Winter Tales Read online

  “In my bag with the handcuffs and rope. Want me to get it?”

  “You brought your toy bag?”

  “Never leave home without it.”

  Zach pulled out of her, sat up. “Stay,” he said.

  Oh, she did love it when he was in a toppy mood.

  She didn’t quite “stay” as ordered. She pulled the covers on the bed down, revealing the lush white sheets and sinking into them. When he returned, he had her black silk scarves in one hand, the lube in the other. He set them down on the bed, then turned to leave again.

  “Now where are you going?”

  “I need backup,” he shouted over his shoulder as he disappeared through the door.

  “I…” she began, to herself, and then continued, loud enough for him to hear, “…I don’t know what that means.”

  Zach returned again, carrying her vibrator.

  “Oh, that’s what that means,” she said.

  “That’s what that means,” Zach said as he crawled across the bed to her. Heaven was a warm hard male body on a cold soft winter night, and Nora was in heaven as he settled on top of her again. She took him in hand and guided him inside her, craving the connection. He held himself up over her on his elbows, gazing down, his hand in her hair.

  She smiled tenderly at him. “Hey there.”

  “You know,” he said, “I really was reconciled to us being friends, only friends.” He stroked her cheek. “Least, I thought so.”

  “We’ll go back to being friends next week. Until then…” She moved her hips up and into him, squeezing her inner muscles around him, making his eyes flutter.

  “Nora…” His voice was almost a growl.

  “Sorry. That’s a lie, but still, sorry.”

  Zach pulled out of her, which she thought was very bad form. “Turn over,” he said, a polite request. She politely acquiesced, rolling onto her stomach. Zach took her wrists in his hands and one by one tied them to the bedpost. He tapped her left hip. “Up, up,” he said, sliding a pillow under her lower stomach when she lifted her hips for him.

  “You’re being very scientific about this,” she said.

  “Thorough.” He flipped open the cap on the lube. “Simply being thorough. I do have a reputation to live up to, after all.”

  Thorough indeed. Nora lay on her stomach, relaxing into the pillow as Zach worked his wet fingers into her. He took his time, enjoying her. She knew he was enjoying her because he told her so, quietly, between kisses on the back of her naked shoulder and neck. As always, the prep work was uncomfortable at first, parts of her being touched that weren’t usually given much attention. Tense, tight, toes clenched…then eventually, thanks to Zach’s patience, his willingness to be “thorough,” she relaxed, melting like hot candle wax.

  “Ready?” Zach whispered into her ear.

  “I’ve been ready for this for months, years…”

  He laughed. “You always know the right thing to say.”

  He moved up on her, over her, straddling her. She moved her thighs wider to make it easier for him to enter her. Although he’d joked about being seconds away from coming, he didn’t rush this part, not at all. He went slowly, carefully, not pushing into her so much as letting her accept him. It hurt at first, it always did, but as she inhaled and exhaled deeper and deeper, the discomfort faded, turned to fullness.

  She felt his hot breath close to her ear. “All right?”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  His entire body lay flush against hers, prone on the bed. His legs tangled with her legs, his chest warmed her back, his breathing tickled her neck as his hands stroked her arms all the way up to her bound wrists. And this was what made him so good at it. Anal sex with King was all about domination—it was a game and he was going to win it, until they switched and she took her turn and won. With Søren, it was about pain. He was a sadist. The more it hurt, the more he liked it. But with Zach…it was just another way to make love. A more complicated way, maybe, but more intimate, too. He cared about her pleasure, and actively avoided giving her pain. Nothing turned her on quite like Søren’s sadism, but Zach’s cock in her ass was making a strong play for second place.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  “Ever, I meant.”

  He dug his hand into her hair, lifted it off her neck, bit behind her ear. She was open now, taking him easily inside her. Still, he didn’t push or prod or pump. He just slid in and out of her, his cock slick and her body slicker. This was what she needed, to get out of her brain and into her body. The only thoughts in her mind were more…deeper…more...again.

  Maybe she said “more” out loud, because Zach reached for the vibrator. Nora gave her consent without words by spreading her legs wider, bowing her back so he could move his hand under her. The soft buzzing sounds came first and then she felt the touch of the tip on her clitoris. She shuddered in pleasure as Zach teased her. Then he wasn’t teasing anymore as he found the entrance of her vagina and pushed the humming vibrator into her.

  Nora lifted her head and moaned.

  “I hope our neighbors heard that,” Zach said.

  The whole city might have heard it, but Nora heard nothing except her own ragged breathing. She writhed as much as she could being tied and pinned down. Her inner muscles stretched and tensed, clenched and clutched around the vibrator, around Zach. Even he was breathing hard now, pumping into her. They moved as one body—tightening, coiling, panting, pushing. Far away, Nora heard Zach make a sound that was almost a cry of pain. It was one of the sexiest sounds she’d ever heard a man make. He was coming undone and she was doing it to him. Tied up, impaled, pinned to the bed, she still could own him.

