The Paris Apartment (Love Nests Book 1)

by Sophia Karlson

  “Not yet,” he whispered back, but he let go of his cock and paused at her entrance, giving her a torturous moment to retract from the edge over which she was hovering.

  “Please.” Her voice had reduced to a helpless plea.

  He kissed her, and as his tongue slipped between her lips his cock jammed into her, filling her to her core. She moaned in his mouth, but he didn’t retreat. Instead, he lowered onto her, resting on his elbows to keep the bulk of his weight off her. They kept on kissing, his tongue playing cock in her mouth, as he rode her as she’d wished for. It was different from the other time she’d been with him. Every motion was loaded with something else, every penetration seemed deeper than where he’d been before.

  She dug her fingers into his hair and he thrust, grinding deeper into her body. She was so close, with every part of her body gravitating towards the abyss.

  He broke their kiss, his gaze dark and wild as he looked at her. “Come with me, Mila.”

  He’d hardly spoken when her orgasm ripped through her, seeming to tear from the top of her passage down to her clit, each contraction followed by a stronger one. It was too intense and she buried her face in his shoulder, clinging, aware of each gush of semen as he came. He continued to push as if he would consume her.

  When he eventually stilled she tuned into the frantic beating of his heart under the heel of her palm. He breathed haggardly, and with a sigh dropped his forehead to hers. Their bodies were hot and fused together with nothing to tear them apart. In her, every emotion of the past few days welled up. The pressure in her chest broke from her in a quiet sob, as tears, over which she had zero control, seeped from the corners of her eyes.

  He rolled off her and she buried her face in her hands, swallowing at the cramping knot in her throat. She couldn’t break in front of him. Not now. The tears were so quiet, but her breathing…

  He was busy with the condom, opening a drawer, pulling something from it.

  “Here,” he murmured.

  She peeked at him. He was holding a wad of tissues out to her. She took it with trembling fingers, not sure what to make of his half-turned back. She dabbed at her eyes just as he shifted, his weight denting the bed.

  “What’s this, Mila?” he asked softly, catching her wrist in his hand.

  A sob broke from her chest. “I don’t know.”

  “Shit, sweetheart.” He nestled close to her, gathering her in his arms. “Mila.” He kissed her eyes, kissed at her tears that were still flowing. “Did I hurt you?” His voice was heavy with concern and it gripped at her heart. But when he kissed her lips with such tenderness her heart caved in. It was his. Now. Forever.

  “No,” she murmured. She’d no idea what had overcome her. Did she have to be so weak? Such a mess? “No-no,” she said again, wanting to make sure he understood it wasn’t physical.

  The weight of his gaze rested on her for a long second, then he unfurled her fingers from the wad of tissues she clutched like a lifeline.

  “Those were meant to wipe,” he murmured as she let go. “Down there, not up here.” He kissed her tears as he gently wiped the overflow of juices from her pussy. Dear Lord. That he could be so caring. That was probably the best sex ever and she was a mess.

  He’d set the bar impossibly high. How would any man ever compare to this?

  chapter 28

  James searched Mila’s face. She’d closed her eyes, seeming asleep and almost angelic. In the little light, her tears seemed to have stopped, but the streaks on her temples and cheeks were still there. Those tearstains were working him like a shredder. He held her closer, trying to comfort her, but he felt helpless. There had been nothing wrong with the way they’d made love. It had been the most emotional sex he’d ever had. This was the first time he’d ever had a woman in tears afterward and he was hesitant to dissect what they meant.

  But that was just it, wasn’t it? Inwardly he cursed. With Mila, everything had become more. His sexfest had gone north, hitting him straight in the heart. He’d known it with every thrust. The deeper he went, the harder he was falling.

  Exhaling, he settled on his back, making space for her to snuggle in the circle of his arm. Her hand eased up his chest and went to rest on his heart, which was still beating as if he’d run a marathon. She hooked a leg over him and he hugged her tight.

  For a long moment, they were quiet, their bodies calming down. But his mind was racing with so many jumbled thoughts that he couldn’t get anything straight. Eventually, he swallowed. “Do you want to talk about… it?” he whispered against her hair.

  “No,” she murmured softly and pressed a kiss to his chest.

  Too many nos.

  “Mila—” He needed to talk about it. For fuck’s sake. What was happening to him?

  She perched on her elbow and peered at him in the dark. Her forefinger stroked from his forehead down the bridge of his nose to his lips, where it settled to make him hush. “Spare those lips for what they do best,” she murmured and lowered her head to kiss him.

  As she kissed him he couldn’t think of anything but her lips and her soft warm body nestling against his. Eventually, she pulled away. She turned on her side to allow him to spoon her.

  Again he pulled her close with his hand on her hip, not wanting to let go. With any other woman, he would have been more than happy to stop and step away as she was prompting him to do. To brush off any feelings they might have had for each other as simply as Mila had just hushed him. Hell, he wasn’t innocent. He’d walked over a couple of women en route, but that was why the boundaries had always been drawn up in advance. Swinging worked until someone got emotionally involved. Sometimes it happened quicker than expected, before anybody could take stock and step away. The rules were to step away.

