Dedicated to all the readers who think this story lacks the heat of the previous version. Get ready to feel a little taste of it ;)

-------------------------------------------------------

I was sitting in the dining room, isolated from the rest of the house. It was no wonder that I did not notice the sound of Jean entering the house. He had been taken in last night by the police and I hadn't heard from him up to this moment. A silent shadow crept into the doorway and stood still. I looked up to find the face of a fallen angel. His sharp cheekbones were peppered with a days worth of stubble and his eyes were orbs of dark blue, the kind of color the oceans adorned only in the most wildest and remotest parts of the world. His shoulder was propped against the frame as he looked at my sunken body in the dining room chair. I had poured myself a glass of whiskey.

"You mind if I join you?" came Jean's husky voice.

"It's your house," I said.

Jean rolled the jacket off his shoulders and threw it recklessly across a chair. He went to the decanters placed decadently across the hall and poured himself a large shot of his favorite poison — an Auchentoshan 1978. He seemed to keep this particular whiskey brand all over the house. He removed a cigarette from his pocket and lit one right on cue.

"I heard Inspector Andre paid you a little visit," Jean spoke as he grabbed his full glass and made his way over to my lonely presence. He pulled out the chair to my immediate right and sat at a right angle to my vision.

I took a sip of whiskey and controlled the urge to wretch at the pungent smell and sour taste of the distasteful liquid. "He ambushed me. Again."

Jean was looking at me as I avoided his eyesight. I was on my second glass of liquid petroleum, or so it tasted, and not particularly feeling kind towards my present company.

"What did he want?" asked Jean as he blew the smoke from his lungs right into my face. I gave him a sharp look of disgust at his lack of courtesy. I must not have done a convincing job of it as my repugnance didn't spur any reaction within him.

"I have no fucking idea what he wanted. I have no fucking idea what I have to do with you and your goddam life, yet he seems to keep showing up everywhere I go. So, why don't you tell me what the hell he wants so I can move on with my life?" I said.

My tone was acerbic and the alcohol had loosened not just my tongue but also my temper. Always used to obeying societies archaic rules of civility, I was on the brink of smashing the glass in my hand on someone's face. I was trapped in an unknown country where I still couldn't grasp their language. I was doing barely above average in college. I had no parents and a sister I couldn't even stalk on social media. I was stuck with a family whose deeds made Judas look like a saint. Worst of all, I was nothing but a helpless collateral in all of this mess with no way out.

Jean's ocean blue orbs turned darker at the negligent and scathing tone of my voice. I could tell by the twitching in his hands and the tightening of his jaw that he was controlling the urge to unleash himself on me. Yet, I wasn't afraid. I wanted him to know how miserable I was being dragged into his life.

"You're a Renauld. What else did you expect?" Jean derided at me.

I laughed at that. "I am so not a fucking Renauld. Even Inspector Andre knows that!"

"What?" Jean asked me.

"Oh, did I forget to mention? Andre knows my real name. He knows I was smuggled into this country," I said. I looked at Jean, trying to decipher if he was behind the leak in my real identity to the police. All I saw was confusion.

"How did he find out?" Jean asked, with genuine concern in his voice.

"I have no idea," I said as I guzzled the whiskey in my glass. I could feel the lightheaded feeling creeping into my body. The numbness interspersed with tingling made its way onto the edges of my fingertips and legs. I was successfully buzzed.

"Well, we can worry about that later. Did he want anything else from you?" Jean asked. His eyes pierced into me, reaching into the depths of my dark soul.

"He told me about Alexa," I whispered.

"What exactly did he tell you about her?" Jean asked. Anger and irritation were evident in his voice.

"You . . . choked her. And bruised her. On her thighs and arms and . . ,"

"Stop believing everything Andre is feeding you, okay? The guy is a fucking loser who is hell bent on revenge!" Jean yelled.

"What does he want revenge for?" I asked angrily. "What is it that is egging him, constantly, towards you? Clearly, you must have done something!"

Jean had the audacity to huff in my face as if I was incapable of understanding the intricacies involved in plotting a revenge. This game was as old as time. It had no rules and everyone involved were casualties. It never ended well.

"He's been trying to come after me for a while and is trying to pin just about anything he can on me. Don't be stupid," Jean snapped at me. He got up abruptly which caused his chair to fall back. He chucked his half finished cigarette across the room and carried his now empty glass for another refill.

