CHAPTER TEN
DEAN
MY TRIP PASSES IN A BLUR of work and activity as we hurry to get the proposal in order. We meet with Italian officials, seismologists, scientists, and historians. We take photos, ensure the site meets all the WHC criteria, review the comparative analysis, and provide details of the quake damage.
Simon Fletcher, my old friend from grad school days who has been directing the Altopascio excavation for years, is jittery with nerves over the impending protection vote. He’s a big, no-bullshit guy, most at home when he’s crouched in the dirt digging up an artifact.
We take the train to Paris, loaded down with files of reports and photographs. A UNESCO car and driver takes us from the de Gaulle airport to the Four Seasons Hotel.
“Since when do a couple of ordinary scholars get royal treatment?” I ask Simon as we check into the rooms that have already been reserved for us.
“Not for me, boss,” he replies. “You’re the king around here.”
I glance at him. “What’s that mean?”
“We know the WHC is courting you big time,” Simon tells me, reaching down to heft his ratty rucksack. “And you’re the reason the UN Assembly is voting on the site. If it weren’t for you, we’d already have lost the project completely.”
“That’s not true. You were working on the site long before you asked me to come on board.”
“Yeah, but we were scrambling for funding back then.” Simon punches the elevator button. “You’re the one who got us in with the IHR and the Conservation Committee. You’re the one who got the seismologists in after the quake and put together the damage report. You’re the one who got the proposal pushed through the WHC so the Assembly can vote on it. And that’s a lot of fucking bureaucracy and red tape to cut through. You get shit done, man. It’s a beautiful thing.”
He extends his fist. As our knuckles bump, I can’t help thinking that getting shit done for the sake of the archeological team has been one of the most rewarding parts of my career. And it all came about because Liv insisted I work on the dig in the first place.
“You’d better plan on going to the UN Assembly,” Simon tells me, as we get into the elevator. “You’re the man we need to convince the delegates to give us their vote.”
“Any one of us can give the presentation.” I scroll through the calendar on my phone, double-checking the UN Assembly dates, which are a two-week period in July. “I can’t go anyway. I promised Liv I’d help out with a festival she’s planning.”
“Can’t you still do that?”
“The festival is on a Saturday right when the Assembly is meeting. You’re going, right?”
“Sure, but I’m not as high-powered as you.”
“So many compliments.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re not going to try and kiss me now, are you?”
“You should be so lucky.”
With a grin, Simon gives me a salute and lumbers down the hall to his room.
I spend the next few days meeting with program directors at the World Heritage Center headquarters, a seven-story building designed in the shape of a three-point star, with a panoramic view of Paris from the rooftop.
In addition to Altopascio, there are questions about UNESCO, my opinion on the heritage sites, goals, and programs. It’s clear to me the exchange of ideas is also a thinly disguised series of interviews. I tell myself to stick to the path of political navigation, even as my brain processes the details of all the initiatives.
On my final night in Paris, after an evening dinner honoring the UNESCO goodwill ambassador, I finally return to the hotel close to midnight. My flight leaves at noon the day after tomorrow, so I’ll be home by evening. Just in time to read Nicholas a few stories before he goes to bed.
I call Liv and leave a message on her voicemail. While I wait for her to return my call, I pull a loop of string out of my pocket and twist it around my fingers. And I think. Hard.
The possibility of the World Heritage job makes me wonder what I’d been striving for before I met Liv. I knew I’d wanted a tenure-track position with a respected university. After a year of caring for my sick grandfather and writing my dissertation, I wanted to solidify my career.
But had there been anything else?
After Liv, it was easy—I wanted to know her, love her, give her everything she wanted. I wanted to excavate my way through the maze of her secrets and desires. I wanted to free-fall into her.
And my career became about more than my love for history and my drive to be the best—it became about Liv too. What jobs or postdocs would work for both of us. What university town would she want to live in, what would make her happy, where could she find a path of her own.
Not for a second do I regret that, especially seeing how Liv has blossomed in Mirror Lake. She’s become everything she always was, yet hadn’t known.
But I can’t remember what else I’d wanted. My attraction to Liv, and then my love for her, had been so blinding and intense it obliterated anything that didn’t affect her.
