The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Twenty-Five

We arrived in Lucerne the next morning under a haze of fog and snow.

“It’s Christmas,” Eric remarked, steering our rental car under a dizzying array of lights strung over one of the bridges.

“So it is.” I looked at him queerly. “You didn’t realize that?”

Eric blinked. “No, I knew.”

But that was all he said, as if he were simply mentioning the day of the week. He drove on, feigning concentrating on the road, though the reason for his reticence was clear. He was scared.

Lucerne was a relatively small city, an odd juxtaposition of old and new buildings smashed together at the edge of a large lake nestled in the Swiss Alps. It was a bit jarring, really, to drive through loads of picturesque Swiss farmland, complete with fallow fields dotted with Brown Swiss cattle and the occasional tractor, and suddenly enter a city over which lorded a nineteenth-century castle and a waterfront casino. Like a lot of European cities, the architecture spanned nearly a thousand years, but because of the city’s density, medieval buildings ran into modern with the disorienting effect of time travel.

The city, however, was almost deserted as we rolled in—it was Christmas Day, of course, so most people were with their families. Nearly every shop was closed, and even the famous swans of the lake seemed to be hidden away.

We checked into our hotel, but almost immediately, Eric wanted to leave. As soon as we had deposited our things, he was up again, pacing the room.

“I can’t just sit here like fish in a barrel, waiting to be shot,” he said. “I need to move. Take a walk or something.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I sat on the bed.

Eric turned at the door. “Are you coming?”

“Do you…do you want me to come?”

Finally, his gaze softened. He walked across the room and knelt in front of me. “I always want you to come.”

“Well, good,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to appear nonchalant. “Because I don’t want you to go anywhere alone right now.”

Again, tears sprang to my eyes as I cupped his face. Lord, the intensity of this trip was really getting to me. I never cried like this. But sometimes I forgot just how beautiful he was. It wasn’t a blinding beauty. Eric was more like a statue, carved and solid, but not necessarily ornate. His appeal was unwavering, something you wouldn’t always notice, but when you took the time to look, made it hard to see straight.

His eyes, so often the color of a time-worn marble, blinked up at me, bright and full of love. I brushed my thumbs over his knife-edge cheekbones. His eyes shut, and his long lashes cast a light shadow over his fair skin.

He laid his head in my lap, and his arms encircled my waist. “Jesus Christ, Jane. You have no fucking clue how much I love you.”

“Do you?” I wondered before I could even help it. Sometimes I honestly had a hard time remembering. Even after all this time. Even after a month. “Even after all I’ve cost you?”

“You’ve cost me?” Eric sounded genuinely confused.

“Well, if I wasn’t John Carson’s long-lost daughter, he would have left you alone, wouldn’t he? We wouldn’t be in this shitty situation.”

He looked up with a somewhat amused expression. “The fact that you think any of this is your fault blows me away.” He swallowed hard. “The more time I spend with you, the more I realize I’m nothing without you, Jane. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.”

“I don’t like it when you talk about yourself like that.”

I stroked his cheek again, and he closed his eyes, leaning into the light touch.

“Eric,” I whispered. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say: “It’s Christmas.”

He offered a crooked smile. “So it is.”

“Merry Christmas.” Could I be any lamer? “Christmas is a time to be with the ones you love. Isn’t that right?”

Eric deflated. He knew I missed my family, my friends. “Yeah. It is.”

“Hey.” I cupped his cheek, this time the one forcing him to look at me. “Then I’m in the right place.”

That smile reappeared, complete with the dimple in his left cheek. “You think so, pretty girl?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. But instead of shouting how much I loved him and tackling him onto the bed, I decided that now would be the best time to give him his present.

Eric watched curiously as I dug a small jewelry box out of my bag. It had been hard to buy without him knowing—Eric hardly ever wanted to spend time apart, considering how worried he was that we were being followed. But I’d managed to get this piece in one of the little old shops on the Ponte Vecchio one day when he was running.

He opened the box and pulled out the simple gold chain, at the bottom of which hung a small medallion, about the size of a nickel. Turning it back and forth in the light, he examined the engraving across the front and back of the hand-pounded disc. On the front was his father’s full name: Jacob de Vries, followed by 1957-1996. On the back was Eric’s full name, followed only by his date of birth.

Eric fingered the disc, remaining quiet.

“You originally wore the coin because it was your dad’s, right?”

“Yeah.”

He continued to examine the necklace while I grew nervous. His hand drifted up to the open collar of his shirt, to the empty space where the coin had hung before Brandon smashed it.

“I…he was about to become chairman too. When he died. I don’t know. I guess I just thought it was a way of carrying his memory with me.” Eric rubbed his face. “And then it became a clusterfuck. But yeah. I guess it was a way of taking him with me.”

