The Butcher (Fifth Republic Series Book 1)
The Butcher: Chapter 9

A week passed—and I didn’t hear from Adrien.

I hadn’t tried to submit the divorce paperwork again. I was too afraid I would be met with another rejection. And then I would have to confront him and have the same conversation I’d had a hundred times already.

I continued to work at the bar even though I wanted to cry on my apartment floor, but I had bills to pay now. I needed food and electricity and all the other essentials that I’d taken for granted when I’d married into wealth. That meant I was required to show up for my shift, regardless of the state of my mental health.

It was a quiet night at the bar. Some of the tables had occupants, but no one sat at the stools at the counter. I had no one to wait on, which meant no tips, which meant a smaller paycheck. A lot of people assumed that people who worked in hospitality in France were paid a great salary without tips, but that really wasn’t true. We’d come to ask for tips and gratuities on tabs because additional income was needed to survive in a city like this.

No one was around, so I pulled out my phone and opened our message box.

I read his last message. Let’s get a drink.

I’d rejected the invitation, and he’d brought me pancakes instead, an awfully sweet thing for someone with a dangerous reputation to do. I didn’t call off the reconciliation with Adrien because I wanted to pursue a new relationship with Bastien. I just wanted to work on myself and take baby steps. But I did miss Bastien…a lot. I hope you’re well. I shouldn’t have sent the message at all, shouldn’t interfere with his life when I was such a fucking mess, but my thumb hit send.

His dots were immediate, like he’d been on his phone when I texted. Are you well, sweetheart? His voice played in my head when I read the message, perfectly capturing his baritone and slight hint of playfulness.

I typed a message but then deleted it. Started over, trying to replace a lighthearted answer instead of telling him the truth—that I’d hit rock bottom. Yes.

Don’t lie to me.

My heart started to drum like it always did when he was near, like he was right at the back of my neck, his breaths across my skin. There was something about him that made me uneasy and the most comfortable I’d ever been at the same time. I didn’t say anything, unsure how to respond to such assertiveness.

Where are you?

The bar.

His dots were long gone.

I suspected he was on his way here, that in a couple minutes, he would be the only customer at the bar. I put on a fake smile and did my best to look like everyone else, but I knew it would be impossible to do that when he was across from me. I’d quickly learned that it was easier to lie to strangers than to people you knew.

Less than ten minutes later, he walked inside, dressed in all black, his short sleeves showing all his muscles and the black ink over his thick arms, the cords down his forearms, the images of skulls and snakes and scorpions on his beautiful skin.

His eyes were on me the moment he walked in. He moved for where I stood at the bar, not taking a seat so he towered over me, his hands together when they rested on the surface that I’d just wiped down. And then he stared.

And stared and stared.

No one had ever stared at me like that, like I was all they could see.

It was hard to hold his look, to see the blue eyes that had flashed across my mind so many times in our separation, from my dreams to my waking moments. A warm sensation burned in my chest, and the longer it burned, the more it hurt. Something about this man—this stranger—elicited so much emotion in me.

He seemed to know that because he extended his palm forward, his knuckles against the counter.

I stared at the big hand that had touched me everywhere, that had carried me to his bed, that had held me when I fell asleep against his chest on the couch, that squeezed my ass in a way that made me feel possessed rather than objectified. I finally placed my hand in his and felt his fingers close around it and give it a nice squeeze.

It felt so nice… I couldn’t even describe it.

“Sweetheart.”

My eyes lifted to his, feeling that warmth in my chest again, falling deep into those blue eyes.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

We went to Au Pied de Cochon after I got off work, a restaurant I’d spent a lot of time in since my divorce, the perfect place for a smoke after a long day, for a late-night meal when I didn’t have time to eat anything.

There were a few people in the restaurant, but it was mostly empty except for us and a couple other tables.

Bastien ordered a stiff drink, and I had a glass of wine and an appetizer.

It was nearly three in the morning, but Bastien didn’t seem even slightly tired. He didn’t have bags under his eyes, had a distinct clarity to his gaze that made it seem like he’d woken up just a few hours ago.

The drinks were brought to our table, along with the burrata I ordered.

Bastien didn’t seem interested because he didn’t touch it.

“I haven’t eaten anything today.”

“Then you should have ordered more than the burrata.”

