Can't Get Enough
To be finished at a later date, I guess! This ends before the smut begins, but there's some suggestive themes, mention of alcohol, and misogyny.
“Come on, Miss. Edwards,” My agent pulled at my elbow insistently. “This'll be good for you. I don't know what you're worried about!”
I swallowed back my anxiety and let Dean, my round, blotchy-cheeked, thinning-haired agent lead me up the gravel incline. My agent was taking me to a house party. It was in an expensive part of town that I'd heard about but never been to, and the house was a big white cube with large windows and a lovely garden, but there were people here. Lots of people in clothes more expensive than mine sipping drinks that I don't indulge in and gossiping about things I don't care about. Social anxiety curled its icy talons around my innards and twisted, squeezing out waves of panic that crested into the shores of my self-consciousness.
The fact that Dean had started calling me Miss. Edwards didn't help. He only called me that after he'd had a few drinks, when he thought it sounded enticingly sophisticated enough to lure me into his greasy hands. I shuddered. We crossed a wild-grassed lawn specked with flowers that I imagined would have been quite colourful in daylight and passed through French doors into a spacious lounge. Dean led me to the open kitchen at the back of the room and bustled us into a small circle of people who politely re-shuffled to make room for us. I smiled apologetically and shrugged my elbow out of Dean's hand.
“Miss. Edwards,” Dean moved his now-free hand to the small of my back; “Let me introduce you.”
I could feel his clammy skin through the fabric of my 'Define Interesting' baby-doll T from Think Geek. I wished it was the Donna Karan silk tank that was hanging, never worn, in my wardrobe back home. I wished that I'd worn an A-line instead of my short black net skirt and I really wish I'd worn pumps instead of my flat-soled black and silver knee-boots.
I probably imagined the glances of distaste as I shook hands with the polished people in the circle. I'm pretty sure the shocking disdain and up-turned noses were a figment of my self-depreciating brain but I saw them none the less and my cheeks flushed as Dean threw names at me that went in one ear and out the other.
“And this,” He reached across the circle and tapped the shoulder of a thin man with a shocking mess of brown hair jutting at defiant angles from his cranium who was hunched over the breakfast bar with his back to us, “if he feels us worthy of his presence...”
The man swung around on the stool and I drew sharp breath. I knew who he was but let Dean introduce him regardless; if the fates were kind they'd restore my heartbeat while Dean spoke.
“Ahh, here he is! Sebastien Fay. Seb, this is Megan Edwards; one of my authors.”
I smiled and reached for his outstretched hand. I wisely decided not to speak; I'm always self-conscious of my voice in crowded places, my feeble little voice, and was pretty sure it'd crack with this bombshell that Dean had dropped on me.
“Enchanté,” Sebastien Fay brushed his supple fingers along my palm to clasp my hand and his touch made my legs quiver.
My eyes were wide; I could feel this but couldn't do a thing about it. I saw myself from an outside perspective, deer-in-the-headlights expression plastered across my gormless face as I stood in my almost-punk outfit with my hand resting in Sebastien Fay's.
His soft green eyes crinkled at the corners and his head almost imperceptibly dipped to one side as he regarded me. I swallowed hard, conscious of the flecks of mahogany and slate in his irises, the ginger-brown stubble peppered with maturing grey, the shock of wild, dark chocolate hair that framed his face in its sexy just-got-up halo. My heart fluttered.
“You're an author?” He confirmed, his words trickling with the sweet allure of his French accent. He cocked one eyebrow and its majestic curve made me think of a tilde; approximating beauty.
He still held my hand in his. There was no creepy brushing of his thumb over my skin, no unnerving exploring of his fingertips; only his strong, warm, grip as he eased me gently through the circle of strangers to the empty breakfast stool next to him. I could feel Dean glaring at my back as I shunned him for Sebastien Fay's enchantment.
“Writer!” I nigh-on blurted, aware suddenly that the moments were ticking longer between his question and my answer. I swallowed. “Writer. 'Author' sounds stuffy.”
Sebastien Fay's sensuous lips curled upwards, dimples like little half-moons forming at the corners of his mouth and containing his smile in parentheses.
