Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
She moved into the corner and immediately widened her thighs for me to crawl between them.
I pinned her in place then folded her up like she could bend in any way I wished. Then I shoved myself inside her, moaning when I was returned to paradise, and I fucked her like everything that had just happened was foreplay.
The couch was way too small for me, so we ended up in her bed. Not on different sides of the bed, but together on one pillow, her leg hitched over my hip, a bottle of wine on her nightstand because we didn’t bother drinking from a glass.
Her face was close to mine, and sometimes she would dig her fingers into my hair and feel the short strands. Other times, she would trace my jawline with a finger. Touch one of the veins in my neck. She seemed as absorbed in me as I was in her.
I cupped the back of her thigh underneath the sheet as her knee bent over my hip. I’d fucked all kinds of women, short, tall, stacked, whatever. But she was more petite than usual. She was small but still had the tits and hips of a woman. I was an ass man, and while she had a gorgeous derriere, her tits were some of the nicest I’d ever seen.
Sometimes her eyes would drift from mine, but they would always come back. It was late, after midnight, but she was wide awake, like she didn’t want the evening to end. My phone had been left in my jeans on the living room floor. Whenever I checked it, I would probably find dozens of messages waiting for me to resolve.
The guys might even think I was dead.
“Can I ask you something?” she said quietly.
“Anything.” Jesus, who the fuck am I?
“Do you normally sleep with women bareback?” Her hand came to rest on my arm, feeling the separation between my bicep and my deltoid.
“No.”
She gave no visible reaction, but I could somehow sense a jolt of surprise.
“I always wear something,” I said. “You?”
Her fingers started to explore my arm again. “Me too.”
So both of us had turned into irresponsible idiots at the sight of each other.
“I guess that’s okay…as long as you don’t sleep with other people.”
Completely unhinged from the man I was just a few weeks ago, I blurted, “I haven’t been with anyone else but you since we met. And I don’t want to be with anyone else but you.” I’d never done this before, never pursued a single woman and excluded everyone else from the running, and I felt like a goddamn idiot every time I spoke.
But she smiled like what I said wasn’t stupid at all. Like she felt exactly the same way even though she didn’t say a word. She planted her palm on my chest and kissed me softly, kissed me with restrained passion, slowly curling up closer to me, her tits against my chest. “Are you real, Luca Fournier?”
I watched the guys load the bags into the back of the truck. When they were done, it was locked from the inside as well as the outside. The truck was both bulletproof and fireproof. No one was getting inside before it arrived at their destination. It looked like a regular black van to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
I locked the back then knocked my fist against the back door.
The garage doors opened, and the van pulled onto the street before the door shut again. It was on its way to the Old Republic Bank—not a real bank at all, at least not to the public. The place where the tariffs were dropped off to be processed accordingly by the government.
“We’re going to Maxine’s.” Carvel came up to my side, a cigar already in his mouth after a long night. He turned away and headed toward the main doors, and when he realized I wasn’t with him, he turned back to me, an eyebrow cocked. “What’s the holdup?”
Maxine’s was a brothel in Paris. A subtle, but not so subtle, place that was frequented by men like us. “I’ve got shit to do, Carvel.”
He came back to me. “What shit? Tariffs are paid for the month. We’re paid for the month.”
“You need me to tell you where to put it or what?” I snapped.
“I just don’t understand why you don’t want to go.”
“And I don’t understand why I need to give you an answer.”
The confusion spread across his face like a bad infection, but then it quickly disappeared. “Ah…Aliénor.”
I wouldn’t deny it, but I wouldn’t talk about it either.
“So, this is pretty serious, huh?”
I turned my back on him and grabbed my laptop from the desk before I shoved it into my bag.
“It’s okay to be seeing someone, Luca.”
“Never said it wasn’t.”
“Then why don’t you just say that.”