I was holy murder coated in fed up, quickly melting into remorse.
Had I really done that? Had I hung up on him?
Uh, Fleur, try asking the important question here: Was Louis really having you followed? Because how else would he know Bastien had spoken to you? I thought about Louis’s bodyguards, and his wealth, and dread crept into my conscience.
It was too much. Wasn’t it?
When the phone vibrated in my hand I dropped it. I was all jitters. I picked it up but I let it ring and ring and ring. It was Louis, calling back.
I was drowning.
I needed some kind of rescue.
On the third call I answered without saying a word.
“They follow you for your protection. In case people know we are together. It is a practicality,” he shot into the phone.
They. There is a they following me.
“You don’t understand the threats my family gets, and I am sorry for the things I cannot change,” he said, much quieter. My heart thudded against my rib cage, desperate to express the empathy I had for him. “You are not in danger,” he added. “I am keeping it that way. They keep you safe.”
I opened my mouth but nothing would come out.
“Do you think if I was stalking you, as you say, I would let you know I was doing so?”
“No,” I was forced to admit.
“Fleur, I only want to protect you.” Something about the way he said this strummed deep in me. It was heartfelt. The thing I couldn’t get over was that his family faced so much risk.
Maybe he was just overly protective. With concentration, I could label that “sweet.”
More silence. I didn’t know what else to say. I could have made small talk, but to be honest, I was frustrated. Louis had texted me once over the past week and there was another ten days to go before he would be back. We were having our first phone call and he could barely be polite.
“If Bastien bothers—”
“I can handle Bastien, Louis. Are we done?”
The silence almost reached out and touched me.
“I miss you.”
And . . . exhale. He’d punctured the growing divide with his deep, brandied declaration. A collage of moments rushed at me: his flush when he gave me the necklace, how he kisses the top of my head unexpectedly, how he expresses his need for me when he’s inside of me.
“I miss you, too,” I heard myself whisper.
“Come to Paris next weekend after the final match. We will spend Sunday together and return together on Monday.”
Paris?! And yet, the way he’d asked . . . no, he hadn’t asked at all. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re bossy?” It was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
After a moment, he gave me a breathy laugh.
“Yes, you.”
I smiled, and thought about his demand. Come to Paris? Excitement swarmed my already crowded brain. I had been dying to see more of France, and was secretly disappointed Marie had not been taking me on weekend road trips like I’d fantasized.
“Fleur,” he stated, waiting for me to concede.
“Well, I would like to, but I don’t think I can get off work on Monday.” Sylvie had me working in the front of the store every day now—Anne had had a baby girl.
“Oui, you can. Sylvie owes us that.”
Owes us? So, did she know who her savior had been then? She’d never said a word to me.
“Fleur, you will love Paris, and I will love you in Paris. I will send a car for you next Saturday morning, at 8:00 a.m. to take you to the airport.”
I stared at the Call Ended message. Wow, did he give terrible phone or what? That was definitely not one of his strengths, I decided, wrapping my arms around myself.
I will love you in Paris, he’d said.
How could a girl resist that?
Chapter 18
Wow. Triple wow.
I’d looked forward to Paris with a hopeful heart for ten painfully long days, and there wasn’t any let-down upon my arrival. Louis had booked us into one expensive hotel. Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière was a five-story palatial wonder located on the Champs-Élysées, which, be still my beating heart, is the world’s greatest shopping street. I settled in, noticing his bags were already here and some things unpacked. My heart swooned at his almost-presence. I fondled his travel kit in the floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom and sniffed his cologne.
Somehow, some way, the airplane ride, the frantic Parisian streets, the familiar earthy, carnal scent of Louis’s clothes, all worked to dissolve the shroud I’d lived my life behind. The plain truth was unfolding around me. There was no rhyme or reason to one’s life, no way to control your destiny. Sure, you could set goals, work toward them. Make assumptions. But events would continually surprise you, and, just as the weather changes, people would come and go like sunshine and storms. And all you could do was check in with the forecast, try to dress appropriately, and carry on. Louis was real. We were real. And I didn’t have to be scared or hide or wonder at my feelings for him. I also didn’t need to hide him from Marie.
I felt steadier in that Paris boudoir. I held a new conviction: to question the things that threaten all my pretty, little ideas. Maybe because I wanted to be the kind of person who believed there was happiness in rainstorms, too.
I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. A confident woman stared back at me. I smiled.
I knew Louis wouldn’t be joining me until much later. He’d explained that significant others just did not attend teammate celebrations. I didn’t care because he considered me a significant other.
To keep me busy in the meantime, he’d booked me a personal tour of the city of lights at dusk. After I freshened up I met Martzel, a friendly blond-haired man, in the lobby, and he informed me that he would be my chaperone until Louis returned. My ire peaked that Louis had arranged one, but instantly disappeared because of Martzel’s enthusiasm and the luxury of being driven around Paris.