“I'm an actor,” He replied. “But I don't like that word either. I prefer clown.”
The waves of his eyebrows crested suggestively and the expressive power of his beautiful face was too much for me; I sank heavily onto the stool as my legs turned to jelly.
“I know who you are,” I mumbled reverentially. “I've seen some of your films.”
“Have you? Which ones?” This time his eyes were the ones to widen with surprise.
Sebastien leaned one elbow onto the counter and tucked his feet onto the stool's rest. He looked so comfortable in his own skin, so easily casual and confident in his jeans, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and the black blazer that hung open. He looked scruffy and sophisticated all at once. My heart thumped hard against my chest and I clasped my trembling hands demurely in my lap.
“Uh... I'm not very good with names,” I winced and hoped he wouldn't interpret my lack of remembering with disinterest for the films. They were very good pieces of cinematography, albeit subtitled as I don't understand more than a handful of words in French – very good, that is, even aside from Sebastien Fey's alluring presence that I could quite happily sit and watch all day without understanding a single word.
“One of them you were in only briefly, a short scene at a party. In the other, you were a company CEO.”
“Ahh,” He nodded. “En Français?”
“No,” I shook my head with a blush. “Subtitled. I don't speak much French,” I wrung my hands apologetically. “But they were very good. I like watching low-budget foreign films; they put so much more emphasis on character and story than Hollywood fare.”
Sebastien Fey fixed me with such an intensely curious stare I thought I was about to combust.
“So, Miss. Edwards the writer; what do you write?”
I knew it was too good to be true. This was the point in all of my social interactions where my conversational partner asked me the genre of my literary flights of fancy and my answer always, without fail, was met with a patronising little smirk akin to a pat on the head. Maybe I could ease into this one; strike myself a lesser blow with some cunning glossing over of facts.
I closed my eyes and encompassed my nose with the prayer of my hands and peeked at him over my fingertips, sliding my hands down away from my mouth to answer.
“Romance?”
My hands poised nervously at the crest of my chin, my eyes already wincing in anticipation of his response. Instead of the expected twitch of his lips that would have betrayed his inner smirk, he clasped his fingers loosely on his lap and bestowed upon me a smouldering, suspicious glance.
“You sound as if you're testing waters, Miss. Edwards. Is romance perhaps not the complete truth?”
“Fine,” I sighed and dropped my hands back onto my skirt. “I write erotica.”
He acknowledged my honesty with a purring “Mmm,” that made my breath hitch.
“Do you find it difficult to overcome the taboo so bewilderingly applied to one of few things that unite most of us mere mortals in enjoyment?”
Sex. The three little letters formed in my mind's eye and grew until they dominated my mental field of vision. The word drifted from my thoughts and plastered itself all over him, clinging to his easy posture, flickering from his mouth with the brief exposure of his tongue as it glanced across his lips, patterned through the mesmerising flecks of his grey-green eyes as they bore into mine with intense apprehension of my answer.
I swallowed hard. “Sometimes. It's getting easier.”
“You're a brave woman, Miss. Edwards. Don't be ashamed of what you write.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. No dismissive condescension? That was a first.
“Please, call me Megan; or Meg. He,” I nodded my head at my agent who was busy turning on the schmooze with one of the women in the circle now that I'd been lost to him, “only calls me Miss. Edwards because he thinks it'll make me like him.”
Sebastien followed my gaze and looked long and hard at my piggy little agent before turning back to me. His expression was a sea of unreadable calm.
“Agents,” He shrugged. “Never met a single one I didn't want to garrote.”
My lips trembled into a tentative smile. Sebastien Fay was demonstrating an uncanny skill for making me relax.
“Can I fetch you a drink?” He motioned to the kitchen.
“Oh, uh, just tap water will be fine.”
Another of my normally eyebrow-raising little quirks that was again met with simple acceptance from this man. I never drank at parties, not even if I uncorked the wine myself and held my glass protectively into my bosom all evening. I watched Sebastien slip easily from the stool, glide around the breakfast bar and into the kitchen. He picked up two highballs from an arrangement on the counter and washed and dried them both before filling them with water from the faucet. I watched him do this with transfixed fascination – did he share my mistrust of inebriated strangers, or had he perhaps guessed my reason for asking for tap-water and poured one for himself as show of good faith?
