Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (31 page)

The day she did…

He felt like a bastard for even thinking it, but Alex would feel nothing on the day the call came. If anything, he’d probably experience a great welter of relief.

While his mother lived, Alex’s past remained an open, festering sore.

He could never close ties to the past, because he wasn’t certain if his mother had played a part in his ruination as a child. And if he wasn’t certain of that, how could he trust any part of his relationship with her? She might have betrayed him in the most evil possible way. On the other hand, she might have been entirely unaware.

His gut told him it was the former that was the case, for how could a live-in partner leave a shared bedroom three or four times a week, in the depths of the night, without the other partner being aware of it? No matter how often he was on the verge of breaking all ties, with no real, concrete evidence, Alex remained in contact with her.

The thoughts were a trigger. He fought hard to stop himself from releasing the “bullet” and completely annihilating his plans for the day in a meltdown of his own. Alex managed to curb his emotions by focusing on Devvy’s promise.

Such a simple offering, gifted freely and openly. It was clean. So lily white that the black in Alex’s soul shriveled a little. Turned gray.

He turned his head to watch her as she shrugged out of her lightweight cardigan and handed it to one of the maids, Louise, if memory served. He himself gave her his leather jacket and she scurried away to tuck them in some closet or other, leaving them alone after completing her task and waiting to be summoned for further instruction.

The archaic running of Bastien’s house was thanks to a housekeeper, Madame Joffet, who was nearing seventy and had a familial background of service to the rich and famous. Her grandparents had once acted as housekeeper and butler for some of Paris’s most elite. As such, she took her teachings from them and had the staff scurrying around as though they would be whipped if Bastien or Devvy so much as saw them for more than a few seconds at a time.

Devvy didn’t seem to notice, but he did. The idea of living with such a high number of intrusions made him shudder with the horror of it.

At the moment, living alone suited him. His PA, Catherine, came in and molded herself to his schedule, her PAs worked to ease her life and to further enhance the smooth running of his own. He only interacted with Catherine, and her staff worked on a telecom basis.

He preferred it that way. Catherine knew how he liked things done and she did them to suit his routine, often carrying out the heavy tasks when he was asleep or in the middle of an experiment. He ran her ragged, he knew that, but she never complained. Mostly, because he gave her freedom to come and go. As long as he was never troubled, she could work as little or as much as she chose, and whenever she wanted. He never checked up on her. Her wage was more than twice the average PA’s, and she could adapt her job to suit the school run. As a single mother, such flexibility was vital.

As far as Alex was aware, Bastien had at least eight people working in his house. From maids to gardeners to drivers to maintenance people to the chef. As well as their assistants! In a way, having so many people under one roof was like inviting the chaos of the outside world indoors.

Would he be able to cope living this way?

As he pondered the question, he realized he was looking at it from the wrong angle.

Could he cope in a world without both Bastien and Devvy in it?

No.

That was the short answer.

The long of it was, Bastien loved Devvy and that love was returned. As Devvy had once told him, he was the outsider, because he pushed himself to the fringes of their relationship by living away from them.

He’d never thought of it that way. Even when he’d been Bastien’s dirty little secret. He had just believed they were both waiting for the perfect moment and had been content to be hidden away.

Now…he wasn’t content with the idea of his many foibles turning his lovers away from him. Especially after he’d realized his love for Devvy was as concrete as his love for Bastien.

A life without them was worse than a life of inhabiting a house such as this one, with a small pack of staff that kept it ticking like a clock.

Priorities.

Everyone had them and it was time Alex reassessed his.

As he pondered such a reassessment, his eyes wandered over to the catalyst for such change.

In the light and airy vestibule, with the central circular table loaded down with freshly-cut flowers that perfumed the room with a clean tinge of the season and the lights beaming into the room from the windows surrounding the door, Devvy’s dirty-blonde beauty was highlighted to perfection.

The light golden tones in her hair shone and glistened in the bright, hot sun. The darker shades, the light chestnut and almost bronzy hues, were given extra contrast in the shadows of the hall. Her skin, the shade of magnolia tinged with the rosiness of a downy peach, gleamed in the muted, dusky glow from the windows.

She was unique and she was his. As he was hers.

In a way, it was a miracle.
She
was his miracle.

Intelligence was a burden as well as a gift. The higher a person’s capabilities for brilliance, the higher the chances that same person could crack. Alex had more cracks than he could count, and he was on the brink of a Humpty Dumpty moment.

Only in his case, he could be put back together again.

If Devvy chose to do the repair work.

He was laying all of this on Devvy’s shoulders and not Bastien’s, because Bastien’s love gave him a different kind of support.

With him, Alex was at peace. When they were together, the outside world didn’t exist. But the instant they were apart, the demons returned. They attacked.

With Devvy, perhaps because she was just as brilliant as he, perhaps because they were both scientists, albeit in different fields, she kept the demons at bay. When he was with her, memories of the past, his nightmares would return, but she would dampen their effect with her unique outlook. And when she left him, while he felt lost, his lips would often twitch as his mind recapped a conversation they’d had as he worked on something or other in the lab.

They were two halves of a whole that would keep him sane.

“What are you staring at?” she asked, turning to him with a scowl. Her eyes glanced down as though she were looking for a stain on her shirt, and a smile graced his mouth at her lack of artfulness.

“The flowers,” he teased, deadpan.

Her scowl deepened as her gaze flickered over to the pink-purple azaleas. “I didn’t realize you were a flower lover.”

“Whatever made you think I wasn’t?”

