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  She took a deep breath. She would start slow with him, let him feel everything as she moved on him. Remi tried not to go over the edge herself as she rode him with each sway of her hips, each undulation. His hands held her thighs, and she let him set the pace of her movements at first, the rhythm of their joining.

  Joining...that was it. She couldn’t think of what they did in this bed together as fucking, although she knew that was what the world would call it. She’d fucked him with her eyes the moment she’d seen him again for the first time in four years standing in his doorway. He’d fucked her with his fingers moments ago as she’d lay splayed open for him against his pillows. He’d fucked her with his mouth, and now she fucked him for the first time in his short life, which could have been so much shorter—a thought that terrified her. But this didn’t feel like fucking to her, even as the room grew warm from their bodies and sweat trickled down her back and his fingers smelled of her arousal and his mouth tasted of her desire. She licked it off his lips.

  For four years their two families had pushed apart from each other—a foolish, drunken quarrel that forced everyone to pick a side and go to war. But here on these pale gold sheets where Julien Brite’s body disappeared inside Remi Montgomery, the rift they’d accidentally caused one foolish night mended inside her.

  Remi pressed her palms onto Julien’s chest and drove her pelvis into his with concentrated effort, clenching her inner muscles tightly around him. She wanted him to feel everything as she rode him. His back bowed underneath her, his length deep in her, hot and hard. She ground into him, against him, on him, with a renewed frenzy while beneath her Julien gasped and breathed and gasped again. He’d lost control of himself and nothing could stop him from lifting his hips in short, hard pulses as if seeking to tunnel as far into Remi as possible.

  Their bodies were slick with sweat. She could hear the wetness that sealed him to her with each movement. The heat grew almost unbearable. She felt light-headed even as a heaviness settled into her lower body. Julien latched onto her right breast and sucked her nipple with desperate hunger. They had promised tonight last names would be banished. She was Just-Remi and he Just-Julien. But in that moment when he was inside her, they couldn’t possibly have been more joined to each other. Even their first names disappeared and they became nothing but a man and a woman driving their needs into each other, taking their pleasure from each other and surrendering their lives to each other.

  Julien’s head fell back onto his pillow, his lower back arching off the bed as he came inside her, filling her up, coating the walls that clasped him. As he came, Remi rode him into the bed with wild movements that brought her to the edge and left her hanging there. Julien emerged from his haze long enough to press two fingers into her clitoris so deep they almost slid inside her. The touch, rough but necessary, sent her falling over the edge. She collapsed onto his chest as her second climax shook her to the core.

  Haltingly and carefully, they disentangled from each other. A pure, pervasive exhaustion suffused her entire being. She could do nothing but roll onto her back and let the night air cool her burning skin. Julien’s wetness poured out of her, glazing her thighs and staining the sheets. She did the math and realized it was nearly six in the morning back in Kentucky. She wanted to stay up all night with Julien, but her body wouldn’t let her. Tomorrow they would do this again and again and again.

  Remi waited for Julien to speak, to laugh or sigh or to congratulate himself in some way for divesting himself of his virginity, and with an older woman, too. It was what she’d expect from any young man who’d fought long and hard to live long enough to experience a night like tonight. But he wasn’t just any young man.

  “You are the only person on earth my parents would hate for me to get involved with. Man. Woman. They don’t care as long as I’m happy and he or she isn’t you. And it’s you,” Julien said with a rueful laugh. “We’re going to get in huge trouble for this, aren’t we?”

  In this torrid hour when he should have been thinking of sex and passion and conquest and everything that had happened and would no doubt happen again between them, instead he thought of her, of them, of what the future held, and what price they’d be asked to pay for what they’d done. Their families were very likely making a lot of money for stoking a very ugly rivalry in the press, and with one act, Remi and Julien had just merged the two families.

  “With who?” she asked.

  “Our—” he began and stopped. She heard his laugh, felt the bed move with it, then felt the bed move again as he lay on his side and rested his hand on her still quivering stomach.

  “No one,” he said. “No one at all.”

  Chapter Six

  A Fool’s Paradise

  Remi awoke with the first light and found Julien already up and sitting by the window. He had something in his hands—a book or magazine. She couldn’t tell. She looked at him sitting in the sunlight. In the glint of the morning she could see every inch of the long pink scar on his chest. Nothing scared Remi—not spiders, not snakes, not jumping horses. But the idea that she’d almost lost Julien before she’d found him again—that terrified her. She said a silent prayer of thanks he’d survived his battle with cancer, which made this morning and every other morning she planned to wake up with him possible.

  “Morning already?” she asked, pulling the covers over her breasts and sitting up.

  “Unfortunately,” he said. In nothing but a pair of pale blue boxers, he walked over to the bed and leaned in for a kiss. “Good morning.”

  “Morning breath,” she warned.

  “Don’t care,” he said and kissed her hard and deep before pulling back and smiling at her. “I woke up without my stupid virginity hanging over my head. You think a little morning breath is going to bother me?”

  “Your virginity was hanging over your head?” Remi asked. “And I thought hymens were weird.”

