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Ding.
The elevator swept open with an old-fashioned chime, a welcoming chocolate box of Art Deco grandeur – burnished oak lined with blacker-than-black lacquer, cushion-cut mirrors that seemed to reach impossibly high.
Somehow his hand was still in hers, and she led him inside, hit the button for her floor.
For some reason she felt self-conscious for still holding his hand, and so she dropped it, feeling awkward for having done so, and even more so for having taken it in the first place.
The doors slid shut and the elevator began to move.
She put her back to wall and faced him.
Neither said a thing.
He’s different, she thought – but she couldn’t say how. Why couldn’t she place it? He looked the same – tall and sinewy and graceful and impossibly beautiful – that hadn’t changed. He was standing there only a couple of feet away in his tailored suit and his tie, with his slightly unruly auburn hair and his five o’clock shadow, exactly as he’d been in the photos Kitty had taken of him, as he’d been in so many of the memories of him she’d horded.
But he was different.
And she couldn’t say how.
And it seemed so damn important, because there was so much she’d missed, so much she didn’t know, so much she couldn’t touch.
She knew, of course, where their future lay, at least for tonight. They both knew, without having to say a thing to one another, and in a way it was the only thing that mattered right now, because it was the only thing either of them could guarantee one another; it was the only thing that wasn’t complicated and, ironically, didn’t depend on anything except that they were both here, physically. What mattered, she tried to tell herself, was that somehow he’d known it was her, and he hadn’t run. He was still here.
She realised they were still holding one another’s gaze; and there was that smile on his lips, barely-there, dimpling the corner of his mouth. That, at least, hadn’t changed.
Her stomach lurched with this horrible, grinding need. Months of celibate denial had been honed by the anticipation of this moment, a moment she had begun to fear would never arrive. It had driven her lonely search for him, tormented her with memories of their time together, stoked up an irrational fear of rejection that, even now, still hadn’t completely gone.
She was a quivering, nervous ball of untapped frustration and lust, desire and apprehension. Could he see it? Did he know what he did to the woman they once used to call Weapon Zero, the Rogue?
Ding.
The elevator came to a smooth halt on the topmost floor, the doors sliding open with that same, soft chime. She could barely break eye contact with him, and neither could he… but somehow she did so first, turning aside with a tentative though meaningful smile in his direction as she stepped out into the corridor.
As always his footsteps were light enough so as to be almost imperceptible; but after a moment, she sensed him follow.
It was only a short walk to her room, and she stopped at the door, trembling – trembling! – as she took out the keycard and passed it over the control panel. The door unlatched softly, and she opened it up, stepped inside.
She felt him right behind her, and all she could think was that it still bothered her that she couldn’t place the change in him.
There had been moments, back down in the gallery, waiting for him to make his move, that she’d been flustered, embarrassed, about the way she’d done up this room – the soft dim setting of the light; the log fire; the sumptuous décor. Now the obviousness of her intentions grated on her, making her 100% certain he would see through it and laugh.
God, there were so many men she’d seduced in the past, in far more tawdry and blatant ways than this but…
…But never one like him, Anna... never one like him…
She heard him shut the door with a gentle click, felt him step in right behind her. For a few painful seconds there was nothing but the drumming of her own heartbeat, this irrational sense of her own inadequacy, and then… … And then his hand was at the nape of her neck, cupping the back of her head, warm and firm and tender, stripping away all her doubts…
She turned to him and…
...And they were kissing.
They were kissing with all the passion and hunger they’d been denied the past 14 months and more, kissing with a kind of desperation neither had felt before, as if to claw back all the time they’d lost. She’d worried so damn much about the life he’d led without her, that he might have resented her for being the one to walk away… but here, together, like this… all those questions, all those fears, quietly melted away.
It was only when they had no air left to breathe that they were forced to stop. Her hands were curled into the lapels of his jacket, pulling him close, wanting him closer, closer than he could possibly be. His eyes roamed her face like he was marking it, comparing it to his own imperfect memory of her; he traced his lips over her hairline, pulled some of the locks loose from her fancy up-do, breathed in the scent of her.
