All Mixed Up Read online

  I refocused on corporal things. Easier stuff—like the glorious bulges of his biceps. “More,” I demanded while tucking inside his shirt and spreading my hand around one.

  His eyes glittered. His dimples deepened. “More what, ma douce?”

  “More…there.” I swiped my tongue along the seam of my lips. I was nervous as hell, and I had no idea why. No; wait. I had every idea why, and the knowing lights in his eyes confirmed that truth. Shit on a Left Bank brick. He was really going to make me say it. And damn it, I was really going to loathe and adore him for it. “There,” I finally rasped. “In my pussy. Whatever it takes, Lucien. Whatever you ask. Please.”

  He dipped a little nod, disguising his victory as respect. Bastard. “More…as in my cock?”

  I nodded too. Mine wasn’t so smooth or cocky. I was desperate now. No; beyond that. “Y-Yes, please. Oh, yes!”

  “Right here?” He shoved aside my panties, rubbing his fingers directly on me now. Pushing one me…there. Flaring every erotic light in my body to its fullest incandescence. “Right in your sweet, hot cunt? Is this where you want my cock?”

  Ohhh, dear freaking hell!

  I sighed. Writhed. Angled my hips, struggling to put more of him into contact with more of me. “Yes,” I grated. “I—I need it. I need you…inside me.”

  I need you everywhere.

  His lips parted and his eyes heated, as if the thought had been his to pluck from my brain. Finally, as if an On switch had flipped inside him too, he reached down. Opened his belt and slacks with gruff breaths and impatient speed. A low groan erupted from him. The heat of his hard, full penis slid against my right thigh. But he paused, sliding in no closer. As if he knew how wild it would make me, he simply let me feel his arousal…while intensifying mine.

  Rubbing me.

  Pinching me.

  Teasing me.

  Taunting me.

  As I sighed.

  Sobbed.

  Wanted.

  Needed.

  The boat’s motors churned. The vessel was turning, so the light beams slanted around our haven in new angles. The umber beams played across his high forehead, down his strong knife of a nose, and then over the edges of his stark, chiseled jaw. He kept up his rhythmic strokes, fanning my sexual flames higher…higher. From below, the mystical strains of the song filled the air, flowing around us. The lyrics talked of life and its ultimate fragility…

  Fragile.

  It was the perfect word to describe this blown-glass treasure of time. I’d never know a moment like this again. As awful as it was to admit it, I was glad I could grasp the realization. Once the torch of reality was turned back on, the glass would take another shape.

  Lucien recognized it too. I saw it in every depth of his glittering stare. Felt it in every sweep of his perfect touch. Breathed it in as he leaned over me, sharing his very air with me. The clove tones of his cologne blended with the citrus and jasmine of mine.

  And then it was confirmed, in the surety of my soul, as I watched the reverence with which he pulled a square packet from his pocket.

  Without breaking the seal of our stares, he ripped the foil open with his teeth. Rolled the latex over his throbbing length. He openly gritted his teeth while aligning his body to the apex of mine. He breathed out heavily, his face constricting in concentration, as he pushed in…testing the readiness of my trembling body. All around us, the music played on. Its magical strains spoke to us about many things. About all the things happening between us.

  Sweeping the world away.

  Touching the whole damn universe.

  Becoming one…with the power of just one word.

  “Lucien.”

  A word.

  And we were one.

  No more test thrusts. He impaled himself in one slide, his cock finding its way home at once. His flesh swelled, growing to stake its ultimate claim.

  Me.

  My breath rushed out in a sigh but became a high cry. The dull pain of his invasion quickly spiraled into more. So much more. I convulsed and quickened. Fluttered and flew. Raced toward the edge I’d been craving since that amazing night in the apartment. How had I ever thought one night with him would be enough?

  How would one month be enough?

  It will have to be. You will make it be.

  Wasn’t that the point of magic anyway? It was special…for an instant. Awestriking…for a flash.

  Temporary.

  An illusion.

  And I’d accept it. Embrace it. For this crystalline perfection of a moment, I’d believe it.

