Sneak Peek: Under the Norman Sky Prologue (Teaser Tuesday)

 Hi friends! I'm happy to share the first chapter of "Under the Normany Sky" with you today, and I hope you like it. This isn't the final first chapter, as I'm still editing, so bear in mind that it might change it a bit once I finish tweaking it. 

Anyway, without further ado... 

Chapter One

One year ago

 

The hotel was empty except for the partygoers and the family. Victoria Garnot’s eighteenth birthday was the social event of the year. I shouldn’t have expected any less, as her parents indulged her every desire since she was their only surviving child. She’d been born right after the first day of spring, and since then, her grandfather called her Fleur-de-lys. It wasn’t because of their links to the old aristocracy but because he thought Victoria embodied all those qualities that someone had decided to apply to it. Purity, virtue, chastity.

While I walked into the restaurant, now doubling as a ballroom, I was surprised by the number of her friends there. Most of her American relations, friends, or family were on one side of the room, while the French side kept close to the bar. The dance floor was filled with her peers, dancing to the beat of corny pop songs both in English and French and the odd K-Pop song that he was sure Thybault Cho had taught her during the summer. We spent most of it at my grandparents’ house in Courselles-Sur-Mer, exploring Juno Beach and building sandcastles at sunset.

As my eyes scanned the crowd for Victoria, I felt two hands gripping my arm tightly. And I have to admit that I wasn’t ready to see her yet. My heart flip-flopped a few times before I managed to return her smile.

“Joyeux anniversaire, ma belle.” I said as she turned her face, offering me her cheek to plant a kiss on it before I obliged. Repeating this small dance thrice because Normans love giving people four kisses.

The scent of flowers, wood, and spices hit my nose, but before I could inhale and savor the moment, Victoria pulled back.

“Thank you, you’re late.” She said in English before quickly switching to French. “I should have expected as much.” She sighed heavily, placing her head on my shoulder.

“You’re so dramatic. This isn’t a Jeunet film.”

After she swatted at my arm, she took my hand in hers, scanning the room once more, and then tugged at my hand.

“Come with me.” She said in that soft speech she used when her eyes were colored with so much mischief, I knew better than to say no.

My brain immediately began to think about an alibi, for I knew that whatever it was we were about to do if her parents found out, I would be skinned alive.

We walked around half the room before she led the way through a double door where the servers came in and out. Silently, we walked out of the kitchen where my godfather, Armand de Longcamp, one of France’s most recognizable chefs, shouted at his kitchen staff to hurry with the meal.

“Where are we going?” The heat from her hand against mine intensified as we walked into the chilly night.

“Just for a walk.” Her impish smile was still in place as we crossed the parking area in front of the hotel and walked across the main road that divided the beach from the rest of the town of Deauville.

“A walk?” I blinked several times as we turned toward the deserted beach. “At this time?”

“I just want to be alone with you.” Her voice lost all its playful hue and instead was nothing but a breathy sound that held my attention along with the mysterious secrets it held.

The salty taste of the sea in the wind hit my face while I walked beside her, and darkness reached its tentacles through the sand, weaving in and out of the light cast by the street lamps. Soon, we were in “Les Planches,” the seaside boardwalk built sometime about a century ago.

  Victoria shivered slightly while walking past the names of several Hollywood legends before I shrugged off my jacket. She stopped, arching an eyebrow, her dark eyes falling on me while a smile pulled the corners of her plump lips upwards.

“Can I ask for my birthday present now?”

Surprise, no, stunning silence held me in place before I placed my jacket over her slim shoulders. My eyes rested on the beautiful white dress with the shimmering sequins, and then I forced them up for fear that she would call me a creep.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked when her eyes lost some of the mischievous shine in them. Then, I realized she’d probably added something to her first request.

“Did you not hear me, Lefevre?” She asked, this time using my surname, something she did when she was losing patience.

“You know I hate it when you call me that,” I told her, crossing my arms over my chest mainly because the cold wind was starting to feel much more severe than a chilly breeze.

“I see.” Her eyes were slightly guarded while she closed the space between us and looked down.

I was about to ask what she was playing at when her eyes settled on mine, looking at me from under her long, curled lashes. It was at that moment that I knew I fucked up. I wouldn’t be under her spell like now if she’d been a few feet away. I could reject whatever mad idea she was about to spew. And it had to be a mad idea for her to leave her party and walk to the beach with me.

“I want to sleep with you.”

I could have sworn that I stopped listening to the wind that encircled us, to the sea crashing against the coast. Time itself might have halted as my mouth opened and closed, and my blink rate increased as my brain tried to process.

“Have you got nothing to say?”

My throat was dry. It felt parched, like when we would be outside in the sun all day, catching waves and then tanning on the warm sand. A strange sound left my throat, but it wasn’t anything resembling a word. I cleared my throat, looking around to make sure that none of her cousins were nearby waiting to beat me up before I returned my eyes to her. Still, no thoughts were running through my mind, as everything seemed to have scrambled like a bad signal.

