“But after that, you can have me.”

“I wish your keynote were ending this very second,” he said, and dropped his mouth to hers, consuming her in a hot, wet kiss that would have turned into so much more if they weren’t on this goddamn plane.

20

Mais Oui

She was radiant in the gaslight from the streetlamps along the Seine.

The soft glow illuminated her, a faint golden light at night that made her all the more breathtaking. She wore heels and a skirt, her strong legs on display for him, always for him, and a pretty top that was falling off her shoulder. He’d already had her twice today. The second, the very nanosecond they’d arrived at the hotel room, he took her. The door had fallen shut and he’d thrown her on the bed, stripped off her jeans and his, and entered her. It was a hard, fast fuck, but after that red-eye flight it was what they both desperately required. It wasn’t enough to quench his desire, though, and after a nap, he’d put her on all fours, and made her cry out his name once more.

Then they’d behaved, spending the afternoon working. She’d practiced her talk alone in the room at the Sofitel Hotel in the 8th arrondissement, near the Champs-Elysées and the Louvre, while he’d gone to a cafe around the block and worked on his laptop. He’d drunk espresso at a sidewalk table, and watched the Parisians stroll by as he dealt with business matters related to vibrators, bullets, and butterflies. It seemed quite fitting to work on Joy Delivered business in a city like this, where anything goes and everything went, where the residents embraced sex and sexuality. Hell, the politicians here often had mistresses. Paris was a city that celebrated passion.

Judging by the P&L numbers his chief financial officer had just sent over, there were plenty of Americans and Upper East Siders, as the demographic data told him, who enjoyed the full range of Joy Delivered products, from basic massagers to butt plugs to leather floggers. But yet, there was such a vocal outcry to shut down the damn BDSM clubs, even though Denkler’s campaign had tried the whole “safer for everyone” route. Admittedly, it was working the tiniest bit, based on the new numbers Henry had sent over earlier today. That gave Jack a needed boost of confidence that turning the tide was possible. It wouldn’t be easy, but it seemed doable, even though time was running out on the campaign.

The whole situation had left Jack with a bad taste in his mouth. Politics and sex were terrible bedfellows. Ironic too, because there was so much demonizing of the clubs on the outside, but he bet some of those same opponents had red marks on their asses from using toys behind closed doors.

But here? Even when he’d had his laptop screen open to a photo of a prototype of a new double-headed dildo, neither the waiter nor the gray-haired woman who’d been sitting next to him, holding a teacup poodle in her lap as she drank a coffee and dragged on a cigarette, seemed to care. The woman had even leaned closer and whispered, “looks like fun,” to which he’d responded “mais oui.”