  But with Mila… he couldn’t do it. The mere idea that he could hurt her was suffocating him. He pressed his nose into her hair to inhale her sweet, intoxicating scent. To hurt her was the last thing he wanted.

  He closed his eyes. “I have to tell you something.” He spoke the words softly, hoping they would get lost in her thick tresses.

  “Hmm? Now?” Already she sounded half asleep. Her body was still next to his.

  “Marlène is coming.” It was a start, wasn’t it? The introduction to the shitty story that was his life.

  Mila shifted but didn’t turn around to face him. She took his hand and tugged it close to her stomach. “Oh.” She paused. “Why?”

  “To fetch her things.” That was at least true. He hoped it would be the last time he saw her.

  “When?”

  “I’m not sure.” Now he wished he knew exactly when Marlène was going to be there to spill her poison. He should’ve tried harder to find out her movements. Should have tracked her down at work. She had a personal assistant, didn’t she? He bit down the curse hovering on his lips. “Probably late next week. But—”

  She yawned, cupping his hand to her breast, making him hold on to the softest part of her. “Stacey will be here then.”

  He’d forgotten about Stacey. That was another pile of crap waiting to overflow.

  “I don’t want Stacey to know… about us.”

  He frowned. “What has Stacey got to do with any of this?”

  She groaned like all she wanted to do was sleep. Like he was some idiot for not understanding. “Stacey would probably have a fit if she knew we were sleeping together. I’d much rather she didn’t know.”

  “Why?” he quizzed. She was still lying quiet, but under his palm, her heart beat a notch faster.

  “Don’t mess with your little sister’s best friend?” she offered. “Best friends don’t come between older brothers and their perfect girlfriends? Ex or not.”

  What the fuck? “Really?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Mila?”

  “She really likes Marlène. She’s been idoliz
ing her for years.” She took a breath. “Stacey hopes you will get together again. She believes that work separated you, all the traveling you do… Stacey’s convinced that long-distance caused your break up. She doesn’t know about Damien.”

  He wanted to laugh, but instead, bile crept up his throat. If only he could claim that he’d broken up with Marlène because the long-distance relationship hadn’t worked out for them. And Damien. Honestly, he should be grateful to him. Maybe next time he would thank him for taking Marlène places he’d refused to take her.

  As for Stacey, he’d never thought he’d bare his life and secrets to his little sister. He’d deal with her when it came to it.

  But it was more than all of that. Deeply rooted in her comment was something he recognized as inferiority. Mila didn’t think she was worth squat in the bigger scheme of things. Pushed to the sidelines by her parents, she’d been trodden on by her herd of brothers. And she was tied to some old-fashioned religious code and had been too scared to tell her parents that she was going to Paris with her oldest—maybe only—true friend, to go and find herself and live a little.

  “Stacey isn’t entitled to an opinion here.” He almost cursed. “Least of all one that goes along the lines of you not being good enough for me.” The truth was the exact opposite. She was too good for him.

  He huffed a sigh, louder than he’d intended. Having secrets had always been a burden, but a burden he’d carried with care. Now the pile was getting too heavy and he was trapped under the weight of all the secrets he’d kept over the years.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be gone by then if it is any later than next week,” Mila said, the very tone of her voice spelling out that it was the end of the conversation.

  She’d dismissed him. Again.

  Just as he’d been gathering his guts to start the conversation about his past, she’d cut back as if it didn’t matter, as if nothing affected her. He gritted his teeth. And it didn’t matter, not if she didn’t want more than what they had right now.

  It was him who wanted more. And he had no idea how to go about it.

  Swinger. Sex. Strangers. There had been a point where he couldn’t have cared less. His inability to love at a deeper level had been a mere fact, like being left- or right-handed. Now every one of those words that summed up his life stood in his way. They were ready to burst from him but his guts floundered. He bit his tongue, letting the anger at the situation dry up and die instead of fueling something more.

  For a long time, he stared at the skylight, knowing from her easy breathing that she’d fallen asleep.

  For fuck’s sake. He couldn’t raise the topic of his past again. He wouldn’t. He was such a coward.

  He was falling for Mila, a younger woman who played him at his own game, and she was winning. He considered himself a no-commitment pro. Having sex and walking away was his niche. And here she was, not even aware of playing.

  If nothing else, it probably served him bloody right.

  chapter 29

  “Don’t move,” Mila murmured. Only a few more touches and she’d be done.

  She suppressed a grin as James stirred next to her, his eyes opening with a soft murmur. He looked a bit worse for wear. From the dark circles under his eyes, he hadn’t had a great night’s rest.

  Mila didn’t feel rested either and had woken up at some crazy pre-dawn hour. Her conscience had wanted to psychoanalyze every moment of the past few days and make her pay. She’d refused to let her mind churn in some religious time warp and bow to some stupid feeling of guilt. Her parents would be so disappointed, yet again. She wasn’t sure she could face more of that from them. And her brothers would probably tag her as a slut if they knew how quickly she’d slept with James.

  What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, right? And she wasn’t planning to let anybody know about her and James. When she got on that plane to go home she’d be the only one in pain and she would keep it that way.

