by Alix Nichols
“On a woman,” he explains. “Like your eyes. And lips. And neck, and boobs… Actually, every part of you.”
As he names the various parts he touches his lips to them, a little clumsy at times. What with his right hand still in my panties and his left hand splayed against my seat propping him up, the poor man is forced to use his head.
Literally.
“It’s like with Q-tips,” Raphael says.
“Pardon me?”
“Haven’t you ever caught sight of Q-tips in a bathroom drawer, and suddenly your ears felt itchy?”
I smile and nod. Just hearing the word makes my ears itchy.
He trails his tongue up my neck and over my chin. “It’s like once you see them, you simply must grab one to scratch your itch! You know?”
“Yeeeah…” I draw it out.
The truth is I don’t know if I know. The real Q-tip situation is something I can definitely relate to, but we’re no longer talking about Q-tips, are we? Raphael is describing his relationship with the opposite sex.
Scratch the itch, huh?
I’m struck by how insensitive his comparison is. And even more by the fact that he doesn’t realize it.
Or doesn’t care.
For heaven’s sake, Mia, walk away from this man!
He’ll get you addicted to his lovemaking and rakish charm and then discard you like a used Q-tip.
“Baby, is something wrong?” he asks.
I shake my head. “All’s well.”
“I doubt it.” He searches my face. “Did I bite your lip too hard, or is it what I just said?”
How can a man be so blunt and so sensitive at the same time? He says the most outrageous things without caring about their effect, yet he’s capable of noticing the slightest change in the way my body reacts to him. Why isn’t he just a regular entitled jerk? Things would have been so much easier!
I would’ve dumped him by now.
No, scratch that, I would’ve never hooked up with him in the first place.
“It’s not something you did,” I say.
He nods. “It’s what I said about Q-tips, right?”
“Not a very flattering comparison.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
I tug at his wrist, and he pulls his hand out of my panties.
“At least it was honest,” I say, sitting up. “I’ll get over it.”
He pulls himself up, too, and then puts the backs of our seats into an upright position.
I sort myself out and decide this is a good time to talk about my colleague Sandro, whom my lover is about to sack.
“You’re letting Sandro Marnier go,” I say.
Raphael gives me a slightly surprised look. “I am, indeed.”
“Is he bad at his job?”
“Why do you care?” His expression hardens. “Is he a friend of yours? Or more than a friend?”
“He’s a friend of Barbara’s,” I say. “We sometimes eat lunch together.”
Raphael nods, his jaw relaxing.
“So, is he bad?” I ask again.
“No. But he showed up to work drunk three times over two weeks.”
“His boyfriend of three years dumped him out of the blue.”
“Not my problem.” Raphael’s lips flatten.
My jaw clenches.
“I must act before his probationary period ends,” Raphael explains. “If I don’t, he’ll get an open-ended contract, join the staff union, and continue drinking. And then it’ll definitely be my problem.”
“He won’t continue drinking,” I say. “I can vouch for him. He loves his job, and he needs to work. It was just a glitch.”
Raphael shakes his head. “If things are the way you describe them, he would’ve never allowed the glitch to happen in the first place.”
“Haven’t you ever lost your way?” I ask. “Haven’t you made misguided decisions and done stupid things you regretted bitterly later?”
He surveys my face.
“Please, will you give Sandro a chance?”
He stares out the window for a long moment. “Yes, there was a time when I lost my way,” he says, turning to me. “Many years ago, back in my teens.”
“But you got your act together, and I’m sure you didn’t do it alone. Someone—your parents, most likely—was there to help you.”
He gives me a humorless smile. “Someone was, indeed, only it wasn’t my parents. Maman was running her charity in Nepal, and Papa… Anyway, the person who had my back was Seb. I may have never cleaned up my act if it weren’t for him.”
I gaze into his eyes.
He stares back. “I’ll take another look at Sandro’s file.”
“Thank you.”
The corners of Raphael’s mouth curl up. “You should apply for sainthood with that heart of yours.”
Ha! The irony of it.
I’m not championing Sandro out of the goodness of my heart. My motives are more complex and somewhat less altruistic. The main one is a ludicrous wish. I hope that if my sex tape ever hits the Internet, the universe will return the favor. I hope the people who know me won’t see it, or if they do, they won’t judge me too harshly.
And, above all, I hope the people who matter most won’t cast me off.
Chapter 10
I’m stretching my legs in the airy foyer of the Pompidou Center, fighting the temptation to check out its Dadaism exhibit. But the purpose of my being here isn’t art. It’s work.
My main work, that is.
I’m at the Pompidou Center tonight—just as I was last night and I will be tomorrow night—because its well-provisioned library is open until ten p.m. That means I can come here straight from the office and toil on my thesis for full three hours.
Tonight, I’ve been particularly inspired. Not only did I manage to track down an elusive thirteenth-century source, I also did quite a bit of writing. Oh, to hell with false modesty. I did a huge amount of writing and—wait for it—finished Part II of my thesis.
