Excerpt: 'Elle' by Emma Mars

Emma Mars shares a favorite scene from her new release, Elle, book two in her Hotelles erotic mystery trilogy.

First, here's the blurb about the book (courtesy of Harper Perennial):

A spellbinding, erotic, and revealing love story full of drama and poignancy—the sequel to Hotelles-in which a young French woman continues her carnal education in a mysterious Parisian hotel.

In a hotel room in Paris, a young woman named Elle experiences the most exquisite freedom and sensual pleasure she has ever known, thanks to Louis, the man who has conquered her completely.

So many things in life have changed since they first met. Her engagement to Louis's deceptive brother, David, has been broken. Her mother has died. Yet Elle is wholly fulfilled with Louis, the master who heightens her senses and unleashes her deep, seductive power.

In the alluring Hôtel des Charmes, Louis takes Elle beyond her wildest fantasies. Exploring the boudoirs devoted to other courtesans—Mademoiselle Josephine, Deschamps, Kitty Fisher, Cora Pearl, and Valtesse de la Bigne—Elle willingly opens herself further. In sublime self-abandonment she discovers absolute ecstasy, absolute sweetness, absolute desire.

Then David unexpectedly returns, stirring up painful memories and threatening their bliss. Elle fears her education may soon be over...

She does not understand that it has only just begun.

Emma sets the scene for us …

Emma: This scene may be the most pivotal of the entire Hotelles trilogy. At this point, the reader does not yet know all of the Bartlet family secrets. All of their mysteries are contained in this banal Christmas photo. The reality of this image is very different than it seems.

EXCERPT

The Mars House, my home with Louie, seemed to me life a movie set or a magician's stage, where every nook and cranny might reveal new secrets about this man.

Where were his secrets buried? Did he lock them in his desk like David?

No. What was most disconcerting, in fact, was that aside from the basement, nothing – no door, no drawer, no lock – put up any resistance to my thorough investigation that day. I wasn't fooling anyone, least of all myself, by pretending to explore the house in order to hide anything that could prejudice the courts against Louie. I had simply succumbed to my unhealthy curiosity, whose extent I had already encountered in the past and whose deleterious effects I had already experienced. It was my curiosity that drove me to spend more time searching through his office than through any other room in the house.

I was about to give up when I stubbed my bare toe on a piece of the parquet that was just barely coming loose.

"Ouch! Crap…that was stupid!"

I was cursing the construction crew and the fact that home remodels are never done with as much care as one might hope when a little pressure from my heel tipped up the narrow oak floorboard, opening a dusty hiding place. I leaned forward to see what was inside and made out a small white envelope, the kind used for invitations and announcements.

"What's that?"

I carefully withdrew it from where it was resting and considered it for a while before daring to open its flap. Considering the paper's degree of discoloration and its wilted corners, I guessed that the envelope had not been buried in this wooden hiding place just yesterday. Finally, my chest heaving, I quickly pulled open the triangular flap.

It contained just one small, yellowed photograph with a scalloped border such as was common in the sixties and seventies. In fact, everything about the photograph – its faded colors, the pose of the people in it, their clothing – was reminiscent of that era.

The picture was of an adult couple standing on either side of a gaudy Christmas tree and, in front of them, two young children of about two or three years. At least that is what I was able to gather given the condition of the photograph. Because although the bigger of the two children, the boy, David, was completely recognizable – David's features had hardly changed with time – I could not for the life of me identify the little chestnut-haired girl who was holding his hand. Her face had been scratched out with the blade of a knife or a pair of scissors. Whatever it was, it had almost pierced through the photograph's thick, glazed paper.

And even though their faces hadn't been massacred, the man and woman didn't remind me of anyone I knew. After having seen numerous pictures of Andre and Hortensia Bartlet at Brown Rocks, their beach house, I knew that this was not them. Who were they, then? And what was David doing in this family portrait? Who was the girl with the mutilated face? And why had her identity been scratched out like that?

But above all: Why did Louie keep that snapshot hermetically sealed underneath a floorboard?

I turned the picture over to see if there was any kind of inscription on the back that might give me some answers, but it was blank.

My next reflex: dig out my cell phone, launch its camera app, and photograph the picture so that I would have it archived in my device's electronic memory.

The little faceless girl had been brought out of her hiding place. And I was not going to forget about her.