Martzel was about my age and full of energy. He took me around to the city’s most spectacular highlights—the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame—and threw money around to skip line-ups. There was a lot of getting in and out of the car, and he showered me with nuggets of history. I longed to ooohhh and aaahhh over things with Louis, like the twinkling lights on the Eiffel Tower, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Martzel was flirting his pants off, and I slipped back into being Flirty Fleur like an old, comfortable shoe. I knew it was harmless because Martzel was as much in love with Louis as he was, well, with everything. He went on and on about how Louis was a great rugby player, how lucky France was to have him on their national team, too, and how his Toulon club team should give him more breaks so he wasn’t so tired when he played for France. I loved hearing about Louis in this way.
By the time Martzel dropped me back at the suite, I was feeling full of gratitude. I was beyond fortunate to have had a day like today. And I was coming home to a glorious three-thousand square foot presidential suite.
And yet, my chest felt tight. Peering inside of myself, I decided I wasn’t comfortable with the wealth; maybe because it wasn’t mine. I was a guest. Being hosted. By a famous man—who was keeping me a secret. All that “world at my feet” crap I’d just experienced was only an idea. The reality was that part of Louis’s allure, his quiet, aloofness, confused and worried me.
My mood had darkened, and I let it.
For a while I just sat in the window seat, staring down at the lit-up Champs-Élysées, reveling in the sense of being alive in a city where two thousand years of heartache, love, and life had marched civilization forward.
It really gives you perspective on your place in the world.
Or, for me, in a revelatory haze, perspective on what you might expect from the world. Kindness was all I wanted. But I wasn’t so sure I should be expecting it all of the time.
I guess by “late”, Louis had meant wee hours of the morning late. I ordered room service, and by the time
I finished it was eleven-thirty p.m.
I went to bed in a sheer nightie I’d bought on a whim a year ago hoping maybe someday I would need some sexy sleepwear that was actually comfortable. But I couldn’t go under. It was a strange bed. I was in a lonely mood. And I felt a horniness so deep it threatened to trigger a headache. It had been close to two weeks since I had seen Louis.
Whiskey breath.
That’s what woke me.
“Fleur,” he garbled, blasting me with bourbon and his familiar cologne.
He had returned. Finally. It was like I hadn’t slept at all. “Louis,” I exclaimed, sitting up. I got on my knees and hugged his big hard body to me. He was dressed in pants and a white shirt, and stumbled into me. Oh. I pulled back. His eyes were glassy and he wore a smile I’d never seen on his face before.
“Ah, que tu m’as manqué!” His words, how much he’d missed me, dripped with sincerity, and he hugged me to him tenderly, possessively rubbing his hands over my body, sticking his face in my hair and inhaling. My heart beat faster. This was a different Louis. A very drunk Louis. “Regarde-toi! Tu es un ange.” He petted my hair back and cupped my ass, staring down on me as if I were his long-lost love. His words were fast and blended into one another, but I melted at what I had caught.
He’d called me an angel.
“Je veux te gicler sur la gueule (I want to come in your face),” he growled. Oh. Not so sweet anymore. My pulse sped up and my cheeks flashed red. I yelped when he bit my neck, and leaned back wide-eyed.
I slipped out of his embrace, easily—wow, his wits were definitely slowed—and squirmed backward on my knees, wary of his drunken lust, but his face wasn’t displaying its usual stark need.
It was soft. His eyes were relaxed and he took me in with open adoration. “Every time I see you, those angel eyes, I want to make you get on your hands and knees and beg.” He said this in slurred French so tenderly, so nasty, tugging his shirt out of his pants. He could have been quoting Shakespeare and Marquis de Sade one after the other.
I laughed. Thanks to the alcohol, I was witnessing the two sides of Louis he seemed to struggle to hide, and certainly had never showed me at the same time before.
I crawled back over, tentative, and his eyes, so full of wonder, never strayed. I helped him undo his buttons while he staggered again. As I pulled back his shirt, letting it drop to the floor, I smiled at him.
“You are so fucking sweet,” he exclaimed, grabbing my hair, violently, “I want to lick every inch of you.” He threw me back on the bed and I yelped as he grabbed both my ankles, holding them high. He licked the arch of my foot, and then sucked my big toe.
The erotic, utterly unfamiliar sensation made my lower stomach ache with need.
My smile slipped. His eyes had fallen on my exposed pussy, and I wondered if he could see my clit clenching. He spread my legs wider and stared with base desire. I struggled in his grip. “Louis,” I whispered, covering myself. He looked into my eyes with lustful exaltation. He undid his zipper, pulled out his enormous hard-on, yanked me right over to the edge of the bed. Without bothering to remove his pants, he entered me slowly, holding my ankles tight. When he filled me up, my eyes were as glassy as his, and he said in French, “I could spend an eternity defiling you.”
• • •
I’d relished the way Louis had made love to me last night with drunken, gushing expressiveness. He kept calling me his “beautiful addiction.” I’d never felt so special in my life, and that closeness remained the next day as he stayed by my side—in the shower, where he washed me like I was about to be sacrificed in an ancient rite, leaving me wet and longing, open-mouthed, confused, staring after his naked ass as he left the stall without either of us coming; in the Louvre, where we spent hours wandering and making up stories about the secondary cast in paintings hung throughout endless galleries; across from the Louvre entrance, in the outdoor bistro, when he pulled his chair around the table and sat with his arm draped around me.
