Oh my God. Bastien De Leon.
Just typing his name now is an invitation for every tingle in the building to visit the juncture of my thighs. I do it carefully, so as to avoid any conflicts with the search.
But I get no hits on the search. None that make sense, anyway.
Maximilian De Leon brother
Better hits but wrong results. Most of the listings are about Max’s wild success on the Hemline channel, as a guest commentator on other shows as well as his hit partnership with Allie. Turns out the modern world is in love with charming time travelers, even if they don’t quite know it for themselves. None of the articles mention a brother.
De Leon family France + 18th century
Another list of clickables, though every link leads to the basics I already know. That the De Leons once owned massive lands in Loire, which were seized once the Jacobins and the Revolution inundated the countryside. That the family was given the land back once Napoleon took the throne, though a great deal of the family wasn’t accounted for. Maximilian, Bastien, and their parents were seized early during the insurrections. The elder De Leons were executed at once. The next day, Bastien followed them to the executioner’s block.
My chest hurts. My throat tightens. Still, I force my fingers to type in a new search string.
Bastien De Leon execution
I grimace but force myself to click the search bar.
The first results aren’t enough to erase my tension. But I do indulge a long breath while scanning the page. Then another, as soon as I peruse the subject’s second and third pages.
Once I hit the fourth, I allow myself to breathe easy again. For about ten seconds. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” I remind myself in a mumble. “Wasn’t like Robespierre and his posse were logging every execution and then selling it for demographics.”
So there’s still a reasonable chance that Bastien’s head rolled into a basket back then. But how does that explain the very beautiful head, attached to the equally stunning body, still snoring in the bedroom? And I mean snoring. The deep, lusty rumble actually makes me smile on the upbeats. The man can’t even slumber without intensity.
On this day, in this time, Bastien De Leon is definitely not dead.
That opens up a few more possibilities. Crazy ones, but options I have to consider.
He’s a substantial ghost. Or a soul reincarnated. Or a zombie. Okay that one’s kind of cool, though he’d have to be categorized as a pretty zombie. Like that kid from Warm Bodies or the hottie king in Army of the Dead. But he’d likely rock the crap out of gory zombie too.
But that’s probably not the case. Because I already hear what logic is screaming at me.
Like his brother before him, the man has been propelled through time. So that means he escaped or avoided prison. After that, he probably learned about the fastest way out of the country and vanished into Germany or Prussia. Maybe he even found a way to hop la Manche to England.
I’m so lost in a vision of him doing that, heart aching while I envision him trudging alone into strange countries, that his snoring dims from awareness. Once I realize he’s stopped, the man is standing next to me.
Correction. Looming over me.
Holy shit.
His hands are fisted. His golden eyes are wide. He’s really turned into my Desperado. He’s frantic. Lost. Terrified. I can’t say that I blame him.
“Oh, hey!” I surge to my feet. “Good morning.” Within two seconds, I whip around to turn us into a pseudo see-saw, plunking him down to the cushion. “Okay, whoa. You’re about to hyperventilate. Whoa. Bastien, you need to breathe deeper.”
Thankfully, he listens. I still don’t feel confident about letting go of his shoulders yet—having nothing to do with his huge delts beneath my sprawled hands—but it also feels good to have him near again. As if the world has been on a massive tilt and has leveled again.
“You.” He lifts a hand that trembles harder than his voice. But when he presses his fingers to the scoop of my tank top, where my scar is peeking out, he touches down like my skin is chiffon. “You are still here.”
“Yes.” I run my own fingers along the back of his. “Exactly where I belong.”
The pledge wasn’t what my brain intended but what my heart means. It feels so right to say it. More than right to realize it. Almost as if I traversed centuries to get here too. As if I should be called Desperado as well.
“Magique.”
Damn it. I liked Desperado Junior better. I even close my eyes and pray for it as he braces his other hand to my hip and tugs me down next to him. And then against him.
So close.
So warm.
So right.
“How is this possible?” He rumbles it with low ferocity, sending wonderful rumbles through his chest and along my cheek. “Last night, I nearly thought it but a vivid dream.”
“I get it.” I pull in a breath, sneaking an extra hit of his scent. There’s a lot of my stuff, cherry body lotion and vanilla shampoo, mixed with the earthy notes along his skin. The effect is dizzying in all the right ways. “I almost threw down for the same theory a few times.”
“Threw what down?” He busses the top of my head. “Perhaps your precious garlic wings and the cold slaw with chips a-laying?”
My giggle nearly becomes a spit take. It’s tempered by a glaring realization. Even animated corpses know the almighty goodness of garlic wings.
So, I really have to accept the base truth now. And the conclusion to where it leads.
I have to convince Bastien of what’s happened too. And, very possibly, why.
And something—a pounding, dreading something—tells me he’s not going to hop on the time travel parade float as easily as his brother.
CHAPTER SIX
BASTIEN
“Alll riiighty then.”
Magique’s evasive expression is not just words from her lips. She looks away quickly, as if having a debate with herself before deliberately raising those pretty greens back to me.
Eyes that have become too bright. Above a smile that is too forced.
“You know, now that we’ve danced toward the subject, you hungry at all? I haven’t had a chance to check kitchen inventory yet, but if Allie’s only got old stale saltines and diet soda, we can order in…”
Words that are too hurried. And truly make no sense at all now.
I clasp both of her hands. It is the only way to halt her progress from nervous to petrified. If I know nothing else about her, it is assuredly this. “Magique.” I squeeze to emphasize the mandate. “To me, you are already my duchess. If you desire some food, I can send a servant to—”
“Oh, holy shit.” She chuckles despite my puzzled gape. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like— I mean, it’s just that servants aren’t going to be—” She stops again, though with significant purpose. “Maybe we’d just better sit for a second.”
I knew I was premature, thinking her tension was gone. Still, I give an inviting tug to her stiffened fingers. “Why sit when we can lie?”
She adamantly ignores my suggestive glance back toward the bedroom. It gives me no choice about looking elsewhere too. And wondering, yet again…