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  Dree’s heart thrashed in her chest. She was struggling to suck air because the room seemed to have fallen on her. The only thing holding back the wreckage was the huge man looming in front of her, protecting her from those men intent on—

  —rape.

  Intent on rape.

  Dree knew what would have happened to her, and people would have said that she deserved it because she’d yelled such a thing and the whole bar had heard it.

  But the man was holding them back.

  Her heart fluttered as it settled.

  She was still shaking from her skeleton to her skin.

  The man twisted, looked down at her, and asked, “Are you all right?”

  Up close and looking down at her like that, his chiseled cheekbones and jaw seemed more pronounced, and his large, dark eyes had grown more intense and filled with points of light. He had a straight, masculine nose, and his dark curls swept forward and framed his face as he bent. He looked like a statue of a Roman god or a sculpture by Michelangelo that had come to life and twisted to stare down at her. Shock at his pure male beauty flooded her, and it felt like something between a tremor of magic and abject worship of a divinity that had materialized in front of her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked again.

  By all the saints, the man had a refined British accent, too.

  That was just not fair. It was like he’d scooped up all the masculine perfection in the world and left none at all for the other guys. Dree was pretty sure that every man she met for the rest of her life would seem watery, weak, and spineless, and they would talk funny, too.

  The man turned a little more toward her, peering at her face. “You’re not all right. Let’s get you out of here.”

  He grabbed her hand and tugged, and she stumbled off the bar chair. The flesh of his hand was hard around her fingers, like he had thick calluses on his palm and fingers. Her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she felt like a newborn lamb trying to not fall on its face in the straw and failing.

  His firm grip on her arm hauled her up, and she knew her stupid face was slack with numb confusion at the squawking of the people crowding around her and the whirling disco lights and beeping techno music. When she breathed, the tequila from her mouth mixed with the exhaled breath of too many people packed into the room, and she was suffocating.

  The man held her up by her upper arm and half-dragged her a few steps. She was trying to follow him, but her legs would not cooperate. Her limbs tripped and splayed at bizarre angles as the music and screaming beat on her ears.

  The man wrapped one arm around her, holding her up around her back. She frog-flopped one foot in front of the other, staring at her white ballet-flat shoes, and he hustled her out of the Buddha Bar’s front doors.

  She stumbled out of the bar and into a wall of ice.

  Freezing air slapped her face and sweaty skin. Clammy cold crawled under the red fabric of her skin-tight dress and sucked the heat out of her. “Oh!”

  “What is it?” the man asked.

  The cold stung her cheeks and arms, rousing her from her drunkenness. “It’s so cold,” she said. “I left my coat in there.”

  “We’re not going back in,” he said, his deep voice spreading out in the night air.

  “But my coat—”

  “You can get it tomorrow.”

  “Someone will take it,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine.”

  The icy air sucked the heat out of her flesh and chilled her to the core. “It’s December, and I need a coat.”

  The man whirled something black through the air that had been hanging over his arm. He said, “It’s not even that cold out here.”

  The air stung the inside of her nose, and it hurt to breathe. “It totally is! It’s freezing! How do you Europeans stand it?”

  He looked down at her as he settled his black leather jacket around her shoulders. “Where are you from?”

  “Arizona!”

  One corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile as he adjusted the jacket’s collar.

  One of his fingertips brushed her neck, and a shiver flew through her.

  “That explains it,” he said. “This is a chilly fall evening for Paris. It’s a little fresh.”

  Dree shoved her arms into his jacket, pushing her small purse down the sleeve. Of course, his coat must be roomy to accommodate his thick, muscular arms and broad chest. The inside of his jacket was still warm, and the lining was smooth on her bare arms like it might be silk.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as a hint of the warm spice and dark scent of his cologne rose out of the collar and brushed her face. “Thanks. I do need to get my coat, though.”

  “That bar isn’t a safe place for you right now. You can see if it’s still there tomorrow.”

  She blurted, “I can’t afford to buy another one. I have to go back and get it.”

  One of his shoulders twitched, a gesture of dismissal, and he blinked and glanced off to the side from under his thick eyelashes. “If you promise not to go back in there tonight, I will buy you any coat you want.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that.” Her instinctive pushback to anyone helping her popped out of her mouth before she could even think. She didn’t want to be a bother.

  “I promise,” he said, his smile becoming easier. “Any other problems I can solve for you?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him. She was a grown woman of twenty-five years old and didn’t need anyone to solve her problems for her. “No.”

  “Then smile for me.”

  “Smile?”

  “Before you made that ridiculous pronouncement that you were going to screw every man in the bar—”

  “Fuck. I said I was going to fuck every man in the bar.” She was supposed to fuck somebody tonight. There was a reason she was supposed to do that, if only she could remember why.

  “Yes, you did say that. But before you announced it at the top of your lungs whilst standing on a chair, you had the funniest, most joyous smile I’d seen in a long time. You kept giggling to yourself as you looked at a piece of paper.”

  “It’s a cocktail napkin,” Dree said. Some of the silly insanity of that napkin crept back, and she smiled. Yeah, the napkin had told her to do that. She needed to check the napkin for what else she needed to do, but she needed to sleep with at least one guy tonight or else she would never get even halfway through the bucket list on that napkin before she left Paris.