He placed the glasses down on the breakfast bar, slid them across to me, and then danced around the bar to return to his stool. His every movement exuded a boyish energy, a joyeux de vivre attitude that mischievously infected my dour dragged-to-a-house-full-of-strangers anxiety.
“To eroticism,” Sebastien lifted his glass with a devilish twinkle to his eye; “and to those who embrace it.”
I picked up my glass, tinked it lightly against his and then sipped the cool water. It trickled refreshingly down my dry throat.
“To clowns,” I replied with slowly surfacing confidence.
Sebastien shrugged with a little laugh and sat his glass down. “To entertaining clowns, at least. If I fail to entertain you then I'm afraid I have failed in my life's only goal and my entire career will have been miserably for naught.”
I held on to my glass; the cool surface against my hot palm served as a reminder that this was not a daydream; not a flight of fancy.
“You want to entertain me?”
“Oui,” He nodded and flashed me another of his charming smiles, his expression painting the simple 'yes' of his answer as if it were only logical.
“Why?” I gripped my glass tightly, feeling the condensation pooling at my fingertips.
“Ah,” He leaned back a little and looked at his own glass on the counter, tracing one supple finger from rim to base and drawing a line through the dewy surface. “Because you look as out of place here as I feel.”
Still facing the glass, he cast me a sidelong glance of tremulous hesitation. My first reaction was to take offense – yes, I knew I looked out of place here, but had he needed to point it out, to make it even more glaringly apparent? But then, if he felt as out of place as I looked, we had a delicate, tenuous connection to each other. He'd been hunched over the bar with his back to the party when Dean had introduced us, I remembered. He hadn't been engaging at all. Maybe he was reaching out.
“Am I that obvious?” I offered him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
He glanced diffidently downwards before returning his smiling gaze fully to me.
“Only kindred spirits can recognise each other with such unwavering clarity. Thank you for not throwing your drink at me.”
A wider smile pushed rebelliously at the corners of my lips and I looked away as it triumphantly overcame my cheeks.
“'He' dragged me here,” I refrained from using his name again lest he heard it mentioned and felt that I was requesting his presence. “He thinks these things will be good for me.”
“Good for him, he means. He wants to show you off. Although I feel inclined to say I can't blame him, his motives are worlds away from what mine would be.”
Sebastien Fay pinned me to the spot with that same intensely curious gaze that he chose to inflict upon me at frequent moments throughout our conversation. I flushed beneath its weight. Ah, if only I could read minds – would I like what I saw there, behind that desperately, wildly handsome visage?
The prurient inquisition of his gaze was interrupted by a beautiful woman with uncannily golden hair and an hourglass figure ensconced in a tight-fitting dress who sidled up to Sebastien's side and slipped a piece of paper into his hand. He wrestled his gaze away from me, a frustrated frown furrowing his brow, and unfolded the scrap as the woman lingered near his side. He inhaled sharply, a furious flush daubing his cheeks, and pressed the paper back into the woman's hand with a brief shake of his head.
She scowled and turned on her heels.
A little baffled, I quirked a brow.
“A proposition,” Sebastien ran his hand through his mussy hair. “And not a very polite one.”
“Oh.”
He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed and I felt a compassionate desire to recapture the prior playful innocence of our conversation.
“So what are you doing here, if you feel so out of place too?”
“Heh,” A hint of a smile returned to his lips and he held his arms wide with a shrug. “Glutton for punishment?”
I knew how that went. He took a long swig from his glass of water and I felt the needy drying of my lips as I watched him brush the knuckle of his finger across his mouth. My heart resumed its palpitations.
“Miss Edwards – Meg,” He paused to correct himself – “would you like to accompany me outside? I'm feeling a little claustrophobic suddenly.”
I wasn't entirely sure that my legs had re-solidified from their earlier jellied state but I could risk toppling with him at my side to catch me.
“Sure,” I slid tentatively from the stool and he offered me his arm, the stark contrast between this gentlemanly gesture and Dean's grabbing hands very apparent to me.
