He felt light-headed. He had to duck his head and start pressing kisses to her skin almost the way someone might lower his head and breathe through a paper bag. “Can you tell me?” he whispered, hiding his boy’s shamed, longing face between her breasts. “Could you give me an idea?”
She sank her fingers into his thick, overlong hair as if it was the most beautiful texture in the world. “Your hair is like
silk,
” she said, and he shivered as she petted it. “It’s so black and it’s so beautiful, and I love the silk here.” Her fingers traced the edge of where his head pressed against her breast. “And the prickles here.” Around the other side, the edge of his jaw against her tender skin. “The two of them together drive me
insane.
”
Oh, God. He twisted his head and bit suddenly into the side of her breast, a little too feral, a little too hard, the only thing he could do with the fierce arousal that swept through him. She shuddered and pressed her body up against him.
“And here.” Her hands dragged down his shoulders and back. “Your back is
so smooth.
And just under that smoothness, all those muscles. You’re so strong. I bet you’ve had more women dig their hands into those muscles than you can even count.”
That was true. He shook his head against her breasts, shaking the memories away. He had worried about bringing her here, but all those sexual encounters didn’t lurk nearly as close to ruining this moment as he had thought. She dominated his focus, pushing his sexual past so far away he could barely recall it. “I can count you,” he whispered against the soft underside of her breast and licked up it to the nipple.
Her fingernails flexed into his skin. He liked that, that he could make her hurt him just a little, like a caress. He suckled harder, and her fingernails dug harder, and he laughed a little, triumphant and wild, against her skin.
“You’re so
strong,
” she said enviously. “I love how strong you are. But so gentle. You probably take care of kittens.”
Not really, no. Vulnerability in others scared him. He matched himself against the strongest people he could find and kept as far away as possible from the others. His employees didn’t count, right? It wasn’t his fault they kept tucking themselves up under his wing. He might not care for kittens, but he didn’t go kicking them into oncoming traffic, either.
Jaime’s strange mix of strength and vulnerability terrified him, even while it drew him inexorably. He did want to take care of her, but she didn’t remind him of a kitten in the least. She was a very strong person, and yet she had opened her shields and let him in where he could do untold damage. Wouldn’t that be amazing, if he could deserve that estimation of his worth?
“You’re so disciplined and determined, you don’t let
anything
stop you.”
Yes, it didn’t bear thinking, the life he would have had if he let things stop him. He worked his way downward, teasing with rough jaw and teeth and mouth and tongue across her belly. All that time shaving himself raw, and she
liked
the prickles.
“You’re so—I bet every woman you meet craves you.”
He lifted his head enough to give her a crinkled, funny look. “It might be that you idealize me
un tout petit peu.
”
Not that he wanted her to realize how much, but he had some kind of conscience. After all, she had suffered a recent blow to the head. Every woman he met craved him,
putain.
He did tend to attract a lot of women who craved a good, hard fu—but anyway. He would bet it was not the kind of craving she was talking about.
“No, I don’t.” She sounded both surprised and slightly offended. “I don’t idealize you at all.”
Well, no one could say he hadn’t tried. He didn’t have to hammer the point in. He returned to his path down over her belly.
“And I love—Dominique, what are you doing?” She wrapped her hands in his hair again, trying to drag him back up. “Don’t—”
“Shhh. Shhh.
I
love to see you blush. God, your freckles go everywhere,” he said giddily, nipping across her hip, the curve of bone and the way her body grew softer, so much more vulnerable, between the frame of those bones.
He grabbed a fistful of the comforter and ripped it entirely off them, shoving it onto the floor, so that the light from his window spilled over her, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her body against his white sheet, the fairy dust of freckles that was such a faint pale gold there where her skin rarely saw the sun, but which gilded her everywhere. She was growing less thin, he thought with triumph. Two weeks of his
salon
were filling her up, softening the ribs and wrist bones, while her Paris walking and gym workouts built back her strength.
Braced on his elbows, he lifted his head, centered there above her hips, and just gazed at her for a long time. And under his gaze, she blushed all over, slow, sweeping, ever darkening, a tide of color that made her freckles brighten from her head to her toes. She twisted uncomfortably, but he had outsmarted her: the curtains were open, the comforter now on the floor, and the full bright sun of a spring afternoon shone all over her.
“How could anyone
not
love you?” he asked, puzzled, and bent his head and licked her right up the seam of her sex, finding and tonguing her clitoris.
She yelped, and her hands yanked in his hair. “Domi—” She couldn’t get his name out all the way, and she tried to knock him away with a twist of her hips.
“Shhh.” He cupped his hands under her buttocks, holding her there, loving his ability to hold her there, tonguing her again. “You’ll like it. Shhh. And I
love
to see you blush.”
“No. Please, I don’t—” She was crimson with embarrassment. As she moaned despite herself, she threw both arms up to hide her face. The scar stood out on the right forearm, a jagged white line against the freckles.
