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“They really fucked you up, Layla Radford. But that’s okay. All the best people I know are totally bent in the head.”
I didn’t see how that was a reasonable response to what I’d just said to him. I told him I basically felt like getting dressed was participating in some kind of fraudulent activity and that was his response?
“Zeke…”
He kissed me. I didn’t see it coming, and I wasn’t sure he’d planned it. One second, he stood next to me, and the next he drew me to him hard and kissed my lips gently, a stark contrast to the way he held me still. I closed my eyes, totally surprised by the caress as I gave myself over to it at the same time.
Zeke pressed his mouth deeper, and I wanted it to never stop. My body seemed to come alive. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been kissed like this before, so unplanned, so spontaneously, and my breasts hardened in the seconds that he held me.
He pulled back, smoothing his thumb over my mouth. “You’re so young. I need to leave you alone.”
If he’d dumped cold water over my head, he couldn’t have destroyed that second any better. “I was going to be someone’s wife. I’m not that young, I assure you.”
“Even if you were waking up as Mrs. Kit Allard this morning, you’d still be young. Too young for me. I don’t do love and romance. I do temporary. Heat. Sex. Fun. You’re living with me until we get this sorted. I won’t be another man who fucks up your life.”
Now wasn’t the time for an argument. I knew enough to know that I wanted Zeke to do those things with me, and I wasgoing to have to convince him when his guard wasn’t as up as he’d just placed it.
That kiss had shown me I wanted more. And maybe for now, the best thing I could do was to have no-consequence sex with the only man I’d ever wanted to have it with.
10
Igot what I’d wished for, and for a while, Zeke drove me around Paris on his motorcycle. While we’d never lived in Paris, I had been here many times. Still, I’d never seen it from the back of a motorcycle, clinging to a man who had kissed me into plotting how I could have sex with him in the future. At no time did it feel like I had ants crawling on me or any other upsetting feeling.
We were two people wearing helmets, darting around traffic, and enjoying the heck out of the pleasant weather. No one knew us in those moments, and for just a little bit, I wondered if I was getting to know myself better. I was a woman who liked the wind to hit her body at high speeds, to depend on someone else for my safety, and to try something new on a Sunday that she’d never done before. These were all things I hadn’t realized when I woke up that morning.
Eventually, we stopped, and I let my feet ache a little bit while we walked around Montmartre, admiring the work of the artists. Or at least I was. Zeke could go quiet for periods of time, and while I didn’t find it unnerving, I did have to wonder whatit was that would catch his attention and hold him so quiet. I’d shared with him, and he had yet to answer my earlier question.
I didn’t want to ruin this time by asking again. I would, it was important I understood, both for myself and for the sheer curiosity because he knew things about my life I didn’t know. My dad got into trouble, and that was why we’d had to leave? Why didn’t I know that?
Why hadn’t I asked?
I stopped to admire the work of one artist who did his in pencil and charcoal. It was a dramatic effect and different than the others I’d been looking at. When he spoke to me, I smiled. It was really the only thing I could do when this happened. I’d not been traveling that much lately, and I’d not asked myself why, but maybe it had to do with this problem. I hated not understanding.
“He wants to know if you want your portrait done. He says it would be a gift to his pencil to sketch you.”
Zeke translated for him before answering the man. I wondered how many times he’d had to already tell people I just didn’t get what they were saying to me. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I hadn’t tried to learn, if I’d never made the attempt. Most people probably thought that. I hadn’t studied French, fine. But I had tried. And Spanish. German. Chinese. All of them had been a sad failure, with the schools suggesting to my father he get me tested for one thing or another. He never did, and the Fs didn’t matter because he’d paid to get me into school anyway, where I had promptly failed. Again.
Strangers didn’t know all of this, but I did, and it was a constant bang in my head to try to deal with it. Better to just stay home.
“Well, I’ll do it if you’ll do it.”
No way was Ezekiel Scott going to sit still and let the artist sketch him. There was no way. He smiled at me. “One thing youshould know, while I’m not a jackass about it, I do find it difficult to resist a real challenge when it’s presented to me. Like I’m not going to jump off the Eiffel Tower. That’s stupid. But show you that I will absolutely get my portrait done? Sure. I’ll do it. If you do it with me.”
I turned to look at him straight on. “Okay.”
He said something to the artist, and there we were, seated together, letting a stranger try to capture us in that moment.
“Hold on,” Zeke said before he must have repeated it to the gentleman who was going to try to sketch us. He was older, with a beard and a kind smile.
Zeke moved us until I sat in his lap, with his chin on my shoulder. With the sun behind us and Paris looking as beautiful as I’d ever seen it, we stayed very still and let the man with all the talent attempt to capture us.
Eventually, he said something that made Zeke groan and laugh.
“Something funny happening between the two of you that you want to share?” I was going to get a leg cramp if I didn’t move soon, so if there was something ridiculous going on that I should know about, it would really be great to hear about it so I could join in the fun.
“He said you’re incredibly sexy. And that he doesn’t know how I can sit here like this for so long without finding myself in trouble.”
I rolled my eyes. Neither one of them had said that. I was sure of it. But if they didn’t want to share, I wasn’t going to push it. “It’s hard to never know what people are saying. You could be making fun of me all over Paris.”