Pigeons flocked. Tourists took countless photos of the glass Louvre pyramid. The sun beat down.
A family passing by recognized Louis and interrupted us to compliment him and ask for his signature. He was very gracious and prideful at the same time. I reveled in being out in public with him. Yet it drove home just how secret we were in Toulon.
Our conversation was intent and avid. We talked about his performance at the final match of the season, his love-hate relationship with Paris, and his home, which I had not realized was originally Corsica, the tiny French island where Napoleon Bonaparte was born. He had said his family was from there, but I didn’t realize they had a home there as well as in Toulon.
He’d spent his summers growing up on the island. “You will see it,” he’d said vaguely, and I was a puddle of warm liquid love.
We talked about how I wanted to become a cookbook editor. I told him I must have got the editing bug from my other mom, who was a journalist, and he didn’t bat an eyelash. He asked what her name was, and what my childhood was like. When I mentioned that I was searching for an internship at a publishing house when I returned next year, he stiffened and changed the subject.
Much, much later, after a ridiculously expensive, delicious dinner and a quiet long walk along the Seine, we made love for a long time, quietly, softly, missionary style.
His passion was no less diminished, though wholly respectful.
What shook me to the core was how badly I wanted him to defile me—even as we shuddered in each other’s arms, tender and sweet. I wondered for a moment or two, when he looked at me in a strange way, if he’d been going so slow and gentle in the hope I might snap and beg him to fuck me like an animal.
In truth, it was starting to bug me how he seemed to manage a tight control of everything in our relationship, even the style of lovemaking we would indulge in. I mean, I could have asked for him to spank me, but then it’s not the same, is it? And after what happened last time I took the lead, I was too timid to try again.
The next morning we set out early to get back for an unexpected meeting he said he had to have with his brothers about the business. He’d told me this, tickling me in bed again, while I’d been barely able to open my eyelids. I got really mad then because I hate being tickled. And I hate being tickled first thing in the morning even more. And I had told him that the time before. But he did it anyway.
A while later he admitted, not at all sorry, “I wanted to fuck you angry.” Of course I forgave him.
As we bundled into the car that would take us to the airport, I looked one last time longingly down the Champs-Élysées. He said the next time we came back we would go shopping.
More liquid love.
I was closer to Louis than ever, and so on our trip home I was determined to bring up a few things I needed clarified. I spent twenty minutes watching us rise above the cloud line, building up the courage.
“How long are we supposed to remain a secret in Toulon?” I blurted out. I startled him because he was in the middle of a magazine article. And I pissed myself off because I’d meant to be so much more smooth.
“As long as necessary.” He went back to his article as though I’d asked how much longer until we arrive. I exhaled, huffily.
“What does that mean?”
He sighed with equal ferocity and put away the magazine. “As much as I enjoy your temper, Fleur, not today.” He said this through half-closed eyes, tugging me to him, where I could only fight the battle to cuddle so long. I knew something was up with his family, and . . . so . . . I let it go.
And you know, I slept on his chest like a contented kitten.
Chapter 19
“Bonjour,” I greeted Marie, brimming with contentedness, leaving my suitcase by the door to hug her. I slipped the newspaper she’d yet to bring in onto the counter. I could tell she’d slept in all morning by her bed-head hair and cranky disposition. She was also cross I had not brought “Alain” in with me upon our return from Paris. “Oh, but where is he?�
� Her face fell as she looked over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Marie. He had some family emergency.” I wasn’t lying. And I wouldn’t lie any more. I planned to tell Marie today about Louis.
“But this is very disappointing,” she grumbled. “You are not hiding him from me, are you?” Horror crossed her face. “You are not embarrassed by me?”
“Oh my God, no! Marie, I’m so proud of you, are you kidding? No, he had family business.” Again partial truth. Louis had seemed very distracted as he kissed me goodbye in the lobby. Also, we were met by Georges, who gave me a very polite hello. Something was up. I could feel it in Louis’s stiff body language. I hoped everything was okay.
Speaking of something being up, I asked, “Is everything okay, Marie? You seem out of sorts.” She wore a scowl, the likes of which I had never seen on her face before.
“I was so close.” She swore in French under her breath, and my eyebrows raised. Her elbow was on the bar, and her fist, which she’d been resting on, slid close to her mouth. She looked like she wanted to bite down on it. “I know, or I think I know who is the, how do you say, linchpin, behind smuggling in the ports. There was supposed to be a meeting last night.” She seemed lost in her anger, lost enough to be divulging police details.
“What happened?” I nudged her along.
“We set up a takedown in the port. There were extra teams. But even so—il s’est échappé —he got away.”
“Oh, Marie, I am sorry.” I tried to hug her, but she was too stiff. I ended up patting her back.
The rest happened in slow motion.
I had taken off my sweater, because I was feeling warm. I had on only a tank top.
I went over to the fridge and searched inside for some white wine, to make her feel better, as it was almost happy hour anyway.
I heard Marie gasp.
I peered over my shoulder.
I noticed her confused brow.
I spied the newspaper she was reading.
The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) Page 19