B00CACT6TM EBOK (20 page)

And then he brought his mouth to her, suckling her straight through the cloth. She made a little screaming sound, her hands clutching in his hair, pulling it too hard. “Twenty-nine more seconds,” he said. And bit her with exquisite gentleness, as if he was tasting some tiny fragile chocolate. “Twenty-five.” He sucked her clitoris slowly again, through the cloth, elusive and thorough as if he wanted her to melt on his tongue. Which she did, whimpering, her hands writhing in his hair. “Twenty-two. Twenty-one. What’s your name?”

“Gabriel,” she moaned, bucking helplessly, held like iron.

“Oh, good, you’ve forgotten yours, too. Twenty. Ah, Jolie.” Her body was starting to shake uncontrollably. Her head fell back in the waves of pleasure. When they took her over, she could have drowned under them, drowned in the shower, for all she knew, but as the world came back to her, it was a world made of his body. He was holding her again, pulling off the wet boy shorts.

“I think that leaves five seconds for me,” he said roughly and thrust deep into her, once, and then again, and again, as if he couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t slow down. “
Ma belle
, you are so . . . so . . . ” Words seemed to fail him. He dragged himself out of her and found finally a word to describe her as he drove hard again: “Mine.”

His body pinned her to the wall in one deep, final thrust as he claimed her, her own body clutching helplessly around him.

Gabriel sprawled again. His bed was much bigger than hers, but he still took up most of it. She had woken lying on her side, curled toward the edge of it, her knees thrust past the side. An arm was snug over her waist, keeping her from falling. She twisted slowly, carefully toward him. As before, he slept so heavily she had the impression his body would leave its imprint on the bed forever.

She could hear the sound of his breathing, close and soft and intimate. The warmth and weight of his arm pressed her to the soft cotton sheets.

She had at least one idea of what to do with him in the morning. She curled up against him again, throwing her leg over his, and fell back asleep.

When she woke up again, Gabriel was still sleeping like the dead. His body hadn’t even moved. It must be close to noon, which made her mouth curve wryly. Was this what he had been so determined not to miss Monday mornings? Sleeping? Or had he just thought that with her around, he would skip what must be his weekly recuperation from his short nights?

She did that, too. Slept short nights all through the week—working or reading late, her quiet time, then up early because she loved the dawn hours—then recuperated in one slothful, indulgent morning.

But she finally couldn’t stay still any longer and slipped into the bathroom. Trying to comb her hair after her shower made her eyes water. Gabriel didn’t have any conditioner, and his hands had left her hair in a mass of tangles. She tucked a towel around herself and went to the door, comb in hand, to see if he needed the bathroom space while she tried to get those tangles out.

He was lying on his back now, arms crushing the pillow on either side of his head, one knee bent as he stared at the ceiling. God, what a beautiful body. Her gaze drifted over the six-pack abs, the faint tan that suggested he did some kind of beach sport sometimes on his days off, the paler line at his hips, around that intimate part of his body that never saw sun but was all exposed to her.

Heat ran through her, and pride. That he wanted
her.

It was enough to make a woman walk straight across the room and sit astride him to take possession again, if she could only get this blasted comb out of her hair.

His stomach muscles flinched. “
Putain.
What did I do to make you cry?” he asked, and she looked back at his face to find him watching her warily.

“You are so hot,” she said helplessly. “It’s probably a bad idea for me to keep telling you that.”

He rolled over onto his side and propped on one elbow, an eyebrow going up. “It feels good to me.”

“Yes, but you’re already so arrogant.”

“You keep saying that. And here I am, putting myself humbly at your service, trying to do everything you want me to do. No matter how unreasonable the demands.” He looked smug.

He was the most infuriating man in the world. She yanked extra hard on the comb to punish herself for being that damn obvious about what she wanted him to do to her.

“
Now
what did I say? Jolie, please. Don’t just stand there crying at me. Tell me what I did.”

