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He gave a careless shrug. “It’s good to let it all out.” The shrug turned into a quick nudge. “You know, Charles, even beautiful, elegant shoulders like yours can only carry so much.”
Florian’s light charm worked like a cool, soothing caress; the fog lifted a little and I dragged my head up from his own perfectly sculpted shoulder. His eyes landed on my tear-streaked face, and I flushed as he wiped the wetness away with his thumb, his gaze focused as though it was a task of utmost importance.
“I don’t know who I am any more, Florian.”
“Yes, you do. You are Charles Heyer.” His thumb tracked down to my lower lip. “You are my friend, Charles Heyer. And tonight, that is enough.”
He kissed me then. Softly. And a little warily, as if braced for me to push him away. Only one kiss, a steady press of his plush mouth on mine. Seeking an opening, his tongue licked across my lower lip; I sensed it coming and let it happen. How could I not? If my green could speak it would have purred.
When he pulled away it was with a low chuckle, the sound mingling with the joyful noises around us. I stared up into his face, a part of me wishing he’d do it again, because it… had not been unpleasant nor unwelcome. Far, far from it. Nearby, a rowdy group of lads let off a firecracker and we both flinched. The moment was lost.
“It’s a Bastille night tradition.” He smiled down at me. “Us local men all have to kiss the foreign tourists. Nico picks out the pretty single ladies and I tend to volunteer for beautiful, lonely males in need of a hug. It’s a tough gig.”
His touch lingered on my lips; I resisted the urge to run my tongue along them.
“I’m fairly sure you just made that up.”
I shifted too, aware of the cool dampness seeping through my jeans. Time to leave.
“Yes, possibly, but I’m an Aries—kissing is as natural as oxygen to us. We have to kiss every handsome man we meet, at least once.”
I chuckled and shook my head. The man could lighten an awkward moment like no one else. “I think you’ve just made that up too, Florian. But it’s a good line.”
“And just so we are absolutely clear on the rules, some men have to be kissed several times.”
It was my turn to redden, at how I liked the sound of that even as I acknowledged a kiss shared between tipsy friends was a nothing. And I’d watched Florian in the bar. He kissed everyone—people were drawn to him, and he responded. I was neither different nor special. “I’ll… ah… I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
We both got to our feet and I brushed myself down. Florian’s fingers landed at my wrist, firing off a meteor shower of silver sparks. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, “that I did that?”
“No, I don’t mind. It was…” I hesitated, not sure how to describe in English how it had made me feel, let alone translate the peaceful state of my green into French. Strange, not entirely sexual, a kiss demonstrating care, tenderness even. And no, not altogether unwelcome.
“It was nice,” I said. Nice? Out of all the adjectives at my disposal in either language, that’s the one I come up with? “Thank you.”
“I mean it when I say you can tell me about everything, you know.” We fell into step. “Your illness. About your mother too, if you want. Papi talks about Beatrice all the time, and it helps him, I think. To make sure she is remembered.”
It was as if he’d read my mind, except if he had, then he’d know what a dark lonely place it was. He’d see the shadowy grey swarms; he’d hear me screaming. He’d be running for the hills.
We reached the end of the port, Florian’s house in one direction and mine in the other. “I will,” I said, pausing to meet his clear gaze with mine. Christ, how I longed to let him see the madness, to share it with someone. “I want to.”
CHAPTER 12
FLORIAN
Charles didn’t stop by the salt flat and neither did he come for a drink at the bar. I reminded myself that perusing the Selco paperwork properly would take a few days, and that was what he was doing.
Would he have let me care for him if I’d persuaded him home with me after the fireworks? We had both been a little tipsy after all. I’d have undressed him, peeled away his layers, lavished attention on every inch of him, coated him with my need, eased away his sadness. Distracted him.
The last of those was the most likely, and all I’d ever amount to. A pretty distraction as he grieved and recovered, a summer-long liaison if I was lucky, nothing more than a quick fuck to be stored away forever in a dusty corner of his memory after he returned to the UK. Which was why I should forget about him and focus on presenting a coherent argument at the meeting in a few weeks’ time.
Nico dropped by the tile on his way home from his dawn shift on the oyster beds, as I was shovelling salt.
“Go away, you stink. You’ll scare off my rich tourists. And my family of egrets. They’ve only recently become brave enough to feed out of my hand.”
Predictably, he ignored me and arranged his filthy, denim clad legs on my little bench, right next to my shack. His ripped T-shirt did nothing to hide his tattoo sleeve, and he lit a roll-up, grinning as he held it between his teeth, his lip piercing glinting in the bright morning light. No, not sexy at all. I had no idea what all those women saw in him.
“Bonjour to you, too, Florian, my little burst of sunshine. I guess you didn’t get to fuck your pensioner last night, then? It was looking promising when I saw you cuddled up to him at the port.”
“He’s only thirty-nine! And I’ve told you, it’s not like that!” It was so like that.
