“He’s your boyfriend?”
“Nope,” I said. “More like a really domineering older brother.”
“He’s gone now?”
“Completely. For good. Not coming back ever.”
A single cricket began to sing from a row of round hedges. “It’s almost like summer tonight,” Julien said. “You want to see the garden?”
He put out his hand and I took it. Sandals crunching gravel, I weaved beside him down the pathway between luxuriant beds of flowers. I could smell his scent, dark tobacco combined with a vaguely stomach-turning cologne.
The hotel suddenly seemed a long way away. All I could think about was Marc in his room asleep, or poring over real estate materials. If he was thinking of me at all, he was imagining the relief he’d feel after he ditched the American drama queen at the airport.
When Julien hugged me near the lavender, I couldn’t resist. My legs were too unsteady, and I had to grab him to keep from falling backward. I patted his back lightly, not feeling the slightest arousal or attraction.
It occurred to me that this might not even be happening. Maybe I was in a drunken doze in my room and it was all an incredibly realistic delusion.
“I hope for this all night,” Julien said. He lowered his head for a kiss, his mouth opening like a sinkhole.
“Oh, no,” I muttered, turning my head away. “Yuck.”
His lips were an inch from my cheek when he suddenly jerked back. Out of the darkness Marc had appeared, his face demonic. Gripping Julien by the back of the neck, he shoved him into a large rosemary bush.
“Oh, my God!” I shrieked. Julien scrambled to his feet, fists raised, gravel spinning out from under his shoes.
Marc rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an ass. Though that may be more than you can manage.”
Chest heaving, Julien glared at him but dropped his hands. He swore fiercely in French and kicked a stone bordering a row of herbs.
“I’m sorry!” I called to Julien, but he was already tramping off across the grass.
I turned to Marc, my cheeks flaming from wine and embarrassment. “What are you doing here?” I said, the words sticking to my tongue. “I thought you went to bed. You said I could –”
“I came down to save you from yourself,” he growled, pulling me up the path by my elbow. “Apparently I barely made it in time.”
“You were inside watching me?” I asked, my anger only partially exaggerated.
“Watching you do something insanely stupid, yes. This is not the way to deal with what’s happening between us. I can’t believe I have to tell you that.”
I stumbled over the threshold into the lounge. Half the people at the bar turned to stare. “So you care now? You hardly looked at me all night.”
Marc’s fingers bit into my arm. “How would you know? You couldn’t take your eyes off the waiter.”
“Damnit – let go,” I said, trying to squirm away. “You’re hurting me.”
“Am I? I know the feeling well.”
“You know the feeling?” I said as he hauled me through the empty restaurant and up the stairs. “We’re not even together anymore. You’ve made that pretty obvious, sticking me in a separate room.”
“I wanted to give you space.”
“And I have plenty of that now, don’t I? So much space I don’t know what to do with it all.”
He squinted at me, his gaze dark and bitter. “Why are you acting this way? You think I like seeing you move on to your next conquest in front of me? You did it with that imbecile Robert at my father’s house, too. No wonder the bastard was all over you. You practically seduced him across the table.”
“I was trying to make you jealous,” I said as he dragged me down a hallway.
“Oh!” he laughed. “Is that what this waiter thing is about, too? More manipulation and dishonesty? You know, things might be very different if you’d been straight with me.”
He opened the door to his room and pushed me inside. There were papers scattered across the desk, shirts slung over chair backs.
“Tell me this,” he said, slamming the door, “if I hadn’t come out just now, would you be fucking that kid in a back room somewhere? On your knees sucking him off?”
I sat clumsily on the edge of the bed, hoping the room would stop revolving if I stayed still. “I’m trying to figure out why you care.”
Marc stood in front of me, his face red and his hands clenched. Gradually, his color drained and he looked very tired. “Then you don’t know me very well,” he said.
He went into the bathroom and closed the door. I lay back, watching the ceiling spin until I was too sick to keep my eyes open. I turned on my side and clung to the bed like a raft in a storm, knowing that I’d made everything worse, and that nothing I could do would make it better.
“I love you, Marc,” I whispered into the comforter.
The bathroom door opened – or maybe the sound was coming from inside my aching head. I tried to sit up but a wave of drowsiness swept over me. A moment later, I was asleep.
When I woke, the room was dark.
There was a sheet over me. It was four in the morning by the ticking bedside clock. Marc lay on the other side of the mattress taking slow, deep breaths.
I ran a hand down my body – completely naked. I sat up slowly, head pounding but my stomach a little better. In the moonlight I could see my dress folded over the arm of a loveseat and my shoes under a table.
I lay back down, afraid to jostle the bed and wake Marc. The sound of the clock seemed to drill through my brain, every second a reminder that our time together was almost over. And all I’d done to extend it was drink too much and maul a waiter. In two days Marc would vanish from my life forever.
I couldn’t just lie here and let it happen. I had to try something. Anything.
The sheets rustled as I turned toward him. I reached out and touched his smooth chest, then skimmed my fingers along the strapping curve of his shoulder. For a minute, he didn’t move. I held my breath and slid closer. Then I felt his hands on my waist as he pulled me against him.
