The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1)

by Young, Lesley

  Tears spilled out of my eyes.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. I clutched at my heart. This was not happening. I was not going to break into little orphan pieces right here, right now.

  I tried to steady my breathing.

  In that moment, I was utterly grateful to him, for not saying one word, for not even moving.

  When I could speak again, I faced him. Fully. I planned to tell him to go fuck himself.

  “Fleur,” he said quietly, eyes full of compassion, which made me want to punch him. “Don’t you see? She thinks we came after the most important thing in the world to her. She thinks it is a game. Only this game she plays now, she will lose,” he said quietly.

  No. No. No.

  I shook my head and crossed my arms tight.

  He wanted me to not only believe he was the honorable one, but that my mother was dishonorable. Unbelievable, that he would accuse my mother of wrong-doing, when his brother was one hundred percent a criminal. “How do you know he wasn’t there, Louis?” I challenged him, barely able to control my temper, hating myself for even giving him the slightest benefit of the doubt. I was close to meltdown.

  “Because Georges was with me when this informant claims he was selling drugs. I was with him this night in my home.”

  I recoiled at the fierce—honest—gaze. He was with Georges.

  No. No. I didn’t want to believe . . . oh my God . . . could Marie? Could she have done what he was saying? No. I could not even contemplate it, not in that moment. I refused to accept what he was saying.

  “Maybe I am too late. Maybe she has painted you self-righteous, too,” he murmured in French.

  Loud scraping startled me. Louis had pushed back his chair. He rose up, stepped closer and nudged my glass over to me.

  “Please, drink.”

  “How do I know it is not drugged?” I snarled. He’d put me in an impossible position. He wanted me to choose who to trust. And I refused to. Not right now.

  He bent over quickly, hands on his thighs, just a foot from my face.

  “Your anger won’t rescue you,” he said, following my face as I pulled away. “Will it, hm,” he added softly, his eyes falling on my lips. I glared at him. “But,” he said slowly, using that gravely, deep voice of his, “maybe it will keep you from seeing the truth a while longer, no? Mon Dieu. Is that what you want? To hide some more with my cock in you? I will give it to you, Fleur, but only if you beg.”

  I gasped at his . . . cruelty, but this time I wasn’t going to stand and stare and let a vile man hurt me. Not anymore. Not ever again.

  “Look at your tiny fists.” He laughed. Stop! I was leaning away from his hovering face, shaking with fury. He wants to provoke you—the realization popped in my mind. Why? To force you to choose. He wants his way. He is determined to have his way, whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He dragged something over. A chair. I didn’t want him so close, but I didn’t want to shift because it might give him a reason to touch me.

  “Pauvre Fleur. You know how I feel about you when you are so angry.” He leaned right in, inches away, and his scent flooded my memories with all of the love I held for him. My heart squeezed. It hadn’t gone away. My love wasn’t black, as I’d expected it to be. It was white and pure and holy. “But maybe that is what you want? I can make you feel all the things you want to feel, all those dark ways you want me to make you feel. Ah, look at your chest, you can barely control your lust for me. You want me to fuck you right—”

  I knocked his face away with my left hand, the sensation of flesh hitting flesh feeding my violence. I swung again wildly with both hands. How dare he corrupt what I feel for him? How dare he constantly dangle desire and pleasure like it is exclusive of love? He had gone too far. I had to fight back. He had hurt me for the last time. I struck out, desperate that he might feel a taste of loss. Real loss. He was stealing from me. From us.

  I fought until I could fight no more.

  My breath raspy, I squeezed my eyes and opened them.

  I was trapped on the cot on my side. Locked up tight by arms and a giant thigh.

  I had disappeared somewhere horrible. Somewhere I didn’t even know I had in me. I couldn’t believe I had hit another human being. I couldn’t believe what I had become.

  I gave up trying to wrench free. It was pointless.

  I squeezed my eyes tight one more time.

