I glance out the window. I’ve craved the sight of Henri’s face like a drowning man craves oxygen, and for far too long. “I just…I think I need to talk to Henri first.”
She waves my words away. “There’s time for that later. You’ve been asleep for days and you need your energy. Just take a quick bath while I go get him.”
She heads toward the door but turns back just as it opens. “I’m so, so happy you’re here,” she says. “I hope you plan to stay.”
That’s in your brother’s hands, not mine. I think of how uncertain his face looked when I ran to him and the doubt in my stomach begins to spread through my blood. “I hope it all works out.”
I take the world’s quickest bath and dress again before I hobble downstairs. I’m holding my breath, bracing for Henri, but when I reach the kitchen I find only Marie bustling around, having already placed an obscene amount of food on the table.
“Where’s Henri?” I ask.
“I’m leaving to get him in a second, but first you must eat.” She bites her lip. “And I thought perhaps we should talk.”
My stomach falls to the floor. I take a chair at the table, not sure I can continue to stand. It’s only been a few weeks. I thought he might be dating someone but he couldn’t already be serious with her, could he?
“Talk? About what?”
Her eyes are worried. “I think there are some things you need to understand. When you—”
The door opens, and her words stop short.
Henri stands at the threshold. Our eyes meet, and I start to rise but Marie’s hand presses to my shoulder. “You will stay where you are, and you will eat. And you,” she says, turning to Henri, “will sit politely at the table, and wait until she’s done.”
He looks more worried than pleased to see me here. Did I misunderstand the things he said? “Marie,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine, “get out.”
“Do you not care how well she recovers?” Marie asks. “Stop being selfish and take a seat.”
Henri sighs and slides his large frame onto the bench across from me. I watch, wondering how there ever could have been a time when I didn’t know I loved him. When I didn’t want that full, pouting mouth of his on mine, when I didn’t want his calloused hands—currently clasped tight above the table—on my skin. There is so much we need to say to each other, so much I need to know, and the fact that it can’t be said with Marie here makes me feel even more choked, even more desperate, than I already did.
“Tell us what happened,” Marie says breathlessly. “What brought you back?”
“What made her change her mind is none of your concern, Marie,” snaps Henri. “Don’t you have errands to run or children to teach?”
“All in good time. She deserves a chance to tell her side of the story,” she says, shooting Henri a look I can’t quite interpret. She turns to me. “Start at the beginning.”
I’m not sure what she means by my side of the story, as if there was a fight. Henri can’t be mad that I left—he never once asked me to stay. With one last glance at him, I begin to tell the story between bites of bread and cheese and sausage: how I woke, tied to a gurney, under the command of a doctor who was certain I was an addict. And the mysterious Cecelia and how she rescued me from all of it but would never tell me why. The whole time I’m talking, however, all I want to do is drink in the sight of him. I can barely look his way, however, without forgetting what I’ve just said.
"And you still have no idea who she was?" Marie asks.
“None. She said she was a friend of yours,” I reply, “but she isn’t even born yet, so that seems unlikely. And she told the hospital my name was Amelie Besson.”
Marie looks slightly alarmed. “Could she have been…one of our children? Mine, or Henri’s?”
I shake my head. “I think she would have said so. And she had a different last name and looked nothing like either of you. But anyway, she agreed to take care of me until I recovered. She seemed to know my arrival there would have gone really badly if she didn’t intervene.”
“But what happened when you landed that made things go so wrong?” she asks. “I hope you were at least able to get to your clothes before you fell asleep.”
I bite my lip. I hate not knowing what could have happened to me during those missing hours between my arrival in 1987 and waking in the hospital. “I’m not sure. I remember landing, but I wasn’t at the farm. I was in an alley somewhere. It was like I fell into the wall and that was it. The next thing I know I was in the hospital.”
Henri buries his head in his hands, looking even less happy than he did a moment before. “Dieu. Anything could have happened to you.”
