Page 35 of Immoral (Park Avenue Kings #3)

BENOIT

“ W AS ANYTHING YOU said true?”

Dimitri’s words came from out of nowhere as we lay in front of the crackling fire the next day, curled up together on a soft pile of blankets after a night spent making up for lost time.

With the rain coming down in sheets against the wall of windows, it was hard to know what time it was, but it didn’t matter.

I wasn’t planning on leaving this spot anytime soon.

I ran my fingers down his arm and watched the flames dance a few feet away, my back warm against Dimitri’s chest and our legs tangled together. Was anything I’d said true? I was wondering when he’d finally ask.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“How much?”

“Everything but the reason I was there.”

His hum vibrated against the back of my head, and I could sense there was more he wanted to ask. There were so many questions I had, too, and if this was the time he wanted to lay it all out there, I was ready to do that.

I turned in his arms to face him and was taken again with just how striking he was.

That was the best word for him, because even though, yes, he was beautiful, it was too soft a word to encompass all that Dimitri was.

He was a man who was hard and unyielding, but protective and far too captivating to look away from.

“Ask me,” I said. “Whatever it is you want to know.”

His dark eyes narrowed slightly. “Will it be the truth?”

“Guess you’ll just have to trust me. We don’t have the best track record with that, but we’ve got to start somewhere, non ?” When he hesitated before nodding, I said, “This goes both ways. Why don’t you tell me something true about you, and then I’ll reciprocate? Come on, mon monstre. Indulge me.”

Dimitri let out a sigh. “I never wanted to be a… monstre .”

My nickname for him fell softly from his lips as he stared down into my face, his expression inscrutable.

From the little he’d told me about his father and his childhood, I knew what he said was true.

It was unlikely that child had dreamed of growing up to be one of the most feared men in the world.

So what had set him on that course? The loss of his father? The manipulations of a bigger, badder monster? I wanted to ask, was dying to peel back every damaged layer of this man who hid away in isolation, but I didn’t want to push. I wanted Dimitri to tell me, to trust me.

After all, that was what this was about—we trusted each other enough not to physically harm one another. But emotionally? That was a whole other story.

“I believe you.”

His lips quirked at the edges. “Why? It’s not like I’ve ever given you a reason to believe otherwise.”

“That’s not true. I’ve glimpsed behind that scary facade of yours.

I’ve seen moments of kindness.” I turned and settled back into his arms, hoping he’d open up more if my attention was elsewhere.

“You played chess with me by the fire one night, took me to the Christmas markets, planned a night out dancing…”

Dimitri wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin atop my head. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

“You did.” I lowered my head to kiss his arm. “Why?”

“Honestly?”

“ Oui. That is the theme of the moment.”

He chuckled, and it was such a relaxing sound from him it warmed me more than the flames in the fireplace.

“I wanted to impress you. Stupid, really. When you were only there because I paid you to be.”

“Maybe at first,” I said without thinking.

“But King and the money?” I reached for his hand and interlaced our fingers.

“They were a distant thought in my mind whenever you were in a room with me. You took up all the space. All my thoughts. Until I started to forget why I was there in the first place.”

“That’s a dangerous admission. Especially to a monstre .”

“Not to mon monstre. You won’t hurt me.”

“You trust too easily.”

“And you don’t trust enough.”

“That’s what happens when your father is taken from you in the middle of the street on a sun-drenched afternoon.” The confession was soft, but the impact was harder than any strike could’ve been. “You stop trusting perfect situations.”

I wanted to know more, was about to push for more, when he cleared his throat.

“You mentioned a betrayal,” he said, turning the focus back on me. “Was that true?”

“You remember that, huh?” Mon Dieu . That time in my life was the last thing I wanted to talk about. But if we were baring our souls, learning to trust, then I supposed I couldn’t deny him the full story.

“I remember everything.”

“Maybe you should be the one spying,” I teased, but when he didn’t respond, clearly waiting for more, I swallowed a sigh and took myself back to a place I never allowed myself to go.

“I wasn’t always such a…well, man-eater, as my brothers would say.” I glanced at Dimitri who arched a brow at the mention of family, and I waved a hand. “Not blood family but chosen family. You’ve met three of them already.”

“I see. And your blood relations?”

