Bordeaux

AGATHE I sat there in front of the dressing mirror at the club, one false lash on and the other off, reading the words that appeared on my phone screen and I felt the floor tilt beneath me. It was the end of the month. And I still hadn't gathered enough money to save Château Gleyzes, "a hundred and twenty years of my family's name in the Pomerol soil, reduced to a deadline." "Aggie don't," Margaux said from the next stool, not looking up from her lipstick. "Whatever that is, don't carry it onto the stage. Put it in the locker with your phone." "They're going to sell it." "Then tonight you'll earn one more night of not selling it." She pressed her lips together and turned, all copper curls and sharp, loving eyes. She took the lash from my fingers and set it on my lashes with a steady hand. "Breathe. You're Romy tonight. Romy has never heard of a bank." I tried to breathe like Margaux said, I really did, but in the mirror I saw the girl who had grown up among oak barrels and silk curtains, looking back at me, dressed in black satin and borrowed courage. My father would not have recognized me. And that thought of that hurt me worse than the text I had received. I locked my phone away, and I let Romy walk out the door. L'Écrin was gold and shadow, a jewel-box of a club tucked behind a quiet Bordeaux street. The air held perfume and cigar smoke and the low hum of money. I moved through it the way I had taught myself to, kept my hips unhurried, warm smile, because I'd never had to fake warmth. Men watched, and I let them. I had learned that being looked at and being seen were two very different things. Margaux caught my wrist at the bar. "Third booth. Stag party. They're loud, but they tip." Then her eyes slid past my shoulder, and she went still. "Mon Dieu! Who let that hondsome c**k in?" I turned immediately. He had just come through the door, and the room seemed to rearrange itself around him. I watched, amused, as those perfectly built, yet broad shoulders moved past the crowd and stopped a few meters away from where I stood. His deep-set eyes scanned the room for someone, and for a moment I thought that maybe I was the one. But how can such a man with an angelic yet dangerous face of a god want a lady such as me? Then his gaze crossed the floor and landed on me. It felt like a hand pressed flat against my sternum. Heat climbed my throat. Hundreds of men had stared at me, but none ever made me lose awareness of my own feet. "Oh," Margaux whispered, delighted and horrified. "Oh, that's trouble. Go." My breathing became shorter and faster. At that point, I wanted to run, but it seemed my legs couldn't move, no matter how I commanded them. I just froze. He moved briskly towards me with that exquisite male air that smelt like a mixture of hunger, anger, and ego all in one. Then he stopped. I ended up in the VIP section that I'd never been to before. The whole place upstairs was empty, it was as if he had ordered everyone out before he came in, so it was just him and I. The walls were velvet in colour, there was a low lamp that served as the only source of light, and the door closed with a soft, click. Suddenly, the whole noisy world was on the other side of it. I danced for him, though I never decided to. It began on the main stage, the lights hot on my shoulders, the music a slow, dark pulse. At the edge of the light, he had taken a table and ignored the drink placed before him. He did not whoop or reach out. He simply watched, still and intent, as if I were the only true thing in the room. As I turned, I noticed his eyes were there. Each time I let the satin slip lower, his jaw tightened, and his hand curled against the table. To be honest, that rattled me a bit. Halfway through the second song, my composure cracked. The text, the bank, my mother's tired voice, all of it rose at once. My steps faltered. A single tear, hot and furious, slid through my makeup before I could stop it. I finished the set with my chin up high. I walked offstage on trembling legs and nearly collided with a waiter, and in the dim corridor I pressed the heel of my hand to my mouth, fighting for air. "Take this." A plain, folded handkerchief appeared in front of my face. I looked up to see who it was. And it was the handsome stranger I'd performed for. Up close, his eyes were the color of strong tea in sunlight. "I'm fine," I said, in the bright voice of Romy. "You're not." His voice was low and rough, with the faint drag of the countryside in it. "You don't have to lie that you are." "You don't know me." "No." He held my gaze. "But I saw you when you stopped performing. Something I'd kept bolted inside me since the day of my father's funeral, trembled on its hinges. I stretched forth and took the handkerchief. Our fingers brushed. Neither of us