“I’ve seen it before,” he says, like he’s bored out of his mind. His gray gaze sweeps over me and then flicks away, toward a wall of carvings with a sign explaining their origin. Apparently, the entire church used to be covered in them, but this is the only surviving segment. I’m practically salivating. “But you look like you’re about to have an orgasm.”
He says that last word so loudly that several people turn to look at us, and I flush.
“Don’t say orgasm so loudly in a church,” I choke out, and Tristan laughs. It may very well be the most genuine sound I’ve ever heard pass by his full, sensuous lips. Oh no. No. No. You’re doing it again, Marnye, you’re forgetting what he did to you. My mind conjures up the image of Tristan’s face from last year, the cruel sound of his words. “And you know what? The only prize … was that trophy. We did it for fun.” My tummy butterflies land and refuse to take flight again.
“You know,” Tristan continues, his voice much more pleasant than the echoes in my head, “that orgasm isn’t a bad word.” He turns to me, our arms still linked. Somehow it’s more intimate like that, to be face to face with him with our arms woven together.
“I never said it was,” I whisper as the priests stop singing, and the sermon begins. It’s in French, so I can’t understand a word of it. It sounds pretty enough though.
Tristan leans down and puts his thumb against my lower lip. Half of me considers biting it off while the other half … doesn’t want to admit how damn good it feels.
“The passionate joining of man and woman, it’s not a sin, it’s God’s blessing in the bedroom.” He leans in closer, like he’s going to kiss me, but I pull back, yanking my arm from his. He smiles seductively, this practiced motion that I bet he’s used on dozens of girls. Don’t think about Kiara Xiao, I tell myself, but my mind goes there anyway, and I shiver. She’s been nothing but a nightmare to me, and she’s only just become a Blueblood.
“You don’t strike me as a religious person,” I say, and Tristan shrugs, digging his hands into the pockets of his white slacks. A huge group of tourists pushes past, and I get jostled and shoved. Tristan’s there in a split-second, putting himself between them and me, and putting his hands on my shoulders to steady me. He levels a glare on the crowd that instantly puts a space bubble around us, and then he stands over me with this possessive tightening of his fingers that I don’t understand. For someone that hates me as much as he claims to, he sure does like to touch me.
“I’m not religious,” Tristan replies, finally letting go of me. He turns back to the long row of carvings, kings and bishops and Jesus himself done up in fine detail. “None of this interests me.”
“But this is history,” I say, holding a hand out to indicate the church, my heart pounding wildly. This is seriously the longest conversation we’ve had the entire year. It’s making my pulse race like crazy. “We can learn so much from the past.” I step closer to the velvet rope and curl my fingers around it, wishing I could get just a little bit closer. “People make mistakes, Tristan, and if they don’t learn from them, nothing changes.” I level a look on him that he returns with unflinching ease. After a moment, he steps closer and holds out his elbow. I take it, noticing that his body tenses when I dig my fingers into his jacket.
“My dad hates you, you know. He thinks you’re the devil incarnate.” He says this casually, but with a hardness to his voice that says he wants me to know this for some reason, like it’s super important. I take note and file that away, but I refuse to let thoughts of William Vanderbilt interrupt my afternoon.
We spend the rest of the day in the Latin Quarter, walking past bars where Ernest Hemingway drank, and pausing at street vendors selling oil paintings of the city. The coffee in Paris is atrocious, the pastries fantastic, and the company … not so bad as I’d thought.
Spring break might be two weeks long, but we only have five days in Paris, so we pack them as tight as we can with activities, using our second day to tackle Disneyland.
Tristan lets me cling to his arm and gush as we make our way from one ride to another. Despite his uptight personality and generally bad attitude, he’s not a bad park buddy. He doesn’t shy away from any ride, not even something as silly as the tea cups. He takes a selfie with me in front of the pink Disney castle, and even has lunch with me at the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant. By the end of the day, I’m sort of enjoying parading around the park in our matching white uniforms, watching girls’ eyes track our movements with unbridled jealousy.