  It didn’t just feel good. It felt too good. Keening sounds came from the back of her throat. She couldn’t move but moved anyway, writhing on the bed where Zach had her trapped and speared. Her clitoris throbbed. Her vagina clenched. Her ass was filled. She pulled on the silk scarves hard enough to bruise herself. Not that she felt the pain—she felt nothing but the pulse of the vibrator inside her and the fullness of Zach’s cock inside her ass. Again, she lifted her head, cried out, and this time she came, shaking hard, her mouth buried into the pillow in a futile attempt to silence her own unholy moans. She finished first, recovered first, and glanced up in time to see Zach’s face in the hotel mirror, his long body cast in shadow as he fucked her mindlessly, his hips grinding into her ass, his eyes closed and lips parted as he gave all of himself into her. She could see the veins on his forearms pop out as he came, his fingers twisting tightly into the sheets, his head down and then up again for one final spurt into her. He filled and filled her and she took it all because she wanted it all, she deserved it all.

  And then, after, the inevitable collapse.

  She whimpered as he pulled the vibrator out of her still-pulsing vagina and slid his cock out of her ass. He straddled her back, untying her wrists from the bed at a leisurely pace, still breathing heavy.

  “You all right?” he asked for the third time.

  She liked it, liked that he worried about her, worried about hurting her. As if he could ever hurt her. As if anyone or anything could ever hurt her again. But that was the afterglow talking. Or was it?

  “Now I know,” she said, still panting, “why ex-lovers say, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ ”

  Chapter Four

  The South of France

  Mozet was a full day’s drive from Paris. Nora took the first shift behind the wheel and Zach the second. The sun had set around five, but Nora still watched the darkened landscape roll by from the passenger window, trying and failing not to think about Nicolas Delacroix and what she was about to do to his life. Was this really the right thing? Find this young man and tell him everything he thought about himself and his family was a lie? Reveal a woman’s deeply personal secret—that she’d had an affair—to her son, without her permission? She could de
stroy a marriage, destroy a family, destroy the way Nicolas Delacroix saw himself. What choice did she have, though? This boy was a secret she couldn’t keep. Not from Kingsley. She would think about it every time they were in the same room together: that Kingsley had a son he didn’t know about, would never know about, all because of her silence. She’d kept the secret for over a year and it weighed on her like the proverbial stone around her neck. How many times this past year had Søren asked her what was on her mind because she was being quiet, far too quiet? How many times had Kingsley demanded to know if something had happened during the “ordeal” that she wasn’t telling them? How much longer could she go on lying to the two most important men in her life?

  She almost hoped Zach was right. Maybe Nicolas wasn’t King’s son after all.

  But there was only one way to be certain.

  “This should be it,” Zach said as he slowed the car. “Can you read the sign?”

  Nora rolled down her window to clear off the rain. VILLAGE MOZET, it read, black paint on a white board. Under it, another sign read L’Un Des Plus Beaux Villages De France.

  “One of the most beautiful villages in France,” she translated. Her heart clenched. Suddenly, it was all real. The fantasy was becoming a reality. Excitement turned to fear.

  “This is it.”

  The road into town was lined on either side by houses and shops that couldn’t have looked much different than they had when they were constructed three or four hundred years ago. The tallest buildings were only three stories high. Nearly every house and shop was built in the timbered style, each a different color of the rainbow. A blue pub. A pink café. A yellow boulangerie. The shop windows were all decorated for Christmas.

  “This is the prettiest little town I’ve ever seen in my life,” Nora said. “Add some snow and you’d have a medieval French Christmas card.”

  “Very quaint,” Zach said. “I’ve been to the South of France dozens of times and never heard of it.”

  “The detective said it’s not much of a tourist town. He warned me almost no one would speak English here, even if they know it.” It’s why she’d brought Zach along. One reason, anyway. Her French was decent, but Zach was fluent and could pass for French if need be. If Nicolas Delacroix started asking complicated questions, she’d need someone fluent to make sure she wasn’t making things worse.

  “I think that’s our hotel. The only hotel in town.” She checked the directions she’d printed out and pointed to a large white home with black timbers crisscrossing the exterior. “Les Florets.”

  They turned off onto a cobblestone side street and parked in the lot. There was only one other car.

  They wandered into the small lobby. They were well past late check-in, but, if the parking situation was any indication, their room would still be available. She paced the parquet floor, inspecting the potted flowers decorating the lobby while Zach checked them in. Les Florets was aptly named: even in late December, the hotel was alive with jasmine and begonias and desert roses and—

  “We’ve been upgraded,” Zach said, returning to her with a slight grin on his handsome face. “Honeymoon suite.”

  “Did you flirt with the old lady at the desk to get it?” Nora asked, taking a key from him.

  “I told her you were a famous author here to research your next book.”

  “So you lied.”

  “It worked.”

  They carried their luggage up the two flights of stairs. They’d been offered a bellhop, but Nora hadn’t wanted to wake the poor boy up. He was on the red sofa in the lobby, a copy of yesterday’s Le Monde over his face.

  The honeymoon suite wasn’t large—only a sitting room, bathroom, and bedroom of average size—but it was beautifully decorated. The bedroom’s carved wood four-poster bed, rosé-colored damask wallpaper, and heavy black rotary-dial phone made Nora feel as if she’d stepped back into the 1930s.

