Knight Nostalgia

by Joey W. Hill

  Bernard was wrong. He was still hungry, but this was a new hunger, one that grew every day and was never filled. To watch her reaction to everything, listen to what she had to say, demand her full capitulation to him as her Dom in a million ways. Even knowing that every time she submitted, she won his full surrender to everything she was.

  Bernard and Winston were back. Her fingers in his grasp, Ben drew her to the main horseshoe-shaped counter to see what they were putting out on a black velvet covered board.

  It was the first time he was seeing the finished work, but that was fine. Because he knew Bernard, Ben knew it would be nothing less than perfect. He didn’t look at the rings, though. He looked at Marcie’s face as she looked at them.

  “Ben,” she said softly. Her fingers were trembling once more.

  The engagement band was platinum, the diamond a sparkling marquis, flanked by swirling metalwork that included three tiny flowers, two on one side of the diamond, the other centered opposite it. The wedding bands were also platinum, and Bernard turned them so she could see the inscription inside. On the inside of the thicker male band was the word “Always.” The female one said “Yours.”

  At Bernard’s nod, Ben picked up the engagement band, and took her hand. Marcie’s breath caught, color washing out of her cheeks. Slightly alarmed, he tightened his grip on her fingers. “Don’t you faint on me,” he warned. “That’s an order.”

  She choked on a half-laugh, but when he dropped to one knee, she paled even more, such that he put a hand on her hip. It was okay, though, because her other hand was on his shoulder, gripping. He found his throat suddenly dry enough he had to clear it.

  “I still have a lot of things to work through, Marcie. I can’t give you a date yet. But I can give you the promise that comes with this. If I’m capable of making that commitment at all, it will only be to you. Will you accept that?”

  “You never ask me anything,” she managed. “My Master simply tells me.”

  She spoke as if the two of them were alone. He was okay with that, too. Bernard and his son were as discreet as priests. Whatever they made of her words would stay with them.

  “On a lot of things, yes. Not on this. I’ll do what it takes to care for you, always. If it hurts your heart too much to wait, so be it. But if you can have faith in me, I need…time.”

  To make sure he deserved her, before there was no turning back and he ruined her life.

  She looked at him a long moment and slowly nodded her head. “I can give you time. For a while.”

  There was his brat. The little set to her chin said she wasn’t going to let him push it out too long, while the soft understanding in her eyes gave him what he needed. She hadn’t lived the life he had, didn’t understand the paths he’d walked, and he was damn glad she didn’t. If he was given a choice of going through it again or her having to walk that same route, he’d take it three times over to save her from coming anywhere close to the hell he’d survived.

  But even without that direct understanding, somehow she knew him. Knew how to connect with the darkness and need inside him, soothe and ease it, give him comfort and challenge both, in all the right ways.

  “Okay.” He slid the ring on her finger, a perfect fit. Her fingers closed over it. When he rose, he lifted her up on her toes, her arms circling his neck as he kissed her.

  A loud noise disrupted them a long minute later, and Marcie looked toward the store front. As she laughed and hid her face against his chest, Ben saw the windows of the limo were down, and the women were waving flutes of champagne and cheering while Max laid down on the horn in celebratory bursts.

  Ben looked toward a smiling Bernard and his son. “You really should have the police drive off the rabble hanging around in front of your store.”

  “Of course, Mr. O’Callahan. We’ll look into that.” Bernard had already placed the other two rings in a small silk-lined box that could be latched. After he did that, he handed the box over to Ben. “I wish you both the very best.”

  Reaching across the counter, Bernard clasped Marcie’s hand one more time, placing his other hand on top of it. “The marquis cut diamond is also known as a navette, meaning little ship, because of its shape. I think that is a very appropriate cut for an engagement ring, since it signifies the beginning of a voyage together.”

  Releasing her, he gave Marcie a wink. “I will look for your wedding notice in the society columns, so I can add it to the clippings of the many other happy couples whose rings I’ve had the privilege of designing.”