  When I opened them I knew why it was pointless, and it didn’t come down to size or muscle or strength. Louis thought I was fighting him. He didn’t understand I was fighting for the both of us. He couldn’t see what was at stake since he was robbing blindly from himself—even right now. Did he not know what it took to salvage this?

  Love. Simple love.

  I was near hyperventilating.

  He was making that stupid “sh” sound.

  I tried to steady my breathing.

  Come on, I willed myself.

  “Let me go,” I choked out.

  “Non,” he whispered behind me.

  His cock was already thick, pressing into my thigh. I knew what would happen next. He was going to express himself the only way he knew how. Offer me a bowl of milk. And I would lap it up, ravenously, like a good little homeless kitten.

  “No. I mean, let me go for good. Leave me alone forever, and I will convince Marie to drop the charges—if you’re right about her.”

  Chapter 23

  He forced me onto my back, crushing my body under his, and grabbed my face.

  “Don’t!” I squirmed. I would cry at any moment.

  “Fleur!” He held my face, searching my blurry eyes, all the while calculating. Always calculating. What did he see?

  “I should not have said those things. I was frustrated with you.”

  I had to batten down my heart, which begged to forgive him.

  “Fleur.” He gave me his soft look. “It does not have to be this way.”

  At the hope, the promise in his words, I stopped fighting his hold on me.

  Did he understand? Could he understand what we needed? Could he give it to us?

  I closed my eyes and placed my hands on his shoulders, instead of against his chest. And I let myself contemplate the possibility.

  I felt enormous relief.

  Oh my God.

  He was right.

  I did want to lose myself with his cock in me. I wanted to forget everything else—like I always had in life, pretending the bad didn’t matter. I was willing to sacrifice something greater—what? I didn’t quite know—just to feel his love, the way he gave it to me, one more time. Be in it. Feel him from the inside. I wanted to believe it.

  I opened my eyes, and I was back in that time and place when I knew him to be great. Not the best man, but the greatest man.

  His eyebrows eased, and he slowly lowered his mouth until it was just inches from mine. I had to taste him again. I missed him so much it ached, still. I lifted up and claimed his mouth with determination, so he could have no doubt. I breathed in, tasting and nipping and sucking, frantically running my hands down his chest. He responded immediately, grabbing my chin with his hand, tasting my tongue. “Fleur,” he gasped in my mouth.

  I arched with abandon.

  No, it was not enough. I pushed up, yanking on his shirt, tearing it open. He lifted up onto his knees and took it off as I struggled out of my cardigan. He rushed at me, pulling off my tank top, throwing it aside, pulling my bra down to free my breasts. It was a frenzy of clashing flesh, a battle for more. I grasped his head and shouted as he bit down on my nipple, already budded for him. He squeezed my breasts together and rubbed his face in them. “Ma petite Fleur, tu es mon cœur,” he murmured. I closed my eyes at his words—I was his heart—and moved my hands over his head, down his strong back, trying to memorize every undulation of muscle, the weathered texture of his skin. I ran my nails deep on the way back up.

  He hissed and wrenched back, pulling at my jeans, violently impatient, trying to get them off. They were skinny jeans and I a
lmost laughed with his frustration. He ordered me to do it, and stood up and removed his own. Didn’t want to question. Didn’t want to think. Just wanted to take. Like he takes. He fell back on me before I had even laid back down, kissing, licking, and biting anywhere, everywhere, moving down my navel, forcefully opening my legs. When he sucked my clit, a powerful erotic sensation tore through me, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. I sat up, grasping his short hair, yanking it as hard as I could. He grimaced and glared up at me.

  “Cock,” I demanded.

  He smiled vicious.

  “Is that what you—”

  I flipped over on my hands and knees, beating him at his taunting game, arching my back, sticking my ass in the air, legs spread. He hissed again, and his hand grasped my butt cheek, gently caress it, and—mmm—his face was deep, lapping—I gasped as sharp pain quickly diffused. Twisting around, he winked at me and bit down again on my ass cheek.

  “Cock,” I said, getting down on my elbows, raising my butt even higher in the air.

