1939912059 (R) (28 page)

She startled as he shoved down the gown and flipped her toward the wall, tugging and removing all of the strings on her corset with aggressive tugs that made her stagger as she tried to steady herself against the wall with both hands. Her heart pounded as he finished stripping her completely.

When she was fully naked, he turned her back to him and yanked her up and into his arms, heading down the corridor. “Where is your room?”

She tightened her hold on his shoulders and neck, astounded by the fact that he had stripped her in less than a minute. She could barely breathe, much less focus.

He glanced down at her, still walking. “Where is your room?”

“Next to Henri’s. Over there.” She floppily pointed.

He stalked them down the corridor, toward that direction and angled them into the room. Walking up to her bed, he set her onto it and grabbed her face with both hands, leaning toward her from over the side of the bed.

Fixedly holding her gaze, he said, “We are doing this as many times as our bodies will allow so you
never
forget feeling me. Are we understood in this?”

That fierce passion she remembered all too well had not changed. Her heart pounded. “Yes.”

“Good.” With the swing of his body, he used his knees to spread her legs wide.

Unbuttoning the flap on his trousers, he released the hard length of his cock with a hand and lowering himself to her naked body, rammed his cock into her.

She gasped, gladly taking in that fullness. A fullness she missed so, so much.

Rigidly holding onto the sides of her head, he held her gaze and worked his cock into her again and again, the tempo of his hips and his body thumping the bed and her body into a delirium they both felt.

With each thump of his cock that pushed deeper and deeper against her womb, she felt herself spiraling against core tightening sensations that rippled through her body until she cried out in complete disbelief as to how good it felt to know something other than angst and pain. She missed being with him and touching him and holding him.

He withdrew and between savage breaths, spilled seed onto her stomach. He gasped.

She panted, trying to regain breaths, knowing he was protecting her to the end. “Maybe we should try for more children?”

He shook his head. “No. It would be too much of a burden on you. Henri is all we need.” He captured her lips, working his tongue against her mouth.

She melted against him and used her tongue to taste him and remember him, savoring every glorious moment of holding him despite all of his bundled clothing.

Releasing her mouth, his scarred hands skimmed her entire body, her thighs, her stomach which had been stretched from having the baby, and her breasts. He sucked on each of her breasts hard, holding her milk-hardened breasts, forcing both her breasts to lactate and spill.

She gasped and tried swatting him away. “Whatever are you doing? Leave them be.”

His head popped up, and he stared her down. “I am ensuring that what you are feeding my child is worthy of him.”

Despite his riled intensity, she burst into startled laughter and swatted at him again. “Do leave some for the poor boy, will you?”

He smirked and grabbed her, rolled her onto his chest. Kissing her throat, he sucked on her neck, his mouth pulsing against her skin.

She raked her fingers through the softness of his black hair, wanting and needing to remember everything about him. Surely, the man she had fallen in love with months ago was still in that mind and in that heart.

They continued to touch and kiss and kiss and touch.

He eventually spread her thighs open again and slid his hard length into her wetness, ready to start again. He rolled his hips into her and rasped, “Do you love me?”

Her throat tightened. She smoothed the sides of his overly lean, shaven face. “I think we both know our affection for each other will forever bind us.”

He searched her face, still rigidly pushing in and out of her. “Say it.”

“I am not about to give you a reason to stay.”

He gritted his teeth and slammed his cock into her in reprimand. “Say the words.”

She gasped. “No.”

He rammed into her again.

If she said it, it would give him a reason to stay. And she was not that selfish. “No.”

He stilled against her. Leaning in until they were nose to nose, he savagely held her gaze and said in a raw tone, “Allow me to gift you with what I am feeling right now due to your inability to proclaim what I know you feel.” He lowered his head and then bit into her shoulder hard.

She winced, feeling those teeth pinching far more than skin.

He clamped down even harder. And harder and harder still.

Tears now stung her eyes from the pain. She shoved him.

He released his hold on her shoulder, heavy breaths escaping him. “If you refuse to say the words,” he rasped, resuming steady, hard strokes, “then you had better use the strength of your hand. Either way, you are telling me that you love me before I leave tonight.”

She swallowed, the pleasuring sensations making it impossible for her to focus. She gasped, knowing she was about to climax.

His cock pushed harder into her. “Do you love me?”

“I am not about to—”

He rode her harder. “Say it, damn you. I need you to—”

She could barely breathe against his urgency and those strokes. Without thinking, she choked out, “I love you.” She cried out in disbelief, her entire body trembling.

He trembled with her, hissing out a breath as his pleasure and seed filled her womb.

She clung to him, and he clung to her, their breaths jagged.

“Thérèse.” He kissed her lips hard, his fingers tracing her face. “I knew you loved me,” he whispered against her mouth. “I knew all along. The dream of us and how we first met kept me alive. Do you know that?”

She wanted to cry.

He lifted his disheveled head, glancing back at the clock on the side of the room. He paused and quickly withdrew. “I have to go.” He kissed her lips hard one last time, lingering for a long moment as if to ensure they both remembered it, then rose, sliding his hand across her face, throat and breast. He watched his hand and searched her face. Averting his gaze, he dragged away his hand and rose, sliding off the bed with a thud.

He quietly buttoned his breeches. “I love you, too.”

