Anne-Chantal gives me a knowing smile and pushes my ticket across the counter. “Here you are.”

“Thank you.”

My tone is polite and hopefully formal enough to discourage any comments she might be tempted to make.

“The tour starts in five minutes,” she says.

I nod and, exhaling a sigh of relief, move to turn away.

“You’re really into prehistoric cave art these days, aren’t you?” she says, tilting her head to the side.

“What’s wrong with enjoying—”

“Nathan,” she butts in, arching an eyebrow. “This is your fifth tour of the Darcy Grotto since January.”

Not that you’ve been counting or anything, I itch to say, but decide against it.

Anne-Chantal is one of Ma’s bosom friends and a frequent guest at the farm. Even though she sometimes boxed my ears when I was a kid, I owe her respect.

Anyway, busybodies are inevitable when you live in a village where everyone knows everyone.

“Fifth, you say?” I feign surprise. “I guess I am really into cave art.”

With that, I shove the ticket into the pocket of my jeans and march to the area where two dozen visitors are waiting for our guide, Dr. Penelope Muller, to show up and start the tour.

Her scrawny assistant Nina arrives first and delivers her introductory spiel. “It’s going to be chilly inside the Grotto. So, if you left your coat or jacket in the car, you might want to go get it now.”

Several people dash out.

As before every tour, I can’t help wondering if Nina ever eats anything beyond the occasional lettuce leaf. If I wasn’t wary of giving her false hope, I’d take her to the farm and make her sample our dairy products.

If Girault cheese and butter don’t transform her into a foodie, then nothing will.

“Nathan, hi! You’re back.” Nina smiles and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

We cheek kiss.

Like her boss, Nina isn’t a local. But she claims she loves Burgundy with its lush vegetation, gentle rivers, and hills. She also loves country life. And, above all, she loves farm animals. Especially, cows. Nina’s most cherished dream? To settle down in the region and become the wife of a dairy farmer.

At least that’s what she told me when we bumped into each other about a month ago, in early February, at the opening of the cattle fair in Auxerre.

I asked her if her boss shared her aspirations.

“Clarissa?”

“Um… I thought her first name was Penelope?”

“It is.” Nina played with a lock of her hair. “Clarissa is her middle name. She doesn’t care for her first name and only uses it professionally.”

Clarissa.

I took a moment to adjust my go-to fantasy in which I whisper “Penelope” while pushing hilt deep into her welcoming heat. As sexual fantasies go, this one is as much vanilla as it is a pipe dream. Thing is, I’ve never been with a woman—let alone someone as refined and far removed from my world as Dr. Muller—who could fully accommodate my length.

I wouldn’t call myself a freak of nature, but there’s no denying I’m larger than average. A lot larger. My neighbor and friend Celine once suggested I should book an appointment with a specialized surgeon to see if they can “trim” my “thingy” a bit.

“I know a woman who had her breasts reduced from an F cup to B cup, and it changed her life,” Celine said.

No way in hell was my answer.

Then she came up with another idea. Why not try full penetration with a professional first? To be honest, I’d toyed with the idea a few years back, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay for sex.

“That’s because you aren’t desperate enough,” Celine offered when I rejected her second scheme. “Unlike the average farmer, you never had any trouble getting laid.”

My guess is that by “average farmer” she meant herself.

Anyway, when I asked Nina what Clarissa thought of Burgundy, she rolled her eyes. According to her, Dr. Muller will get out of here as fast as lightning the day her research at the Grotto is done.

Of course, she would.

I don’t know where Nina gets her romantic notions about country life from, but running a big farm is one of the hardest jobs I can think of.

A cheerful “hello” uttered in the world’s most pleasing voice brings me back to the present moment.

Clarissa has arrived, sharp on time.

Dressed in a silky white blouse, black pants, a tailored black jacket and a pretty scarf around her neck, she’s as classy as ever. Another friend of mine, Danny, who came along on my third tour, claimed she wasn’t beautiful. Then again, Danny’s standard for female beauty is Pamela Anderson from Baywatch.

Clarissa’s breasts are pert little handfuls, nowhere near Pamela’s cup range. The tip of her thin high-bridged nose looks down. She wears glasses, very little makeup, and has naturally brown hair.

And yet… to me, she’s the sexiest thing alive.

Maybe I have a hand fetish.

Clarissa’s delicate, long-fingered hands are out of this world. But they aren’t the only thing she has going for her. On my first and fourth visits, she wore a skirt, giving me a chance to see her shapely long legs. Not just see them—study them, caress them with my gaze, and commit their lines to memory.

Then, there’s her voice. It’s clear, velvety sound makes my heart beat faster. Her intelligent gaze turns my brain to pulp. So much so that I still haven’t plucked up the courage to ask her my prepared questions during the tour and ask her out after the tour.

Clarissa’s competence and subtle humor leave me in awe.

As for the grace with which she carries herself, it has my cock on speed dial.

“Stop staring. You’ll burn a hole through her,” Anne-Chantal whispers with an amused smile on her face as she sails past me.

Great.

I can see her calling my mother the moment I’m out of earshot to tell her what she thinks about my sixth visit. Blanket denial combined with insinuations that the woman is so bored with her job she sees things that don’t exist will be my best line of defense.

Anne-Chantal unlocks the heavy door and ushers everyone in before closing it behind us. I guess the animals painted on these walls are too precious to risk some moron creeping in at night and spraying his own version of a wild beast over them.

“Bone fragments and tools made by the Neanderthal man who lived here some 60,000 years ago were found in the Bison Cave and Hyena Cave,” Clarissa explains as we begin the tour.

Having taken it five times already, I know what comes next, even though she does improvise a lot. The group hangs on her every word, staring at the masterfully painted reindeer, mammoths, rhinos, and horses.

“The beautiful Paleolithic art you’re looking at,” Clarissa says, “is the work of the Cro-Magnon—the modern humans—who moved in here some 40,000 years ago.”

As she takes us to the Mammoth Hall, the largest of the interconnected caves, she explains that until two decades ago, no one knew about the existence of the paintings. Tourists came to the Grotto to admire its stalactites, stalagmites, and underground lakes. They were given a piece of stalactite as a souvenir at the end of the visit, and they left unaware that these caves held an extraordinary human-made treasure hidden under a layer of calcite.

As we progress from cave to cave, I keep staring at Clarissa. She doesn’t look at me, not once.

All too soon, the tour is over.

Several visitors surround Clarissa to ask their questions.

I hover by the entrance for a few minutes, and then stride out and get into my car. As I drive off, I decide that I should forget about her. It’s foolish to expect Dr. Muller, a lady and a scholar, the young and ambitious curator of the Darcy Grotto Museum, to care for a local farmer.

She could also be frigid.

Alternatively, she could be only interested in older men.

Or women.

Or group sex.

And even if I did manage to get under her skirt, what would be the point? I’ll give her my heart—she practically has it already—but the moment there’s an opening in some fancy museum in Paris or another big city, she’ll zoom out of here like a meteor.

Ah, the voice of reason!

Thank you.

I’m giving up.