He runs his uninjured hand through his drying hair, leaving it a wonderful mess. “That’s just it, Sara. I can’t do that. I’m never going to be able to do that. I can’t do this.”

He pushes to his feet and he’s gone, leaving me alone.

Seventeen

I’m remarkably calm when I snap out of my stunned reaction to Chris’s declaration. I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting on the tub, but my body is stif and cold.

When I inally stand up, I strip of my clothes and turn the shower on to scorching before I step inside. I need to think, and once my mind is working again, my perspective on what he’s said changes.

Chris loves me. I believe that. He told me I’m what got him through losing Dylan, even when I wasn’t with him. So, while my irst thought was that his reference to not being able to do “this” meant us, me and him, I don’t think that now.

I think he means the pain, the worry, the fear. I believe that it’s the moments when he’s felt “I can’t do this” that he’s ended up tied up and screaming for someone to whip him until he feels nothing else.

My poor damaged man. So brilliant and wonderful, and he can’t see it. He wants to leave Paris to protect me from more than outside danger—he’s still afraid I can’t handle who he is.

This hurts far more than his reactions today. I’m not leaving. We are not leaving.

The hot water is cooling, and I get out and dress in my favorite soft black sweats and a pink tank. Once my hair is dry, I resist the urge to look for Chris. He left here feeling out of control, and I need to give him time to get it back. Pushing him won’t get me the results I want.

Grabbing my laptop, I head to the leather chair by the window in our bedroom. I open the blinds of the massive arched window, so like the others in the house. Rain patters against the panes and I curl one of my bare feet beneath me. Needing a connection to at least one of the two people I wish were with me now, I begin my search for Ella by googling the name “Garner Neuville.”

Two hours later, the everlasting rain a soft hum on my rattled nerve endings and I’m lost in thought. What does one of the richest men in Paris want with Ella, who has no family and no money? I’ve tabbed through pages and pages about the thirty-two-year-old billionaire who inherited a fortune and turned it into a bigger fortune, and have to igure out an answer. I have no idea why Chris thinks this man is trouble, but I don’t doubt he knows what he’s talking about.

It makes no sense that Neuville would be looking for Ella, so this has to be connected to her iancé. I never liked David, never trusted him.

I set my computer on the loor and stare at the bedroom door, willing Chris to appear. It doesn’t work. I can’t just sit here. I have to attack the problems, not let them attack me.

I push to my feet. I’m going to ind Ella, and talking with this Neuville person is a good start. But I’m not doing it without Chris. He’s had enough time alone, and so have I.

Now it’s our time.

The door to his studio is open when I arrive at the top of the stairs, and I hope it’s an invitation. The hard, dark song rever-berating of the walls isn’t as encouraging: “The Bottom,” by Staind. The words grind through me, inescapable, intense. Emotional.

You sufocate, you cannot wait for this to just be over. The song is the voice to Chris’s feelings. The window to how deeply he hurts. And I hurt for him all over again. If I can’t stop his pain, I’m at least going to be with him, through it.

I step inside and see Chris on a stool directly in front of the archway window, leaning toward the canvas resting on an easel.

His hand, bandaged but apparently functional, moves easily with the brush he holds, and he’s changed out of his wet jeans. He’s now dressed in a dark blue pair, but he bypassed a shirt and shoes, and his hair is soft and spiky, like it’s been freshly washed.

He showered in another bathroom, avoiding me while I’ve been wishing he’d appear.

The song lyrics remind me that every masterpiece he’s ever created has been done to music to match his mood, and this song has a clear message. He’s sufocating. He wants this to end. He doesn’t mean us, I remind myself. He needs me, like I need him.

Suddenly, I have to know how this song relates to what he’s spent two hours creating on the canvas. I push away from the door and start walking. Chris doesn’t turn and I don’t think he knows I’m here. He’s intensely into his work, deeply involved in what he’s creating. I stop as soon as I’m close enough to see the canvas, but not close enough to disturb his concentration.