“I said I hadn’t eaten, not that I was hungry.” I grabbed a piece of bread and spooned the fresh cheese with the tomato on top, making my own version of bruschetta. I took a bite, struck by the subtle salt and the basil, the cheese so fresh it seemed to have been prepared just that hour.

With his fingers resting on the top of his short glass, his elbows on the table, he was a man far too big for such a small table. We were on the second level against the window, seeing the buildings lit up across the way.

I drank my glass of wine, enjoying the floral tones that masked the distinctiveness of the alcohol. After serving people fancy drinks all night, it was nice to enjoy one myself. I would have sat outside and enjoyed a cigarette if it weren’t so cold, but the dampness in the air would probably give me a chill.

“We can talk about it or not talk about it,” Bastien said. “Either is fine with me.”

I looked down at my glass then his, seeing the tattoos on the backs of his fingers, Roman numerals. It started off at I on his pinkie and then made its way to V on his thumb. Both of his hands were that way. “What do the Roman numerals mean?” I lifted my gaze to his eyes.

He didn’t look down at his hands to check what I meant. “The Fifth Republic.”

My eyes searched his for more information.

“The second-longest reigning political system in France—our current political system.”

I stared at his ink for another moment before I looked at him again. “And why is that important to you?”

He stared at me for a long time, his fingers resting on top of his glass. “Because that is the Republic that I serve.”

I’d been submerged in a depression that was colder than the Arctic, but my head popped out of the water when I heard what he said, when I understood it was important, even though I didn’t know why. “Adrien told me you’re dangerous.”

He didn’t react like he’d been caught in the spotlight, like he was red-handed in the midst of a crime. Adrien’s eyes had reacted in a distinctive way when I’d cornered him about Cecilia. He couldn’t lie his way out of it. But Bastien didn’t do that, didn’t stiffen like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I am dangerous,” he said. “But not to you.”

A warning flashed in my heart, but I ignored it—for better or worse. “How are you dangerous?”

He turned his attention elsewhere, surveying the other tables and deciding they were far enough away. “It’s a long and complicated story, but this is the headline you’re looking for—I kill people.”

This was the part where I should walk out and not look back, but I sat there and stared, the burrata forgotten. Adrien made his living in his nefarious ways, but it was a victimless crime because no one got hurt. But Bastien looked me in the eye and told me the truth—bluntly. Perhaps I was focusing on the wrong thing here, but that kind of honesty was damn refreshing. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

The seriousness of his face softened, his mouth possessing a hint of a smile. “You’ll get tired of my honesty after a while.”

“I don’t think I will.” It meant a lot to me to have that kind of respect, to be privy to information that a normal man would have concealed. “Adrien says there was no one else, but I don’t trust him. What I would give to hear his answer and know it’s the truth…”

His smile faded and his eyes hardened, like I’d said the wrong thing.

“What?”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Where do the two of you stand?”

Marriage was sacred, and I didn’t blame anyone for wanting to fight for it until their dying breath. When I’d married Adrien, I assumed it would be forever. That we would have babies together, grow old together, and then be buried side by side in the cemetery. It was hard to accept defeat, but surrender felt like the right option for me. “It’s over.” It still made me sad to say that, to know that our relationship had been destroyed because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants until he came home to me. “I said I would try…but then we met with the marriage counselor, and it just went to shit.”

“Why did it go to shit?”

My eyes dropped down, remembering how many times I’d thought about Bastien as I sat there, unable to get those blue eyes out of my goddamn mind. It had been as if he were there in the room, watching the whole thing unfold. “There was a vase on the corner of her desk, and she accidentally knocked it over.”

He continued to stare at me, his fingers relaxed on the cool glass, giving no discernible reaction to that.

“Glass…everywhere.”

He definitely had edges of arrogance, but he didn’t display them now.

“Adrien helped her clean it up, but I still spotted pieces in corners…and I didn’t say anything.”

“And then you left?”

“Yeah. We talked at the apartment, and I pulled the plug. He accepted it this time—I think.”

“And that was it? Nothing else was said?”

I studied his face, trying to understand why he continued to push the needle. “Should something else have been said?”

He brought the glass to his lips and took a drink. A long one, unnecessarily so. When he set it down, he licked his lips. An answer didn’t seem forthcoming, like he’d somehow forgotten my question. “You made the right decision.”