“Anna,” he murmured, like any other words were superfluous, like to say the name was to affirm that this was reality, that nothing could magic her away.
And she loved it. She loved the way he made her name sound, those two syllables that had never really belonged to her almost half her life. She put her lips against his neck and whispered his name too.
“Remy.”
I missed you. I missed you, Remy. So damn much.
She backed up a little, stunned by force of the feeling. She’d spent so long feeling it, that having him here now made it all the more acute. Now there was only one possible way to bring the past year’s worth of loneliness to a conclusion, and she was greedy for it. Her fingers touched the lapels of his jacket, her thumbs sliding under the fabric and all the way up to his shoulders. She fixed her gaze on his, slowly slid the garment off him. When it hit the floor she ran both hands downward and let them come to rest on his chest. His demeanour was calm, collected… But she could feel his heartbeat, and it was racing.
Strangely, words were pushing at her.
We need to talk. There’s so much that’s happened, so much I want to know. But I don’t know where to start.
She lowered her eyes and silently worked free his tie, her teeth momentarily tugging at her lower lip.
I want you to tell me about it. About the life you have without me. About the women you’ve been with who aren’t me.
The question was painful, and she swallowed. She raised her hands to the top button of his shirt, undid it… then the next… and the next…
Breathe.
She paused and breathed consciously for a second or two. Her mind caught on a memory, like a leaf snagging a branch in the wind… Her, in another life, in another hotel room, with another beautiful man, doing the exact same thing. Wanting it, like she wanted it now. And yet feeling so detached, so untethered from it all.
She was right here.
In the moment. No escaping. No pretending it was something it wasn’t. Just her and him, and something… genuine. Real, for once.
The thought confused her, and it stalled her. She hesitated.
His hands settled on her hips, jolting her from the rabbit hole of her own thoughts. His touch was firm yet somehow restrained. Restraint! It was something she’d rarely seen him practice before, not in affairs like this. It heartened her, and she undid the rest of those buttons, a little frightened that she’d felt so… well… frightened.
His shirt finally undone, she fisted the fabric at his waist and pulled it out of his pants. With inquisitive hands she slipped both palms between the opening and smoothed them up his torso. His skin was tanned and warm and fragrant, so exactly what she had remembered and forgotten. She’d remembered he felt good. She’d forgotten exactly why.
She put her mouth on him and tasted what she had forgotten, reconnected it with all the worn, degraded memories she had tended so assiduously in all their time apart. The more you thought of something, she mused, the more you remembered it, the more you forgot it. This was an elixir, a cure for that; kisses, slow and hungry, along the line of his collarbone and up his throat, over his quickening pulse and up under his jaw, her teeth grazing his chin… All the tastes and the textures of him being recommitted to false and flighty memory… …
She felt his hands move from her hips to her waist and up to the small of her back; and finally, impatiently, he shifted his head, reclaiming her mouth in a slow, sensual crush. The thrill of his kiss was something so much more than just erotic – it did something to her that it had never failed to do before – it made her feel alive.
His palms slid down and over her backside, his fingers pressing in hard, pulling her in again almost roughly. In a moment all pretence at restraint was gone. Months’ worth of pent-up desire whipped them up and swept them away, and God, how had she gone without this, how had she lived without him for so long?
There was a tremor in her hands that had nothing to do with the mem-intoxication that had plagued her half her life. Her fingers fumbled at his belt as his mouth nipped and sucked at her lips, her neck. Somehow she managed to finally get his belt undone and she flipped open the button of his pants, pulled down his fly. His body literally jolted when she snaked her hand in and cupped him through his boxer briefs. His head snapped back, a hiss of pleasure escaping his lips. It was the kind of reaction that instantly brought her eyes to his face; and she watched him as she fondled him through the cotton, reacquainting herself with the feel of him.
Horribly sinful thoughts were racing through her mind now, all her previous uncertainty now forgotten.
