“Stop teasing.” I hiss.
He chuckles. “Not what I want you to say, and you know it.”
“Fine. I find you charming. In your own very annoying way. Now, can you please shut up and fuck me?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” He sinks in deep, stealing the breath from my lungs.
Our love-making is slow, sweet, something I never thought a man like Levi would be capable of, but he knows how to worship the female form. He knows how to work my body in just the right ways so that I sing for only him. He knows exactly how to get underneath my skin, and worse still, I like him there.
You cannot lose your heart, Brielle. I remind myself again, but I fear it’s already lost, and I doubt this man is likely to ever give it back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
INK AND MILK
BRIELLE
I lean against the doorframe and watch him play. A sad melody fills the space between us as his hands make love to the keys. It’s late, close to 2:00 a.m., and I woke in his bed with no idea how I came to be there. The sorrowful notes seemed to call to me from the ballroom, and so I followed them up the stairs and down the hall as if he were the pied piper, and I was a hapless child.
There is a bottle of whisky on top of the piano, and an empty glass. Of course, he is drinking again. He is never long without a whisky or wine in his hands, and I don’t know which makes him happier, sex or alcohol. I wonder if he knows how to have one without the other.
I move closer, trail my fingers along the ink that marks the hard muscle over his shoulders and down his back. My insides tighten. Levi turns and faces me with a curious expression. I retract my hand and stare into the hazel eyes so full of anguish and torment, and I want to erase his pain, but I don’t know where to start.
He grabs my hands and tugs me closer, setting me down so that my arse smashes the keys. He runs his hands up my sides, finds the sash on my robe and tugs, exposing my silk chemise underneath. Levi runs his thumb over my nipple, and my body breaks out in goosebumps. He kneads my breasts and stands, kicking back the stool. It lands with a loud clatter in the empty room. He slides his fingers into my hair, gripping it roughly as he meets my lips with vigour, and passion, his need as intoxicating as his misery.
I kiss him back, wanting more of this delicious, ridiculous man who more often than not borders on insanity. He tugs at my robe, ripping the fabric from my shoulders, and jerks me closer, devouring me with his mouth on my neck, my shoulder, my breast. He tears the silk of my chemise and I’m laid bare to him, exposed and vulnerable but revelling in it all the same. Levi squeezes my breast while his mouth covers the opposite nipple. He lifts me onto the piano, the keys protest under the soles of my feet, making a strange and beautiful music all of their own as he splays a hand over my abdomen and pushes me back against the sleek white surface of the piano.
I rest my feet on the keys and that dissonant noise comes again as he trails his hands over my chest and belly, and down my thighs, avoiding my pussy altogether. Grasping my knees, he spreads my legs, so I am splayed for him. Wide open and vulnerable.
“Jesus, you’re fucking beautiful.” He lowers his head, and kisses the inside of my thighs, all the way up to my pussy where his finger dips between my lips. His tongue laves at me, opening me little by little, and then all at once, he thrusts inside. I cry out. Wanting more, but too afraid to demand he give it to me. Too afraid his drinking and silence means he’s still pining after another woman while his mouth and hands make promises to me that he cannot keep.
The thought of being just another plaything to him boils my blood, and I grab hold of his hair and tug him closer, grinding my pussy against his face. He moans, the sound reverberating through my flesh. It makes me shiver all over. My legs are shaking. I can’t keep still and every time I move, the keys groan again with more discordant notes, shattering the silence. Levi grabs my ankles and thrusts my legs forward, so my knees rest on my chest. The position makes my already sensitive flesh sing. I arch my neck so that I’m looking into the mirror on the wall behind us. We make a handsome couple. His shock of thick black hair and pretty face buried between my thighs, one inky hand under my arse, the other grasping my breast. My milky skin flushed with desire, and perhaps the most erotic of all, my ravaged and torn chemise exposing my body to him.
I come staring at our reflection, begging for him to stop, and silently wishing for more. More of him, more time, and more nights like this.
