“Watch it.” Teo’s eyes were still closed as if not seeing Jacques would somehow made the truth about Isabella less real.
“It’s the truth, Teo, whether you want to face it or not. You may not want Isabella to be the woman she is, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t that woman. You said it yourself. You can’t deny what you are. You can’t. I can’t. Isabella can’t.”
Teo’s shoulders collapsed and he buried his face in his hands.
Shit, now Jacques felt sorry for the guy. “I understand why you’re struggling, Teo. I do, but it doesn’t change anything. She trusts me. You can too.”
“Yeah, and I’m a prima ballerina.”
“You’re making this harder than it has to be.”
Teo met his eyes. “She deserves a crown, man, a fucking crown.”
Of course she did and he was a rich man. A very rich man. He shouldn’t have to point out the obvious, but…“I plan to give the world to her and I have the means to do it,” Jacques said.
“I meant a metaphysical crown, dumbass. She doesn’t care about your money.”
“What can I say, Teo? You can scream and threaten me until you’re old and grey, but I’m not letting her go. I lost her once because I treated her like the women from my past. I won’t make that mistake again. Isabella is my future. The woman I’ve waited my whole life to find. I love her and I always will. I would swear it on my honor if I had any, but I’m telling you the truth.”
“And you show your love by putting a collar around her neck, you twisted fuck. If you had a drop of decency you would do it right.”
Teo didn’t say the word “marriage,” but Jacques heard it loud and clear. His eyes fell. Damn, he didn’t want to face this.
“Seems we both know things about Isla that we’d rather ignore,” Teo smirked. “Think about her for a minute, Jacques. Not the woman you want her to be, but the woman she is. What's most important to her?” Teo asked.
“Family,” Jacques answered without hesitation.
“Give the man a prize,” Teo mocked. “And what does a woman who values family dream about? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not leather and dungeons.”
When Jacques didn’t fight back, Teo continued. “Do you know what her favorite game was when she was a little girl? It was dress-up. She would dress up and we would pretend to get married. The family didn’t eat meat for an entire week so mi abuelo could save the money to buy the materials for mi abuela to make a princess dress for Isla. White satin, a poufy skirt, sequins, lace. All the trimmings. Isla said someday she would marry a real prince and live in a castle filled with their babies. That was her happily-ever-after when she was a kid and it still is.
“Doms are not princes, Jacques. That’s why she struggles so hard with what the adult woman needs. If I could convince her to run from you, I would, but I can’t, so it falls to you.” Teo looked him straight in the eye and leveled his challenge. “If you truly love her, Jacques Meszaros, you wouldn’t collar her. You would marry her.”
*****
The plane was very quiet on the flight back to Paris. Only the gentle hum of engines and the sound of Jacques’s heavy breathing. The weekend had worn them both out, but Isabella couldn't sleep.
She pressed her fingers against her forehead. This was the worst one yet. In the flurry of her crazy family, she’d forgotten to take her medication. Or maybe she didn't want to. And now she was paying the price. She sat up to slip away and sneak a pill.
"Oh, ow." Her hands shot to her temples. She froze, hoping the outburst hadn't woken her far too observant lover. No such luck.
“Everything alright, Paradis?”
“Headache. It’s nothing. Too much wine,” she lied.
As Jacques focused on her his eyes became more than a little bit concerned.
“Go back to sleep, Jacques.”
Damn, she was going to have to schedule a visit with Dr. Boucher. The thought made her want to cry. Before she did, she stood and turned away.
Copper eyes, fully awake and probing, greeted her when she returned from the bathroom. Jacques wasn’t kidding when he said he was hard wired to take care of people he cared about. It was like a switch flipped in him when things went awry. No way she could keep lying to him, but how could she tell him the truth?
“I can’t resist Spanish wines. Tannins. My bad.” She shrugged.
