Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 23181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 116(@200wpm)___ 93(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 116(@200wpm)___ 93(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
True to his word, Alistair has spoiled me rotten and I’ve given up on trying to convince him I don’t need the fancy trappings. He enjoys giving me jewelry, silk lingerie and feeding me desserts—and I like seeing him happy.
Yes, happy. That’s what he is. Every hour that we’re in Paris, he grows more comfortable, smiling, laughing, being optimistic. I thought he was handsome before, but now that he constantly wears a grin, his hair tousled from sex, I lose my breath every time he walks into the room.
Okay, so maybe I’m partially responsible for us remaining in the suite so long.
But we’re outside now, evening has just fallen and we’re walking along the Seine. I’m wearing a pastel-pink dress with a corseted top and a flowing skirt that blows around my knees and makes me feel beautiful. Alistair never takes his right hand off me, resting it on my hip, then my shoulder, occasionally fisting my loose hair and forcing me to look him in the eye, as if reminding me who I belong to.
I don’t need a reminder.
Alistair already has my heart and he’s quickly capturing my soul. With every look, every touch, every night that he holds me. The only thing stopping me from handing over every part of myself completely…is the fact that I haven’t told him the truth about who I am and how we met.
In Paris, though, so far from reality, it becomes easier and easier to forget.
Especially now, when the sun sets and Paris lights up around us, romantic and beautiful and full of history, hope, music. We’ve just had an amazing dinner at a dark, candlelit restaurant and I’m delightfully full. Alistair pulls me to a stop in the middle of an elegant square, complete with a marble fountain, spilling with water and red flowers. Twinkling lights are strung overhead. I’m so far from my old life that when Alistair picks me up by the waist and settles me on the edge of the fountain—and pulls out a black velvet ring box—I think I’m dreaming.
“Alistair,” I breathe, hands flying to my mouth.
“Shelby.” His throat works with emotion.
But before he can say another word, a man appears to his right. An old, hunched-over man in tattered clothes and no shoes. He’s holding an ancient violin in his hands, the neck partially bent.
He says something in quick French.
Neither of us responds and when it becomes obvious that we didn’t understand him, the man repeats himself in English.
“Play music for you and the lady?”
A flash of annoyance crosses Alistair’s face. He starts to tell the man to leave us alone, but something in his expression shifts. And instead of shooing the man away, Alistair nods. “Yes. Thank you.”
That’s when I can no longer keep my soul from becoming Alistair’s. Because he doesn’t merely love me, desire me…he listens. He listened to me when I asked him to be more patient with people, cared enough to try.
His actions are rewarded a moment later when the old man begins to play… and it’s quite simply the most incredible sound I’ve ever heard. The swell of sound, the delicate romance of the strings being finessed by the bow, is poetry. The square is filled with even more life than before, passersby stopping to appreciate the music.
Alistair looks at me in wonder, the ring box still in his hand. “Shelby, you’ve made me a better man. Made me see the world as a beautiful place. A place to appreciate instead of conquer. And I just want to walk beside you through it forever.” He opens the ring box as the music drifts around us, the size of the diamond almost causing me to fall backwards into the fountain. “Be my wife, angel.”
“Yes,” I whisper, moisture crowding my vision. “Yes, Alistair.”
There is a sheen in his eyes as he slides the ring onto my finger and pulls me into his arms, spinning me in a circle in the middle of the square, laughing. My heart expands with hope and awe and affection. Our mouths lock together, as they’re wont to do, and I’m being kissed passionately. With such growing fervor that my thoughts begin to cloud, lust tightening and wetting my flesh.
Barely conscious of our audience, my legs cinch up around my future husband’s hips and the kiss changes tempo, growing more ravenous, Alistair’s shaft hardening against my mound, a groan emanating from his throat. His fingers plow into my hair and he attacks my lips, his tongue plunging deep inside my mouth, his hips tilting forward at the same time and I whine his name.
“Christ, I know what it means when you cry my name like that,” he says hoarsely against my lips. “Means you need a good, hard fucking.”
“Please, Daddy,” I whisper, my femininity clenching.
He glances around us in frustration, making note of the busy square, the people seated at the nearby café who watch us openly. “We’re a half a mile from the hotel,” he says, striding out of the light onto the sidewalk, before hooking left onto a lesser populated side street paved in cobblestones. My mouth races up and down his neck, his hands delving beneath my dress to palm my buttocks, his fingers tangling in my lacy thong, tugging, sliding it back and forth through the valley of my sex.