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Maybe for the first time.
“I’m going to go now,” Rory told him when he’d set her back down on her feet. Next to the chairs where they’d sat together what seemed like a lifetime ago. The floor where she’d knelt despite how much it had scared her. The little pile of the clothes that she hardly recognized, because she’d become a stranger.
His hand moved as if of its own accord and smoothed over her hair. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Are you worried about me?” It hurt to sound dry. Arch and amused. But she had to start building back her walls, or how would she walk down a street? The sensory input would kill her within a few steps. “You don’t need to be. I’m good. Really, Conrad.”
She wasn’t sure he believed her, not with the way he looked at her, all narrow and dark. But he only nodded, with his usual authority.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one who needed to find her footing.
He insisted on calling her a car. And when it arrived, he led her outside, wearing nothing but a pair of lounging trousers, low on his hips. He stopped her when she went to climb in, once again with his hand in her hair.
Then he held it—and her. Possessively, she thought.
Like her hair was a kind of leash, and her body responded by melting all over again, as if it could never get enough of him.
Rory doubted that could change. How could it change? Even her bones felt new, and they melted, too.
She thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. He looked down at her, his mouth a stern, almost grim line. His gaze was harsher than she’d ever seen it and still, somehow, connected to all the parts of her he touched.
All the parts of her he’d changed.
“Be well,” he told her, making it a command.
Then he let her go.
And Rory did the only thing she could.
She fled into what remained of the night, hoping that when dawn came, she would find herself whole.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AWEEKAFTERthat night, Conrad stood outside of one of Paris’s most decadent, exclusive clubs. A place he was well-known, having spent so much time there over the years. He knew exactly how the night would unfold if he went inside. He could have his cock sucked within the first ten minutes, as an appetizer, as he worked out how he should further indulge himself.
But he couldn’t seem to summon up the slightest bit of interest in going inside.
He’d thrown himself into work in the wake of that night with Rory and told himself that he hadn’t had time to indulge his usual appetites. Now he did.
But he’d been staring at the secret door, conveniently placed down at the end of a dark alley, and couldn’t quite bring himself to go in. His appetite wasn’t for a buffet.
He told himself it was an aberration.
Because he had done everything he should have done. He’d found her phone number and called two days later, to make sure she was still all right. It had been a strange, stilted conversation that had left him unsettled. Wound up with a bizarre energy he’d tried to work off in the gym.
I’m well,she’d said.You told me to be well and I am.
Miles and miles he’d run to try to dislodge those words from where they were stuck inside him, with no luck.
He’d thought a night out at his favorite club might do the trick.
But he didn’t bother to go in. A week later, it was the same.
Two weeks after that, Conrad was forced to accept that he simply didn’t want anyone else.
He came to this conclusion in the bright light of a late summer day, sitting in the office building that he walked to every morning from his own personal church. It was located in one of those lovely buildings that lined the Golden Triangle, where he could look out over Paris and be glad. La Tour Eiffel. The American Cathedral. The plush green trees that lined Avenue George V. And in the distance, Tour Montparnasse.
Usually having Paris at his feet was soothing.
