When she loved him, she had called him up and told him.
When she needed him to do something, she’d picked up her phone and asked him.
When something was wrong, she’d sent him a very subtle text that hinted about it, but nothing had ever changed.
And now that she was righteously enraged because he had stolen money from a disabled kid, her disabled nephew whom she loved and thought he seemed to love her back and was willing to go with it, she was going to damn well yell at Francis.
The third time her cell phone rang, she realized what she was doing. She didn’t want to talk to Francis. Why was she calling him?
Francis answered, “Dree? Where the hell are you?”
Old-Dree probably would’ve hung up on him because she wouldn’t have wanted to express how upset she was. It wasn’t proper. It might make him angry and hurt their relationship.
New-Dree was going to damn well tell him. “Francis, you belly-slithering, double-dealing, rat snake of a human being, did you steal money from Victor’s therapy account?”
Francis screamed at her, “I needed that money. Where were you hiding it?”
“It’s new money. I didn’t have anything hidden from you. I never hid anything from you. And then you went and stole it all, you thieving, conniving, lily-livered jackass!”
“Do you have any more money? Where are you hiding it?”
“None of your business! We are officially broken up, and I never want to see you again.” Just in case he thought there was any chance she would go back to him after he’d swindled her out of everything she owned, but she needed to say it out loud for her peace of mind.
“I don’t care what you think about our relationship! If you have any money, I need you to give it to me right now.”
“I would never give you another red cent, you turnip-eating low-life!” Dree had no idea where that particular insult had come from.
“I need six hundred thousand dollars, and I need it right now.”
“Why the hell do you need more money, Francis? You stole everything I own, and you’re selling drugs, aren’t you? Peaceful Transitions isn’t a real hospice. It’s just a front so you can get narcotics from Good Sam and sell them. You’re a drug dealer, and you stole from the patients and me at Good Sam.”
“It’s none of your business what I was doing or why I need the money, but I fucking do. I need it right now. Are you still in Paris?” he growled.
“Where I am is none of your business. I never want to see you again.”
“If you’re hiding any money from me, you’d better hide, bitch. If I ever see you again, I’ll sell your kidneys on the black market. I’ll put you in a dark room and pimp you out for twenty bucks for an ass fuck.”
She spat, “You’d better hope you never see me again, Francis Michael Senft. I will give you a horse-whipping you’ll never forget. They make frying pans out of cast iron for exactly this situation, and you’ve gotta sleep sometime.”
“I need six hundred thousand dollars, and you’d better fucking give it to me or else I will hunt you down and sell your skin for medical research.”
“Drop dead.”
Dree punched the red circle on her phone screen, ending the call.
Her hands were shaking because she wanted to wrap them around Francis’s throat and slam his head into the ground. The terrifying things he had said kept sticking in her mind.
She took a few deep yoga breaths to calm herself down, then a few more.
She would not burst into tears. She would not. She hated him, and he deserved it, and her broken heart was the least of her damn worries right now.
Francis couldn’t find her. She was on a whole ‘nother continent. By virtue of the fact that his phone number had worked, he was still in the States somewhere. And from what the bank lady had said, Francis must still be at his house because he’d logged into her computer from his Wi-Fi’s IP location.
She was safe there in Paris with Augustine.
Her breathing came easier. Air reached farther into her body with each breath, and her shoulders descended from up around her ears.
But if she ever saw Francis Senft again, she was going to mete out some country justice.
Augustine walked out of the bedroom shirtless and with a towel slung low around his hips. One bead of water that had been resting in his collarbone slid between his heavy pectorals and trailed down the line that separated his abs.
Dree thanked God for distracting her so that she would not continue to commit the sin of wrath, although she was currently committing the sin of lust and thoroughly enjoying that.
She needed to concentrate on the lust if she was going to retain her composure. Losing it again would just add embarrassment to everything else that was wrong in her life.
Augustine raised one eyebrow at her. “Something wrong?”
She didn’t want to tell him that she been so stupid as to allow Francis to steal the money that Augustine had been so kind to advance her. “Nope. I set up that new bank account like you asked me to.”
“Excellent.”
Dree handed him the paper with the banking numbers on it, and he typed a bunch of numbers into his phone. She saw him move his finger around to the back of his phone at one point and press it to the fingerprint sensor.
She deliberately looked elsewhere, lest she seem greedy or ill-mannered.
Augustine said, “All done.”
Her next breath felt like it had oxygen in it, and her arms and legs relaxed. She could get money to Mandi, and she would be all right, someday. “So, it’s all transferred?”
“Again, my bank will probably take a bit to transfer the money over, but it’s at least a Tuesday afternoon rather than a Sunday evening this time. It should be there in a matter of hours.”
Dree sighed, her relief exhaling from her body. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“Dree, chérie, don’t think I’m too kind. This is nothing for me.”
How rich did someone have to be to think that a six-figure amount of money was nothing? “Okay, but it’s everything to me.”
“Are you going to leave me now that you have the money?” He was grinning as he said it.