She scrambled to sit up, not at all ready to let him go. Still naked, she slid off the bed and rounded him, taking both of his hands into hers. She kissed the scars on them and lifted her eyes to his. “Gérard, we will be together again. I know it.”

He didn’t meet her gaze.

She kissed his hands again. “I will always belong to you. And if God wills it, we
will
be together. I love you. And by saying it, I pray you take the words and save yourself. Swear to me you will leave tonight and never look back.”

He snapped his gaze to hers, the feral intensity in his expression overwhelming her. “I have to stay a bit longer. Just a few days. There is a family I have to help.”

Panic gripped her. “No. You cannot stay. If you do not leave tonight, Sade told me tomorrow will never come.”

“
Thérèse
. I will only stay long enough to help. I am bound by the promise I made to Larouche when I saw him dead on the street. He has a family. I have to—”

“Gérard. Sade will not be able to protect you beyond another night. You
have
to go.”

“
Thérèse—”

She shook him. “You have suffered enough! I am begging you to fight for yourself, damn you. Fight! Forget about what you owe to the world and remember what you owe to yourself.”

He averted his gaze. “Fine. I will leave tonight.”

A breath escaped her.

He grabbed her face and kissed her lips hard, his breaths uneven. “I should have married you. I should have married you the moment we arrived into Paris after our time in the forest.”

She grabbed his face. “Gérard,” she whispered. “Like you had said, marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper. It does not decide if two people end up together. Paper will burn, but what we share will remain strong. It will last forever.”

He lingered and touched a finger to her bare shoulder, tracing the still sore bite mark he had left. He leaned in and kissed the bite mark. Twice. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I am not the same man. I…they murdered me.”

“No. They did not. You are here with me. You are still the same man. Never forget it.” She cradled his head against her shoulder.

The clock chimed ten times.

He removed her hands from his head. “Tell Henri when he is old enough to understand that the only reason his father is not in his life is because he was not as strong as his mother.”

Smoothing away her tears with his thumbs, he searched her face. “Stay in Paris and never leave. I will find you. No matter where you are, I will find you. In the meantime, Sade will look after you and protect you.” Gérard released her face. Letting out a slow breath, he turned and quietly strode toward the door.

Glancing back at her one last time, he disappeared.

Frantically padding after him, almost too blind to see past her tears, she swung into the corridor in one last effort to see him before he disappeared from her life. To her astonishment, he re-entered Henri’s room. In the deafening silence, and through the open door of Henri’s room, she could hear him whispering to their son, “You were born of love. Remember that.”

She clasped a quaking hand against her mouth to keep herself from screaming at the horror of knowing that this amazing, beautiful man, and whatever was left of him, was being forced out of her life and his country because of vile people in a corrupted government wanting nothing more than what the last government wanted:
power
.

When Gérard re-appeared into the corridor, she swung back into her room, knowing if she looked at him again, if even for another breath, she wouldn’t be able to let him go. And she had to. She had to let him go. So he might live.

She heard Gérard’s heavy footsteps go down the corridor and down the stairwell. Those steps paused as if he stopped near her reading room. More steps and thudding, no longer within the corridor below, made her realize he had gone into her reading room. He noisily rummaged for something, books thudding onto the floor.

She edged out into the corridor, heart pounding, wondering what he was looking for.

He kept rummaging.

The noise eventually stopped.

His heavy footsteps went through the rest of the house until they faded.

A door opened and closed, announcing he was gone.

Sliding down the frame of the doorway, naked, she numbly stayed there and stared at the garnet ring on her finger. She was never going to love another man again.

Tucking the leather bound book of Voltaire under his arm, which his beloved Thérèse had carried in her basket when they first met in the forest, Gérard glanced down and fingered the small knitted boot in his hand. The tiny knitted boot he had slipped from his son’s foot to have something to remember him by. His pulse roared.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He would have to carry this disgusting anguish with him knowing he would not be there for Thérèse or for his son. They would be living life without him.

He crossed into the shadows of the narrow road covered by the fog.

Savagely pressing the knitted white boot that achingly smelled of powder and freshly starched linen which spoke of how much Thérèse tended to their child, he shoved it into his coat pocket and yanked open the door to the waiting coach. Hauling himself up and into it, he slammed the door and fell onto the upholstered seat across from Sade who quietly sat in the shadows opposite him. Gérard fingered the leather bound book before setting it beside him.

“There is a connecting coach waiting for you outside of Paris,” Sade announced. “We will part ways from there.”

Grabbing up the flask of brandy from the seat beside him, Gérard uncorked it. Taking a long swallow, he drowned himself in its all too familiar taste and flavor that he hadn’t indulged in since well before prison. He swallowed as much as he could without breathing and then broke away from the rim of his flask with a hiss, letting the fiery heat of that smooth liquid coat his throat and stomach.

A strange sense of clarity overtook him. One that made him realize brandy really did not have the power over him he thought it did. The greater power belonged to the beat of his heart and doing what was right.

Despite the promise he made to Thérèse, he had people to save. He had made old Laroche a promise from that cart. He would give himself five days to find them and help them.

Leaning forward in his seat, Gérard took another quick swig and announced in between ragged, brandy-fired breaths, “I want those fucking papers back. Because I am
not
leaving until I know Laroche’s entire family has been spared along with anyone else I know. You will tell Thérèse I left and darted across that border so she does not have to worry about me again. In the meantime, you and I are going to strike a few people from the guillotine list before I go. Do you understand?”