After another day of shopping and wandering the streets of Paris, Elle and I headed back to the apartment to change for dinner. We hadn’t hurried out of bed that morning or rushed through our afternoon shopping spree.
I’d hired an executive car service and kept a driver on standby for us at all times, so we could eat, shop, or sightsee as we pleased. Packages now filled the sedan’s boot and the empty seat across from us.
Elle drew her fingers over my five o’clock shadow. The day before, I’d surprised her with a clean shave.
“You’re so handsome in this blue shirt and jacket combo. It goes perfectly with the jeans you’re wearing. And with your blue eyes.”
“You’re all right, baby?” I pulled her hand to my lips and kissed it.
“I’m fine. I’m happy, Will. Can’t you tell?”
I nodded, moving my kiss to the inside of her wrist, where the delicate blue veins were visible and her pulse confirmed that she was real, that she was mine. “Me too. You’re a little pale, is what I meant to say.”
Our driver opened the car door and extended his folded arm to Elle. “Madame.”
She took his arm and looked back at me as she climbed out of the car. “You worry too much. I feel fantastic.”
Better be the truth. Maybe she misses our girl.
After stepping onto the pavement beside Elle, I put money into the driver’s hand. “Bring our bags up to the door. We’ll leave for dinner in about an hour.” Then, I turned to my wife. “Let’s video-chat with Lissie this evening. I’ll send her pictures of the swans on the Seine just before we ring her.”
Elle giggled. “If a stranger looked at the photos on your phone, they would never believe you’re the dangerous man that you are.”
“Dangerous? You must have me confused with someone else, angel.” I winked and laced my fingers with hers as we hit the stairs to the apartment. “Christ, I’m hungry. You hungry?”
“Starving. Find us a quiet, casual place while I freshen up? The weather is wonderful again today. I wouldn’t mind another evening walk through the city.” A mischievous smile lit up her beautiful face.
Before I let her slip away to the bedroom, I pulled her body against mine. “Kiss me before you leave me, Elle.” But I didn’t give her the chance. The back of her head was already in my palm, and I forced her mouth to mine.
It was a fierce, no-holds-barred kind of kiss. I lost myself in her sweet taste, fucking her mouth with my greedy tongue, urging her to meet me with the same passion.
Elle broke the kiss and panted against my cheek for a moment. She pulled back and hit me with her eyes. “I’ll never leave you, Will.”
She knew me so well, understood exactly what I needed. Reassurance. The way I demanded it from her was unfair, but my fucked-up soul required it. I lived with an overwhelming fear that, someday, I would lose her.
I had done the same thing to her the night before.
The moon was high, and the breeze was warm when we left the restaurant. We decided to walk round the city for a while before taking the car back to the apartment. We found ourselves along the scenic walkway of the Right Bank. The city was fully awake, the reflection of its lights dancing on the Seine. What was more, the way the moonlight painted the contours of her face, her body, the way it clung to her long hair as we walked along the river took my breath away.
After leaving the riverbank, I backed her into a dim alcove and pressed her body against a brick building with mine.
“Lock your arms round my neck and do not remove them,” I said.
Her breath quickened as she submitted to me. She breathed out, and I breathed in, her rhythm completing mine.
“I need to touch you. You’ll be quiet because you are mine. Your moans, your cries—all mine.”
Her pupils expanded. “I need to touch you too,” she whispered so close to my ear.
“Not this time.” I tucked my thumb under her chin, pulled her mouth to mine, and sucked on her bottom lip. “Your hands are exactly where I want them to stay. Understand?”
She nodded. I dropped my hand and slid it up her thigh beneath the hem of her dress. When my fingers brushed the lace on her knickers, a sensual whimper hit her throat.
Covering her mouth with mine, I kissed her brutally, giving her everything that I was. She met my tongue with hers and fell into the moment with me. I pushed my fingers inside her, my mouth still on hers, and drew a small cry from her.
“You’re going to come for me, baby, right here. Use my hand.”
I wanted to watch her come. I wanted to see her lids drop, her head fall back, her skin bloom with heat, her lips part until her mouth formed a pretty circle that was too small for my hard cock. I wanted to hear the rushing of her breath, the exhalations she couldn’t control. I needed to feel her soft, erotic scream as I captured it with my mouth and swallowed it.
She did all of those things, and when her tight little heaven clenched round my fingers, I almost came in my trousers.
“You’re my world, Elle. Without you, it would end.”
“I won’t let it end. I’m yours. Always yours,” she said as she melted into my arms to catch her breath.
Sweat soaked my clothing. My erection was painfully hard, and I ached for release. I was desperate to feel her soul complete mine, to fuck her. The unsatisfied craving was my punishment for all of the merciless acts I’d committed in the past, for the horrible shit I would do in the future, for coercing her reassurance. I was drowning in my desire, but I only watched.
