Toxic: A Dark Romance

by Zoe Blake

  Richard had asked me to come to Maxine’s this morning to start my wedding dress plans. I had no idea she had already cut the pattern on something.

  “What design are you using?”

  Maxine laughed, her bright red lips opening in a perfect circle. “Why, yours, of course! It is beautiful, chéri. Some of your best work.” Looping her arm through mine, she led me down a narrow hallway to a private lounge. “Love the outfit, chéri. I’m not used to seeing you in such modern fashions.”

  I straightened the black velvet vest over the short lavaliere-neck dress in cobalt blue silk with gold embroidery that had arrived from Yves Saint Laurent in Paris yesterday. I gestured to the tejus-embossed gold leather boots. “Do you think the boots are too much?’

  “No. No. No. My darling, when you date a man like Richard you cannot be afraid of a little flair and drama.”

  Ain’t that the truth.

  Maxine clapped her hands. A woman with icy blonde hair and long bangs that covered her eyes appeared with a glass of champagne on a tray decorated with red roses.

  Taking the crystal flute, I tilted my head to get a better look at her. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

  The woman glared and walked away without answering. At least I think she glared; I couldn’t tell because of the bangs. Perhaps she thought I was insulting her?

  “Here is the design,” announced Maxine as she strolled back into the room holding a large notebook filled with heavy card stock pages.

  I recognized one of my favorite wedding dress designs. It was just something I had been playing with, a classic bodice with a more modern angle for the draped flounce around the waist ending with the standard drape and lines of a traditional Victorian dress.

  “Your fiancé has chosen the most exquisite mulberry silk in a gorgeous champagne color. It will make your skin glow, chéri.”

  Fiancé.

  It was the first time I had heard it uttered out loud.

  Fiancé.

  Richard was my fiancé.

  Wow.

  There was a loud crash.

  Maxine and I both turned to see the blonde had dropped her tray.

  “Stupid fool,” scolded Maxine. She clapped her hands again. “Go and get the bodice and muslin for Miss Elizabeth.” Then turning to me, she sighed and said, “That girl is new this week and already I want to fire her.”

  She then redirected my attention back to my drawing. “Are you familiar with mulberry silk, chéri? Ah! My! It is glorious, so delicate and soft. It will float around you like a cloud and shimmer with each movement.”

  I was familiar with the silk. It was one of the most expensive fabrics in the world. It’s said they only fed the silkworms mulberry leaves. The result was a pure white, luxurious silk that allowed for perfect uniformity no matter what color you dyed it. It was the perfect, albeit extravagant, choice. Typical Richard, the best at any cost.

  I ran the tip of my finger over the pencil drawing of the rather intricate beadwork pattern I had created, depicting orange blossoms. I had designed it based on a piece of Victorian lace I had come across in a book, knowing orange blossoms were a traditional symbol of good fortune and popular in Victorian weddings after Queen Victoria herself wore a crown of orange blossoms for her wedding to Prince Albert.

  “Will you be able to recreate the beadwork?”

  “It will take some work, but for you? Of course! I have already ordered the Swarovski crystals, per Richard’s instructions. You must look perfect. After all, the world will be watching.”

  Smiling nervously, I raised my glass and took a long sip of champagne.

  We hadn’t even started truly planning the wedding yet and already I was grateful for Richard’s guidance. Apparently, marrying a member of the royal aristocracy was a really big deal in England.

  Maxine continued to prattle on about using fresh orange blossoms in a wreath of flowers in my hair for the veil instead of the more common diamond tiara and something about it causing a sensation. I wasn’t really listening.

  All I could think about was Richard and how I truly didn’t know what it would mean to become this powerful and influential man’s wife. Was I up to the task? I worried my lower lip as I feared the answer. Once again, I wished Richard was here. I always felt more confident about myself when he was around. He always took charge of every situation and I found I had become used to it.

  Of course, he couldn’t be here. It was probably improper for the groom to see the wedding dress in any form before the wedding.

