“Tapas,” she mumbled, yawning around the word.
He grinned and nuzzled his nose against her cheek. “I’m going to check the dumbwaiter. I know a bell usually rings, but with all the noise you were making, we probably missed it.”
Her head flew back at that and she glared at him. “You were making just as much noise, buddy.”
He held up both hands in surrender. “I’m sure I did.”
She nodded stoutly and on shaky legs, stood. He watched her weave a little as she walked over to the little elevator that brought their food from the kitchen. Inside, there was a tray and she shot him another glare at his having been correct. Both of them had missed the rather large bell that rang when food arrived.
He just shrugged. “At least we did it right.”
Tray in hand, she chuckled. “Yeah, I guess if I’d been bored I’d have heard the bell.”
He growled. “I’ll take that as a compliment, chérie.”
“Good,” she retorted pertly. “It was meant as one.”
Sniggering a little, he peered down at the tray of food she’d ordered. Before he could pick up the deconstructed chorizo, she perched herself on his knee, and wiggled around to get comfortable.
He just laughed as she reached for the chorizo, took a bite then fed him the other bit.
“How did you know I wanted that one?”
She grinned at him. “You’d be surprised how much I know about you.”
“Oh?” he asked, brow cocked.
“Yep,” she retorted cheerfully. “I spent two years hanging on every word and absorbing every detail. I know a lot about you, honey.”
He scowled. “You thought I was going to leave you. Alex told me.”
At his statement, she reached around and patted him on the cheek. “Maybe a smidgen.”
He tapped the nose she’d crinkled. “I hope you now realize how foolish that was.”
Devvy blushed. “Sort of. I asked Alex to move in with us last night.”
He said nothing at the change of subject. Her boost in confidence only went so far, it would take far longer for her to feel secure in her marriage to him, and their relationship with Alex. At her other comment, his brows rose. “I take it that went badly.” He reached for an asparagus spear surrounded with Serrano ham and took a bite, before offering the rest of it to her.
His voice was strain-free, but it was a lie. It both pissed him off and saddened him the way Alex continually rejected him, and what he could offer.
After twenty years, he should have been used to it.
He wasn’t.
“Kind of,” she answered. “He was a little annoyed, but I was too. He got up, in the middle of the night, and started working! I mean, I know I’m bad sometimes. But I’m not that bad. I told him if he wanted to be an outsider in our relationship, then the way to go about it was to stay at the penthouse and not come and live with us.”
“True,” Bastien murmured softly. “I think a part of him wants to be an outsider.”
She frowned at that and picked up a slither of peach topped with melted Manchego cheese. “I think you’re right, but I won’t allow it.”
At her arrogant claim, he grinned. “Since when did you get all bossy?”
She rolled her eyes. “Since you introduced me into this wacko way of life. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it properly, Bastien. No messing around. He wants me to fall in love with him, he wants me to need him. Well, there are consequences if I do.”
“Do you think you could love him?” he asked, voice quiet, his eyes caught in the ice blue of her eyes.
She nodded. “I’m halfway there.” The admission was husky and rueful.
“I’m glad. He needs you. I need you.”
She sighed and turned to him, resting a finger moist from the peach’s juices on his lips. She trailed the digit around his lips and whispered, “For two years, I needed to hear you say that.” Another sigh. “It really was as good as I thought it would be.”
Pressing her forehead against his, she whispered, “I need you to take care of yourself, Bastien. Nothing can happen now that I’ve found you. Do you promise me?”
Wrapping his arms about his wife, thanking his lucky stars for having found a woman that could fill all of his blank spaces as well as Alex’s, he kissed her gently and murmured, “I promise.”
Chapter Eleven
Eight days later
Alex’s jitters were starting to make Devvy uneasy and that was really saying something, especially after having to defend her PhD dissertation the way she had. She’d been fine all morning, not at all nervous at what today held, that is until Alex had left his apartment.
Not even the fact they were going to visit his mother discomforted her. But Alex’s terror at leaving his own little bubble to walk out into the chaos of reality definitely put her on edge.
When Sebastien had talked about the times Alex left his home, there had been strain written into every single one of his features. He’d physically felt Alex’s emotional tension, and Devvy could now understand and appreciate Bastien’s concern.
She wasn’t proud to say that twice she’d had to bite her tongue. Patience was a forte of hers but the stress he was under was being transmitted to her and it was contagious. Her temples were pounding, already, and they hadn’t even left his apartment building!
“Alex, sweetheart, how did you manage to get to our house? Why can’t you do it now?” she asked softly, only now just realizing how huge a deal this was for him.
It was one thing being told by Bastien how bad Alex’s agoraphobia was, but seeing it in the flesh was another thing entirely.
His panic was an ethereal but existing form. So tangible, she could almost touch it.
She’d tried to coax him, tried tough love, but nothing was budging him from the elevator. They’d been up and down the damned thing so many times she was thinking about grabbing a chair from the penthouse and making herself comfortable!
