The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin (45 page)

I'd intended to keep the distance while I had been on work assignment in Berlin, even when Hollie and I had graduated to cyber sex.  But to finally hear her voice, that confident giggle that always followed her climax, had struck me hard.  I had fallen in love.

Yes, I was in love.  You either enjoy spending time with a woman and being friends with her, or you only want the sex.  I wanted sex, friendship, and a relationship with Hollie.  But how to manage that with a wife still on the line?  Mon Dieu, the woman was insisting on taking half of everything I own.  We had been married two years.  The last year we'd been separated.  And as far as I knew, she'd only been faithful to me those first few months of the marriage.

Leaning over the sink and catching my elbows on the cool porcelain, I caught my face against my palms and rubbed my temples. 

Was I doing the right thing by encouraging this relationship with Hollie?  Was I right in the head?  What sane man hooked up while still married?  (Don't answer that.)  Maybe I should put this relationship off until the divorce papers were signed and I could focus completely on Hollie?

I glanced through the window and across the street to the gleaming reflections on my lover's windows.  She was like that.  Bright.  Always upbeat and gleaming.  Like something I needed to survive. 

Sunshine.

"Fuck."

Chapter
Five

I caught myself humming as I sorted through the dresses hung on the rack at the back wall of my bedroom.  It wasn't a song, just a happy melody. 

I had good reason to be happy.  I'd spent the last two days with Jean-Louis.  We had kissed.  We had touched.  We had fucked.  (Oh, baby, had we fucked.)  We had lost ourselves in one another. 

Yeah, it had been that good.  And it was going to stay that good.  Right?

I could dream.  I wasn't going to let my mind go there.  You know that there.  The there that warns that nothing good can ever last for too long.  The there that makes you question everything you do.  Is it for real, or is something wrong with him?

There was nothing wrong with him.  Sure, he wasn't perfect.  No one was.  Hell, he had a wife.  But they were in the process of divorcing.  And I was not going to hold that against him.

Instead, I'd hold my breasts against his bare, hot chest and breathe in the sable rum scent from his pores.  I'd hold my fingers against his skin.  I'd hold that nice handful of a cock that, even now, I could imagine pumping inside me, seeking my depths, filling me, owning me...

I groaned, catching a hand at the top bar of the clothes rack and leaning into the dresses.  Biting my lip, I closed my eyes and slid my hand between my thighs to press against my clit.  That pressure captured the hum of desire and intensified it.  I ached for the man. 

I don't think I've ever ached for a man before.  I liked it.  I wanted to feel this way all the time.  Whirling about in a constant horny state.  Ready to get off with a flick of his finger.  Alive. 

That's what the feeling was.  I felt alive and vital, and yeah, sexy.

I know, I know.  This was a new relationship.  First-time sex and kisses always giddied about in a girl's system and made her feel as if she was a princess floating above the clouds.  And then familiarity sank her into the clouds, and eventually the princess fell to earth.

That was fine by me.  If I landed on earth then I'd grab Monsieur Sexy's hand and lead him into my bedroom. 

So tonight I was dining at his place, and he was cooking.  That thrilled me, and made me curious.  He could not be kind, a great lover,
and
a good cook.  It didn't compute.  I'd have to be careful not to make a face if anything he made didn't taste right.  I could fake pleasure, if need be.

Here's to never having to fake it in bed.  I didn't believe in that.  If a girl faked an orgasm she only enabled the guy.  He thought she was having a great time?  He'd continue with his lackluster attention to her pussy, or whathaveyou.  Men only learned by being taught.  And faking it was the worst lesson.  I cared too much about my personal pleasure to sacrifice it in a misguided attempt to make the guy look good.

I ran my fingers down the black lace dress Jean-Louis had bought for me.  He'd instructed me to go into a ritzy shop on the Champs Elysees while I'd chatted with him on Skype via my cell phone, and had helped me select a dress.  There had been an incident with the sales girl.  Roxane.  She'd...touched me, and had almost kissed me.  And I had let it happen.  All while Jean-Louis had looked on.

