go. Enjoy your stay at Le Pavillon de Giverny.”
He smiles at her as she leaves. “We will.”
I love his confidence. I want to scoop it up, take a spoonful, and taste it. I want to feel that same boldness. But maybe I can by believing him. By believing the we will when it comes to us.
He lifts his drink. I lift mine.
“To questions, and to finding the answers,” I offer.
“I’ll drink to that.” We clink glasses, and then we do what we’ve always done.
We talk.
“At the risk of knowing the answer, I suppose flings are something you’re familiar with?” I ask.
“Flings. One-night stands. And arrangements. I’ve played the field. I’ve had threesomes, as you know.”
I do know this about him. Before Cole fell in love with Sage, he and Daniel had engaged in threesomes, the kind where the two of them would focus solely on the woman’s pleasure. Daniel had entertained me with stories of some of those. I ate up those tales, loving the debauchery, the decadence, and the way he told them—with zero guilt.
With only an appreciation, it seemed, for the purity of pleasure and the pursuit of it.
In his world, pleasure is reason enough to indulge.
Is it in mine?
I don’t know, but I delighted in the voyeuristic thrill of listening to the stories of their bedroom antics, the kind where everyone said yes.
Where everyone wanted the game.
“I’ve never really indulged in bedroom games. Not like that,” I tell him. “And I don’t want a threesome.”
“I wouldn’t want to share you,” he says, then takes a drink, sets it down.
His lips are a ruler; his eyes are resolute.
That decisiveness turns me on. I don’t want to be shared. I’m a one-man kind of woman. “I’m glad you don’t want to share me. I don’t want that kind of bedroom game.”
“I sense that about you.”
“Is that why you don’t want to share me?” I ask, needing to know, craving the answer. “Because you can tell I don’t want that?”
He hums. Maybe a few notes from Beethoven. Perhaps “Ode to Joy.” A sign that he’s thinking. He licks his lips, inching closer. “No. That’s not the reason. Here are the reasons. I don’t want to share you for you. And I don’t want to share you for me. So make of that what you will.”
Part of me wants to make everything of that, but that’s a risky bet. “What do you make of it?” I ask.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” he says, and his forthrightness lures me. It makes my skin tingle. But also, it excites my mind.
That’s what electrifies me the most.
That’s what excites my body—when a man speaks his truth. When a man acts from truth. When he doesn’t lie.
Honesty is an elixir.
For all our flirting, all our games, Daniel has never seemed like a liar. Not once.
Right now, his eyes are etched with longing, a longing he’s letting me see fully. “But the one thing I don’t need to figure out is how much I want you,” he adds in a low, dirty whisper. “I don’t need to mull it over. I know I’d like to explore it, and I believe we can go back to who we were. We’re mature, thoughtful, caring. We can fuck and not let it ruin us.”
A pulse beats between my legs.
Fine, my brain isn’t the only organ that’s turned on.
My body longs for him. For the way he says fuck with such assuredness, such confidence.
“Are you asking me, Daniel? Are you asking me to engage in bedroom games with you?”
He lifts a hand and brushes the red strands that don’t belong to me off my shoulder. I tremble under his touch.
“It’s up to you, Scarlett. I’d very much like to indulge in you. What would you like?”
I lick my lips, lift the glass, and take another drink.
What would I like?
I would like to feel indulged in.
I would like to know what that’s like.
But I also don’t know what happens on the other side. How to make the exit neat and orderly. How to ensure I’m not ruined. “Our friendship matters to me. Our partnership matters to me,” I say. “I don’t want to lose any of that. We can make promises that nothing will change, but can we keep them?”
He knocks back his drink and sets down the glass. “We can certainly try.”
People make all sorts of promises. People try to commit. But promises are often broken. “I’d like to sleep on it,” I finally say.
A flash of disappointment crosses