“But it didn’t,” says Marie, grabbing my hand. “And look at her. She’s never looked healthier.”
Henri doesn’t look reassured. I came here for him, willing to give up everything, and he seems to wish I hadn’t.
“And Mark?” he asks, his shoulders rigid. “Did you see him?”
I’m not sure what’s happening between us, but the air is thick—with tension and desperation and unanswered questions—and there’s just too much there. Like colliding weather in the heat of summer, there will need to be a storm before we can have clear air.
“Yes, I saw him. He came into Paris before I left.”
Henri’s eyes darken until they’re nearly the color of night. “Meeting in Paris. I assume that means you called him.”
“Yes,” I snap. “That’s generally how people get in touch with each other.”
Marie’s glance darts between the two of us. “So back to Cecelia,” she says, her voice overly cheerful and loud. “She took care of you?”
I nod, still watching Henri. “She put me up in a suite in the Ritz Carlton.”
Marie sighs dreamily. “So you lived like a queen for three weeks. What did you eat? How did you get clothes?”
I swallow and look away from Henri. “I felt like The Little Princess. Anything I could possibly have wanted, I had. She even took me to Chanel and when I didn’t want to buy anything, she began sending designer clothes to the hotel, more clothes than I could have worn in a decade.”
Henri’s eyes have narrowed to slits. "It sounds as if you should have stayed."
If he’d reached into my chest and ripped my heart in two, it couldn’t hurt more than his words do now. “I’m beginning to wish I had,” I reply, rising with my plate in hand, torn between weeping or throwing something at his head.
He pushes away from the table, grabbing what I left behind and following me to the counter. “Marie,” he hisses as he slams the butter and bread down beside me. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“Please,” she begs, “you both need to—”
“Go,” he growls. “Now.”
The door shuts and neither of us blink an eye. He’s wounded me, but only rage feels safe right now. “Do you have any idea what I gave up to come back here?” I ask. “And what I risked making the trip?”
“Do you have any idea what it was like to be stuck here knowing you were with someone else?” he demands. “For all I knew you’d already married him.”
“Well I’m here now!” I cry. “And it’s like you don’t even care!”
He tugs at his hair with an angry laugh. “Don’t care? I’ve spent the past three nights watching you sleep. That’s how much I don’t care. And given how horrified you looked when I kissed you last week, and the way you vanished when it happened, I can’t imagine why you’d choose to return.”
“Last week?” I ask. “But…”
The day I jumped ahead. I thought it was fall, but could it have been an unusually pleasant August day instead? Yes, it absolutely could have been. No wonder he’s been so uncertain since I arrived. “That wasn’t last week for me,” I whisper. “It happened back when I was still staying here with you.”
“And you couldn’t have explained that? You left me feeling like I was another André!”
I throw out my hands. “I thought I
could prevent it happening if I left early!”
The light in his eyes dies and I realize the error I’ve made immediately. “I’m not saying I wanted to prevent it. I just didn’t know…”
His mouth becomes a flat line. “Didn’t know what?”
I take a deep breath. “I didn’t know I was in love with you. And I didn’t know if you’d want me to stay—”
I don’t finish the sentence. That’s how fast he closes the distance between us, pushing my back to the refrigerator as his mouth crashes on mine. A hard, possessing kiss with his hands tight on my hips. What I’ve longed for all these months.
“All I have ever wanted was for you to stay,” he says, his mouth moving to my jaw.
“You never said that. Not once.”
He huffs a pained laugh against my skin and pulls back, framing my face with his hands. “How could you not have known? Marie knew. The whole town knew. I haven’t been capable of wanting anything else since you arrived.”
His mouth moves over mine again, and I melt, arching against him, heedless of anything but this desperate want inside me. Unbound at last after a whole summer of deprivation and restraint, with his arm wrapping around my waist and rib cage, pulling me tighter and tighter, his lips moving over my jaw, my neck. His fingers slide from collarbone to the top of my dress and my breath comes in tiny pants, frantic to feel that first button pop free. But instead, he eases away, his breathing heavy, his forehead pressed to mine.
