“I love it, and I love you, and I want you to read my blog,” she says.
“You wrote a blog post?”
She nods, grabs her phone, and shows me a post from fifteen minutes ago. As I read it, my smile can’t be contained. I point to the screen. “You posted that as I was walking over to you?”
She nods and grins like a fool. “I did.”
I give her a look. “Elise, admit it.”
“Admit what?”
I point from her to me. “This is fate. We’re fate.”
She laughs. “Yes. I believe in fate. But mostly I believe in you.” She plants a searing kiss to my lips that makes me want to do very dirty things to her.
I grip her hips, lift her off me. “Let’s go to your hotel.”
We leave the park and hail a taxi.
“By the way, how did you find me?”
“I tracked down your brother’s number and asked him to find out where you were. He seemed quite eager to make sure you’d be here to meet me.”
She laughs. “I’m so glad it was you instead of him.”
I run a finger over the hollow of her throat, touching her new Eiffel Tower charm. “We need to get you a necklace for the gardens now. You don’t have one. Do you need a flower charm?”
She shakes her head and holds up her hand. “I have a diamond instead.”
We waste no time when we reach her room. Clothes come off at record speed, and our bodies become reacquainted with each other. It’s only been a few days since I’ve seen her, but it’s been too long since we’ve touched.
When I climb over her, and she raises her arms to loop them around my neck, I look into her eyes. “I want to make love to my wife.”
She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t say, “Make love to me.” Instead, she says, “Consume me.”
And I do. That’s how I make love to her. Like there’s a fire inside me, and the only way to quench it is to have her. To take her. To bring her to the edge of pleasure again and again.
I lose track of time. I lose track of her orgasms. She twines around me, her skin hot, her eyes glossy. My hands tug on her hair, and my lips crush hers, my teeth nipping at her neck, her earlobe, her jaw. The sounds she makes send me into another realm. My mind is a blurry haze of desire and love and passion.
And at last, after we come together one final time, I pull her close and whisper in her ear, “I love you. I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”
She runs a hand down my chest. “I love you. And I feel like I belong to you, and you belong to me.”
“That sounds about right. There’s something pretty spectacular about falling in love with your wife.”
A little later, after I rummage through the hotel fridge, I announce that we must go out to eat. “I’m starving, and I can’t subsist on peanuts.”
We dress and head outside on a summer night in Manhattan. “Show me around New York City, Mrs. Ellison.”
She does, and we extend our trip, staying for the weekend, enjoying the sights. I introduce her to Oliver since he’s back in the States again, where he lives. He takes us all to a fantastic bar in Chelsea. Gin Joint is jumping, and Oliver seems to have commandeered an entire corner with his friends, and one of his cousins on the other side of his family, a bloke named Jason who’s from London and works here now. It’s a veritable crew of Brits and Americans, but Oliver quickly loses interest in us when the pretty blonde walks in.
He waves her over. “Summer, I thought you were ghosting us.”
“Ghosting you? Never,” she says, then introduces herself before she sits next to him.
Pretty soon, he’s enrapt in some conversation with her about whether the fries from this place are, as he puts it, last meal worthy, and she’s laughing, and telling him he’s crazy.
I lean back in my chair, put an arm around my wife, and whisper, “He has no clue that he’s mad about her. But I bet he’ll figure it out so very soon.”
“I bet he will too,” she says.
Then, I kiss my bride.
The next day, I meet her brother and his wife and kids, as well as her parents, since they’re back in town after a holiday. We get along fantastically.
So well, in fact, that I make sure they know that when they’re in Paris next month, we want them at our wedding.
EPILOGUE
Elise
Twilight drapes over Montmartre. Strings of flickering lights hang from the iron posts that hug my courtyard.
That’s all I have for my wedding decorations, and that’s all I want. With the soft light fading above us in the sky, and the curving cobbled street beyond the front yard, this is the ideal setting.