  “I’ll bring you a copy myself,” she promised. “Your work is beautiful.”

  “Not as beautiful as you are, my angel,” he said. “Keep him out of the fires, hmm?”

  So, yeah. It had been a nice, long day. After the cookout at Lucas’s, he took Marcie home to his Garden District house and reminded her thoroughly and several times, who her Master was. In the morning, he dropped a reverent kiss on her bare shoulder where she lay limply in the bed. As he always did—or rather, the routine they were establishing in their new life, living together—he left her aspirin and directions for what he expected of her that morning.

  Take a long, hot shower, put on one of my shirts or your silk robe. Magnanimously, he left that choice up to her, even knowing she’d choose one of his dress shirts. She always did. Then she was to eat the breakfast he’d left her and spend the morning, until he returned, reading on the small balcony at the end of the second floor hallway. It overlooked the alley garden below. He knew she had a new book she wanted to read, and he wanted her to take the time to enjoy it.

  He also liked thinking that she might get distracted a few times from the pages by the new addition to her finger. She’d spent most of the time last night—when he didn’t have her otherwise distracted—gazing at the sparkling diamond like a kid with the best Christmas gift ever.

  She was his distracting diamond, the one he wanted to gaze at all day today. But first he had to honor another promise he’d made her.

  His destination was the gallery, to collect the painting he’d bought for Cass. He drove one of the company Escalades, since he still hadn’t decided on a new car after he’d donated the McLaren to a charity auction. While he missed the sports car’s maneuverability, he didn’t have any problem negotiating the narrow streets, making his way around the carriage horses already at work. As he passed the café on Royal Street, he inhaled the scent of fresh baked beignets. He might pick up some of those on the way back. Powdered sugar tasted just fine on Marcie’s skin.

  It was morning, and the gallery opened at ten, so he expected he’d be the day’s first arrival. He was wrong.

  As he entered the store, he saw Cassandra, sitting on a bench that had been placed before the monastery painting.

  “She came in a half-hour ago,” the man standing at the desk said. Ben guessed this was the gallery owner, Mike Owens, according to the business cards in a holder on the polished desk. He was in his fifties, with silver gray fine hair pulled into a ponytail. He wore a maroon dress shirt with a silver tie and gray slacks. A spider web tattoo was visible above the starched collar. His gravel voice was at odds with the formally educated tone. It reminded Ben of Hector Elizondo in Pretty Woman.

  “Did she bring the bench with her?” Ben asked.

  “I put it there, so she’d have the option to sit,” Mike replied. “After she stood in front of the painting for about ten minutes.”

  Sometimes a storeowner did things because of the money a customer spent or could potentially spend. Cass had the style and presence to broadcast she could be a generous patron. But Ben didn’t get the ingratiating vibe from the man. He was simply observant…and kind. A combination Ben appreciated, and would remember. Ben guessed he’d been in the back yesterday, since he seemed to realize not only that Ben was the owner of the painting now, but that Ben also knew Cass.

  “She lost someone recently?” The gallery owner made a sympathetic noise at Ben’s nod of acknowledgment. “That piece do
es that. It’s the last work the artist did, and it was where he died. He told the monks he hoped to imbue it with all the serenity, compassion and spiritual hope he’d felt within their walls. Know it sounds crazy, but everyone who gets caught up in it is still in some stage of grief over someone who meant a lot to them. I almost hate to lose it, because it’s kind of nice to watch how it comforts people.”

  Since Ben had kept his attention mostly on Cass, he could see firsthand what Mike meant. There was a peace to her profile, a quietness. “Doesn’t look crazy at all,” he commented.

  Mike grunted in acknowledgement. “Take your time. We can pack it up to go whenever you’re ready. Mornings are quiet here.”

  Courteously, he turned his attention back to his laptop screen. Not to dismiss Ben, but to give him the chance to move away without requiring a response, something else Ben appreciated.