  The clumsy blonde brought the muslin pattern and bodice into the lounge. While the rest of the dress was in the rough-cut muslin pattern, it looked as if the bodice was mostly finished. It was in the classic Victorian style, a stiffened silk reinforced with whalebone that laced up the back. I stared in awe as she placed it on the dress form.

  Even in the simple cream muslin, the dress looked stunning.

  Maxine fluffed the train as she stretched it across the floor. Even in the spacious lounge there was not enough room for the twenty-foot train. “Now of course this will all be lace with crystal beads,” said Maxine.

  Standing, I circled the dress form. Fingering one of the cap sleeves, I asked, “Do you think this makes it look too dated and… I don’t know… childish? Maybe we should change it to a sweetheart neckline with wide straps.”

  Maxine shook her head. “No. No. No. You just need to see it on.”

  She clapped her hands, and the blonde raced over to help me out of my velvet vest. Then the silk dress was whipped over my head, a little bit too roughly. There was no such thing as modesty in a dressmaker’s workshop. Left in only a thin lace peach bra and panty set with my gold boots, I crossed my arms over my breasts as I waited for them to unlace the bodice from the dress form.

  “Maxine. You have a phone call. It’s Eugenia. She says the dress is all the wrong color. She wanted lipstick red, not crimson red.”

  Maxine rolled her eyes. “Try on the bodice, Elizabeth. I will return.”

  The lounge felt strangely tense and awkward the moment Maxine left.

  “Arms up,” demanded the blonde.

  “Sure. I’m Lizzie, by the way.”

  She didn’t respond.

  So much for breaking the tension.

  She wrapped the bodice around my front and pulled it tight.

  “Wait! Something’s wrong!” I exclaimed as I pulled at the bodice. “I think a few pins are sticking me.”

  The blonde continued to pull roughly on the laces of the corset-style bodice, pulling it tighter and tighter.

  “Stop! Something’s wrong!”

  I could feel hundreds of pinpricks piercing my skin.

  I tried to wrench away but felt a kick to the backs of my knees. I crashed to the floor. The blonde placed her knee on my lower back and used her body weight to pull the corset laces even tighter.

  I could feel the familiar tugs and pulls of her knotting off the laces, trapping me inside the extremely tight corset as pins dug deep into my flesh.

  Using all my strength, I inhaled as much as I could with her weight on my body and the tight clasp of the bodice around my ribs and screamed, “Help!”

  “Elizabeth?”

  It was Richard calling out to me from somewhere in the workshop’s front.

  The weight of the blonde lifted off my body.

  “Richard! Richard! Help!” I cried.

  A moment later, Richard appeared in the lounge’s doorway with Maxine right behind him.

  “What the fuck is going on in here?” he roared as I struggled to rise to my knees.

  As I desperately grasped at the bodice, small coppery red stains appeared as blood from the pinpricks soaked through the expensive silk.

  Richard’s face hardened in rage when he saw the blood. Racing to my side, he knelt on the floor next to me and started pulling at the laces, trying to loosen them.

  I shook my head, only having enough breath to choke out one word. “Knotted.”

  By no
w my security detail as well as several other employees from the shop had gathered in the lounge to stare in horror at the strange spectacle.

  Richard furiously looked around. Spying my champagne glass, he grabbed it by the stem and smashed it against the table. “Hold still, baby.”

  Wrapping his arm around my shoulders to keep me as still as possible, he used the sharp broken edge of the champagne flute to slice through the corset laces. Immediately, the tight corset loosened and I could breathe.

  Clawing at the bloodstained silk, I pulled the offending garment away from my body but Richard placed his large warm hands over mine, stopping me.

  “Everybody out!” he demanded. Nodding to Maxine, he said, “Soak some cloths in warm water and get me something to use as a blanket.”

  Maxine’s bright red lipstick looked like a macabre slash across her overly pale face. Her usually chatty demeanor gone, all she could do was nod and turn to do his bidding.

  Clasping my tearstained cheeks, Richard captured my gaze. “Baby, I want you to keep your hands at your sides and let me do this, okay?”