Go Mia!
As of today, exactly half of my dissertation is done, ready to be shown to my supervisor, and used for conference papers and journal articles. On top of that, I’m a whole month ahead of the deadline Professor Guyot and I had agreed on.
What can I say?
Mia Stoll rocks.
Some day she’ll be a recognized authority on the harlots of medieval Paris. No, think bigger! She’ll be the world’s biggest expert on women in medieval France.
I turn around to head back to the library and collide with someone’s broad chest.
A very familiar chest.
“Hey, Rudy,” Raphael says, putting his arms around me and planting a kiss on my mouth.
My lids fall as I savor the scent of him and the feel of his lips against mine.
Wait… what is he doing here?
I draw away. “Weren’t you supposed to be in Rio?”
“I came back two days early.” He shrugs. “The work was done so there was no point in lingering.”
“No point in lingering in Rio?” Man, he’s jaded. “Didn’t you say you wanted to explore the city?”
“I did. And I was planning to… but then…” He gives me a crooked smile. “I realized I missed my Ferrari.”
I stare at him in incredulity. “Let me get this straight. You left Rio two days early because you missed your car.”
He nods.
“Poor lovesick man.” I give his upper arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Does your Ferrari feel the same way about you?”
“She won’t say—seeing as she can’t talk—but she lit up when she saw me earlier.” He beams.
I beam back. “That’s a good sign.”
“So, how’s the study coming along?”
“I just finished part two.”
“Madame Stoll.” He takes an imaginary hat off. “That deserves a celebratory dinner.”
I just grin, feeling ridiculously proud of myself.
“Speaking of dinne
r, have you eaten yet?” Raphael asks. “I’m starving—came here straight from the airport.”
“I grabbed a sandwich on the way from the office.”
Hang on a sec…
Did he just say he came here straight from the airport? I thought he’d gone home first to check on his Ferrari, which “lit up” for him?
Raphael pulls a face. “A sandwich doesn’t count as dinner. How about that place on rue Rambuteau we went to last week?”
The place that serves Kobe steaks for the price of my monthly rent and swarms with movie stars, some of whom greet Raphael with a “Hi, baby, we should get together sometime.”?
No, thanks.
“You go ahead,” I say. “I’m in this crazy productive flow tonight. I want to write some more.”
“Not even George’s at the top floor of this building?”
I shake my head.
He looks around and takes a step toward the escalator. “Follow me.”
Intrigued, I do as requested.
Turns out he’s leading me to the mezzanine café.
“Unless you have serious and well-justified objections,” he says, motioning me to a table by the balustrade, “I’ll order your favorite brownie and chai latte and something more substantial for myself.”
He spins around and heads to the counter before I get a chance to utter my objections.
Honestly. Men.
When he returns with an overflowing tray and I sink my teeth into the brownie, I feel a lot less peeved at his unceremonious ways.
“Do you have your laptop?” he asks.
“Of course.” I point at my backpack on the floor. “I’m not crazy enough to leave it in a public library unattended.”
“Will you show me an interesting passage from your new chapters?”
Every time he asks me to do that, I get inexplicably excited.
So I pretend to be miffed. “Are you suggesting my thesis has passages that are boring?”
“Yes,” he says, unfazed. “If it didn’t have any, it would be a Stephen King novel.”
He does have a point.
I open my laptop and scroll through my new chapters.
Hmm…. All of it looks interesting to me…. OK, how about this one?
I turn my screen toward him and point. “Read this bit.”
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the sex worker had no legal status and wasn’t even allowed to speak for herself in court. But her right to be paid for her services was firmly established and protected in Norman laws. The influential English canonist Thomas of Chobham, who had studied in Paris in the 1180s, wrote: “It is wrong for a woman to be a prostitute, but if she is such, it is not wrong for her to receive a wage. But if she prostitutes herself for pleasure and hires out her body for this purpose, then the wage is as evil as the act itself.”
“Ha!” he says, looking up at me. “So this Thomas is basically saying it’s a mild sin if a woman has sex for money, but it’s a really nasty sin if she does it for pleasure. Right?”
“That’s not exactly what he says, but you aren’t far off the mark.”
“Well, I’m glad medieval canons are dead and buried now, at least in this part of the world.”
“I’m not so sure.” I narrow my eyes. “What do you pay an average male auditor versus an average female auditor?”
“At DCA,” he says with visible pride, “male and female auditors get equal pay for equal work.”
“OK, then how about male and female staff, all categories included?”
He runs his hand through his hair. “That wouldn’t be a fair comparison.”
“No? Why?”
“Because…” He hesitates for a second. “OK, I’m going to be blunt about this. We don’t have any women in the top management. And we don’t have many male assistants.”
I nod. “Still a long way to go even for this part of the world, huh?”
He chews his sandwich in silence.
I study his serious face. “You’re suspiciously thoughtful.”
“I’m trying to picture myself living in medieval France where all pretty young things who don’t sell their bodies are chaste.”