I watched the woman I loved more than my own life recover from her climax without taking a fucking thing from her.
Thirty minutes after Elle disappeared into the master suite, she reappeared in a pretty white dress. It was quite different from the seductive black dress she had worn for dinner the night before, but she was just as lovely.
We left the apartment and walked hand in hand through the middle of the brick-paved streets until we heard the lapping waves of the River Seine. The comforting aromas of freshly roasted coffee and sugared brioche and vanilla cream drifted out to the street as we passed by one of our favorite cafés in the city.
Flower markets lined the pavements along the way. Earlier that day, I’d made note of one market in particular, located close to Pont Neuf, the bridge we would cross on our way to dinner.
I guided Elle into that market and pulled her along by the hand as I weaved through the tables and floral displays, plucking individual fresh-cut flowers from tubs of water. When she realized I was creating a handpicked bouquet for her, she blushed. I grinned.
“Je veux une rose blanche parfait,” I said to the market owner, asking for a perfect white rose.
“Les roses sont à l’intérieur.” The woman scuttled inside and came back, holding an exquisite rose. “I grow the roses myself,” she added.
“It’s beautiful,” Elle said.
The woman met my wife’s eyes with a smile. “Merci, madame.”
Elle hooked her arm in mine after I paid for the flowers, and we headed for the bridge. Pont Neuf was the oldest one in the city. It was made of stone with architectural arches and ornamental mascarons along the length of the exterior walls. Displaying sculpted mythical faces in that way seemed strange to me, but it had always been part of the sixteenth-century design.
The old stone bridge offered a paved walkway for pedestrians in both directions. The two stretches offered stone niches with wide benches, where people could duck out of the foot traffic to admire magnificent views of the Louvre and the Notre Dame Cathedral or steal a kiss.
“You are the only man who’s ever given me flowers, Will.” The words were soft and honest, followed by a childlike smile. “There’s only you,” she added in a whisper.
There it was. The innocence that drew me into her deeper with each passing day. It was light and goodness and lived infinitely within her soul. It was what held me together through the madness. Her innocence healed me, completed me. I was addicted to it, and the craving was nonstop. I longed day and night to possess it, to possess her.
Unfortunately, there was no help for it or for me. The compulsion needed to be satisfied. In an abrupt move, I took Elle into my arms and backed us into a niche to kiss her.
I owned her mouth with the same fierce passion as I had at the apartment before she’d gotten dressed. Something more was building between us, if that was possible. I didn’t know how or what the fuck it was, only that there was more for us.
“Will,” she whispered, her eyes full of unshed tears.
She panted from the kiss. The sweetness of her breath hit me, causing me to ache for more of her.
Her tears started to fall.
The tears were different than all the others. No fear or pain or grief tainted them.
Something new overwhelmed her.
“Will,” she said again.
I held her face in my hands, wiping her cheeks with my thumbs. Tears fell faster. They wouldn’t fucking stop.
I kissed her lips. “You don’t have to say anything, Elle. Please don’t cry.”
She smiled through the watery sentiment. Her green eyes were brilliant, but those goddamn tears were spilling down her face.
“I think I should see a doctor right away,” she said.
My heart stopped. The goddamn world stopped. My body became one with the bridge. Immovable stone.
“What?” I stared at her. What the fuck was she saying?
She said my name again.
My name on her lips once more—that was all I needed to finally understand. It lingered in the air between us with the softness of a tender love song.
“I think you should have a seat,” she said.
I raked a hand through my hair and shook my head. “No, I need for you to sit.”
Elle sat on the stone bench, and I crouched between her legs.
Our eyes locked.
More tears. “The test results weren’t accurate.”
I dropped my face onto her lap. “Oh Christ,” I said against her dress.
My wife pushed her fingers into my hair. “We’re pregnant.”
I shook my head again, my face still buried in the folds of her dress. “It’s too soon, Elle.”
Her fingertips moved gently through my hair. “Do you remember when you gave me this engagement ring, and I said the same thing to you, that it was too soon? You assured me it wasn’t. It took me a minute to realize where you were coming from, but you were right. Fighting what is meant to be is painful. In the end, it’ll still be. You and I already live with enough pain, most of it beyond our control.”
Clever little angel, chucking my rationale back at me.
I lifted my head to meet her eyes. She was calm and fearless.
So beautiful.
I had misinterpreted some of the signs as a manifestation of her anxiety.
“You’re going to be a father, Will.”
I drew breath through my nostrils and nodded with a heavy exhale.
“We’ll find a way to be happy about it together,” she added.