“Yep!” Dree sprang up from the couch and made a beeline for the door, running with a silly, rolling gait to make it obvious she was kidding around. Her shabby old phone was still lying on the gilded coffee table.
Augustine laughed and chased her, catching her around the waist and flinging her over his shoulder in a fireman carry. “Not so fast. You’re mine for another forty-eight hours to debauch in any way I want and slake my lust upon you.”
She paddled his rock-hard bottom with her hands as he carried her into the bedroom. “Where do you even learn stuff like ‘slake my lust?’ Y’all Monagasquayans must be reading different books than we do.”
Augustine cracked up at that one. “Yes, Monagasquayan literature is a highly evolved art form, as it is written in the Monagasquayanese language. Besides, I ordered two more Merveilleux de Fred for after supper. I got the toffee ones this time.”
From this vantage point with her head hanging down his back, tattoo ink stained Augustine’s skin to where his fluffy white towel encircled his waist and continued below, but she was upside-down and too close to make out what it was. There were long lines and intricate shading, though.
Instead of patting his butt, Dree reached down and squeezed the round, rigid muscles of his ass. “Geez, Augustine. Why didn’t you lead with the dessert? You can do anything you want to my body if those nifty mousse-filled meringues are part of the deal.”
Dree was flipped, flew through the air, and landed on the soft bed, her arms outstretched. “Are you going to do it right this time, Sir? Or are you going to do something dirty and leave me all frustrated again?”
Augustine crawled onto the bed, a wicked smile on his face. “In all the fracas this afternoon, I’d almost forgotten that I was edging you and forcing you to wait for you
r next orgasm. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Forget I said anything! Please, for the love of God, I think I’m going to die.”
Augustine stripped her clothes off her and tongued and sucked her breasts until she thought she was going to come from that alone, but once again, he stopped. She was practically crying when he flipped her over and his hands palmed the soft flesh of her ass, his thumbs dipping and stroking her soft core and teasing her.
Dree pushed herself up on her knees, turned, and grabbed his shoulders, trying to wrestle him onto his back on the bed.
Augustine laughed at her, his hand resting on his muscled stomach and arching his back because he was laughing so dang hard.
She told him, “No, not this time, Mr. I’m-Gonna-Tease-You. I know you can do it right. You keep stopping on purpose, and my head is going to explode.”
With one arm, he swept her off him and flipped her over again on her stomach. “Your head isn’t going to explode, and nothing else will either.”
“Seriously? Come on, I’m not doing this to you.”
“No, I’m doing this to you.”
His towel landed on the bed beside her face.
Oh God, he was naked back there.
She sneaked a peek over her shoulder at the perfect form of male anatomy, muscles braided upon muscles, his skin almost translucent the way it laid over his thick sinews and striations. He was facing her so she couldn’t see that tattooed backpiece, drat. She still wanted to know what it was.
He looked like the statues of Greek gods they had seen in the Louvre just a few hours before, except he was not formed out of white marble but varying shades of gold and brown. His core and the muscles of his abs were a medium gold, but his forearms and lower legs looked like they had been dipped in mahogany, they were so tan. The vibrant colors of the tattoo on his forearm blended with his dark skin.
Considering the calluses on his hands she’d noticed earlier, he looked like he’d worked outside, in the sunlight, for his hands and arms to be so deeply tanned by the sun and roughened by work.
Which was weird for a guy who was as rich as he seemed to be.
Farmer tan lines and thick calluses were weird on a rich guy, no matter what he’d said.
Was this a red flag she should be noticing, like she hadn’t noticed with Francis?
But Augustine moved his arm, and his interconnected biceps, triceps, and the deltoid muscles on his shoulders flexed under his skin. His rounded, heavy muscles shifted. At the place where his oblique muscles running down his sides came to a vee, his cock jutted straight out from his body, a little higher than horizontal, and he had a slight curve up.
It was massive, too. No wonder he’d thought he had to pay extra for “the monster.”
Augustine crawled onto the bed and shoved her face into the mattress. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “You’re not desperate enough yet.”
“Yeah, you aren’t desperate at all. You’ve been getting anything you want,” she muttered, her voice muffled by the comforter up around her nose, but she could breathe fine.
The hard rod of his cock rested between her ass cheeks.
Was he going to do the butt stuff already? She thought there were things you had to do first.
He whispered near her ear, “I loved watching you run through the Louvre this morning. I wanted to throw you face-down on any of the exhibits and fuck you till you screamed. Every time this glorious ass of yours jiggled when you ran, it was the sexiest, most feminine thing, and I wanted to fuck it.”
Dree’s voice sounded hoarse in her throat, but she said anyway, “Yes, fuck me ‘til I scream. Please, for the love of God, don’t stop this time.”
His erection began to move between her ass cheeks, rubbing from that place where she was afraid he might stick it in and yet wanted him to because at this point she wanted anything, but he slid up the crease between her cheeks to her tailbone.
She groaned. He wasn’t doing it. “Please. Please do it. Please take me.”
He whispered, “You forgot to call me Sir.”