moved. "I'm Leo," he said. "Ermm…" I said uncertainly. "It's fine if you don't want to tell." "Sorry, Romy, I'm Romy", I retorted. I don't know what got into me but damn, I was just wondering what he'd look like undressed, if he's this charming with clothes on then….. Strippers are not to get involved with customers normally, yet some clubs do permit it, except mine, but oh well I suppose when you're that wealthy, every rule bends for you. We headed back to the VIP section, I barely remembered the walk back there. Leo stood near the door as if afraid to come closer. "I didn't come here for this," he said. "I want you to know that. A business associate insisted. I was going to leave." "And yet?" I asked, tilting my head, and the old armour of Romy slid into place, flirtation as shield. "You stayed." "I stayed because of you." The words seemed to cost him something. "I don't know how to say it better. I've spent my whole life knowing exactly what I want, Romy. And I've wanted nothing the way I've wanted to know you in the last twenty minutes." I crossed the room slowly. When I stopped in front of him, I was close enough to feel the warmth coming off his body, close enough to smell cedar and rain and something else faintly like wine and earth that made me ache with homesickness. "Do you always talk like that?" I whispered. "Never." I laughed, soft and shaky, then almost immediately, he pinned me to the wall and let his tongue dive deep into my throat. While kissing me, his hand rose to the back of my neck, careful at first, as if I were something that could break. Feeling the intensity all around me, I quickly blotted out…" Ermm there's a private room at the back." He understood exactly what I meant. Once we got there, he kissed me like a starving man. His mouth was hot and certain, and when I gasped against it, he made a low sound in his throat that went through me like lightning. My back met the wall. His hands travelled through my waist to my hips, then rested on the curve of my thighs, and he murmured against my ear, "Tell me to stop and I will." "Don't you dare," I breathed. My fingers fumbled his tie loose, then the buttons of his shirt, until my palms found the hard, hot planes of his chest and the wild thunder of his heart beneath. He shuddered under my touch. I realised in that moment that this proud, composed man had become as undone as I was. He lifted me way too easily, quite to my surprise, and set me on the edge of the low table, stepping between my knees. His mouth traced down my throat, over my collarbone, lingering where my pulse beat hardest, and my head fell back on a moan I didn't hide. The satin that covered my body slid from my shoulders. He caught his breath, and he looked at me with something close to reverence. "You are so beautiful," he said hoarsely. "Not the dress. You." My eyes stung again, and this time I let them. He kissed the tear away, then my mouth, then slower, and lower until he reached my clits. The world narrowed to the heat of his lips against my p***y and the ache that coiled low and bright inside me. I wrapped my legs around his neck as he ate me inside out, and he gave a ragged, helpless laugh against the lips of my clits, like he'd been waiting years for this moment. What followed was slow, then desperate intimacy that felt tender in a way I had no defense against. His hands never hurried or took. They asked, and I answered, over and over with my breath. My nails were across his shoulders, the shattered way I said his name each time he thrust in made me lose my mind. When the wave finally broke over me, it carried away every deadline, every bank, alongside everything I'd told myself about being unseen. For one suspended minute, there was only his arms locked around me and his forehead pressed to mine as he whispered my name like a vow. Afterwards, we sat tangled on the velvet sofa, my head on his chest, his fingers drawing lazy circles on my bare shoulder. "Whatever's weighing on you," he said quietly, "it's not small. I can feel it even now." I stiffened. "Keep it to yourself. No one will understand." I reminded myself of the old rule automatically. "It's nothing," I lied. He didn't push. He only pressed a kiss to my hair and held me a little tighter, as though he understood perfectly well that it was a lie and was willing to wait. That, more than anything that had happened in the last hour, frightened me. I had spent two years believing that all men eventually lied, left, or took. But I was lying in the arms of a stranger who had done none of those things, and I could already feel myself having little fragments of hope, although I'm not meant to. Down the corridor, behind the closed door, I could hear Margaux's laughter ringing out loud, bright and oblivious to what I had just partaken in.