  “That’s better,” the man said, and his smile grew, too, and reached his eyes.

  She had been amazed by his looks and his eyes in the club, but his smile was even more dazzling.

  He lifted her chin with one finger, still smiling. “More.”

  “More what?” Her eyelids felt heavy, and her lips seemed clumsy and swollen.

  His voice dropped to a more seductive octave, and a hint of breathiness crept in. “More smile. Give me more.”

  It was such a silly request that she laughed at him. The tequila that was still in her stomach was flowing into her blood. They called that crap liquid courage for a reason.

  “That’s better. Now, let’s take you back to your hotel.” He steered her toward the street.

  “Hotel?” But, wait. She was supposed to be in a bar, living an awesome life. That woman had told her to. “How did you know I’m a tourist?”

  His chuckle was an explosion, like, “Hah!”

  “No, seriously. How’d y’all know I’m not a worldly Parisienne?”

  He glanced down at her. “Just a hunch. Come on, let’s get you a cab.”

  She tried to follow him as he walked away, but her toes dragged because she was still dead-ass drunk. He caught her as she flopped forward and set her back on her feet. She said, “I could totally be a worldly Parisienne if I wanted to.”

  “Of course, you could. What cab service did you use? Or maybe one of the ride-sharing ones?”

  She told him, “I rode the subway here.”

&nbs
p; “It’s late, and I don’t think you should take the Métro. I don’t trust you to get off at your stop.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Come. What taxi service should I call?”

  “I can’t afford a taxi!” she blurted.

  He stopped and frowned with confusion, peering at her, but then shook his head. “All right, then I’ll send for a taxi for you. It’ll take you back to your hotel.”

  “I’m staying at a B and B, not a hotel.”

  His shoulders drooped, and he closed his eyes. “So there isn’t a concierge who would help you up to your room?”

  “No. It’s an apartment I rented by the night.”

  His chin dropped, and he heaved a sigh. His phone was in his hand, and he tapped the screen a few times. “I’ll drop you off and make sure you’re inside all right. Come on. Let’s not dawdle. I’ve got places to go, or I should have places to go. What’s the address?”

  She fished a slip of paper out of her clutch purse. “Here.”

  He blinked at it. “That’s in Seine-Saint-Denis.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what the ad said.”

  He paused again, his lips tightening. “It’s far into the northeast districts. It’s probably better that I escort you, nevertheless.”

  The sidewalk undulated under her feet, and she bobbled sideways. He caught her again. “Why? It seemed fine.”

  “It’s unusual to see tourists there. I would be concerned that you might be taken advantage of or accosted.”

  “Bah,” Dree said, her hand flailing around to show her disdain at his wussiness. He side-stepped as her forearm whizzed past his shoulder. “I live and work in the Alhambra district in Phoenix, dude. Nothing in Paris scares me. That B and B just kinda reminds me of home, but fancier.”

  The man waved his phone in the air, and a black car cruised to a stop in front of them. “Right, then let’s get you locked up tight, shall we?”

  “You don’t have to take me home,” she told him. The sidewalk still crested under her feet like fluffy ocean waves bobbing a small boat. “I don’t wanna go home. I haven’t accomplished anything on that napkin. That napkin is going to change my life. I’ma do everything on it, starting tonight. I’m going back in there to get a guy and bang his brains out tonight.”

  Dree handed his coat back to him and stalked off, trying not to fall over because the sidewalk kept rolling like ocean waves when she walked.

  Chapter Two

  Worse Decision

  Maxence

  The voluptuous blonde staggered away from Maxence into the darkness, back toward the Buddha Bar. Her hourglass figure swayed in her scarlet dress as she minced along, a feast of feminine flesh that he had already been imagining sinking his fingers and teeth and dick into.

  And then there were those fingernails. Just long enough, femininely oval, and a brilliant shade of red that matched that dress.

  But he wouldn’t touch her.

  She was too drunk, and he did not take advantage of women.

  He didn’t need to.

  Unfortunately, other men would, and eagerly.

  Laughter and music from the Saturday night crowd in the bar followed the path of light leading from the open doors and spilled into the night as she neared the entrance.

  Once she went in, he wouldn’t be able to rescue her again, not with all those men who would certainly take her up on her offer, even if she became unconscious in the meantime. There had been four empty shot glasses on her wooden tray, and he didn’t see anyone she’d shared them with. Half the guys in that bar wanted to fuck her and would be fine with rape if that’s all they could get.

  The other half wanted to rob an American tourist.

  A part of Maxence warned himself that he shouldn’t get involved with the blonde’s bad decisions. That little voice scolded him that the woman was clearly an adult and he should not interfere with her agency and her life choices. It reminded him that he’d interfered in a woman’s life only the day before, though that had been at her request, and then her mafioso husband had threatened to cut off Max’s head and feed it to the sharks.

  He would help Simone again in a heartbeat, though. He did not regret that choice for even a moment.

  But tonight, within minutes, this pretty and very drunk little woman in the red dress was going to be surrounded by leering predators, unless Maxence intervened.

