The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin (58 page)

"Let's do champagne."

"I'll grab us a couple.  You want to find a table?"

"I think I'm going to dance.  I love this song!"

And she slipped away toward the dance floor, leaving me to marvel at her ever-changing facade.  The fun, spontaneous vixen turned and winked and waved at me.  And earlier today I'd held the sex-starved slut against the bathroom wall on the train.  And yet, yesterday we'd held hands and I'd consoled her over her mother's death. 

"
Monsieur, voulez-vous danser
?"

I turned to gaze into a gorgeous set of green eyes surrounded by lush black lashes.  My eyes dropped to the unavoidable breasts that plunged up from a tight black leather corset.  Glossy red lips curled into a teasing smile.  Mercy.

"Champagne," I uttered, dumbly nodding toward the bar.  Though I felt compelled to add, "
Très jolie, mademoiselle
."  I winked in approval and then pushed through the crowd toward the bar.  I would never stop admiring the female form.  And tits?  Loved them.  But my heart belonged to Hollie.

I laid down my black credit card on the flashing blue neon bar.  Let the celebrating begin.

Though certainly I did recall Hollie telling me not to let her drink too much.  I was a two-drink kind of guy.  I didn't like the man I became after drinks number four, five, and six.  Such excessive drinking should be reserved only for after biking stints with the guys while sitting around a bonfire.

Four goblets of champagne later—for each of us—I decided buying a bottle was more reasonable.  Hollie stood in my embrace as we danced to a slower tune, the dance floor flashing azure beneath our feet, and the crowd brushing and pushing against us.  Music bounced off the walls and jittered in my eardrums.  Some teeny-bopper singer who wore his pants down around his thighs and was famous for puking on stage.  The song was annoying. 

But Hollie and I were in our own world.  Nothing else mattered.

"You bought a bottle?" Hollie saw the waiter deliver the bottle to the table we'd staked out near the dance floor.  "You are such a...a lover boy."

She was drunk.  I neared inebriation, but I could hold my alcohol better than she could.  She had slipped into a melancholy, which I'd decided wouldn't do for an end of the year send-off. 

I led her to the table and instead of pouring another goblet, I tilted back a swallow straight from the bottle, then lifted it to toast the crowd, "
Salut
!"

"Let me have some more of that joy juice," Hollie slurred.  "Mmm..."

"We must do resolutions," I suddenly decided. 

Hollie's head tilted against my shoulder and she sought my crotch with her hand.  One squeeze was all it took to make me hard.  You bet I could get it up on a bender.

"I resolve..." she muttered, "to get you off tonight.  And tomorrow night.  And forever after that."

"I will do the same!" I announced loudly with another raise of the champagne bottle to toast the crowd.

The music had grown louder and it thumped in my brain as if a relentless Poe-inspired torture.  My heartbeat matched the techno pulse, and the muggy air seemed to hold me upright even as my shoulders swayed forward and back.  An unavoidable grin lifted my cheeks. 

Very well, I was feeling the alcohol, too. 

"We should fuck."  Hollie gripped my jaw and laughed when our gazes wobbled.  "Maybe not.  I think I'm feeling sick."

Ah hell.  Fresh air was in order.

"You were not going to let me get drunk," she admonished.  "Bad Frenchman. 
Très
naughty."

"You had two drinks."

"Two?  It was more like..."  She held up three fingers, eyes crossed, and she readjusted to add her other hand with—I wasn't sure how many fingers that was.  "Fingers?"  A silly grin curled her lips.  "I like it when you put your fingers in me, lover boy."

"I can do that right now.  Move closer.  Open your legs for me, woman."

"Wait.  Where's the lady's room?"

"You want to fuck here in the bar? 
Oui
!"

I tugged her out of the booth, but the hand I grabbed wasn't moving. Hollie jerked me to the edge of the dance floor before I could spy the bathroom.  I wobbled, but did a double step skip, landing with a jump and a splay of arms before my lover.

"Just me," Hollie stated with an admonishing jab of her finger to my chest.  "I need to puke."