“And?”
“It’s terrifying.” He widens his eyes in mock despair. “As a man who’s not interested in marriage, I’d have to either grin and bear it or pay for sex.”
“Something tells me you’d go with the second option.”
He smirks. “I’d probably have loyalty cards from brothels all over the country.”
“What if you were a medieval woman and you weren’t interested in marriage?”
“I’d become a harlot,” he says without hesitation.
Of course.
“What about you?” he asks.
I don’t hesitate either. “I’d become a nun.”
“Really? I didn’t realize you shared your mother’s passion for Jesus.”
“I don’t, even though I do think he was an admirable individual.”
“Then why a nun?”
“Well, for starters, taking the vows was the best escape route for a woman who didn’t want to marry the man her parents had chosen for her—or any man at all.”
He nods. “I see.”
“But it isn’t just that. Career options that were open to a nerdy medieval woman—even wealthy ladies of the manor—were extremely limited.”
He slaps his forehead. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? A woman wasn’t supposed to be smart, right?”
“Right, unless she became a religieuse.”
I pick up the last crumbs of my brownie and then lick my fingers.
He opens his water bottle.
“A religieuse,” I continue, “could read philosophical treatises to her heart’s content. She could have opinions, and write, and engage in intellectual debates.”
“I get it, really,” Raphael says. “What I don’t get is that you’d forego sex for intellectual debates.”
“No pain, no gain,” I say.
“Your life credo?”
“Not a credo, more like a rule of thumb.”
“My life is ruled by a finger, too,” he says. “But it’s not a thumb.”
I screw up my face, expecting the worst.
True to form, he holds up his middle finger. “It’s this one.”
“Prick,” I say.
“And proud,” he says with a grin.
Chapter 11
Raphael locks the door of his office behind me. “Should I have a word with Pauline?”
“What for?”
“So she’d let her assistants take credit for the sections they compile.”
I stare at him as I process his suggestion.
“I checked your contract,” he says. “Your pay grade requires only proofreading and formatting.”
“I’m happy Pauline gives me more challenging tasks,” I say.
“Yes, but the bulletin still has your name only next to layout.”
“And that’s perfectly fine by me.”
He looks taken aback. “I’ll be very diplomatic if you’re worried about raising her suspicions—”
“It isn’t just the suspicions,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t care how I’m credited in the bulletin. I’m here only until I get my PhD and find a job in the academia.”
“I know that.” He frowns. “Still, it isn’t right that someone should take credit for your work.”
“Your concern for your foot soldier is commendable.” I give him a wink. “How about you extend it to the ones you aren’t sleeping with?”
“I discussed Sandro Marnier’s case with my aides,” he says. “I might give him a second chance.”
I beam.
He smiles back and pulls me into his embrace. “We have two hours before I head out of town.”
His hands begin to stroke my back. Palms flat and fingers splayed, they travel up to my nape, slide down my shoulder blades, press against the small of my back, and cup my ass. While his hands roam at will, leaving no
inch untouched, his lips brush my face, hungry and demanding.
I love this part.
That is not to say I don’t love what follows more, but there’s something about Raphael’s touch that hits all the right spots. Even the ones I didn’t know I had. It’s as if his hands have the exact size, warmth, and strength that my nerve endings require. And it always feels as though he has more than two—like a Hindu deity—when he caresses me like this.
As he backs me toward his massive oakwood desk, I feel him harden against my tummy.
My eyes close. “Will I see you this weekend?”
“I’m afraid not.” He trails hot kisses along my neck. “I’ll be away all weekend and all of next week.”
I dare not ask where he’s traveling to.
Or with whom.
Is it because I’m awed by this man? Bearing in mind he’s only twenty-nine, it’s hard not to be impressed by what he’s achieved. It’s hard not to be affected by his status and wealth, not to mention his blue blood and crazy good looks.
But it isn’t those awe-inspiring features that got me stuck on him. Whenever I forget to be wonderstruck, Le Big Boss disappears and a sweet, carrot-nosed snowman takes his place.
Lovemaking achieves that every time.
Raphael hooks an arm around my waist as he pushes the files on his desk to the side. I expect him to lift me and sit me facing him as we’ve done before, but he turns me around instead. Before I realize what he’s up to, he has me bent over the desk. Placing a hand between my shoulder blades, he nudges me lower until my cheek is pressed against the polished wood.
He holds me firmly in place, pushing my hem up with his other hand. I’m wearing a tight pencil skirt today, so Raphael’s task isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when performed single-handedly.
But he keeps at it until, finally, my skirt is bunched at my waist and my panties are around my right ankle.
He groans as he strokes my bared flesh.
I feel exposed and vulnerable, with my ass sticking out like this.
We have, of course, done it doggy style before. But we were in bed and it was different. The room was much darker, and I was completely relaxed and uninhibited after the exquisite wine and even more exquisite tonguing he’d treated me to.
I’d had none of that today.