When Dimitri made a noise in his throat, I nodded.
“Scandalous, isn’t it? I wasn’t the one who made the first move, but you can imagine when a brilliant, worldly man makes you the center of his world that it’s hard to resist. Ulterior motives never entered my mind because of his supposed relationship to my father, but it turned out he’d embellished that bit. They’d been friendly at one point, but playing up their closeness made me all too comfortable opening up about things I never should’ve. Private family affairs, business dealings…things this man could leverage for his own personal gain.”
“So he used you?”
“Pretty spectacularly,oui. It was humiliating. While I’d been falling for him, he’d been looking to make my father’s empire fall. Turned out I unknowingly gave him a key piece of information—the name of the man my father was thrilled to be signing a multimillion-dollar global contract with.” I shook my head, remembering the disgust and disappoint my father aimed my way when he’d found out. “Let’s just say the fallout from that mistake was more than my broken heart and his broken contract. My father pushed me out of the family after that. Said that if I couldn’t be trusted, I shouldn’t be there.”
“But I thought your father was generationally wealthy. A few million shouldn’t have hurt his bank account.”
“He was, and still is. It wasn’t that it hurt him financially, it was that in his eyes I had betrayed the family, betrayed him. He never once stopped to ask me how I felt. I thought I’d been sharing an exciting family moment with my ‘boyfriend,’ but let’s just say that experience woke me up real fast.” I turned around and pressed my finger against Dimitri’s parted lips. “And before you say ‘once a betrayer, always a betrayer,’ I learned from that mistake to always keep my mouth shut.”
But there was no accusation in Dimitri’s eyes, only a flicker of empathy that I hadn’t seen there before.
I forced a tight smile and lowered my hand. “Oh, don’t go feeling sorry for me now. I’m fine. Better than fine."Je vais très bien.”
“Not sorry. It does give me an insight into you, though. Why you use charm as a weapon and view vulnerability as a weakness.” He tilted my chin up and traced my lower lip with his thumb. “You fell for someone who used you, so you decided to become untouchable. To never let anyone get too close or see the real you.”
Putain. How did he do that?
“Sounds like you might know something about that,” I said.
“I do.”
I reached up to circle my fingers around his wrist to keep him touching me. “Tell me. My truth for yours.”
He shifted, moving his leg between mine and pushing me onto my back. As he lowered his head, he whispered across my lips, “One traumatic tale is enough for today.”
His mouth moved to my jaw, and I arched into his kiss. “That’s cheating. You promised.”
“I’ll keep it. Just not today.”
I started to protest, but Dimitri stole my lips, cutting me off and doing a damn good job of distracting me.
But I’d let him keep his secrets for another day.
33
DIMITRI
“OKAY, I KNOW we’ve been working on rebuilding our trust,mon monstre.But this is asking a lot.”
Benoit eyed the scrap of material hanging over my finger with a healthy amount of caution. I couldn’t blame him, not really. With the way I’d treated him—up until a few days ago—he was smart to question my intentions.Even if he had no reason to.
“And here I thought we’d moved past all of that.”
“We have,” he was quick to assure me. “But a blindfold?”
Just because we’d moved beyond the name calling didn’t mean I was going to let him think I was a total pushover. But, truth be told, I was starting to think I’d let him get away with just about anything.
“Then you should trust me enough to put this on.” I moved closer, dangling the piece of black fabric at him like one might a cape at a bull. I was daring him, and if there was one thing I’d come to know about Benoit, it was that he couldn’t resist a challenge.
“Fine.” He snatched the narrow strip from my finger and wrapped it around his eyes. “But please tell me I’ll eventually seethe light of day again. I would hate to think I let you talk me into walking off the edge of your cliffside retreat.”
He turned his back, and I tied the blindfold in place. “Maybe I should look into a gag for you as well.”
Benoit turned his head and, when our noses bumped, moved back a fraction. “Your choice, really. But I have to tell you, I’m way more fun when my mouth is unoccupied.”
I grinned despite myself—and because he couldn’t see—then leaned in to brush a kiss across his lips. “I might have to disagree with you on that one.”
