Maxence couldn’t stop himself and speared his cock into her, impaling her soft, wet flesh with his maleness, and the world fell away into that moment of stillness and bliss with her all around him, every heartbeat an eternity, and his balls pulsed while he held her body under him.
His skin was exquisitely sensitive, and yet he was flayed alive.
Exhaustion took him, and he fell.
Maxence rested his forehead against her spine, gulping air while his heart slammed in his chest.
A bead of sweat—hers or his, he didn’t know—wandered over her skin and trailed down her side.
Hers or his.
He still didn’t know her name.
Remorse settled over him. He should have found out what her name was. He should have been more restrained.
He shouldn’t even be here.
Her sides heaved, and her breath rasped in her throat. “Oh, my God. You did it. Twice. I think I’m going to die.”
He whispered, “What’s your name?”
Her shoulder was a curve of pale skin on the dark blue duvet. “Dree.”
Odd name. Must be short for something. “I’m—”
“Don’t tell me,” she said, still panting. “Or lie to me. Don’t tell me your real name. Any name but your real one.”
The orgasm still reverberated in his mind, making a muddle of his thoughts. “What?”
“Not your real name. And remember that you have to leave before morning.” She was murmuring drunkenly into the duvet. “I’m supposed to have a one-night stand with a beautiful man who I’ll never see again. It’s on the list. I don’t want to be able to find you, even if I wanted to. So, not your real name.”
What a weird little girl. Maxence pulled back and kicked his pants off his ankles while he got rid of the condom. He yanked his shirt off her wrists, untying her. His mind was still a blurred mass of smudges.
Dree, for that was the blonde’s name, was wiggling, trying to free herself from the tight, red dress like she was fighting her way out of a cocoon. She’d gotten her elbows inside the red roll of elastic around her waist.
He helped her, pulling at the straps and finally locating a zipper.
She popped out of it like a sausage splitting its casing, sucked in a few panicked breaths, and tossed the red fabric over the footboard and onto the floor.
The bed was a four-poster. Damn. He really should have made use of those.
Four posts.
Three.
The Trinity.
“Augustine,” Maxence said, almost chuckling with the rightness of it. “My name is Augustine.”
“Like, St. Augustine?” Dree asked, rolling and wriggling to get under the covers. “Like, The City of God, that St. Augustine?”
The City of God was St. Augustine’s most famous book, yes.
Maxence rolled naked onto the bed and pulled the duvet over himself. The room had turned chilly in the December night. “More like when Augustine was younger. Like his prayer, ‘God, grant me chastity and sobriety, but not yet.’”
Her chuckle was slow at first but sped up to a laugh. “‘But not yet.’”
The double bed had two pillows, so Max commandeered one and grasped the voluptuous Dree, pulling her against himself and spooning her. “‘Not yet.’ Maybe someday, God will grant me chastity and sobriety, but He has not done it yet.”
“Well, I’m glad God hasn’t answered your prayer for chastity yet, Augustine, because that was spectacular.”
Damn, that was gratifying.
As he was drifting off, she asked, “What’s that tattoo on your back? Or your arm?”
But Maxence was already descending into sleep, and he couldn’t make his mouth move.
Rescuing two women in two days and then satisfying each of them didn’t leave much time for sleep, and he was damn tired.
Chapter Three
Plan Dree
Sunlight bouncing off the sunny yellow walls glared on Dree’s face and stabbed her eyes, so she squeezed them more tightly shut.
The DJ from the night before at the Buddha Bar had crammed the nightclub’s enormous speakers inside Dree’s skull and turned up the pulsing bass to full volume.
Her shoulders were sore.
So were her boobs.
Not to mention between her legs.
She might have a hangover, too, but that guy, “Augustine,” had been amazing in bed. She had been well and truly fucked. Last night was exactly the sort of thing that she’d needed to draw a bright line in the sand between her old life and her new one. She’d needed a fantastic night with a gorgeous, gorgeous man whom she’d never see again.
She was never going to see him again, right?
He had left during the night, right?
Dree held her breath, and despite her hangover, she squinted and rolled over, hoping like hell that he had done as she’d asked and taken off during the night.
The other side of the bed was empty. The sheets were rumpled, and the pillow lay askew.
Oh, thank goodness. Dree did not need to explain herself to anyone in the light of day just then. Her life was a godawful mess. Putting it back together was going to take a hell of a lot of work, and she didn’t need some hanger-on bugging her for ass while she was trying to deal with it.
Besides, she had a “Bucket List” to attend to. She had a hundred more things she wanted to experience in Paris before she caught that plane in four more days.
She swung her legs around and hopped down to the floor, smiling a little at the edge of the bed.
Her legs wobbled as she tried to walk. Man, Augustine had gone
