“You told me years ago that you didn’t want our businesses intertwined.”
“That was when I had a business.”
“Okay. Let’s pick this up tomorrow,” Rosebud says, her voice light but she’s definitely not suggesting, she’s demanding. She reaches into her purse, which I notice is an Allard bag, and walks around the table and drops a crystal into Axel’s hand.
“Solidite for calmness and clarity.” She turns to me and drops one into the center of my palm. “Agate for healing. You’ve been rolling your shoulders all night.”
She hugs Axel and he hugs her back. "Love you, my boy. I'm going to stick rose quartz under your dad's pillow tonight. You know how that calms him."
We say goodbye to Cordy and Dominic, although that goodbye is frosty between him and his son. We don’t speak until we get to the room. I am the one to break the ice. “He hired your ex?”
“Yep.”
“For public relations?”
“Yep.”
“Your ex worked in the same field as you?”
“Yep.”
Well, this isn't a very two-sided conversation. I roll my shoulders again and pull out the crystal Rosebud gave me and put it on the bar. "Can you say something other than yep?"
“Yep. Sure.”
He’s pacing by the window, eyes down on the fancy lush carpet. I lean against the bar. “Want me to suck you off?”
“Ye— what? No. I mean, what the fuck?”
I smile because I finally got him to look at me. And although something in his expression holds shame and pain, he’s still fucking gorgeous to me. “I’m just trying to get you to talk to me. You sometimes let out a whole lot of words when you come.”
“I don’t want to talk about this. Or think about it. Or tell you what a total idiot I’ve been,” Axel mutters. “I spent years changing people’s images, rebranding them. Seeing them for exactly who they were but making sure the world saw something better. And I didn’t know that I wasn’t seeing my partner for who he was.”
“We all make mistakes,” I say simply.
"He's the reason I don't have a company of my own anymore," Axel says and stops pacing. He runs his hand through his hair and stares at the carpet again. "He worked for me. We were already dating, as you know. We were in a good place when we got back together after my New Year's in Monaco. I thought. And he was a good accounts manager at his other firm. So I thought sure. I was careful and filled out paperwork with my own HR department so it was on-record we had an out-of-office relationship. But I didn't make him sign a non-compete because he was supposed to love me. We were supposed to trust each other. That’s what he told me when I brought it up. So I dropped it.”
I shake my head, not at Axel's mistake. But he misinterprets me. He turns to the window and tugs on his hair. "I know. I'm a fool. A loser. I've always had shit taste in men and no self-preservation."
Ouch. I struggle not to take that personally because I am a man he picked. I walk up behind him and grab his shoulders. He’s tense and he tries to step away but I don’t let him. “I am not judging you in the least, Axe. I am very happy that you were stupid enough to give me a real shot.”
He smiles at that, but it's fleeting. I wrap my arms around him from behind. He reaches up and wraps a hand around my forearm, where it's wrapped around his chest. "I didn't mean you. You aren't a mistake."
“I know,” I whisper against the back of his ear. The French countryside rolls out in front of us, dark and looming. “I don’t believe in mistakes. If Eric hadn’t screwed you over, and you hadn’t closed your agency, you wouldn’t have been hired by my dad. And we never would have met again. And I never would have almost heard you tell me you love me.”
Slowly, Axel turns in my arms. His eyes are wide and his cheeks rosy. It’s my favorite Axel. The one who is scared shitless but not about to back down. “You told me not to tell you.”
“Lay it on me now. I can handle it,” I say in my best tough American guy voice.
Axel laughs. “Well, now I’m not sure I want to.”
I laugh too and pull him closer, sliding my hands down to cup his ass. I pull him into me and feel our cocks stir at the same time. “Okay well, keep the words in that pretty little mouth of yours and show me instead.”
“Good idea.” He pauses to kiss me long and slow. “Anyone can say anything, whether it’s true or not. But a cock in the ass, that speaks louder than words.”
I laugh. Scratch that, I think as we start to undress each other. My favorite Axel is this one. The one with the dirty words and hard dick. The one who wants me despite all his many sensible thoughts. I cuff the back of his neck when we’re naked so that I can hold our mouths together while our bodies touch. We find the bed. He tumbles onto it first and everything is like it always is between us—passionate and needy and real.
But I roll him over, so he’s on top of me and I’m under him, his legs between mine, our cocks leaking as they grapple for space between us. I run my fingertips over his cheeks and into his hair as he whispers, “You want me on top?”