When Levi stands, he’s smug. I want to smack the smile right off his face. Instead, I sit up with a huff, but it’s apparent he hasn’t had his fill of me. He greedily sucks on my breast, and I let him, because he’s so very talented with his mouth. Shoving his sleep pants down his hips, he takes hold of his cock. It’s thick, a gorgeous dusky pink with just the right amount of veins. The slit is leaking pre-cum. I wet my lips, wanting to lick it away, longing to take him in my mouth and feel him succumb to me, but I watch—enchanted—as he strokes himself. I commit to memory how the hard, corded muscles of his chest and biceps bunch as he works his long shaft. And I slide my own hand between my legs and rub my swollen flesh with hands as greedy as my eyes.
“ Fuck me, Levi. S'il te plaît.” I moan, the promise of euphoria so close. A few more strokes and I will come undone again, but I want him. Non. I need him inside me. “Please?”
“Jesus Christ, begging looks good on you, Brie.” His own voice is strained. He dips his thumb into my mouth, and I suck, hard, the way I would his cock.
Why won’t he fuck me? I need him to fuck me. This is probably the last chance we will get because my flight leaves early in the morning, but he won’t.
“Please?” I cry again.
“No. Not until you say you’ll stay with me.”
I frown and shake my head. I don’t understand why he’s doing this now. “I cannot. You know I cannot.”
With a low, throaty groan, he comes. Hot jets of semen hit my stomach and pool in my belly button. He pants and slumps over as his hand strokes his cock and he draws out the last of his orgasm. He closes his eyes, and just when I’m about to sit up, he presses his hand to the centre of my chest and holds me in place.
“Stay,” he whispers, as he pushes into me, hard. I am soaked from his mouth, and my fingers, but I’m still unprepared for his punishing thrusts. He can’t be in very far, and yet it’s too much. I can’t take it. The pressure, the pain, it’s too much. He pulls out and slides his hand over the flesh of my stomach, scooping up his cum and using it to coat his length. Then he positions himself at my entrance and slowly eases back in. “Stay with me. Not because I’m paying you, because you want to.”
“I can’t.”
“Bullshit,” he hisses.
I tense up. I don’t want to have this conversation now, not when he’s drunk on pain and pleasure, and thoughtless with his words, with me.
“Give me the month, Brie. Just one month, and you never have to see me again.”
Never see him again?
The Brielle of one week ago would have laughed at this man so desperate and needy for my company, my body. She would have told him to go to hell and gladly never laid eyes on him again. But I am no longer that Brielle.
Levi pinches my clit. I arch my back with the sensation, as it coils like a snake in my belly, ready to strike. He rakes his hand across my breasts and down my abdomen, his blunt nails leaving long red lines, marking me, and rests his hand over my pubic bone, massaging gently. I feel myself open even more to him, taking him deeper, my heels digging into his back to hasten his thrusts. They aren’t gentle, but they are perfectly timed with the pressure of his hands, and as my orgasm rushes over me, I find myself saying yes over and over, though I’m not sure I know what I’m agreeing to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE BLACK PEARL
ONE WEEK LATER
LEVI
The sounds of Le Vie En Rose filter down the stairs to my room. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Mon Dieu! Ma
ke it stop,” Brie groans from behind her eye mask.
“Every goddam morning.” I throw back the sheet and I’m met with Brie’s body wrapped in black silk. I slide my palm over her hip, kneading her flesh with hungry hands. “Hey, since we’re awake. Why don’t you—”
“Non.” She pulls her eye mask away from her face so I can see she means business with her “fuck no” glare. She slams the silk back in place and rolls over.
“Okay, guess that’s the end of that.”
Brie sighs. “Make her stop with the music, and I will have sex with you. I cannot promise I will be awake.”
