A few minutes later I notice that she’s put her head down on my shoulder and closed her eyes. “Sleepy?”
“Mm.”
I stand up and carry her to her room. Once there I tuck her beneath the blankets and see she has Christine to cuddle.
“'Night, Frederic,” she whispers as I turn out the light, her voice heavy with sleep and relaxation. That’s how a woman should sound after coming, not choked up with tears.
“Bonne nuit, minette.”
I head off to take a shower but I can’t get her smile out of my head, or the way she felt, sleepy and satisfied in my arms. I haven’t dated much since Marion and I split up ten months ago and I’ve missed being able to do that for someone.
I close the bathroom door behind me but don’t reach immediately for the taps. Remembering Evie half-naked and spread before me makes my arousal rear up afresh. Naïve though she is, Evie has dark tastes. Tastes that intrigue me, and it’s several long minutes before I realize I’ve been staring unseeing at the wall while I picture my hands in leather gloves, gripping her wrists in one hand while the other squeezes her, strokes her. She’d like that. What else would she enjoy?
The idea of teasing secrets out of her, of testing her limits, makes my pulse quicken. Evangeline Bell, you are too pleasing. What would it be like to have you as my sub?
Chapter Eight
Evie
I waken and stretch my arms over my head, toes curling. Frederic’s intense words from the night before echo in my head. He wants to be thorough with you, giving you your reward for making this so good for him, though to remind you who’s in charge he takes off his belt and loops it around your neck, holding it tightly as he fucks you. It was this image that tipped me over the edge. This brutal assaulter, whom I’d pictured automatically as Frederic from the moment my eyes had closed, relishing my sordid response to him.
Until last night I never told anyone the dark things I fantasize about, thinking them shameful and strange the moment my orgasm haze passed off. But I wanted to tell Frederic, partly because he’s so comfortable with me ferreting about in his private life, and partly because of his worldliness and ease. Tears don’t shock him. My confession that he brought my nascent desires to a head all those years ago didn’t scandalize him.
It’s not just that, though. It’s because I’m noticing more and more how do
wnright sexy he is. I felt the thrum of my attraction to him all day long as we walked about Paris, my eyes drawn to his broad shoulders, his large tanned hands, his mouth when I thought he wasn’t looking. I know it’s stupid to be attracted to Frederic. He moves in exalted circles and doubtlessly knows or could know any number of beautiful women and is, to boot, eighteen years older than me.
But there’s something about him that I crave. That’s what he was hinting at, wasn’t he, when he said I was missing out on something I need? Something darker. Something fierce. If there’s anything I know about Frederic it’s that he has embodied dark, ferocious men all his professional life. The flint in his eyes as he’d snapped, That’s not acceptable, Evie and then moved in close to take hold of me, discipline me. I don’t know if that was an act or not, but it makes my stomach swoop to think about. I like the careful way he listens to me, the questions he asks. It was the most intimate thing I’ve ever done—more intimate than sex—when I stripped half-naked and touched myself in front of him. I wonder, as I watch the dappled morning light sway on the ceiling, did he enjoy it, too? Did he wake this morning, wrap his hand around his thickened cock and think of me, my fingers moving on my clit, climaxing to the fantasy he’d spun so expertly for me?
I hope he did. I want him to think of me that way. Maybe I’m not famous or exotic or beautiful, but he could find me attractive. Couldn’t he? I’m tired of being good, sensible Evie. Look where that got me with Adam. I want to be daring Evie with Frederic, and I want him to keep pushing me into unexplored places because I know I haven’t reached my limits yet.
But there’s still a good chance that he’ll never touch me again. Because of the crying.
I throw the sheets off with a groan, pad out to the kitchen and eat fruit over the sink with my bare hands, tearing plump wedges off a pink grapefruit and gulping them down, juice dripping over my chin. I want Frederic to touch me like he described in that fantasy. I want a man who understands the allure of something a little more brutal.
I want Frederic.
When I finish my breakfast and have washed my sticky face and hands I turn to my laptop, because while I’m alive with desire, I also need to work. There are still several people on Frederic’s list for me to interview and I set up the appointments. One of them is with Marion Prussard, his former partner. I feel ambivalent about calling her. Certainly she’ll have things to say that are important to the book, but I don’t know if I want to hear them, as it feels like prying. I’m curious about her, and it’s not only professional curiosity.
When I do call I’m relieved to find she’s been expecting to hear from me, so I don’t need to fumble through an explanation about why I want to talk to her. All the same, I show up on her doorstep armed with a list of questions and my recording app, feeling nervous. I don’t want to feel personally curious about her and Frederic’s relationship, but I am. As I wait for her to answer the doorbell I’m struck by an image of myself asking, So I’m trying to get your ex into bed, any tips? and I have to swallow down a hysterical giggle as she opens the door.
Madame Prussard is an elegant brunette in her midthirties with plump, high cheekbones and a beautiful smile. She’s friendly and welcoming to me, and we sit in the glassed-in sitting room with a view onto a superb summer garden. Over a tisane, which I find is peppermint tea, she answers my questions with ease and good humor and tells me anecdotes about how she and Frederic met and what she thinks of his career.
As we approach the time of the end of their relationship I notice she pauses before answering each question, as if weighing her words. “Frederic is a good man,” she says haltingly, “but his need to be infallible was exhausting.”
I’m puzzled by this. I’ve heard from others that his perfectionism was irritating, but that was when he was younger, surely, before he met Marion. Did he transfer his need for perfection from his career to his relationship? “In what way did he need to be infallible?”
“Fred doesn’t like people to see him as weak, and he won’t reach out for help. He’s proud.”
I think about Frederic walking the streets of Paris with me and confessing that he’s worried about being good in the show. That was showing weakness, wasn’t it? It’s not that I don’t believe Marion, but what she’s said doesn’t fit with the man I’m getting to know. “Can you give me an example of that?”
She purses her lips and thinks for a moment. “Nothing springs to mind right now.”
That’s a lie, and it’s frustrating she won’t tell me an anecdote to go with her statement, as it will come off as unqualified without an example to back it up.
When I ask the inevitable what-caused-you-to-break-up question, she tucks her hair behind her ear and I notice an engagement ring sparkling on her finger. “I thought it was time for Fred to slow down. He...didn’t agree.”
I wait, giving her time to add to this.