I slipped my fingers around the curve of his elbow and he led me through the mingling guests and out into the cool night breeze. A wood-decked balcony wrapped around the side of the house and he led us to a quiet spot overlooking the hillside on which the house was perched.
“It's number two, by the way,” He dropped his hands to rest on the wooden railing and I consciously shifted my fingers from his arm.
“Number two?”
“Number two,” He confirmed and nodded down at my chest.
I glanced down – ah, my T-shirt. On it were three definitions of the word 'interesting';
1) Capable of holding one's attention;
2) Arousing a feeling of interest;
3) Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die.
I grinned and looked back up at him.
“I promise I wasn't staring,” His lips twitched into a boyish smile.
“I didn't notice, if you were,” I replied honestly.
Number two. Number two began with the word 'arousing' and followed with the word 'feeling'. These were two words I could, right now, very much identify with.
“Arousing,” I mumbled to myself and then realised with a tremor of horror that I'd probably said it a little too loudly. I looked down at the grass below the balcony and clenched my jaw with a silent curse.
“Indeed,” Sebastien breathed quietly into the night air and from the corner of my eye I saw his fingers curl a little more tightly around the balustrade.
I swallowed. This wasn't possible, was it? Surely I was imagining things. I longed for my glass of cool water to press into my palm. He turned away from the view and leaned back against the balcony railing with his hands holding onto the wooden beam either side of his perched behind, his blazer casually, sexily, displaced and a chill breeze playing through the wild meanderings of his unkempt hair.
“You were shunning it all, weren't you?” I asked him, very aware of the raspy, breathy quality to my voice. I told myself it was in the best interest of my hearts' health that I spend less time looking at him. Far less time. I didn't think I'd take my own advice.
“Hm?” He glanced down at me and I was transfixed by the aesthetic perfection of the outline of his face.
“When Dean introduced us, you were alone at the breakfast bar with your back to the whole room.”
“Ahh,” He smiled at me and his hand found mine on the railing. A jolt of tingling electricity shot along my arm at his touch. This wasn't the polite, gently reassuring hand-shake of earlier – this was an anticipation-driven gesture fueled by Sebastien's persistent curiosity and flanked by my increasing arousal.
“Yes. Rooms full of strangers make me uncomfortable.”
I didn't dare look down at his hand on mine, at our entwined fingers, because I knew I would see there no visual confirmation of the crackling energy that coursed from his skin to mine and seeing that nothingness would dampen the magic. Instead I let my eyes trace the contour of his jaw, the trim of his beard, the strong line of his nose and the gentle slope of his forehead. He looked a little sad, I suddenly realised – off-kilter, sobered. And yet his hand still clasped firmly with mine.
Someone had found the stereo inside the living room and a baleful female voice accompanied a lilting, soulful melody that spilled through the French doors and wrapped its blue jazz around us.
“Dance with me!” Sebastien said quickly and his other hand found mine and pulled me into his grasp before I could respond.
“Ohh, I'm not very good,” I warned him since I'd been stripped of the chance to decline but he just smiled at me as he held my hands in his and guided me in slow circles around our little corner of the balcony.
He smelled sharp and fresh and intoxicating. It was all I could do not to drift my forehead down to lean into his chest but even as I restrained myself I felt his nose grazing into my hair. There was a tangible magnetism between us and I felt it almost impossible to not close the meager distance from my body to his.
“Although, number one is equally true.” His mouth was shockingly close to my ear. “My attention has rarely been held so completely by anyone I know, let alone someone I've just met.”
I felt myself melting into his arms. There was no alcohol on his breath; I'd confirmed this by tilting my face just fractionally towards his as he spoke. Yes, if someone was hitting on me I always made a point of checking if they were intoxicated – but only because they so very frequently were. Sebastien Fay, however, was not. This padded my courage with equal parts confidence and confusion.
“And number three?” I murmured, so impossibly close to him that I could read the imprint on the buttons of his shirt and see the pattern in the weave of the fabric.
“Oh God, Oh God...” Sebastien whispered with his breath warm against my cheek and the intent implied by his intonation made me blush furiously.
