The Paris Caper (28 page)

She’d just spent eighteen
months hating
Commissaire
Lacroix and studiously avoiding him, with damn
good reason.

She thought about him
naked.

Damn
good reason.

And she’d remember what
it was any minute now.

Fuck.

She glanced down at the
long, soft terry cloth robe he’d left for her and pulled the belt tighter. Then
walked out of the bathroom to face him.

She found him sprawled on
the floor in front of the fireplace, his bare chest cast in tones of red and
bronze from the glow of the flames. A feast of delicacies was spread out on a
low table in front of the sofa. Her mouth watered.

She told herself it was
because of the food.

“There you are,” he said
as she took a spot on the floor next to him.

He sat up, refilled her
wineglass, and they began to eat. She didn’t know what was more orgasmic, the
taste of the incredible gourmet morsels he plied her with, or the sight of his
virile male body clad only in those semi-transparent linen pants. Everything he
possessed was clearly visible, but enhanced by the intriguing play of shadows
and firelight through the gauzy black cloth.

“You look beautiful,” he
said when their eating had slowed to nibbling. Breaking into her thoughts about
how beautiful
he
was. “I hate to say prison must have agreed with you,
but...”

She smiled, distressingly
pleased by the unexpected compliment. He had lolled back, elbow bent and head
resting on his hand, one knee bent up, clearly showing her exactly how
beautiful he thought she was.

Unconsciously, she licked
her lips. “I, um...” She tore her gaze away from the tempting sight. “It did
agree with me, actually. As far as it goes. I hadn’t realized how stressed out
I was, about the Orphans, money, Beck’s blackmail. Everything. When I was
inside and social services told me a benefactor had come forward as a result of
the trial, to pay the Orphans’ rent and tuition, that they weren’t going to
split them up...it was like a reprieve.”

“I understand you took
some classes. In interpreting?”

She stared at him. “You
checked up on me?”

“Of course. You’re my lover,
Ciara. I never stopped caring about you.”

A spiral of desire curled
through her center, immediately crushed by a slash of hurt. Suddenly she
remembered why she’d hated him for eighteen months.

“Not your
only
lover, from what I understand,” she said acerbically. “You can’t have cared all
that much.”

“Checked up on me, too,
eh?”

“Not me. But I was in
prison, Jean-Marc, not the Antarctic. The rumors—” She shook her head. “Let’s
just say my fellow inmates delighted in showing me the tabloids every time you
graced the centerfold, I couldn’t help noticing you had a new woman on your arm
in every photo. Catching
le Revenant
made you quite the eligible Paris
bachelor, I must say.”

“I was invited to a lot
of functions,” he said evenly. “The boss made me go. It was good publicity for
the OCBC. But you weren’t the only one affected by the rumors. I had no choice
but to be seen with other women.”

“Kicking and screaming,
I’m sure.”

“Most of them were paid
escorts,
chérie
.”

She rolled her eyes.
“That makes it so much better.”

“May I remind you, you
wouldn’t even see me?
For eighteen months
you wouldn’t see me. You were
the only woman I wanted, Ciara, but I’d have been a fool to turn into a monk
for eighteen months for a woman who didn’t even want me.”

She snorted derisively.
“Eighteen months is a long time for a woman, too, mon
cher
.”

She realized her mistake
immediately. She slammed her eyes shut. The ensuing silence was thick enough to
slice.

 “Well,” he finally said
with classic Gallic insouciance, “I could help you out with that now, if you
like.”

“They gave me fifty euro
to get started. I could pay you,” she threw back.

He chuckled, unoffended.
“Fifty? I usually charge more, but I guess I could give you a break,
considering your dire need.”

“You’re a riot, Lacroix,”
she ground out.

He rolled onto his side
and regarded her. He was fully, flagrantly aroused. His brow rose. “Well?”

At some point her belt
had come loose and her robe gaped apart. She didn’t bother to pull it closed.
She had the sinking feeling she’d already lost this battle. Had lost it the
moment she’d seen him outside the prison, lounging there against his Saab like
some modern-day French James Dean.

Jesus, how had this
happened
again
?

He reached over and
tugged her belt all the way off. Her robe fell open and his gaze caressed her
body, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She felt ravished by
it, by him, and he hadn’t even touched her.