Eloquence had gotten lost in that last goblet of champagne.  I pushed her toward the dance floor.  "That way."

***

I didn't puke.  But man, I'd needed an escape from the claustrophobic crowd.  And that music!  I was so over funky pop tunes overlaid with bass-heavy rap riffs.  I'd meandered, zigzagging like a pinball between dancing couples, to the ladies' room.  Only, the bathroom had been clouded with cigarette smoke, and I'm sure there had been a couple fucking in the far stall.  Hell, it could have been a threesome for the number of shoes I'd counted beneath the metal divider.

Jean-Louis had been waiting outside the bathroom door to whisk me outside and head for home.  Good call. 

The Métro car was packed.  And my head was spinning right round, baby, right round.  Like a record, baby...  Yikes!  The nightclub's techno beat still clanged about in my head and hips.  I didn't think I was standing still.  It's hard to tell when the people all around me were bobbling as if dancing in a club.  I clung to the steel pole as if to let go would send me hurtling into outer space where my head would implode from the loss of atmospheric pressure.

Actually, that might feel good right about now.  An implosion would relieve the dizzy spinning up in this crazy drunk chick's cranium.

I felt Jean-Louis's hand slide up my thigh and under my skirt.  I hoped it was his hand.  If the hand in question belonged to someone else... 

Oh, mercy, I did not feel good.  Check, please?

I shifted my hip backward, banging the man behind me, whom I hoped was my guy.  He smelled like my guy, only with a distinct tinge of whiskey.  We hadn't drank whiskey.  That I know of. 

Ugg.  Thinking about whiskey stirred my gut in an unpleasant roil.

"Not now," I muttered.  The hand glided between my legs from behind.  "Jean-Louis!"

He pressed his body against mine, resting his chin on my shoulder.  Just focusing long enough to make eye contact with him hurt my brain, or maybe I was too sensitive and not in the mood. 

"I must touch you," he pouted.  "I cannot stop."

"Not with everyone so close," I whispered, sure I was screaming. 

In fact, the guy immediately before me, clinging to another steel pole, eyed me lasciviously.  I shook my hips in an attempt to dissuade Jean-Louis's intent pursuits.  He only leaned in tighter, nuzzling his mouth against my neck.  His fingers tweaked at my pussy.

"You are so beautiful," he singsonged in a drunken melody so out of tune with my spinning head.  "Let's do it now."

"No!" 

The car rolled to a halt, and the doors opened.  I tore away from the handsy man and wobbled out onto the landing.  The chilled air brewed an awful mix of urine and body odor, and I gagged to keep down my stomach.  When I turned, I landed in Jean-Louis's arms.  I pushed him away and staggered toward the exit stairway.  "Not now!"

If the man wanted to get some, he'd have to wait until we returned to the privacy of my apartment.  What was it with him and his odd fetish for public sex?

"You jilt me!" he called in drunken English that was only sad now.  But no more sad than the two of us, so wasted we could barely walk a straight line.  "My lover she is fickle!"

He followed me up the stairs as younger couples dodged around us chattering and having a good time.  The kind of dancing and drinking we'd just imbibed should only be allowed for the under twenty set.  I was getting old.

Frigid air blasted me in the face and sent a welcome shiver from my neck out my sleeves and down to my toes.  It momentarily erased the need to toss my cookies.  I inhaled and turned left.  My apartment was five blocks away.  A virtual trek across the desert, vast barren landscapes, and the Arctic tundra all rolled into one.

I could do this. 

The world swirled and I wobbled.  A step plunged my Louboutins into slush and the cold water oozed under my arches.  Something hard crashed up against my side.  The something smelled like whiskey.  Groping hands embraced me and tweaked my nipple.  Jean-Louis pulled me in for a kiss. 

I didn't want this.  I couldn't do romance now.  And I most certainly did not want to have sex when my only goal was to hang my head over the toilet. 

"Why not?" he called as I staggered onward.  "Just right here.  I am wearing my long coat!"

Again I was captured, crushed against a limestone wall laced with winter-dried vines.  His hands deftly slipped up under my skirt, and my thighs, which were too weak to care about pleasure, quivered. 