The encounter had confused me, as well as bolstered my confidence.  I had no desire to have sex with a woman, but that moment in the dressing room when I had allowed myself to feel a woman's touch on my skin had been incredible.  And to know that my lover had been possessive enough to tell Roxane not to kiss me—because my lips were for him—had been an exquisite claiming.

He'd seen me in this dress, so I pulled out the red one.  It wasn't silk, but it looked like it.  It had been cheap.  I'd probably gotten it at Nordstrom Rack back home in Iowa.  But it was low cut with spaghetti straps, and the body-hugging shape of it stopped above my knees with a tickle of fringe.  Seriously, it had three-inch long fringe.  I loved the eclectic vibe.  Hippie chick meets sex bomb.

I slipped it over my head and pulled it down. There was no zipper.  No bra and no panties.  (Because he liked me that way.)  Just thinking that thought flushed my neck with a shivering blush. 

Flouncing over to stand before the floor mirror, I inspected the look.  My hair was loose and wavy thanks to the tousle it had received in the sheets the past days.  I'd wash it tomorrow morning. 

The Louboutins would be perfect with the dress, so I sat on the chair and strapped into the sexy.  Black leather with velvet ties about the ankles.  They were not slip in and slip out shoes.  These were designed to make a statement and to attract the eye.  The soles were the color of my dress, which made everything perfect. 

"I've got to stop thinking that word.  Perfect," I muttered.  "No one or nothing is perfect."

If I set myself up to believe in perfection, I would only be let down.  Instead, I'd settle for happiness.  It definitely rocked my world.

***

Hollie was refreshing.  A whispery summer breeze curling into my life.  A red-hot fringe tickling at my libido.  She ate heartily of the food I had prepared, and hadn't stopped complimenting me.  She was too good to be true.  What was wrong with her?

I finished the broiled sole and ran my finger through the lemon and capers sauce for one last taste.  Then I sat back on the kitchen chair and made a dessert out of watching my lover eat.

All women were prone to some bad habits.  As were we men.  But as a man, I have to say that women were more of a struggle to understand than we men.  And yet, Hollie read like an open book.  Bright and cheery, a bookish sort with a wild inside that she didn't mind letting out for me.  She was smart, but didn't flaunt that.  And she was sensual without (I suspected) realizing it. 

Like right now.  She leaned forward on an elbow and trailed her finger through the lemon sauce, licking the finger slowly afterward and smiling to herself, unaware that I observed.  Or maybe she was aware?

No, she was lost.  And I wanted her to stay lost so I could accidentally stumble upon her.

My eyes played at the red fringe dusting her thigh, then glided down the sleek length of her long leg.  She was shorter than I, but perhaps it was the shoes that made her legs look so long.  Those sexy black shoes with the ties caressing the ankles.  Women swooned for those red-soled objects of desire.  And put out a pretty penny to obtain them.

"Was that the first day you'd gotten those shoes?" I asked.  "That day I saw you putting them on in front of the window?"  I had watched her take them out from the box and, indeed, swoon over them as she slowly tried them on.

"Yes.  I'd raided my mad money for these pretties.  They spoke to me."

"They did?"  Her blue eyes widened as she nodded in confirmation.  My cock, which never truly relaxed when she was near, hardened.  Because that blue sparkle always got me.  Her eyes were true.  They would never lie to me.  "What did the shoes say to you, exactly?"

She pushed the plate away and dabbed her lips with the napkin.  It was a paper towel from a roll but I'd hadn't anything fancier.  Propping an arm on the back of the chair, with a tilt of her hips, she crossed her legs, displaying both with that accidental seduction I so loved to fall prey to.

"They said, 'Mademoiselle, you must ave zee shoes. 
Oui
?'"  She laughed, and sipped wine.  A nervous reaction, I sensed, to her often-sudden humor.  "Sorry," she added.  "I shouldn't attempt to sound like a French person.  But I was impersonating the shoes.  They sounded like that.  I swear to it."

"Is that so?" 