Damn, damn,
damn
.

“What do you want me to
do, Ciara?” he asked, his voice rough as sandpaper, husky as a lion’s purr.

She gave up. Gave in.

What the hell. She’d been
eighteen months without a man. And Jean-Marc was the only man she wanted to be
with. Would probably ever want to be with.

“Let me touch you,” she
murmured, reaching for him. “Let me touch you and smell you and taste you. Let
me kiss you all over, and make love to you. Then let me do it all again.”

Jean-Marc met her halfway
but Ciara pushed him back onto the floor. “I’m paying,” she said. “I get to do
what I like to you.”

A corner of his lip
curved up. “Hmm. Sounds a bit backwards. Shouldn’t I be pleasuring you?”

“Oh, you will be,” she
assured him, climbing onto his big, muscular body.

She grasped his broad
shoulders and stretched her body out on top of him. Putting her nose to the
crease of his neck, she breathed deeply of his dusky, male scent, enjoying the
rough scratch of his chest hair on her breasts. She wanted to rub herself all
over him until the smell of him surrounded her like a blanket. She wanted to
lick his body until she drown in the rich, erotic taste of him. She wanted to
touch and meld with his flesh until she didn’t know where he stopped and she
began. She wanted to kiss him until she forgot the pain and loneliness of the
past year-and-a-half, and once again believed in him.

He reached for her and
she caught his wrists. “No.” She tucked them above his head. “I don’t want you
to touch me.”

A shadow of uncertainty
flitted through his eyes. But he obeyed. “There are condoms in my pocket,” he
murmured.

“You won’t need them.”

His pupils flared, so she
leaned down close to his ear, and whispered, “I’m not going to let you come.”

And she didn’t. Not for
an hour or more, until after he’d made her climax at least three or four times.
Not until she’d tortured him with her lips and her tongue and the hot passage
between her thighs, keeping him on the edge, pleasuring herself by pleasuring
him to the brink of explosion, only to stop and start all over again. He
groaned. He pleaded. He begged.

She felt immensely
satisfied.

And he roared like a
beast when she finally allowed him completion.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he
swore when he could speak again. “
Bon Dieu de merde
. I think you’ve
killed me.”

She rolled onto her back
next to him and smiled at the ceiling. She was floating on a sea of delighted
gratification. The torture had done the trick. Revenge was sweet; prison had
receded to an indistinct blur. She was back to loving him.

She didn’t dare think
about tomorrow. Tomorrow was too complicated. But in prison she’d learned to
live each day on its own, one day at a time.

Tonight she loved him.
And that was enough.

But the next morning...

The next morning,
everything changed.

Ciara and Jean-Marc slept
in, happily exhausted from their long night of making love. She awoke in his
arms, content, optimistic, and dimly aware of a faraway chirping sound. His
cell phone.

“Damn Pierre,” he
muttered. “I told him I wouldn’t be in today.”

“Probably should get it,”
she said with a yawn and a stretch. “Must be important or he wouldn’t call.”

Jean-Marc grunted, sighed,
and slid out from under the massive goose down quilt. “Don’t move. I’ll be
right back.”

Thirty seconds later he
walked back into the room, cell phone to his ear and a worried look on his
face. “Ricardo, slow down. I don’t underst— Speak French, Ricardo! For
chrissake—”

Ciara was already on her
feet. She grabbed the phone from him. “Ricardo, it’s me. What’s happened?”

“Sofie!” came the boy’s
almost hysterical reply. “
Dios mio
, Ciara. Sofie’s been—It was Beck. He
raped her.”

♥♥♥

“Hell of a homecoming,”
Davie murmured, and kissed Ciara on the cheeks. “Sorry, darling. We had a big
party all planned...”

Ciara gave him a squeeze.
“Yes. Jean-Marc told me.”

Ciara, Davie, Ricardo and
CoCo were sitting in the waiting room of the
Hôpital la Rochefoucault
while a forensic nurse did a rape kit on Sofie. Jean-Marc had stormed off
earlier to question Beck. Hugo was doing his usual pacing back and forth,
looking like he would murder the first thing that moved. Thank God Jean-Marc
had read him the riot act before leaving, telling him to stay put on pain of
death. And Hugo had actually heeded the order, to Ciara’s everlasting wonder.

