SAVAGE BEASTS

BRIELLE

I arch my back and stare at my cello in its stand. We’ve been making great progress. We already had seven songs, and I was recording the eighth when Levi could not stand it any longer and had taken me on the ballroom floor. I had just enough time to place my cello in an upright position before he stalked towards me and kissed me stupid. The next second, we were on the ground, and our hunger was insatiable.

I shift in his arms. The beast wakes from his slumber and pulls me close. He shoves his nose into the crook of my neck and inhales. “Mmm, you smell good.”

“I am good.” I laugh, tracing the tattoos on his hands and forearm with my fingertips. I wonder if I’ll ever grow tired of finding new patterns and shapes in the ink. “But I smell like you.”

“Probably taste like it too,” he murmurs, shifting his arms from around me and sitting up. “Let’s find out.”

He crawls on the floor, a lion stalking prey, his tattoos rippling, taking on new life with each movement on his corded muscles, and sets upon me. Not by lowering his head to my pussy, but by sliding his hands under my arse and lifting my sex to him. He wraps one arm around my waist and drags me closer, sealing his mouth over me. I moan, my hands grapple for purchase on the smooth parquetry floors.

My phone rings. I ignore it, but the longer the vibrations cause it to shift closer, the more my head gets the better of me. Maman. Something could be wrong with mon père. It’s been a few days since I checked in, and though Levi arranged for a fulltime nurse to be sent to the house, I can’t help but feel I’ve let them down. I reach out and grab the phone.

Levi lowers his mouth from my pussy. “Don’t answer it.”

“They will just continue to call.”

“And I’ll just continue to eat you out,” he says, trailing kisses over my sensitive flesh.

“Knock it off, I have to take this.”

“And I have to taste you ... again.” His grin is wicked, and I can see why women the world over fall in love with him.

I hit the green circle, and accidentally let out a startled gasp as Levi bites my inner thigh and covers my pussy with his mouth.

“Brielle,” my mother’s voice is broken, and I attempt to sit up, but Levi splays a huge hand over my lower abdomen and holds me in place.

“Maman, what is wrong?”

“Ton père, he is gone,” she says in French, her voice hoarse, as if she’s been crying for some time.

“Non.” Tears well in my eyes, and I wriggle free of Levi’s grasp. He can’t be dead. “He can’t ... I did all of this for him. So I could take care of him.” Even as I say those words, I know they aren’t true, and I see the way Levi’s face pinches before he locks the unfazed rock star persona back in place. My heart pangs with sadness and guilt, and jealousy. I get to my feet, desperately searching for my clothes. Though the ballroom is empty, I find only my skirt and panties, no bra, no shirt, and I stalk out of the room and down the hall to the bedroom I have seldom used since we returned from the vineyard.

“Brie,” Levi calls, but I ignore his words and the fact that he is following me closer than my shadow.

“Maman, I am coming. I will be on the next plane home.”

“I am sorry, I did not want to tell you this way, mon petit chou.”

I fight back the tears that threaten to spill over. “I am coming. Piaf will pick me up from the airport.” My throat is choked, tight, and I cannot swallow properly. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” I say into the mouthpiece, but I barely hear the words coming out of my mouth much less believe them. My père is dead.

“Brie, what the fuck is going on?”

“My father is dead,” I shout. The words echo off the high ceiling, and the walls around us. I want to collapse on the floor in a heap. I want to scream and shout, have my tears kissed away, and be held in Levi’s arms, but I can’t. I won’t do any of those things, because I have to be strong for my mother. I have to go home.

“He died,” I whisper, staring at Levi’s shocked face, his pitiful eyes. “While I was here with you. My father died.”

“Brie, I’m so fucking sorry.” He steps towards me, but I shrink back.

“Don’t touch me. I spent all this time, wasted all this time with you, and now I will never get to see his face, or say goodbye. I will never have that time again.”

He looks like a sad puppy when he says, “You couldn’t have known.”

“But I did,” I snap. “I knew how sick he was. I knew, and I stayed here with you, when I should have gone home.”

His brow creases, and he looks both angry and hurt. Good. I want him to hurt. He should hurt. It is Levi’s fault that I am here now. “Get your shit together. I’ll drive us to the airport.”

“Us? There is no us.” I abandon my hasty packing and grab a T-shirt and throw it on. Then I swipe my purse and a light sweater from off the bed and face him. “My father is dead. He’s dead and I wasn’t there. You took that from me.”

His jaw ticks, and I can see him debating whether or not to argue. “I took that from you? Are you fucking kidding me? I didn’t force you to stay. You stayed because of the money, because I paid you to.”

I shake my head. For weeks I’ve been obsessed with this man, smitten, bewitched, but no more. I was crazy to agree to this, madder still to enjoy spending time with him. To begin falling for him. When I turn, Levi is standing in the doorway. His face resigned.

“Brie, don’t go alone, let me come with you.”

“Why? What can you do to help? My father is dead. What can you possibly have to offer me?”

“Me,” he shouts. “Me. That’s it. That’s all I got.”

“I can’t. I have to think of my mother. She is alone now, and—”

“Fuck!” he roars, grabbing my wrist as I try to pass. “What about thinking of you for once? Huh? What’s wrong with putting you first. What do you want?”

“You can’t give me what I want,” I seethe, wrenching my arm from his grasp. “I want the time back that I lost with my father. I wish I’d never taken this job. I wish I’d never played that damn wedding. I wish I’d never met you.”

“Then go.” His lip curls in a sneer. I stalk past. Already I’ve spent too much time arguing with him. “I’ll be sure to wire you the full two hundred thousand euro.”

I swallow hard and turn on my heel, retracing my steps, I slap him across the face. “Vas te faire foutre, fucking pig!”

He laughs humourlessly, grabbing my wrist so I cannot hit him again. “You gotta pay extra for the pleasure of beating me, darlin’.”

I wrench free and walk away. The tears fall freely by the time I reach Margaux in the kitchen and beg her to take me to the airport in Nice.

“Bien sur, mademoiselle.” She grabs the keys from a holder in the pantry. I follow her through the empty house. Levi is nowhere to be seen, but I hear him in the echoes of crashing furniture and splintering wood.

I can’t think about him right now, because my father just died, and instead of being there with him, I wasted those weeks with a drunk, a stranger. I let my body and my heart twist my judgement, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.