  And did.

  “Juliette. Tu me rends folle. Tu est tellement parfait. Je t’aime baise. Je t’aime baise.”

  “Yes,” I gasped back. “Fuck me, Lucien. Deeper. Plus profound. Plus fort. Je te veux tellement. Baiser-moi Baiser-moi!”

  I had no idea why I switched to French, but I didn’t question it. The words simply felt right. As right as him filling me over and over again, stretching me in every way, Conquering me with his pulsing, hot stalk until everything really was him, including the words that tumbled from my lips.

  And the kiss he gifted me with his.

  Mon dieu. My God.

  So good.

  So full.

  So invasive and wet and dominating and captivating. And now, absorbing every second of the rapturous scream that erupted from me.

  The ecstasy started in the center of my clit. Zinged through every inch of my womb. Rocketed past my cartwheeling belly and up my convulsing throat before shooting off my parted lips. And Lucien was there, taking it all. Feeling it all. Celebrating it all with his hot lunges and his rolling hips and his salty, gleaming skin. He used it all to ricochet the force back into me, making me come with a force I’d never known. My senses were lightning and thunder and rain. A swirl of silver then black then white behind my eyes. Beneath my clawing hands, Lucien’s shoulders coiled and strained. Against my biting teeth, his lips growled and gnashed. Inside my body, his cock swelled even more.

  His mouth slipped off of mine, only to keep my lips captive with a lusty litany in two languages.

  “Fuck. Juliette. Fuck.”

  “C’est si bon, ma belle.”

  “Wrap your legs up. Squeeze me, chéri. Squeeze me.”

  “Oui. Yes. Yesssss.”

  “Je jouis…oh, God…je jouis.”

  His ass and thighs constricted. Froze. Then released, punching his erection even deeper into me, before he groaned low and hard, consumed with his intense release.

  He rode me long and hard, not stopping for several minutes. He gave me his shudders while accepting mine in return.

  At last, he rolled his head down to take my mouth in several tender kisses. During one of those embraces, I felt extra warmth on his lips. My gaze bugged wide—but then even wider, as my shock took hold.

  “Shit.” I swiped the pad of his lower lip with my thumb. “I made you bleed!”

  With an expression I couldn’t decipher, Lucien gently grasped my hand. When he pulled it back, he regarded the bright red stain on my finger with steady intent…

  Before guiding my hand down the center of his sternum.

  Wordlessly, I stared at the crimson streak along his skin.

  With equal solemnity, he didn’t say a word either. Just continued dipping into a surreal stillness…an attentive intensity.

  “It is not the first slice you’ve gotten into me, mon reve.”

  17 Days and Counting

  “He did that?”

  “He said that?”

  Even on a Skype video call, I was pretty sure telling Leese and Gigi had been a poorly-executed case of TMI. Sometimes, even with them, too much information was just too much information.

  But in this case, I’d been damn near ready to spill my guts to the next stranger I sat next to on the Metro. Not that Lucien hadn’t done exactly the same thing, over the last seven days—resulting in me finally breaking down and pinging two-thirds of my girl posse under the thin pretense of d
iscussing their return trip to Paris.

  Thin was right.

  Inside a minute, they’d both seen through my façade.

  Inside another, they’d guessed I was actually calling about man issues. Neither had even questioned about which man.

  “Okay, wait. I need a review.” Leese, ever the pragmatic redhead, went I Love Genie with her forearms while leaning toward her laptop cam. “So after the Paris moment”—her nickname for Lucien and my’s first meet on Avanti’s opening night—“You decided Paget was worth some Parisian-style fun after all?”

  “You mean after he went all Prince Phillip on our Metro Sleeping Beauty?” Gigi giggled it out, but her mirth was short-lived. Leese knew how to dagger a moment with her accusing snort.

  “Okay, whoa,” she injected, glaring harder into her camera. “Pause button. ‘Metro Sleeping Beauty?’ What the hell, Darienne? What happ—oh, you do not with the eye roll at me, missie.”