If a person could look nauseated, then Alex was doing a pretty good impression of it. His face alternated between puce—a color she hadn’t realized existed in the natural spectrum of shades the body was capable of emulating—bright red, then deathly pale. So white, he looked on the brink of fainting.
Usually, the white pallor came when they landed on the first floor and he could see out onto the street. His hands would clutch the elevator’s hand rail, his head would bow, and the sounds of his breathing…she could only liken it to an asthma attack without the wheeze.
His panic was making her panic. She knew if they didn’t get out of here soon, he’d either throw up or collapse. He was making himself sick. She’d never seen the like before and she hoped to never see it again.
“It was for you,” he gritted out, eyes closing as one of the tenants sent for the elevator. As they shuttled upward, he whispered, “It was important. Had to see you. Had to make you understand what Sebastien and I wanted. I knew he’d cock it up if I wasn’t there.”
Despite herself, her lips twitched at that. Alex rarely said anything derogatory about Bastien. Not because in his eyes, their mutual lover was perfect, but Alex seemed to accept Sebastien’s faults easily. She imagined it was because that acceptance was mutual.
Very few people would be able to handle the many hang-ups Alex had.
And Bastien wasn’t even aware of some of them!
“Isn’t going to see your mother just as important?” As soon as she said the words, she chuckled and shook her head. “Yeah, I take that back. Nearly fifteen or so years looking for a third for your relationship takes precedence. But still, you wanted to see your mother. We’re already late.”
“I’m always late to see her. She knows to expect it.”
“How long have you suffered with agoraphobia, Alex?”
“Too long,” he spat as the doors opened and a fellow tenant climbed in. All three of them shared brusque nods of greeting. The newcomer kept on peeking out of the corner of his eye at Alex’s decidedly ill coloring b
ut Devvy glared at him and the man soon stopped, preferring to stare down at the floor.
They shuttled downstairs, the doors opened, and the man departed. As he left through the main entrance, his gaze wandered back and he frowned at their lack of movement from the elevator before shrugging it off and going on his way.
The sight of the outside world had that horrid paleness reappearing, and she squeezed the hand she held in her own.
“Okay, different question. Since when has it grown so bad?”
He scowled but it was a welcome change from the weak terror clinging to his features. “How do you know that?”
“Well, you just answered it for yourself. I could tell anyway. Sebastien said you were bad, but he said you believed yourself to be in control of the situation. Now, either you feel you can let go with me—which I’m pleased about, don’t get me wrong—or he doesn’t know how bad you’re getting.”
The elevator doors closed, and the machine hummed as though going into sleep mode, awaiting the next user. At last count, this was the twenty-second time they’d hovered on the first floor.
It was a good job she wasn’t claustrophobic.
They’d have both been ready for the loony bin by now!
He grimaced at her summation of his condition. “You are too astute, Devvy.”
She shrugged. “I’m supposed to be analytical. It’s a part of my job description.”
“It’s always bad when I have to visit my mother.”
“Why go, then?”
“I have to.”
His brisk answer had her rolling her eyes. “So, for future reference, this is as panicked as I’m likely to see you?”
She hadn’t thought it possible for him to blanch even further. She’d been wrong.
“If I’m keeping you from something else, something urgent, then don’t let me stop you!” he snapped.
“I think I’d have left on the fifth ride from the top to the bottom floor if that was the case, Alex,” she retorted dryly, refusing to let his temper ignite her own. “I’m just wondering what I have to do to get you out of here.”
Her words had him frowning. He tilted his head to stare at her, a question in his eyes.
She smiled slowly. “Yep, you heard right.” Devvy pulled her hand from his and stepped closer, pushing herself into the personal space he’d set earlier when they’d first climbed onto this goddamn elevator. She’d tried to stand close to him, but he’d stiffened and moved away. Now, she pressed her chest to his and nuzzled his jaw with her cheek. Her hot breath had his throat working as she whispered, “What do I have to do to get you out of here, Alex?”
He swallowed again. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure that’s a lie,” she remarked, insinuating her hand between the two of them to rub her fingers down over the lean line of his hip, following the muscular ridge of his obliques to smooth along the length of his shaft. Under her fingers, it began to twitch, as though coming back to life. “I think we need to do a deal, you and I.”
Alex frowned. “What sort of deal?”
“Every time you have to go out, I’ll do something for you. Whatever you want.” A month ago, Devvy would have been mortified at the very idea of making such a proposition. Now, she felt her pussy start to quicken, heat setting deep in her belly with the promise of what was to come.
It was a sign of how she was changing, of how confident she was growing in herself and in her allure that she could make such a proposition with her body and not just with words.
“Whatever I want?”
She nodded.
“Wherever I want?”
Another nod.
“What if I said I wanted to fuck you on the balcony in my apartment?”
“I’d say yes, but that you were cheating, and that you could only fuck me after we’d gone out.”
“Small print, hein?” He tutted. “You just can’t escape from it.”
She was heartened by his teasing. It was definitely a step up from outright terror!
He bent down and bussed her lips with his own. “I accept your challenge.”
Devvy grinned. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
“I expect more of my overachiever. In the future, come up with inappropriate propositions earlier.” He checked his watch. “We might have missed the rush hour.”