“If you say so, Isabella, but I want you to see a doctor when we get back to Paris.” As her lips parted to protest, he eased back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “In case you don’t know it already, that’s an order.”
I’ve already seen more than my share. “Alright, Jacques.”
Jacques looked tired. Talk about dragging a guy out of his comfort zone. His expression when la familia swarmed him was priceless. He managed to regain his characteristic charm by the time the first smiling Spaniard swallowed him in a bear hug, but she didn’t miss the flash of panic as they walked into that reception hall.
To her family, Jacques wasn’t a gazillionaire tycoon philanthropist, although Tía Sophia did mention the repairs needed for the roof of San Sebastian church more than once. To them, he was “Isla’s boyfriend,” the first one they’d ever met and to say that la familia was enthusiastically obsessed about him was an understatement.
Then came the frightening four. Of course, her brothers acted like she was an infant and Jacques was some creep threatening the innocence of their precious baby sister. Asking Jacques to endure them was definitely too much, but she loved him even more that he'd done it.
“Thank you for this weekend. It meant the world to me.”
“You’re welcome. You mean the world to me, Isabella. How’s the head?”
“Still hurts.”
He kissed the crest of her forehead. “Come here.”
A warm hand touched her forearm and pulled her onto his lap. Her head fell forward as he began to knead the base of her neck. No pill could match those magic fingers.
Jacques, I have to be honest with you about something. The words sat on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t manage to make them come out of her mouth. Not this time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that.
She switched to an easier topic. “What did you think of my brothers?”
His hands moved higher to her scalp. “They're good men.”
Her voice filled with sarcasm. “Very diplomatic, Jacques.”
“How so?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“You didn't say you liked them.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t. They love you and want what’s best for you. That makes them good men.”
“You’re what’s best for me.”
He chuckled and his voice filled with the same sarcastic tone she’d used on him. “I think it might take a little more than one weekend to convince your brothers of that. You got a couple of spare decades, pretty lady?”
She felt her shoulders tense, but his hands were on her head so maybe he wouldn’t notice. Yeah, right.
“I apologize, Isabella. I know you don’t like to talk about the future.”
She whipped around to look at him. “What? Why would you say that?”
“Because you never do. I know the future scares you.”
“How? How could you know that?” she said more to herself than to him.
“Sometimes it’s more about what’s not said, than what is,” he replied softly.
The patient look in his eye made the guilt at shutting him out spike. “Does that upset you?”
He smiled and it was almost shy. “I want forever, Isabella.”
Her fear of forever quickened the heartbeat in her chest. “What if forever isn’t long enough, Jacques?”
“Don’t measure what we have in time, Isabella. Eternity with you wouldn’t be long enough. I’m grateful for every kiss, every smile, every sigh. No matter how long our forever is. I love you and I always will.”
But you don’t know the truth.
As the silence settled ba
ck around them, she turned her head away and let her hopeless tears fall.
19
A Decent Proposal
Jacques slipped the key into the lock. His hand was shaking, literally shaking with the struggle to enter the apartment. He hadn’t been here since before Nicolai’s opening all those months ago. He would like to lie and say he’d been caught up with business or Jerard or the damn weather, but that wasn’t the truth. He may be a bastard, but he wasn’t a liar. He hadn’t come here because he didn’t want to face himself.
This place used to make him so proud. A shrine to the years spent crafting his reputation as a Dom. He thrived on what that reputation afforded him within the elite circles he ran in. Lovers came here to endure any depraved, humiliating or painful thing he asked simply to be associated with him. But now, as he walked into his dungeon, a feeling of disgust washed through him.
The room was cold, just enough to be uncomfortable, and smelled of leather and antiseptic. He flipped every light switch. The harsh light bouncing off the hard surfaces only enhanced the chill. Empty eyes scanned his collection of toys. No, not toys. This room housed the tools of a twisted mind and he’d perfected the use of every depraved object around him. Stadium lights couldn’t remove the darkness of his dungeon.
