Chapter Twenty-Two

“ E NCORE , M AMAN !” A GAIN, Mama.

“Patience.” She tosses my pajamas onto the bed next to me. “Arms up.”

“Encore, Maman!” Again, Mama , I yell louder, lifting my arms.

“Such a demanding little lark,” she says, pulling my shirt down before pinching my nose. “Count with me.”

“Un, deux, trois,” One two three , we recite together before she begins to sing. “Alouette, gentille alouette.” Lark, gentile lark! “Alouette, je te plumerai.” Lark, I will pull your feathers! “ You sing too, gentile lark.”

“Je te plumerai la tête.” I will pluck your feathers off your head, I sing as she begins to tickle me.

“Je te plumerai la tête.” I will pluck your feathers off your head , she sings back.

“Et la tête,” off your head , she sings high.

“Et la tête,” off your head , I drop my chin and sing low.

“Alouette,” Lark! she sings.

“Alouette,” Lark! I sing back.

She presses her nose to mine, our eyes getting bigger as we sing together. “O-o-o-oh!”

She pushes me back on the bed, hair tickling my belly as she kisses it, and I try to wiggle away.

“Encore, Maman,” I yell as she chases my foot with my pajama pants.

“Et le bec,” off your beak . She pinches my lips.

“Et la tête,” off your head . She plucks my hair.

“Alouette!” Lark!

She stops, yawning.

“Maman,” I yell. “You did not sing it all!”

“We can sing again tomorrow.”

***

But we didn’t. We didn’t sing.

We never got to sing again.

“Maman,” I whisper, speeding away from the lake, chest burning as trees blur in my peripheral. Irony strikes me that mere hours ago, I chastised my inked brother for taking stock in a nursery rhyme while I replay the one I’m most familiar with—a subconscious punishment.

Atonement demanded by my psyche to re-live one of the handful of vivid memories I have with my mother.

One of my last, when Maman declared me her gentle little bird.

What would she think of me now?

What would she think of the fact that I’ve become a different bird entirely?

A bird of prey.

A bird fueled by retribution.

A cunning bird capable of acts so vile, that boy is almost unrecognizable to me now—a liar, a thief, a master of deception.

A bird capable of taking part in destroying an innocent girl in the name of vengeance.

But what transpired on that lake float didn’t feel like that. At all.

It felt like the opposite of that.

“Dominic.”

Cecelia’s moans skitter down my spine as her coconut-scented oil seeps further into my skin. My cock stirs at the memory of her above me—and beneath me.

The lust-filled tidal wave that crashed into me by way of a deep-blue stare.

Her parted lips—and the sounds coming out of them.

A long pull of her pebbled nipple in my mouth.

The feel of her flawless skin between my bruising fingertips.

Her velvet tongue thrashing against mine.

Her endlessly long legs cradling me as she sank down onto me before we clicked into place, the fit fucking surreal.

Today’s forecast did not call for—or in any way predict—me fucking Cecelia Horner.

But it didn’t feel like fucking. What that felt like was...otherworldly.

The snap happened so abruptly that the static that always accompanied us caught fucking fire as the noise stopped. I succumbed so quickly that I made my own will a laughingstock but was rewarded in a way that I experienced every single moment. With just a kiss, this bird totally fell under the spell of the shiny, spinning thing.

In offering her my fuse, she ignited me.

Fire and water, she’s both burn and soothe.

The haze I’ve been immersed in lifted so fast. It was as if I had roused from a deep sleep only to open my eyes and see the world through a magnifying glass.

All of my senses became more acute as sensation and sound overwhelmed me—the lake waves breaking against the float, the sharp intakes and exhales of breath, the feel of my heartbeat, the electricity that flowed at my fingertips, the thunderous warning that rumbled through the sky. Though, I bat away any foreboding feelings induced by any idiotic fairy tale I conjured as she swept me into a fucking fantasy. I wanted her so goddamned much that I would have defied anything or anyone who tried to separate us.

“Dominic.”

For the first time since the nightmare I’d existed in for weeks began, I felt like I’d surfaced from being underwater and took a much-needed breath. A breath of realization that I am a living, breathing man. A man starved, due to self-deprivation, in dire need of the woman spread in front of me.

I took the breath allowing everything I felt to ring true, in the way I touched her, voicing the few words that came to me, my guard absent.

No longer feeling like I was watching just outside my own life but participating in it. I was capable of taste again and savored hers. Touch turned into worship. With every deep thrust inside her, the burdens weighing me down were forgotten.

Something so natural and straightforward for most...but so complicated for me.

If fucking was all we had done, I’d already be home, finding another way to fill my time—but it wasn’t. I totally lost myself in her, and every second of it only ramped up the one before.

Fully hard from the recollection, I speed forward in the opposite direction of the sun as I attempt to race away from the fact that the best I’ve ever fucking felt in the whole of my existence was when I was moving inside Cecelia Horner.

Speeding past any route home—knowing I can’t be anywhere near where she is—I pour every effort I have into putting those minutes, that stolen time, into its respective box.

Cecelia and I are practically strangers. But that interlude said otherwise, just as the whisper informed me the second I laid eyes on her and every time since. The last part of said whisper, I refused and denied even after I saw her for the first time without the grudge in my eyes.

She knows.

She knows you .

Tightening my hands around the wheel, I curse whatever fate brought her into my life because finally allowing it to happen, wanting it to happen, and in participating in it, I lost the most important battle I had yet to fight.

Goddamn Sean.

Goddamn them both.

“Goddamn you,” I grunt as the clarity threatens to disperse while the weight of the secret I just took part in begins to take its toll. Chest thumping, I lick the remnants of the kiss I left her with—a kiss that lingered with a promise I’ll never be able to see through.

A fresh wave of culpability crashes into me as another vivid memory surfaces. My eyes fixed on a buzzing tattoo gun before lifting to meet his where he hovers a foot away—his expression a mix of pride and obvious affection. Pride and affection I may never see again because in finding that bliss—and momentary peace with Cecelia—I might have lost my forever constant.

My brother.

Turning into the heavily concealed driveway, I speed past endless acres of land and park at the foot of his porch. Taking the wide steps up to the ancient farmhouse, the door opens just as I lift my knuckles to knock. Denny’s eyes roll over me in a mix of curiosity and concern for a second before he dips his chin and widens the door enough for me to step through. I palm my cell phone against his chest as I pass. He takes it, my intent for being here made clear as I make my way through the house, retreating into his guest bedroom. Within seconds I’m stripped bare, every muscle in my body shutting down with fatigue, my mother’s voice ringing through as I collapse onto the mattress.

“Il est temps de dormir, Petit Prince.”

It’s time to sleep, Little Prince.