His chiding had her rolling her eyes. “In the future, you’re going to have to talk to somebody about this. Especially if it’s getting worse, and you’ve already admitted that it has. Sebastien’s concerned, and after today, I am too.”
He grunted. “Don’t spoil the moment, ma petite.”
“I’m not. I’m being realistic. Offering you carte blanche with my body can only work for so long!” Now that wasn’t a sentence she’d say often.
“Surely not.”
She frowned at him. “Be serious, Alex. You need to see someone. I’ll get Sebastien to look into it. He’ll find one that comes to the apartment.”
She made to step out of the elevator, but he grabbed her arm and shook his head.
“No, don’t mention it to Sebastien. Please. I don’t want to worry him.”
“Too late. He already is. He loves you, Alex. Of course he’s concerned.”
He winced at her words. “I never sought his love for this very reason.”
“That makes it all the more precious that he gave his heart to you regardless of your hang-ups.”
“I know. Even at twenty, a few years after I met him, I knew he loved me, and I knew I was nothing but bad news for him.” He tapped his temple. “Something’s never been right up here.”
“We all have our own problems, Alex. They’re normal.”
“Mine aren’t,” he retorted gloomily. “They never have been. Do you think this is normal? I thought at one point you were going to sit on the floor to wait me out.”
Her lips twitched. “I almost did, but the thought of what your neighbors would think stopped me.”
A phantom grin fluttered over his mouth. “You won’t let me take myself too seriously, will you, Devvy?” He sighed and slipped his hand up her arm to cup the back of her neck. He dragged her close until their torsos touched and whispered, “I need that. I think I’ve always needed you. Even when I didn’t know you existed.”
The muscles in her abdomen clenched down at his words. To be needed by this man was an honor. Resting against her, telling her his woes, sharing his problems, was one of the world’s greatest scientists. The man who had found cancer’s trigger, and determined how to stop it in its tracks.
When a normal cell mutated into cancer, it deactivated the body’s ability to suppress tumor growth. For over ten different cancers, Alex had determined a way to counteract this deactivation. This stopped cancer in its tracks. By targeting the malignancy so early on in the disease’s development.
And those ten weren’t enough for the man who had effectively found a cure for one of the world’s most worrisome diseases. He was working on more. Always working, always researching until his work became a cancer in and of itself.
She had to change that. He was right. He did need her. He needed her to bring him out of himself.
Because he was a man, and a busy one at that, Sebastien believed Alex’s need to work was simply something he had a right to. Sebastien probably would have seen no wrong in Alex getting up that night after they’d taken their first steps toward a fully-fledged ménage relationship. He’d probably thought something had popped into Alex’s head, and it needed to be hashed out.
He hadn’t realized that was Alex’s way of putting a barrier between them all.
He wouldn’t have known, but she had, and Alex needed her to force him to change. It was folly to enter a relationship where the woman believed she could change her man. Devvy knew that. In this instance, it was imperative she make him see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Because Alex was dying. From the inside out.
She didn’t know how she realized that. His mind was t
aking over as it had a way of doing with men of his caliber. His hang-ups were a part and parcel of his genius. He had every right to them. But those hang-ups had no right to torment and torture her lover, to twist him and to drag him down a path that could only end in tragedy.
These little oddities were what made him great, and as with any great man, he needed a great woman behind him.
She was no slouch in the intelligence department, but capable of nothing so miraculous as Alex. It was a pleasurable duty to realize she had to keep him under her wing. She had to keep him safe and to protect him from the bogeyman.
In a way, to be needed so intensely filled Devvy with warmth.
Bastien was so independent. So self-reliant. As she’d told her mother, her husband looked after himself. He didn’t need her. Devvy hadn’t known she needed to be needed, but the fact that Alex did, had something deep inside flowering. Blossoming.
It was early days. She knew that. But Devvy had the feeling she’d just found her purpose.
Her very reason for being.
To keep Alexei Ivanov on the right track. To stop him from drowning in his psychoses, and to stop him from trying to find a way out.
“If you need me, Alex, I’m here.”
His breath fluttered against her lips and his arms slipped around her waist. “Will you leave me, Devvy, when I get too annoying? When I won’t leave the apartment, and when I get churlish and refuse to move out?”
She pressed her face against his chest, breathing in the scent of starch and cleaning detergent, laboratory, and pure Alex. Her olfactory senses were in heaven. Absentmindedly, she remarked, “You can be as churlish as you want, and I won’t leave you, because I’ll make you move out. I’ll tell you when you’re pissing me off. I won’t let you get away with murder just because you’re Alexei Ivanov.”
He surprised her by laughing. “Will you get out the whip and make me toe the line?”
“Only if you want me to.”
His chuckle deepened. “I have many kinks but that is not one of them. Although it might be interesting to see you dressed from head to toe in leather.”
“Well, if that’s a fantasy of yours, you’ll have to save it for when I want you to go out with me. It will have to be one of those occasions where I’ll do whatever you want as incentive.”
Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 19