After a moment or two, he dropped his head again and glared at her with fire in his eyes. His left hand cupped her breast, while his right gripped the hair at the nape of her neck and jerked her head backward, staring her down like it was some Mexican standoff.
You’re a bad, bad girl, she almost heard him say. Don’t you dare fuckin’ stop.
She didn’t. Instead she upped the ante and slipped her hand inside the opening of his boxers. As soon as her fingers touched his flesh he gave a guttural moan, his head kicking back again, his eyelids fluttering shut. His grip was so tight on her hair that there was pain, and tears began to form – but it was also mixed with an insane amount of pleasure, considering the fact that she was the one giving most of it. To elicit this kind of response in him… it was an intoxicating pleasure in and of itself. And so she kept on caressing him, because it pleased him, and it pleased her to please him.
It was a few moments before he seemed to realise he was hurting her; he loosened his grip on her head a little and put his mouth in her hair. His body was taut; his breathing ragged. She knew she was driving him closer to an edge neither of them really wanted him to fall off just yet – but she couldn’t help it. He was intoxicating and beautiful – almost unbearably so. She’d take him all the way just on principle, just because a man like him shouldn’t be left wanting and she could give him everything he desired.
She’d been the one to walk away from him after all, knowing it would hurt him. The guilt of that alone was enough for her to consider debasing herself to him in ways even she wasn’t quite ready to admit to herself.
The tempo of his breathing was now so irregular that she figured he was about ready to go over the edge; so she was surprised when he gripped her wrist and cut off her fevered torture. A breath lingered in her throat; she let herself be stopped as he raised her hand to his lips, his eyes holding hers with a dark seduction. He kissed the inside of her wrist savagely, only to abruptly pull her over to the nearest wall, backing her up with his body until her backside hit the decorative side table by the door.
His hands cupped her backside and he hoisted her up roughly onto the table, knocking everything on it off and onto the floor. His hands swept down the sides of her thighs, coming in lightly under her knees, bringing them flush with his hips as he inched up between her legs. There was an expression on his face… the same look she’d only seen on him once before, the night he’d asked her to come away to London with him, the second time they’d had sex, the first time they’d made love. It was mesmerizing, so erotically charged that it took her breath away.
They kissed again, once, twice, brief but passionate.
Neither of them could wait a moment longer.
She guided him outside his flies, shifting her weight slightly, rubbing him up against the crotch of her panties. She felt his hands move, the press of his fingers digging into her thighs so hard she thought they might leave bruises… The sound of their panting as she slowly moved aside the silky fabric and—
“Hmm… Wait… Protection…” His voice was thick, a gruff undertone as he pushed the words out his mouth with an effort, breath by laboured breath. “I got some… in my back pocket…”
Well, this was something new. They’d rarely used protection before, especially once he’d figured there was zero chance of her ever getting pregnant, and he’d made a point of assuring her he always got himself checked out. It could only mean one thing – that there was someone else he was seeing, and it made her heart skip an involuntary beat.
She didn’t dare analyse it. Instead she reached round with her right hand for his back pocket, furiously trying to not think. Slipping out the condom there, she ripped the foil open with her teeth and unrolled it on him, slow enough to tease, to buy her some time for a quick moment of introspection.
There might not be someone else… maybe he just hasn’t got himself checked out yet…
That had to be it.
She flicked a smile up at him; he wet his bottom lip, slowly, deliberately, and she held his gaze as she inched him inside her with a delicious slowness.
He broke eye contact first, lifting his chin on a groan of pleasure before dropping his face back into her hair.
God, he was inside her. He was inside her again.
She put her arms round him, gripped the back of his shirt, aware that she was making sounds, short little gasps in the back of her throat, as his body began to rock against hers. It’d been months and months and months since she’d lived without this, and now… …
And now it didn’t matter because this was here and it was now and it was real, and she gripped his hair in her hands and kissed him fiercely, as if to dare anyone to take him away from her.