What had there been before her? With my father’s incessant pushing me to succeed, I find it hard to believe—even now—that a quiet, medievalist professor career was the endpoint of my professional ambitions. Maybe I’d even once dreamed of pursuing a position like assistant director of the World Heritage Center.
I shake my head. Stupid to think further about the challenges of the job. No sense looking at a door I can’t walk through.
“I don’t want you to take a new job, Dean. Certainly not one in Europe. But I also don’t want to be the reason you turn down an amazing opportunity.”
So what did that mean? Liv doesn’t want me to consider the job, but she also doesn’t want me not to.
I call her again. This time she picks up, her voice warm and smooth like melted syrup. The sound of it settles something inside me.
“So how are things going there?” she asks.
“Fine. Busy.”
I push aside the curtain to look at the street below. It’s raining, so the nineteenth-century buildings and boulevards are all cast in a damp, gray sheen.
I remember a day during our honeymoon. A rain shower drove us indoors to Angelina’s café where my new wife and I spent a couple of hours together, watching the rain and passing pedestrians as we ate lunch and drank cups of thick, hot chocolate piled with cream. Even when I’d kissed Liv later that afternoon, she’d still tasted like chocolate.
“Tell me about the room,” Liv says. “The Four Seasons is no travel hotel.”
“Lots of satiny stuff,” I reply, glancing around. “Blue and yellow. Nice big four-poster bed with a million pillows. I’d love to get you spread out on that bed.”
“I’d love to be spread out on it, from the sound of things,” Liv says, a smile in her voice. “Will you have time to do any sightseeing? Louvre or the Orsay?”
“I doubt it. Wouldn’t want to without you here, anyway.”
“One day we’ll be in Paris together again,” Liv promises. “Hold on, I’ll put Nicholas on.”
“Hi, Daddy!”
The knot in my chest both loosens and tightens at the sound of my son’s voice.
“Hey, buddy. How’s Fred?”
“Fed noogie.”
I grin, picturing Liv rolling her eyes with disapproval that our two-year-old son knows words like noogie and wedgie. I make a mental note to blame Archer.
After Nicholas tells me about Clifford the Dog’s fire-fighting abilities (“Dog Fed!”), Liv gets back on the phone. After discussing the rest of my plans, we exchange goodbyes and promises to talk tomorrow.
I stretch out on the bed and look at the ceiling, the pale blue crown molding edged with gilt. I’d intended to stay in a place like this for our honeymoon, but Liv hadn’t wanted to. For her first trip to Paris—her first trip out of the States—she’d asked if we could stay in an apartment.
“That’s how you and I started, right?” she’d said, tucking her hand into mine. “In your university apartment, just the two of us. Exploring the city. Exploring each other. I want our honeymoon to be the same way.”
And, of course, because that was what my lovely, soon-to-be-wife wanted, that was what I gave her.
For the two weeks of our honeymoon, we stayed in a little apartment off Boulevard Montparnasse, a former artist’s atelier with worn hardwood floors, and a wrought-iron balcony overlooking a maze of rooftops punctuated by orange chimneys and antennae.
We explored the city. We explored each other. I’d loved showing her hidden parts of Paris, the things I’d learned as a medievalist—the dimensions of Chartres Cathedral, the stories embellishing Notre Dame’s rose windows, the place where Abelard and Heloise fell in love. I took her to my favorite cafés and restaurants, introduced her to the pleasures of French pastries.
One morning I woke and felt the warm weight of her curled against my side, and I was filled with renewed gratitude for us, for her. Olivia West. My wife.
As soon as I thought that word, Liv turned, her long hair sliding like silk over my chest. She pressed a line of slow kisses from my shoulder to my neck. The fragrant scent of her, peaches and sugar, filled my head.
Her lips reached my jaw, her fingers tracing my mouth. Her wedding ring gleamed in the early morning light. I stroked my hand over the arch of her back, never able to get enough of touching her.
With a little moan, she shifted, draping her body over mine, her full breasts crushed against my chest. Her nipples were already hard. She had always been easily aroused, even if she tried to resist it in the beginning, but over the two years of our relationship she’d become increasingly uninhibited. Free.
