The Bar Next Door Read online

  “I mean, I possibly broke your sink forever.”

  “Worth it to see you doing some handiwork.”

  “Now you’re just trying to speak in euphemisms.” I do my best to sound unamused, but I know I must be blushing.

  “Come here.”

  I step toward him, heart hammering in my chest, but when I reach him, all he does is pull me into his arms and hug me tight against his body.

  “I’m sorry,” he says against my hair.

  “For what?” I asks, startled by the words.

  “For interrupting our night. For never being able to be completely there when we’re together.”

  “Julien, how many times do I have to tell you that it doesn’t—”

  “But it will.” I can feel how shaky his breaths are. “One day, it will. It’s different for you. You choose to be pulled away to help people. I’m always here because...well, because what else do I have? I’m here because I can’t stop. I don’t know how. There’s always more to do, more to accomplish.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to accomplish things,” I soothe.

  “There is when it rips everything else away.”

  As gently as I can, I pull away from the hold he has on me. He lets his arms drop to his sides.

  “Julien.” I reach up to place a hand on his cheek. “What happened to you?”

  “I...” His voice goes hoarse. “I doubt you want to hear it.”

  “I do.”

  I let my free hand reach for his. This is what I’m good at. This is what I know how to do. He needs someone to listen, to coax him to speak. I can be that person.

  “Somebody hurt you.”

  He shakes his head, my palm still cupping his jaw. “I hurt somebody.”

  “Was it...a girlfriend?”

  He hesitates. “We were engaged.”

  I try not to let that sting, but it does. He’s five years older than me; of course he could have had time to become engaged. It shouldn’t be so much of a shock. It’s not like we’ve talked about exes yet. He didn’t lie to me.

  But he did love someone enough to ask her to marry him. As much as I don’t want it to, that’s the part that hurts.

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” he offers.

  Now I’m the one shaking my head. “I want to. You can tell me what happened.”

  He draws in a breath and then slowly lets it out before leading me over to the counter. We both lean up against the edge as he starts to speak.

  “We met when I was in Paris. Her name was Fleur. She was studying public relations. We just...We worked well together. Very well—at that point in our lives at least. We were long distance after I went back to Bordeaux, and I think that distance made us realize how much we truly cared about each other. I proposed. Then my father died, and she came to Canada with me. We hadn’t actually lived together before that.” He laughs ruefully. “We probably should have done some sort of trial run before moving across the world.”

  “Probably,” I admit.

  “She felt...I think she felt isolated. She started to feel like she’d given her life up for me. She tried to fix things, to talk to me, but...I never had time to listen. I knew we weren’t heading anywhere good, that I wasn’t giving her what she needed, but in my head there was this—this future that I was always so close to reaching. I just had to go a little bit further, do a little bit more. I thought she would wait. I was stupid.”

  He goes silent.

  “She left?” I prompt after a few moments.

  “She packed up one night and went back to France,” he answers, voice flat.

  My next question is selfish, but I have to ask. “Do you miss her?”

  He looks at me, reaches to brush my hair away from my face. I realize I’m bracing for the worst.

  “Honestly...” He stares off into the distance. “No. I don’t. It took a while, but I know now that even if things had gone better between us, we wouldn’t have made each other happy for the rest of our lives. It’s not losing her that I still regret; it’s how it happened. I...I...”

  He sounds like he’s choking on the shame.

  “It’s okay.” I reach for him, cling to him. “It’s okay.”

  “It took me weeks before I even started missing her.” He admits it like a confession. “I loved this woman so much I wanted her to be my wife, and it took me a month before I even really cared that she was gone. That’s how focused on my work I was.”

  “But you’re different now,” I assure him, and I know it’s true. The man in my arms is not heartless. The man I’m holding wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes he made years ago.

  “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I don’t know if I am, but I want to be.”

  “Wanting to be different means you’re already different.” I step back and place my hands on his shoulder to make sure he pays attention. “That’s how people grow. You’re not the same as you were. You learned.”

  His face gets hard. “I learned to keep people away from me.”

  I drop my hands. I’ve never heard him sound so cold before.

  “I...” he stammers. “I...I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want to let you go.”

  I don’t say anything. We both went into this knowing it was against our better interests, but I didn’t realize just how much he was fighting to be with me.

  “Something’s wrong with me, Monroe. There’s ambition, and then there’s...whatever I have. I always wanted to be like my father. He was always encouraging me, telling me I’d build something even bigger than he did. No one else understood why I didn’t want the wineries, but he knew. He knew what it was like to want to look at an empire and know it started with a seed you put in the ground yourself. He’s the reason I haven’t used any family money for my business. I want it to be mine. I don’t want to disappoint him, but if he knew what I’ve done, how I’ve made people feel...”

  “I think he pushed you too hard.”

  Julien blinks at me like he’s working out whether he should be angry or not.

  “What?”

  “You talk about him like he was this...superhero, and I know he must have been a good man and that I never met him so it’s not really my place to say, but it sounds like there were some ways he failed you as a father.”

  Julien shakes his head. “He was the best father. I’m the one who failed.”

  “He made you terrified of failing.”

