pushed me down the street, and then ironically I was angry at myself for being angry; I really couldn’t win. I needed to escape.