  Finally, the cot squeaked under his weight as he positioned himself. His tip massaged my wet core, hitting my clit, rubbing it, tapping it. Louis made a low noise like an animal, and I moaned with rabid pleasure.

  His hand reached down and squeezed my breast hard.

  “Yes,” I gushed, needing like never before.

  I wiggled my ass.

  I was throbbing.

  Give it to me.

  He was going to make me beg.

  I wanted to beg. I wanted him to know how much I needed him, how much I would always need him. “Please, Louis.”

  I gasped as a large hand dug into my hair, twisted it, pulled me up and around roughly. My pussy clenched with desire at the hunger in his eyes. “I want to see your face when I give you what you want.”

  I let out a blissful mewl as his length entered me.

  Finally.

  I needed to collapse at the invasive pleasure-connection, but he held up my waist with one arm, keeping my head twisted up with the other. His face was wrenched in a frenzied trance. I cried for more. I’m not sure he was listening—he seemed lost in another carnal dimension. He just kept pulling out, and ramming into me, stoking the tremulous sweet throbbing that was traveling from my pussy to my mind. Watching me, always watching me. Again, again, harder and harder, with each pounding thrust he brought me, us, closer in the chase.

  He leaned over my back, holding me close to him, my muscles wanting to give out even as they clenched tighter. Our mouths completed the tangled siege, a tremor wracked through me, and he murmured oui, fucked me, and my mouth, harder, biting my lip, exerting his control over me, reveling in his mastery of my total surrender.

  I climaxed, quivering on a slippery floor of euphoria as he groaned wildly, pumping erratically, surrendering to his own pleasure, losing control. He let my hair and mouth go, hands slipping down to milk my boobs while he shuddered twice more inside me. We stayed like that, intertwined, connected, for a moment or two.

  The second he let go of my body I melted onto the cot. Having gone hungry for so long, my body was unable to absorb it all. And it felt hollow. He stood up for a moment, and I watched his magnificent silhouette return with another blanket.

  When he saw me staring at him, he smiled, as though our lives were about to start over—it stole my breath. He crouched near the pillow, brushing the hair out of my face, kissing my lips the way I like. “You are my heart, Fleur,” he repeated, hushed.

  He climbed back into the cot, and I rolled over onto his chest as he covered us with a blanket.

  In my mind, over and over, rubber squealed on pavement. Metal crumpled with two-ton head-on force. Glass shattered. Sirens screamed. A mother cried plaintively.

  I didn’t care. I wanted to lie in this wreckage. Blind. Immobilized. Listening for a distant echo of heartbeats.

  • • •

  “This place is tragic,” I whispered. I knew he had come up behind me. I could feel him.

  I sat on a rock far too large and lonely to have ended up at this cliff’s edge by environmental forces. My arms were wrapped around my bent legs, chin on my knees, staring out at the setting golden orb in the unearthly pink sky. Below, a miniature village was nested on the tip of a cliff. And far, far away, lay the sea.

  “I wanted you to see my island.”

  He settled beside me on the rock, dressed, bringing with him the blanket we had just fucked on. I thanked him and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “Surely this is not your family’s summer home.”

  “No.” He smiled, mysterious. His eyes roamed approvingly over the church, which was indeed in a state of restoration. “But my grandfather, how do you say, removed three times?” I nodded. His great-great grandfather. “He was from here. My family bought this town, which was not easy. Laws here dispense ownership to every single generation past. We tracked down hundreds of people.”

  “I bet they didn’t sell cheap, either,” I said, turning to stare at him, temple resting on my knee. He shrugged indifferent. “It is the Messettes’ now. Forever.” The way he said forever, staring at me pointedly, made me shiver.

  He thought I was his—forever.

