When she moved her head, the light caught her face, and he saw tears on her cheeks. Juliette turned her back and Kingsley stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. His plan was discarded in an instant. All that mattered was her.

Kingsley clapped a hand over her mouth from behind and held her tight against him. Her body tensed, ready to fight or flee.

“It’s me,” he whispered in her ear. At once she relaxed into his arms. “Good girl.”

He let her go and she turned to face him. Before she could say a word, his mouth was on hers, and he had her backed against the wall.

“He’s home,” she said against his lips, but it was the only protest she made.

“Good. If I fuck you hard enough do you think he’ll hear?”

He didn’t let her answer. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and kissed her so brutally she whimpered. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. Her hips pushed into his, and she reached between their bodies to open his pants. He had the condom on as quickly as possible and her panties off and on the floor in seconds. He lifted her off the floor and brought her down onto him, impaling her with one thrust.

Once Kingsley was inside her, time stopped. The rush and the urgency ceased. He was in her and that was all that mattered and would ever matter.

He kissed her gently now. Their tongues mingled, their breath... He held her thighs, stroking them, gripping them. She had one foot on the floor and one leg wrapped around his back. She smelled like a tropical garden, like Eden, like Paradise before the Fall. His tongue traced the line of her neck, slid over her collarbone, her shoulder. He pushed the straps of her dress down and bared her breasts.

The heat inside her was incredible. She burned him from the inside out. They pressed their bodies into each other. She had her hands flat against the wall to steady herself as she tilted her hips up. Kingsley pressed his thumb against her clitoris and she shuddered silently. The day’s heat hadn’t worn off yet and sweat covered them both. He tasted the salt on her skin as he dropped his head and took a nipple in his mouth, sucking deeply.

Juliette raised her arms, twined them around his shoulders, holding him to her breast.

“Mon roi,” she whispered, a sob her in voice, and Kingsley went weak. He kissed his way up to her mouth again, kissed the tears off her face. She buried her face into his neck and he held her there, held her close and let her cry.

He couldn’t stop and she didn’t want him to. He thrust into her, and she took it. She took it until he came hard enough the world went black, and he had to blink to clear his vision.

Juliette looked at him and he raised his hands to her face and wiped away her tears. More came to take their place.

“I can take these away,” Kingsley said.

“How?”

“I have a plan.”

“To do what?” she demanded. Juliette pulled away from him and straightened her dress.

“I can kill him.”

Juliette laughed, laughed right in his face.

“You’re out of your mind,” she said.

“I’m not joking.”

“I’m pretending you are.”

“You’ll be free.”

“Free? Killing a man isn’t freedom. Death isn’t freedom. Running away isn’t freedom. I could walk out of this house tonight of my own volition if I wanted to.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“I choose to stay. I told you why. He takes care of my mother.”

“Who takes care of you?”

“I don’t need taking care of.”

“Yes, you do.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but a cry echoed from the next room. Kingsley recognized the cry at once. It was the cry of a baby, shrill and piercing.

“Who is that?” Kingsley demanded.

“His grandson,” Juliette said, obviously annoyed. But not with the baby. With him. She strode purposefully from the room and Kingsley followed her into the guest room next door, where someone had set up a nursery. She reached over the side of a crib and lifted the crying baby boy from his bed. She put a cloth diaper over her shoulder and bounced him a few times until he quieted.

She carried him past Kingsley, ignoring him studiously, and walked down the hall. Kingsley switched off the light behind her and stayed in the shadows of the doorway. At the end of the hall Gérard met her. He patted the baby on his head and kissed him. He listened as Gérard complimented his grandson for his impressive lung capacity. He took the boy from Juliette’s arms and held him to his chest, rubbing the boy’s back and soothing the last of his tears.

“Let’s go find your maman,” Gérard said to his grandson. “She’ll talk some sense into you.”

“I should go to bed,” Juliette said to Gérard.

“Go, but stay awake,” Gérard said. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Your daughter is here,” Juliette said. “You shouldn’t come to me tonight. She might hear.”

“She’s going out soon to meet friends. He’ll sleep. You don’t.” He kissed her on the cheek and walked off, bouncing his grandson in his arms and laughing.

And in that moment Kingsley felt something hit him like an ocean wave, knock the breath out of him, kick the legs out from under him and send his heart to his knees in the sand.

Envy. Envy the likes of which he had never before felt in his life. Envy of this man and the life he had. Children, grandchildren, Juliette in his home, in his bed, in his heart. And if Kingsley had been offered the chance to take Gérard’s place, and all he had to do was go back in time and fuck fourteen-year-old Juliette, he would have done it. He would have done it in a second. He would have done it in a heartbeat, in an instant, and he wouldn’t have regretted one second of it. And that meant he couldn’t pass judgment on Gérard and certainly couldn’t sentence him to death.