The song changed to something less befitting of a gentle lulling sway and yet our hands remained entwined. I made sure that I was not holding him at all – that the decision to remain in contact with me was entirely his.
“I'm sorry,” He lifted his head slowly and I felt his breath ascend from my cheek up across my ear. His face was so close that the short hairs of his beard brushed into my hair and my displaced strands clung to him with an uninhibited desire that I alas did not myself possess. He laughed lightly and let go of my one hand to smooth my hair back with his gentle touch.
“Sorry for what?” My eyelids flickered closed at the touch of his hand on my head. That was a sure-fire way to make me completely docile – playing with my hair. I didn't know what to do with my released hand and just held it there between us; he took it in his returning grasp and guided it up to press my palm around the curve of his shoulder.
“For behaving as if there aren't a hundred eyes on us and as if I've known you for a lifetime.”
A sharp breath drew itself quickly over my parted lips. I knew, without a doubt, that even if Sebastien Fay had only been half as disarmingly handsome as he was I'd still be enraptured by the innocence of his charm.
“If I'm not to be ashamed of what I write, then you're not allowed to be ashamed of how you act,” I dared to press my fingertips into his shoulder and felt the responding movement of his muscles as he lowered his arm and brushed the backs of his knuckles gently up and down my forearm.
“If this were one of your books, what would happen next?”
His question made my stomach flip. I knew exactly the kind of scenario that would follow ours and knew that I'd regale him with the details of such scenarios through cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Oh, God.” I groaned and looked down at the floor.
Sebastien pressed his hand to my back and pulled me lightly into him so that the top of my head nudged against his chest.
“Tell me.” He said and I could feel his smile in the way that he held me as much as I could hear it.
“Well, it would depend on the tone of the story. Maybe we'd embrace a popular Latin catchphrase about not wasting any more time and we'd duck behind some bushes for a quick fumble in the dark. Or perhaps there's an old tool shed in the back lawn to which you'd lead me for a little more than just a fumble.”
“Hmm.” His hand still pressed unmoving against my back. No roaming fingers confirming the presence of the my bra or sliding downwards to chance their luck at the curve of my backside. “And what if it were a romance?”
I smiled. “Then we'd flee this den of banality and head off into the night. You'd drive me to some cherished scenic location and we'd sit on the bonnet and talk until sunrise.”
He sighed; a long, lonely sigh that rattled its profundity into the quiet blanket of air around us as his chin dropped to rest atop my head.
“Megan,” He whispered and I knew that he was only tasting my name and didn't expect a response. “Megan, Megan... Ahh, who are you?”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply of him. I felt now that his earlier lively good cheer had been a mask; a shield that protected him from the bitterness of life. I was about to lean back, to look up into his eyes as I offered some answer to his question, when my phone vibrated in my skirt's pocket. I fished it out and Sebastien stepped back a little to offer me more room.
I frowned at the name on the caller ID; Dean.
“Hey,” I answered and flicked my gaze up to Sebastien; he was peering down at me with complacent admiration. My cheeks heated and I glanced away.
“Did I just see you dancing with Sebastien Fay?”
“Uh... yeah?”
“You two know each other?”
“No?”
“You spike his drink or something?”
“What?” I looked around and saw Dean glaring at me through one of the windows. He was sneering at me lasciviously. My brows dove into a deep frown and I stepped backwards in an impulsive, repulsed response to his expression only to push up against Sebastien's chest. His hands curled protectively around the tops of my arms. I didn't think he could hear the conversation but I was positive that he could feel the vibes of seething fury emanating from my dislodged countenance.
“Did you see him when we got here? He's an absolute party-pooper; he never loosens up. And yet there he is dancing with you and he barely knows you. What did you do, did you tell him you write porn? Hell, I'd dance with any chick that told me she writes porn.”
“You are an arsehole. Piss off.” I narrowed my eyes and bestowed upon him what I hoped was my most vindictive glare.
I thumbed the red End Call button and shoved my phone hard into my pocket, turning my back on Dean glaring at me through the house window and finding my nose against Sebastien's chest.
“Forgive me a silly question; are you alright?”
“It's fine,” I muttered after forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath. “I've endured worse from my agent than him calling me to ask if you're only dancing with me because I spiked your drink.”