"Jean-Louis, you are being a monster."  I shoved him away and he stumbled backward.

The man couldn't be as wasted as I, but his steps angled and he caught his back against a street pole.  If I ever drank champagne again, would somebody please murder me to put me out of my misery?

I stuck out my tongue at him.  He gestured at me dismissively and gave me that thrust of his nose that indicated I was being a poor sport, then walked on ahead, calling back that I was a poor lover.  Or maybe he said mean lover.  I was in no condition to interpret his French right now.

The asshole wanted to get it on?  Fuck this.  I'd show him how mean I could be. 

Pulling open my coat, I struggled with the wrap sash that secured the dress across my stomach.  Meanwhile, icy snow melted into my shoes and soaked my feet.  I shouldn't have worn the Louboutins.  Why hadn't I gone with the boots?  I slipped on some wet snow and flailed wildly.  The bastard didn't even turn around to notice I had almost gone down in a graceless sprawl.

A group of men strolled past me, and when they were clear, I tugged down the coat and let it drop.  The dress clung because the jersey was like that.  I struggled with the tie across my waist.  My fingers weren't doing what I needed them to do. 

Bed.  I needed bed. 

After I puked.

But foremost?  I needed the Frenchman to be kind to this drunken sot whose head spun so wildly I wanted to wrap myself about the nearest tree trunk and cling until the storm had passed.

Peeling open the dress, I called out to him, "You want this, Monsieur Eiffel?"

Jean-Louis swung around.  "What are you doing?"

The chill air tightened my bare nipples.  I immediately regretted my hasty decision to show him who was boss.  Who was I kidding?  I felt the bile rise in my throat.  Hoots and a whistle from behind me riddled a sharp heat up the back of my spine.

Jean-Louis rushed toward me.  Yet from behind, I felt a hand clutch my arm.

"I will take what you are offering," said a male voice that was not the Frenchman I knew and loved. 

The stranger jerked me around.  I staggered and landed my palms against his chest.  My bare breast brushed his coat sleeve.  Pushing to get away, I felt hot tears spill down my cheeks.

"Unhand her!"

"You don't want her?  She says I can have her!"

I managed to kick the man's shin.  He laughed, as did his cohorts, who gathered close by.  I couldn't see beyond the man's leering gaze, which was fixed to my chest.  I hadn't worn a bra or panties beneath the dress tonight.  Only thigh-high stockings.

Grabbed from behind, I was torn out of the stranger's grip and flung to the side.  Jean-Louis's fist soared past my face as I stumbled toward the ground and the heap that I saw was my coat.  I heard the crunch of fist connecting with nose.  The men watching all groaned suddenly, then cheered.

"
Elle est tout a fait fou
," Jean-Louis growled at the pack.  "
Allez
!  Leave her be. 
Foutre
!"

I knew what those words meant.  No, I didn't.  Maybe?  God, I was cold.  And pissed off.

"I am so tired of your French!" I shouted to the world, because I wanted everyone to hear me.  "I will never learn it.  I don't want to.  What kind of stupid language makes you learn if a word is a male or female before you can speak it?  It's stupid!  Fucking stupid!"

Clutched from behind and pulled upright, I felt the warmth of my coat hug against my back.  Jean-Louis struggled to pull the sleeve up my arm.  All I wanted to do was push him away.  Staggering, I slipped and fell completely into his sure grasp.  And so I relented, desiring warmth more than distance.

"You called me crazy in the head," I protested as he tugged me down the sidewalk.  "See!  I do know French! 
Canard
!"  The coat flapped open.  He stopped and tugged it closed then pulled the ties tightly.  "I am not crazy!"

"You are crazy drunk!"

"So are you.  Let me go!"

I struggled to release myself from his firm grasp, but couldn't win.  Performing a sort of run-walk alongside his swift pace, we quickly gained our neighborhood.  By the time we reached my building's front door, I couldn't move another inch.  Cold, tired, and feeling as if my next step would result in a technicolor yawn, I shivered.