Page 81 of The Stipulation
Then she inhales like she’s steadying herself. “Relax, Axel, I knew it was a joke. I was playing along,” she says quickly.
No, she wasn’t. Not entirely. My hand lifts before I consciously decide to move it, and my fingers brush her jaw. Her skin is warm in the cool Paris air. She freezes for half a heartbeat. Then she turns her face towards my touch. Her eyes lift to mine. There’s no mockery in them. No deflection. Just vulnerability; raw and unguarded and terrifyingly real. I search her expression.
“Tell me to stop,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t. Her lips part slightly. That’s all the permission I need. I lean in and kiss her. It’s not playful. It’s not teasing. It is as if this is really the last time I get to kiss her, and I want her to remember this kiss forever. I kiss her deeply and passionately, as if every movement of my lips on hers is going to be the last.
The world narrows away to the softness of her mouth and the way she exhales against me. For a split second, she hesitates, not in doubt, but in surprise, and then she’s kissing me back. Fully.
Her hand slides up to my collar, her fingers curling into the fabric like she needs something to anchor her. I pull her closer, my other hand sliding to the back of her neck, holding her close. The kiss is slow, searching yet certain. This isn’t just heat. This isn’t lust. This is something else entirely. It is my way of telling her all of the things that my words can’t say at this moment. The tension melts into something fiery. Her thumb brushes the edge of my jaw, and I feel it all the way down in my bones.
The driver clears his throat up front.
I don’t move, but Jo lets out the smallest breath of laughter against my mouth before pulling back just enough to look at me. Her pupils are blown wide. Her cheeks are still flushed.
“That was the perfect way to end our time here,” she whispers. “The perfect way to cross the line one last time.”
She’s talking about the line we drew in that hotel room when we agreed that what happens in Paris stays in Paris. I have no intention of honoring that agreement. And something in her eyes tells me she doesn’t either, despite her words. I brush my thumb along her cheek and kiss the tip of her nose.
I lean back in my seat as we take off. This weekend was supposed to be about answers. About a painting. About leverage. About strategy. We didn’t really get any of that. Definitely not the answers we were hoping for. Instead, we have raised a hundred more questions, none of them about the painting. Somewhere between cocktails, black market art dealers, and stolen masterpieces, something else took root.
Something I didn’t plan.
Something neither of us expected.
But something I don’t want to lose.
I knew I wanted Jo, but I didn’t know quite how much until I had her for one weekend. Now she is all I can think about, all I want. I’m not absolutely sure how she feels about that. I can see in her eyes that she too doesn’t want this thing we have to end, but her words say otherwise. Perhaps she thinks I do, and she’s just trying to save face.
Jo smiles at me. Our relationship is natural now. Unforced. Even if we leave Paris in Paris, we can’t go back to the icy relationship we had before we came here.
“New York is going to be different,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“You’ll be … you.”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll be … me.”
“I hope so.”
She tilts her head to look up at me. “There’s nothing about me you’d like to change?”
“God, no.”
A small laugh escapes her.
“I like you exactly like this,” I continue. “Sharp. Stubborn. Slightly infuriating.”
“Only slightly?”
“Don’t push it.”
She smiles, and it’s softer than I’ve ever seen it.
“I don’t leave things unfinished,” I tell her quietly.