She rolled her eyes. “The complete lack of anything green in your penthouse.” She mock shivered. “I don’t know how you can stand all the recycled air without some plants in there to rebalance and cleanse the space.”

Alex shrugged. “I like them but they don’t like me. We can’t all have a green thumb, Devvy darling.” Stood beside the table loaded down with the huge display of blossoms, she was in the center of the door-lined space. He strode over to her and calmly, presumptuously, wrapped his arms about her and pulled her close. “Don’t change,
ma petite
.”

“Why should I? I’d say I’m too set in my ways to go through a complete personality shift.”

He grinned. “You say that and yet you’re deep in the midst of a relationship that most would consider taboo.” The dimness of the room had dilated her pupils, but the icy-blue orbs darkened further as his tone dropped into a husky growl, “You know what’s going to happen tonight, don’t you? When Sebastien gets home and finds us both here?”

Swallowing, she turned her head from side to side. Her eyes never left his, not for a second and he reveled in being at the center of this woman’s glorious attention.

“He’s going to fuck you. And as he takes your ass, I’ll sink into your pussy. When we’ve flooded you with cum, I’ll fuck him and you can suck his cock…” He paused, waited and watched as she sucked in a breath and held it with expectation. “Just think of all the different positions, Devvy.”

“If you think I haven’t already contemplated what you two will do to me, you’re very much mistaken, Alex.”

He grinned. “I’m glad to hear that you’ve been looking forward to it as much as I have.”

“Damn right.” She snorted, and then looked sheepish. “Well, I did freak myself out. Just a little.”

He cocked a brow, urging her silently to explain, but she shook her head, untangled herself from his embrace, and then grabbed him by the hand. He let her lead him into one particular room and from the slight touches of femininity, he knew this was her lounge. He’d often heard Bastien complain about her refusal to change any of the other rooms.

“While you can’t leave a statement like that unexplained, my curiosity has me changing the subject.”

“Oh?” was all she said.

He hummed and looked around the white walls with the cream cornices and
café au lait
decorative touches. A light, moss green linen sofa sat squatly in front of the original carved stone fireplace. To the side, a matching armchair overfilled with stuffing had the best seat in the room to stare out through the double-paned French doors and out onto the gardens. Cream cushions with a silky texture had been plumped and arranged artfully on the chairs. Small, occasional tables dotted the room with pieces he could only assume were her favorites. Everything from an ornate, mahogany armoire the size of his hands, carved in an Asian style with jade-inset doors, to an elaborate plant pot filled with a plant he’d never seen before but had the most delightfully silky petals.

It was a woman’s haven, restful, calming, and peaceful.

It shocked him but he knew he could sit in here and feel at ease. It wasn’t overfull with stuff. The room wasn’t at all cramped. In fact, for the amount of space she had, the room was rather over furnished. In comparison to his own haven, it was full, but still…. On an afternoon, while Bastien was out at the office, when he didn’t want to be cooped up in his lab, he could imagine himself in here.

That was enough to have his stomach twisting with nerves.

“Why haven’t you changed any of the other rooms? I know Sebastien asked you to.” Her blush charmed him into crossing the room to caress the silky leaves of the unknown flower. “What is this?” he asked, before she could answer his other question.

She frowned at him, then down at the plant and absentmindedly said, “It’s a camellia. Seb has them on standing order for me with a florist. They won’t grow in our garden. I think our soil has too low a soil acidity for them. They’re my favorites.”

When he nodded his understanding and continued to caress the petals, the sound of a heavy sigh crossed the room. He turned, looked at her, and immediately interpreted this new flush as arousal. Hiding a smile, he trailed one finger down over the frothy bloom. She shivered at the touch, so he did it again. And again, until she stepped backward and sank onto the armchair.

“I actually think I could come from watching you do that,” she whispered hoarsely, her honesty surprising but pleasing him.

“Perhaps I should stop.”

“I don’t think you should.”

His lips twitched. “Why touch a flower when I can touch the real thing?”

At that, she grinned. “My grandmother used to call “the real thing” her “lady garden.” Maybe my grandfather was a lot more adventurous than we realized.”

Stepping away from the flower, he crossed the room, ignoring her sigh to sink down to his knees in front of her. Tucked into the armchair, she looked comfortable, even if he’d inadvertently put her on edge by touching the flower the way he had.

His hands slipped over her skirt-covered thighs and he sighed with pleasure as they fell apart slightly. He pushed them wider so he could kneel between them. “I do like this new habit of yours.”

“What new habit?”

“In the last week, I’ve seen you three times in a skirt.”

She blushed again.

“It isn’t that I dislike you in jeans, because,
ma petite
, I can’t deny your ass is perfect in trousers, but it means…”

“…easy access,” she butted in before he could finish his sentence.

“Exactly,” he murmured with pleasure. “Now, tell me why you won’t change any of the rooms.”

“It isn’t my place to.”

He snorted. “Bullshit. When I move in here, there will be a lot to change. That god-awful salon is the first to go.”

She stilled at his words. “
When
?”

“Yes. I don’t know when it will be, but I shall move into
Les Fenêtres
, Devvy.”

It unnerved him to see tears moisten her eyes. “Thank you, Alexei.” She reached forward and cupped his chin. He relaxed into her hold and rubbed his cheek against her palm.

“I should be thanking you. I can be stubborn, at times. I can’t guarantee it will be soon, but I can guarantee it will happen.”

“That’s all I want.” She sucked in a breath, obviously overwhelmed by his agreement and said, “I guess, the house does need a makeover. It still looks like a bachelor pad.”