“Just be careful, that’s all. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, and I can hear her grunt, as if she’s getting out of bed. “You know, after what happened to me the other night, you don’t have to tell me twice. I guess all the sex distracted me from everything ugly and cruel out there in the world.”
The very obvious thing is that the same goes for me.
But now, after seeing Pascal, I’m hyperaware of everything. My meeting goes smoothly enough, but as soon as it’s done, I race back to the hotel, hoping that Sadie listened to my instructions, hoping that I’m worrying for no reason.
I march right up to the front-desk girl from earlier. “Where is he? Is he gone? Pascal Dumont.”
I know you know who he is.
She gives me a pleading look. “Yes, he got in a limo shortly after you left. Mr. Dumont, I am so sorry, I didn’t know—”
I hold up my hand to silence her, grateful that someone else will be firing her for me. This is the kind of dirty work I try to avoid. “It doesn’t matter. As long as he’s gone.”
“He’s gone,” she says quickly. “Everything’s fine.”
But I’m not sure that’s true.
You can never be too careful with Pascal.
I’m starting to think you can never be too careful with anyone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SADIE
“Mind if I join you?”
I twirl around in the shower to see Olivier outside the steamed-up glass of the shower. Even though his image is hazy, he’s naked and completely breathtaking.
He opens the door and grins at me, his eyes raking over my body.
I can’t help but smile, even though I automatically move to cover up my breasts. “Why is it that every time I’m in the shower, you end up coming in here?”
“I guess I just like to see you get clean after I get you very dirty.”
Very dirty, indeed. This morning we’ve done nothing but have sex in pretty much every position imaginable, in every place possible. I never thought I would turn into one of those sexually adventurous girls, but there’s something about Olivier that makes me put all my trust in him. Probably because the man makes me see freaking stars while I’m having an orgasm. I know whatever he wants to do to me is going to be worth it.
“Here, turn around,” he says, stepping inside and grabbing a loofah and body wash.
“Think I’m not clean enough?”
“Actually, I like you a little bit dirty,” he says, rubbing the soapy sponge down my back. I was pretty much done in the shower, but there’s no way I’m heading out now.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do back at home,” I tell him, even though the word home puts a sour taste in my mouth. “I won’t have anyone to give me a proper scrub. You’ve spoiled me.”
The loofah stops midway down my back, and a thick tension fills the steamy air.
“So don’t go,” he says, his voice soft.
“I wish,” I tell him, glancing at him over my shoulder. His eyes are on me, intense.
“I’m serious,” he says. “Don’t go.”
I slowly turn around to face him. “I have to go.”
He frowns at me, his hair already damp from the steam and sticking to his forehead. “Why?”
“You know why. I have school. I have my mother. I have a very empty bank account.”
“You know I’ll take care of you.”
“Olivier, we barely know each other.”
But even though it’s the truth, he flinches slightly, almost as if I’d slapped him.
He swallows, licking his lips as he studies the shower walls. “Maybe we don’t, but it feels like we do. I know you feel it too.”
He’s right. But it doesn’t change the reality.
He continues, eyes back on my face, curious and hopeful and all the things I need from him. “Come with me to Paris.”
It’s like a net full of butterflies has been released inside me, his words setting them free.
“What?” I whisper, feeling every part of my body dance with promises.
He takes one of my hands and raises it to his lips, kissing my fingers. “I want you to come back to Paris with me. Stay with me. If you still need to go back in three weeks, then I’ll make sure you get back home. But until then, I don’t want to be apart from you. I don’t want this to be our goodbye.”
I give him a wan smile. I’m thrilled that he wants to be with me, that he wants me enough to invite me to stay with him in Paris, luxuriating in all the romantic words and gestures, yet I’m deeply saddened. Because I know that I have to use my head to see myself through this time. That my heart and body have to take the back seat if I want to do the right thing.
I slowly shake my head, and it’s like the net comes back, taking all those butterflies away. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could. But I can’t run away from my responsibilities, my problems. These last few days here have been some of the best of my entire life, if not the best, but I can’t keep on pretending to be someone else.”
“You don’t have to. You just be Sadie. I’ll be Olivier. And we’ll be together.”
“Until I have to leave again.”
He closes his eyes, nostrils flaring as he takes a deep breath. “Until then.” Then he opens them and nods. “At least I tried. Couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t asked. But I respect your wishes, Sadie. I’ll always respect you.”
Little does he know that my actual wish would be for my brain and logic to take a hike.
He leans in and kisses me, softly at first; then his arms go behind my back, and he rubs the still-soapy loofah up and down, making me shiver. I ignore the pang in my stomach, as I’m sure he’s ignoring his, and we fall into that easy, heady rhythm our bodies know so well.
All the regret and disappointment wash down my body, swirling into the drain until it disappears.
For now.
It’s been two days since Olivier asked me to come to Paris with him.
Two days since I turned him down.
Two days of spending almost every hour in each other’s arms, within each other’s touch. Other than the time he had to jet off to Saint-Tropez for a meeting, we haven’t left each other’s side.