I fucking loved it. And even more, I loved that she was mine.
I stroked my hands over her ass and between her inner thighs. She tightened her legs around my hands, the soft heat of her skin jolting me with lust. I edged my finger closer to her cleft, feeling a lingering dampness from the previous night slickening her folds.
I couldn’t get enough of her. Every night when we returned to the apartment after dinner or a walk, the pent-up urgency of the day unleashed. I grabbed Liv, she fell against me, and then we were kissing and groping like love-struck teenagers as we made our way to the bedroom.
She was always ready, always eager. So was I. I slipped my finger up to her clit and circled it slowly. She gave a muffled groan and shifted her hips. My dick stiffened against her thigh.
Liv lifted her hands to my face and moved closer. She probed her tongue into my mouth, bit my lower lip, kissed the indentation just above my chin.
My wife. My wife.
Need boiled up inside me. As if sensing it, Liv rolled onto her back, all soft, yielding flesh and warmth. So perfect with her round hips and tapered waist, her full high breasts with tight nipples begging to be sucked.
I got to my knees, fisting my stiff cock as I pushed between her thighs. As always, I battled the urge to make this last forever with the urge to plunge into her as fast and hard as I could.
“Oh, God, Dean.” She moaned, stretching her arms over her head. “I’m already close.”
I put my hand on the side of her face, turning her toward me. She stared at me, flushed and hot. I felt her body straining, almost vibrating with need.
“Look at me.” I commanded gently. “You look at me the whole time, beauty. I want to watch you when I push inside you, when you take my cock nice and deep. I want to see your expression when I start to fuck you. I want to look into your eyes and know you’re feeling every goddamned inch of my cock filling you. I want you breathless, overwhelmed, taken. And I want to see you when you come, when you clench your sweet pussy around me so tight I can’t fucking hold back anymore.”
Liv stared at me, her lips parting and her eyes widening with shocked arousal. “God, Dean.”
“Look at me.”
I positioned my cock right at her slit. She slid her hands under her thighs to hold them farther apart for me. A gasp caught in her throat. I eased into her slowly, my jaw clenching as her hot, slick channel closed around my shaft.
“Ah, fuck, Liv.” I inhaled a ragged breath, mesmerized by the sight of my erection disappearing inside her. “So goddamned tight.”
“Dean, please.” She panted, pushing to her elbows so she could keep her eyes fixed on mine. “Oh… oh!”
I thrust, sinking fully into her. She groaned, her eyes glazing over with urgent lust. Sweat broke out on my forehead. My muscles strained with the effort of trying not to push too hard, too fast. I didn’t want it to be over soon, but Christ in heaven, she was so hot and sweet…
“I’m… oh, hurry,” she whispered. “I want to come with you inside me, to feel you… so deep… ah!”
I surged inside her, forgetting to be gentle, the sensation of my wife crashing over me. I thrust hard, harder… fucking harder. My mind emptied of thought. Pressure coiled through me. Her body shook and quivered under mine, her breasts bouncing with every thrust, her long hair clinging damply to her face and shoulders.
“Dean.” Her voice cracked, her eyes suddenly filling with desperation and the glitter of tears. “I need it so badly. Please…”
Her pleas became a low chant, a stream of fire straight into me. Even as I felt her striving for release, she didn’t take her eyes off mine. A thousand emotions filled her expression—need, lust, urgency, love. Heat crackled between us, sparks like the strike of flint against steel.
Tension tightened my lower body. I drove into her again, wanting to bury myself inside her for days, sinking into all her goodness and warmth.
“Oh!” Liv inhaled sharply, her body tensing as if she felt the power of a wave the instant before it engulfed her. “Dean.”
My name was a choked gasp, trailing into a moan as her body shook, hard vibrations trembling through her. Then it was too much, and I sank into her the instant before an orgasm ripped through me. I gripped the sides of her head as I filled her, flooded her. She stared at me in a daze and then our lips crashed together, a sudden explosion of emotions too complex to unravel.
Dean. Dean… Dean.
My wife’s voice echoed through me, her tears dampened my skin, and her body stayed wrapped around mine until we finally pulled ourselves out of bed. The rest of the world came slowly back into focus, even though neither of us wanted it to.