by R. Scarlett
It was the tone of his father’s voice, the amazement he could clearly detect in his words that took Tensley by surprise. His father was proud of him. After all these years, after all the times he had tried and failed, his father was finally proud of him. And Tensley didn’t even care anymore.
“I’ll have to tell the council,” Mr. Knight said, his voice distant to Tensley’s throbbing eardrums. “Tensley…” His father took a painful deep breath, not calm, not strong, but weak.
Tensley glanced up at him.
“After your brother’s scandal, we fell from grace in the court’s eyes. For years, I’ve tried to keep our family name strong and fierce. I could only hope the daemon would erase your brother’s mistake. You have the chance to make us powerful again. Make us feared in the High Court.” His father’s hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed, his dark eyes watching Tensley’s features.
Tensley nodded, until his father left his office.
The laughter and chatter from beyond his office grated his nerves, losing any patience for anyone else. He needed peace. He needed to find a solution, an escape.
He swung the door open and didn’t bother stopping when a few men tried to speak to him. His beast was restless, aching for that one soul out of reach.
Fifth Avenue was packed under the glow of street lamps, and he swore if one human touched him, he’d snap like the monster he was.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fumbled with his cigarettes. He lit the bud and took one long drag, hoping to take the edge off. Freshly rained, the sidewalks were darkened with wetness, the smog easier to taste in the air. The Callery pear trees shaded him, the tiny white petals floating onto the cement. They left behind a thick bitter scent in the air, even though they looked so sweet.
Briskly walking in the dark of Manhattan didn’t relieve him, though.
“Fuck it,” he hissed and yanked his phone out, his fingers shaking as he dialed that precious number. Just to hear her soft voice—it would help him stay leveled.
It rang, and rang, and rang—until that addictive hum rang instead.
“Tensley?” Velvety softness swam through on the other end of the call, and he held his breath. “Is everything all right?”
He closed his eyes, enthralled in her, the beast relaxing.
“Tensley?”
It was then he noted how husky her voice was—how muffled it was and it dawned on him.
Time difference.
“Fuck,” he whispered, “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ll call you tomorrow—”
“No, no! It’s fine,” she whispered loudly, and when a small mewl left her, he clenched his jaw. “We haven’t talked for days.”
A week and six days…
He scowled at himself.
“I didn’t want to distract you,” he told her, walking across the one-way street. Or distract me.
“You’re always a welcomed distraction.” He could tell by her teasing voice she was smiling, and he imagined that adorable dimple appearing. God, he wanted to lick it. “Are you in bed?”
Tensley took a drag from his cigarette and listened to the clank of his footfalls on the wet pavement. “I just left the office. Its only ten here.” Which would make it around three a.m. in Paris. Which meant she was in bed.
Fuck.
The image of her sprawled across a comfy bed in one of her silky nightgowns made him painfully hard. He cleared his throat. “How’s everything in Paris? You enjoying it?”
“Hmm,” she whispered, and it sounded like she shifted against her pillows. “I like it. I haven’t seen as much as of the city as I would like, but I love the museum. It’s just long hours. I left the museum at midnight and just came back here while everyone else went out.”
“Maybe you should go out with them,” he suggested hesitantly. He didn’t like the idea of her at bars with drunken men, but he trusted her, and he didn’t want her to miss out on any experiences.
“Is it sad I’d rather sleep?” She laughed into the phone, and he couldn’t fight the quirking of his lips. That laugh, that sweetness, he wanted to drown in it. “You’re engaged to an eighty-year-old woman.”
He smirked. His chest warmed at her mentioning the engagement. “Sleep while you can, dolcezza. You’re going to need it once you’re back in my bed.”
The laugh was soft, and he knew she was tired, but he couldn’t bring himself to hang-up just yet. Just to know she was on the other end, listening. “Do you want me to speak Italian? Would that help you sleep?”
“Tensley,” she whispered, and he heard her rearrange the phone to her ear, her breath heavy.
“La mia bella sposa,” he whispered back, his accent thick and heavy, and he imagined her lashes fluttering shut over his spell. “Sei bagnato?” His raspy voice drew a moan from her.
“What did you just say?”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “If I tell you, you won’t go back to sleep.”
“Oh?”
He licked his lips, hungry for her. “Are you wet, dolcezza?”
“Tensley,” she gasped.
A beat of silence.
“Well, are you?”
“You’re smiling,” she said panicking, but laughter slipped from her voice.
He laughed heartily. “A shit-eating grin with a mouth that’d love to devour you.” He felt drunk off their playful banter. “And you’re blushing, sweetheart.”
“Ugh,” she groaned into the phone, and he pictured her covering her face.
“Now, la mia bella,” he paused, taking one final drag and flicking the butt to the pavement, “I’m only going to ask again—are you wet for me?”
“Yes.”
God, he wished she hadn’t gone to Paris. Damn it. Three weeks without seeing her, touching her, was painful.
“Good,” he said, lowly and nodded. “Now go back to bed.” He went to hang up, but she spoke fast.
“Tensley,” she said, and a slow sigh fell from her lips and into his thumping chest. “I miss you.”