“Oh, you’ll be awake. I’ll make sure of it.” I jump out of bed. My dick is hard, and almost impossible to ignore, especially when she looks like that, but I am a man on a mission—to get my crazy housekeeper to quit waking me up every day with the same fucking annoying song. I head into the bathroom, piss, and throw on yesterday’s clothes. Climbing upstairs, I walk through the hall, and across to the other wing where Margaux is in full swing. Dog is jumping around her as she mops, messing up her floor with his paw prints, but the woman clearly doesn’t give a damn. She’s lost to the romance in her head.
I squint at the light streaming in through the open windows. “Margaux, what the fuck?”
“Morning, monsieur. Why are you not in bed making love to that beautiful girl?”
I don’t know, cock blocker, you tell me.
“Because that beautiful girl threatened to castrate me if she gets woken up one more time with this song.”
She shakes her head and makes a tutting sound. “You two should be up and seizing the moment while you have time.”
“The only thing Brie is seizing before 10:00 a.m. is my balls. And not in a good way. You gotta stop with this song, Margaux.”
“But this song is France. It is passion and undying love, monsieur. You could learn a thing or two from this music, non?” She sets the mop back in her bucket and disappears into the service room, discarding the dirty water. “But now that monsieur is up, and mademoiselle is still sleeping the day away, why not accompany me into the village? I could use some big, strong shoulders like yours.”
“For what?”
“For a piece of furniture that is my own.”
I scrub a hand over my face because it is way too early for this shit. “What?”
“I have spotted a chair for sale, a chair I want. A chair I cannot possibly carry myself.”
“You want me to lift a chair?”
“Oui, monsieur, you catch on quick,” she deadpans.
“Don’t they have people at the store who can do that for you?”
“It is a flea market, not a store.”
“Whatever. Fine. If it will get you to turn off this goddam music, and Brie to fuck me again, I’ll do it. Let’s go.”
“But monsieur, will you not be recognised?”
“Ah, shit.”
“You will need a costume. Wait here,” she says, and scampers off.
I stare at Dog, whose big goofy face stares back at me. “Wait, Margaux, a costume? I’m not wearing a fucking costume into the village.”
***
“I’m not wearing this.” I stare at my reflection again for the eighth time in a nearby shop window as I smoke my pipe.
“You look very handsome, monsieur.”
I study the dark seventies shades and paperboy hat pulled down over my unruly hair. “I look like a paedophile.”
“A handsome paedophile.”
“Christ, Margaux.” I shake my head. “That’s not something to strive for.”
“They belonged to Monsieur Durand,” she says, matter of fact. “And he always looked very handsome in them.”
“When, the eighteen hundreds?”
“Pfft.” She shakes her head and hurries off. “You men these days. You throw on yesterday’s clothes, rumpled and stained from the floor, and you expect women to fall all over you.”
“Hey, I take pride in my appearance.”
She stops, looks me up and down, and pretty much gives me the kind of look that says, Really? “No wonder you’re here instead of home in your bed having sex with Brielle right now, a woman like that needs passion, and ... effort. She needs to know she’s appreciated.”
“Appreciated, huh?” I laugh. “I showed her my appreciation last night, and I would have again this morning, but someone is a cock-blocker.”
“Appreciated with your mind, monsieur, appreciated with your heart. Not your penis.”
She walks away, and I’m left staring at the shop window of a tiny jewellery store and a long string of pearls as black as my heart. I tried showing a woman how much I appreciated her with my heart, and she stomped on it before handing it back to me, and then she married my bandmate.
No.
I’m not falling for that shit again. Brie might be just the kind of distraction I need—beautiful, perfect in nearly every way, even despite her angry French side. She may even push me mentally, more than any woman ever has, but I have no intention of falling in love with her. I shake my head and follow after Margaux.
We come across a little stall in the marketplace, and Margaux wastes no time in marching up to the man sat on a wooden bench at the back of the tent. He looks up from his book and grins.
“Bonjour, madame,” he says in a deep growl that makes me roll my eyes, but for the first time since I met Margaux, she blushes. She’s completely fucking lost for words. Because of this arsehole?
They chat—in French, obviously—and I don’t understand a goddam word because I still don’t speak French, but I’m pretty sure it amounts to, “You would like to buy my chair? Wonderful, because I would like to fuck you.”