It’s like we’ve fused in some way I never thought possible.
That molecular level of connection that I was talking about before?
Yeah, well that was before we even slept together.
Now that we’ve been having sex constantly, it’s morphed into something else entirely. A symbiote? Who the fuck knows. All I know is that I have to leave him today, and every single part of my body, heart, and soul is screaming at me.
Telling me I’ve made the wrong decision—I should have agreed to stay.
Telling me that I’m harming myself if I go.
Telling me that my body actually belongs to his, like two magnets kept apart in separate drawers, inching up and up and up, trying to reach each other.
It’s crazy.
I know.
It hurts my brain to know I even feel this way, because it goes against every logical cell in my body.
This is not something that Sadie Reynolds feels.
And this is definitely not the way that the sane Sadie Reynolds behaves.
I’m the girl who lost her virginity to her best guy friend to get it over with.
I’m the girl who went out with Tom because he seemed like the most boring guy on the planet and, therefore, the least likely to break my heart or give me any surprises.
And I’m the girl who tossed all that hard-earned cynicism aside in order to have a fling with the hot, rich French guy who saved her life.
But this has turned into more than a one-night stand, and it has the chance to turn into something even more than that. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t have any delusions that if I went with him to Paris we would turn into something more than a vacation romance. He has his business and his life there; I have my life in Seattle: schoo
l, my mother, my dwindling bank account.
It’s just . . . I have a chance to keep this going. I have a chance to indulge myself in this man and everything he’s offering me. This doesn’t have to be goodbye.
And yet it will have to be goodbye at some point, so it might as well be now.
“Here you are,” Olivier says from behind me.
I’m standing at the railing on the deck and staring at the sea, the salty breeze tangling my air and invigorating my senses, making me second-guess everything.
I slowly turn to look at him. “You have a way of sneaking inside,” I tell him.
He walks through the door, his skin looking especially bronzed against the white curtains billowing behind him. With his reflective aviator sunglasses on—the Dumont brand, no doubt—he looks especially movie star-ish.
“Are you all packed?”
I nod and slowly walk toward him. I have one hell of a limp now, but at least I can put pressure on my foot. “It takes about two minutes to cram all my stuff in my backpack. At least it’s all freshly laundered now.”
He winces as he watches me walk and quickly rushes over, grabbing me. “Are you sure you don’t want to take your crutches?”
“Have you ever tried to wrangle crutches on a train? I haven’t. But it looks terribly awkward. I’ll be fine.”
His hand trails across my face. “But I won’t be. I’ll be unable to stop worrying about you. I’ll be unable to stop thinking about you.”
I manage a small smile, trying to mask this lump of wet sadness that’s crawling up my throat. His fingers coast along my jaw, holding my chin with a warm grip. I close my eyes. “I won’t be able to stop thinking about you either,” I tell him.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he says gruffly, and then he places a soft kiss on my lips.
I’m almost powerless against him—the feel of his grip against my skin, his lips and tongue moving softly against mine. He knows what he’s doing to me; he doesn’t have to beg or ask. He can persuade me just with his body and the way it calls to mine. Intimately, honestly, hungrily.
I pull away, breathless, my face all flushed and my knees weak, and it has nothing to do with my ankle. “I wish things were different.”
He sighs and runs his hand over his face before pulling at the back of his neck. “I do too. But we’ve spent nearly one week together here. Why go to Spain for another two? What’s there for you? Why are you running from me?”
“I’m not running from you,” I say, sounding more defensive than I mean to. I turn away and sit down on the lounge chair, the spotless fabric hot from the sun. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“I would go with you to Spain if I could, but I’m needed in Paris. Not just with the hotels—I could find someone to do my job for a while, but it’s the autumn season. My family needs me. And I need you.”
Fuck. I know that for all the romantic words that usually spill out of Olivier’s mouth, I shouldn’t be affected by this plea, but I am. I can feel the passion in it, the anguish that I myself am pretending not to feel, the same feelings I’ve been avoiding for the last few days.
You’re being stubborn. A stupid, stubborn girl, I think.
And I’m probably right.
I glance up at him, wincing at the glare of the sun. In the reflection of his sunglasses, I look so small and tiny. I look like a liar. I look like someone who is about to run away. “The sooner I get on that train, the sooner I can go back to being a backpacker. That’s who I really am. I’m poor. I’m a struggling student. I should be sleeping in dorm rooms again, and washing my underwear in the sink, and raiding happy-hour specials and tapas in order to eat. I should be just scraping by, because that’s pretty much what my life is about. And I really should see Spain too. Then, after that, I fly home and return to my life. It’s what I need to do. What I have to do.”
He nods slowly, chewing on his lip. I wish I could see his eyes underneath the glasses. “I understand that, Sadie. I really do. As I said before, I respect your wishes, even if I wish they were different.”
I expect him to say something else, to offer some other way of trying to convince me, but he doesn’t.
It’s like he’s giving up.
I have to admit, it kind of sucks.
It means this really is the end.