“I thought you were too biased to give advice?”

He smiled slightly then looked at the glass sitting at the bottom of his fingertips. “In this case, my advice is pretty fucking objective.”

Bastien walked me to the lobby door hidden between the two rows of hedges. There was a mist in the air, visible in the lights outside the buildings, drops of rain so light they floated like snow. “I’ll leave you here.”

I scanned my phone into the computer so the lock on the door released. It was as heavy as the gates to an old keep, something that couldn’t be broken down by a herd of Clydesdales. I looked at him standing in the mist like the cold didn’t bother him at all, didn’t leave bumps on his arms as his body tightened to stop the heat from escaping. “Why?”

That boyish smile moved in that rugged, manly face. “I assumed you needed some time.”

“I do.” There wasn’t a word to accurately describe the way I felt, a mixture of sorrow and unstoppable rage. There was a special kind of anger felt by women who had to leave their lying husbands. Wished I knew what that word was. “But I also want you to stay.” How could I be so heartbroken over one man but so desperate for another? How could I want this man so much that it made me sick when we were apart?

“I’m trying to be a gentleman, but I’ve never been good at it.”

“I don’t want a gentleman,” I said as I continued to hold on to the door. “I want you.”

His smile widened like I’d vanquished his restraint. He moved to the door, and even though it weighed a hundred pounds at least, he opened it like it weighed nothing. We entered the warmth of the lobby and began the walk up the circular staircase, the carpet an olive green with white flowers in the center.

We made it to the top floor, and I scanned the door to get it unlocked. My apartment was quiet and cold because I turned off the heat before I left. The first thing I did was move to the thermostat and turn it up so I wouldn’t freeze during the night.

I was about to drop my jacket over the back of the chair but changed my mind. “I’m so fucking cold.”

“Here.” He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a body so hard it looked like a sculpture rather than living flesh. “It’s a lot warmer than that jacket.”

I hesitated before I dropped the coat, immediately feeling the frigid air attack me like a swarm of needles. When I removed my top and unclasped my bra, my tits were hard and my nipples looked sharper than any of the knives in my kitchen.

He stared straight at my tits. Didn’t try to be discreet because discreet wasn’t his style.

I pulled on his black tee, and just as he’d said, it was as warm as a furnace. My skin immediately bubbled into bumps because it felt like a steaming bath. I stepped out of my boots and left my socks on. My jeans came next. I’d never undressed next to my dining table before.

He moved into me, his big hands sliding underneath my shirt and squeezing my hips, so hot they felt like heated oven mitts.

“You’re so warm.” My arms circled his back, and my cheek rested against his chest. I felt like I was sunbathing on a summer day, soaking in the heat on the pool deck. I’d been frigid just a second ago, but now it felt like I’d stepped into the desert.

His hands scooped over my ass, and he lifted me into him before he carried me into the bedroom. I’d rented the loft at the top because it was cheaper, and it was cheaper because most of the walls slanted in and made it hard to stand upright in most places. It was no place for someone like him, a man taller than the average man, who took up most of the hallway with his bulkiness. That was especially true in the bedroom, but he navigated it effortlessly and rolled me onto the bed, his body acting as a fur blanket and smothering the heat against me.

He pulled the blankets over us before he slid below, yanking my panties off before he pressed his kiss against the warmest part of my body.

I sucked in a breath as I arched my back, the duvet cover at my shoulders to keep me warm, the bison-sized man underneath the sheets so stifling hot, he acted as a heater to warm the entire bed and me with it.

His arms hooked underneath my thighs, and he kissed my lips as hard as he kissed my mouth, with a possessiveness that made me feel like I was his even though I was technically married to someone else.

I moaned in the dark, one hand moving to the headboard behind me, my fingers on the other grasping his short hair beneath the covers. I quickly forgot about the cold when he did incredible things with his mouth, when he kissed me like it was an honor rather than an obligation. I felt it fast, felt the heat roll over the hills and head straight for me. “Wait, stop.”

Instead of ignoring me and doing what he wanted, he moved up my body, kissing my belly that was exposed from his lifted shirt. He tugged the sheets off so he could move over me, his bare back to the ceiling.

My hands moved for his jeans, and I unbuttoned them fast.

