Chapter 3: Baptism in Champagne
The marble floor of the Le Meurice bathroom was shockingly cold under his knees. Tom settled beside the clawfoot tub, the steam from Simone’s bath condensing on his tailored sleeves. She watched him from a nest of bergamot-scented bubbles, her expression softer than it had been in the booth, but no less intense. “With your mouth,” she instructed, her voice echoing softly off the tiles. “No hands.”
He leaned forward. The warm, soapy water sluiced over his chin as his tongue found the elegant ridge of her collarbone. She sighed, her head tilting back against the porcelain. He tasted salt and expensive bath oil, his tongue tracing a slow, deliberate path down to the gentle swell of her breast. He circled one nipple, and her breath hitched, a sharp, wet sound in the quiet room.
“You have a talented tongue,” she murmured, her fingers drifting to card through his hair, not guiding, just resting.
He continued, his mouth a slow, worshipful counterpoint to the memory of her tears. He lavished attention on the inside of her wrist, the delicate hinge of her knee, the pale skin of her inner thigh where the water had sluiced the bubbles away. Each stroke was an act of rediscovery, a quiet mapping of territory long abandoned. Her breathing deepened, the earlier grief replaced by a focused, thrumming anticipation.
When his tongue finally found the core of her, she cried out, a short, sharp sound that bounced off the marble. Her legs, previously resting on the rim of the tub, tensed. “Tom,” she breathed, not a command, but a realization.
Then her hands were in his hair, not gentle now, but possessive. With a sudden, powerful pull, she yanked him forward. He stumbled, knees slipping on wet marble, and tumbled into the tub with a huge, sloshing cascade of water. He came up gasping, suit soaked, hair plastered to his forehead. She was already on him, her wet body sliding onto his lap in the confined space, her legs locking around his waist underwater. The bubbles clung to them both like shattered lace. She searched his face, her own flushed and desperate. “I need to feel you,” she said, the words urgent against his mouth. “All of you. Now.”