I puff on my pipe and watch their exchange with my arms folded. She can’t really be falling for this shit ... can she? Apparently so, because she giggles like a fucking schoolgirl and hands over her hard-earned money for the chair.
The chair in question is a piece of crap, but it’s her new piece of crap, and I guess I understand something about that. They both glance at me, and Margaux says something that no doubt amounts to, “I bought this strapping young Australian rock star to help me carry your piece-of-crap chair.”
The man appraises me. I glare from behind my sunnies, which I guess is why he can’t read the daggers I’m shooting at him. I hear the word boy? One of the few French words I do know, and they both chuckle at my expense.
I frown and step closer.
“Hey, I’m stronger than I look.” I bend at the knees and lift the damn chair. It’s also heavier than it looks. And now I understand why the arsehole had his doubts. “I’m a fucking rock god.”
Shit. And the winner of the dickhead award goes to ...
Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that the man is paying any attention to me. He’s too focused on my housekeeper. I head back to the truck, but it’s slow going and Margaux catches up with ease—after she’s finished flirting with the lumberjack. “So, he was a douche.”
“Monsieur, he was not a ... douche, as you say.” She raises her chin defiantly. “He was a true gentleman.”
“If he was a gentleman he’d be carrying this crappy chair to your car himself.”
“And risk your masculinity? No, monsieur, he would never dream of it.”
“Okay, I get it, Margaux, geez, you’re as fucking subtle as a sledgehammer. I have to learn to be a gentleman.”
“Oui,” she says with a resolute face as I set the chair down beside the truck. I wait for her to lower the tailgate, and then I hoist it up on my shoulder and into the truck bed as carefully as I can.
“Did you really want this piece-of-crap chair, or did you just do it to talk to Monsieur Lumberjack back there?”
“This chair is not a piece of crap. It is a restored antique, restored by that gentleman’s lovely strong hands.”
“Hands you want him to be not so gentlemanly with.”
“Mon Dieu!”
I laugh. “Come on, Margaux, you’re a hot
-blooded woman. Are you telling me you don’t want Mr Fix-it’s hands on your body?”
“What I want is irrelevant.”
I make a face. “Who told you that?”
“Je ne suis qu'une employée de maison. I am a servant, monsieur.” Margaux shakes her head. “I do not have time for love affairs.”
“Surely you’ve got time for a quickie?”
“Not if you are the one who is asking.” She chuckles, her rotund belly jiggling with the effort. “Now get in. I have le déjeuner to prepare back at the house.”
I glance at the store across from us. “Just a minute. There’s something I have to do.”
“What?”
“Be a gentleman,” I say with a wink.
***
Back at the house, Dog nips at my legs as I unload the chair from the truck and haul it inside. That mutt is fucking crazy, but I pet him and tell him he’s a “good boy,” because I happen to like crazy a whole lot, while Margaux flurries around me as if I’m going to drop her precious chair. I set it down in the lounge room.
“Will you not take it to my room, monsieur?”
“It’s a lounge chair. It’s meant for lounging in. It won’t even fit in your room, Margaux. Which, by the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Why the hell are you still sleeping in that tiny servant’s quarters when we have a house full of empty bedrooms to choose from.”
“Because, monsieur, je fais partie du personnel de maison. That is where I sleep.”
I shrug. Her old employer must have been a complete fucking dickwad to make her live in that tiny room, when she wasn’t running around doting on him. “Well, you can choose another room if you want, but either way, the chair’s staying here.”
She shakes her head emphatically. “Monsieur, that is not necessary. This is your house.”
“Margaux, how long have you lived here?”
“Twenty years, monsieur.”
“Then it’s more your home than it is mine.” I glance around the run-down living room, at the ancient TV she watches her French soap operas on, the worn couch, and the few other pieces of dilapidated furniture. “You’re the only one who uses this room, be comfortable in it.”
CLOSER (Taint Book 2) Page 14