His pace was quickening, the rhythm of their conjoined bodies sending the little side table that was her perch banging noisily against the wall. Between that and their cries of pleasure – right by the door, no less – she felt certain they would wake up the whole floor – not to mention cause probable damage to the expensive furnishings.
“Merde,” she heard him mutter between their kisses, and she laughed against his mouth, not caring at all whether they tore the room itself down with their lovemaking. He, apparently, wasn’t of the same mind. Grabbing hands-full of her ass, he hoisted her up onto his hips and carried her over to the bed, him still deep inside her.
“Fuu-u-u-u-u-u-ck!” she pretty much wailed at the unbearably intimate sensation, as he staggered across the room with her and they all but toppled into a tangled heap onto the bed. He was past caring about any perceived inelegance – she was his sole focus, and the bed seemed to be a far more acceptable location to do what he wanted to do to her – namely, to nail her to something that wasn’t going to resist. The mattress squeaked its protest as they made wild, unrestrained love.
“Fuck, chere,” he uttered almost deliriously. “You are so. Damn. Perfect.”
She loved it when he talked like this. So in the moment, so completely lost in it, that he started spouting out truths without realising it.
“Say that again,” she gasped, and he put his mouth against her ear, whispered hotly:
“Vous est tellement parfait.”
She thought it was the most French he’d ever spoken to her. She was fairly sure that it was at that point she ripped the shirt right off him, but she’d never be 100% sure afterwards. She was beside herself with pleasure, with the knowledge that they’d finally found one another again; and if this night was it, if it was all she was going to get – she was going to savour it. She was going to make the most of every damn moment.
When her orgasm finally hit her it was like the world was beginning and ending, like she was invincible – like they both were. And when it was over they both lay together with their arms round one another, a disarticulated bundle of limbs and still-beating hearts. It didn’t matter what he’d seen or done or had on the other side of this. He was here now, he’d let himself be here with her now, he’d wanted her like she wanted him. For the first time the idea of something more had become stealthily, silently real. It enveloped her as she lay there cradling him in her arms, as, even then, he did not get up and leave.
But then, she mused silently to herself, he never did. He always stayed.
Was there more? How far could this go, how many more minutes, hours, days, was he willing to be hers?
She twisted her head towards his and kissed the line of his jaw.
At least a few hours more, she mused whimsically to herself. I can live with just a few hours more.
-oOo-
Hours had passed.
Hours and hours of sweet talk and serious talk, and sex, sex, sex.
Anna glanced over at the clock on the nightstand that read 03:04; stretched and yawned.
Remy was out on the balcony smoking, which annoyed her, because it was the one thing about him that she found less than perfect.
It was while she was lying there, musing on strategies that would get him to quit – including bribery, cajoling, and straight out torture – that he came back in, cell phone in hand.
“Great news,” he said jovially.
“What?” she asked him.
“Jes’ got my test results back. I’m all clear.”
He chucked the phone onto the edge of the mattress and jumped back onto the bed with her.
“Oh. Amazing news,” she congratulated him drily.
“Don’t be ornery,” he chided her cheerfully, snuggling into her and making her yelp at his freezing cold hands. “It’s great news. I was runnin’ low on condoms. That woulda been a nightmare.”
She grappled his hands off of her ass and grabbed at them, warming them between her palms instead.
“Sounds like you shoulda got yourself checked out earlier, Cajun,” she shot back at him wryly.
“Well, I did as soon as I figured out it was you makin’ me run your li’l maze, Anna,” he laughed. “But gettin’ anythin’ done in a timely manner on British national health is a joke, chere.”
“Oh shush. I don’t wanna hear about it,” she griped. The idea that he’d had to have himself checked out at all was making her unreasonably belligerent.
He pouted, a little put out by her obvious mood, but too happy himself to be too bothered by it.
“Well, ain’t you in a glorious mood, chere,” he prodded her with a laugh in his voice.
“Well, it sure makes me in a ‘glorious’ mood to know that you’re so damn considerate about the many, many women you sleep with,” she shot back, slapping his hands back on her ass now that they were tolerably warm again. He was silent a moment, regarding her curiously from those gorgeous brown eyes.
