Chérie, I see everything.
She waited for my response, and the longer it didn’t come, the more her eyes sank. “You can trust me—”
“I don’t trust anybody.” Like razor blades, the words left my mouth and sliced through the air. “It has nothing to do with you. How many times do I have to say it?”
Her eyes winced, like I’d just cut her deeply. “You said the safest place in the world is with you. How am I supposed to feel safe if I’m down the hall in a freezing cold bed—”
“Then I’ll fuck you there. Problem solved.”
She winced again.
My anger was inconsolable at this point. When I gave her a little string, she wanted the entire rope. She tugged and tugged, having an entitlement she never earned. “You ask me for more when all I should be getting is your gratitude. You should be on your fucking knees thanking me for the sacrifice I made for you.” I couldn’t keep my voice down like usual. It was one of the rare times when I actually yelled right in her face, when my ferocity hit her shores like a goddamn hurricane. “You have no idea what it will cost me. I woke up today wishing I could take it all back, but I’m a man of my word, so I won’t break my promise to you.”
She breathed hard as she absorbed the wind and the hail, eventually dropping her gaze entirely because the intimacy between our eyes was just too much. Bumps formed on her skin like she was cold, and she absent-mindedly crossed her arms over her chest to protect herself from my wrath.
I was used to yelling at people—but not her. There was no regret, only more anger because she’d forced me to do what I’d rather avoid. My obsession with this woman was obvious to everyone, including her, but I wasn’t a fucking pushover. I wouldn’t give in to every demand she asked for, not when I already gave her the world.
She didn’t rise and depart my office. She remained in the same position, just breathing.
I leaned back into the couch and curled my fingers into a fist, my elbow propping on the back of the couch with my hand on the back of my neck. My other arm was stretched across the back of the couch. I rubbed the back of my neck and the bottom of my hairline, my fingers running through the short strands. I waited for her to storm off and not speak to me for several days.
“You’re right.”
My fingers stilled at her admission.
She smoothed out her dress then got to her feet. When she approached me, she hiked up her dress before she lowered herself right between my knees.
I stared at her. Breathless. Still. Focused.
Her palms moved up my sweatpants to the band before her fingers hooked inside the fabric of my boxers. Then she dragged them both down, assisted when I lifted my hips to get the clothes off my ass, and she pushed everything to my ankles on the floor. “I should be thanking you.” She craned her neck forward and started at my balls, pressing gentle kisses there.
The surprise waned, and my hand fisted her hair, keeping it from her face as I guided her onto my length and pushed her down, getting my dick in her throat, moaning when I felt that tongue. “Yes, chérie.” I closed my eyes briefly when I felt her warm mouth, when I listened to her make a slight choking sound. My hand gripped her neck, and I forced her down over and over, making her take that dick harder than her pussy did. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she gasped, but I guided her at the aggressive pace I demanded, and she didn’t resist. “Thank me good and hard.”
The catacombs were once a national landmark to the French. Tourists could pay a fee to explore the underground tunnels that stretched for miles and miles, admire the skulls in the walls, the underground city of the dead.
Until the Chasseurs bought it.
I wasn’t the only man acquainted with the political aristocrats of this country. Paris was known as the city of love, the Eiffel Tower a symbol of light and heart, the bakeries selling chocolate croissants that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere.
Little did people know that monsters lived in the shadows.
That it was one of the most corrupt cities in the world.
I descended through the tunnels until I came face-to-face with Bartholomew in the great hall, an enormous cavern with an ancient city in the rear. The Chasseurs were there, drinking at their tables, entertained by the French whores that were paid to pay a visit.
Bartholomew was on the throne, and his eyes were instantly on me when I entered, as if he expected me the moment I approached his territory, his spies everywhere. His chin was propped on his closed knuckles, and with a bored look, he watched me approach.