He kissed me slowly, searchingly, as if he were dreaming. At first I thought he was, but then his eyes flickered open and I felt his heart thundering against my breasts. In an instant he was on top of me, naked and hugely stiff, his breath warm on my cheek.
I opened my legs for him and he entered me, driving his entire length into me with a low moan. I wrapped my thighs around his waist, drawing him into me as deeply as I could, tears filling my eyes. At last I had him again, if only for a few short minutes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep.
“Everything. Tonight. Keeping secrets from you.”
He shook his head and raised my ankles, setting them on his shoulders. Bending my knees back, he shoved himself inside me with such strength that I gasped and clutched the sheets.
“Marc.” I waited for him to look at me, to talk to me as he always had, but he kept his eyes closed, fucking me with a savagery I’d never felt from him. On and on it went, one harsh thrust after another, until my hips ached and my back felt raw.
“Marc?”
He opened his eyes as if being dragged back to a world he didn’t recognize. “What?”
“Where are you?”
“Right here.”
“No, you’re not. I can tell –”
“Shhh.” He put a finger over my mouth and began to move again, dropping his head so I couldn’t see his face. I lay rigidly under him, my body responding but shame burning in my heart.
So this was “normal” sex with Marc.
I’d never have believed it could feel so degrading. When he was dominant I was his focus, the one thing he couldn’t refuse. On those nights he’d given himself to me completely, but now I had only a shell of a man and a memory. Not really Marc at all.
He came with a grimace, his body shaking violently against mine. In one brief, depressing moment, it
was over. I hadn’t wanted to come and hadn’t tried to. Had he even noticed? Had he fantasized about someone else so he could climax?
He rolled onto his back, his breath slowing. Though he rested one hand on my ribs, it seemed obligatory, the final act in a sad charade. I felt used and dirty, like nothing more than a receptacle for a base physical urge.
I wouldn’t stay in his bed a minute longer.
I got up in the dark and put on my dress. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Back to my room,” I said.
“Sophie,” he said, sitting up. “Wait. Please.”
After slipping on my shoes, I found my handbag on the floor near the closet. Without another word, I opened the door and left.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We hardly looked at each other the next morning at breakfast.
I picked at a bowl of fruit and sipped my second cup of too-strong coffee. My head threatened to burst every time I looked toward the window, which gleamed with dazzling sunshine. Julien serviced a row of tables across the room, his chin scratched from his dive into the rosemary bush. He glanced at me with soulful eyes and I gave him a brief apologetic smile.
Marc didn’t even notice. He read his newspaper as if it held the secret to life, not glancing up until our plates were cleared.
“Shall we get going?” he said in a business-like monotone, pushing back his chair. “We don’t want to keep Matthew waiting.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, matching his coldness with my own.
In the car, neither of us said a word. The radio was all static, leaving us to sit in grueling silence. In spite of everything, my body still ached for the addictive feeling of his skin against mine. I was in full withdrawal, my nerves raw and my stomach queasy.
Hand gripping the armrest, I began to count down the kilometers until I could escape the car. I was picturing jumping out into the road when we came to a farmhouse on the outskirts of a picturesque town.
“Thank God,” I whispered, a little too loudly. Matthew grinned and waved from the front steps.
“If you could at least pretend not to hate me, I’d appreciate it,” Marc said, parking next to Matthew’s car.
“You know what?” I blurted. “The last thing I needed was to feel violated again.”
My words rang out like a shot. Marc stared straight ahead, his fingers clamped around the steering wheel.
“A lot went on last night. This is not the time or place to talk about it.”
“Oh, okay. Let me know when it’s convenient for you,” I said, and threw open the car door.
I pasted on a happy face for Matthew, hoping he wouldn’t notice my hoarse voice and bloodshot eyes. Marc followed, calling out a forced, “Good morning!”
Matthew opened the door with a giant tarnished key and led us inside. “The estate was built in 1885 and used to produce cognac,” he said.
“That’s what I’m looking for,” Marc said, so falsely chipper he wasn’t fooling anyone. “History.”
I trudged behind him from room to room, each decorated in some variation of depressing floral. The ceiling sagged from water damage and the kitchen wallpaper was peeling at the edges, as if it didn’t have the strength to stay up anymore.
“There’s plenty of history here, all right,” I muttered under my breath. “Plenty of termites, too, I bet.”
“The house seems to be in relatively good shape,” Marc said to Matthew. “It just needs an interior designer and some cosmetic work.”
While Marc took pictures of the rooms with his phone, I asked Matthew about the process of financing a vacation home in France. I did have an article to write, after all, and the showing was meant to be research. But every time I glanced at Marc, the same truth rang like a cymbal through my head.
He was gone.
He might be walking around, a tantalizing vision of masculine beauty, but the man I’d known had retreated to a place I couldn’t go. I’d tried talking him out of it, provoking him, and fucking him, but nothing had worked. Nothing ever would.
