He looked down at the book cover where it showed a pair of feminine hands tied with a black scarf.
“He was a wealthy, extremely handsome, and sinister sociopath who only cared about one thing: his kinky pleasure. Why Dr. Volk wanted you to see the film with your wife, baffles me.”
How could I know it was so different? “Er…he told me to read the book so we can discuss it in our next session.” His brow creased in thought. “But why did you read it?”
“I normally read the book before I see the film. You’ve been tempting me with it for months.” She scooted closer to him on her knees and framed his face with a hand. “Now. Why did Dr. Volk want you to read the book? What have you done for him to propose such an assignment?”
Alistair kissed her palm. Cautious and steady, Alistair Connor. Studying her face, he tried to explain the whole situation, showing his feelings, but keeping out the action. “It was about…have you ever wanted to hurt somebody so badly that it sickened you?”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Have you forgotten? “Yes. I ordered twelve fingers cut off. But I really wanted all the men dead, after being tortured for as many days as they had tortured Gabriel, preferably.”
There was a long silence as Sophia toyed with the tips of his long hair, seeing his chest expand and deflate. She ran her hand over his shoulder and pectoral to stop over his unevenly beating heart. When she raised her eyes to him, she saw that he was watching her closely.
Alistair had so much locked inside that he felt compelled to confess and share the burden. “I went to Emma’s apartment.”
Startled, Sophia didn’t speak, waiting for the whole story to come out.
“I know she is the one who sent the messages, though she didn’t say it.” And Baptist couldn’t confirm it. Alistair looked very seriously at her. “I wanted to make it clear that I wanted her to keep away from you. You and Gabriela. But…well, she tried to seduce me and I did something I’m very ashamed of, Sophia.”
Suddenly, it seemed the oxygen had been pumped out of the room. Oh, good God. Please, don’t let it be what I’m thinking.
“I wanted to make her suffer, I wanted to beat her, to hurt her so badly...in the end, I left her chained to the floor.”
Sophia felt forlorn and relieved at the same time. Her dear husband, the man she was considering letting adopt her daughter and was lying intimately with her in bed, left a woman chained to the floor. And who am I to judge?
She imagined the scene, absorbing his words. She knew victims of all kinds of abuse, and knew that some found it erotic, but she didn’t. Not in the slightest.
“Say something,” he whispered.
The tricky thing about abusive relationships is that even the ones involved don’t realize how damaging they are. She couldn’t let this story slide just because Alistair was trying to protect her. She smoothed the sheets, not caring about Emma but trying to understand why he had done it.
“Sophia, please?”
She exhaled and looked at him. “Was that all?”
All?! “If you are asking if I touched her sexually, the answer is, nae, I did no’,” he said tonelessly.
“Do you know you could have been arrested for such an act? Do you know that keeping women or men as sex slaves, even if they want it, is a crime and is considered a psychiatric disease?”
His answer came out in a whisper, “Aye.”
“What did you do afterwards?”
“I called a friend of hers to take care of the situation.” He laughed bitterly. Tell her about your feelings, not your acts. “When you came down to call me for breakfast with you and Gabriela, I was feeling dirty. And yet, there you stood, clean and fresh, knowing there was something wrong in me. It just made me feel worse, totally undeserving of you.”
“Oh, Alistair Connor.” She couldn’t imagine how devastated he was. “What I don’t understand is, why did you do it? I mean, in my opinion, you submitted to her. And why do you keep returning?” She linked her hands to stop them trembling. “You promised me you’d keep away from her.”
“I had warned her to keep away from you. She didn’t.” He blew a hushed sigh and his hand covered hers. “I had to threaten her with the only thing she understands: money. I was afraid she would try to harm you again. That’s why I went to Scotland. I needed to think over the many different emotions inside me and because I wasn’t sure of your reaction. I didn’t want to omit it, but to tell it in the right way and then I realized that there is just one way: to tell the truth from the very beginning, to trust and open up my feelings to you, whatever they are.”
Oh, my love. She turned to him and her fingers combed his bangs from his forehead. “I’ll always be here for you.”
“I know. You’ve taught me to trust and open up.”
“Me?”
Her surprised face made him ask, “Don’t you remember? When you denied my wish to beat you with a crop? That you had to respect yourself first? That if you fulfilled my whims and pleasured me, in detriment of your own feelings, you would hate yourself the next day? And you made me climax barely touching my body?”
Her surprise turned into amusement. “Alistair Connor. Don’t be naïve. Do you really think I could have taught you that in an hour or so? And with a single sentence? With just one experience?” She shook her head. “No. My firm position just reminded you of what you’ve known all your life. I’m sure your mother and your father taught you respect on a daily basis.”
Hmm…I guess so. “Just for the record, as we are being very frank here, I was worried. I am worried, so I contacted Baptist, a detective that has worked for me before to track the number as Emma was just one of my…er...”
“Harem.” One I don’t want to know about.
If you want to lighten things up, I’ll oblige. His lips curled up. “Right. My harem.”
“Alistair Connor.” She shook her head at him. “It must’ve been very hard for women to resist you.” I don’t want to discuss this anymore.
