Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

Today, fear tinged her pleasure. Was another woman giving him something she herself couldn’t? And if it wasn’t another woman that was keeping him away from her, what was? Questions, questions everywhere, and not an answer in sight. She kind of knew how the Ancient Mariner felt. Only without the severe dehydration, and the albatross.

She was clueless, unless she built up the courage to actually come out and ask him what was going on…

Did she have the balls for it?

Technically, no. But was Devvy too lily-livered to approach her husband about a fundamental part of their marriage? For the last five weeks, the answer had been an unequivocal
yes!
With the idea that another woman was floating around in the background, giving her husband massages as well as other things…well, the situation had tilted a little too far. Even for Devvy’s non-combative nature.

As her hands began to rub and smooth down the tension in his neck muscles, Bastien’s groans echoed around the room. They were almost sexual, so deep and at such a bass, the pitch set her own sex to quivering with need. His hard frame drooped under her touch and her lips twitched as his fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt in a move filled with desperation, one that indicated he wanted her to work on his back with skin-to-skin contact.

She hummed with pleasure as his toned flesh was revealed to her. She took great enjoyment out of smoothing her hands over his skin, manipulating it and rubbing so as to ease his tension. For how long she worked, Devvy didn’t know. She only stopped when her fingers started to ache and the cuts on her palm started to sting and even then, she trailed the digits gently over the back of his neck.

The sounds of his low, rhythmic breathing pleased her. She’d managed to work out the worst kinks, and from the lax curve of his spine, she’d done a good job.

“Dinner will be ready, Bastien.”

He hummed his understanding under his breath and then, in a move that shocked her, for he was never overly tactile outside of sex, he tilted his head back and rested the heavy weight against her breasts.

Devvy closed her eyes as her nipples instantly peaked. She’d been inexperienced—not a virgin—on her wedding night and ever since that first time together, Bastien had awakened a passion in Devvy that she’d never imagined existed. Around him, she was a starved creature and he was her banquet.

She never asked him to make love to her. She waited for him to act. Uncertainty had always kept her at bay, had always stopped her from coming on to him. Aggression had never been her thing, but it might start to be if he didn’t satisfy the knot of desire he had unearthed in her body.

She swallowed, wishing he’d turn his head to the side and tug at one of her nipples. It wouldn’t hold the same punch as flesh-to-flesh contact, but it would be enough to send excitement buzzing down her nerve endings.

Trying to regulate her breathing so as not to disturb him was difficult. Especially when her mind was keyed on sex, and his was on the pain burrowing through his skull. As she looked down, his head bobbed a little with the swaying motion of her breasts, but he didn’t seem to mind. His long, black-onyx lashes fluttered a little before they opened and their gazes clashed.

Few people ever held eye contact with Devvy because hers were strangely colored. Almost white, so light blue they had a silvery hue. She knew most found them unnerving. Akin to a husky’s piercing orbs, especially in comparison to her coloring.

Her hair was a muddy shade, not like her husband’s, whose blacker-than-black hair was softened by light golden-hued flesh. Devvy was more of a dirty blonde, where strands of chestnut and gold came together. And not always successfully.

Unlike Bastien, she was pale as linen. Some nights, after they’d made love, he’d trace the blue veins under her skin, for they were as visible as the few freckles that spotted her body.

She’d truly felt beautiful on occasions like those. Her husband worshipping her body, making her feel things she’d thought to be mythical. It was amazing, or depressing, how, in five weeks of having not an inch of his attention, self-doubt could set in.

Devvy watched, almost in awe, as his pupils dilated at their prolonged eye contact. She knew he was about to reach up and kiss her, knew it and was on the brink of welcoming it, when those seeds of self-doubt demanded to be heard. It was bad enough feeling pathetic for needing her husband’s touch as much as she did, but it was even worse when he didn’t share her craving.

She couldn’t help it. In her miserable anger, the words just blurted out. “Are you cheating on me?”

His slumberous eyes shifted, darkened somehow, and then he shot up and off the bed.

The behavior of a guilty man? Devvy wasn’t sure. He
had
broken eye contact, and that was never a good sign, was it?

She watched as he began to stride back and forth at the foot of the bed. Each time he passed, he almost walked into the trunk that sat there, and she wished for his grace, because, clumsy oaf that she was, she’d have knocked her shins a dozen times by now.

His discomfort, the very unease he exuded, told her the truth, but she didn’t feel sorrow, or misery. She felt nothing. Just a strange blankness. Hurt was there, waiting to come out, but it was dampened. At the moment.

The belief that he might be seeing someone else had only just popped into her head this morning. She’d been seeking an excuse for his peculiar behavior. The late nights, the drop in activity in the bedroom…his short temper, even, when she knew him to be a very patient man. Especially with her.

She’d had no real evidence that he was cheating. Nothing but a gut feeling. Despite herself, Devvy wished she could take the question back. Wished to bury her head in the sand, because once the truth was revealed, it could never be hidden again and she’d have to act. No one could hide from such a shameful truth and still retain a measure of self-worth.

And while Devvy knew she’d been silly to think a marriage between herself and a man like Bastien would ever work, she valued herself too much to stay with someone who wanted her for her abilities in the laboratory. Now the bedroom, she’d have accepted being shuffled into that role. Willingly! But apparently, she’d started to bore him in that department.

Mortification triggered a silent throb in her brain. She felt her cheeks start to heat, her body quiver with horror at the times she’d thought him to be enjoying himself in bed, when he must have been putting on an act.

His silence was unnerving, especially now she’d worked herself up to hearing his admission of guilt. She wanted him to get on with it but when he spoke, he didn’t say the words she’d thought she’d hear.

