She continued to stare, her bright eyes shifting back and forth between mine. Her relaxed posture suddenly turned tense, the comfortable intimacy we’d just shared shattered by my interrogation. “Why don’t you just ask what you really want to know.”
“I already did.”
Her confidence disappeared the moment she spoke. Her eyes dropped down to her food, and she grabbed her salad wrap once more. With her eyes on anything but me, she ate her lunch. “Only once.”
She was ready for me when I walked in.
Her pajamas were replaced by lingerie. Black. Lacy. Crotchless.
On top of her, I sank deep inside and felt how ready she was. She’d been thinking about me long before I walked in the door, daydreaming about this moment with her eyes closed and her fingers between her legs.
She gasped when she felt me, her nails deep in my back, her ankles hooked around my torso.
With my lips to her ear, I thrust inside the wettest pussy I’d ever fucked. “You really did miss me.”
She squeezed me tighter in response. Her fingers slid up the back of my neck and into my short hair. She writhed underneath me, rocking her hips back into me as we moved together across the bed. With heated breaths and sexy moans, she made me forget all the bullshit. “Cauldron…” Her whispers were deeper than before, almost painful, as if she didn’t just want me but needed me.
It didn’t take much to bring her to the edge; she was so hot before I even walked into the room. I felt her explode around me, felt the strength of her tight pussy as I pounded her into the mattress.
“Yes…”
Watching her get off got me off. I’d never cared much about the woman’s pleasure, but hers really made me hot. The way she was so desperate and unafraid to show it. Maybe this was all just an act to earn her keep, but I suspected it wasn’t. It was sincere. Every moan. Every thrust. Every tear.
It was real.
TWENTY-ONE
CAMILLE
I’d been writing letters my whole life.
Letters I never sent.
Letters that were only meant to be written but never read.
It helped me release all the things I could never say. Helped me express my remorse or my rage. Helped me feel something as deeply as I possibly could so it would pass and I could move on.
So I wrote one now.
In my scribbled handwriting, I wrote a simple paragraph, read it back, and then ripped it out of the notebook before I crumpled it in my closed fist. Permanently wrinkled and resembling trash, I threw it in the wastebasket in my bathroom and forgot all about it the second I was done.
A knock sounded on the door before Hugo stepped inside. “Mr. Beaufort wishes for you to join him for dinner.”
I shut the notebook and left it on the couch. “Downstairs?”
“No. You’ll be dining at Mr. Beaufort’s favorite restaurant in the village.”
That meant there would be other people there, probably people interested in his diamonds. “I’ll be down in a second.”
He nodded before he left the room.
Hugo wasn’t sunshine and rainbows when he interacted with me, but he wasn’t rude anymore. It was a major improvement. I grabbed a black dress out of my closet and slipped on some heels before I went downstairs.
Cauldron sat at his desk in his study, his eyebrows furrowed as he read the screen of his laptop. He was in a dress shirt and dark jeans, looking as handsome as ever. He was so good-looking he could have all those beautiful women on his yacht for free. He finished typing before his eyes flicked up to meet mine.
I usually felt like the jewel in the room, felt endless stares directed my way, but next to him, I felt ordinary.
His look suggested he didn’t feel the same way. He shut the laptop and approached me near the doors. One arm moved around my waist, and he pulled me in for a kiss, his hand inching for my ass until he had a big handful. He squeezed it before he ended the kiss and headed to the door.
I remained behind, my lips on fire and my knees weak. He’d never done that before, kissed me just because he wanted to, not in the heat of sex. When he’d first kissed me, that was a shock, but this was an even bigger one.
He opened the door and turned back to me, his eyebrows furrowed by the holdup.
I snapped out of it and walked with him out the door.
Instead of a blacked-out SUV waiting for us, it was a sports car. Cauldron opened the passenger door for me before he got behind the wheel and drove away. It was clearly one of his toys because he took off like a spaceship and put the engine to the test. He drove fast down the winding roads, and if it were anyone else, I’d ask them to slow down. Not because I was scared of him, but because I trusted he knew what he was doing.