  Pressing my lips together to keep from crying, I nodded my head.

  His hands looked enormous and almost menacing against the delicate cream silk, but his touch could not have been gentler. Reaching around my torso, he carefully pulled open the two halves of the corset. I cried out as one by one the pins were pulled out.

  “Shh… I know, baby. I know. This is almost over,” he murmured in my ear as he continued to pull the fabric away from my body.

  Once the bodice was released from my back and sides, he paused. We both knew the pins were dug in the deepest in my front and over my breasts.

  Looking down, I began to whimper, knowing it would hurt.

  “Look at me,” demanded Richard.

  His dark blue eyes caught my gaze.

  I felt a tug on the fabric and looked down to see small bloody pinpricks across my breasts.

  “Eyes on me, baby girl.”

  Never able to resist his command, I obeyed, drawing strength from him as he finally pulled the horrible garment off of me.

  Richard unleashed a vicious string of curses under his breath. Looking down, I could see why. Someone had placed hundreds of pins sticking straight out on the side of the fabric that would be against the skin. When you looked on the other side, all the pin tops were carefully hidden among the seams and whalebone stay stitching.

  This wasn’t an accident.

  “The blonde girl, it was her!” I blurted out.

  While obviously not meant to kill, they were meant to send a nasty message.

  With one of Richard’s men guarding the door to the lounge while he issued orders to the rest of his security crew, Richard wiped the already drying blood off my skin with the warm, wet cloths Maxine had brought. Each time I hissed from the sting, I could see the lines of his face harden.

  He was furious.

  Very, very furious.

  Raising my hand to his cheek, I tried to reassure him. “I’m fine, really. It was just a nasty scare.”

  Grasping my hand in his own, he placed a fervent kiss on my palm before placing our clasped hands over his heart.

  Just as Richard was wrapping a long length of soft wool over my shoulders, Harris arrived.

  “Secure the place. No one leaves,” ordered Richard.

  “Should I call the police?” asked Maxine.

  “No,” snarled Richard.

  Everyone in the room exchanged anxious looks. They knew what his refusal to involve the authorities meant.

  Swaddling me in my makeshift blanket, Richard lifted me in his arms. As he stormed out of the lounge, Harris kept pace. “Your Grace, it can’t be her. We took care of that situation months ago,” he declared emphatically.

  “Obviously not,” ground out Richard through clenched teeth.

  His arms tightened around me. I knew better than to ask any questions.

  Still, I couldn’t help thinking… maybe I wasn’t the only woman Richard liked to play games with?

  Chapter 18

  Richard

  “Find her,” I demanded.

  The men in the room shifted in their seats.

  Harris cleared his throat. “We can’t be certain it’s her. All the reports from Bahrain say she is still on Sheikh Hamad’s compound.”

  “I’m telling you. She’s in London. She got into this house,” I raged as I pounded the desk for emphasis, “into my bedroom. And now this attack on Elizabeth? I won’t fucking stand for it.”

  “We have a team of men en route to Bahrain now. There were no security cameras at Maxine’s but we are combing the area for CCTV footage. We also lifted some fingerprints from the scene. If it’s her, we’ll find her, Your Grace.”

  Turning away, I stared out the window. Dark grey clouds had rolled in. There were already several drops of rain clinging to the windowpane.

  A storm was coming.

  “It’s her,” I said to no one in particular.

  It was Nicole.

  Nicole Fleming.

  The woman I was with before I found Elizabeth.

  At first the relationship suited both of our needs. Nicole was from a privileged family. She had no ambition or need to work, so it reserved all of her attention for me. Something I had enjoyed at first but came to despise.

  The only thing we truly had in common was our mutual fascination with pain. In the beginning, I’d thought she understood. My interest was purely in how pain allowed the body to experience more intense pleasure. There was no need to use it for discipline with Nicole, perhaps because I didn’t care enough about her to want to control her behavior.