  He knew what those predatory men would do, given half a chance. He’d saved dozens of women from men just like them.

  Indeed, over by the corner, a group of men had paused and were watching them.

  They weren’t the types who would ordinarily be in the club, though. They appeared older, mid-thirties, and seemed to be moving oddly, like they had the weight of weapons under their coats.

  Max should get in the car and leave now.

  His heart raced, and the air hurt his chest.

  Red, twinkling Christmas lights adorned the trees. A shop across the street had a Father Christmas in its window. Evergreen boughs looped around the streetlights, the café’s signs, and the wrought iron railing. Cars whizzed by on the street, their tires crunching on the asphalt. The Buddha Bar vented the smells of roasting meat, garlic, and ginger into the cold air.

  The blond woman paused at the doorway and looked back at Max, the fluff of her blond curls blowing in the breeze.

  In his hands, his jacket was still warm from her soft, curvy body.

  It was that last look over her soft shoulder that got to him.

  The taxi waiting for them on the street rolled down the passenger-side window to talk. Maxence said to the driver in French, “Wait one minute, if you please. My date forgot her coat.” The guy started arguing, but Maxence said, “Just one minute!” and ran after the woman.

  She was still watching him as he hurried toward her.

  “I say, you there!” Maxence called. He didn’t know her name. How could he not have gotten her name? “You, little girl, there! Wait up.”

  “I am not a little girl!” she told him as he jogged up and held out his coat to her. “I am a grown-ass woman.”

  She was exaggerating her words drunkenly, slurring, and it was funny as hell. “Of course, you are a grown woman.” But a very drunk one.

  She gesticulated wildly, her arms flying through the air. “And I’m going to fuck every man in that bar!”

  “Oh, we’re not on that again, are we?”

  “Yeah, we are! I am going to have a gang bang, or a foursome with three guys, or a threesome, or at least a one-night stand with a beautiful man whom I’ll never see again because the napkin says so!” She shook her purse at him.

  “You will? You will do all these things because a napkin demands it of you?” he asked, hammering his point home. That wasn’t the only thing he wanted to hammer home, and he forced himself to drop that line of thought.

  “Yes!” she said. “Have you ever done any of those things?”

  All of them and more, though mostly with women instead of men, but that was none of her business. The gang bang had been Maxence and twelve women. “That’s immaterial. Why would you blindly follow everything written on a napkin?”

  “Because I have to change my life! I’m stupid and gullible and pathetic, and I have to stop. I have to be something else. I have nothing left, nothing, so I cut my hair and got on the plane to Paris because I’d never been to Paris or London or anywhere, ever in my whole life. At least I’m going to have this night, this one night, this one night in Paris, to remember for the rest of my life!”

  “It occurs to me you may not remember much of it,” Max mused. He was still watching the group over by the streetlamp, and they were still watching him. The lamplight shone like a yellow crust on the big guy’s white skin.

  The little blonde said, “And if I have to fuck every guy in this place to change my life, I will!”

  She was drunk-adamant and sounded desperate, so he needed to drunk-argue with her until she came around. “You want t
o get laid at any cost, and yet you’re walking away from a man who wants to take you home tonight.”

  “Where?” she demanded, throwing her arms to the sides and nearly stumbling again in her vehemence.

  “Right here.” Max wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. “Me, right here.”

  “Nuh-uh,” she said, her head hanging and wagging. “You’re a ten, and I’m a six when I have on wedding make-up and it’s a good hair day. And I don’t have any of that. I used a Sharpie marker for mascara.”

  He took a long look at her, allowing himself to savor the view of the roundness of her breasts and hips, her narrow wasp waist, and her full thighs stretching that bright scarlet dress that drew him like a waving red flag.

  Max’s friends had warned him, many times, that he had a bad habit of getting involved with women who were ragged bundles of waving red flags.

  He smiled as he allowed himself to thoroughly enjoy examining her lush body, the swells of her visible in the streetlamp’s glow. To be any more form-fitting, that dress would’ve had to have been painted on. “I don’t think you’re a six.”

  She argued, “A guy like you wouldn’t want a woman like me. Only a pathetic loser would go home with me. I could never get a guy like you.”

  Pure frustration with her inebriated illogic and the fact that she would not get in the damn car so he could take her someplace safe broke his willpower.

  Max grabbed that blonde with the spectacular tits around her bendy waist, yanked her against himself, and kissed her until she melted in his arms.

  Her mouth opened in surprise when his lips crashed down on hers, and he took the opportunity of her parted lips to stroke his tongue over hers. She was a limp drunk in his arms for a second or two, and then she came alive and wrapped both her arms around his neck, kissing him back and sucking at his lips. She twined one of her curvy legs around his thigh.

  Desire raced through him. Maxence was all too easily tempted, and this amorous, soft, yielding woman was his favorite kind of temptation. Her mouth tasted of tequila and vanilla peaches. He wondered vaguely if she’d eaten dessert or whether that was just her, and he wanted to nip her skin to find out. He reached one hand lower, feeling the curve of her hip in his palm, and then pressing all of his fingers around one overflowing globe of her ass.