"Don't you dare call me stupid," I said. I got up from my seat to face him. "You both go way back. I can tell. You both knew each other very well the first time you stepped into the police station to rescue me."

"Yes, we've clashed before. And guess what? He's always lost this game. And he will again," Jean said with a cockiness I wish I had in a situation where the police had compelling evidence to charge me with murder.

"Did you or did you not kill Alexa?" I asked him with as much calmness as I could muster in that moment.

Jean looked at me and for an inexplicable reason kept shaking his head as if the question I were asking him was incomprehensible to him. "I have answered this question before. I. Did. Not. Murder. Alexa."

"Then why the bruise marks everywhere?" I asked, irritated at going round and round in circles.

"Because she liked being fucked like an animal!" Jean yelled at me. "You want to know the truth? Okay, then hear it," Jean said. He poured himself a glass and made his way to me. His towering presence dwarfed my physical presence as well as my confidence.

"Alexa and I met occasionally for a good fuck every now and then. She called me up that evening. I showed up at her place. The woman might look like an innocent sweetheart on magazine covers but she likes being treated like a dirty slut in bed," Jean said.

I shielded my eyes away from him as he spoke with such vulgarity about a woman. I felt ashamed of being a witness to this display of his. Is this how men felt when they slept with women that enjoyed sex?

"Those marks on her body? She liked them! She liked being choked during sex and she liked it when I bent her like an animal and gave it to her like a bitch in heat," Jean kept continuing.

"Stop it," I whispered.

"No. You wanted to know the truth, right? The truth is I did have rough sex with her that night because she was begging me for it. Like she has for the past year. It was consensual. I did not kill her. Is that clear enough for you?" Jean asked me. He had gotten closer to me and stepped right into my personal space as he stared down at me.

I continued to look away from him as I controlled the rush of emotions within me. I felt disgust. I should have felt disgust for having Jean talk about a woman this way, but my traitorous mind felt disgust at hearing Jean being intimate with another woman and being forced to picture their intimacy in detail. I tried to control my thinking but the alcohol in my brain was silencing all smart voices and enhancing the baseless animal part of me wanted to slap Jean.

I could feel his heavy breath on my face as he finished his ranting. He was unbearably close to me. The silence in the dining room was deafening as I tried to control the thoughts running rampant in my mind.

I felt Jean's hand on the nape of my neck, gentle at first and then punishing.

"Look at me," he commanded me.

I continued to look away from him, for the pure reason of hating being ordered by him to do anything. At my blatant disobedience, he grabbed the hair at the base of my neck and jerked it to make me meet his eyes.

I looked into them and felt a jolt of electricity. It sounded cliched but it felt as if a current had zapped my body, with it origination right between my legs. A pulse throbbed from some mysterious place between my legs that had laid dormant for all my life except this moment. Jean's eyes were focused on my lips like a man hungry for his first taste.

He clashed into my mouth ruthlessly. Our lips mashed painfully as I was caught unaware by the force behind his action. His hand moved from my neck and grabbed my waist in a punishing grip and slammed it tightly against his torso. My lips moved of their own accord and the alcohol made me bold enough to slip my tongue in his mouth. The second our tongues intertwined, the heat between my legs grew ever more powerful and I started grinding against Jean's body.

Feeling my enthusiasm, Jean matched it with cupping my ass tightly within his hands and pushing my crotch right into his. His hardness was bulging and grinding so pleasurably against my front that I wanted more. I pulled him closer towards me by holding onto his broad shoulders. Jean groaned so loudly that he pulled his mouth away from mine, bent his knees slightly, and picked me up as if I weighed nothing more than a scrap. I wrapped my legs around him as he planted my ass firmly on the dining table and drove his tongue into the depths of my mouth. We kept making out as his rock hard erection grinded up and down against my pleasure spot.

Our kisses turned from hot and passionate to slow and languid till we broke apart to catch our breaths. My hands had somehow found their way across his neck, locking him next to my face. I unlocked them hastily and saw the way his lower half was connected to mine. I noticed the bulge in his pants and looked away in embarrassment. I could feel the blush staining my cheeks as my deep breaths filled the silence between us.

Jean slowly disentangled himself from the death grip of my legs and shuffled away from me.

"If this is was anything like our first kiss, I am fucking disappointed to have missed it," Jean said.

I looked up at him in disbelief of him bringing up our first kiss. His cheeks were slightly flushed but for some reason my eyes kept going down to his bulge. Jean noticed my eye movements and smirked at me. "That's going to stay hard if you keep looking at it like that."

