Chapter 186

Chapter 186
Étienne

We pulled into her apartment complex at eight thirty-two. I parked in her designated spot, killed the engine, and sat in the sudden quiet. Elena unbuckled her seatbelt but didn't move to open the door. Instead, she sat there, fingers fidgeting with the belt's fabric, and I could feel the weight of everything she wasn't saying pressing down on both of us.

"Elena." I kept my voice gentle, though my chest felt like it was in a vise. "It's late. You should go up and rest."

She turned to look at me then, and the expression on her face nearly undid me. Then she said it, soft and deliberate: "Uncle..."

The word hit me like a physical blow. She hadn't called me that in weeks—not since we'd started circling around this thing between us, not since the night I'd stayed up reading with her and felt the first real crack in my defenses. Now she wielded it like a weapon and a plea all at once, that single word containing every complicated feeling neither of us knew how to name.

My hand was on the door handle before I'd made a conscious decision to move. I needed air. Distance. Perspective. "Let me get your door—"

I didn't finish the sentence. Because in the space between my words and my movement, Elena moved with the kind of speed and agility that only an elite athlete possessed. She unclipped her seatbelt, swung her legs over the center console, and before I could process what was happening, she was straddling my lap, her weight settling onto my thighs with devastating finality.

Every thought in my head went blank. My hands froze in mid-air, hovering uselessly, because I had no idea where to put them that wouldn't be an acknowledgment of exactly how much I wanted this, wanted her. My body responded with embarrassing immediacy, and there was no hiding it, not with her positioned exactly where she was, not with the thin fabric of her leggings and my dress pants the only barriers between us.

I squeezed my eyes shut, reached blindly for the seat adjustment, and shoved the seat back as far as it would go. Creating distance. Creating space. Creating the illusion that I had any control over this situation.

"Elena." Her name came out strangled. "Move back. Please."

She didn't move. If anything, she seemed to settle more firmly against me, and I felt her face press into the hollow of my neck, exactly where she'd been earlier. Her breath was warm against my skin as she whispered, "But I can already feel it."

My eyes snapped open. The overhead light of the parking garage cast harsh shadows across the car's interior, and I stared at the fabric ceiling as though it held answers to questions I didn't know how to ask. "I'm sorry." The words felt wholly inadequate. "This is why I need to go home. I don't want to... I don't want you to have to deal with this before we're ready."

Elena lifted her head, and when I finally looked at her, her expression was serious in a way that made her seem older than her twenty years. "I'm not letting you leave."

It wasn't a request. It was a statement, delivered with the kind of certainty that came from someone who'd spent her entire life learning to fight for what she wanted. I felt something in my chest constrict—part desire, part terror, part a desperate kind of hope I had no right to feel.

"Elena, I'm fine." I tried to inject some firmness into my voice, tried to sound like the adult in this situation. "You should go upstairs and rest. Okay?"

She shook her head, and I watched a strand of damp hair fall across her cheek. "Not okay. You haven't kissed me yet today."

The statement was so unexpected, so baldly honest, that I actually felt my brain short-circuit for a second. Then, because I was apparently a masochist, I asked, "Where do you want me to kiss you?"

Her answer was immediate and greedy: "Everywhere."

I should have said no. Should have gently but firmly removed her from my lap, walked her to her door like the responsible guardian I was supposed to be, and driven away. Instead, I found myself cupping her face in my hands, tilting her head up, and beginning a slow, methodical inventory of every place my lips could reach without completely destroying what remained of my self-control.

Her jawline. The corner of her mouth. The tip of her nose. Her closed eyelids. The small mole near her left eye that I'd catalogued a thousand times without ever allowing myself to touch. Each kiss was soft, reverent, a prayer I didn't know I'd been holding in. Elena went still under my attention, her breathing shallow, and I felt her hands come up to rest on my shoulders as though she needed the support to stay upright.

When I reached her earlobe, I couldn't help myself—I took it between my lips, felt her whole body shiver in response. "Is this enough?" My voice had gone low, intimate, the question both genuine and rhetorical because I already knew the answer.

Elena shook her head, and when she spoke, there was a catch in her voice that sounded dangerously close to tears. "Not enough. Don't leave. Please?"

I felt her shift in my lap, and the movement sent a fresh wave of sensation through me that I absolutely could not afford to acknowledge. She was still talking, her voice taking on that slightly petulant tone that meant she was building toward an argument.

"Don't go." She repeated it like a mantra, like if she said it enough times I'd have to listen. "It's not fair."

I frowned, pulling back enough to see her face clearly. "What's not fair?"

She looked up at me, and her expression was so earnest it made my chest ache. "You took a shower. You smell really good. But I haven't showered yet. I want..." She hesitated, color rising in her cheeks. "I want you to smell me after I shower too."

For a moment, I could only stare at her, caught between exasperation and something dangerously close to laughter. "So you're saying that after you shower, we can..."

She nodded, and the movement made her hair brush against my hands where they still cupped her face.

"No more games." I tried to inject some authority into my voice, but it came out more plea than command.

Elena's response was immediate: "I just got back to Paris without anywhere to live, and I stayed at your place, didn't I? This is just the same thing. Different location."

Then she started moving, a gentle rocking motion that was probably unconscious but felt devastatingly intentional. "Uncle," she began, her voice taking on a wheedling quality. "Mr. Beaumont. Étienne..."

The sound of my first name on her lips, without the title, without the distance, broke something in me. "Call me that from now on." My voice had gone rough again. "Just my name. Okay?"

I felt my resistance crumbling, felt the careful walls I'd built over five years beginning to crack and splinter. "Fine." The word came out on an exhale. "I'll stay. Whatever you want to do with me, I'll cooperate completely."

But even as I said it, even as I felt her relax against me in relief, I knew I needed a moment. Just one moment to gather the scattered pieces of my composure before I did something we'd both regret.

"Wait here." I kept my hands on her waist, steadying both of us. "I just need a minute."

She started to move her hand toward me, and I caught it, brought it to my lips instead. "Don't." The word was gentle but firm. "Let me handle this myself."

Then, because I owed her honesty, because she deserved to know exactly what kind of man she was choosing to trust, I looked directly into her eyes and said, "I need to apologize."

She blinked, clearly not expecting this turn. "For what?"

"For making decisions about your life without asking you first." I counted them off, each admission a small cut. "For interfering with your relationship with Maxime. For using my position and my resources to manipulate situations in my favor. For—"

"Then you owe me compensation." She cut me off, and there was a glint in her eye that I couldn't quite read. "You chased away my boyfriend. You have to make up for it. Double."

And despite everything—despite the ache in my body and the chaos in my head and the certainty that we were crossing a line we could never uncross—I found myself smiling. Because she was right. Because I'd done exactly what she'd accused me of, and we both knew it, and she was choosing me anyway.

"Double it is," I agreed, and felt the last of my resistance dissolve like sugar in water, sweet and inevitable and utterly complete.