The things he did, sexually or otherwise, to the women he brought here, the things he said, what he made them wear, made them do, it was all carefully calibrated for effect. A head fuck, a sick game, and they loved him for it. He never loved them back. He loved that they lived for the scraps of his affection, loved the shock and awe his exploits inspired, loved the sycophantic adulation, but never loved a single woman who stepped foot over his threshold.
Marry her.
Teo’s words cut him to the quick. He pictured the little girl in a white princess dress, the sparkle in her eyes as she dreamed of her prince. The thought of Isabella in this place made him quake the way her brother had earlier. Teo was right. Isabella deserved diamonds. Not around her neck. Around her finger. So he came here to face the challenge.
This was a reckoning.
Can I be a husband? Stand by a woman through sickness and good times, bad health and…hell, I don't even know the words, let alone how to live them. Jacques Meszaros was no prince. The man who lorded over this dungeon was not the marrying type. Definitely not.
Control over minds. Control over bodies. That was all he was after, but that was before. Before Isabella. Jacques, B.I., he chuckled to himself even though there was no humor in the thought that the man after Isabella may simply be the same guy with delusions of redemption.
Can I really be a different man or am I full of shit?
The fact that he couldn’t answer his own question made him furious. He flew around the room ripping the symbols of his depravity from the walls, throwing the drawers, the shelves, and hurling things in every direction. Glass shattered, metal clanked against the marble floor, cabinets toppled. Every object he touched tore into his soul, crowding his mind with now bitter memories. He fought with everything he had until blood covered his hands, sweat poured over his skin and his throat was scratched raw with screaming.
He lost.
The ghosts of his past brought him to his knees amidst the wreckage. He pressed his forehead against the cold floor and wept. Destroying this place didn’t destroy the darkness. The darkness lived inside of him. The past could never be erased. Jacques Meszaros was nothing more than a monster who lured his prey into his dark world and he would never be worthy of a woman like Isabella Rey.
In that horrible moment of shattered hope, the prophecy he’d heard as a teenager slayed him, mocking him with the dream of a destiny he would never possess.
*****
“Why are you crying?”
Doctors generally sucked with patient emotions, especially ones like Dr. Boucher, but she gave him credit for trying.
“I’m in love,” Isabella choked out through her angry sobs.
“Who’s the lucky man?” Dr. Boucher asked brightly, trying to hide his obvious discomfort at having inadvertently ventured into a discussion of her love life.
“Are you making fun of me, Doctor?” She cracked a humorless smile.
Confusion wrinkled that confident brow. Dr. Boucher was a good man, a serious man, with no sense of humor whatsoever.
She swiped her cheeks suddenly even more annoyed and snapped at him, “How can you say he’s lucky?”
“I say it because he is.” The good doctor looked confused.
It was wrong to direct all the anger inside of her at him, but it had to come out somewhere and he started this by pushing her about what was going on in her head. “Jacques Meszaros is not lucky. He fell in love with me.” Isabella pointed a finger into her chest so hard, it hurt.
Dr. Boucher didn’t seem the type to be easily impressed, but the mention of Jacques’s name made him sit straighter.
“You know Jacques?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Now who’s making fun of whom? Of course, I know him, or better to say, I know of him. I’ve been introduced a few times at fundraising events, seen his signature on scores of checks. He’s a good man, Isabella.”
She made a short, sharp sound. “A very good man who wants a future with me and I can’t offer it to him. You of all people should know that.”
“I know no such thing.” Now Dr. Boucher was snapping at her. “You haven’t told Jacques what you’re going through.” It wasn’t a question or a judgment
She shot to her feet and glowered across the desk. “Would you?”
He stood and glowered right back. “I wouldn’t lie to someone who loves me.”
“I’ve tried to tell him, I can’t.” Her fist slammed down on the desk. Maldita sea, doesn’t anybody understand that I can’t!
