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“Go.” Lianne’s waves me off. “That’s her, isn’t it? Go.”

I’m already gone. I take off after her, cutting through the festival-goers fast, because whatever else fifty-six has taken from me it hasn’t taken my fitness.

I call her name over the noise of the crowd. “Elodie!”

She stops. Doesn’t turn, plants herself dead in the middle of the crowd with her back to me, shoulders climbing toward her ears. I close the last of the distance, place my palm on her shoulder and turn her around.

She’s sobbing. Silent and furious and undone. Tears cut tracks through the shimmer on her cheeks.

It kicks the legs out from under every reasonable thing I’ve told myself for a month.

I stop thinking entirely. Pull her into me and fold her into my chest. Her wet face is buried in my shirt and my chin rests on the top of her head. She shakes against me and I hold on tightly in case she tries to make a break for it.

When the heaving subsides, I take her furious, streaming beautiful face in my hands, tip it up to mine and I kiss her.

In the middle of ten thousand people. Out in the open. Where anyone could lift a phone and make us the laughingstock of the world.

I kiss her because I’ve spent more than a month trying to prove I could live without her and I can’t.

I kiss her because reasonable is a religion I’ve lost.

I kiss her because I’m the reason she’s crying and the only thing I can do for the rest of my life is show her how much I love her.

Starting right fucking now.

seventeen

Two Days Later

This wasn’t on my European bucket list.

Which is a shame, because it should have been number one.

I’m naked in a hotel suite on the Champs-Elysees with my palms flat against a floor-to-ceiling window. Beau Bixby is fucking me from behind like the world is ending and I’m the last thing he wants before it does.

Paris glitters ten floors down, all wrought iron and gold light. My own reflection is ghosted over it, flushed and open-mouthed. My tits swaying with every thrust. His big body curved over mine, hands are clamped on my hips hard enough to leave marks.

Beau’s buried so deep I feel him everywhere.

Then he pulls out, and I whimper at the loss. He spins me around, lifts me like I weigh nothing. I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. He lines himself up and drops me down on to his cock in one long slide, and we both groan.

I’ve learned this is Beau’s favorite position. He loves to fuck me standing up, carrying all my weight, bouncing me on his cock like I’m made of air.

Three months ago the stretch of him would have undone me, but my body opens for Beau freely now. Takes every thick inch and begs for more. He walks us deeper into the suite with me riding him and I’ve never felt so owned or worshipped in my life.

He carries me to the edge of the enormous bed and sits, settling me astride his lap with him still inside me. Takes over, both hands slamming me up and down, harder. The angle puts him right where I need him. I’m loud. I’ve quit being embarrassed in this fancy hotel because I can’t help it.

Beau drives up into me and works my clit with his thumb and says smutty, tender things into my throat. I come with a scream I feel in my bones, clenching around him. He lets go too, spilling hot inside me with a roar.

I’m still shaking, boneless against him, when he lays me back and spreads my thighs wide with his big hands. Probes at the mess of the two of us leaking out of me, and lowers his head. Licks up the length of my pussy, tasting both of us at once, cleaning me with his tongue and groaning like it’s the finest wine he’s had in his life.

I lean up on my elbows to watch, fascinated. My whole body lights back up as he laps every drop of him and me together. Unhurried, filthy, reverent. By the time he lifts his head with his mouth shining I’m coming all over again.

After, we crawl under the ridiculously fluffy covers and I fold myself into Beau’s side. My head on his chest, his heartbeat slowing under my ear. Neither of us talks. We’ve done enough talking in two days to last a decade.

The first night, after we left the festival, this proud, impossible man begged me to come back to his hotel and let him apologize. I almost resisted. Pride had me halfway into a cab. But, he stood in the middle of Paris, with his heart in his hands and said, “Please, Elodie, ten minutes.”

I couldn’t walk away from him. Let’s face it, I didn’t stand a chance.