“I…if it’s too morbid, I understand,” I said. He was so still, so intense as he stared at the disc, that I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake. “I just thought—”

“It’s great,” he interrupted, his silver eyes meeting mine like a gust of wind. “Jane, it’s great. Thank you.” He pressed a kiss on my head.

I sat back a little awkwardly. It wasn’t exactly the response I had been hoping for. “Ah, you’re welcome.”

He frowned, like he was wrestling with something. “I’ve been…I was alone for a long time. I mean, I had friends. I had Skylar and Brandon, other people I met at Harvard and around Boston. But I…they…no one ever knew. They never knew who I was, you know?”

I nodded. I hadn’t either, really.

“You know me better than anyone,” he said. “Even before I told you anything, you always did.”

He swallowed, and his eyes actually glistened. That, of course, was it for me in my current state of mind. My own tears started to overflow again, falling down my cheeks one at a time. I pulled off my glasses and swiped at my eyes. Eric smiled and used his thumb to brush away a few other tears.

“I…shit. Would you believe I don’t have anything for you to open?” he said, wiping at his eyes too.

I giggled nervously. “It’s okay. It’s been kind of an odd Christmas. God, we’re basically a Hallmark card anyway today, aren’t we?”

“I did get you something, though.” He pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to me.

“Tessuto Di Lorenzo,” I read awkwardly, stumbling over the Italian. I looked up. “This is the fabric store I found in Milan. Their stuff was to die for!” On the day we had walked around Milan before taking the train north to Switzerland, I had spent a solid four hours in this shop, swimming in a sea of textiles.

Eric nodded. “I bought you, um, a few bolts of fabric. That’s what they’re called, right? Bolts?”

“Really?” I squealed. I had wanted to send some home, but had decided it was too much of a hassle, given the fact that I didn’t actually know when we would be going there, if at all. “Oh my God, what did you get?”

Eric shrugged, like it was absolutely nothing. “Everything.”

“What? You bought out an entire fabric shop? That’s like thousands of yards of fabric!”

“Well, no,” he said nonchalantly, “not the whole shop. Just the ones you liked.”

My jaw practically hit the ground. I had mooned over at least twenty different fabrics in there. If Eric was keeping track…holy shit, I could literally design an entire fashion line, not just a few pieces here and there. If, of course, the idea wasn’t absolutely ridiculous.

“You know what I love about you, Jane?” Eric said, interrupting my thoughts.

I stilled, though visions of boatneck shirts and paperbag waists were dancing through my head. “What’s that?”

“Well, a lot of things,” he said. “But even when we’re fighting, even when I had to come home late and sleep in another fucking room right next to you…I’d still get to look into your room and see what you were making. I love the way you create, Jane. It’s inspiring. You’re inspiring.” Eric smiled, and this one wasn’t cocky or knowing. It wasn’t his “lady killer” smile either—the one he used to charm people, male and female alike. It was simple. Honest. “I just want to see what you’ll make. I just want to see you happy.”

We examined each other for a few more moments. Sometimes it was hard to realize that we were here. Amidst all the drama. All the games. All the fights. All the hurt. Somehow, we had come to a place where we could say plainly to each other those three simple words.

“I love you,” I blurted out before I could think too hard about it.

Eric cocked his head. “I know, gorgeous.”

“No, I mean I really fucking love you,” I kept on. “Not because you’re worth the earth. I—I did, Eric, I loved you so much way before I knew anything about your money or your family. It pisses me off, but I love the way you never let anything bother you. I love how you appreciate beauty, even something as small as a verse of poetry. I love how you’re like this calm to my storm, how you forgive almost anyone and everything, how you really would do anything for people you love, even the ones who hurt you the most…”

Even people like me.

By the time I’d finished, all amusement on Eric’s face had disappeared, leaving only an intense, watchful expression that made me feel pinned into place.

“Say it again,” he said. “I want to hear you say it again.”

“You just said it,” I said. “I wanted to say it too.”

“Goddammit, Jane, just say it again.”

And then, like the emotion was too much for him to handle, Eric’s face darkened, and he launched himself at me, steel hands wrapping around my arms, yanking me to him.

But he didn’t kiss me. Not yet.

“Sometimes,” he whispered, just a hair’s breadth from my lips, “it’s just too fucking much.”

I stared at his mouth. And then I nodded. Sometimes it really was.

“Say it again,” he ordered. “Please.”

I dragged my gaze up to meet his and fought to hold it even. His own burned into me.

“I love you,” I pronounced as clearly as I could. “I love you, you ridiculous, romantic, infuriatingly beautiful fucking man. I love you, and I always will.”

I swear to God, I could hear our hearts beating wildly in time, like drums in the wind.