“Chere, you’re jealous.”
“What me?” she rolled her eyes at him, noting that he hadn’t made any attempt to deny those ‘many, many women’. “Pfft. No.”
He knew the back-off signals she was throwing out were only half-serious, and so he buried his face in her shoulder and kissed her, saying:
“No need t’be jealous, chere. Since meetin’ you, I’m a reformed man. Ain’t no ‘many women’ no more.”
What? Just one? Or maybe two, if we’re including me?
She wanted to ask him, but couldn’t get the words out.
“So glad to know I had a positive effect on your life, Remy LeBeau,” she snarked, only to be promptly cut off by his hands coming right round to the sensitive spot low on her abdomen. The tickling sensation made her gasp and squirm onto her back, and he took the moment to skilfully pin her to the bed again.
“Anna Marie, I’ve had nothin’ but ‘positive effects’ from you since day one,” he growled seductively at her, making the point by rubbing up against her intimately. “Betcha you forgot I knew about that sweet spot o’yours,” he added teasingly. It was enough, at least, to get her to forget her previous ill-temper.
“You oughta worry about the sweet spots I remember you havin’,” she smirked, slipping her hands in under his boxers and squeezing his butt. She didn’t prod any of them just yet, figuring it would be fun to keep him in suspense. “Do I haveta get you out of these boxers again?” she grumbled instead. “I don’t know why you bother keepin’ them on at all.”
He laughed.
“Gotta be decent in public, non, chere?”
“Mmm, there’s nothin’ decent about ya,” she drawled. “I’m sure the world would be brought to its knees, seein’ you out there on the balcony in nothing but your birthday suit.”
This time his laugh was downright dirty.
“Beb, I am gettin’ more and more exhibitionist vibes from you by the minute. There are plenty o’places round these here parts where I can show the good ol’ American public just how indecent I can be. If you’re interested in comin’ with.”
“I’ll take the ‘coming’ part,” she bantered back brazenly. “If’n that’s all right with you, Cajun.”
He laughed again, leaning in for a passionate kiss; and just as things were starting to get interesting again, his phone began ringing.
“Ugh!” Anna exclaimed. “Can’t you turn that thing off?!”
He pushed away from her, going to retrieve his phone; and when she saw that he actually looked like he was about to check it, she sat up, crawled on over, and snatched the phone right out his hand.
“Hey!” he protested, chasing her across the bed on all fours, as, cackling, she scuttled effortlessly out of his reach. The only thing he could stop her with was a football tackle from behind; but it was too late – she’d already thrown the darn thing halfway across the room and into a pile of decorative cushions they’d left lying unceremoniously on the floor.
“Why you little—!” he growled, laying a bite on her ass that made her shriek with laughter. This time he made no bones about pressing all the sweet spots he knew she possessed, wrestling her into delicious submission.
“Bite me!” she gasped, egging him on to something much, much more delightful.
“I just did,” he shot back gruffly. “But sure – if it’s more punishment y’want, beb…”
And he snapped her legs open, dipped his head, and very enthusiastically began to gobble her up.
Anna gave a cat-like mewl, every single thought instantly driven out of her mind as she basked in the delicious sensation.
“Oh, you are such a talented, fucking bastard,” she announced deliriously to no one in particular. “I think I kinda hate you.”
At the words he stopped, kissing his way up her body; and right before he kissed her, right before he plunged inside her, he said helplessly:
“It’s okay, Anna. I think I kinda love you too.”
-oOo-
Even later, she lay in the darkness and watched him sleep.
It was the kind of whimsy she rarely allowed herself, that she hadn’t indulged in since her time with Cody.
He’d taught her so many things, but the one thing she’d learned from him that she still found hard to compute sometimes was this. That sex wasn’t just a mechanical thing, and neither was touch. It could be a way to express love too.
Love.