  Julien laughed and pulled her into his arms. Remi sighed, deeply contented despite the lingering worry in the back of her mind. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Julien, and yet she could stay in Paris only so long before everyone back home got dangerously suspicious.

  “Thank you for last night,” he said, kissing her neck and her shoulders.

  “I should thank you. That was amazing,” she said. “It might have been your first time, but it was my best time.”

  “Best time? Are we talking sex or races?”

  She laughed again. “Sorry. Hard to get my head out of the business.”

  “You really run things at Arden, don’t you?” Julien stretched out next to her in bed. He slid his hand under the sheets and rubbed her hips and thighs.

  “I do. At least I thought I did before all this mess. Mom and Dad have been running the show behind my back. I’m more than a little pissed off about that.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’m pretty pissed, too. I don’t know how bad this could get, but I know when there’s gambling and race fixing and professional sports involved, it can be—”

  “—a disaster,” she completed for him. “Pete Rose banned from baseball. Lance Armstrong stripped of his medals and jerseys. Reggie Bush giving back the Heisman.”

  “You know so much more about sports than I do.”

  “You’re not a typical guy, are you, Julien?” Remi asked.

  “In the hospital, the nurses would hang out in my room with me longer if I had soap operas on. And my sisters would visit and that’s what they wanted to watch. That and Grey’s Anatomy. I put my foot down over that one. I had enough hospital drama in my own life.”

  Remi almost smiled, but she saw Julien wasn’t joking.

  “That must have been lonely,” she said. “Being in the hospital all the time.”

  “Mom and Dad worked their asses off with the farm. My sisters were in school. I don’t blame them. They loved me and visited me every chance they got. But still I was alone a lot. My brain was my best company.”

  Remi wrapped her legs
around him.

  “If I had known you were in the hospital by yourself, I would have visited you every day,” she said and meant it. “I would have hung out with you and watched sports with you and made sure you never ever had to watch General Hospital. I don’t care what my parents would have said about it, I would have been there for you.”

  “You were there for me. Sort of,” he said, and Remi noticed a faint blush on his cheeks.

  He got out of bed and walked to the window seat. When he came back to the bed he held a magazine in his hand.

  “That’s a Horse and Hound magazine, Julien,” she said. “You are doing porn the wrong way. Let me get you a Playboy subscription, please. Or introduce you to the Internet.”

  Julien grinned and flipped through the worn and wrinkled pages. “Mom brought me her old magazines to read in the hospital. Remember this issue?”

  Remi glanced at the cover. It did look familiar to her. “Yeah, I did dressage for years. I won a medal when I was twenty-two.”

  “And you and your team got a photo spread in here,” Julien said. “Look at that.”

  He flipped to a page near the center of a magazine. “Who is that smoking-hot chick in the riding clothes?” he asked, pointing at a smiling blonde girl in buckskin jodhpurs, a white shirt with a gold pin through her stock tie, a chocolate-colored coat, buff leather riding gloves and black riding boots. The young woman had her hair plaited in an elegant French braid and wore no makeup but tasteful pale pink lip-gloss.

  “That would be me with the helmet hair.”

  “You look so hot in this picture that for two years every sexual fantasy I had involved a girl in a dressage uniform.”

  “Seriously?” Remi laughed.

  “Dead serious.”

  “I’m not showing any skin in the pic,” she said, remembering the days of sweltering under that coat. “Can’t see anything but my face.”

  “It left everything to my very good imagination. Remi...those boots...”

  “You like the leather boots, huh?” she asked, giggling like she was back in college again and had nothing on her mind but boys and horses.

  “I had dreams about those boots.” He practically growled the words.

  “So when I showed up in your living room yesterday...?”

  “I was pretty sad you weren’t wearing the boots.”

  “I still own those boots,” she whispered into his ear then bit his earlobe for good measure. Julien groaned softly. “I have so many pairs of boots.”

  “There are horses in France,” he said, sliding on top of her. “In case you want to go riding.”

  “I did a little riding last night,” she said.

  Julien laughed and buried his head against her neck. “More than a little.”

  “You want to try this morning?” She relaxed underneath him.

  “We can do it again?” he asked.

  “All you want,” she said, kissing him. “And maybe later...I’ll wear the boots for you.”

  Julien was already so eager he didn’t even take off his boxer shorts before pulling his erection through the slit and settling between her open thighs. Using her hands, Remi opened herself up for him. Julien penetrated her easily, as she was still wet from last night. She sighed with pleasure as she lifted her hips to take every inch of him.

  His thrusts were slow this morning, tentative and unsure. She guessed he wanted to prolong the coupling and avoid coming too soon. He was young, new at sex and no doubt worried about embarrassing himself with his inexperience, and she adored him for it.

  “Your cock feels incredible inside me.” Remi ran her hands through his mussed morning hair. “In case you were wondering.”

  “I was,” he said, his voice slightly strained.

  “I love your body, too.” Remi ran her hands up and down his back, so lean and smooth-skinned. “Everything about you turns me on.”

  “Everything?” he asked between kisses.