For herself, she was so
angry she prayed she didn’t see Beck anytime soon or she’d do Hugo’s murder for
him. “How did this happen?” she asked them, despising what Sofie must be going
through.

CoCo shook her head. “She
went out for a few last-minute things for the party. We could hear her singing
all the way down the stairs. We were all so happy you were coming home
today...” She glanced up, and Ciara could see the mild question in her eyes.

“Jean-Marc arranged for
me to be released yesterday. To avoid the media,” she explained, feeling
incredibly guilty. “If only I’d gone straight to rue Daguerre.”

“How could you know?
There was nothing you could have done, anyway.” CoCo gave her a crooked smile.
“So you spent the night with the man who put you in jail?”

“Seemed like a good idea
at the time,” Ciara muttered.
Damn
.

Davie choked. “That is so
wrong.”

Hugo halted and glowered
at Davie. “The
commissaire
is a good man, and you two know it very
well,” he snapped, then resumed his pacing. “Ciara could do a lot worse.”

Ciara’s jaw dropped in
astonishment at his supportive outburst. Davie and CoCo looked suddenly
uncomfortable. A red flag went up at the speed of light.

“All right,” she
demanded, “what are you not telling me?”

Everyone studied their
hands.

“Come on you guys. No
secrets. I mean it.“

“Lacroix paid the rent
while you were gone,” Hugo said almost belligerently, raking the others with a
glare.

Momentarily stunned, she
regarded at them one by one.

“And our tuition,”
Ricardo said when she got to him.

“
Jean-Marc?”
She
could scarcely believe it. “
Commissaire
Lacroix
was social
services’ mysterious benefactor?” Except...it made perfect sense. He’d
promised, hadn’t he? Why should it surprise her that the most honorable man she
knew would take his promise seriously? She should have guessed immediately.

“He also kept Beck away,”
CoCo said, then glanced toward the room where Sofie was being examined. “At
least until now.”

Which explained why he’d
been on such a tear when he’d taken off after Beck. Ciara wasn’t sure what she
should think of it all. But she didn’t get the chance to decide. The forensic
nurse emerged from the exam room and gathered them all together.

“The good news is that
Sofie is doing just fine. No lasting physical trauma. Psychologically?” She
frowned. “Only time will tell. The bad news is that the man left no evidence
behind to nail him with.”

“Nothing?” Ciara asked,
dismayed.

“I’m afraid not. No
fluids, no fibers, no hairs. Nothing at all.”

Ciara’s heart sank. “So
it’s her word against his. There’s no way to convict the bastard.”

“Not unless he confesses.
Physically, he was too careful. I’m so sorry.”

Everyone’s mood was
subdued as they collected Sofie and took a taxi home. The colorful decorations
festooning the Orphans’ apartment seemed grotesquely out of place.

As CoCo and Davie ripped
them down, Ciara gave Sofie a long hug.

“I’m sorry I’ve spoiled
your homecoming,” Sofie whispered with a hiccough in her voice. “I hope you
don’t mind, but I think I’ll go to bed now.”

Feeling helpless, they
all watched her go into her room and softly close the door. Ciara wanted to
scream and throw things and rage against the injustice.

“We need to get him,”
Hugo said savagely. “We need to make him pay.”

Ciara agreed. So did the
others.

A knock sounded at the
door. “That’ll be Jean-Marc,” Ciara guessed, and went over to answer it.

But it wasn’t Jean-Marc.
It was two police officers. And one of them was Beck.

“Good evening,” the first
officer said politely. “The hospital informed us someone at this address
reported a rape. We’ll need to get the victim’s statement.”

Beck stood behind the
first officer, wearing a bland expression, as though his presence here weren’t
the most perverse insult Ciara could possibly imagine.

She forced herself not to
leap on his filthy carcass and tear his eyes out. That wouldn’t help Sofie.
Instead she ground out, “No, I’m afraid it was all a misunderstanding. My
friend doesn’t wish to press charges. Sorry to have wasted your time.” She was
proud of herself. Her voice barely shook at all.