Auri let out a small laugh, and I felt it like sunlight on skin—brief but radiant. She leaned back in her chair, and finally looked at me. The look in her eyes saidwe did it. Not perfectly, not painlessly, but we made it through.
I squeezed her thigh beneath the table. The conversation shifted around us—lighter, more curious. Étienne rattled off numbers about the soil’s acidity levels. Emilie offered to show me the wine cellar like it was a haunted house tour.
But the room felt different now. Like it had accepted us.
And I couldn’t wait to reward my wife later..
We’d only stepped awayunder the guise of needing a quick moment alone. That was the agreed-upon excuse. Auri’s mum had just asked for another glass of wine, and her dad was still dissecting a photo of our vineyard ceremony like he was reviewing crime scene footage. The tension had easedslightly—they hadn’t thrown us out for eloping. But no one was pretending this wasn’t a shock.
They’d wanted to see more pictures. We were not prepared. Every wedding photo was followed by three they could never see. Her on her knees. Me with the camera. Our rings, her dress, my cock. All in one shot.
We barely managed to throw together a quick album to show them.
But what they didn’t know was that the second that bathroom door latched shut, she shoved me against it.
Hands on my chest, mouth on my jaw, fingers bunching my shirt like she wanted to tear it off. I caught her, instantly, hands gripping her waist as her mouth crashed into mine—hot, open, desperate. Not just kissing me.Consumingme.
I groaned low in my throat, letting her devour me, leaning into the heavy wooden door as I clutched her tighter.
She tugged my lower lip between her teeth. “Cal,” she whispered, so fiercely I nearly came undone. “Mon Dieu, how did you not lose your mind in there?”
“Oh, I lost it,” I rasped, voice rough against her neck. “Still losing it.” I kissed her jaw, then her throat, biting softly just below her ear. Couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
She shivered. “If you keep doing that, I swear?—”
“I’m counting on it.”
Her laugh was sharp, breathless, coated in heat. She shoved her leg between mine, dragging her thigh up where I was already hard, andfuck.
I dropped my back against the door, panting. “You keep grinding on me like that, baby,” I growled, “and I’m going to fuck you right here in this powder room.”
She whimpered—actually whimpered—and the sound was so pretty I nearly got on my knees just to hear it again.
“I’m so in love with you,” she whispered, like it physically hurt to keep it in. “I want you in every way, always, all the time.”
My throat closed. I cupped her face, dragged my thumbs over her cheeks, kissed her like she was the only salvation I’d ever believe in.
“Fuck, mo chridhe, me too. I’d marry you again tomorrow,” I told her, voice rough, “just to prove it.”
She blinked, eyes glassy and heated with want. “I’d let you,” she whispered.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “Don’t say that unless you want me to come in my pants.”
Her laugh broke then—messy and gorgeous and relieved. I palmed her ass, yanked her tighter to me, bit down on her collarbone. I shouldn’t do that, I shouldn’t mark her, but I couldn’t stop, didn’t want to, didn’t even think I could.
She groaned, frustrated and desperate, rocking into me. “You’re going to ruin me.”
“Deal with it, filthy little wife of mine.” I slipped my hand under the back of her dress, fingers brushing bare skin, dragging down her spine.
Then she did the unthinkable.
She stepped back out of my hold and dropped to her knees on the antique wooden floor, resting back on her wedges. Her hands folded neatly in her lap like she was praying. The soft, expensive fabric of her dress pooled around her. Dainty straps slipped from her shoulders, the neckline gaping just enough to show the perfect swell of her breasts.
And shelooked up at me.
Wide-eyed, bare-faced, glowing. Like some spoiled, pearl-wearing French aristocrat preparing to be debauched on the bathroom floor of her father’s château.
And I fucking lost it.
