Page 4 of A Royally Fake French Menage (Rippton U Creatives #3)

BARCLAY

P erched beside me in the back of the black Bugatti headed away from Paris, Genie curled on the leather like a pampered house pet.

Her eyes were closed, and her breaths came slow.

Which left me in the company of my mother’s silent driver to transport us the two hour drive from the private airstrip outside the capital where we headed to our destination of the La Borde family estate.

Genie became my study. Not that I hadn’t had my eye on her for a while now back on campus, wondering which frat party to go to that ensured we’d attend together, or how best to encourage her to drop her flirty facade that she used to keep everyone at bay.

Everything she did was designed. A carefully crafted outlook that made her seem oh so likable, sociable and perfect while she flirted and fluttered without ever actually stopping to engage and flirt.

Apparently, all it took was asking her out on a fake date. I should have tried that one earlier. A sort of bubbly, fizzing warmth surrounded her as she dosed. Even sitting still, she buzzed with the sort of happy energy I envied on this trip.

As though she sensed me watching her, Genie’s fingers fluttered at the hem of her powder blue skirt that perfectly matched the twin set my mother would wholly approve of for a European born girl educated in America.

Another mask from her personal collection. I looked forward to breaking down her perfectly manicured walls.

“Penny,” she murmured, stifling the cutest kitten yawn behind her French tipped fingers.

Her wrist turned as she stretched. I caught a glimpse of out of place stripes on the inside of her pale skin before she shifted again. The brief, intimate glimpse of who she was beyond her facade flitted away.

An ache started in the hollow of my gut at the damage. Perhaps we’re not all as perfect as we pretend after all. I added to my collection of mental notes, knowing I would need that for later this weekend.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” I said quietly. My fingers itched to tuck her hair behind her ear, touch her soft skin, but we weren’t there. Yet .

Her lips curved up a fraction, a fraction less glossy than they had been when we took off earlier. “That’s…considerate.”

“You seemed tired.”

She slept for most of the trip, sinking into her leather seat, and declining my favorite cocktails to my disappointment.

Still, she did appear to need the rest. I wasn't about to be a Beau Bennett asshole level who declared she needed to entertain me just because I was sore over losing her company for a brief period.

The onslaught of my family would be enough to wear us both out over the next few days.

Besides, I liked to watch her sleeping. In a non-stalker way. The way her face softened, more than usual, left her with the sort of peace that I craved for myself. Stripping that away from her seemed unnecessarily cruel.

Genie sank into the cream leather, her head tilted to watch me. "I think you should tell me about this weekend. What’s expected of us both?"

I smirked at her, rubbing my hand over my mouth as I drank her in for the first time with her watching me since the trip began.

“Most likely I should warn you about my mother.” I sighed.

“Genie, don’t worry. You are– You’ll be perfect.

Don’t stress on it.” The terms still sounded foreign in my mouth.

I reached absently for her hand, then stilled as my brain caught up with the all too easy motion.

Genie caught my fingers, curling long, curved legs beneath her as she turned to face me.

Her fingertips were cool against my palm as she started a little discovery tour of the tiny scars across my knuckles, cataloguing each before moving onto the next.

“I thought your hands would be smoother,” she murmured. “Tell me about your family?”

Who you are?

I heard the words even if she didn't say them outright. Relaxing my muscles that wanted to clench at the concept of exposing the person I’d kept hidden for so long that I’d almost forgotten who I was for myself, I watched her fingertips skate across the back of my hand with hooded eyes.

“My stepmother’s a bitch, usually in heat if there’s a male present more than five years younger than her.

Her ultimate weakness. My father passed a year after my birth mother, but remarried shortly beforehand.

The bitch in the house isn’t of my blood but she’ll draw you in any way she can.

” My lip curled in distaste, bitter seeds blossoming across the back of my tongue.

Glazed pears and red wine sauce. That’s what we’d been eating when my stepmother showcased her latest fling that left my English father in heartbreak at the dinner table in front of over sixty guests the night before he suffered massive heart failure.

