Chapter Twenty-Two
Bryan opened the door to the town car he’d reserved. Gabrielle gave him a kiss on each cheek, then got inside. He shut the door, and we both waved as the driver sped off to take her home. We crossed the cobbled street and turned onto the sidewalk running along the river Seine. The muted yellow gaslight from the streetlamps flickered and illuminated our path along the slate-gray ribbon that sliced its way through the city.
“You were amazing back there,” he said.
“Oh, you’re too sweet.”
“I would call you a good luck charm, but I’m pretty sure it’s a hell of a lot more than luck that just went down in there. Brains, talent, beauty, brilliance. Is there nothing you can’t do?”
“I’m not terribly good at cooking or gardening.”
He snapped his fingers as if disappointed. Then he turned serious. “Kat, thank you. Thank you so much for what you did.”
“I’m glad I could be of help.”
Bryan reached for my hand. “Am I allowed to hold your hand? Or does that break the on ice rules?”
“I’ll bend on this one for just a moment.”
We turned onto the Pont du Carrousel that arced over the river. A dinner boat tour floated underneath the bridge, it lights drawing yellow squiggly lines along the water. The Louvre watched over us nearby.
“Would you bend on another one? Because I’d really like to kiss you by the river Seine.”
He gave no room to answer as he pulled me close and dusted his lips on me, leaving a soft, barely wet kiss.
“We should stop. We should be good.”
“We should. But I’m crazy in love with you, and if makes things better, I’ll never stop telling you that. Besides, I have five years of feeling it but not saying it to make up for. So I’ll say it again. I’m madly in love with you, Kat Harper.”
“Fine,” I said with a smile. “That earns you one more kiss.”
He pressed his lips on mine, tracing them with his tongue in a way that made me shiver. I looped my arms around him, underneath his jacket and against his shirt. I walked back a step or two until I met the railing on the bridge and leaned against it. He ran his hands through my hair, moving closer, as the space between us compressed. My body melted into his and I inhaled his cool, clean skin. I wanted to feel him, touch him, taste him, have him. I was crazy to be so close to him. I was foolish to ever think I could have resisted.
Maybe you could say I was selfish. Maybe you could say I was stupid. Maybe you could wonder why I didn’t wait five more weeks.
All of that and more was true.
But I ceased caring. I stopped reasoning. I tossed the rules out the window and threw caution into the river Seine because I was in Paris with the only man I’d ever loved.
I felt fluttery, twitchy, agitated. I didn’t know if it was fear or desire. Either way, there was no turning back. I was going there with Bryan, going to wherever we were going. I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t feel naughty, I didn’t feel wrong. I stepped into our future as I broke the kiss. “Take me to your hotel room.”
I’d never seen a man hail a cab so fast in his life.
*****
The taxi slowed down for a light on the rue de Rivoli. I peered ahead, noting the clogged street in front of us, the boulevard packed with cars. We wouldn’t reach the W for another ten minutes at this rate, so I closed the scratched-up partition that separated us from the driver.
“It’s like you can read my mind,” Bryan said, and returned for a deeper kiss. But I wanted more than kissing and he knew it. He moved his hand across my leg, his fingers dancing down to my inner thigh. I opened my legs a little bit, an inch or two, enough to let him know to keep going.
He didn’t stop kissing me as he traced the outside of my panties. He’d always made me weak in the knees with his lips alone; now it was like double or triple the pleasure with his kisses and his hand. As I tasted the soft underside of his lips, he dipped his hand inside my panties, first pressing on my pubic bone, then making his way between my legs. He kissed me softly, while his fingers explored me, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, always the right way. I barely moved for the next few minutes, except to subtly push against his hand as his fingers glided over me and inside me and around me. He traced me lightly at first, then harder, pressing down in all the right places, savoring how much my body wanted him.
“Please don’t stop touching me.”
“I have no intention of stopping.”
He’d been a pro on the phone, narrating and guiding me, and bringing me to orgasm with words alone. He was even better in person, his hands like magic hands that knew how to make me moan, or sigh, or cry out as his fingers grazed across me, then narrowed in on the one place I wanted him most.
“Keep touching me like that. I want to be kissing you while I come.”
His hungry lips devoured me as he stroked me. My insides were lava, and my body ached for all of him. I wanted to fall away from his mouth, so I could moan, so I could sigh, so I could breathe heavily and say his name. But he kept kissing me, even as my lips fumbled at his, and I writhed, my breaths coming faster. He zeroed in and I bit gently into his lip, managing to gasp out the words I’m coming, as I finally let go of his lips.
I shuddered, and clasped his hand against me. I stayed there, basking in the aftershocks of the most intense pleasure, of the way the boy I’d fallen for, the man I loved, had brought me to this state. “You didn’t stop kissing me the whole time and there I was, coming while you were kissing me. It was like my two favorite things at the same time.”
“Good. Because there’s a lot more on the menu tonight,” he said, as the taxi pulled up to the hotel and Bryan handed several bills to the driver. He made a brief stop at the front desk and then we stepped into a waiting elevator. As the doors closed, he placed his hand on the small of my back. We made it to the fourth floor, down the hall, and to his room. He slid the card key in the door, and once inside, I tore off my coat, and he tossed off his jacket.
His room was heavenly, with a gorgeous gilded mirror and antique nightstands. French windows, fittingly, led to a balcony. But I had little interest in the surroundings when there was a king size bed with a soft, white, down comforter that called my name. I longed to be naked on it, with my legs wrapped around Bryan.