He smirked once he understood why I’d asked him to stop. He kicked his bottoms away and left the clothing somewhere at the bottom of the bed and then he rose over me, his knees separating my thighs, our bodies coming together like they’d known each other for years rather than weeks.

I moaned as I squeezed his torso with my knees, as my arms hooked over his shoulders and brought him in close. His touch always made me burn from the inside out, made me burst like a lit firework. I dug my hand into his hair as I felt him kiss my collarbone then give my shoulder a gentle bite with his teeth.

His hand slid into the back of my hair then he forced my face toward his, his lips kissing one corner of my mouth then the other, his rock-hard dick inside me and pulsing. Then he started to rock into me. His thumb brushed my cheeks, his blue eyes hard and almost angry with their intensity.

“Oh Jesus…” I grabbed on to the bicep of one of his arms, my fingers digging into his hardness like a crevasse on a cliff. I planted my other hand on his chest, and I felt my body jerk over and over as he gave me hard thrusts like a piston in an engine, erasing any trace that Adrien or any other had been there, erasing the hurt caused by lesser men. I was already there the second his mouth sealed over my sex, so I burned like the fire and I came around his big dick with whimpers and tears.

“Fuck.” He tugged my hair, bringing my eyes to his. “You’re beautiful when you come.”

My hand slid up the tattoos on his neck, and I palmed his face. “So are you.” I dug my nails into his ass, wanting his seed inside me, to sit there and keep me warm through the night, to mark me as his when I no longer belonged to anyone.

He gripped the back of my head to keep me in place, and he pounded into me like a bulldozer into a building, demolishing it into pieces, leaving nothing but a wreck behind. His face tinted red, a blotchiness moved across his collarbone and chest, and the veins in his neck were so taut they looked like tightropes. A deep moan escaped his throat when he released, giving me a look so hard it was like he hated me, his jawline sharper than ever.

I winced as I took it, taking that big dick and its explosion at the end of my channel, but it didn’t compare to the satisfaction of receiving him, of feeling that connection that I’d only felt with him. With Adrien, I’d enjoyed the sex, but his climax was never a specific turn-on. But with Bastien, everything about it turned me on. Maybe because I knew how much it would piss off Adrien if he knew, not just that I was sleeping with someone else, but that I was begging him to come inside me like a starving beggar pleaded for food.

It was the first time we finished in a single round. He rolled off me onto the other pillow, his muscular body visible because the sheets were at our waists. The bedroom was filled with warmth because of him, not because I’d cranked up the heater a couple minutes ago.

I still wore his t-shirt and didn’t want to take it off. It felt like silk against my skin even though it was ordinary cotton. But he wouldn’t be able to leave unless I took it off, unless he walked down the street with his bare chest, and if that happened, then the city of Paris owed me a big fucking thank-you card.

I propped myself up and started to pull it off.

He grabbed the bottom and tugged it down. “You’re fine. It looks better on you anyway.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said with a laugh because he filled out his clothes so damn well…and his naked skin too. “I assumed you had somewhere to be.”

“No.” His arm circled my lower back, and he brought me in close, hiking my leg over his hip, his hard stare locked on mine from just inches away. “You think I’m gonna let you freeze to death?” That boyish smile returned, a hint of playfulness that lightened his intensity.

Like a balloon inflated inside me, my lips started to rise for the sky. “You are warm…” My hand moved across his chest, tracing a tattoo just beneath his collarbone. Adrien didn’t have a single tattoo. None of the guys I’d been with had any ink. I usually went for clean-cut men who wore slacks to work.

Bastien was nothing like any of them.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he said. “But it’s gonna cost you.”

“Yeah?”

He gripped my ass cheek and squeezed before he gave it a gentle spank. “Oh yeah.”

“Sounds like a fair trade to me.”

His fingers gently grazed my thigh, exploring the soft skin to the back of my knee before he came back to my ass again. His blue eyes stared at me, locked on my gaze with more confidence than I’d ever felt, even on my best day. His aura was so still and so calm, like an undisturbed lake that didn’t have a single ripple, the surface dark so the contents beneath remained a mystery. “You’re a damn beautiful woman.”

I felt the softness flood into my heart and pull at my eyes. Felt myself feel something at a line he probably said to all women—but of course, I believed he only said it to me.

“And don’t you fucking forget it.”