Maxence’s face heated, not with embarrassment, but from the images in his head. “I don’t ‘exercise control in all things.’ I don’t like control at all. I want tolosecontrol. I like to beoutof control. I like to losemyselfin a woman until I can’t think or rationalize at all. It takes over me. I lose control, and I make you lose control, and then we’re just an unthinking, unyielding, uncontrollable force of passion until we collapse, exhausted and nearly unconscious, in a tangle of sweat, heat, and blood.”
She looked down, frowning, and seemed to examine her fingers on her knees. “I can kind of see it, the losing-control thing, like when you drove me crazy in Paris until I practically attacked you.”
He nodded.
“I—I did attack you. And then again in Nepal, you were—” She looked up at him. “You were out of control.”
He nodded again, watching her.
“How much more out of control can you get?”
“As much as you can take,” Maxence said.
Dree bit her lower lip and nodded, obviously thinking about it.
“Does it always have to be like that? Can’t it sometimes be . . . gentle? Emotional?”
“Like that last night in Nepal, the second time?”
Dree nodded. “So, you’re okay with that, too. Sometimes.”
He drew his finger from her ear around to her throat, stroking the silk of her skin. “Sometimes.”
Her one comment was, “I don’t see how that could last in the long term.”
And that gave Maxence pause.
Because she was still considering a future between them, even after that night in Nepal when she’d refused to travel the world with him.
As was he.
The day wound down, and Maxence sent Dree out to the receptionist and then to the kitchens to bring his afternoon hot chocolate.
He had one more phone call to return.
On his phone screen, a number—no name, just a number—was repeated three times at the top of the list of missed calls.
Max thumbed the glass.
While his phone rang, he leaned back in his desk chair and swiveled it around to watch the wintry sunset turn the terra cotta walls of the fortress to flame.
The twilight of the day.
A suitable time for an ending.
A click.
A woman asked, “Maxence?”
“Flicka,” he breathed.
And there was a pause.
A pause like that one could last a lifetime if they let it. They both knew she’d broken his heart, once upon a time.
And they both knew why he wasn’t right for her. Flicka liked being in control, not losing her mind and self.
But that wasn’t why he’d called.