  I was tempted to continue, because a riled-up Leese was truly a sight to behold. Instead, I went for a bratty tongue poke and a good-natured laugh. “Not a deliberate holdout, okay? I just wanted to get to the point.”

  But that was only half the truth too. I was holding back key details—though in my defense, an over-the-ocean Skype call didn’t feel like the best arena in which to tell them I’d signed a pay-by-the-date agreement with one of the world’s most notorious players. For the purposes of this exchange, only here and now, the description was modified for purposes of necessity. And sanity. Though I wasn’t exactly sure whose.

  Gigi cleared her throat, stepping into her diplomatic side with ease. I could’ve kissed her, even over the miles, for building on my point and prompting, “So that point being…”

  “A consent for casual, that spilled into something more once you hit the sack.”

  Leese’s jump in on the conclusion didn’t surprise me. Didn’t stop my answering grimace. Hearing the situation so plainly stated, especially by a person I respected so much, was bizarre. On one hand, I was flooded in relief—but the chaser was a burst of crazy discomfort.

  “Well, yeah. More or less,” I finally muttered. I focused tighter on both their faces. “Why isn’t this fazing either of you?”

  Gigi shrugged. “Should it?”

  I sat straighter, fighting off alarm. “Did Nico…say anything to you?” The man had stayed on in Paris, working nonstop with Milo on the opening month logistics kinks at Avanti. I hadn’t thought he had the time or urge to care about anything beyond that, though he and Lucien seemed good friends beyond their business relationship.

  Still, had Lucien mentioned anything about our “business arrangement,” I suspected I’d have been the recipient of a visit from the boss by now. Friends or not, Milo had been reveling in his papa bear role with me. Everyone thought it was his way of preparing to knock up Arista again, but whatever the incentive, I’d actually enjoyed it—until thinking of that shit mixed with his awareness of Lucien’s well-earned playboy title. There’s where things got messy. Okay, Lucien and I hadn’t been totally secretive, but as far as Milo was concerned, his friend had simply taken me out a few times under the pretense of showing me some city sights and talking business. God only knew what Milo would do if learning just how deep—and hard and wet and orgasmic—our “business” really went.

  “Of course not.” Gigi’s assurance came not a moment too soon, despite how she finished with a defined arch of her pretty chestnut brows. “But you and Lucien have been discreet, right?”

  I sent her a gentle smile. At once, yearned to add a grateful hug. She was stepping outside her comfort zone here, and I knew it. She didn’t like keeping secrets from Nico, but the implication here was already clear: I was asking for exactly that. The cherry on top of her discomfort sundae? Despite sharing Leese and Greer’s swoonage about Lucien’s devastating looks and beyond-bold swagger, she also had the clearest view about the man’s fuck-and-duck track record.

  “Of course,” I said at once, stamping my tone with the same assuring message. I knew what I’d gotten into here. Or more accurately, what I was refusing not to get into. Still, Gigi’s expression was stuck at skeptical. Damn, I wished Greer could be in on this call. She’d have some sassy Southern-ism to make us all laugh and forget this tension. But she was off at a romance novel convention, working hard for the authors she represented.

  “Of course,” I repeated, as if that would accomplish the same goal. “Seriously, Gi,” I added. “‘Discreet’ has practically been our code word—not that we’ve had need to use it over the last seven days.”

  A long pause went by. Even from thousands of miles away, I could see the gears cranking in both their heads.

  “So what does that mean?” Leese was the first to break the silence, stabbing it with her incisive tone. “Did he say exactly that to you?” she pressed. “Were those his exact words? Did he give the look with them?”

  Oh, gawd. I wanted to laugh but my sweet friend was beyond serious. The look. It was the sticker we’d tacked onto the stare Lucien seemed to save for me, also a hallmark of that first encounter at Avanti. The gaze to which I was deliriously addicted by now. The blue-black heavens that always seemed imbued with a million stars. The heart-stopping crinkles at their corners whenever he pulled me close and smiled down at me.

  The stare that showed me, with increasing frequency, exactly what I didn’t want to see.