“It’s my hair,” she said between her teeth. “I’m not crying over you, you, you—arrogant—
animal.
”

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side. “That is completely unfair, to walk into the shower in that little, instantly-transparent outfit like some porn film fantasy and then complain a man is an animal. I’m doing my damned best. Come here.” He tossed a pillow down between his spread feet.

She halted abruptly, giving that pillow and his spread legs a suspicious look.

His eyebrows went up, and then he grinned. “Honestly, you never think of
anything
but sex when I’m around. Are you sure you should be casting stones about me being an animal? I’m going to help you with your hair. And it’s cheating for you to give me ideas about the way
you
could occupy yourself while I do it.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He laughed out loud and pulled a prim sheet over his hips, tucking it firmly under his butt to hold it there while giving her a look like a stern nun. “Sit here.
With your back to me,
Jolie. Thank you.” She curled her knees under her, strongly tempted to nestle her wet head back against that pseudo-puritanical sheet. But before she could, one strong hand took control of her head, pressing her forehead against his thigh, and the other delicately worked the comb free.

She didn’t even feel a sting.

As the comb began to work through her hair, all the muscles in her back slowly undid, and she sank limp against his knee. He was so careful. This man who always seemed so big, so full of life he would break things just by the force of energy coming off him, and yet who every day, in the midst of his roaring, handled non-stop such exquisite, fragile, complex things. The man who went so fast toward what he wanted, and yet who took, every moment of his life, as long as he needed to get those delicate things just right, without breaking them.

She never felt a sting once. He used two hands for the more complicated snarls, but she could almost believe that even then, he never broke a single strand of hair.

By the time he finished, shifting her head to the other thigh when he needed to change sides, she was in a state of pure physical bliss, boneless.

“You know, for a beast . . . ” she murmured dreamily, caressing her cheek against his thigh.

He slid those strong hands under her arms and picked her up, drawing her down on the bed, her back against his chest. “I know how to be gentle, Jolie.” He closed his hand around hers and stretched her arm out, turning it to expose the most vulnerable flesh of her inner elbow and wrist. A little stream of air blew over that sensitive skin, as if he was blowing gold dust over something delicious. “Haven’t I ever shown you?”

He dusted her all over in gold, with his breath, with his barely skimming touch. He was in no hurry himself, having had quite a night, and he made her feel so special she actually cried a little.

He sipped the tears off her cheeks, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with that particular flavor.

Gabriel sat over warm, golden eggs, soft and fluffy and with just the right touch of butter and dollop of cream, a little blend of cheese, a sprinkling of sea salt. She was good in a kitchen. Not good like him. Just confident and content. It made him terrifyingly happy just to watch her, scared his stomach off somewhere out of his body to imagine breakfasts like this every lazy Monday and Tuesday morning, maybe with some little kids clinging onto their legs or clamoring for more.

Oh,
putain. Kids? Will you the fuck learn to sit on yourself
ever?!
How hurt do you want to get?

“Do you know you’re the first woman besides my mother who has ever offered to cook for me?”

She gave him a puzzled look. “You know, I’m quite a selfish person, but—”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am, really,” she said earnestly, as if she just had to confess herself.

It pissed him off. “Shut up, Jolie. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Selfish. Her.

Pouring out all her enthusiasm and sense of wonder on everything he did. Giving that body of hers—God, how she gave her body. Making him supper. And breakfast. Because she wanted to. Running back and forth between Paris and Sainte-Mère to please the demands of two insanely greedy men.

He looked down at his eggs. How the hell self-absorbed were all the other people in her life, to beat him? And leave her thinking
she
was the selfish one?

“Do you really eat this for breakfast in the U.S.?” he asked, to escape his own thoughts. “Eggs? I could get used to this.”
Putain.
Could he bite his tongue? Of course he could get used to it. That was his damn problem. He could get used to it so easily, and she could waltz on out and never even notice his world crashing down when its center disappeared.

It was her defense against self-absorbed people, maybe: her ability to leave them.