“Do you know what I’ve discovered? I’m much more attracted to a woman who is assertive, smart, and not shy about voicing her opinion. This woman tells me what she wants in bed. This woman was quite difficult to find and shackle. But when she’s happy, she makes me happy too.” He raised her wrist to kiss it under the slave bracelet, with a teasing glint in his eyes. “Was it hard for you to resist me?”
“A bit.” Very. “And I broke all my rules going to bed with you in the first month.”
He was going to say she was a liar but the last statement made him stop. “What do you mean? I thought a month was too much time to wait. With Gabriel and Ashford?”
Sophia laughed softly. “I almost drove Gabriel mad. I was a virgin when I married.” I’m not telling you about Ethan!
“Nooo...” Alistair knew Gabriel had been her first. But he hadn’t known she had waited until marriage. “No way.”
“Come on. I was sixteen when I met him. Underage—a teenager. I was not even eighteen when we married, I had to be emancipated. We only really dated, under Felipe’s and my Grandma’s radar, for six months after three months of,” she made quotes in the air, “courtship.”
“Courtship?” He laughed. “How old-fashioned. But nothing, nada?”
“Oh, you know, a hand there, a kiss lower.” She blushed as she waved her hand over her breasts. Oh, Sophia. It’s ridiculous to blush over this.
He loved her blushing over such a sweet thing. Then he frowned. “What if he was a pervert? What if he didn’t know what to do? What about the many ifs that could happen in a marriage? You were only seventeen and jumped right into marriage after knowing him for only nine months. Absurd!”
Absurd? “Perhaps, but let me think...I started dating at the end of February and I married in the beginning of August a man called Alistair Connor.” She frowned back at him playfully. “That’s less than six months.”
He had the grace to look sheepish. “What if—”
She didn’t let him finish as sh
e covered his mouth with a loving kiss.
He closed his eyes letting her love wash over him and his arms wound tightly around her as if he wanted to pull her light into him.
She broke the kiss and whispered on his lips, “On minor things, consider pros and cons. On vital matters, follow your intuition. In the important decisions of personal life, one should be governed by deeper needs. Love has no reason, no time. It’s instinctual.”
“Freud.” He knew the saying she partially quoted. “So, you just followed your infamous instinct?”
She shook her head at him with a sweet smile on her lips. “I just felt. I love you. What else did I need?”
The Harlequin Suite
Thursday, November 11, 2010
3:21 a.m.
Concentrate on the problem at hand, Ethan: Eve. He sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. Sleep had been eluding him since he had seen the photos and the birth certificate confirming that the man was his son. What am I going to do with a son and an ex-lover?
From what he recalled, the man resembled him very much, except for the azure eyes. His were a chocolate-brown, like his mother’s.
There was no possibility of denying, from the date of birth, that the son was his. Unless the birth certificate was false.
Ethan was completely unbalanced, his emotions changed throughout the day as the waves on a stormy ocean; lust and sexual frustration, love and wrath, depression and exhilaration coursed through his blood, leaving him feeling like he was living in a perpetual state of chaos.
And all because of the women in his life. He had loved them all. And he hated them for it. Eventually, he hated himself too.
Sophia was the only one no money or lust could buy, who has treated me with love and compassion, who has understood. She was the only one I should have put on a pedestal and learned to give instead of only take. I behaved toward her as the others did toward me.
Ethan sighed, again. He avoided confrontation whenever he could. He had to be smarter than his parents. Taking the bottle with him, he crossed the suite to the small office. He messaged Scott.
Ashford. 3:49 a.m. - Call me 1st thing before you leave home. Urgently.
Walking back into the living room, he saw Barbara leaving the bedroom clad only in an elegant ivory silk wrap.
She looked young and sleepy, with rosy cheeks and still reddened lips from their night of sex.
Ethan couldn’t help comparing her with his mother. Barbara was all kindness toward him; Calista was all greed and hatred.
But he couldn’t help comparing her to Sophia as well. Sophia has never sold herself. Barbara is being paid; as Eve was.
“I missed you in bed,” she said softly, in a sexy voice.
But I did not. Sentiment is witty. If it feels like it’s being manipulated, it hides and protects itself. “I was thirsty.” He raised the bottle and kissed her forehead, pulling her to sit with him on the sofa.
He didn’t speak, neither did she. She snuggled closer to him, and he put an arm around her shoulders.
Why couldn’t I have found her as I did Sophia? Why can’t I love her? In his heart, he knew the answer; he just couldn’t get in touch with it.
Most times, Ethan was shy and even awkward with women of his own circle, unless he was doing business with them or thought they were less than him, that he would make an impression.
Maybe if he had been a teacher, he could have found a woman with whom he could be happy, but no. He had been forcibly turned into a powerful businessman and he had to live accordingly. He could never show his insecurities or fears, he could never show the damage that ran deep in his soul. He was condemned to suffer them alone.
After his failure with his first girlfriend on the night of his grand dinner at Les Quat’-Manoirs, he decided that his grandfather was right. He had let Niarchos guide him through paid sexual encounters and to be taught to pleasure and find pleasure in the arms of a woman.