The moment that freshly turned earth touched his coffin was the moment I walked away from France and headed to the US.

I haven't returned since.

“She sounds like a solid replacement.” Genie lifted hazel eyes that reflected the horrors of her own forced life to meet mine. “I’m sorry, Barclay.”

Perhaps we are more alike than you know.

The luxury brand heiress and the displaced nobility that had no place in the world, at least on the Continent.

“Because there’s a bitch who sits there in place of my own mother?” My tone ran bitter, and I didn’t bother to force my mood into something happier.

Perhaps Genie was the wrong person to invite to this weekend after all.

My father should never have abandoned his English seat to chase his French obsessions.

Mind, looking at Genie, I understood, at least partially.

Her features were fine boned, symmetrical and stunning, at a surface level at least. I hoped I required more than a pretty face in my own relationships longer term, and didn’t repeat his mistakes.

But my father’s run of European wives and dalliances had never made him happy since losing my mother.

“I’m sorry because both your mother and father are gone. I have…one. It’s hard.” Genie shifted closer to me, gliding her fingers along my forearm while her other hand traced patterns on my knee.

My heart beat a similar pattern, skipping some beats and picking up others. She leaned in closer, the heat of her brushing my chest, and my breath stalled. I’m out of practice in this. France will eat me alive.

My mother’s household will devour me.

That she insisted I call her mother sickened me.

I distracted myself by memorizing all the pretty colors in Genie’s hair, how her neck sloped into the collar of her knitted top as she toyed with the inner seam of my slacks at my knee. "What are you doing?"

"Making you more comfortable. You're as stiff now as you are for some of those lectures we have at Rippton U."

Stiff isn’t usually what they call me there. At least, not in the Kingsman world. Beau Bennett’s world that I escaped with my chest of familial armor.

“You’ve been watching me?” We shared a variety of law and economics classes. I often sat a row behind to watch her out of the corner of my eye. Apparently, I wasn’t the only perv in the car.

Genie leaned forward and settled her chest against my arm so her luscious, full and perfectly real breasts pressed to either side of my bicep.

I swallowed hard. “You’re not wearing a bra.”

She smiled, the secret sort. I knew I’d love whatever fell out of her mouth next. “I’m not wearing any underwear at all. Being so perfect is so…perfectly monotonous.” She lifted her chin and stared straight into my eyes, the devil in her shining through. “And I’m a dirty, dirty girl, Barclay.”

I had no words, only a sense of wonder.

Perhaps I don’t need to break you after all.

It looked like her flirt was out to play, and I was her full focus.

Genie’s fingers fiddled with my bowtie, teasing and flicking.

The air in the car diminished a fraction, and then a fraction more.

How many hours until we arrive? I wasn't sure I’d survive at this rate.

Then the tension at my throat eased, though she didn't stop her progress there.

Deft fingers flicked open the top two buttons of my shirt and traced patterns on the vee of skin between.

"What if I told you this wasn't that sort of date?"

The same, secret smile, though this time she looked at them through her lashes. The movement was too practiced, but it still worked on my cock, nonetheless. "You'd be lying." Her whisper roused my blood, and nothing about that was fake at all.

“What if I told you this wasn’t a pretend date after all?” My lungs constricted in time for the words to make it from my mouth. Words I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take back the second my next breath made them real, but it was too late then.

“You’d still be lying.”

I swore she either didn’t have a skerrick of makeup on her perfect skin, or her new make-up range would be the next best product ever to come out of Rippton U.

“Is that so?” I caught her exploring fingers in a loose cage, stopping her motions before we ended up fucking like a pair of ferals in the back of my stepmother’s car. "Do you know me that well?"

Despite crushing on the girl for the past full semester, I’d barely spoken to her outside one drunken—and brief—bump and grind at a Kingsman party earlier in the year. I couldn’t remember the end of the song, or even what played that night.

"Not enough. Not yet." Genie licked her lips as she toyed with my fingers. Her touch remained light, still teasing, though the slightest tremble beneath promised me that this encounter had higher stakes for her than she let on as she laced ours together.