And my heart skips a beat. He’s painting me. Draped in his leather jacket, my rain-drenched hair plastered around my face. I’m pale and my eyes relect such anguish that I can barely breathe. He’s captured the moment I confessed I was living my biggest fear, of him shutting me out—and he’s done it with such brilliance that I’m reliving it, my heart bleeding from the pain.

He’d said nothing after my confession, shown no reaction, but he’d felt one. He feels one now.

Chris might not have been physically with me these past two hours, but he hadn’t shut me out. My heart swells, and I burn to go to touch him. But it’s not the right way to reach him right now—it’s not the right thing to do.

I walk past him, toward the window, winging it, hoping I’ll read Chris and understand what he needs right now.

I know the instant he comes back to this world and me. My skin tingles and heats with the weight of his eyes following me.

I step directly in front of the window, several feet from where he’s been working. Turning around, I’m surprised to see him standing on this side of the canvas now. His hands are by his sides, his jaw tense, his eyes as haunted as mine are on his canvas.

I stand there and I wait. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for, but I wait. I don’t speak and neither does he. We’ve been good at this silent thing today. Too good. I can’t take it. I think I suck at waiting.

“Paint me,” I say. I’ve refused his request to do so in the past; I was afraid of what he would see. When I had secrets I didn’t want him to discover. “The real me, not the one from your memory.” I tug my tank top of, which leaves me na**d from the waist up, and I toss it aside. It’s important that he knows I’m willing to be na**d inside and out for him, and I quickly slide my pants and panties down and kick them aside. There’s a ledge that leads onto the wide windowsill, and I climb on top of it so that I’m inside the frame of the archway.

Chris moves toward me with a slow, sensuous stride, dominant but not predatory. The desire etching the hard lines of his face encourages me. He is coming for me, and I am his. I’ve held back until now, but no more. My personal demons just need to go to hell and stay there. They aren’t dragging us down with them.

I came to Paris for him, for this. Today was about his secrets, his past. His heartache and fears. Neither of us thought those things would be easy to face. And I don’t need easy. I need Chris.

Finally, he stops in front of me and my nostrils lare with his musky, wonderful scent. I want to wake up smelling like him every day of the rest of my life.

He looks down at me as the song loops and replays, echo-ing what I see in the dark depths of his stare. I catch a portion of the song, something about waves washing away scars. I want to be the waves that wash away Chris’s scars. I want that very much.

Slowly, his gaze lowers, lingering on my mouth, and then doing a lazy sweep downward over my breasts, my stomach, my sex, and I feel it like a caress. By the time he begins traveling upward again I am liquid ire and anticipation, slick between my thighs and tingling all over. I need him to touch me, but when he’s on edge, I know better than to touch him before he’s ready.

He reaches above me and my gaze follows as he hits a button on the archway. An electronic blind begins to slide down over the window. I almost laugh at the craziness of the moment.

I’m na**d, standing in front of the glass, watching a blind lower, and I don’t care. I just want Chris to touch me. He hits the button again and seals the shade into place a full foot over my head.

Still exposed to the open glass, I wonder what the point of lowering the shade was. I ind out when he reaches for a cord connected to the center of it.

“Hands over your head,” he orders, and inally hearing his voice is sweet honey. It pours over me and into me, and my heart slows its pounding beat.

I willingly lift my arms, aware of how my br**sts are now eye level and thrust closer to Chris. He steps onto the sill with me, in front of me, his big, perfect body cradling mine as he backs closer to the glass but not against it. His touch arouses me even more, and I’m already on ire. My ni**les nestle in the crisp hair of his chest and I can’t stop the arch of my body into his, or the soft moan that escapes my lips. I’m so lost in how much I need him that I’m barely aware of him knotting the cord around my wrists.

He steps of the sill, leaving me aching from the loss of his body, and I’m certain he’s about to tease me and drive me wild.

Then an anxious thought takes over. How many women have been here like this for him? Has Amber?