“I love you, too,” Eric said. And then, finally, he kissed me.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was harsh and defensive, almost threatening. His lips practically warred with mine, and I fought right back, beating my fists into his chest while I took each tormented twist of his tongue again and again.

For some, love is sweet, but for Eric and me, it was a war—a war we were desperate to fight together. Not against each other. Against ourselves, maybe, because in our hearts, Eric and I were both people who were never quite comfortable with the world when it was sweet. We needed a little bit of fight to make our peace seem real. And if it wasn’t there, we’d have to create it ourselves.

I gasped as his teeth scraped across my neck. Eric reached in front of my blouse, took both sides of the shirt, and ripped it clean apart. I stared at the buttons rolling across the carpet.

“Ah, I was wearing that,” I said, though my sarcasm wasn’t particularly heartfelt. I kind of wanted to fix the shirt just to see him tear it open again.

“If you try to keep anything between us right now, pretty girl,” he growled, his teeth once again finding the lobe of my ear with a delightful pinch. “I will fucking demolish it.”

His hands busied themselves with my jeans, and not to be overshadowed, I hurriedly undressed him too. Within moments, we were skin to skin. Maybe it was the meeting with Carson in a few hours’ time. Maybe it was the fact that it was Christmas, and in that moment, we were all each other had. But for once, Eric and I were truly on the same wavelength. We needed each other. Maybe more than we had ever needed anything in our lives.

We tumbled back onto the bed. Spending the last month practically attached at the hip had somehow only made me crave the man more. His lean body buried me in the plush sheets, and he entered almost immediately.

“Fuck,” he hissed as his cock found my slick, aching center. “You are so fucking ready for me.”

I dug my fingers into his hips, wrapping my legs around his waist, eager to feel the powerful flex of muscles as he filled me again and again.

“Eric,” I moaned. Lord, my nerves were on fire. I wasn’t going to take long. I had thirty seconds, maybe a minute left before I was going to explode. This had to be some kind of record.

“Stay with me, gorgeous,” he murmured as he pummeled forward. “Feel me. Goddammit, Jane, feel us.”

And so I did. I clung to his flexed arms, his rippling chest, his strained neck like I was lost at sea, and he was the buoy. For the first time in my entire life, I gave myself completely to every unnamable sensation flowing through our joined bodies. Because it was him. It was Eric. Somewhere deep inside, beyond the constraints of body and mind, some part of me came alive when I was with him. And in giving myself up to it, I had ironically never felt stronger.

“Do you feel this?” His hips ground into me, driving a rhythm that was setting me alight. “Do you feel what we are?”

“Ummmm, yes!” I cried and arched my back, trying to open myself more.

And then, just as I was positive we were about to split apart together, Eric stopped.

I opened my eyes. “What?” My voice was shaky, hardly even coherent. My entire body throbbed. All I wanted was him.

Eric’s eyes were bright, two stars in the dark of the room.

“Just listen,” he said as he drifted kisses all over my face. “Right here. Right now. This is what you do for me, Jane.”

“What?” I pleaded. “What do I do?”

“I never feel more powerful than right here,” he said. “Right now. Inside you. Possessing you.”

“Eric,” I whimpered, knowing that it was true. He did possess me. I was his. A creature no longer myself, weak and strong all at once. Because of him.

“And all it makes me want,” he said as he began to drive forward again, “is to give myself to you.”

“Please,” I whimpered, unable to wait any longer. I needed the release. I needed him.

“Take it, Jane,” he ordered as his merciless pace drove even harder. “Take me!”

And I exploded. “ERIC!”

His name erupted from my chest, my soul, as I split into a million pieces and took him with me, just like he said. He collapsed over me, his beautiful body an effigy of passion, doused with sweat and heat. We spilled into each other, holding nothing back, until the lines between us were no longer clear. Until there were no boundaries between us at all.

* * *

Some time later,we both floated back to reality. Outside, twilight was setting in as the afternoon drew to a close, with a few flakes of snow floating past the window and down to the dark waters of the lake.

I rolled onto my arms to watch the snowfall.

“I just want to stay here,” I said as Eric joined me, wrapping his body over mine, a warm, muscular shelter. “I want to do that again and again for the rest of the night. Fuck Carson. Let him stand in the snow.”

“Later,” he whispered, drifting his lips across my bare shoulder. “Right now we have an appointment to keep.”

I arched my brow. “We?”

Not that I was ever going to let him meet with Carson without me, but I had certainly been expecting a fight. When he had asked me before if I was coming, I had honestly thought he meant for a walk.

Eric nodded. “Where you go, I go, right? Well, it goes both ways, gorgeous.”

And despite his fear, despite the fact that a terrible, horrible man who seemed hell-bent on ruining both of our lives was waiting for us only blocks away, I grinned. I absolutely beamed, because I knew that all I could ever need was right here in this room. And for once, he knew it, too.