The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin (22 page)

He swiped a hand over his mouth and leaned back in his chair.  A coffee cup went to his lips, and he sipped.  "Tea," he offered.  "Chamomile.  It calms me after a long day at work."

  "I prefer cinnamon myself.  And you're changing the subject."

"So I am.  We are testing the grounds,
oui
?  This new medium of voice challenges our expectations of one another."

"
Oui
," I said.  "Truth?  I would feel more comfortable stripping off my clothes for you if we hadn't sound on these things."

"I can relate to that.  This is more intimate than what we've done thus far.  But I don't want to go back to the window.  Not when your pretty blue eyes are so close to me now.  Do you want me to turn off the sound?"

I actually considered it for nano-seconds.  "No.  We can do this.  But is it okay if we go slow?"

"How slow?"

Splaying my hands over my naked breasts, I felt entirely comfortable sitting there.  And I could see on the little screenshot of me that my breasts bounced up and down into the picture as I moved.  I then wobbled my hand back and forth to signal middle ground.  Then I realized I'd just made a hand gesture. 

I wasn't standing before the window anymore.

"Let's play it by ear," I finally said.

"How does that mean?  I'm not sure I understand that phrase."

"Oh.  Uh.  Let's go with however comfortable we're feeling.  I'm flashing you my boobs.  I'm comfortable with that."

"I am comfortable with that, too." 

His sexy grin started at the corners of his eyes and curled his mouth.  It was a comfortable place I'd peered into often.  And now I'd taken a step across the threshold.  I liked it there, standing in the foyer waiting to be invited further.

"I think your breasts are very sensitive to touch," he said.  "You like to squeeze your nipples to get off,
oui
?"

"You noticed?"

"I have noticed everything about you,
mon abeille
.  Your breasts are full yet soft like peaches.  They are a handful for you."

I cupped my breasts before the monitor.  Yep, he was right.  Perfect handful.  But what it would feel like to have a larger, more masculine pair of hands on them tickled at my core and tightened my nipples against my palms.

"Mm, I'm thinking about you touching them right now."

"Me as well," he agreed.  "Your nipples are always hard.  I could lick them for you.  Trace my tongue along the soft undersides of your breasts.  Taste your sweetness.  Drag my tongue up to the rubies that grow harder in my mouth.  Then I will slide my teeth along them in a tease."

I pressed my thighs together.  The heat between them slipped moist and slick across my skin.  What had happened to going slow?

Fuck slow.  Seriously.

"You like me to suck them hard or softly?"

"Both," I answered immediately.

Hands still cupping my breasts, I tilted back my shoulders to lift the sweet treats he described for his tongue.  I couldn't feel the hot, wet lash of him tasting me, but I did feel a satisfying tingle skitter across my skin when I tweaked both nipples with my fingers.  I moaned and settled against the pillow, the laptop wobbling on my thighs.

"Mmm," he growled.  His eyes were closed, one hand held up before his face, his fingers dancing imperceptibly.  Imagining his actions.  "I think you taste like honey,
mon abeille
.  And you smell like a honey-soaked bee.  Anticipation jitters your heartbeats beneath my mouth.  Fast.  You like it firm now.  I suck in your skin and feed on your nipple.  The texture of it against my tongue is fun to play with.  I lick it and trace the rigid peak until I can memorize the shape of you.  I could suckle from you forever. 
Mon Dieu
."

The hand before him dropped to his lap.  I couldn't see what he was doing, but I had my suspicions.

"Are you rubbing your cock?" I asked, tongue dashing to the corner of my mouth in anticipation.

He nodded.  "Is okay with you?  I can suck you at the same time."

"Very okay.  I wish I could see you jacking off."

"I…uh…"  He closed his eyelids tightly.  Trying to maintain the sensual feeling, I'm sure.  "Tomorrow I will adjust the camera for a better view,
oui
?"

"That's fine.  Just take that pretty boy out of your pants right now, and rub it like you'd rub my breasts and nipples, please?"

"
S'il vous plaît
," he corrected.

"
S'il vous plaît
," I repeated.  The French means to saying please was much more delicious on the tongue. 

He stood and unzipped then shuffled down his trousers.  "You like this?"  He turned to the side, gliding his fingers down the hard shaft that was so close I could reach out and touch it. 

I'd seen him handle the main stick before, so now I focused on taking it in, learning the color and shape of it.  Deeper colored than his lightly tanned skin, the head of it growing darker as his fingers slid up and down, slowly, not rushed.

He turned toward the computer.  The underside of his cock was thick, and I knew if my fingers were pressing on it, it would feel full and yet supple, filled with his need to get off.

"Squeeze your nipples," he said.  "Let me watch you so close to me.  Lick your fingers to wet them and make your tits slick."

I followed directions, my breast and hand becoming the star of the show.  He bent again to watch me, and his hand worked faster up and down his cock.

"Tell me how you like it," he said, pumping at his cock.  In the background a phone jangled.

No, don't answer it.

Another tweak of my nipple arched my back and I shoved my free hand between my thighs.

The phone again rang.  He glanced to the side.  "
Mon abeille
, I have to take this.  It is work."  He grabbed the phone and signaled for me to pause.

Pause?

But I was touching myself for him.  We were having a moment here!

He spoke to someone, stood, and wandered out of camera range.

"Shoot."  I exhaled and pushed the hair from my face.  "Work this late?"

He flashed back into view, the phone tucked between shoulder and crooked head, and I saw him type.  Words scrolled onto the screen before me.

Tech problem for tomorrow.  Must straighten out.  Will take some time.  So sorry
.

I typed: 
I understand.  We did agree to go slooowly.  We can pick up tomorrow where we left off.