Or maybe her father lays such a weight on her life that she can’t carry anyone else, too, and he always wins.

Or maybe, just maybe, she clings to that idea of being able to dump someone the way a woman might cling to a life preserver going over the Niagara Falls, because it reassures her even though it’s not going to do a damn bit of good.
He wished
he
had a life preserver.

Jolie’s eyes flickered, and she gave him a searching look, then refocused on her work. Now she was adding some American pancakes to the mix, laughing, teasing him about getting used to an American breakfast—getting
used
to one—and every time she flipped the pancakes with a little expert jerk of the skillet, he felt as if it was his heart tumbling in freefall through the air.

He held his breath each time until her skillet dipped neatly under the whirling pancake and caught it. And then he let it out again, absurdly reassured by the little
smack
the pancake made hitting the pan. She was pretty good at catching spinning, freefalling things, wasn’t she? At least it wasn’t on the damn floor.

He couldn’t believe he was looking for positive signs in the fact that she could flip a pancake.

“I was going to say, I’m pretty selfish, but—”

“Will you
stop
saying that?
Merde.
”

“
But
it kind of sounds like the other women you’ve dated have been real pieces of work. Did they ever look at anything but themselves in the mirror? I mean, is that why you picked them up, because they were pretty and you love to pour yourself out for people, and they were happy to let you do that without ever giving anything back?” She smacked the skillet down too hard on the burner. “Without ever getting their heads out of their own assholes,” she muttered.

He stared at her, wondering suddenly if she had just been beamed down to him from some alien planet. Maybe he needed to check the Web to see what the real, human Jolie Manon was supposed to actually look like. “I
am
Gabriel Delange. It’s natural they would assume I would do all the cooking.” Had he been doing the same thing Matt was doing all this time? Dating women who couldn’t see him, who only wanted to be seen?

Shit
, how had he gotten lucky enough to meet
her
then? She saw him. She looked straight into him all the time and smiled at what she saw, too. Oh, God. This was so fucking scary.

“Really? Natural it would never occur to them that you might be
tired
when you get off after thirteen hours of merciless physical activity? Or
hungry
, as in, you know, that kind of thing
burns calories
?”

Why, she was pissed off, too, he realized, wonderingly. At least as pissed off as he got, when she said she was selfish.

“Why do you really get dumped, Gabriel? Tell the truth. Some woman gets all bitchy because you can’t take her out for drinks because you have the
President of France
helicoptering in to dine here with half the leaders of the free world, and so you have to work that night
at your dream
, the thing you’ve
dedicated your life to.
And she just wants you to drop that. Because, you know, she can’t figure out how to read a damn book by herself and maybe talk some of her friends into doing things Monday nights with you guys instead.”

Gabriel was gaping at her. Wow. She had picked up a lot more kitchen language than one would think through the glass walls of her father’s office. That was quite some attitude she had going there, too. “I, uh—”

“Eat your pancakes,” she said, sliding a golden one out of the pan onto his plate. “And we need some maple syrup in this apartment. I’ll pick some up at the Grande Épicérie when I’m in Paris.”

As in . . . supply his kitchen with things she might need on a long-term basis?

At least the other women he had dated had only left behind a few hair products. If he had to discover bottles of maple syrup in his cabinets months after she had dumped him and remember this morning, he didn’t know how he was going to survive it.

She slid him a jar of rosemary honey in place of the maple syrup and sat down across from him with her own pancake, just one and a little helping of eggs compared to his starving-man’s plateful of them. Her eyes met his across their plates, bright and warm, and he gave a little sigh of despair. Maybe the aliens had sent her to utterly destroy him.

“Speaking of Monday night, I talked to Léa,” he told her. “She said they would love to come over.”

Jolie looked pleased for just a second, before a sudden realization hit her, and she brought her hand to her mouth, eyes rounding. “Oh, no. I’m going to be cooking dinner for Daniel Laurier?”