He gripped the phone tighter, gawking at his oxford dress shoes and the cigarette steaming. He thought of Fallen, of the High Court and how much danger surrounded his lioness. He’d rip any beast limb from limb to protect her. He’d present her severed heads if he had to. She was his queen, his only.
“Mi manchi, dolcezza,” he said, his voice thick and laced with too much emotion to hold within a heartless beast.
“Just five more days, and I’ll be back,” she said.
Five more fucking days. “I’ll be counting.”
He hung up, his hand dropping to his side, but everything was loaded into his being. Her addictive voice, her words, and how they had snuck deep inside of him, taken root without his permission.
I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.
“Fuck this,” he snapped and stomped on the cigarette, turning the opposite direction from his apartment.
He’d show her exactly how much the beast missed her.
EVERY MORNING JUST before Molly left to work at the Louvre, she stared at the little blue box in her purse. And every morning, she refused to open it. As she walked around the cobblestone streets of Paris, she felt the box burn a hole in her purse. Until she had any symptoms, she wouldn’t worry, she told herself. She was fine—no vomiting, no dizziness, no lack of energy.
There were moments where she almost caved and ripped the box open, but she calmed herself. She wasn’t going to base her worries on what a warlock told her he ‘sensed’ three weeks ago.
Molly led a group of tourists back to the front lobby, trying to wear that winning smile as her Kate Spades dug into her heels. She didn’t need to even look at her ankle to know they cut the skin deep.
Just as they moved along, Molly stopped in front of the statue, Venus de Milo. Its marble structure, missing its arms, stood proud in the center of the hallway.
“This statue is a personal favorite of mine,” Molly began, smiling as she turned to
face the group of followers. “This graceful statue of a goddess has intrigued and fascinated since its discovery on the island of Melos in 1820. No one is sure who this goddess represents. Most believe her to be Aphrodite, who was often portrayed half-naked. The Marquis de Rivière presented it to Louis XVIII, who donated it to the Louvre the following year.”
She walked around the statue while the tourists listened on, enchanted by the statue as much as Molly. Molly’s curator heart sung at the chance to be so close to history and to tell a group of people about the rare piece.
“This goddess is shrouded in mystery, her attitude a persistent enigma. The missing pieces of marble and absence of attributes made the restoration and identification of the statue difficult.” She hummed to herself. “The goddess of love broken in time.”
A silence settled upon them, and Molly stared at the statue’s smooth discolored marble, the impassive expression on the unknown goddess.
“Scholars actually believe it to be the sea goddess Amphitrite, who was venerated on Milo,” one guy who refused to take off his sunglasses piped up. A few of his fellow travelers laughed. Molly fought against rolling her eyes. Everything she said, he had to mention his two cents. Always trying to out do her.
“Very true,” Molly said with a pinched smile, but a stare that told the guy to back down. “But they also have argued it’s more likely to be Aphrodite.”
He wrinkled his nose and the sunglasses shifted further up his nose. These rich college boys always challenged her, or older couples who loved to correct her, only for her to correct them.
Molly continued the end of the tour, and once they reached the entrance, she turned to face the group.
“I hope you enjoyed the tour. You are more than welcome to walk at your own leisure through the rest of the museum, and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me,” Molly told the group, a mix of retired couples and twenty-somethings still hung over from the night before.
A few couples thanked her and asked for directions to the washrooms. As soon as they wandered off, Molly turned and walked toward the café. She leaned against the chair and glanced down at her heels. Dry blood caked her Achilles heels and she cringed.
“That looks painful,” Tessa said, dressed in a similar A-line black dress with a white blouse underneath, the cuffs peeking out at the end of her long black sleeves and black high heels.
“I thought I broke these in,” Molly groaned and stood back up. She’d have to live in them the rest of the day.
“How’d your last tour go?” Tessa asked, fixing a fallen strand and pushing it behind her ear. Tessa, from Norway, the closest coworker she had met. All the other students she knew, but not very well. They worked hard and played hard, but Molly didn’t feel the need to go out after working from seven in the morning to eleven at night. She wanted her bed—so badly.
“It was all right, but I can’t wait to just have a hot shower and go to bed.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Tessa said, jumping in front of her and grabbing her hand, the one that held her elegant engagement ring, a constant reminder of the man miles away. The man who called her the middle of the night and ignited an aching flutter between her legs and her chest. “One night. We only have less than a week left here and all you’ve done is work and sightsee. You have to experience the nightlife.”
Molly’s lips twisted into a frown. When she thought of going out and drinking, she thought of Stella and Tina. When she thought of Tina, she felt Tina’s last breath against her chest.
Stella called every single day, just to speak, and Molly let her ramble on about every single detail of her life. It was the moments Stella cried that Molly found it hard to breathe.
Molly facetimed September and told her of the rich baked goods and Notre Dame’s beautiful architecture.
Tensley called a few times and each time he did, she so badly wanted to tell him what she had been holding inside her chest.
I love you.
Instead, she smiled into the phone and hoped he heard how much she loved him in her voice.
Molly looked at the emptying halls of the museum, the last few tourists ambling through, and back at Tessa’s begging brown eyes. “Okay, but only for an hour.”