“Nonexistent. No siblings and I haven’t spoken to my parents in”—I thought back, counting the years—“has to be at least a couple of decades.” More like they hadn’t spoken to me, but that was just semantics.

There had been no communication between the three of us, and at this point, that was fine by me.

“My mother is French, my father is from the U.K., so I grew up splitting time between France, London, and New York.”

“That accounts for two languages,” Dimitri said, and I cracked a smile.

“Keeping track, are you? How many am I up to?”

“At least six.”

“Remind me to whisper sweet nothings in a seventh later.”

Dimitri nodded against my neck, tightening his arms around me, and I swallowed a sigh.

“I guess by now you’ve figured out I come from money, but what you don’t know is that the generational wealth and status goes back centuries. Both sides of my family are part of the aristocracy and are worth… Well, add a few more zeroes to the check King gave you and you’ll understand.”

“So you planned to spend the couple million I gave you on what, lunch?”

“Couple million?” I said. “I do believe the agreed-upon price was four.”

“Lunch and dinner, then.”

“Exactly. Maybe even a couple bottles of the best brandy.” My lips quirked as I faced the flames again, but my smile soon fell.

“What I didn’t realize as a young man going out into the world was that there are people who would take advantage of my family’s money and connections.

I was… What did you say? Too trusting?” I shook my head.

“Not so much anymore, but I was then. I went off to university in Manhattan and got swept up in a romance with a much older man, someone I had no business being with.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Ah, but you’re not the love-bombing type, mon monstre . You’re also not a diplomat. Or my father’s closest friend.”

When Dimitri made a noise in his throat, I nodded.

“Scandalous, isn’t it? I wasn’t the one who made the first move, but you can imagine when a brilliant, worldly man makes you the center of his world that it’s hard to resist. Ulterior motives never entered my mind because of his supposed relationship to my father, but it turned out he’d embellished that bit.

They’d been friendly at one point, but playing up their closeness made me all too comfortable opening up about things I never should’ve.

Private family affairs, business dealings…

things this man could leverage for his own personal gain. ”

“So he used you?”

“Pretty spectacularly, oui . It was humiliating. While I’d been falling for him, he’d been looking to make my father’s empire fall.

Turned out I unknowingly gave him a key piece of information—the name of the man my father was thrilled to be signing a multimillion-dollar global contract with.

” I shook my head, remembering the disgust and disappoint my father aimed my way when he’d found out.

“Let’s just say the fallout from that mistake was more than my broken heart and his broken contract.

My father pushed me out of the family after that.

Said that if I couldn’t be trusted, I shouldn’t be there. ”

“But I thought your father was generationally wealthy. A few million shouldn’t have hurt his bank account.”

“He was, and still is. It wasn’t that it hurt him financially, it was that in his eyes I had betrayed the family, betrayed him.

He never once stopped to ask me how I felt.

I thought I’d been sharing an exciting family moment with my ‘boyfriend,’ but let’s just say that experience woke me up real fast.” I turned around and pressed my finger against Dimitri’s parted lips.

“And before you say ‘once a betrayer, always a betrayer,’ I learned from that mistake to always keep my mouth shut.”

But there was no accusation in Dimitri’s eyes, only a flicker of empathy that I hadn’t seen there before.

I forced a tight smile and lowered my hand. “Oh, don’t go feeling sorry for me now. I’m fine. Better than fine. "Je vais très bien.”

“Not sorry. It does give me an insight into you, though. Why you use charm as a weapon and view vulnerability as a weakness.” He tilted my chin up and traced my lower lip with his thumb.

“You fell for someone who used you, so you decided to become untouchable. To never let anyone get too close or see the real you.”

Putain . How did he do that?

“Sounds like you might know something about that,” I said.

“I do.”

I reached up to circle my fingers around his wrist to keep him touching me. “Tell me. My truth for yours.”

He shifted, moving his leg between mine and pushing me onto my back. As he lowered his head, he whispered across my lips, “One traumatic tale is enough for today.”

His mouth moved to my jaw, and I arched into his kiss. “That’s cheating. You promised.”

“I’ll keep it. Just not today.”

I started to protest, but Dimitri stole my lips, cutting me off and doing a damn good job of distracting me.

But I’d let him keep his secrets for another day.