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CHAPTER18
SIMON
I bangon Autumn’s door, calling out, “Autumn! Open the door! Let me in!”
A door behind me opens and a head pops out. I look back and point at Autumn’s door, demanding, “Have you seen her?”
The neighbor points down the hall where another door opens and Autumn appears.
Did I have the wrong door? But no... the numbers are correct. Is she coming out of someone else’s apartment? The thought leaves me frozen in angry shock for a moment. It’s then that I realize she’s simply coming out of the shared washroom because she’s wearing flowy pants and a camisole and carrying a towel and shower caddy.
“Simon? What are you doing here?” she asks, rushing down the hall to me. “Is everything okay?”
I snort out a derisive laugh. “Non, non, things are not okay. We need to talk.” Tobias and Albert are friendly, and as soon as Tobias heard what Jacqueline did, he hunted me down to inform me, thankfully with zero judgment. He’s a good friend, and one who can keep his mouth shut when the situation calls for it, or let the right person know what they need to know in other situations.
Like this.
She opens her door, and I push my way inside, slamming the door behind me. “Shh, my neighbors!” Autumn hisses.
I don’t care about them. Don’t give a fuck about disturbing them when Autumn and I need to talk about what I heard at the office tonight.
The apartment isn’t small, it’s miniscule. There’s barely room for the bed and a desk, but Autumn has made the most of it. There are countless drawings tacked up to the wall, along with fabric swatches and scribbled words creating an inspiration board of sorts.
“What did Jacqueline say to you?” I snarl. I’m furious—not at Autumn, but at my aunt.
“The long and the short of it? We can’t see each other,” she answers, plopping down onto the bed. She crisscrosses her legs, her hands in her lap.
I drop to my knees in front of her, my feet nearly flush against the wall in the tight space, and cover her hands with my own. “It’s too late for that,Princesse. You said you didn’t want casual, and I agreed. We’re in this now, no turning back.”
“I need to focus on the competition, Simon. This is a big opportunity for me,” she pleads, her face filled with pain. “She canendme.”
I don’t care. Nothing has changed between us. Only Jacqueline’s interference.
“You and I have nothing to do with the competition, and you know it. Others might have a hard time believing that, but we know the truth. You are a talented designer who earned her way here, and then the fates intervened, bringing us together.” I speak slowly and softly, wanting my words to wash over her and take away whatever damage has been done.
I grip her hips to pull her to the edge of the bed, and she unfolds her legs, placing one on either side of me. I wonder if she realizes that she’s squeezing me as if she doesn’t want to let me go?
Cupping her cheek, I whisper mindlessly in French into the small space between us, our lips brushing with the words as I tell her how much I care for her, am glad to have met her, and how much she’s quickly come to mean to me.
She is wavering. I can taste her surrender, but there’s something holding her back. Something other than the competition.
“What is it? Tell me so I can fix it.”
Her sigh is heavy with weight and doubt. “She told me you’d throw me away and move on to the next woman, breaking my heart.”
Furious, I growl before reassuring her, “Mon amour, ton coeur est à moi. Your heart is mine,Princesse. And no one can take it away. Not my aunt, not even you. I will take the utmost care of you, of your heart.”
She lays her arms over my shoulders, fingering the hair at the nape of my neck. “It was... I felt like I’d disappointed her. And that makes me worry about disappointing myself if things go sideways. I don’t want to look back on this and feel like I got played. By you, or by my own stupidity.”
I pull her off the bed and into my lap as I sit back on my heels. Her core is aligned with my dick, her heat through the thin pajama pants a welcoming haven as she holds on tighter. “You won’t.”
I don’t know if she hears me, though, because the promise is made as I kiss along the tendon at her neck, licking up to nibble her earlobe. She tilts her head, giving me more access, and I suck at the tender skin there.Mon Dieu, I want to mark her so everyone knows she is mine.
No, I want to mark her sosheknows she is mine. So that every time these doubts creep up, she need only look in the mirror and know.
When I move to lift her camisole, planning to lick her breasts until she is liquid for me, she moans unhappily. “The walls, they’re too thin. The neighbors will hear.”
“I don’t care if the whole world hears you calling out my name.”
