“I love you so much, my beautiful man. It was always you. It has always been you.”
“Fuck, Valentina,” he utters, burying his face in my neck, and we lose ourselves in the violent rhythm of our fucking. He builds a church with his body in mine, making a sinner and a believer out of me while quieting my demons. Restraint gone, he shoots us into the stars until we reach the heavens and beyond. And when we fall and crash, we are reborn on the sheets of this bed. He fucks me savagely, claiming me over and over again—baptizing me in the holiness of his body, his kisses, and his love.
My name on his tongue and his taste on mine.
We come undone.
And when I feel his seed filling me, my body full with his cock, my skin burning with his kisses, I have never felt more whole. More complete.
Sébastien
Sometime during the night, I wake up to the sensation of kisses being showered all over my body. I open my eyes and find Valentina watching me, a soft smile on her lips.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
We turn our faces to one another. I raise a hand to touch the curve of her mouth, noticing for the first time small changes in her appearance. She’s slimmer. Her cheeks hollow. There’s a trace of purple under her eyes. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“Yes, you were tired.”
“Did you sleep?”
She shakes her head, sighing. “When I came back, I woke up so many times in the middle of the night after dreaming of you, and … well,” she traces a shape over my heart, “that’s when it hurt the most.”
“I’m here, Valentina.” I pull her into my arms, kissing her neck. I wish I could erase those memories, take her pain away and make it mine. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
She buries her face in my chest and nods. “Steal me away. Take me to a place where we can start all over again. No past. No future. Just the present. Just you and me. Your body will be my shelter, my home. Can you do that?”
“The past cannot touch you anymore.”
Seconds pass in silence.
“I know. I won’t let it.” She hesitates. “I need to explain Paris … what happened tonight …”
“Not right now.” I take her hand in mine, bring it to my mouth, and kiss it. “You don’t have—”
“No, please.” She tightens her grip on my hand as her eyes implore me. “Let me explain. I want to explain and put this behind us once and for all.”
“All right.”
“William came to Paris asking me to forgive him and give him another chance. He seemed so lost and in pain. I wish I could’ve seen through his lies, but I was a fool. You see, I was living a lie, but that’s all I ever knew. Lies. They were my reality. Or maybe I chose to be blind because I was afraid to open my eyes. I don’t know. I felt so guilty, too.” She lowers her gaze to our hands laced together.
“I thought, here is my husband suffering at my hand while I fell in love with you. It made me feel unworthy. Dishonest. I thought I had betrayed my husband. I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but there was still love and commitment between us. A lifetime worth. Or so I believed. I didn’t want to leave, but I thought I owed him my loyalty. I went back home to atone for my mistakes, to make it right by William.”
When she says that she might still love him, jealousy makes me see red. Punch-a-hole-through-the-fucking-wall red. But then her next sentence cuts through the angry haze in my mind. I frown. “What do you mean by ‘or so I believed’?”
“I’m about to get there, and it gets really juicy.” She chuckles sadly. “I came back to the States. To my life in Greenwich. And for a while, it seemed everything was working even though my heart wasn’t in it.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Say it.” I grin. “I want to hear you say it.”
She rolls her eyes, smiling nonetheless. “Because I loved you then. Because I love you now. Happy now?”
“Extremely,” I say, feeling like I just won the Nobel Prize. I’m about to tell her to continue when the memory of coming home and finding her gone hits me in the chest like a grenade. So I ask her the one question that has kept me awake many nights wondering where it all went wrong. “Why didn’t you say goodbye?”
“I tried. Before I left, I went to your apartment, but you weren’t there.”
“Sophie needed me to babysit her kids.” I sigh, a sense of sorrow laying siege to my heart. “To think that maybe I could’ve—”
“Don’t. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. It’ll only drive you crazy to think like that. Trust me, I know.” She gives me a quick peck on the lips. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, little cracks started to show.”
Valentina tells me about William’s reaction when he found out she wanted to work, and how things seemed to go downhill from there. What she overheard and saw happening between William and his sister at the party, and what happened in their bedroom. When she reaches that part of the story, it takes every ounce of power I own not to get out of this bed, go in search of that fucking piece of worthless filth, and destroy him. But the concern I see in her eyes calms me down.
She takes my hand, placing it on her cheek. “I wish I had been braver for you, for me, but at least something good came out of it. I finally realized what kind of man William truly is. I think I needed to see it to believe it and to wake up. If I hadn’t, maybe I would’ve never broken free of the weird hold he had on me.” She smiles. “So now I’m free. It’s over. Truly over.”
“I still would like to kill him,” I rumble out, unsatisfied that the bastard got away unscathed.
“Don’t. There’s nothing more important to William than appearances. What happened tonight is punishment enough.” She stares at me for a moment too long. “My God, I love you so much.”
“Good,” I say, dismissing William. He doesn’t get to come between us anymore, not even his memory. “Because I need a lot of loving.”
“Oh yeah?” She raises an eyebrow, a seductive light flashing in her gaze. “How much are we talking about here?”
“Oh, I don’t know …” I say, playing dumb, enjoying myself more than I should.
“Shall we play Hot and Cold to find out?”
“Now that’s interesting … How do you plan on—”
She smirks. She moves to kneel, encasing my hips with her legs, hovering over me. My cock stirs awake at the sight of her slim body branded by my hands and lips. She watches me, a sly smile on her face, as she glides her hands over her tits, touching her nipples and playing with them.
“Hot?”
I clear my throat. “Getting there.”
“Oh yeah?” She leans on my chest as she lowers herself on my cock, and begins to rub her cunt on it.
“Hot?”
“Warmer,” I groan, my hands going to her hips as she continues to torture me. But it’s the reckless woman with laughter in her eyes that drives me to fucking perdition.
She taps her chin, seemingly thinking of her next play. “Hmm …”