He looked up to see her smiling. Smiling? Hey, at least she wasn’t still crying.
Then her eyes traveled down his body and stopped dead-on… dead on the cucumber, that is. To say she was impressed was probably an understatement. Hell, he was impressed, and he’d been living with that body part for thirty-three years.
Somewhere, somehow, sometime… whether from a love potion, lack of use, or a zipper soap-rubbing… his organ had taken on a huge, vein-popping, tumescent life of its own.
He shrugged ruefully. “Sometimes you get a blue steeler. And sometimes you don’t.”
She laughed… a soft, ripply sound. “Sort of like an Almond Joy?”
“Exactly.”
She was still standing under the streaming water with her hands extended over her head, clutching the showerhead. She began to lower her hands… to embrace him or take the ol’ bar of LeDeux Joy in hand, he wasn’t sure which… but he protested immediately, forcing her hands back upward. He wanted to savor this picture of Sylvie standing before him thus.
“Let me,” he begged, and took a container of liquid body wash in hand. Squirting the fragrant fluid onto his palms, he began to work it into her neck and arms and underarms.
“I’m mad at you,” she said weakly, squirming under his touch.
“I know.” He bypassed her breasts and lathered her sides and buttocks, her abdomen and flat belly. Going down on one knee, he concentrated on her thighs and calves, as well, even the arches of her feet, and toes.
“Sex doesn’t solve everything, Luc,” she protested, but her voice was breathy and uneven as she spoke.
“I know,” he agreed once again, standing to refill his palms with the slick soap. He couldn’t help chuckling when he added, “But it’s a helluva start.”
He lathered her breasts over and over with wide, circular kneading motions. Then he used his soapy fingertips on the peaks, over and over and over and over, till she was mewling continuously with pleasure and the need for fulfillment. He let the shower wash the soap off her then, and replaced his fingers with his lips and tongue and teeth, suckling her ravenously.
She was probably crying again, but he didn’t care now because it was for sexual need of him. That had to be a good thing.
When he moved his ministrations lower to the dewy curls and hot wetness between her legs, she let herself go limp, the only thing holding her up being her grip on the showerhead. He tipped her face up with a finger under her chin, forcing her glazed eyes to meet with his.
“I love you,” he whispered.
He hadn’t known he was going to say that, and he was as surprised as Sylvie. But it was the right thing to say and the right time.
“I love you, chère. Remember that, always. I don’t deserve you. I may never have you. But don’t ever doubt that I love you.”
“Luc, I—”
Before she had a chance to say anything, he turned off the water and took her in his arms, carrying her to the bedroom. Uncaring of their wet bodies, he laid her on the coverlet, then came down on top of her.
For what was probably only a half hour, but seemed like forever, Luc made slow, endless love to Sylvie. And it was so good, he wept, too.
Whoever said, “Ain’t love grand?” didn’t know the pain it could bring, in Luc’s opinion. Even as he basked in the joy of loving Sylvie, Luc sensed the agony to come. And so he left.
When Sylvie awakened several hours later, Luc was gone. She wasn’t overly alarmed, though, even when she read his terse note on the kitchen counter, next to Samson and Delilah.
Sylvie:
I cleaned the rat cage. Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Love, Luc
The reference to cleaning the cage had to mean that he’d taken the hidden Cypress Oil documents that Remy had intended to take earlier, but had forgotten. And as to telephone calls, she assumed all their lines were bugged at this point.
The thing that gave her hope—and perhaps it was a sign of how pathetic she’d become—was that Luc had underlined the word love. She was hoping that was his secret message to her, reinforcing what he’d told her earlier, that he loved her.