I smirked before I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it onto one of the lounge chairs. My jeans, shoes, and boxers came next. When I was naked, I stood at the edge of the pool.
She came up for air and looked up at me. “Damn…” Her eyes were on my dick. “You aren’t cold at all…”
I jumped into the water beside her and fell under the surface, bubbles surrounding me, the cool water comfortable against my warm skin. I saw her silhouette in the water as I rose up to breach the surface.
“See? Isn’t this nice?” Her arms moved forward and back across the surface of the water as she stood in front of me, her chin at the waterline. “I always wanted to have a pool when I was little.”
“You can use mine anytime you want.”
“That sounds nice.” She moved toward me then kicked from the bottom so she could hook her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. Her naked body pressed against mine, her nipples cold and hard. She smiled as she brought her face close to mine, like she was happy to be with me, to be spontaneous with the one person she could be completely herself with.
My hands rested on her ass, and I lowered myself farther into the water so just our heads were above the surface. I hadn’t used this pool for years, but it was always immaculately clean, like I could jump in at any moment. I didn’t come to this estate often at all, and when I did, using the pool was not on my mind. The landscape lighting gave us enough visibility to see each other, but it was also dark enough that Ramon wouldn’t be able to see our bodies under the surface. It was a clear night with a blanket of stars up above. It was just us…like there was no one else in the world.
Her smile slowly started to fade away when she saw the serious expression in my eyes, and she knew I was thinking deeply about a lot of things in that moment.
It was hard to believe this was the woman who’d run through the snow to get to safety, though the odds were stacked against her. It was hard to believe this was the woman I caught sneaking around the camp at night, trying to steal supplies. That seemed like a lifetime ago, and now we were swimming naked in my pool…as if none of that happened at all.
My future had always been an open book, even though I knew every page would contain the same words. The immediate future was the only thing on my mind—work and money. Romantic relationships were so far down the ladder they were barely even on the bottom rung. I searched for women based on a very specific criteria—appearance. But out of nowhere, this woman came into my life, and now I couldn’t imagine the remaining pages of my book not having her name written in every sentence.
She was me. I was her. We were the same person.
I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
My feelings were nothing like my brother’s for his lover. He felt infatuation, obsession, for Melanie. It was superficial, lustful. Once her looks faded, what would they have left? But the way I felt for Raven was timeless.
She continued to look into my face and study my expression, like every thought I had was somehow transferred into her mind. She could touch me to know me. She could read my moods accurately. And she seemed to read me now. “Don’t…”
My eyes watched hers, seeing the landscape lights reflecting in her eyes. Emotion was burning in her gaze, absorbing my feelings as if I’d just shared them with her.
“I won’t say it back.” She rested her forehead against mine and brought our bodies even closer, her tits pressed against my hard chest, her ankles locked together around my waist. “If you want me, you have to do what I asked you to do.”
I pulled away slightly so I could look into her eyes better, see the emotion and conflict in her gaze, see the woman who put her integrity above her own desires. “It doesn’t matter whether I say it or not. You already know how I feel.”
Her eyes watered, the edges of her lids slowly filling with emotional wetness. She closed her eyes for a moment so she could take a breath and fight the urge to break down in front of me.
“And I know you feel the same way.”
When she looked at me, there was resistance, like she wouldn’t cave, no matter what. “Then that just gives you another reason to do the right thing. I am with you in this until the very end. You aren’t just doing it for them. You’re doing it for us. You’re doing it so you can say those words to me and hear me say them back.”
Twenty-Eight
The Future Countess
She sat on the floor in front of my fireplace, which was lit with roaring flames that filled the bedroom with light. It was the end of summer, so it was too warm to have a fire, but she seemed to enjoy it anyway.
A blanket was around her shoulders as she sat naked on the rug. It reminded me of a memory from the chateau, when she’d mimicked this exact scenario. It was wintertime then and she’d done it to keep warm, but the two instances were identical. I felt like I was back in time.
I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of boxers before I sat beside her. “It’s a little warm for a fire.”
She kept her eyes on the logs. “I just like to watch it…” She stared for a few more seconds before she turned and looked at me. Her makeup was gone and she was ready for bed, but she wasn’t ready to sleep. We’d made love since we finished dinner, moving across the bed and getting tangled in the sheets. But instead of drifting off to sleep afterward, she made a fire and sat there to admire it. It’d been going for thirty minutes, and it probably only had thirty minutes left before it was snuffed out.
“Did you have a fireplace growing up?”
She nodded. “My mom would use it at Christmastime. We would drink our hot chocolate in front of it.”
“I can have Ramon make you some hot cocoa now, if you want.”
She smiled slightly and shook her head. “Maybe another time.” She turned her gaze back to the fire and watched it, silent a long time.
I stared at the side of her face.
“It’s hard to believe so many things have happened. Rose and I lay in front of the fire at the chateau to stay warm, and it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime somehow. That night I got into the car with those guys feels so far away that I’m not even the same person I used to be. I can never go back. Even when Melanie and I were living in Paris after you freed us, we still couldn’t go back.”
I listened to everything she said.
“She’s different… I’m different.”
I watched the flames light up her skin and give her a dreamlike glow. “There’s something I need to tell you.” It had left my mind because it didn’t seem important at the time. I’d told her she was free, but she’d said she would rather be a prisoner with me. The news had faded into the background, but now I had to tell her.
She turned to look at me, her eyes now sharp and absorbed.
“Fender asked Melanie to marry him. Her answer was yes, but only if he released you.”
Her eyes instantly hardened into a look of anger.
“She also asked him to stop running the camp in the way he does in exchange for her answer, but he said no. He would only let you go.”
She shook her head slightly, her reaction so subtle but her distress so obvious. “I don’t want my freedom, so she doesn’t have to marry him.”