“Of course I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do,” he said soothingly, blowing gently the length of her sex, watching the petals open helplessly to the stream of air. A faint, acutely victorious smile crinkled his eyes as he lingered just above the nub of her sex, letting the stream of air play over her, and her whole body shuddered in his hold. “Can you tell me what you don’t want me to do,
minette
?”
“I—don’t—” She bit into her own forearm as he rubbed his rough jaw against her, her hands flexing helplessly open and closed on empty air. “Domi—” She broke off with a moan again.
“Vas-y, minette,”
he told her reassuringly, drawing his jaw over the tender inner skin of her thighs, just shy of her sex, ostensibly giving her time to collect herself. “What don’t you want me to do? You can tell me. It’s not this, is it?” He licked her again, taking his time. Her body shook, her thighs clenching around his shoulders, so that he had to let go of her bottom and force them apart with his hands. He pinned her to the bed with his forearms. “No, it couldn’t be that. Was it this you didn’t want?” Her hips kept trying to arch up, and he kept controlling them, so that the movement transferred to the rest of her body, her back arching, her arms locked over her face in pure desperation. “
Non, ça va aussi?
And this?”
She just moaned, her body shaking in sharp pants.
He laughed in uncontrollable joy and triumph. “
Minette,
you are so red.
Tiens, bébé.
” He pressed his mouth to her in earnest, and laughed out loud when she screamed as she came.
C
HAPTER
24
J
aime climbed all over him afterward, dragging him into her, pulling him on top of her, taking each of his hard thrusts as if it was the deepest and most intimate of caresses. He was going to curdle her soul with embarrassment, but he felt so very, very good.
She liked even the way he laughed softly afterward, as if he was very, very happy, lying with her tucked into his shoulder, lazily stroking her back. She rather liked the fact that making love to her made him feel exultantly victorious.
She had forgotten to tell him how much she loved his hands. She drew the one that was stroking her up to her face and curved it around her cheek, so that she vanished in it, kissing it. And she must have fallen briefly asleep.
When she woke, it was at the slight tugs against her of Dominique’s body, a brush of denim. He must have caught his jeans somehow with his toe without slipping out from under her, because they were now draped partly across his body, and he had the phone that had been in his pocket in one hand, texting. She blinked sleepily, focusing with increasing interest on the books that filled the whole wall beyond his hand, row after row, primarily of the discreet white
livres de poche
favored by Gallimard for its classics of great literature and poetry. She stirred, trying to make out the titles.
“Pardon,”
he said, when he saw he had woken her. “I was just letting them know I wouldn’t be back in this afternoon.”
He dropped the phone on top of a book on the night-stand and went back to stroking her gently, lost in thought. After a little while, he took her hand from his chest and kissed the palm and then tucked it back against him.
Could
he really love her? How was it even possible? She wasn’t beautiful, and her days of doing things more valuable than beauty seemed to be at a dead halt. All she had ever done was take from him, take everything he had to give.
He acted as if
that
was a reason to love her.
Something flickered in her brain, an instant of almost comprehension. But then it was gone.
“Can you do that?” she asked. “Just disappear for the afternoon ?” She didn’t want to be a detriment to his work on top of everything else.
“Not regularly, no. But I don’t do it regularly.”
So those other women, the ones he “didn’t date,” had to wait until after hours. She sighed a little, imagining him working his chocolate, knowing some gorgeous woman was waiting for him, and gazed at her still too-thin freckled arm lying across his perfectly sculpted chest, wondering what in the world it was doing there.
“Do you even like jewelry?” he asked suddenly, and she jumped.
“No.”
His brows lifted at her vehemence.
“Une aversion?”
“I don’t like things in general, except sometimes when they’re special, when people give them to me.” She was thinking of the little treasures grandmothers might weave for her to say thank you, the miniature dugout canoe carved by a grateful father . . .
He held her eyes in a long, steady look. He didn’t say anything.
She started to flush, delicately, her eyes widening. “I’m not—collecting souvenirs here.”
“Souvenirs.” Just like that, the bliss was gone. “Something you could pack up in your luggage when you leave?”
Her heart began to pound sickeningly.
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. Please don’t let me leave you.
“When your solar panels are fully charged, so to speak,” Dominique said grimly. “What are you going to do? How long do you think it will take before you’ll have to come back and charge up some more? Or do you seek out different suns each time?”
From the cuddling bliss of a few moments ago to this was a stark, spiraling plunge. Something ugly raged in his voice, trying to break free.
Don’t leave me,
he had said, when she told him she loved him.
Oh, God, don’t say that, don’t leave me.
She looked at the slim freckled arm that she thought had no force. And that was pretty scrawny and unattractive right now, to tell the truth. She tightened it around him, and he almost didn’t breathe. What if the worst thing she could possibly do to him was get strong enough to leave him?
