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His hands are up my dress, sliding up my bare thighs. In a moment he’ll discover that I’m so wet it embarrasses me. My legs spread in anticipation as I undo his pants.
But he stops, his chest rising and falling quickly. “No.”
“No?” I ask. I’m humiliated by how distraught I sound right now.
“It won’t be just like last time,” he says. “I won’t let this be rough and frantic and perfect only to end with you unable to look me in the eye.”
“Fine,” I say, reaching for him. “It won’t be.”
“No,” he insists. “No more sleeping in another room. No more awkwardness. No more using Cece as an excuse to avoid me. The next time we do this, we do this in our bed, in our room.”
“Have you even changed the sheets yet?” I ask, bitterness in my tone.
“Marie did the day she left.”
I frown. “I still hate that she was in there, but fine. I’ll sleep in your room.”
I reach for his pants a third time, let my hand splay over his cock, jutting against the material. He hisses air between his teeth, but then his fingers twine with mine and he pulls my hand away. “I want it even more than you do, little thief, I assure you. But if this is what I have to do to have you back in my bed, begging for it, I will.”
I arch toward him. “I’m begging right here.”
He laughs. “Not good enough.”
* * *
When we return to the house, Marie looks at us askance. “You’ve been gone nearly two hours and you return empty-handed? Dieu. You’re both absolutely worthless.” Henri ignores her, grabbing the key to the truck off the peg by the door.
“Where are you going now?” I ask.
A hint of a smile graces his mouth. He leans over and presses a kiss to his daughter’s forehead, and then a kiss to mine, before reaching for the door. “Just a little insurance policy.”
“Were you fighting?” asks Marie after he leaves.
“No,” I say, lifting Cece from her crib. She burps loudly and I grin at her as if she just got into Harvard. “Such a good girl,” I coo.
“He didn’t say anything? You don’t think he—” Her question trails off as she looks away, and I know what she was going to ask.
“No, he didn’t go to bring her home. That I am certain of.”
Hours pass. Marie continues to fret, and it’s time to put Cece to bed but…well, I promised. And more to the point I want what he promised me if I stayed in his room. The truck pulls up at last and he comes in, moving past us but flashing me a quick grin. Seconds later, he’s pulling the mattress from the room. He dumps it outside, without ceremony, and then drags in a new one, wrapped in plastic sheeting.
“Henri,” breathes Marie, “what on earth?”
He ignores her, going to the linen cabinet just off the hallway and grabbing clean sheets. And then holds out a hand for me, formally, as if he’s a foreign prince meeting his new bride. “Marie, do you mind very much taking Cecelia tonight?” he asks, never looking away from me once as he pulls me into his room.
When the door shuts behind us, he begins pulling a fresh sheet over the mattress. “I was already going to sleep in here, you know,” I tell him. “You didn’t have to take it quite this far.”
He meets my eye with a single brow raised. “Just so we’re clear, you’ll be lucky if you do any sleeping.”
I blush, feeling suddenly shy and uncertain. Somehow, we never went through this awkward stage the first time around, but I’m going through it now. I reach for the door. “I should check on—”
He comes to where I stand and presses his left palm flat against the door so it stays shut. With his right, he begins unbuttoning my dress. “Stop avoiding me, Sarah,” he says. His voice is a low growl, one that unsettles me as much as it makes me want everything he’s promised.
“We still haven’t finished making up the—”
“Close enough,” he says, pulling the dress over my head and swinging me onto the mattress. He tugs my panties down, then slides down until his head is between my thighs, letting his tongue dart out to taste me while his fingers push inside.
“Henri,” I groan. “Oh my God. It’s too much. Just come up here.”