“I…” he swallows, wincing as if in pain. “I want so much from you right now, but you just arrived. I should…let you rest.”
I grab him by his shirt and pull him back to me. “I want a lot of things right now too. And none of them are rest.”
I see the war raging inside him, the heaviness of need, tempered by doubt.
“Henri,” I whisper against his lips. “I’m not fragile. Remember the guy who pinned me to the dirt over a chocolate bar? That’s the version of you I want right now.”
With a low growl, he lifts me then, wrapping my legs around his waist as he carries me to his room, kicking the door shut behind us. And then I’m in his soft bed and he’s beside me, rolling me to my back. He finds my mouth, his tongue stroking mine, creating a sharp, desperate pulse between my legs, an emptiness that demands a cure. His hands slide down to my ass, sinking in to pull me hard against him.
I wasn’t raised in a convent, but this is all new to me—the way his erection pressed to the juncture of my legs is enough to make my knees spread wide. The way the rasp of his breath and small groan of desire against my skin make my heart rate soar. I spent so many years proud of my self-restraint, proud I hadn’t given in when everyone I knew had, but if Mark had made me feel anything close to the way I do now, I’d have given in within minutes. Seconds. The way I have every intention of giving in to Henri right now.
His hand goes to the top button of my dress and then he stops, with an expression of pure tortured lust on his face. He swallows. “Is this okay?”
When I nod, he unbuttons it to the waist with frenzied hands and pushes it off my shoulders, revealing the lace bra I bought that day in Paris months ago. “Dieu,” he says, running his finger over my tight nipple, visible through the sheer lace. “You have no idea how the thought of doing this tortured me.” He lowers his mouth and his warm breath washes over the tight peak of one breast before his mouth lands on it, through the lace, softly clinging with his teeth as he pulls away. I arch, stifling a cry.
“I want to hear you,” he groans. “I want every single one of your sounds because I’ve been imagining them for months. Tell me what you want.”
“I have no idea,” I gasp. “Just more.”
His mouth descends to the other breast, repeating the action, while his hand is gliding along the soft skin of my inner thigh, lightly pressing against the outside of my panties. My breath hitches and then stops entirely as his fingers slide beneath the hem, gliding along my core.
"Merde," he groans, his eyes fluttering shut. “Ask me to stop. I’ve wanted this too much, and for too long. Ask me to stop or I won’t.”
I reach for his belt, tugging it free. “I don’t want you to stop,” I whisper, while I fumble with his buttons. “I don’t care about waiting. I don’t care about marriage. I just want this.”
His eyes blaze, but his mouth tips into an almost-smile as it descends. “I care about marriage,” he says beside my ear, his fingers still moving. “Just maybe not for the next hour.”
My hand slips into his pants. I can barely wrap my fingers around him, but when I attempt it his whole body stiffens.
“God,” he says hoarsely. “Yes.”
“Are you ready?” I ask.
“My readiness was never in question,” he says with a gasp as my hand glides over him. “But yours is. The first time can be…”
“I know and I don’t care,” I breathe, arching into his hand. “I’ll never be more ready than I am now.”
He kneels above me, between my spread knees, still almost completely dressed: shirt in place, pants hanging halfway down his hips, and pushes my skirt around my waist before tugging my panties down. It bears no resemblance to all my fantasies about what a first time would entail—a room lit by candlelight, me in a negligee, nestled in a sea of pillows—but that’s because I never realized before what it meant to truly want something. I don’t need a perfect setting or a pretty story—I can’t imagine being able to notice anything but him.
His eyes have gone hazy, feverish. “If you had any idea what you look like right now,” he says, the words trailing away as he takes in my spread legs, the way I’m bared to him with my dress half off. He flinches. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I reply, arching toward him. “Now.”