Dr. Boucher didn’t react to her little outburst. “You can. You simply choose not to,” he said a bit too matter-of-factly.
Her head fell. “I’ll hurt him.”
Not one to skim around the heart of the matter, he hit it directly. “You’ll hurt him more by lying. What’s really holding you back, Isabella?”
Without meeting his eyes, she gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know.”
He growled, literally growled, “After everything we’ve been through together,” and waved his hand between them, “you have the audacity to lie to me too. Well, that’s a fine thank you right there.”
No matter how angry she was at herself, she couldn’t bear the thought of Dr. Boucher being angry with her. “I’m sorry,” she offered weakly.
“Don’t give me an empty apology, Isabella. Talk to me.”
“I want to be honest, but all I do is lie. Every day is another lie and I can’t find the courage to stop.”
His hand reached across the desk to lift her chin, forcing her to look him straight in the eye. “It’s not courage you need, Isabella. It’s hope.”
Hope. The one cursed thing she’d never seemed to be able to believe in. She didn’t dare hope that she and Jacques could share a future. She’d spent months running from that hope, trying to pretend it wasn’t what she wanted or needed from her life, however long or short that may turn out to be.
“I’m afraid to hope.” The dreaded words slipped past her lips in a voice so small even she could hardly hear them.
“The headaches are from stress, Isabella. There are no signs of recurrence.”
“Sí,” she mumbled, refusing to let his reassurance penetrate.
He held her watery gaze. “You want me to tell you that you’re not going to die.”
She looked into the eyes of her champion willing him to say the words she wanted to hear. “Yes, actually. I do.”
He cocked his head to the side, his expression apologetic. “I can’t do that. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
He circled his desk and approached her. She stepped back and held out her hands to stop him. Stop the words she didn’t want to hear him say. He said them anyway.
“You hav
e today, Isabella. All any of us have is today and the hope for tomorrow.”
She took a deep breath. “That’s not enough.”
“We don’t get to make that choice.” Dr. Boucher put his hands on her cheeks to make her see the challenge in his eyes. She’d seen that look before. “The hopeful embrace destiny; the hopeless run from it. Promise me something,” he said with the confident smile of a man sure he would get whatever he asked. “Find your hope.”
She owed this man so much, wanted to repay him in some small way for what he’d done for her, but her mind locked with panic. He was asking for the one thing she simply could not give.
Without a word, she turned and ran. Ran from the destiny she believed was hers.
*****
A low whistle filled the silence. “Fuuuck. Tell me you’re alone and I don’t have to call the police.”
Jacques’s head jerked up like someone punched him in the jaw. “Jerard? What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped, unable to wrap his mind around Jerard being here. Now. Seeing him like this!
Jerard grinned, slicing his hands into his pockets, and rocked back on his boots. “Not happy to see me. That hurts, Jacques.” The sarcasm didn’t match the expression that said Jacques looked as crazed as he felt.
“What, not happy to…of course, I’m happy…I’m just…I mean you…” Jacques stuttered, wiping his face and staring like Jerard was persona non grata.
“Relax, man. It was a joke.”
Jerard stepped through the wreckage without asking why Jacques’s dungeon was in ruins and disappeared behind the bar. Jacques heard the sound of broken glass being moved aside and then a hand shot over the lip fisting a bottle of whiskey.
“You missed one,” Jerard said as his smiling face reappeared. “Managed to break every damn glass, but we’ll make due.” He stepped in front of Jacques and held the bottle out to him.
Jacques didn’t bother to stand up, he couldn’t even if he tried, and took a long pull on the neck. The heat of the whiskey burned through his gut. He swallowed another.
“Before you pull the papa routine,” Jerard said, “I’m fine. Hit my ninety days yesterday and I’m feeling pretty good, strong, you know. You, however, are obviously not doing so well. You look like shit.”
Paradise: The Masters of The Order Novel Two Page 27
