What…the hell?
The golden glow spreads, transforming everything else in the room. Holy shit. I’m no longer in a cheap boardinghouse chair but reclining on an old-world chaise covered in tufted velvet. The craft services tables are gone, replaced by a giant canopied bed that belongs in a musketeer movie.
In Bastien’s world.
Which is now…my world?
No. I mean, no. What is all this?
But as the words careen in my mind, they never take form on my lips. The only thing that emerges there is a phrase as stunning to me as it is to him.
“Tu préfère te battre?”
Yes, I really just did that. Literally asked the man if he wants to fight instead of fuck. And yes, it felt totally awesome. All the flippancy of it. All the French of it. Like it’s come out of me before. Like Bastien has been here, in this room with me, responding exactly like he does now. With that sultry smile and even that pronounced laugh…
“Must I select this very moment?”
And holy crap…with those very words.
“If your testicles want to make it out of this room in the same sac, I’d highly advise it.”
No more French from out of nowhere, though once more the words are all kinds of wrong and right at the same time. It’s as if I’m in a Broadway play that’s already a hit. I already know how well the lines are going to land, and they’re special because of it, but they’re still lines. Words that weren’t created by me. That surely aren’t me…
Right?
Why doesn’t my psyche automatically answer that? Worse, why is Bastien already making me doubt the instinct, his stare turning into something I can’t decipher?
“Little lily.”
More bewilderment, trying to absorb how he utters the endearment. Like it’s a poem in and of itself. No. Like it’s prayer from the depths of his soul…
Before he pushes back in and softly kisses me.
“Oh, Magique.”
Once more, everything feels so right. A memory that’s been perfectly imprinted on my senses.
But as he kisses me again, I fight to recall what a memory even is. As he fits his body tighter against mine, I give up the battle. And as he angles my hips up, wrapping my legs around him, I simply succumb to it all.
To desire. To connection.
To him.
“Bastien. My duke. My love. Je te veux en moi.”
There’s more to say, so much more that feels so right now, but he robs the words from my throat while stealing the breath from my lips. How do his kisses keep getting better? Brighter. Bolder. Nastier. Wetter. Everything I want. Everything I’ve waited so long to have…
Over two hundred years…
I should be the one jolting back now. Hard and fast. But that would mean leaving him, and no way am I doing that. Not again. Not ever again.
Until death…and beyond…
More of the words that I remember but don’t. That are new to me…but not.
Because…this is me. Whispering it to him, right now—if even just from my soul.
But I need to do better. To let her speak it to him. To let him know…that she’s here. That she knows. And sees. And still needs. And still loves…
At last, at last, he breaks his lips free. He’s dragging them through the salty drops that have crept down my cheek. The bittersweetness that’s leaking from my senses. From her, now so awake and happy and sad and adoring him. Crying to him.
“Bastien. Bastien.”
“I know. I know, my sweet love.”
But he doesn’t know. Not really. How can he? All the words I hear. All the things I see. All the changes I feel. What’s going on? Who am I now?
“Raegan!”
It takes a moment to fully identify the sound. It’s not from my head. It’s from Drue, who repeats the shout from somewhere far away. No. Not so far at all. From just down the hallway…
The hallway of this place, just beyond the closed door on the other side of the banquet tables…
The North Greene. A boardinghouse thingie of the twenty-first century, not a roadside inn somewhere in eighteenth-century France.
Yes. I’m here. I’m me, altogether now.
So why does that make me so sad? Even forlorn? So much so, I can’t even choke out a reply to my friend’s new hail.
“Raegan Karlinne Tavish! For the love of fuck, where are you?”
She strides down the hall with enough force to sound like two people. Maybe three.
“They’ve got to be here somewhere. Her phone and a lot of uneaten dumplings are still in the room. But if one of Logan’s minions picked them up, I’d have been her first phone call.”
“Unless they’re still getting booked?”
The reply, so clear because it’s issued from this side of the hallway, elucidates the pitter-patter-for-two that I just heard.
At once, I rush to my feet.
“Allie?”
“Aha! Wonderful supposition, mon miracle, but they are certainly not getting books. Unless these rooms have books in their amenities?”
The third voice in the hall has my poor Desperado jostled worse than me. He pops up like a GI Joe figure that’s been plucked by an eager kid. Apt comparison because he’s gawking with as much glee as that kid.
But his joy is only half that of his brother’s.
“Mon dieu,” Max blurts from the second he leads the way into the room. His hair, a few shades lighter than his brother’s, is damp and disheveled. His eyes, also lighter than Bastien’s, are glowing as brilliant as gold. “Bast! It is really you!”
I smirk, filled with a flood of girlish pride that flows as Bastien dips half of an unassuming bow. An equally adorable grin yanks up one corner of his mouth. “It is very good to see you again, brother.”
“Good?” Max counters. “It is a fucking miracle!”
“Well, that’s almost taking the words right out of my mouth.” I drawl it in the moments before hauling Allie into a hug. “How did you get back here so fast? Did you guys spend all of fifteen minutes in Italy?”
“Hmmm, maybe sixteen.” Her concession comes with an it’s-all-good glance, as if she already hears my inward fret about her forced interruption to an essential work trip. “We weren’t even unpacked. We were going to do that after enjoying a drink at the hotel. Fortunately, their lobby bar had several English language news feeds turned on—and we caught a very familiar face on one of them.”
Drue takes that occasion to saunter deeper into the room. “You hear that, Duke of Daring? You made the international feeds!”
I wallop her with an exasperated huff. “And that’s a reason for celebrating why?”
“Because it got us back here,” Max announces, lurching to thread his way between the tables. “Back here, to where you actually are.” He doesn’t hesitate about yanking Bastien into a hug that takes bromance to seriously fresh levels. “My brother. My beautiful brother. It is you—with your whole head on your shoulders, at that!”
Bastien’s smirk isn’t so pronounced now. “Where else is it supposed to be?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BASTIEN
I intended the question in jest. Mostly.