“I’m trying to see if you’re pulling my leg,” I began, “or if you’re serious about wanting to sleep with me.” I hoped then that the bravado in my voice could disguise the crazy thumping of my heart.

Confusion brought forth a memory of our first time in a similar situation. The moment she’d asked me to kiss her because she didn’t want to waste her first kiss on someone that she would possibly end up hating… that was the moment I should have said no. As a newly minted teen, I thought it couldn’t hurt. I hadn’t kissed a girl before, and her rationalization for the kiss felt as good an excuse as any. The problem was that that one kiss had defined most of my relationships at the time. No other kiss, I concluded, had had the same effect as the one I gave Victoria under the rain in the middle of my family’s farm. The fear that her parents or mine would get involved in our relationship to protect years of faithful friendship between our families had kept me from trying to kiss her again. Though I’d never forgotten how her body fitted perfectly in my arms, her well-defined plump lips brushing against mine.

Perhaps he was wrong to assume she wanted to have sex with him. Maybe she just wanted to crash in his room and hide from her cousins; God knew that Guillaume and Giselle were the most overbearing ones of the whole lot.

“Sebastien…” The impatience in her voice isn’t as hot as the flash of anger crossing her delicate features. “I said I want to sleep with you.”

Nope, he’d heard right the first time.

“W-Why? You don’t like the room your parents booked for you and your friends?” Playing dumb was the only way out of this. “Are  you being forced to sleep in the same room as Giselle and Guillaume?” I added even though I knew her parents could book the entire hotel and not make a dent in their fortune.

Her eyebrow shot up fiercely as her eyes widened. “Are you stupid?” The question came out in a bubble of laughter that soon surrounded them. “Seb, I want to sleep with you… in the way that you sleep with all those girls, where there’s no real sleep involved.”

The color was probably draining from my face. It wasn’t that I’d never fantasized about this. The fact that she was being brazen about it, so matter of fact, shocked me to my core.

And just when I thought she’d silenced me for good, my brain shifted gears as images of her father and mine beating me to a pulp rushed through my mind.

“T’es folle?” I exploded, immediately regretting that I called her crazy. “Your father will kill me if he finds out,” I added quickly in English while her eyes lingered on me, and her demeanor remained unchanged.

“He won’t find out. No one will.” Victoria’s body heat radiated like a furnace when she closed the remainder of the space between us. My whole body seemed to be expecting an attack as I stood up straight and still, my eyes on her. “Are you really turning me down?” She asked with a pout, setting my blood to boil and my pulse to throb around my entire body. “I don’t want to go to Paris and end up giving my body to some loser robbing me of a good first-time memory. I want it to be you. If it’s you, it’ll always be a good memory.”

Damn her logic.

Merde, merde, merde.

I muttered while she leaned against me, her hands on my chest. They’d been here once before, a maddening time that ended with me drawing the line on the sand. Or at least I hoped I had. The memory of that first kiss, of the whole day, was etched in fire in his mind.

“So, do you have a lot of girls who follow you around because you know how to kiss them?” Victoria teased him while the dark clouds moved across the sky at sun set.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, your looks are good, but if a boy doesn’t know how to kiss, that’s just not going to help you get all the girls.”

“Why do you suddenly care so much about whether or not I am a good kisser?”

“Because I want you to kiss me.” She’d replied in a tiny voice, nothing to do with the brazen girl in front of him now. “I want my first kiss to mean something, something nice.”

The memory of that first and only kiss burned bright in my mind. Rain started to drip slowly around us while my arms circled around her. I moved slowly, almost resisting the pull of her body. And when my lips touched hers… I nearly pulled away. It was Victoria who had pulled me closer. Victoria’s hands were the ones that had awakened something in me that I’d never felt. Desire, lust, a need for someone that I never knew I could feel.

This request, however, was not the same. It was just so much more intimate than a first kiss. My eyes tried to evade hers. The answer was on the tip of my tongue. Still, even though I understood this wasn’t a good idea, my defenses were obliterated by the expectation in her eyes.

Without thinking, I held her hand in mind, and before my mind would change or I would slap myself out of the depth of my desire for her, I led her back to the hotel.

We walked across the impressive lobby with the big old-fashioned red chairs and the beautiful chandeliers. Taking the stairs to the second floor, I ensured no one saw us before I led her straight into my bedroom.  

After the door closed behind her, I scanned the room. The large bed with the royal red and gold canopy over it and the chandelier over the bed made me take a moment to think this through. However, rather than think, I turned to her and opened my mouth.

“Are you sure about this?” The words left my lips as regret flooded my thoughts. It was only conscionable for me to ask her, even if she changed her mind and went. Maybe that would be the preferred outcome of this whole ordeal, but I knew that I would be heartbroken if she left me.

She looked around, and then a smile pulled at her lips. The gentleness in her eyes nearly made my legs buckle. Victoria then shrugged off the jacket I’d laid on her shoulders to protect her from the chilly weather, and my eyes followed it as it fell to the floor. And then she crushed her lips to mine before any sound could come out. A low rumble spread through me as my hands explored her body under her dress. Every kiss, every caress was an invitation to further touch her and make her mine.

And I did.