  “Nice,” she said, nodding her approval. “We’ll have very good sex in this room.”

  Zach dropped his bag onto the luggage rack. “Does the decor improve performance?”

  “You get a room this nice, it makes you want to have good sex in it. Gorgeous old bed. Fancy wallpaper. Beautiful view. No television. They designed this room for fucking. Hate to let the decorators down, you know.”

  “Tomorrow. Tonight we sleep, and in the morning we find this kid.”

  “Or we could just stay inside tomorrow and fuck all day.”

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. “Not a chance, darling.” Then he slapped her on the ass—hard. “Supper, then bed. You like following orders. Those are my orders. Come on.”

  Nora stared in shock as Zach waltzed out the door. “See if I ever let you ass-fuck me again,” she called after him.

  After a late supper, they went to bed. No sex, because Zach was a cruel, evil man, immune to her begging and pouting. He refused to touch her again until she’d gone through with her mission.

  So it was no surprise that Nora was out of bed first thing the next morning, mapping their route to the Delacroix vineyard on her phone. Fifteen miles from the village. That’s all. A fifteen-mile drive on a winding two-lane road. So close that the reality of what she was about to do finally hit her.

  She couldn’t go through with this…which was why she had to do it sooner rather than later. Even if Zach hadn’t been withholding himself from her, he had the right idea: work first, then play.

  Zach took the wheel again today. Her nerves were so frayed, she couldn’t drive; in fact, she’d skipped breakfast, a rarity for her.

  It had been dark when they’d arrived yesterday. Now she saw the countryside in the cold light of morning. The sea was south of the village, the vineyard north in the rocky hills. They snaked their way up the winding road, through the dense pines.

  Eventually the scenery changed. The pine trees gave way to fenced-in pastures and fields, and then grape vines and arbors—acres and acres’ worth.

  The landscape matched the photographs in the magazine article the detective had given her. The wooden fences soon turned to stacked-stone fences. The fields, previously barren aside from trellises and arbors, began to fill with wooden sheds, barns, outbuildings, houses big and small, all surrounded by trees and sleeping winter gardens.

  They reached the turn-off to the vineyard. Nora read the simple sign on the open gates: Vignoble Delacroix.

  Past the open gate was a narrow lane, all gravel and rutted from the wheels of farm machinery. She saw a small orange tractor parked to the side of an old wooden shed.

  “It really is a farm,” she said.

  “What did you think it was?”

  “You just don’t think of vineyards as farms.”

  “They’re grape farms.”

  “I’m trying to picture Kingsley on a tractor. Whatever happened to the apple not falling far from the tree?”

  “Says the erotica-writing dominatrix whose mother is a nun.”

  Nora glared pointedly at him.

  They entered through the gate, pressing slowly on down the lane, but the ride was choppy.

  “Bit muddy,” Zach said. “Might be easier on foot.”

  Nora agreed. She’d prepared for walking today, dressing in her black knee-high leather boots and leggings, which she’d paired with a red sweater and her red trench coat. Zach had on jeans and hiking boots, and a leather coat over his heather gray pullover.

  They abandoned their car in a small gravel lot and headed down the winding lane, which was bordered on both sides by white fences. On their right, a few black and white cows roamed and drowsed in their pastures. On their left, the vines stretched into the distance. They were brown, still, sleeping. No grapes in sight, of course—not during this time of year. A listless wind blew through it all.

  Still—the sun lurking behind the clouds turned the sky a palette of pale pastel colors, and Nora knew she was seeing what Monet must have seen when he’d painted his winter scenes in pink and yellow and blu
e. And though it was winter, she smelled spring in the air, swept in on a sea breeze. There was life here, lurking behind the trees and inside the vines and under the ground and over the clouds. Life, biding its time, hiding, waiting…

  “It’s just so beautiful.”

  “You look smitten,” Zach said. “Never imagined you sighing over a farm. Not even a grape farm.”

  She smiled, laughed to herself, at herself. Nora was anything but a country girl. Yet as they walked along the lane, Nora felt the strangest sensation. It was almost as if she was supposed to be here. But of course she was. She was supposed to be here—finding King his son. That wasn’t quite it, though. She didn’t generally give much credence to premonitions, but now she tingled all over with the inexplicable sensation of coming home again. Like when she visited the house her grandmother used to live in, and, even though a stranger lived there, Nora somehow still felt like it was her home.

  Nora reached for Zach’s hand, took it, held it, practically clung to it. She had to, otherwise she might have hopped the fence and run through the fields as if she owned them. The stress was getting to her, making her lose it a little. Or maybe it was knowing Kingsley must have walked this very same lane twenty-five years ago. Possibly when he was a child, too, coming here with his parents to visit friends on their long holiday. That didn’t quite explain it to her satisfaction, however. This place was from Kingsley’s past. Why did it feel like a part of hers?

  They stopped at a crossroads. An old-fashioned fingerpost-style sign pointed left and right, as the lane split in two. It listed the various buildings on the grounds—wine shop, tasting room, event barn, cuverie.

  She looked to Zach. “Cuverie?”