He pulls his cock free and leans over me, letting the wet tip glide, press to my entrance and then, slowly, he begins to move, entering me in tiny pulses, forcing me to stretch wide enough to accommodate him.
“You’re alright?” he asks, his eyes unfocused. The heavy thickness of him feels like too much, like something that could break me. But I can see the effort it takes for him to restrain himself, teeth sinking into his lower lip, breath coming fast.
“Don’t go slowly,” I tell him. “Just do it.”
He hesitates for only a second and then gives into it, the urge to thrust, to fill, to push until he can’t go any farther. He falls forward with a small cry, bracing himself above me, and by the time he’s opened his eyes to check on me that initial shock of pain is leaving and in its wake is another feeling—full, stretched. It still hurts, but there’s pleasure there too, some deeper craving that now thrums inside me, wanting.
“More,” I demand, and then his mouth is on my neck, on my breasts, as he withdraws and pushes back in, once, twice, three times. And suddenly all the pleasure, all the craving—it seems to center itself, a circle of flame he hits with every thrust.
Ohhhh. It’s so much more than I realized it could be.
“I don’t ever want this to stop,” I gasp.
His eyes are squeezed shut as if he’s in pain. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he says between gritted teeth. He stops moving, but his fingers go to my clitoris and begin to circle there. With him fully inside me, nothing has felt better in my entire life. I tighten around him. “Please,” I beg. “Move.”
He thrusts once, hard, and the sweet sharpness of it has me gasping, digging my fingers into his back. His face is desperate, tight with restraint, groaning low in his chest as I clamp down on him.
“Again,” I demand, my legs wrapping around his back for leverage, meeting his thrusts, demanding they come harder and swifter until that ache inside me tightens, tightens and finally explodes.
I cry out, arching off the bed pulling him against me, greedy and desperate, and his movements grow frenzied—swift, stabbing thrusts that prolong my orgasm, making me feel like I’m suspended in mid-air for seconds, a full minute, before he gives a single hoarse cry and pulls out,
gripping himself, spilling across my stomach and chest.
He falls against me, his mouth pressed to my neck. “I’ve wanted that for so long,” he groans against my skin. “From that first day in the barn.”
I laugh, pulling him closer. “When you were holding me at gunpoint?”
“Yes, even then. And nothing from my fervent imagination could match the reality of it.” He presses small, sweet kisses to my brows, my cheekbones, and finally my lips. “You’re…okay? It didn’t hurt too much?”
I pull his lips back to mine. “It was a lot better than okay. They probably heard me clear to the other end of town. Although we shouldn’t make a habit of doing it without protection,” I say. “It doesn’t matter today because my cycle just ended, but it will matter a lot going forward.”
“Protection?” He looks at me blankly for a moment. And then he sighs, realizing what I’m saying. "Contraceptives are illegal—selling them here means six months in jail, so even on the black market they’re hard to come by. Our version of protection is what I just did. That and watching the calendar.”
My God. If a man back home were to suggest pulling out and the calendar method as ongoing forms of contraception, any female would laugh in his face. “Maybe we shouldn’t—” I begin, just as his lips press to my neck, and I forget my point.
His fingers slide over one breast, which tightens in response. “I love that,” he says with a soft groan, rolling over me to place his mouth at the tip. “This about killed me that day in the field when we fought over the chocolate.”
“If I recall correctly, you walked away like it was no big deal.”
He laughs. “I walked away like it was no big deal so I could…take care of an issue you created.”
A small moan escapes my lips at the thought of him taking care of an issue. “I want to watch you do that.” He leans down, fully hard again, sliding his hands behind my neck as he begins to kiss me.
My legs spread and he pushes inside me once more. “It might be a while,” he says, biting his lip, “before I’m willing to do anything but this.”
Across Time: Across Time Book 1 Page 23