Perhaps all this time I was waiting for something to convince me, when really I have every reason to be convinced already.
Olivier sits down beside me, resting his elbows on his thighs. “What time does your train leave again?”
He knows. We’ve been over this a few times, but I don’t mind him asking.
“In an hour and a half.”
He nods and pushes his sunglasses up over his head as he squints at me.
“That’s plenty of time to make you come,” he says smoothly. “More than once.”
I slowly shake my head at him. We’ve already fucked a few times this morning—once in the bed, once in the shower—so I certainly wasn’t expecting this proposition. But I’m not surprised. And I’m certainly not disappointed.
“You’re always promising me the moon,” I say, feeling my body flush at his words.
“I don’t promise the moon, mon lapin,” he says, leaning in. “I just promise that you’ll come so hard you’ll end up forgetting your own name.”
“I certainly won’t be forgetting your name.”
He breaks into the cockiest grin. “Never.” He then nods at me. “You better hurry and get naked.”
I give him a look. “Me?”
“It’s easier to make you come that way. But I do like a challenge.”
“You’re insatiable,” I tease him, and, God, how I wouldn’t have him any other way.
He sucks in his lower lip for a moment and then kisses me, his hands disappearing into my hair, pushing me back until I’m falling into the lounge chair.
Then he’s grabbing me by the shoulders and twisting me around so that he’s lying on his back, his hands deftly undoing his belt and fly. “Ride me,” he whispers, his voice already thick with lust.
I blink at him for a moment, and in the back of my head I know this means my own pants have to come off, and that I have a train to catch, but the moment I see him bring his full, thick cock out of his pants, all those thoughts are deemed useless.
Though it’s not very graceful, I quickly get my own pants and underwear off until I’m naked from the waist down, and he’s staring at me with so much desire he’s practically salivating.
Okay, well, that definitely helps put me in the mood too—to be looked at like that, to be wanted like that.
He holds his cock upright like a pike. It’s so rigid and stiff and large, absolutely formidable. But I know I can take it. I know what it does to me.
I straddle him carefully, patiently waiting to position myself over him until he’s got it wrapped in a condom. Once he does, I use the back of the chair for leverage and slowly, very slowly, lower myself down on top of his cock.
“Sadie,” he moans and then says something else in French, his words coming out in grunts and groans as his eyes close and his head goes back.
I can barely breathe, let alone talk. With him holding his cock so hard, each push down feels like I’m losing all space in my lungs, and I’m being filled with every aching, hot inch of him. It’s nearly painful, but it’s a sweet pain, the kind that you could get addicted to.
Finally, I’m exhaling, and he’s all the way in to the hilt, and I’m hit with the feeling that I’ll be hollow and empty without him. It’s almost silly to think that when you’re in the middle of having sex, but it’s true. This is more than sex now; this transcends that. I don’t exactly know what it is, but right now . . . it’s us.
“Ride me,” he groans, grabbing my hips and moving me up and down. “S’il vous plaît,” he says.
“Talk some dirty French to me,” I tell him, grinding out the words as he starts moving me faster and faster.
And so h
e does. He lets out a string of breathless expletives that sound effortless and dirty all at once. I have no idea what he’s saying, of course, but the intention is all there, and he’s letting his cock do all the communicating.
I keep riding him like this: me in charge of the depth with each roll of my hips, him in charge of the speed as he pumps himself up into me. It feels so good, too good, especially when his thumb rubs down my clit and my back arches and I’m staring up at the sun and the sky and it’s blinding and beautiful.
Everything about us is blinding and beautiful.
“I need to come,” he says hoarsely, and I look down to see him staring up at me with the most intense and passionate gaze that I’ve ever seen from him, the kind of look that holds your own eyes hostage and promises to never let go.
I don’t want him to let go.
And I don’t want to let go.
Not now, not ever.
But then he’s about to go over the edge, and he always makes sure I’m coming along for the ride. I don’t even have a choice in the matter. He strokes me expertly, his thrusts deepening, and I’m opening up wider and wider until I’m free-falling down, down, down.
The orgasm takes us both at once. It slithers up my spine and then explodes in a shower of fireworks and electricity, and I’m crying out his name, trying my best to keep my hips pumping even though my body doesn’t know what direction it’s heading in.
Neither does my mind.
Neither does my heart.
I’m ripped apart at the seams by this man, and after this, I’m not sure he’ll be able to put me back together again, because he’s not going to be there.
“Sadie, Sadie,” he moans as the thrusting slows, his hands slick on my hips, “my beautiful girl.”
But I barely hear him. I’m still somewhere in the universe, twirling around in strange galaxies, not wanting this feeling—the fact that he’s inside me—to ever stop.
It does, though.
I collapse against him and roll over, just as he pulls out and makes room on the lounger beside me, holding me in his arms for a few seconds, his heart beating through his chest, as if wanting to join mine.
When I return to planet Earth and the blue sky above me stops spinning, I’m hit with a rush of emotions so intense, I have to pinch my eyes shut.
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