  Cass’s blue eyes shifted to Ben as he came toward her. He remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d come to them for a meeting at K&A, representing a client through Pickard Consulting, her employer. Unbeknownst to them at the time, Lucas already knew her, from a chance encounter when he’d been vacationing in the Berkshires. The electricity between her and him during the negotiations had been like watching an erotic light show, but there’d been a stronger, more captivating undercurrent. Each man of the K&A circle had fallen fast and hard for the woman he wanted, the submissive he intended to claim forever.

  Ben had felt an odd yearning during that meeting, which, at the time, he’d dismissed. He’d dismissed it when Peter had found Dana, and Jon had found Rachel, though the feeling had become stronger and stronger, until Marcie’s stubbornness had forced him to face what it was. An acknowledgment of his own loneliness, and that he was trapped in a cage he’d made for himself out of his past demons.

  Marcie had thrown herself right into that cage, taken on those demons head-on, and wrapped herself around his heart and soul, refusing to leave unless they walked out together. That struggle was still ongoing, as some of yesterday’s events had proven, but in the jewelry store, the bars had bent, just a little.

  When he’d met Cass, he hadn’t known she was connected by blood to the woman who would completely fuck up his certainty that he’d never be in a long-term relationship. Let alone be thinking of crazy things like marriage, or picking out rings.

  Cass loved Marcie as much as he did. But it wasn’t that side of her Ben was considering as he took a seat next to her on the bench. He slid an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her upper arm with easy strokes.

  “Did you guess?” he asked at last. “Or did Marcie tell you?” Since it was a short bench, they were hip to hip, her shoulder pressed against his chest.

  She let out a little sigh, relaxing against him. “Neither. At least not right away. I came back to buy it and Mr. Owens told me it had been purchased. Then I guessed.”

  “Mike,” the proprietor said, his hearing obviously sharp, since he sat nearly forty feet away and they were speaking in low tones.

  “Mike,” she repeated, her lips curving in a slight smile.

  They sat in silence for another few moments before Ben spoke again. “You wouldn’t let me buy you anything yesterday.”

  “No.”

  “I wasn’t trying to disrespect that,” he said. “Marcie wanted me to buy the painting for you.”

  She nodded.

  “I also wasn’t trying to buy you off. Make amends with a fucking bribe.”

  He hadn’t meant to curse, but the first sentence resurrected some of what he’d felt yesterday. It had apparently built up acid in his gut that hadn’t dispelled.

  She turned her gaze to him fully, and the regret he saw there disintegrated some of it. “Oh, Ben. I’m sorry you thought that I felt that way. I didn’t. Not at all.”

  He tightened his arm around her shoulders, but suddenly needed some space. Withdrawing and rising, he walked a couple steps toward the painting and stared up at it. Fuck, the artist had succeeded in his intent. A man could get lost in the swirling colors and textures he’d used to depict the monastery, and the way it nested in the deep forest. The inviting depth was the right balance between coolness and warmth.

  The longer Ben looked, the more it felt like he wasn’t looking up at a picture from inside of a gallery, but up at the monastery itself, from the floor of a thick forest. Standing on rich earth formed from the decay of leaves and passage of seasons, he could gaze up at the gray and brown timeless stone, more a part of the mountain than a separate structure built upon it. One could climb upwards to it, reach that tranquility.

  There were no faces to those Ben had lost earliest. His mother had abandoned him as a baby, and he had no clue who the sperm donor was that he would never call a father. But as he looked at the painting, those faceless people passed through his mind, quickly overtaken by Jonas Kensington and brusque Golda, the closest thing to parents he’d had. But he had brothers. Matt, Peter, Lucas, Jon. He had a family.

  Peace beckoned from the canvas. Ben wasn’t much of a nature guy, but even he felt its pull. Standing in its shadow, he felt what else it could summon. Truth. Uttered without accusation or defensiveness.

  “I get it, you know,” he said. “You had one sibling self-destruct from his addiction. You don’t want to see Marcie go down a similar road.”

  He turned to face Cass. Her intelligent blue eyes registered surprise at his words. “You think love can be like an addiction,” she said slowly, more an observation than a question.