  The farthest reaches of his heart. The powerful depths of his soul. The fierce intensity of his spirit. Everything, everything, that was so uniquely him…

  Calling to everything in me.

  Everything I thought I’d erased from myself.

  The grief over Dad’s abandonment. The fear that Mom wouldn’t survive her chemotherapy. The thrill of being on top of my career, joined with the loneliness of doing it alone.

  The loneliness.

  So deep, it was embedded into my marrow by now.

  Not seen by anyone so clearly before now.

  Before him.

  Because he’d exposed his loneliness too.

  I saw it all again this moment, as if the man suddenly appeared next to me. In my mind, we were lying together once more, in those quiet post-coital moments on the riverboat. Our naked limbs were still twined and our faces were just inches from each other. He’d brushed the hair back from my face—and in the same sweep, every barrier back from his emotions.

  And in that amazing moment, I’d seen it all.

  The wilderness of his insecurities. The uncertainty of his happiness. The voids inside that no bespoke suit, fast car, or Michelin five-star dinner would ever fulfill.

  Without thought, I’d lifted my hand to his face too. And then followed him into that wilderness. And then been terrified of what I found there.

  So much of me.

  And I’d shattered.

  The barriers, all down. The floodgates, unlocked.

  I’d come apart so hard in his arms, Lucien’s cock never had a chance to leave me. I’d cried for so long, he’d stiffened once more…and then used his body to put me back together again. His slow, deep rhythm lifted us to new crescendos of pleasure, new elevations of erotic light. We’d climaxed with our eyes fixed, our breaths mingled, our bodies meshed…our spirits joined.

  I shivered again now, just from the memory of it. The action did little to help my conflict but at least woke me up to Leese’s incessant echo of her question. I wrangled some mental matter together long enough to answer her.

  “Well…the look seems to have been retired.” Though I got it out, it wasn’t with any enthusiasm. What was a vexated mire if one couldn’t drag friends into the muck too? “Correction. The damn look has died. Long live the look.” I raised my wine glass toward the screen before finishing my Cabernet in one purposeful swig. Thank God for my lightweight metabolism and the rush of a good French red.

  “Well, crap.” Leese, who had seven more years of friendship with me than Gigi, was already breaking down my actions and words. “Hold o
n. Let me get a refill of my own swill here.”

  As she poured herself some more of her favorite canned margarita swill, Gigi wasted no time in leaning in to her own camera. “Oh, dear. What’s going on, chere?”

  “Uh-huh.” I wagged—swiveled?—a finger at her face. “Ohhh no, no, no. No with the chere.” I burped and then giggled. “On the other hand, why not with the chere?” I blinked lazily while searching for the Cabernet bottle. I’d left it around here somewhere… “’S not like I’m hearin’ it from anyone else around here.”

  “Details.” Leese was back and cutting to the chase with her demands.

  At first, I just shook my head. Though the motion turned the room into an E-ticket ride, it was surprisingly great for aligning my thoughts. “Whaddya want first? Deets on the multiple-orgasm demon from a week ago, or the cut to the priest who’s replaced him since?”

  “Demon,” Leese said.

  “Priest,” Gigi blurted in the same instant.

  “What the hell?” Leese flung. “Priest?”

  Gigi had her most coy shrug at the ready. “Clearly, your kinky mind needs to be expanded, girl.”

  “Damn.” Leese clapped. “Okay, priest it is.”

  “Oh, God.” I buried my face in my hands. “This conversation’ll resume as soon as you two finish your gutter river cruise.”

  Gigi replaced the shrug with a disappointed pout. “Ugh. No kinky rosary handcuff confessionals?”

  I lifted my head. The hazy reflection in my screen showed my face at its most morose. “Honey, I wish I could tell you a week’s worth of cheek kisses is better than binge watching public access, but…”

  “Oh, shit.” Leese facepalmed herself. “That bad?”

  Gigi slowly shook her head. The girl looked like I’d revealed the Seine had been drained and turned into a skateboard park. “Are you sure you’re talking about Lucien Paget? The Lucien Paget has literally not tried anything beyond cheek pecks? For a week?”