  The more I continue, the more I realize it must be true. The way Julien talks about his father has always set me on edge, and I couldn’t figure out why, but now I know. He made him believe there’s only one way to measure success, only one type of accomplishment that actually counts for anything.

  “He set you up for failure. It’s okay to actually be happy with what you’ve got. It’s okay to look at your life and know it might not be the best or most impressive in the world. It’s okay to enjoy it anyway.”

  He stands there with this look on his face like he’s wrestling monsters in his mind.

  “I hate...I hate seeing you hurting,” I admit.

  It feels like one of the most intimate things I’ve ever said to him. The words pull him out of his trance, and he moves to pin me between him and the counter. His hands grip the metal on either side of me, caging me in, and he lowers his forehead until it’s pressed to mine. We both close our eyes. I can feel his breath on my lips.

  “I stop hurting,” he murmurs, “when I’m with you.”

  “Come home with me.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. “Spend the night.”

  Fifteen

  Monroe

  BLEND: The process of combining two or more grape varieties to form a single wine

  “I would ask you who that old guy on the wall is, but I’m much more interested in getting your clothes off.”

  Charles Dickens stares on impassively while Julien pants underneath me, lying stretched out on my couch as I straddle his thighs. My shirt’s already pushed up over my br
a, and I’ve managed to get his belt undone, but we’re going to need to find something with a greater surface area if we want to take this further.

  “Do you want to go to my—”

  “That’s a nice carpet,” he interrupts, jerking his chin at the fuzzy rug on the floor. “It would look nicer with you on it.”

  I shriek as he somehow smoothly manoeuvres us both onto the floor, capturing my mouth with his as his body presses mine into the ground. My thighs part to let him rest between them.

  It’s still not a great position for getting our clothes off, but there’s a primal urgency to being on the floor like this that stops me from suggesting my bedroom again.

  Julien’s mouth travels from my lips to my neck, teasing me with soft, barely-there brushes of contact interrupted by quick grazes of his teeth that have me digging my heels into his ass and clawing at the back of his shirt. He doesn’t pick up the pace, doesn’t do anything more than let his lips wander closer to my collarbone. I start to squirm, gasping and panting as the pressure inside me builds.

  I’ve never heard of a neckgasm before, but Julien Valois might be about to make that a thing.

  “Please,” I beg, not even sure what I’m asking for. “Please.”

  I feel him smile against my skin. It’s a dangerous smile.

  “Please, what? Qu’est-ce que tu veux, chérie?”

  What do you want?

  “I...I...”

  He keeps nipping at the delicate skin stretched taut over my collarbones and then presses a kiss to the hollow at the base of my throat. His mouth is hot and hungry. It’s making me dizzy.

  “Qu’est-ce que tu veux?”

  The question rumbles against me, through me, the sound of it scattering across my skin.

  “I want...I just want to let go.”

  The answer emerges from some hidden room I don’t remember giving him the key for. He’s unlocked it all the same. I cling to him even as I ask for my freedom. It’s not him that I want to let go of; it’s everything that’s working to pull me away.

  “I want to let go of it all. I just want this. Just this.” My chest is heaving beneath him as he moves his lips to my ear, teasing with faint touches and warm breath until he suddenly nips at my earlobe and then starts to suck. My body jerks on the carpet.

  “Make me forget,” I beg. “Make me forget everything else.”

  I almost cry out at the loss of contact when he shifts himself backwards until he’s resting on his knees. He grabs me under my arms and pulls me up just long enough to strip my shirt and bra off with deft hands before he’s slamming me back onto the carpet again. He makes quick work of my jeans, and in a matter of seconds I’m totally naked, completely exposed to him on my living room floor.

  He pulls his shirt over his head, and the stretch and flex of his muscles is hypnotic. I didn’t know I had a thing for chest hair until the first time I saw him naked, but I totally do.

  “Spread your legs wider,” he orders, and my knees snap away from each other of their own volition before I can think to feel embarrassed. It’s hard to feel anything other than awestruck as he takes the sight of me in. I’m so wet I know he must be able to see it. I watch him run a thumb along his bottom lip, something dark and hot like embers slipping into his eyes.

  He places his hands on my knees, somehow making even that feel erotic as he strokes and caresses while forcing them farther apart. He rubs the outsides of my thighs before moving back up over my knees and down my shins. I shiver.

  Neckgasms. Leg-gasms. Is there anything not within this man’s power?

  He lowers himself down on the carpet. I whimper in anticipation when he starts to kiss my stomach.

  “Only this,” he murmurs. “Only me.”

  All I can think about is what he’s giving me and how much more I want. The parts of me my eyes always criticize when I look in the mirror somehow feel worthy of worship under his touch. The wide set of my hips, the roundness of my thighs, the way my stomach is soft instead of hard: he treats it all like the most perfect body he’s ever seen.

  He trails his kisses lower and lower. It’s torture and pleasure all at once. When he finally gets to the place I want him, he hovers over me, his hot breath raising goose bumps all over my body. My hips buck, trying to get closer to the pressure I need.

  He lays a hand on my stomach and starts to stroke me with his free hand before sliding a finger inside. The pace is maddening, forcing me to accept every millimetre one by one.

