That made a bit of sense to Libby. Tristan’s arm slid around her back as he adjusted his posture, brushing the inch of skin between the top of her jeans and the hem of her sweater.
“So you use them,” Libby said, clearing her throat. “Your… paramours?”
“I enjoy them,” Parisa said, “and they enjoy me.”
“Is it only men?”
Parisa paused to moisten her lips, half-smiling.
“Most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion,” she said. “They want, most often, to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance.” She reached forward, taking the bottle from Libby’s hand. “But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another—that we can experience rapture without being someone’s other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures—then we’re free, aren’t we?”
It took Libby a moment to realize that Parisa had set the bottle aside, forgotten. Instead Libby had been feeling Tristan’s arm against the small of her back, smelling the roses from Parisa’s long hair, draping like a curtain within reach. She could see the little gloss of alcohol on Parisa’s lips, and the strap of her silk dress she still hadn’t fixed, slipping further down her shoulder. Libby could hear the undertone of suggestion in Parisa’s voice, as spiced as the absinthe, as warm as the noisily crackling fire.
“You underestimate your power, Libby Rhodes,” said Parisa.
Libby held her breath as Parisa came closer, half-straddling Tristan’s lap to take hold of Libby’s face, smoothing her hair back from her cheeks. Libby, paralyzed, sat perfectly still as Parisa’s lips brushed hers, warm and soft. Delicate and inviting. She shivered a little despite the heat, and meanwhile Tristan’s hand stole up her spine, traveling carefully over the notches. She kissed Parisa back tentatively, lightly.
“You’re mocking me,” Libby whispered to Parisa’s mouth, withering a little in agony.
Parisa pulled back halfway, pausing to glance at Tristan.
“Kiss her,” she suggested. “She needs to be convinced.”
“And you’re leaving me to do the convincing?” prompted Tristan drily, as Libby’s heart pounded in her chest. “I rather thought that was your expertise.”
Parisa glanced at Libby, laughing melodically.
“Oh, but she doesn’t trust me,” murmured Parisa, reaching out to toy with Libby’s hair again. “She’s curious about me, fine, but if I do it she’ll only get up and run.”
She let her hand fall, sliding her palm around the slats of Libby’s ribs.
“I’m not mocking you,” Parisa offered Libby softly. “I’d be happy to have a taste of you, Miss Rhodes,” she mused, and Libby shivered again. “But it’s not simply that. You’re useful, Libby. You’re powerful. You,” Parisa concluded with another fleeting kiss, “are someone worth knowing well, and fully, and—” She broke off, the tips of her fingers stroking up the inside of Libby’s thigh. “Perhaps deeply.”
Libby was startled by the sound from her lips, mouseish and yearning.
Parisa lifted a brow knowingly, turning to Tristan.
“Kiss her,” Parisa said again. “And do it well.”
“And if she doesn’t want me?” Tristan asked, glancing at Libby.
The moment their eyes met, Libby tried to conjure Ezra. She tried to think of something, anything, to remind her that she had left him at home, left him behind, but she could see only glimpses of her own frustration, her fury, her irritation. She tried, fruitlessly, to see him, and saw only Tristan instead.
Helplessly, Libby felt the pounding of her heart the way she had once felt Tristan’s touch, ricocheting through her chest like tribal drums. She had stopped time with him, once. This was the problem: that within these walls she wasn’t Ezra’s, wasn’t one of his trinkets or possessions or pets, but entirely herself. She had stopped time! She had recreated a mystery of the universe! Here she had done as she pleased and she had done it well, fully, deeply.
She was powerful on her own. She did not need his oversight. She did not want it.
“You’ll have to tell me what you want, Rhodes,” Tristan said, and if his voice was gravelly with something, it might have been the absinthe. Or it might have been the fact that he was looking at her like he had already undressed her, already kissed her, already peeled her underwear from her hips with his teeth. Like he was already glancing up at her from the foot of her bed, his broad shoulders securely locked between her thighs.