“It isn’t what you think.”

With humiliation battering her, it would have been too easy to take comfort in those words. Because of that, and to be contrary, she decided to do the opposite. “It isn’t?” she sneered. “Explain it to me, then. I’m all ears.”

“I chose you for two reasons.”

Chose
? Fuck, what a verb. Almost like he’d been picking a broodmare. An old-fashioned concept but Sebastien was a wealthy industrialist with no children to inherit the fruits of his hard work. The thought hit her brain with the power of an ice pick.

Please, God, don’t let him say because I’ve got childbearing hips!

“You’re different from most women.”

“Thanks, Sebastien. I really appreciate that! Different, how? Like a monster, different? An alien?” she snapped.

“No!” He held up his hands. “Listen to me. I’m not trying to offend you, simply trying to tell you the truth.” He sighed. “You don’t simper, or flirt. You have a brain. You listen and advise. You’re wise. Your intelligence is attractive, especially as I know what you’re capable of.”

The least sexy part of her body, her brain, and that was the part that turned him on.

Great.
Just fucking great.

“And the second reason, because Alexei felt the same way.”

“Alexei,” Devvy repeated, frowning as she failed to register the name. “Do I know him? Should his opinion be important to me?”

He shook his head. “No, but we’ve waited two years for you to finally meet him. And I hope, eventually, that his opinion
will
be important to you.”

She swallowed at that news and whispered, “He’s not like a son, is he?” Another shake of the head. “Or, locked up in one of the attics?”

Okay, so, she was reading
Jane Eyre
at the moment, but still, it was a valid question. Kind of. And maybe her imagination did tend to run away with her, but hell, she was just trying to make sense of what he was spouting out!

He frowned at that, and then chuckled. “And there you have why I find your mind so appealing. No, I do not lock him up in the attic, because he is mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” he mocked. “He is a man I very much care for.”

It didn’t take much for the truth to sink in after that remark.

“You’re gay?” Devvy barked, jumping off the mattress and nearly falling flat on her face in the process. He grabbed her just in time and righted her before she could hurt herself, but she shrugged him off, pulling away from him to stare at him with horror.

“No, of course not.” He was so calmly assured that confusion thrummed through her.

“You’re not?” She hovered in front of him, wondering what the hell was going on. She had an answer, of a sort, yet it resolved nothing. She was as clueless as five minutes before.

“Well, not technically.”

Devvy closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You married me as a ruse, didn’t you? As a patsy. To hide what you really are from the rest of the world.”

“I had no idea you were prone to melodrama. Exaggeration, yes. Hyperbole, no!” Sebastien snapped, cutting through her hysteria with the skill of a swordsman. “I did no such thing. I married you intentionally, yes. Do you know how difficult it is for two men to agree on the one woman? It’s borderline impossible.”

At his irritation, her eyes popped open and she gawked at him.

“Why would two men have to agree about one woman?”

He pulled a face, his lips twisting with self-directed anger. “This wasn’t the way we were going to broach this subject,” he complained. “You were supposed to meet him first, and then we’d explain.
Together
. I’m no good with words. Alexei is the charmer.”

“I don’t want charm. I want the truth. And what were you waiting for? Two years, we’ve been married. Two! When was I supposed to meet this Alexei?”

“Next month,” he retorted glumly as he resumed his pacing. “We needed to make sure you were happy with me. If you weren’t, if you couldn’t settle in Paris, away from everyone you knew, then we would never have broached this topic.”

Feeling like she’d entered some strange kind of parallel universe, Devvy shook her head. When the movement felt heavy, like she was wading through maple syrup and not air, she lifted a hand to cup her forehead. “So I’ve passed muster, because I’ve endured your moods and my solitude for two years?”

He surprised her with a wide grin. “I love your tongue, chérie. It’s wicked. As sharp and as cutting as a knife.”

Her cheeks flushed, and had she been able to control the involuntary reaction, she certainly would have. The last thing she wanted was to be complimented on her tongue. Good God, the man was French. Surely, he realized her humor and her brain were the last things a woman wanted to be admired! Trust Devvy to pick the most complicated and least charming Frenchman in the country.

Before she could do more than grumble at the thought, he was suddenly there. Right in front of her. No longer pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, but five inches away. Touching distance. Her heart, the treacherous thing, started to pump like a piston at his proximity. There was something in his eyes, something that was the catalyst to her sudden arousal. She didn’t understand it and from the mention of this Alexei, she wasn’t sure she wanted to!

“Alex knew you would be at that convention and directed me your way.”

And just like that, her arousal disappeared. Vanished, without a trace. If anything, she felt slightly nauseated. “Alex,” she repeated blandly. From the depths of her desire for him came a torrent of fury. He might be taller than her but she didn’t give a damn. Index finger erect and ready to point, she jabbed him in the chest and stepped forward, urging him to step back if the pair of them weren’t to collide. “Just who the hell is Alex? Explain what’s happening now, or I’m leaving!”

Even though he’d been preparing for this moment since he’d first proposed to Devvy, the timing of this ultimatum came as a shock to Sebastien.

He had thought to introduce this topic over a long, evening meal. One where romance was in the air and Devvy was soft and relaxed after an afternoon spent between the sheets.

He’d imagined countless ways of informing her of the truth behind their marriage, but he’d never thought she’d ask him if he was cheating on her. He’d never believed she’d be the one to bring the subject to a head.

Was he relieved the truth was about to be revealed?

He couldn’t deny that he was. After all, he and Alex had planned this for so long, had been waiting for her for over a decade. What they wanted was unorthodox. The pair of them knew that, and knew only a special woman would accept them and their desires.