  Things were different with Elizabeth. The driving need to control her and everything in her world still burned deep within me. This fierce need to be everything and all to her. I begrudged the world everything about her… even one of her soft smiles… the world wasn’t worthy of them… didn’t deserve them. They were mine. Everything about Elizabeth was mine.

  Things had deteriorated quickly with Nicole.

  Suddenly, the kiss of a leather belt or whip wasn’t enough for her. She wanted more. Began to beg me for more pain. She wanted to bleed, to carry my mark. My scar.

  One dreadful night, my resolve weakened. I had wondered what it would feel like to have another human being be completely subservient to me, a blood bond. I was a man possessed. The more she begged for it, the harder I gave it to her. We crossed a line that night. I had become Frankenstein and she my monstrous creation.

  The next day, I went for a walk in St. James’s Park, wondering if I would ever cleanse my soul of the crimson stain.

  That was when I saw Elizabeth. She was sitting there on the grass in the sunshine, reading Frankenstein of all things. She’d looked so innocent and pure… so clean of any corrupting stain. I craved just the sight of her. Returning to the park each day for a week hoping just for a glimpse as I furiously collected all the information I could find about her, until the day I saw her reading Pride and Prejudice and I knew, in that moment, I would be her Mr. Darcy.

  I had become the villain of Nicole’s story, but I would be the hero of Elizabeth’s.

  I broke it off with Nicole that day. Sent her the usual gifts of diamonds and money. Nicole ran in the same social circles as me. She knew the score. She knew this was how these things were handled. Usually, the partners went their separate ways with no unseemly public displays, but Nicole would not relent.

  I did my best to hide all this from Elizabeth. That was until the day Nicole dared to accost her on the street. I thought I had made my displeasure known then. I thought Nicole finally understood it was over.

  Then came the night of the masquerade party. Although I couldn’t prove it, I was certain she had something to do with the gilded cage falling, putting Elizabeth’s life at risk. One of the men involved was photographed meeting with Nicole a few days later.

  It was then I knew I had to hide Elizabeth away… from the city… from e
verything for a while till I could figure out what to do with Nicole.

  It was decided by me and her rather influential family that Nicole would be safest out of the country and out of the public eye. I had a business associate in Bahrain who owned a compound where they indulged in some of the more extreme sexual pursuits Nicole had craved.

  For me, the solution was not so easy.

  The stain on my soul remained… as did the cravings.

  Sometimes I looked at Elizabeth and worried that one day I won’t be able to rein it in, that the beast would truly come unchained.

  Unlike with Nicole, I wanted to see my mark on Elizabeth.

  I wanted to brand her as mine. Each time I’d seen a welt from my belt on her creamy skin, my blood rose, wanting it to be permanent. I wanted to know that each time I saw her in public, that under her clothes, on her skin where only I could see, was a mark I gave her. Other times, I wanted to tattoo my crest on her body. Wanted to watch as the ink sank deep into her flesh, a permanent symbol of my ownership of her body and soul.

  The more she fought me, the stronger these urges to dominate and brand her became.

  The wicked side of me fed on her screams as much as her laughter.

  I knew that inevitably, one day, I would go too far. Push over that irredeemable line. My only hope was that by then Elizabeth will be so bound to me in the eyes of God and the law that she would have no choice but to forgive me.

  And if she didn’t?

  Deep down, I knew I was capable of doing anything… anything… to keep her by my side.

  It would be best for everyone if that was never… ever… put to the test.

  For now, I needed to focus on the latest threat to our relationship. Clearly Nicole had escaped the compound and returned. Now a more permanent solution would have to be found.

  I walked into our bedroom right as the doctor was finished examining her. Elizabeth, wrapped in one of my cashmere robes, sat on the chaise before a nice warm fire.

  The doctor patted her on the shoulder in what I was sure he meant to be a reassuring gesture. That didn’t stop a momentary surge of anger at the thought of another man touching what was mine. It was stupid of course, but part of me didn’t even want him to examine her. It was why I’d had to step out of the room. I was certain my baser instincts would cause us all embarrassment and impede her getting medical attention.