I felt his body stiffen. “Is that what he suggested?”
“That or something about me telling you I write porn, because apparently that's reason enough for scum-bag Dean to throw himself at someone.”
He was quiet for a moment and I languished in the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest beneath my forehead.
“I am inclined to defend your honour on your behalf, but I feel that you're the kind of person who would do a better job of it than any man.”
I smiled, so close that the movement of my lips nudged at his shirt.
“It's okay. I know Dean well enough to know that he'll either go home alone or wake up wishing he had.”
Sebastien laughed. “That bad?”
“Yeah, that bad.”
He pushed me gently away from him and looked down at me with a concerned frown.
“But tell me – why are you letting an agent who down-talks your writing as 'porn' represent you?”
I blew a sigh through one corner of my mouth. That was a question I'd procrastinated on confronting for months now.
“Because... Sometimes it's easier to sit at the bottom of a hole in familiar, if undesirable, surroundings than to climb out into the unknown.”
His kind green eyes flicked between mine, his mouth set into a tight-lipped frown of concern. His hands stroked so softly up and down my shoulders that I didn't think he was even aware of their motion, and I would have been too lost in his eyes to notice too if not for the rippling of charge that his touch caused with each brush of movement.
Sebastien's lips parted and I heard him taking a quick pre-speech breath only to pause as the creases of a light frown worked across his forehead.
I arched an eyebrow at him encouragingly.
He pursed his lips and regarded me with pondering deliberation.
“I find myself unable to think of anything except how your lips might taste,” He eventually said and his words left me breathless.
He dropped his hands and stepped back but I grabbed the lapels of his blazer and held him in place. He looked down at me, his eyes wide with caution, and I moved slowly as if soothing some injured wild creature as I drew myself up onto my toes, guiding my nose along his until I was close enough to press my lips to his mouth.
“Wait,” he whispered and his eyes pressed closed with the force of speaking that word.
I knew I shouldn't have made that move; too much, too soon, too impetuous. I dropped my hands from his lapels and cleared my throat.
“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have –”
“Non, non,” Sebastien slipped into French as he took my wrists and gently held them together in his hands. “You are divine and it takes every ounce of me to resist you. But to kiss you here, like this... ” He sighed, “It would do this, this serendipity, an injustice.”
I met his gaze again and he let go of my wrists to stroke one thumb across the curve of my cheek. His touch was so light, so reverent, that I wondered if he thought me made of porcelain.
“Then what might you suggest?”
His hands moved to my shoulders and he rested his chin atop my head as he hummed in thought.
“Do you have plans for the next five hours?”
“Well, I had planned to go home in an introverted sulk and rage quietly in bed until I fell asleep, but I'm open to alternatives...”
He squeezed my shoulders; a reassuring gesture from one wallflower to another.
“Mmm. And uh... Tomorrow? Over the weekend?”
I perked a brow and peered up at him; he smiled innocently and touched his nose to my forehead.
“No plans. Writing, maybe.”
“Ah, oui. So... Do you need to write from one special location, or can you write from anywhere?”
“From anywhere,” I leaned back and regarded him with a curious half-smile.
“I see, I see...” Sebastien trailed off and pulled me back into him, dangling me tantalisingly from the hook of his words.
“You're enjoying this, aren't you?” I nudged my fingers into his ribs and he squirmed delciously beneath my tickling. “What are you getting at?”
Sebastien stroked his hand along the back of my head, traced his fingers through my hair and danced his fingertips across the skin of my neck. His touch sent goosebumps tingling down my spine and my eyelids fluttered closed of their own volition.
“I suggest we... vivre un roman d'amour. Let us live a love story. I will be your co-author and we can pen le romantisme. Drive until sunrise, you said? I have a cottage on the coast, some four hours drive west. The sun will rise in five. Are you with me?”
I grinned, barely able to contain the squeal that bubbled to erupt from my soul. I cleared my throat and composed myself.
“Oui.” A palpable period tailed my confident acquiescence, closing abruptly our house party prologue to make way for our story to begin.
Thank you for reading! If you liked it, let me know at WelshPixie <3