  When she’d opened the roller blind three hours earlier the noise hadn’t woken James. She’d tiptoed around the room to get her painting things and had managed to fabricate a type of easel out of the occasional chair in his room. She had drawn and then painted him while he was sleeping until all she had to do was some finishing touches. For those, she’d slipped back into bed.

  He rubbed his face with his hands and yawned. “What are you doing?”

  “Painting. Try to be still, please.” It was way too late for that, but she’d already caught him on paper.

  “What are you painting?”

  “You.” She bent over and gave him a little wake-up peck on the tip of his nose.

  He grinned. “Let me see.”

  “It’s not very flattering.”

  “Modern nudes rarely are, unless they’re crap paintings,” he joked and pushed up on his elbow to peer at her pad.

  She handed him the watercolor pad and he fell back on the cushions studying it. She tried to read his face, anxious to know what he was thinking. His gaze rested on the painting a long time, hovering over the details. Inwardly she prayed he wouldn’t make some snarky comment about it being a mix of an Egon Schiele nude and an attempt at a Rodin watercolor because for her it looked like a mishmash of the two.

  “Except for my missing morning glory, it’s a very accurate depiction of yours truly.”

  She laughed. True to form, his cock had risen to the occasion. “It’s been nice to observe you in a more… eh… relaxed state.”

  He chuckled. “I should introduce you to a couple of gallery owners I know. They’d be interested in your work.”

  “Really?” In Paris? Her heart crash-burned into a sprint at the merest notion of having one of her pieces hanging in a Paris art gallery.

  “Yes. The market here… this is something that will sell.”

  She couldn’t exhibit this type of thing at home. Not with her parents’ and brothers’ eyes on every painting she ever did. They’d wonder who it was, whether she’d actually seen him naked, and never mind that it would be unacceptable to her father for the whole painting not to be draped in a giant loincloth.

  She bit back the sting behind her eyes. James was such a darling. “This one is mine,” she murmured. To remind her of him when she’d gone.

  He placed the pad on the bedside table and turned on his side to slip his hand under the covers. He traced a slow path up her thigh and then rested his hand on her belly, stirring up every longing in her core.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Good.” But she could be feeling better. She eyed his erection that was nesting in the duvet as he shifted and nuzzled her naked hip with his nose. He pulled the duvet away from her body and she raised her hand, which still held a paintbrush, with a giggle, so as not to get paint on his white linen.

  “Give me that,” he teased as he sat up and reached for the paintbrush.

  She handed it over with a bit of reluctance. “What are you up to, James Sinclair?”

  “Just getting into a bit of painting myself.” He dipped the brush into the cup of water and twirled it around the red paint in the palette.

  “Slowly,” she quipped. “That’s a real kolinsky sable brush.”

  “Hmm,” he hummed, “I wouldn’t let anything else touch you, to be honest.” And with that he gathered her hair away from her chest, exposing her breasts, which had been hiding under her hair.

  She inhaled sharply at having his gaze on her, blatantly inspecting every inch of her curves, her nipples jutting out in hard points, eager for his mouth.

  He hesitated, speculative. “Always so attentive,” he murmured and his mouth closed on a nipple and sucked.

  “James.” She loved him when he was playful like this. Not serious and dark like last night, leaving her with flashes of weird images screwing with her dreams. The images were mostly of unknown women, all of whom she tagged as
Marlène, without even knowing what this doyenne of Stacey’s looked like.

  “What a beautiful blank canvas,” he speculated. He touched the tip of the brush to the middle of her chest and she bit down on a giggle as he swept a slow turn upward and then down over the inward valley of her breast.

  “It’s cold,” she murmured, but inside she was warming up as her skin reacted to the light, intimate touch of the brush. Her nipples pebbled even more as he took the upward turn over her other breast, caressing the sensitive skin and brushing just shy of her nipple.

  “Don’t look,” he whispered but she’d already closed her eyes as every nerve in her body focused on the sensation on her skin and his soft breathing as he manipulated the brush. It left her then, and he dipped it in the water, then more paint.

  A second later the tip was back, tracing line after line, closing in on her sternum. Following the movement, she could guess what he was painting, and for all that she wanted to smile, inside her everything pulled tight together so as not to shatter into pieces.

  “There,” he murmured, a satisfied laugh edging into his voice. “I suck at this.”

  She opened her eyes and stared down at her chest. He’d painted a red and pink heart over where her real one was, the curves going up the valley of her breasts, the tip of the heart closing under them in the middle.

  She chuckled. “It’s gorgeous.” The paint was already running, drops forming on the edges and gravitating down her navel like red tears.

  “Hmm,” he hummed and caught the drops with his fingertip, leading them to follow the path he was tracing to her sex. Just above her pubic hairline, he drew another little heart, and the paint by default pooled together.

  Under his tender ministrations, wetness had seeped between the lips of her sex.

  He laughed as he reached towards the bedside table. He grabbed for some tissues but paused as he glanced at his phone. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s late.” He dabbed the tissues at her chest, smudging his makeshift body art into a red blob.