  Leaning back on his elbows, he stretched out his long thick legs and took in the wonder before him. He was a king, just then, I marveled. A majesty, surveying his splendor, bought and owned with the ashes of unwritten stories. And isn’t all royalty resting on a precarious mountain of souls, inheritances reaped from the deeds—good, bad, no matter—of generations past? I could easily imagine, though never properly understand, the obligations of such a legacy. The way it would shape and mold a young boy into a prideful man whose sense of honor was bound by winning rather than by earning; who had been taught and shown how the world was his for the claiming. I could also understand—perfectly—how so many could love such a man with all their hearts, even as the guillotine dropped down.

  I sighed deeply.

  Time passed in silence. Just as the sun slipped under the edge of the world, he said, staring after it, “I don’t like you this way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Triste.” (Sad.)

  • • •

  In the church, after we ate meat and cheese sandwiches that had miraculously arrived while we’d sat on that stone, posing for an imaginary painter, he asked me to let him make me “happy.”

  And I said yes, because I was selfish. He was soft and tender and soulful. But it didn’t work.

  He took me to the car, parked on a frighteningly narrow road with no safety barrier, with plenty of time to make the seventy-two-hour promise to Marie. An unmarked boat would return me to Toulon overnight. I was leaving solo; he could not risk being connected with my disappearance, in case Marie changed her mind. I spotted another car farther up the road, near the row of dilapidated, conjoined stone houses I hadn’t seen until then.

  I had waited, biding my time, letting him believe he had me until the end. It was time to show my hand.

  My heart beat a dire drum. Could I quantify what I loved about him? Did things like passion, sensuality, determination, even matter? For it’s not the man we love, but his very soul.

  His hand reached up to caress my face.

  I pulled away.

  Yes, the end is near. I stared into his chest.

  Never one to miss an emotion, he grabbed my face, suddenly, and made me look into my future.

  Caustic, demanding eyes.

  “Do we have a deal?” I whispered. His eyelids opened wide as he realized, yes, I still wanted him to let me go. His mouth stiffened and twisted.

  I flinched as he tossed his head back suddenly, and growled his displeasure at the hint of moon in the midnight-blue sky. I steeled myself as he spread his legs out, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at me, disbelieving. Angry. Leaning forward, his face was inches from mine. I tried to stay strong. He wanted to intimidate me, since seducing me had failed.

  “Deal?” I asked again.

/>   “Non!”

  “Louis. Your brother could go to prison for life if you do not agree. That’s why you brought me here.” The Messettes were desperate. If Marie had built a case against Georges, and that was a big if, you bet your ass she’d built an iron-clad one.

  Well, I was desperate to have my way, too. And LaSalles could be equally determined.

  “Mon Dieu!” He grabbed his head in frustration. “Why, why do you insist on such foolishness? Why do you not believe me? None of this is necessary! Are you trying to punish me? Is that it? You are angry at yourself. Fleur.” He stepped into my space. “You will stop this nonsense. You will see, you will believe me, and help your mother, not Georges, your mother. And, in time, this will not matter. You will see. Please trust me.”

  He pulled me to him and kissed my head.

  I remained stiff in his embrace, searching for some way to get through to him.

  “Do you remember the night when—” my voice hitched “—you asked me to trust you to hurt me?” He let me lean back, and I watched his face still. Yes, he remembered how he’d claimed my virginity.

  I stared up at him. “Now it is your turn.”

  His brow leveled down on his fierce eyes. There. He was starting to understand, or so I imagined. Could he see he had lost the game? Or, God willing, that it was only he who had been playing one all along? I had given him my heart. That’s why he called me “his heart.” Well, where was his heart? I wanted it.

  “But . . .” he said, and I watched him rush, frantic, to paste on his charming smile. No. He didn’t see. Was he unwilling, or unable? “. . . we love each other.”

  A terrible sound came out of my mouth. His face pulled back.

  No. He would never have heard me laugh so. I had never heard me laugh so.

  I stared at him with genuine contempt, the kind that steals angels’ souls. And I slayed him even as his eyes bled with child-like confusion at the sudden reckoning.

  “You have to give love to get love, Louis.”

  He flinched, and red infused his cheeks as my words sank in. There. Did he understand? All he had to do was let me into his heart, the precious palace he kept under lock and key.