  “Pleasepleaseplease.” I don’t care how desperate I sound. I am desperate. “Oh god, please. More.”

  His lips twitch where they’re still pressed against my thigh, and then his thumb starts to circle my clit. I want to scream. I want to wail and beg and thrash on the floor. I clap my hand tight over my mouth to hold it in.

  Julien goes still.

  “What?” I ask, moving my hand away when I realize he’s not going to continue. “Why did you stop?”

  “Do you do that on purpose?”

  I can’t tell if I should know what he’s talking about or if my confusion is more than just a product of the lust-drenched daze he’s put me in.

  “Huh?” is all I manage to reply.

  “You do that whenever you’re starting to come.”

  Again, all I come up with is, “Huh?”

  He shifts onto his elbows so he can look at me.

  “You put your hand over your mouth. It’s just...You seem like you’re trying to stop yourself from making noise, and I keep meaning to tell you that you don’t have to. I just want you to know that. I want you to know you can feel comfortable with me.”

  For the first time since I brought him into my apartment, I start to feel embarrassed.

  “Oh, um...” I sit up, crossing my arms over my chest. He raises himself so he’s sitting too and grips my forearms.

  “Monroe.” My name on his lips makes me look up from where I’ve been staring at the carpet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “No, no,” I assure him. “It’s fine. I know it’s kind of weird. I sort of forget that I do it.”

  He stays silent, and I’m startled to realize I want to explain. He’s trusted me with so much. Somehow, I know I can trust him with this.

  “It’s stupid. It’s really stupid. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I do. One of the first few guys I had sex with...” I trail off to take a settling breath. “He, um, he sort of complained about how loud I was during sex. If that had happened with anyone recently, I would have sent him packing, but I was so young, and...well, I used to have a much more difficult time accepting my body. I still struggle with it sometimes, but back then it was much worse. I felt like I was so lucky to find a guy who actually wanted to sleep with me that I needed to do whatever I could to keep him, so I just...stopped being so loud.”

  “Monroe—”

  “I know it’s bullshit,” I interrupt. “Trust me, I know. Like I said, no one would ever be able to make me think that today, but it was a big deal for me back then, and it just stuck.”

  “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to tell me.”

  I wrap my fingers around his where they’re still gripping my forearms. “It feels good to tell you. No one...No one has ever asked.”

  “Will it help if I call that asshole some of the worst names in both the French and English languages?”

  I start to chuckle in spite of myself. “I’m sorry, but did you just say hasshole?”

  He pretends to be offended. “Oh go ahead, make fun of me some more.”

  “It’s just so easy,” I tease.

  He shakes his head and then leans forward to kiss me. It’s tender at first, a moment of reassurance, but the heat quickly builds between us again. I wrap my arms around his neck, and he pulls me onto his lap. The denim he’s still wearing is deliciously rough against my thighs. My nipples peak as my breasts press into his chest. He moans into my mouth when I start to grind agai
nst the ridge in his jeans.

  “On the couch,” he growls, part command and part plea. He squeezes my ass and gives it a slap that makes me yelp before getting up to follow his directions.

  “Not like that,” he orders when I start to lay back on the cushions. “On your knees with your back to me, chérie.”

  I shiver as I move into position so he can take me from behind. My hands dig into the top of the couch as I hear him retrieving his coat from somewhere on the floor and then ripping a condom package open. He teases me for several minutes after that, sliding his cock along my soaked folds as he rubs and smacks my ass until I’m sure it must bright red.

  “You look so good like this,” he mutters.

  One of his hands digs into my hair, hauling me up so he can cup my breast, squeezing and stroking as his lips play along my shoulder.

  “Do you want me to fuck you?” he asks in a voice like the first rumbles of an earthquake. “I know you do. That pretty little chatte is so wet for my cock.”

  I whimper as he lets just the tip find its way inside me. His hand tightens in my hair.

  “Tell me you want it.”

  “I want it.” The sentence ends on a gasp as he tugs head back even farther, my whole body arched like a bow. “I want it. I want it. Please. I want it.”

  “How?” His words are gruff now, guttural with greed. “How do you want it? Tell me.”

  “Hard. So hard. So hard I can’t think.”

  He lets out a dark, exhilarated laugh as he thrusts all the way inside me. I gasp at the fullness, at the way I’m forced to stretch so wide for him, but it only takes a second before I’m pushing my hips back, urging him for more.

  “Make me take it. Make me take it, baby.”

  I’ve never called him baby. I’ve never said things like this before, but the way he’s making me work for him tonight is peeling away all my restraint. I’m bared to him, open and raw. He starts to thrust—long, slow strokes that aren’t enough for me. They’re not even close to enough.

  “Julien—”

  He shoves me forward, one strong hand pressing firmly into my back as the other keeps its sharp grip on my hair. He’s pounding into me before I have time to get ready, to brace myself for exactly what I’ve been asking for. He’s merciless. None of the sounds I make slow him down. He fucks me like it’s a punishment, fucks me like it’s a reward, fucks me like I deserve both and he won’t rest until he gives them to me. I lose all hold over myself. I forget where I am. I forget what any of this means.