  “Everything,” she repeated, as he rose up and put his hands on either side of her shoulders. She opened her legs wider, cupping the back of her knees with her hands.

  “You’re trying to make me come, aren’t you?” Julien closed his eyes tight.

  “Oh, no. You’re not allowed to come. Not yet.”

  “I almost died once, Remi. Are you trying to kill me again?”

  “Only in the fun way,” she said.

  “The French do call the orgasm ‘the little death.’”

  “No dying for you,” she said as he kept thrusting slowly into her. “Not until I tell you to.”

  “I want you to come, too. What do I do?”

  Remi gave him a mischievous grin. “Keep doing that. And watch the show.”

  He sat on his knees and resumed his hard, steady thrusts. Remi slipped a hand between her legs and found her clitoris.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed.

  “Just focus on what you’re feeling,” she said as she closed her eyes. “I’ll focus on what I’m feeling.”

  “What are you feeling?”

  “You inside me,” she said, her eyes still closed. “The ridge on the head of your cock is really pronounced. I can feel it rubbing against some really nice places.”

  “Seriously?” He sounded equal parts pleased and fascinated.

  “Seriously. And it’s a really good feeling. When I get turned on I get really hot.”

  “You are hot.”

  She laughed again. “The other kind of hot. And my boobs feel huge. Do they look huge? When I have sex they feel massive.”

  Julien cupped both her breasts in his hands.

  “They’re the perfect size for my hands.”

  “Then don’t let go. I love feeling your hands on my breasts.”

  “I’ll never take them off,” Julien pledged.

  “Good.”

  “Remi?” He stopped thrusting for a moment, and the pause in the pleasure wrenched her back to reality.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. Maybe. I’m falling in love with you. Is that bad?”

  Remi raised her arms and Julien fell into them.

  “No,” she said. “It’s crazy. It’s stupid. It’s irrational and probably dangerous. But it’s not bad. And I think I’m falling in love with you, too. It scares the hell out of me, but it’s not going to go away anytime soon, so we might as well enjoy it.”

  “Like this?” he said, with a thrust that Remi felt in the pit of her stomach.

  “Exactly like that.”

  He kneaded her breasts as he rode her with long thrusts. As Remi rubbed her pulsing clitoris, Julien pinched her nipples and squeezed her breasts. Ecstasy washed over and through her as Julien pounded into her. Little cries echoed from the back of his throat, barely restrained moans.

  She raised her hand to his face and caressed his lips. He opened his eyes and looked down into hers.

  “Come,” she said. “Inside me.”

  His head lifted slightly, his hands gripped her hard, and he came with a quiet gasp in the back of his throat.

  Remi was so close to coming...so close. Julien pulled out of her but soon he replaced his penis with his fingers. He ground three fingers into her wet opening, thrusting hard into her just the way she liked it. Julien licked and sucked her hard and swollen nipples as she arched into his mouth.

  Had she ever felt anything this good before? Anything this right? Anything this sensual and hot and wrong and right all at the same time? There was no part of her body that didn’t burn with desire right now. She’d never felt this sexual, this desired, this needed...and she never wanted it to end.

  Her orgasm crashed through her so powerfully it almost hurt. Every nerve fired in her back and belly, and her clitoris throbbed against her fingers.

  Spent at last, she rolled onto her stomach. Julien threw a leg over her lower back as he kissed her shoulders.

  “You know what the crazy thing is?” Remi said, still panting. “Sex gets better the more times you have it.”


  “If it gets any better, my dick is going to break off.”

  “We’ll glue it back on. We’ve got a whole farm full of horses we can—”

  “Boss?” Merrick’s voice came through the door, and the entire room rattled with the force of his knocking.

  “I’m kind of doing something here, Merrick,” Remi said, rolling her eyes.

  “I know you’re done fucking. The dishes in the sink aren’t rattling anymore. Thought it was a damn Parisian earthquake.”

  “Fine. We’re done. What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything except breakfast and a raise, but we’ll talk about that later. You’re wanted. You left your phone out here, and you have six missed calls from the farm.”

  “It’s Sunday,” she groaned.

  “Tell that to the fucking horses,” Merrick said.

  “I’ll be right out,” she said.

  “Put on clothes first,” Merrick ordered. “And take a shower.”

  “Anything else, Mr. Feingold?”

  “Brush your teeth. And tell Julien to get dressed, too. We need to figure our shit out.”

  “We have shit to figure out?” she asked.

  “What’s your last name?” Merrick demanded through the door.

  “Montgomery.”

  “What’s the last name of the guy you’ve been banging all night?”

  “Point taken,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll be out in half an hour. Take the credit card and go get us some...I don’t know. Croissants? That’s what French people each for breakfast, right?”

  “Way to buy into a cultural stereotype, Boss,” Merrick said.

  “Actually they do eat croissants for breakfast,” Julien said.

  “I’m not talking to you, Julien Brite,” Merrick said, sounding highly perturbed. “I bite my thumb at you. You sullied my lady’s virtue. And if you’re anything like me, you sullied her chest and her face, too.”

  “But it was really good sullying,” Remi yelled back. “Really really good sullying.”