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Her eyes moved over my features, trying to discern the truth. It was a dangerous confession to make. In a way, I’d just admitted my feelings for her. I’d done the one thing I said I wouldn’t and given her an out if she wanted it.
“Are you telling me that you don’t care what happened?” she asked.
“I do care.” I sighed. “I wish that the two of you were never put in that situation. I wish that you didn’t have to be the ones to do it. But if someone else had, would I care that he was dead? No.”
“So you never really wanted to put me in prison?”
I wiped away the froth bubbling at the top of the water and gave her an honest answer. “No.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “I was exactly the thing you should have hated. A con artist. A manipulator. A liar. You should hate women like me after—”
“Don’t ever compare yourself to her,” I snarled. It came out more vicious than I’d intended, and I immediately regretted it. I needed to tread carefully with her. Sometimes, it was easy for me to forget how much shame she felt inside because she didn’t show it often.
I pulled her closer, burrowing my face against her neck. “I believed in you.”
Pain welled in her eyes, and she tried to look away, but I turned her gaze back to me. “I saw too much in you to believe that you were the person you were trying to be.”
“Or maybe you only saw what you wanted to,” she said. “Maybe I’m not as salvageable as you’d like me to be.”
“Then I don’t care,” I murmured against her lips. “Salvageable or not, I want you. Every broken and jagged piece of you.”
Her fingers curled in my hair, and she dragged my lips to hers, hungry, starving. She crawled into my lap, her breasts wet against my chest as she pivoted her hips against my cock. Even in the water, she was wet for me, and I needed to be inside her. I didn’t care if it was wrong anymore. I wanted to be inside her every second that I could until all my seconds were gone.
I hoisted her up into my arms, and she wrapped her legs around my waist as I set her on the edge of the pool and rubbed the head of my cock against her.
“Lucian,” she pleaded.
Nothing had ever sounded as sweet as her voice begging for me. Wanting me. I plunged inside her, and she dug her fingers into my back. We were wet and sloppy and disjointed when we came together, but none of it mattered. We raced toward that invisible line, desperate to throw ourselves off the cliff.
I needed to bury myself inside her and fill her with a part of me that I hoped would stay there forever, embedded in her DNA and chaining us together long after I ceased to exist on this earth.
“Fuck me like you’ll never let me go,” she whispered in my ear.
My chest contracted, and I buried my face in her neck, so she couldn’t see the lies in my eyes.
I fucked her like I’d never let her go.
“HAVE YOU ENJOYED YOUR TIME here?” Lucian asked sleepily.
We were lazing on the hammock strung between two trees outside our villa in Nice, the final stop on our trip. I couldn’t ever remember feeling so relaxed, and trying to downplay what Lucian had gifted me would be a crime.
“I’ve loved every minute of it.”
Over the past two weeks, we’d been to places I only ever dreamed about seeing. We’d rode the gondolas in Venice, eaten cannoli for breakfast, and gotten lost in the maze of canals as we tried to find Saint Mark’s Basilica.
In Paris, we strolled hand in hand down the Champs-Élysées, eating croissants and watching the sun set over the Eiffel Tower. I saw the Mona Lisa, walked beneath the Arc de Triomphe, and kissed Lucian at the top of the Ferris wheel.
It had been a dream, one day blending into the next as we napped, and ate, and made love like the world was coming to an end. They were the best days of my life, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him so.
When I looked at him now, his eyes heavy and satisfied, his body warm against mine, he looked more at peace than I’d ever seen him. Maybe it was because he knew I could have cut and run the moment he told me he never intended to turn me in, but I didn’t. I was still here with him, and it was the elephant in the room that neither of us wanted to address.
After everything, it felt like we had the makings for a successful marriage. Even though we hated almost everybody else, we liked each other, and that said a lot. We matched, and I didn’t think I’d ever match with anybody.