Dree punched the bed with her fists. Dammit, she wanted to remember to call him that. This waiting and teasing was going to drive her out of her mind.
Augustine rubbed his cock through the cleft of her ass, whispering to her about how much he liked the softness of her flesh and silkiness of her skin, and that if she forgot to call him Sir again, he was going to fuck her boobs next because he simply adored them.
He was holding himself up on his arms, and the one right in front of her nose had the tattoo on it. There were three shields around a triangle. The one pointing down to his hand and the white sheet had a red and white diamond checkerboard pattern. The other two had a white lion on an orange background and three yellow crowns on blue.
The hardness of his cock rubbing her ass and back was driving her crazy, and she tried to turn over to grab him and force him down to the bed so she could have him, but he was so much stronger than she was. He held her arms down with his hands while he rubbed himself off on her, groaning and leaning his forehead against the back of her head as warmth spurted on her back.
When he let her up, Dree tried to punch him, but Augustine deflected her blow with one quick push of his forearm while laughing. “No getting mad, or you’ll never get it.”
“Guys aren’t supposed to play hard to get, Auggie!”
“Oh, I’m getting plenty.”
She tried to punch him again, but Augustine blocked it and laughed at her.
It was his laughing that hurt the most.
Before they ate dinner, Augustine washed Dree in the shower, tweaking her nipples and clit with his fingertips while he smoothed soap over her body.
She kept trying to peek at the tattoo on his back, but he crowded her against the wall and held her wrists pinned above her head with one hand, caressing and tormenting her with his other.
She thought he was going to take her there in the shower, pressed up against the cold tile with the hot water streaming over her back, but he didn’t.
Dammit.
Chapter Sixteen
Choices
Maxence
Maxence had been so enthralled with Dree’s delight in the museum and then distracted by both the kidnapping attempt and her luscious ass that he hadn’t looked at his phone, despite the dozen or more notifications that had caused the cursed thing to vibrate against his thigh all day.
After he dressed and ordered supper from the hotel’s restaurant, he considered that he might need to deal with his phone.
Most of the texts were replies from his earlier prods for information.
The first was from Julien Bodilsen, Max’s contact with Flicka’s brother’s security force: Plan proceeding. Operational security.
Max rolled his eyes. He’d just wanted to know if his ex-girlfriend Flicka von Hannover was all right, and what Wulfram’s plan was to get her and the child she’d had with her out of Switzerland.
Operational security. What an ass.
From Marie-Therese Grimaldi, one of his cousins, the one who had the contact with Flicka: Don’t know what you’re hearing, but everything is fine here at home. Ppl are talking about the Council, but everyone thinks it’ll be after New Year’s or even Feb or March. No rush. re: Flicka vH. Anais says FvH won’t leave & *married her bodyguard,* who is a *Mirabaud.* Anais said FvH was *very happy* at wedding in Gibraltar, happiest A had ever seen FvH. WTF is going on?
And there was a picture.
Flicka was smiling a glorious real smile, not the practiced smile she flashed at the paparazzi. Max had seen her genuine smile dozens of times, but this time, she was looking at the blond, gray-eyed man, the one who had been standing behind her so many of those times she’d smiled at Maxence.
Her smile was joyous. She was exultant and absolutely radiant, as a bride wearing an Elie Saab Couture white dress and flowers in her hair should be on her wedding day. Flicka had worn Elie Saab Couture when she’d married Pierre, too, and had
been just as stunningly beautiful, but her smile had been her professional one, not like this.
Maxence did not know what was happening, but a part of his chest became hollow.
If this was true, if Flicka was legally divorced and had married someone else, there were extensive ramifications.
Maxence stared out the window over the darkening streets of Paris, watching the Christmas lights ignite one by one.
It was almost six o’clock, and the sun was fading into the horizon.
Maxence should be preparing himself for Vespers.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
He hadn’t performed his praxis or even prayed for days, as usually happened when he became this other Maxence, the one he’d been before, the one who had no discipline or conscience.
He was falling, he was fallen, he was falling apart.
World without end.
He didn’t know what was going on with Flicka.
His world was ending.
The other texts were even more confusing.
From another cousin, Alexandre: Home for tour break before Winter Ball. There is some shit going down here. P insisting everything is fine, but it’s not. Fwding info about refusing inheritance. You’re going to need it.
Maxence would not need it.
He had no illusions. His brother Pierre would not refuse his inheritance. Pierre wanted it all, as he’d told or threatened Max with many times during their lives. Max, the spare heir, would never inherit the bulk of their family’s money and power.
Pierre had reminded Max of that every chance he’d gotten.
Unless Flicka had divorced Pierre.
And unless the Council cared that she had divorced him, and that was a longshot.
The last text on Max’s phone was from Father Moses: We should talk.
Maxence held in a sigh.
Yes, he should talk to Father Moses, and soon. Max wasn’t even sure what he was doing in Paris with Dree, but he couldn’t stop doing it. He’d always thought of these sojourns from his true life as going rogue for a few days, but this time, going back seemed impossible. He was already hungering for her again.
Rogue Page 19