I slid off the chair and knelt before her legs, stroking down the soft length of her calf to the velvet ribbon that encircled her ankle.  Drawing her leg out and lifting her foot to eye level, I ventured my gaze along the sleek anklebone, down the exposed heel, and studied the slender curves and lines of her foot.

"My shoes have never spoken to me," I said.  I kissed the top of her foot and she cooed and wiggled on the chair.  The fringe danced and fell between her thighs, distracting me from the footwear.

Holding her by the ankle, I drew my nose up her leg and to the side of her knee where I caught the scent of vanilla.  It was her signature scent, and when warmed on her skin it was as if a hot treat from the oven was luring me to take a bite.

I licked the inside of her knee and felt tension tighten the muscles in her leg.  She was ticklish, and wanted to pull away, but was resisting the urge because...  Because Hollie loved it when I licked her.  Her sweet moan was all I needed to hear to know that.

"That was an amazing supper," she said on a breathy gasp.

I nuzzled my nose along her skin, moving slowly up the inside of her thigh.  Silk against my skin.  Vanilla silk.  I moved her leg to the side.  Her palm pressed against the edge of the table.

"Where did you learn to cook like that?"

Smiling, I paused and toyed with the fringe using my nose.  "I was either going to become a chef or an IT tech after my terminale year of school.  I took the bac and followed the money."  Instead of the passion, is what I didn't say.  I did love my job.  But cooking?  That was something else entirely.  It satisfied my creative side.

"What's the bac?"

"Baccalaureat.  It is an exam we take in order to go to university."

"Like the SATs in the States."

"Similar, I'm sure."

"So what's for dessert?" she managed as I blew at the fringe, aiming toward the apex of her thighs.  She wasn't wearing panties.  Good girl.

"You," I said plainly. 

"Mmm, I like the sound of that.  Ooh..."

I followed the vanilla musk scent of her to the shaved design decorating her mons.  I could smell her, moist and wanting, and I didn't have to hold her leg to the side anymore.  She slid it over my shoulder and I tilted up that shoulder to widen her for me. 

Kissing her thatch of soft hairs, I nuzzled into them.  I loved losing myself between a woman's legs.  Hollie's pussy most especially.  An intriguing place to explore.  I teased my tongue down the soft, hot slit between her labia, nudging her open.  My tongue entered her, and teased upward where her clitoris swelled up from the top of its shaft. 

I'd learned something about a woman's anatomy from an abandoned sex manual I'd found in the hotel last week while in Berlin.  The clitoris wasn't simply that little bud at the top of a woman's labia that I liked to tease with my tongue, but rather extended down like a wishbone along each side of the inner folds.  So I parted those folds and pressed my tongue firmly along and down one side to trace those clitoral legs I could not see, but knew—from Hollie's moan—that I had found.

Her bottom slid forward to the edge of the chair, and I pushed my face in close, my nose nuzzling her clit and my tongue lashing down the other side.  Firmly, as if licking the best and last juices from a delicious dessert, I consumed her.  I sucked at the tender labia, and then dashed my tongue inside her, mining her incredible heat.  Indulging in her salt and sweet and sex.  My goal: to make her come.

Grasping fingers slid over my scalp.  She tugged at my hair, and I answered her insistence with deep penetration from my tongue.  Her thighs shivered aside my cheeks.  The leg over my shoulder tensed, and then it relaxed.  My erection strained against my pants.  But I wouldn't unzip.  The denial of such pleasure as feeling her skin against my hard-on would be as exquisite as if I'd been naked.

Flicking quickly at her swollen bud, I teased it this way and that, licking around it and sucking gently and then more firmly.  Careful not to use my teeth, yet so eager to draw up her panting moans to a climax that I could now feel shudder within her hips and pelvis. 

"More?" I asked.

"Don't stop," she hastened out.  Her thighs squeezed against my head. 

"Maybe I am finished?"

"Oh...  Jean-Louis!"

I should not tease, but it was a way to extend the pleasure.  "Very well.  I cannot resist diving into you."