  “The way she goes about it, the line is thin.” Marcie gave her whole heart and soul to it, refusing to see any roadblocks or warning signs. “I won’t marry her unless I’m a hundred percent sure,” he said fiercely. “That’s a promise. I’m not going to set her up to be disappointed.”

  Cass’s expression became even more thoughtful. “I’ve been a mother longer than I’ve been anything else in my life. Did you realize that?”

  Not sure where she was going with that, Ben remained silent and let her continue. “Once Lucas and the rest of you helped me, so I could finally step back and take a breath, I realized it. My brothers and sisters, they became my kids when our parents weren’t up to the task. Hell, my mother was as much of a child as any of them.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her hands. In absent habit, she turned the wedding ring set Bernard had mentioned. The emerald cut diamond reflected the numbers-oriented Master who’d given it to her; brilliantly geometric. Bernard had set it in a nest of diamond-studded tendrils that curled tight around it in asymmetrical array. The wedding ring was a twisted ribbon style that hugged up to the base of the other perfectly. She looked at Ben again, a poignant smile on her face.

  “The last really teenage thought I remember having was when I was fourteen. I asked a boy to the Sadie Hawkins dance. His name was Mitch, and he had red hair and a nice smile. He’d smiled at me in Spanish class. I remember being so excited about that dance. Thinking about his arms around me, and hoping we’d have a slow dance. Maybe he’d kiss me.”

  Shadows clouded her blue eyes. “My father left the weekend before the dance. He’d taken off before, for a few weeks at a time, but somehow my mother knew it was going to be far longer this time. She took to her bed and wouldn’t leave it. Jeremy went off that weekend with friends and got high. He already smoked pot, but was starting to transition to the hardcore stuff. I stood Mitch up, because I was taking care of my siblings.”

  Ben returned to sit beside her. He took her hand, clasped it on her knee. “That sucks,” he said sincerely. Though a missed Sadie Hawkins dance was hell and gone from his reality, he knew about lost childhoods. He’d always expected that was part of why, out of all the women, Cass was closest to Savannah. Savannah had no clue what a normal childhood felt like, either, but she was fiercely determined that Angelica would have one.

  “It was a long time ago. But it’s necessary to set up my point. Which is this; Jon’s right.” Cass tossed him an amused look. “You reall
y are like a thirteen-year-old boy.”

  “Thanks. I’ll just go back to my comic books and constant masturbation now.”

  She made a face at him. “I don’t mean it that way. A thirteen-year-old is so certain he can be a superhero when he needs to be. None of us can a hundred percent guarantee that we’ll make someone happy, Ben. What did you tell Dana about having a baby? Why she should risk it, when it could crash and burn.”

  He grimaced. “I told her she had to take it on faith.”

  “Faith and a lot of work.” Cass nodded. “A willingness to constantly open yourself to failure, make yourself vulnerable. That’s not easy for you. You think you’ll hurt her.”

  “I already proved that, didn’t I?”

  Her lips tightened. “Yes, you did. But you also learned something about yourself. There’s only one thing you want more than never hurting her like that again.”

  “No,” he said decisively. “There’s nothing I want more than that.”

  “Not true,” she countered. “You want her to love you. You need her to love you. Because you’re a better person with that. You can continue to be even better, every day, with it. And you know without it, you can’t. You think that makes you selfish, and it would. If she didn’t love you so much sometimes I worry she couldn’t breathe without you.”

  At his startled expression, she nodded, her own somber. “You’re right. She feels things so strongly. But love isn’t an addiction. It’s one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and that’s never more evident than when watching the two of you together. She’s your match. I saw it yesterday, whenever you two were particularly wrapped up in one another. Which was most of the time.”

  Cass nudged him, gentle playfulness. “None of our pairings are hard on the eyes, but it’s more than that. The two of you, you’re like Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Solomon and Sheba. These pairings that are somehow larger than life. You capture attention with what’s between you, it’s so strong.”