Tessa squealed. “Yes! Let me go tell the others.”
Molly nodded as she watched her walk down the hallway. She knew she’d kill her feet by the end of the night now.
With a deep sigh, Molly made her last rounds, reminding tourists the museum was soon closing. Each night before they closed, Molly took the time to appreciate the paintings surrounding her. How lucky she was to work in a museum that held famous, timeless artwork.
As Molly walked down the hallway, she saw a few of her coworkers talking, along with Tessa.
Tessa’s eyes lit up. “Molly, come here! We’re about to head out.”
Molly smiled but ignored the leering from one of their coworkers Christopher. He’d been trying to flirt the entire time she’d been here—and when she didn’t return his attention, he grew more aggressive. He was attractive, but she wasn’t the least bit interested in him, and she had made it clear from the very start. Tessa said Molly had bruised his ego.
She’d do more than bruise his ego if he didn’t back off.
“Ready to head out?” Christopher asked, his arm brushing hers when they began to walk to the entrance.
“Yup,” Molly deadpanned, making distance between them.
“Buy you a beer?” His hand brushed the small of her back and she shuddered.
“No thank you,” Molly said, speeding up and away from him.
Molly sighed, squeezing her eyes shut. One hour, and then you can climb into your warm bed.
“Miss Darling?” a familiar security guard said, his heavy gray brows lowering over his dark eyes.
“Yes?”
“You have a guest waiting in the foyer,” he said and gestured with a thumb behind him.
Molly frowned. She knew no one else in Paris but the staff.
She picked up her pace, ignoring the others further behind, and turned the corner.
It hit her all at once.
Her heart knotted inside her chest, and she sucked in air fast, halting mid-step.
His jet black hair that curled around the nape of his thick neck, his pressed Armani suit that molded to the sculpted muscles like the marble statues she saw every day at the Louvre, and when he half-turned his head at her footsteps, his profile, the sharp features of a god of war and beauty came into view. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t process anything.
He was a man of steel and iron and darkness. Lightning had sculpted his severe yet soft features into a perfect balance. The harshness of his jaw and nose competed with his soft looking lips, the only part of him tender, human, vulnerable, but it was his eyes that were vicious and wild and so brilliant, her lungs burned at the intensity of them.
Dark, hooded eyes finally found hers, scorching heat crossed her paralyzed limbs and a terrifying tingle ran up her spine.
God, she wanted to touch him, her fingers aching.
He’s like a woman’s wet dream on crack.
“Molly,” he said lowly, so lowly she felt it deep within her belly, fluttering with want.
She suddenly couldn’t stand still. Watching him, so far away, she wanted to smother him with kisses, push him back against the wall and to show him how much she missed him.
It wasn’t affectionate how she imagined when she saw him after three weeks—it was primal—a primal throb inside of her.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Her hands trembled and she fisted them, terrified if she reached out and touched him she would never be able to let go.
She hadn’t had a reaction like this to anyone ever in her entire life, not even Tensley before this, and now all she wanted to do was lick him from his sharp jaw to his naval, or maybe even lower.
Oh god.
Her hormones were all over the map.
She needed cold air, s
he needed fucking ice to cool her burning flesh, and all she had done was stare at him. He hadn’t said anything remotely sexual but her goddamn name.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to say, her voice turning panicky.
Those dark ruthless brows of his dropped over his brooding eyes. “You don’t look happy to see me.” His tone held neutrality, but she heard the hurt. Dammit, Molly.
She violently shook her head. “I’m just—shocked.”
Shocked—terrified at her own body’s reaction. She was so happy to see him, but she couldn’t grip her intense craving for him.
She wanted to mark him—devour him, ravish and conquer—claim him as hers.
A foot of distance stood between them and her feet ached to cross it, but the unstable desire stirring inside of her so intensely unsettled her.
And now Tensley thought she didn’t want to see him.
That couldn’t be further from the truth, but she couldn’t go near him or she knew she’d lose control.
Tensley looked her over slowly, returning to her flushed features. “Are you all right?”
“Molly?” Molly turned at the sound of clicking footsteps and saw her coworkers. Tessa’s eyes bulged at the appearance of Tensley. “Uh, hi?”
“Tessa,” Molly began her mouth dry, “this is my boyfriend, Tensley.” At his name, Molly’s gaze dragged back to the god in front of her. She eyed his bulging biceps, straining in his fitted suit, and she wanted to bite him through it.
You’re too horny.
“Fiancé,” Tensley’s whisky smooth voice corrected, and he finally closed the distance, his large hand sliding across her waist to pull her in.
Molly swallowed thickly as her body shuddered at his closeness. His addictive scent—sweat, leather, a pinch of peppermint. Energy zapped through her, and she knew he felt it when his fingers dug into her flesh.
“Aw, and you surprised her!” Tessa squealed, and then her eyes widened again.
“You guys need to come out with us to the bar!”
“Yeah, come with us,” Christopher said, and Molly didn’t miss the way he measured Tensley’s tall frame. He outstretched his hand to Tensley. “Name’s Christopher. Watched after your girl.”