She reached out and laid a hand on Remy’s chest, lightly, tentatively. She half expected him to wake up, but he didn’t. His heartbeat pulsed against her palm, calm and regular. He was alive. He was living. And he was here.
Her mind settled on a memory, only two days after she’d journeyed back to NY from Mississippi. She’d taken a walk along the Hudson, and suddenly she’d stopped, recognising where she was. A little outdoor café – the first place she’d really got to meet him.
Remy LeBeau.
Back then, during their first meeting, she’d been so ready to hate him – he had been too smooth, too cocksure, too conscious of his own beauty for her to be anything but impressed. And yet… his beauty had affected her in delightfully insidious ways; the obviousness of their chemistry had vexed her until she’d realised she’d had the same effect on him. He’d wormed his way under her skin and stayed there. Not the splinter she’d first assumed him to be, but the imprint of a hand, warm and gentle and comforting, the only thing that could unwind her tightly-coiled being and smooth her flat.
Going back there that day, to the river, had been a game-changer. She’d stood looking out onto the water and wanted him back. The tumult of her fractured past, of her endless questing, had given way to what lay deeper still beneath – all the love and passion he’d stirred in her so effortlessly, that she wanted desperately to experience again.
Desire was a cruel, cruel master. It had inspired a fever in her that only his presence could relieve, a nearly four-month search for him that – she was not embarrassed to admit – had sometimes left her in frustrated tears. A world without him had seemed a world of endless torture, consumed with a longing for the things that only he could give.
And when she’d found him?
An irrational fear of rejection, of unbridgeable gaps, had coloured the shades of that desire. It hadn’t, however, killed the hunger. The hunger that had finally driven her to face him head on, to reveal herself to him, to be vulnerable, to risk that rejection.
It was a hunger that had been mirrored in his own eyes when she’d finally walked back into his life again, when he’d told her he’d known it was her all along… that he’d come to her anyway, despite that knowledge.
Anna smiled faintly and rubbed that same, small square inch of his chest with her thumb.
They’d talked about things tonight – not as much as she knew they needed too, but enough, she supposed. At least, as much as they’d been inclined to. The mem-chip he’d given back to her was still on the nightstand behind her, and it bothered her, still inwardly made her squirm, to think of all the things – personal things – that he’d seen in it. There were things he knew about her that made her feel incredibly vulnerable, but he hadn’t talked about them, hadn’t even brought them up, and she supposed it was a blessing that they hadn’t frightened him away.
She heard his phone give a muffled ping from wherever it’d landed when she’d thrown it.
Popular guy, she thought wryly to herself.
Was it wrong to feel so possessive of the life he’d built apart from her? To be envious of the things he had that weren’t hers?
She was painfully conscious that they’d never had anything that had even nearly approached a relationship, but… Somehow they’d still forged something together in the short time they’d spent in one another’s company that, for some reason, made her feel entitled to his life. It was ridiculous and it was unfair, but… it was there. And she couldn’t ignore it.
“I want you,” she whispered in the darkness. “I want you, Remy LeBeau.”
God, it was a lonely admission. How do you win and keep a man who could have anything in this life, who probably already has everything he’s ever wanted?
Not you, Anna, she thought wryly to herself. You were the one thing he wanted and never got.
She leaned up slightly on one elbow and looked into his face. He was fast asleep, his lips slightly parted. He was so damn beautiful it made her want to kiss him, but she didn’t want to wake him up.
“You can have me now,” she whispered. “You can have me if you still want me.”
It was yet another lonely admission, compounded by the fact that she’d been the one to deny him in the first place. It was the only thing she could really regret out of the decision she’d made. The truth was, she knew she never could’ve got to this point if she’d let him come along to Mississippi with her. It had never been a rejection. It had been a necessity. She’d had to find herself, before she could find him.
She had to take whatever came with that decision, whatever it cost her now. Even if the cost was anything more than whatever they had in the here and now.
She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his chest, barely-there and featherlight.
She lay down beside him and listened to him breathe, and after a while she fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.
-oOo-