Chris wraps his arms around me, molding me close. “No to what you’re thinking,” he says. “I don’t bring anyone else here.

Only you.”

My lips part. “You . . . you knew what I was thinking?”

“Yes.” He traces my jaw. “I knew.” His lips brush mine, a gentle whisper, before they caress over my cheek to my ear, then to my neck. The tenderness of his touch is unexpectedly erotic. Goose bumps gather on my skin, and my ni**les tingle and tighten.

I thought this was about control—and it is; I’m tied up. But it’s a softer shade of dominance. He vibrates with desire, his lips traveling to my shoulder, his hand to my breast, my nipple, and back down my waist to my backside. He is touching me everywhere, kissing me everywhere. Tender, wonderful nips and bites and licks that travel lower and lower, until he’s on his knees pressing his mouth to my belly.

He lingers there and his eyes lift to mine, promising me delicious pleasure. His hands divide and conquer, the ingers of one tracing the intimate seam of my backside, the other stroking between my thighs where I’m slick and aching.

“Do you have any idea how wild it drives me, to know you get this wet so easily for me?” he asks, his voice laden with desire. For me. Because of me.

I try to laugh, but it comes out choked. “It drives me pretty wild, too.”

He smiles, and it’s as beautiful as watching him latten that room of stufy suits at the embassy. His tongue dips into my belly button, teasing me with where it will go next. I moan when his hand irmly cups my backside, before he lifts one of my legs, and then the next, over his shoulders. Caressing a path from one of my knees to my backside, he orders, “Hold them there.”

I nod and swallow hard as his thumb teases my clit, licking it gently before his ingers press inside me. Gasping, I squeeze my eyes shut. His mouth closes down over me, and aah—I can’t think. Everything seems to go into kind of a soft haze of pleasure.

My head drops back and I have a leeting out-of-body moment where I see myself in the window, my hands tied above my head with my legs wrapped around the neck of Chris Merit, while he does delicious things to my body. I laugh in disbelief that this is my life. His tongue is doing something incredibly perfect to me, and his ingers . . .

I gasp and arch my hips, shocked as my sex clenches around his ingers without warning. Ripples of pleasure radiate to the rest of my body, and Chris uses his skillful ingers and tongue to bring me from the peak to the valley. Slowly, the scream of pleasure within me becomes a hum, and I’m panting from the impact.

Chris kisses up my thigh to one of my knees, then gently lowers my legs to the loor. He wraps his arms around me and presses his cheek to my stomach, holding me there as if he feels like he’s about to lose me.

As seconds tick by, he starts to scare me.

“Chris?” His name is a whispered plea.

His hands begin traveling upward as he stands, cradling me to his body. “I can’t breathe without you, either, Sara,” he says, in a low, gravelly voice, replying to what I’d said in the bar. “And that’s the problem.”

“Just stop trying,” I whisper. “Untie me. Please. I need to touch you.”

He kisses me instead, unwilling or unready to give away control, but there’s a softness about him, about how his tongue caresses my mouth. I taste his passion, his hunger, but there’s something more. Something that still tastes like good-bye.

I stroke his tongue with mine, trying to kiss it away, but it doesn’t work. I try to burn it away with heat and ire, but it won’t fade. So when he tears his mouth from mine, I don’t give him time to speak.

“I’m not going anywhere. You can try to send me away, but I came here for a reason. I believe in us and I’m not going away.”

His hands frame my face. “If you tried, I’d come after you.”

His rough-edged tone is delicious friction to my nerve endings. “No matter what you show me or what happens, I won’t leave, Chris. If that’s why you want to leave, it’s the wrong reason, and the wrong thing for us.”

He stares down at me, the seconds ticking by, his expression unreadable, before he steps up onto the sill and unties my wrists.

Before I have time to lower my hands, he’s stepped of the sill and is walking away to the other side of his canvas. He returns with a shirt in his hand.

“Put this on or we won’t talk, and we need to.” He holds it up so that I can slide my arms. Disappointingly, it smells of fabric softener, not Chris.