“I was—I was actually thinking about ways I might be able to continue to accomplish some good from Paris,” she said carefully.
“Oh, fuck.” He left the bed so fast, his watch left a long scratch on her back as he yanked his arm out from under her. He moved naked to the casement window, pressing one elbow into its frame above his head, staring out. His other arm was wrapped around his middle.
Jaime tried hard to breathe. Her eyes were stinging.
Think. Think. This doesn’t make sense.
“
You’re
not married, are you?” she said suddenly. Why would he beg her not to leave him and then react like that when she suggested she might stay?
He jerked. As if the question was the slap that kept someone from fainting. “What?” He shook himself, managed to turn his head enough to look at her. One corner of his mouth turned up reluctantly. “Have
you
ever dated anyone with morals and sense?”
Her own mouth curved with almost the same reluctance. “I take it I am now?”
“No.” He dropped his arm and turned to face her, back pressed against the window frame now, both arms folded over his middle. “No. You’re not.”
The blow took her in the belly.
Don’t be ridiculous, you know what belly blows feel like. If Cade hadn’t found such an amazing surgeon, you would have lost your spleen to them.
“Not dating you?”
“Not dating someone with morals and sense. But I’m not married, no.
Merde,
Jaime.”
It was true, she should never have had that moment of doubt. Cade would definitely have told her if he was married. As a statement of faith, mentioning her sister’s investigative teams might lack something, though. “You asked
me.
”
He shook his head, that shaggy hair of his even wilder than usual after her hands had been all through it. “I was just trying to figure out how you were using me. I never said I was using you.”
They stared at each other for a moment, in what seemed to be mutual terror of something. Dominique looked so big, so hard, so dangerous. What could scare him?
“I won’t leave
you,
” he said suddenly, the words so hard they could have chopped through the air and split some great ancient oak stump. Even he could hear it resonate, echoing in the air between them while he drew a breath and stared at her.
Her brows crinkled. “That’s—I’ve never heard anyone promise not to leave a woman like a warning before.”
Dom said nothing for a moment, very grim. “I’ve never heard anyone promise not to leave me. So it may be I’ve got the tone wrong.” He forced himself to hold her gaze. “You need to be aware of that, Jaime. I’m not going to be able to leave you, even if I should, so if you need to get away from me, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”
Liar that he was, Dom thought. He had intended a warning, he just hadn’t been able to carry it through.
Please let me keep her.
How could he do anything but take the most precious care of her?
But God knew for a long time his father had acted like they were precious between bouts of violence, until he just started blaming them all the time so he could avoid the guilt. Dom wouldn’t hurt her. He
knew
he wouldn’t. He could be everything she needed him to be. But . . . he kept feeling he should warn her what she was dealing with.
Her brow grew deep furrows. “I don’t want to leave you,” she said carefully.
He lowered his head back against the window frame, light shining over his face. Not wanting to wasn’t the same as promising not to.
Not at all.
He had thought he might faint a second ago, when she had started talking about staying with him. From the complete inability to believe it, the frantic, terrified longing for it to be true. He had wanted to claw at her, to hold onto her so tightly she couldn’t rip herself away. She had
no
idea, this woman who had been hurt once, just once, no matter how badly, who had never been hurt by people who claimed to love her.
“But I don’t want to leech on you,” she said.
“Let me see if I follow.” He spoke precisely, carefully. Not clawing. “You are extremely rich, and yet by the time you were
sixteen,
you were spending your summers working with programs in developing countries. As soon as you finished university, you devoted your career to reforming labor practices in those countries. Three months ago, some people”—his voice darkened—“beat the fucking crap out of you, proving that the fact that you were helping people did not make everyone love you. You spent two months establishing a minimal physical recovery, and by that I mean, where you only need to go to physical therapy once a week and most people, looking at you, wouldn’t know you had been hurt. You seem to have given yourself
no
tolerance whatsoever about how long it takes you to recover emotionally. And you’re already worried that you haven’t found a new focus, that you don’t know what to do, that you’re
going to be a leech on me
? Have I summed it up?”
She looked as if she didn’t entirely appreciate his tone, but . . . “I guess.”
He laughed harshly. “I’m not nearly as worried about you spending the rest of your life as a
leech
as you are, Jaime. Let’s put it that way. And even if you spent the whole rest of your life sitting in my
salon
drinking chocolate . . . you don’t leech off me. You don’t—you’ve spent your
whole life
trying to be the best person you can possibly be, and you make me feel like
I’m
the sun. You have
no
idea what that does for me.” He moved forward abruptly, taking both her hands. “Jaime. I’ve never been so happy in my entire life. I’ve never even thought about being this happy. And every time you talk about being a leech and how you have to find something better to do . . . I’m sure there are plenty of better things to do with your life than make me feel like the sun. But you don’t need to keep telling me about them. Just, please, shut the hell up.”