He has no right to play with my heart like this. As if his words don’t matter. It’s one thing to work me into a senseless, sexual frenzy. It’s another to make me believe he actually wants me back. Does he think romance and pretending to care is the only path into my bed? Because it’s not. All he’s doing is killing his every chance.
I quickly swallow the burning lump in my throat, and push further back in the tub until my breasts come out of the water, and my ankle is free of his hand. In the process, my elbows move too sharply over the tub’s side and sends my untouched wine glass shattering on the tile. Red wine splashes up the far wall and white vanity. Metal arms come out of the walls and have the area cleaned up in less than ten seconds.
“You need to get out,” I say, my tone more clipped than I meant it to be. My nerves are showing.
Jérémie tosses his glass over the side for the cleaning bot arms, and slides toward me in a wave of sloshing water. He shifts my legs around his narrow waist but stops short enough of me straddling his lap. “Not until you talk to me. I will stay here all night if I have to, beauté, but you will finally let me tell you the truth.”
I gape at him. “There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear. Just leave me alone, Jérémie. I can’t play these games with you anymore.”
I start to rise, but he grabs my wrist and tugs me back. The damnably slick tub helps him do it. His gaze darts furiously between my eyes. “I will not live without you any longer.”
Goddamn him. “Should have thought about that five years ago.”
His jaw muscles ripple, and his chin dips for a moment. “I admit I made a mistake, but when you told me you killed Alexandre, I was in shock. You have no idea what you had really done.”
“I’ve spent the last five years hating you, so if that’s your idea of an apology—”
“Eden—”
“—then you suck even more than I imagined. You broke my heart.” My voice cracks, and my throat closes too much to finish any of my thought.
Jérémie frowns, then reaches out and cups my cheek. “Let me unbreak it.”
My heartbeat drums in my ears, underscored by the ping of water dripping into the quiet bath. What could he possibly say to erase five years of betrayal? The bigger question is do I want to hear it?
“I wanted you the moment I saw you at that ball,” he says, and his second hand mirrors the first on my other cheek. His wet thumbs swipe over my dry cheekbones. “The dark-haired beauty in that imbecile’s arms. He never saw you. Not the way I did.”
I remember all too well the way Jérémie saw me. Heat radiated from his gaze that night. I’d noticed him on a number of occasions before, but seeing him that night completely undid me. I wanted him. Then I had him alone in a hallway where he kissed me before even telling me his name. He just took the kiss like he took everything else, including my heart.
“Why are we taking this trip down memory lane?” I ask. It makes my heart ache.
“He never loved you the way I did either.”
“He never loved me at all,” I tell him, and try once again to stand and escape this bath from hell.
He holds me too tight. “True or not, I knew Alexandre would not give you up so easily. I had to be patient, wait for him to show signs of boredom, and finally...he did.”
“No he didn’t.” My denial is more for my pride, rather than actually caring what Alexandre thought of me.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he says, a sad smile punctuating the statement.
Dread pools low in my stomach. “You wanted what to be a surprise?”
“When you came to me with blood on your clothes, sweaty, wide-eyed, and breathless with the news that you’d murdered him... I could not believe it. Your timing could not have been worse. Because he had sold you to me just hours before.”
I shove us apart, throwing water over the tub’s side, blinking rapidly. The implication of this new information has my mind in a tailspin. Alexandre hadn’t owned me at the time of death? And I’d killed him with his back turned—my first kill was my most cowardly—so he’d had no chance to tell me.
There are worse things than this. “If that’s true... You were responsible for my crime,” I say.
He nods. “I came after you, intending to run with you as you wanted, but I was too late. When you weren’t found, I was arrested and tried for Alexandre’s murder in your place. Being your owner at the time made me solely responsible for your actions, and I served nearly five years in prison. Nothing compared to the death you faced, and I’d do it again.” Jérémie pauses for what feels an eternity. “But you still have to face the council, or my time served will be for naught.”
I can’t take a full breath, and my eyes burn. What he’s saying is too unbelievable to be true. Especially when put up against recent events. “You hunted me. Edmond hunts me.”
“Edmond hunts you because it’s personal. He wants you dead, and if he catches you, he’ll kill you. Going before the council and getting your sentence declared paid in full is the only way to stop him from exercising what is his blood right.”
Jérémie shifts our bodies closer, and I’m too shocked to stop him. Before I realize what’s happening, I’m straddling his lap and his fingers thread through my hair.