Promise!

"Sweet dreams," I said.  "Until tomorrow night."

His screen went black and I closed the laptop with a frustrated sigh.

Okay.  So the something that had to be wrong with him had just revealed itself.  The man was a workaholic.  And he was far too casual about
coitus interruptus
.

I couldn't get upset about this.  And I wouldn't.  (Okay, just a little.  I mean, come on!)

Setting the laptop on the floor, I pulled up the sheets and snuggled into the pillow.  Slipping a hand between my legs, I replayed Monsieur Sexy's voice in my reverie as I brought myself to a soft, shuddering orgasm.

Chapter Three

I was responsible for closing the map shop this evening.  Richard, the owner, was out of town for a few days on another map-sleuthing adventure.  Tourist season was settling to a lull, and while the shop normally closed at seven, we sometimes kept it open as long as tourists kept stopping in to browse.  We were featuring a ten-euro reprint of a 19th century Parisian map.  Sales were moderately brisk.

At eight, I decided to turn over the closed sign, even though the boulevard still bustled with tourists snapping shots of Nôtre Dame, which loomed against the purple and gray night sky just across the river.  Tourists passed by, browsing the nearby shops for scarves, keyrings and baby bibs that all touted Paris bedazzled in rhinestones. 

One of these days one of those glittery tee shirts would be mine.  I did like anything that sparkled.  I still considered myself more a tourist than a resident. 

But I did enjoy working at the shop, and adored my apartment, so I really should start thinking more in terms of resident.  And now there was Monsieur Sexy.  We'd known each other almost three weeks.  But the notion that we could create something more permanent hit me like a burst of confetti.  I wanted to do it.  I was capable of doing it.

I was rushing into this happily ever after too fast.

"Slow down," I warned, as I wandered into the back room.  "You don't want to marry the prince and get stuck in the castle cleaning toilets, do you?"

Right.  Slow and easy was fine with me.  For now.

Actually, since crossing the ocean I had become a bit of a short-term dater.  A month or two had become my relationship max.  Enough time to have some fun, some great sex, and learn a little about the guy, but not long enough to commit.  And that worked swell for me.  I had no plans to start thinking marriage and babies until after I'd passed the big 3-0.

In the back room, the map Richard had found on a previous expedition lay upon a wooden drafting table covered with linen to protect it.  He believed it was an original map drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.  And I was inclined to agree, having noted that the knotwork monogram in the key legend was exactly like another Da Vinci monogram featured in one of his published notebooks. 

It was fun to imagine it could be something so valuable.  And if it was, I was surprised Richard had left it here, lying out in the open.  If I had been distracted out in the shop, any customer could have slipped into this small office and taken off with the map.  Not that I ever lost track of a customer.  The shop was small.  Four people filled it. 

Now, as I closed the safe and twisted the dial, I gently glided my fingers over the linen and recalled Richard telling me how a person never truly knows something unless they engage all their senses in the discovery.

I had engaged a new sense with Monsieur Sexy.  And oh, what his voice did to me.  The French accent made some of his words shorter than usual, a little uncertain before he spoke another word, but always correct in his choice of English words.  He was smart.  But I already knew that.  The guy was some kind of IT genius.  Geeks had never attracted me.  But this geek wore his smarts with style.

Computer smarts were vastly different from street smarts, though.  And sensual smarts.  Just because a guy knew his way in and around a computer's hardware and software didn't mean he could do so with a woman.  My software required a delicate touch.  And when it did not, a firmer touch must be employed.  But to know when which touch was needed?  Definitely an art form.

He'd been doing all right thus far.  Not that he'd yet to navigate any of my software.  This no-touching business was admittedly weird.  But then again, I had asked for it, and I liked it. 

Yes, I liked the distance.

I sighed dramatically.  Who was I kidding?  No touching was for the birds.  I needed stimulation that came from the surprise of a man's touch.

Flicking off the office lights, I walked through the shop, and once outside, locked the front door.  I wasn't on the schedule for another three days.  That was fine.  I had enough research work at home to keep me busy for months.

Deciding against walking home, even though the night was bright and many tourists strolled along the river boulevard, I headed down the sidewalk and turned at the corner where a café sided in brown with gold embellishments mastered the corner.  Set back in the intersection was a massive pink granite fountain that depicted St. Michael stabbing a downed dragon.  Parisians were all about glorifying the macabre.

The Métro stop was tucked amidst the sidewalk café tables.  Walking beneath the Art Nouveau-styled sign, I skipped down the steps, slashed my Navigo card, and hopped a train to the seventh where I lived.

Living only five blocks from the Eiffel Tower should be every girl's dream.  Am I right?  It was all fun and games until you had to battle the crowds in the Métro tunnels, and then the masses that queued up around the Iron Lady and stretched out for blocks in quest of historical sites and photo-ops.

My building sat at the edge of all of that madness.  It was nestled in a quiet vee.  That was how I'd met Monsieur Sexy.  Our bedroom windows were positioned across from one another.  And when the lights were on in our respective rooms we could see everything.

Now that the romance—and yes, I did consider this a romance—had graduated to the computer screen, I hoped to get to know him a lot better.  Get inside of his brain and pick about.  I'd always thought the way to learn a man was through the mental rather than the physical. 

I entered my building, nodded to the concierge, and skipped up to the third floor.  I never took the elevator.  I had a fear of it stopping and me being trapped inside the two-person-only suspended coffin. 

There were two apartments on the third floor.  I'd met my neighbors last year, and hadn't seen them since.  A young couple with accents I had assessed as Irish.  I suspected that they traveled a lot because they were rarely home.