He stood behind me and ran his hands along my arms. He reached my hands, clasping my fingers in his and whispered in my ear. “Do you have any idea how much I want to make love to you right now?”
“How much?”
“More than I have ever wanted anything before.” He swept my hair from my neck and kissed me there, sending tingles of insane pleasure down my spine. I understood the meaning of the word swoon — I had become the very definition. He walked me to the bed, and laid me down, then pulled off my boots. He ran his hands up the inside of my legs. Every touch thrilled me. Every second of contact sent me higher.
“You have far too many clothes on, Kat.”
“Take them off. Take them all off.”
He unzipped my skirt, and gently removed it, placing it on the nearby chair. My sweater was next, and he made that groan I found so sexy when he saw me in only my bra and panties. Then it was my turn. I unknotted his tie, then began on his shirt, enjoying the release of each button, as I trailed my hands down the white tee-shirt underneath. Soon, his shirt was off, then I pulled the tee-shirt over his head. I took a step back to admire him. His chest was broad and sturdy, his stomach flat and cut, his waist trim and exactly the kind I wanted to hold onto. I ran my teeth over my bottom lip as I looked at his pants, at how turned on he was.
He unhooked my bra, and touched my breasts in a way that made me even hotter for him, if that were possible. He kneeled down to strip off my underwear, then kissed my ankle and traced a line up my calf to behind my knee. My insides were on fire. My body was a flame. He pressed a palm gently against my belly, guiding me back onto the bed.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, as he returned to my thighs, grazing his tongue between my legs, tasting my desire for him.
I gasped in pleasure and arched against him, as he traced long, soft, lingering lines up and down.
“It’s better than on the phone,” I whispered between ragged breaths, as I grabbed at his soft, thick hair. I needed more. My body ached for his mouth on me. His firm hands hugged my thighs, and he made these sounds as if I were the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.
The way he moved his tongue, the way his lips kissed me made me believe nothing else existed, and that this pleasure was all there was, it was all I felt, all I wanted. To be spread open to someone, to have his mouth devouring you, to say his name, and then to cry out in crazy ecstasy. Nothing could ever be better than this.
He moved up, and I was tipsy, buzzed from the most delicious drink ever — the way he knew me, the way the secret treasure map to my body had been his to follow. He looked satisfied with his work as he began to unbuckle his pants. I sat up to help. I was dying to see him fully naked. He stepped back from the bed, letting his pants fall down, then I pulled down his boxer briefs. God, he was beautiful, and carved, and hard as steel. My hand had a mind of its own and reached for him. He pressed his teeth against his lip, and cursed quietly in pleasure as I touched him.
Then he reached for a condom.
He hovered over me, and teased me with his kisses, keeping me on my back, brushing his lips across my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids, even the tip of my nose. I was startled that even a kiss on the nose felt good from him. Then again, everything felt good with Bryan. I sighed as he kissed my neck and then threaded his fingers through my hair, pulling me close.
I lifted my hips to him.
“Tell me what you want, Kat. I want to hear you say it.”
“I want you to make love to me.”
I didn’t know if he knew how big a deal it was for me to say those words. I never said “make love” to anyone before. Not to any other guy. I’d never known what it was like to truly make love because Bryan was the only person I’d ever loved, and I’d never been with him like this, like the way it seems on the silver screen, with the big love of your life. When young love and passion turn to smoldering tenderness in the sheets. The waiting, the wanting, the longing as bodies come together, skin against skin, nothing held back, no distance, no time, no pretending. It had always seemed so perfect, so epic, so out of this world.
Now, here I was, feeling more than I’d ever imagined.
I placed my hands on his firm, toned chest, tracing his skin, his muscles, searing them into my memory now that I finally could, now that I finally knew what he felt like. He parted my legs and entered me. I moaned as he filled me up. Who said it was supposed to feel this good? But it did. Beyond any and all reason.
“You,” he said, softly, looking at me. “You.”
He buried himself in me, and I was in another world, in another time. I was drowning in pleasure, swallowed whole by desire. I was all the air I’d ever breathed. I was the edge of reason, and nothing else existed but the feeling of him moving deep inside of me, his body touching mine at last. Heat rose in my chest, a fire radiating from the center of my gut to the tips of my fingers, the far reaches of my eyelashes, and through to the inside and out of my heart, as if it might burst with all the feelings — love, lust, want, and then, most of all, ecstatic and utter happiness. Completeness. All-ness. I was lost, and then I was found, and I was suddenly aware of every sensation in my body. Of how he placed a hand on my hip, how his breath tasted good, how the soft little never shaven hairs on the backs of my thighs stood on end. I’d gone to heaven, only I was alive, and everything felt ravishing, as he plunged in me, gripped my wrists, and brought me there again.
And when it ended, when we lay there sated in bed, I outlined his body with my fingertips, planting little kisses across the hard planes of his belly, the firm muscles of his arms, the breadth of his chest that felt like home. We were silent for another moment, then I felt his hand slip into mine.
It was the laughter, it was the movies, it was Paris, it was the hero holding a boom box in the rain. I knew at this moment that a thing could be more perfect. I had always wanted to believe you could have love like in the movies. Now, I knew you could. It’s not just Hollywood.
I could have this man for the rest of my life and never want for anything more.