He chuckles and finds the edge of my ear with his teeth. “Ididn’t have to work for them. Why this sudden interest in my past?”
“Who became friends with whom?”
He lifts his eyebrows. “So you want a history lesson?”
“I’m doing research,” I say primly, and reach down with my free hand to play with his hardening cock. He sucks in a breath.
“Well, if you’re going to do that at the same time… I saw West first. Hated him on day one. Then he stopped me from getting expelled a week later, and, well, he stuck around.”
“You tried to get expelled?”
“Yes. Wasn’t very successful at it.”
“Wow.” I think to his past. The dates, the timelines… “You went to boarding school right after the avalanche?”
He nods. For a long minute I don’t think he’s going to say anything else. But then he sighs. “I saw it as punishment, and I didn’t want to stay there. America was my mother’s home, and it was where I spent many summers, but it wasn’thome.And I knew no one.”
“Do you still see it that way? As punishment?” I turn on his arm and look at him. The sunlight dapples over his tan skin and disappears in the dark, inky swirls of his hair.
His eyes are a lighter shade of green in this light.
“I think it was a Hail Mary pass. My parents aren’t…weren’t… the best at emotions. They were heartbroken over Etienne. They didn’t know what to do with me. And they handed the problem to someone better equipped to deal with it.”
It’s not hard to picture him at fourteen, lanky and crushed and defiant. I don’t like that he was sent away. I don’t like that he’s spent half his life feeling responsible for the powers of nature.
I didn’t deserve to survive, he said.
Rafe’s thumb brushes over my lip. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sure I like this boarding school.” I put the ring back on his hand.
“It saved me,” he says simply, and pulls me closer. “And I think it’s time I correct my previous oversight…”
I end up on my back, with his head between my thighs and all semblance of thought wiped from my mind.
He is very good with his tongue.
CHAPTER 63
RAFE
“Look at this.” Paige is sitting on the edge of my desk, and she’s holding up her laptop with news headlines. There’s a picture of us in Monaco, alongside a giant headline.Luxury’s latest lovebirds seem legit.
“That’s terrible copywriting,” I say.
She laughs. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she’s sitting directly on top of a pile of documents I need access to, and she smells good. I smooth my hand up her bare calf. “Yes, but it’s great news,” she says. “We’re selling it. It’s working.”
“And the news cycle is shifting,” I add. “No one is going to care for long.”
“Hopefully this is what they’ll remember. When it dies down.” She leans back, bracing her hands against the edge of the desk. She’s still wearing the watch I gave her.
She told me how much she liked it this morning, after another tennis match. She carefully took it off before diving into the lake after we’d finished playing.
I don’t deserve her. I know it, and it’s like a stone in my shoe, the knowledge every time she smiles at me and thanksme and touches me. That she is more goodness than I will ever deserve in this life.
Her trust is the greatest thing I’ve ever been given, and I have to make sure I live up to it.
“Your uncle’s lawsuit is close to being settled,” I tell her. “The legal definition oflove of your lifeis flimsy at best. Your grandfather’s will is… well.”