He learned about some very exclusive clubs and Madames in London. With his money and position, at his young age, it was not difficult to be a member of one of these very exclusive clubs.
Although he never went to one, he chose the women from a catalogue, with all the preferences listed, and paid for a meeting where they would parade for him, first dressed, then nude.
The women knew the procedures. All of them accepted his money and gifts as a substitute for his love. It was impersonal, no strings attached.
When Ethan decided he’d had enough, they left without complaining, well rewarded. He moved to another, to learn more, to be taught differently.
After the initial years of impotency and premature ejaculation, Ethan mastered sex.
But not love.
No one had taken care of that part of his anatomy, and his heart wasted away.
After so many experiences, Ethan was almost certain he was Barbara’s first client. “Why me?”
She raised her head to look at his face. “Why you what?”
“You’re so beautiful and kind. Couldn’t you find another job instead of whoring?”
Barbara shot him an appalled look and no words came out of her mouth. He had a lot of nerve to ask such a question.
“I’m sorry, that was out of line. Don’t answer the stupid question,” he blurted out, before she had the chance to say anything.
A light extinguished itself inside Barbara’s eyes. “Do I displease you that much?”
“No. Not at all.” There, Ashford. You hurt the woman. He drained the rest of the water. “You know, Barbara, I’m not very good at intimate conversations concerning myself. I can coach people to tell me their whole lives; I can talk about books, numbers, and intelligent things, but when the topic involves my feelings or relationships, I put both of my feet in my big mouth. It must be hard to keep up with my moods. And surely, Barbara, when you applied for the...job, you knew what you were supposed to do.”
For a moment Barbara seemed lost in thought. Then she faced him and said, “Yes, I knew. When I first met you, and you treated me like a piece of meat, I was scared. Really scared. I had never had paid sex before, but it wasn’t so difficult. You’re a handsome, intelligent, wealthy man. Besides, I needed the money. Desperately. I had no other choice.”
We always have choices. “Surely, you could apply for a secretarial job or—or anything else. But an escort?” A whore?
She gave a bitter laugh. “Ethan, have you ever seen the lives of the ones you loved threatened?”
No. But then, I have never really loved. He shook his head. Although Grandpa really tried, he was too involved in his own schemes.
“I did it to save my mother’s life. My father was a gambler. In time, he became an alcoholic and an abuser. When he had money, he treated us very well. He would buy food and even take us out to dinner. When he was in one of his fouls moods, or losing money, it was difficult. There was no food, no clothes, nothing. As years passed by, things got worse. He began to steal my mother’s meager salary to keep his vices. Afterwards, mine too. He sold things from our home until there was only the bare minimum: a mattress, some plates, an old stove, and an even older refrigerator. In the end, he drowned in the Thames. We don’t know if he drowned because he was drunk or if he was killed. But the bastard didn’t settle his debts before going to hell. They came to us and gave us a month. I applied for many jobs. It was then that Scott miraculously found me and I became Sophia.” Her voice turned to a whisper. “They returned and I gave them all the money we had. They laughed in my face, took the money, and broke my mother’s arm. A reminder for us to be more diligent the next month. It worked. I asked you for the loan and paid them off. Then I stayed to pay you. After you handed me back the promissory, I stayed because I like you. Very much.”
Jesus. Ethan didn’t blink or say a word. He was profoundly shocked by the story and how he had never deepened his interest. He knew she had to settle a debt and about her sick mother. But he never knew the hurt and pain that accompanied the woman who shared his bed.
&nb
sp; “My mother is fragile. She has been beaten all her life, but she never let my father touch me. Many times she took the punishment he thought I deserved. She never complained. I had no choice but to sell my soul to the devil.”
She sold, I bought. Money. That’s what makes the world go round. Not really taking offense by her last sentence, Ethan threaded his fingers through her hair in silence, mulling over what he had been told. Then ever so gently, he breathed, “You’re a good daughter.”
Her lips curled up. “She has always been the best mother.”
How I envy you. “I’m glad you have such a good mother.”
“Without your help—”
No strings, Barbara. He stopped her with a raised palm. “No need to thank me again. You deserved every pound, every jewel, everything. I want you to answer one question with your utmost honesty.” He waited for her nod. “Am I a good lover? Do I treat you well?” Stupid, Ashford. What do you think she will answer?
She smiled wanly. “You asked two questions.”
I pay you very well; you can answer two questions. “Choose whichever you want.”
“Well, Ethan,” her voice was sad and wistful, “you fuck very well. I’ve never had to fake an orgasm because you pleasure me, but you have never made love to me, not even when you started calling me by my name. The dresses, jewels, and money you give me are wonderful, but they don’t substitute love. So, yes, you’re a good lover and yes, you treat me well. Did I answer your questions?”
He looked at her for a long time wondering why he was so flawed that a simple statement as the one she had just uttered couldn’t move him. I don’t know how to do any more than that. I was never taught how.
She entwined their fingers and rose from the sofa. “Come back to bed. You have to wake up very early. A few more hours’ sleep will do you good.”
I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to dream. I don’t want any woman in my mind.