“I knew you would not come willingly,” he says, his gaze lowering to my mouth. “Not without a fight, and there was no time to explain. Edmond was on your trail long before I found you.”
“So you decided kidnapping was the way to go?” It’s a miracle I’m able to get words out coherently in light of the fact that I now feel his erection pressing against my stomach.
“Considering the lack of time I had to keep you out of his hands, and your stubbornness, can you think of any better alternatives?”
He makes a good point. If he’d stopped for even a second to ask me to return with him, even with the promise of my freedom, I’d have laughed in his face and probably killed him. Okay, I wouldn’t have. But I’d have made the attempt look damn convincing.
His hands slide out of my hair and down my back. “When it’s all over, I intend to free you.”
My heart thunks rhythmically against my sternum. A Flux freeing a slave? There isn’t anything the race considers weaker than that. Despite everything, I don’t want that for my proud beast.
“Why would you do that?”
“You have to ask?” His arms circle my waist and pull me tighter.
Our lips close the gap, and just before I’m swept completely in, I say, “Yes. I have to know.”
“Because I intend to get you back, and I want you to stay of your own free will.”
He grips the nape of my neck and holds me still while his mouth closes over mine. His soft lips nudge mine apart. The second his hot tongue touches mine, a full body sigh releases inside me. Heat steams the tension right out of my limbs. I’m so thoroughly his right now that there’s nothing I won’t do.
My fingers work over his shoulders as they bunch and flex, lifting my hips to impale me with his erection. Heat charges through my insides and straight up my spine. My head falls back and my cry echoes off the tile. The way he stretches my walls is both familiar and a shock. No man has ever measured up to Jérémie. Never will.
His mouth falls on the curve of my neck, and he trembles under my traveling fingertips. My palms splay over back muscles, holding him closer, as he rocks into me. Every move sends waves of water over the tub walls. Every thrust changes me, urges me back into the woman he loved all those years ago. The one who dreamt too big for the world I was trapped in, never really believing we’d find a way through.
But here we are. Our future within reach. Saved by his sacrifice, determination, and love. I don’t deserve him. Not after everything I’ve done.
Jérémie senses my body stiffen and the water around us begins to calm. “Stay with me,” he says. “Forgive me.”
I cup his face, his stubble tickling my wet palms. How can he ask that when I’m the one who wrecked everything? He went to prison for my crime. And yet he traveled lightyears to get me back.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I ask.
He stands as if my weight latched around his waist is feather-light. His erection barely slides out as he steps from the tub, and carries me into the dimly lit bedroom, our bodies dripping and securely bound.
Jérémie sets a knee on the bed, and we fall into the middle. Almost instantly, his hips grind into mine. He gazes at me as if detached from the sensations burning through our bodies like a comet.
“This is why,” he says. “The way you look at me. The way you give me the control. The way we love each other.” He punctuates the end with a hard thrust that ignites the first spark of approaching orgasm. One I could almost go without; he feels that good inside me. “You killed Alexandre to assure a future with me. I will never forget that.”
Only a Flux will find honor in murder. I push up, and force Jérémie onto his back. In a swift move, I pin his hands over his head and bite his lip. “You love me?”
“Deeply.”
“So the question that remains is...” I rise up and push my twin forward until she straddles Jérémie’s broad chest. “Can you love two of us at the same time?” We ask in unison.
Jérémie’s hands leave my hips to guide Eden up. She straddles his face, and moans a second later. Her hips roll, just as mine do, although hers a little more on the gentle side. I watch his touch dig deep grooves into her hips, and hear his muffled moan, and I’m doubly turned on. I love the way his fingers rub up her—my—skin, forcing droplets of water to fall in slow trails. The way her damp black hair hangs knotted and shining. The way his abdomen flexes under my fingertips, thrusting his hips up to meet mine.
Our orgasms—mine and Eden’s—peak at the same time. My hips work faster until, throwing my head back, the heat overtakes my entire center. Our ecstasy-filled cry sounds in stereo.
My lover lifts Eden and practically throws her into me. We merge, and I’m immediately overtaken by the force of an orgasm so intense I’m momentarily blinded. Jérémie sits up and takes my mouth, my cries, my senses. He rolls me to my back and drives into me with shoulder muscles bunched, eyes focused on a new destination: his own satisfying end.
Jérémie finally stiffens and grits out a curse. His skin darkens with red. Veins strain along his neck. He collapses and gives me the weight of his body; I wrap my limbs around him and kiss his neck.
“Yes,” I whisper against his hot skin. “I’ll come with you. I’ll stay.”