Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Okay, teeny-weeny exaggeration there, but how could her sex-loving husband suddenly be okay to go without? Unless someone else was giving him what she wasn’t…

  And that, ladies and gentleman, was why she was upset. Another woman seemed to be the most likely, if heart-wrenching, story.

  She hissed as a shard of glass stubbornly clung to torn flesh. It ripped her thoughts away from her husband and back to the pain in her hand.

  The monotonous act freed her mind from the emotional tidal wave battering her, letting her focus on the physical discomfort. By the time she’d finished digging out the shards of glass from her hand and then bandaging it, her alarm clock beeped, making her jump. She almost slammed her hand on the counter, back onto the shards she’d just pulled out of her palm, but she remembered just in the nick of time.

  Usually in her lab, she was totally focused on her work. The only way she would remember the strict dining hours their housekeeper insisted on, was to have an alarm clock warn her twenty minutes beforehand. The sound of the alarm was always accompanied by her jumping in shock. One time, she’d actually fallen off her stool. Her butt had had bruises for a week.

  She left her work where it was on the counter. That morning, in an attempt to clear her mind and to figure out what was wrong with her husband, she’d started a new recipe for the anti-acne soap she’d been working on for the last four months. The last clinical trial of the previous version had worked in ninety-four percent of the people tested, but it had caused some dry skin in too large a number of the women using the product.

  The conundrum had allowed her to focus and it was here, at her worktop, where she’d realized her husband had to be having an affair. Somebody else had to be giving him what he’d needed for so long, because he sure as shit wasn’t getting it from her!

  And now, she had to go and face him. Sit opposite him as they dined on food that could have come from an award-winning restaurant. She’d have to stop herself from choking on each bite that passed her lips…as well as maintain the low level of chitchat she knew Sebastien was used to hearing from her.

  Dazed, wooden, and heartsore, she trudged out of her lab, locked the door and crossed the lusciously green lawn toward the home she shared with her husband.

  Italian Renaissance and rococo architecture made love as they adorned the two-hundred-year-old mansion. The twelve-bedroom behemoth, tucked away in the heart of the sixth arrondissement, was a history lover’s wet dream. In Paris, yet, in its own acreage of land in the space-poor city, Sebastien and Devvy lived in the metropolis yet out of it. It really was the best of both worlds.

  As she crossed the lawns and ran up the three steps onto the terrace dotted with pruned teardrop-shaped bushes and lined with creamy stone balustrades as old as the house and survivors of the French Revolution, Devvy looked in each of the first floor’s ten sets of double-fronted windows, for which the house was named Les Fenêtres or The Windows.

  She searched in vain for sight or sound of her husband, but saw no one glancing through the sparkling glass onto the garden, which was unusual for this time of day. In the evenings, after the stresses of the working day, he stood in his office, a glass of red wine in his hand, leaning against the wall as he looked out onto the gardens at twilight. It was his favorite pastime.

  She wondered if the woman doing the nasty with her husband knew that! Although it wasn’t like Sebastien would need her to be aware of anything other than his sexual preferences. All a lover had to know was how to please her wealthy partner, not what made him happy after work.

  Stomach churning at the thought, she entered the house through the portico, a small porch that sat bang in the middle of the property’s back façade, and which let her into the main hallway. The light and airy space smelled of fresh air and recently picked flowers. There was nothing more than a round, gleaming walnut table in the center of the vestibule, loaded with a heavy vase filled with late-blooming hyacinths. Doors lined the circular room, apart from the east wall, which had a large arterial staircase. It split, after twenty steps or so, and led to the two different wings of the house.

  Bastien and Devvy slept in the west wing. The guests, the few they’d ever had, went in the east.

  She scurried up the stairs, passing doorways leading to elegantly appointed suites and priceless paintings and artifacts that adorned the corridor of their private wing. Hurrying into the bedroom they shared—for the moment, at least—Devvy pulled up short when she came across Bastien seated on the bed.

  Their suite was a masculine haven. She hadn’t liked to change anything, not wanting to spoil the look Bastien had obviously chosen for himself. He’d lived in the house for ten years before she’d moved in, and she’d altered very little in her time spent in the mansion. It was a masculine abode and she’d left it that way, only changing the rooms he gave her as an office and salon. But she spent little time there, preferring her lab or Bastien’s study, which had a large open fire in winter and the best air conditioning in summer. As well as the man himself.

  Devvy didn’t care how many Manet’s or Pissarro’s they had lining the walls, her husband was the prettiest thing to look upon in the entire house. And she was a California girl. Being a geek didn’t make her blind. She’d seen some hunks on her native soil, but not a one compared to Bastien.

  Creams, beiges and blacks were the soothing shades of the bedroom, but they obviously weren’t soothing Sebastien. His hand was at his nape and he was massaging his neck with a grimace twisting his handsome features.

  “Would you like me to massage your shoulders?” Devvy’s voice was hesitant, her new uncertainty about her importance in his life throbbing through every word.

  Sebastien’s taut smile was his first answer. He was usually very aware of her changes in mood, but in his pain, she could tell he hadn’t sensed anything wrong with her.

  She wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

  “Please, ma belle,” he whispered, the grimace twisted again, gentling with his appreciation as she stepped toward him.

  “How long have you had it?” Devvy asked, knowing from experience he had one of the migraines he suffered from time to time. They were debilitating. Sometimes, he couldn’t even leave the bedroom, and woe betide anyone who dared to open the curtains.

  “Since last evening.”

  As she climbed onto the bed and knelt behind him, she tutted under her breath. “You should have told me,” Devvy chided. “I could have rubbed your neck last night.”

  When she’d first learned of his migraines, she’d taken an online course in massage to ease his suffering during times like these. For her, it was a win-win situation. She got to help him and touch him at the same time. And she loved touching him. His skin was supple and like silk underneath her fingertips. A massage was a mutually pleasurable experience and where he was concerned, Devvy was a glutton.

  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 fing
ers 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.”