This time she remembered how to kiss him, she kissed him thoroughly. — Eliza’s fingers lingered on her lips. Sitting next to Oscar at the bar, her fingers remained still. She wanted to keep the warmth, wanted to keep the sensation…the sensation of his kiss there. She had forgotten, but now that he had kissed her again, she remembered every kiss they had…

“We messed up cheri,” she told him, her French accent heavier from being in France. “We messed up, and we both hurt people we love.” — He could smell her on the bedsheets. Rafe rubbed his face over the pillow, he had not changed the sheets since the last time he shared a bed with Eliza. He needed her scent to still have something of her. Neither one of them had tried to call the other…

It all just got to her, and she slumped down the wall until she was crouched in the corner. She heaved violently, but tears would not even come. — Eliza realized that if her eyes had been open, it would have been obvious to her that something was going on with Rafe. She had noticed that he was spending more time with his phone, but she suspected it was Severine, which they did not speak about. Because she was…

He had told her that she would burn for him, that he would make her want him that much. She did. — Eliza collapsed besides the vase filled with roses in the backseat of the taxi. The gorgeous blooms reeked of sage to her, their natural scent eclipsed by her memory of Marcus’s. Her hand dropped lazily between her thighs. …

Her phone vibrated on the table nonstop. She knew she could set it to silence, but she liked knowing exactly when he texted her. — Going to France was often Sandrine’s escape from the world, but this time it was not. She had gone to Paris to stay with her family to escape the things she had set into motion in New York. Her children liked going to Paris anyway, and it had been a…

He squeezed her hand and Eliza knew that he had infected her with a taste for more than just his good cooking. — It was not that unusual really when she thought about it, how many movie and television sets she had walked onto by accident being a New Yorker. This time it was unusual, because she knew the actor on the set and she had disrupted the scene. “Eliza!” When Marcus called…

He’d exposed all the details of his affair with Eliza, and was trumped by Polly exposing her secret past and…her own unfinished ex business. — At least three times Oscar wanted to look back at Eliza, well he wanted more than to look back at her. He wanted to caress her mound and hold it in hand, until the tip of her slit was damp and then shove his finger inside her. …

Actual or electronic, she was constantly puffing on something. — It amused Eliza that Bebel Gilberto was playing in the background at the bar where she and Oscar had agreed to meet. She knew that she could not say anything to him at Fiona’s house, but it was time to address him in some way. …

“Love is never convenient and if you try to deny it it only gets stronger.” — Polly never had close female friends. She did not have a set of girls that she confided to about everything that was going on with her and her relationships in particular were usually very private. Since Alice her new assistant had seen her with Oscar and she was involved with…

Eliza understood Rafe’s silence more than his words from underneath him. — Eliza moved her fork through the raspberry sauce that was left on her plate, using its side so she could gather the sauce up like a spoon. The fork slipped between her wine-colored lips, and she closed her eyes again savoring the almost unexpected sweet and tangy sauce. The first…

The beautiful girl had wandered into her vision through a crowd in Paris, like she was tumbling down the hole and Fiona felt like the rabbit that led her down. — Alice was super nervous about her review. All of the interns had an exit interview…some of them were hired after the fact. Being in Paris was nerve-wracking, she was terrified that she would do something wrong and she really wanted to work with Polly. …

She had not spoken a word to Adrian or he to her, but tangled up in each other their bodies spoke all of their volumes. — It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it’s a poultice. You have an eye, it’s an image. My boy, it’s your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it. — The Applicant by Sylvia Plath It kind of felt like going on an…

She could smell the heat she used to smell when he wanted to suck the blood from her. — Polly took Alice to Paris. She was not sure if her intern was going to think that it was because she knew about her and Oscar, or if it would be reflective of her leadership that Alice constantly raved about. Spy in the Office of Love “Who gave you a key to my office, Alice?”medium.com She really did like Alice, she was smart and discreet…

“Tell me something filthy in English…” — Eliza walked along Rue Edgar Quinet toward the Montparnasse Cemetery. She was not going there to visit any of the famous graves. In all her time in Paris, she had never visited any of the cemeteries there. She was going because Adrien had asked her to meet him there. That…

“Who gave you a key to my office, Alice?” — Alice tried to remember who had given her the key, but she could not remember exactly. She was in charge of watering all of the flowers being delivered to Polly while she was out of the office on a work trip in Shanghai with Oscar. A Dark Desire He still liked to taste her.medium.com She closed her eyes when…

She closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the stubble on his face, loving the burn. — “Did you see him?” “Yes,” Eliza answered Rafe. It was weird for him to ask her if she had seen Oscar yet, but that was the reason why she was able to go to Shanghai in the first place. Dead Skeletons In his dreams, Eliza chased him.medium.com She was sitting in the airport, her legs and ankles crossed…

He still liked to taste her. — Polly was somewhere between wake and sleep, thinking to herself that Oscar did not really know her. She did not tell him about the time that she was dressed as Little Bo Peep, she had kept it a seductive secret and he had went along with it. …

In his dreams, Eliza chased him. — Oscar liked Polly asleep in his arms. She was soft and smelled sweetly of her perfume: the one she wore and her natural scent. Her soft snoring let him know she was tired, so he lie there staring at her. …

The light that she saw when she closed her eyes was a combination of him and the moon. — Polly swore she saw light when she looked at Oscar in the alley that they stumbled into after karaoke. His light lit the way to their driver and her head secure on his shoulder as they drove back to their hotel. It was late and dark, they went to her…

On that dark Parisian street, she was on display like bread in a Parisian boulangerie. — Severine had travelled so many parts of the world, places that many people might never see in their lifetime. But as a flight attendant they were places that she would not just see once, but maybe even revisit many times over. Though at the end of the day, her world…