"What?" I squawked.

Jean's eyes traipsed lazily from the tip of my head to my legs spread apart wide like a harlot. I snapped them shut and got clumsily off the table. I tried straightening my shirt and hair that were in a complete disarray.

"You going to ask me again about Alexa?" Jean asked me.

"No, I think I'm good," I managed to croak out. At this moment, I couldn't give a shit about Alexa. I wanted to run away to my room and lock it behind me. And maybe a cold shower to control my shaking legs and the heat in my cheeks.

"Good. I don't want to ever be asked that question again," Jean said. Gone was any sense of playfulness from his tone, and back in its wake was the stuck up person that had prompted me to lose my temper in the first place.

I nodded my head in agreement, anything to end this line of conversation. Jean picked up his coat and was adjusting his dick in his pants which again caused me to blush like an idiot. I hated how the human body was so embarrassingly incapable of controlling its blood supply. Jean seemed oblivious to my self deprecating monologue as he adjusted himself and said, "Let's get out of here."

I looked up at him, startled at his invitation.

"To our own bedrooms. Separately," Jean clarified once he saw the horrified expression on my face.

I breathed a sigh of relief and started walking my way outside the dining room. We walked in silence, me ahead of him and his heavy footsteps the only evidence of him following behind me. We passed the dining room and entered the main foyer. I looked at him and mumbled an awkward goodnight and raced up the staircase to my bedroom.

Once I made it upstairs, I was in such a hurry to get to my room that I bumped into a body and lost my footing. A pair of strong hands grabbed me as I almost collapsed onto the floor. I looked up to find myself staring into the eyes of Vincent.

"Vincent?" I screeched.

"Shhh!" Vincent whispered harshly back at me.

"What are you doing here? It's one in the morning!" I whispered.

Just then I saw Anna in her bathrobe exit her bedroom with a smile on her face that vanished the moment she saw Vincent and I together. I got up to my feet, still in shock as to finding Vincent in our area of the house, and looked between Anna and Vincent. Anna was pulling strands of her hair behind her ears and Vincent was trying to discreetly button up his shirt.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said as I looked from one to the other.

"Shhh!" Anna said to me as she tried to glance behind us, as if someone was going to enter and witness the horror of the situation unfolding infront of my eyes.

"You two?" I asked. "When? How?" I asked in complete confusion.

Vincent and Anna shared an awkward glance between each other and could not form one coherent response.

"It's not what you think," Anna tried mustering up.

"What do you think I think?" I asked her with suspicion.

"We're not . . . There's nothing going on between us," Vincent interjected.

"You sound very convincing," I replied, sarcasm dripping generously from my tone.

"This was the first time I meant," Vincent hurriedly replied.

"Vincent!" Anna screeched in indignation.

"What? She's not dumb. She knows what this looks like," Vincent said to Anna.

"Ugh. You could have tried a little harder," Anna said.

"Bullshit! This isn't your first time. I heard sex sounds from Anna's room weeks ago," I said.

Vincent's expression turned from confusion to bewilderment to anger in a flash of a second. "What the fuck?" Vincent yelled at Anna.

Anna's eyes bugged from her head at my comment and I realized a little too late that I had made a huge error.

"Who the fuck were you with a few weeks ago?" Vincent asked Anna.

"You know what? I think I was wrong," I tried to intervene to diffuse the situation but Vincent's anger was solely trained on Anna.

"No one!" Anna exclaimed back.

She didn't sound convincing and she knew it. She was grabbing at her robe tightly and pulling it closer and closer to herself.

"Who the hell was he?" Vincent asked.

"Now that I come to think of it, I think it might have been porn that Anna was watching," I said.

Vincent looked at me with a scorching look that made me throw up my hands in a sign of backing off.

"Forget it. I am leaving," Vincent said as he stormed off down the staircase.

I saw him disappear downstairs and looked back at Anna. Her eyes were trained on me as her chest heaved in barely constrained anger.

"Anna . . ." I went towards her when she promptly slammed her bedroom door shut in my face.

I looked at it as the sound echoed in the halls of the mansion and groaned out loud in pain. Just when I needed her to be on my side, things went south as per the Devil's schedule. I went and laid on my bed, with a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. It took me a while before I realized that I had once again forgotten to ask Jean about Belarus.

-------------------------------------------------------
Please vote and comment! Follow me for weekly updates on 'Only Mine'. Also, feel free to inbox me any queries you might have. I love interacting with my readers!