His phone bleated from another room, what sounded like miles away. My heart shrank as I imagined who it might be. An ex-girlfriend, or a pretty young partner at his firm. I heard his voice somewhere above me, quiet and deep. Always soothing, even now. It stopped after a minute, and I heard his footsteps come down the stairs and stop behind me.
I turned around. His face was white.
“Marc?”
He stared at me. As I stared back, I saw his control collapse.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Eleanor.”
“Why? Is something the matter?”
“It’s my father,” he said, his voice stunned, almost hollow. “He’s in hospital in Lyon. They’re not sure he’s going to live.”
The drive north took more than two hours.
Eleanor was on a flight from London and out of reach. Cell service was spotty, and Marc was able to speak to a doctor at the hospital only once during the drive. His father was unconscious and undergoing tests. It could be a stroke, a heart attack, a seizure.
“Madeleine found him in the front hallway this morning,” Marc said when he hung up. “Lying unconscious on the floor with his head bleeding. In his pajamas, for Christ’s sake.”
“Why was he alone?” I asked.
“She had the weekend off to visit her daughter. He could have been lying there for two days.”
I reached over the center console and took his hand. His fingers gripped mine with almost painful force. Finally he was himself again, the Marc I’d always known.
Maybe it wasn’t right to be glad to have him back under the circumstances, but I was. “Eleanor will be surprised to see me,” I said.
“She probably knew about us anyway, Sophie.”
“She asked me about it last week,” I said. “I told her I wasn’t interested in you.”
“Well, it’s our business, yours and mine. We don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
The traffic was heavy on the highway and dark clouds were rolling in on a buffeting wind. Marc called the hotel and arranged to have our things packed and our luggage dropped at his father’s house, half an hour from Lyon. After two wrong turns, he found the hospital and parked, sitting back with a long sigh.
“Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s time.”
“Do you want me to come in? I mean…because of last night, I’d understand –”
“I don’t feel very good about last night,” he broke in. “And I want you to come in with me. I need you to. Please.”
I got out and walked with him across the parking lot. Outside the front doors, he took my hand.
The building was gray concrete, with the same bright, noisy interior of all hospitals, the same acrid smell of disinfectant. We waited for less than a minute in reception before a young doctor came out in blue scrubs with cloth booties over her shoes.
“Monsieur Brayden?” She and Marc spoke in hushed French, then she took us down a hallway to a private room.
Madeleine sat at Simon’s bedside, her eyes red. Her voice broke as she told Marc the story in French, which he interpreted to me. She’d gone to the chateau that morning, nearly hitting Simon with the door when she opened it. There was a pool of dried blood and a broken glass on the floor. Simon hadn’t opened his eyes even when she’d shaken him and shouted his name.
While Madeleine went for coffee, Marc and I stood by his father’s bed, our fingers linked. Everything else – Trevor, last night, what might happen in the future – seemed small and insignificant. It was just us without the complications of sex, the past, or secrets.
We sat with Simon until a nurse wheeled him away for more tests. Just after two orderlies brought him back, Eleanor arrived with a brisk, practical air.
“Sophie?” she said, frowning.
“Hi, Eleanor. I’m so sorry.”
She started to speak, then shook her head as if my presence were the least of her worries.
“How long have you been he
re?” she asked Marc. “Where’s the doctor? Why don’t we know anything yet? It’s been hours.”
As if she’d been summoned, the doctor came into the room with a manila folder in her hand. Though her accent was strong, I understood most of what she said.
Simon had fallen after a night of drinking. Though he had no bleeding in his brain, he had a hairline fracture of the skull. Even worse, his blood tests showed that he was killing himself with alcohol. He might recover from the fall but die from liver disease. If he didn’t stop drinking now, it would be too late.
As soon as the doctor left, Marc turned to Eleanor. “I don’t care what he says, he can’t live alone anymore. That’s the end of it.”
Eleanor looked at him, her hands twisted together. “For God’s sake, Marc, didn’t you hear what the doctor said? He may not live at all.” And then she started to cry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A cold rain was falling when Marc and I got to the chateau.
He’d insisted on bringing his father a change of clothes in the morning, even if it was less convenient to the hospital. The hotel had delivered our luggage, which sat by the front door barely out of reach of the storm.
Marc wheeled the suitcases into the foyer and switched on the chandelier. Though Madeleine had cleaned up the blood, one of Simon’s slippers lay at the bottom of the stairs. I shivered, almost wishing we were sleeping on cots in the hospital room with Eleanor.
After carrying our bags up to his bedroom, Marc lit a fire in the huge stone fireplace in the kitchen and took out the cold roast beef Madeleine had left for us. He mixed a salad and opened a bottle of wine while I set the table with Simon’s heavy monogrammed silverware. We sat side-by-side facing the fire, a single candle burning between us.
“I’ve always known something like this could happen,” Marc said, pouring Beaujolais into my wineglass. “I should have hired someone to watch him full time.”
“He’s an adult,” I said. “From what little I know of him, he’s very stubborn.”
“Stubborn or not, what happened today is a result of my inaction.”
I sliced into the tender, peppered beef. “Eleanor could have taken him,” I said. “She has a family to help her.”
Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) Page 12
