Once Upon a Time

by Luna Doerr

  I can’t hold back the laugh. “A proposal? That got me in trouble the last time, didn’t it?”

  He shrugs. “I need you to help me finish this book. You understand Erica better than I do.”

  “I can’t—” There is no way I am moving back to Maine with him. “I can’t leave my job, Alaric. It took months for me to find one and—”

  “I’m not asking you to leave your job.”

  I frown. “Then how …?”

  “I’m not going to be in Maine much the next few months anyway, what with the book tour. My proposal is that we email scenes back and forth. You send me a scene, I write one in response.” He stands and retrieves his laptop. “Like last night. I couldn’t sleep and came out here. I read what you wrote, then wrote a short scene in response.”

  I take the computer from him and read the new scene. “I don’t know,” I say when I finish. “Who would you be watching act out the scenes?”

  “No one.” A quick look of alarm flashes across his face. “Would you need someone …”

  “No. I mean, if I were going to do it, I wouldn’t need an assistant.”

  “I need you to do it, Caterine. I’ll pay you—and you need to cash my checks. Please. It makes me feel even more terrible, knowing that you haven’t benefited financially the way you should have.”

  Can I do that? Write scenes and email them to him?

  So much for climbing back on the wagon. It might be do-able, though, as long as I don’t have to see him.

  Shit. What are you thinking?

  He doesn’t need me to finish this book. He might want me, but want and need are two entirely different things. He could hire another assistant to help. Finishing his book isn’t my responsibility.

  Not my monkeys, not my circus, as Zoe would say.

  But the thought of him with another assistant, the thought of another woman pretending to be Erica, makes my stomach clench tight.

  “I don’t know, Alaric. I need some time to think about it.”

  “You need some time to think about it?” Zoe’s voice is incredulous.

  Zoe and I are sitting on the floor of our small living room, working our way through a fresh pot of coffee. Alaric and Sim left nearly an hour ago, but it took me that long to get my head together enough to talk to Zoe about the weekend and about Alaric’s proposal.

  “Sounds like a no-brainer to me, love,” Zoe adds. “Write some scenes, email them to him, cash the checks. Boom, done.”

  Zoe is still high from her two nights with Sim. I can understand that. Sim probably turned on the sex god act for Zoe, and Zoe can surely give as good as she gets in that regard.

  I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. “What do you think my mom would say about all this? A job that involved sex and writing about sex, with a man who knows exactly how to manipulate me.”

  “You think that’s what Alaric is doing? Manipulating you?”

  “Of course that’s what he’s doing. I’m just one more in a long line of women he has hired for this job.”

  “Sim made it sound like he’s head over heels for you. Can’t shut up about you.”

  I snort at the ceiling. “Doubtful. I think he likes to fuck me and he’s having trouble writing this book. If he can get me to write half of it for him …” I let my words trail off.

  “I think your mom would tell you that you need to make up your own mind on this,” Zoe says. “What’s the worst that’s going to happen? You do it, you make a lot of money and you get your heart broken. You don’t do it and you cash the checks he’s already sent you.”

  “And I get my heart broken.” I sigh. “That’s the problem. I want him to be a better man than he is.”

  “I don’t know. He sounds like a pretty decent guy already. He walked away from his family’s business because his father was an asshole. He’s been supporting Sim for years.”

  I push myself back into a sitting position. “I just can’t help feeling that I would be betraying my mother. That I already have betrayed her.”

  Zoe frowns. “I don’t get it. Your mom might not wholeheartedly approve of the sex angle of the job but …”

  “Alaric’s father tried to kill my mother when he was a teenager.”

  There. I said it.

  “What?”

  “Weston White tried to drown my mother in a swimming pond near Harrisburg when mom was just eight. Fortunately, they were able to revive her at the hospital. But he was never caught.”

  Zoe shakes her head in confusion. “How did you find out all this?”

  “That was the family emergency that lead me to quit Alaric’s job. His father wanted him to apologize to me in exchange for keeping his sister in the will. But Alaric didn’t. He was planning to do it after he finished the book. But Sim told me, eventually.”

  “Oh. My. God. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I wanted to put it all behind me. I thought I had put it all behind me.” I carry our coffee mugs to the kitchen and refill them. When I sit back down on the living room floor, I say, “So knowing all that, what would my mother tell me to do?”

  50

  Alaric

  “So she didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.” Sim follows me into the house. “Man, this place is a mess.”

  I take in the shambles that used to be my mother’s parlor, the room where she had spent hours reading or quilting. Most of the furniture is gone, the antiques and family heirlooms anyway. I push back at the surge of anger rising in my chest.

  The furniture isn’t important.

  A layer of white dust covers the wide plank hardwood floors, the window sills, the baseboards. Even when my mother’s spirits were at their lowest, she’d always kept this house immaculate.

  Of course, my father had let it go to shit.

  The house had belonged to my mother’s family for generations. She had been born and raised in Middleburg, Virginia, before marrying Weston White and moving to Pennsylvania. My father had sold off the house last year, unbeknownst to either me or my sister.

  I recently bought it back. The buyers weren’t doing anything with it anyway. It was some wannabe real estate investor who thought he could spruce it up a bit and flip it for a quick profit. Apparently that had turned out to be a more daunting prospect than the guy originally realized.

  I walk into the kitchen and have to bite back the tears. A flood of childhood memories slams into me. Helping my mother make blueberry pancakes, sneaking sugar cubes into my pockets to give the horses.

  The horses.

  Kristin and I had spent so many lazy afternoons riding horses with our mother here, until her drinking made it dangerous for her to ride. Then our father had sold off all the horses. I haven’t ridden since I was a teenager.

  I hear Sim’s footsteps behind me, then feel the heavy clap of my friend’s hand on my shoulder.

  “According to her roommate, she plays things close to the vest. She thinks things through all the way before acting,” Sim says.

  “Yeah. I figured that out already.” Caterine said she’d think about my proposal but I haven’t heard back from her. And Sim and I have to fly out to Dallas in the morning. It’s killing me, not knowing whether she will agree or not.

  In the dining room, the old crystal chandelier is gone. Wires trickle down from the ceiling in its place.

  “You gonna hire someone to fix up this place?” Sim asks.

  I shake my head. “I was thinking of doing most of the work myself. Maybe not the electrical.” I look up at the ceiling again. “But the rest of it, I can probably handle.” I sigh. “I need a break from the books. I’m not ready to just launch right into another one.”

  Sim snorts, then sneezes from the dust. “It’s not like you need the money, dude. You can take a permanent break from writing, if you want.”

  That I can, I thnk. People will not be happy with me. My agent, my publisher. I’m not sure I care about their happiness or lack of it, however. No, I correct myself, I totally d
o not care about their happiness.

  Not anymore.

  I can’t see myself hiring another assistant to help with a new book. Just the thought of it exhausts me and makes me want a good, strong drink.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I reply to Sim.

  “So what are the hurdles here?”

  I look around the dining room. “Well, I gotta get this place cleaned up first so I can see what needs to be done.” I bounce lightly on my feet. “Floorboards feel rotted.”

  “Idiot. No, I mean the hurdles to this thing with Caterine.”

  “My father trying to kill her mother, obviously.”

  Sim puts up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Hey. I’m just trying to talk you through this.”

  “I know. Sorry.” I run my finger along the dust coating the chair rail.

  “Did you tell her you loved her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “She didn’t say it back. In fact, she totally refuted me. Said ‘no, you don’t.’”

  “What did you say to that?”

  “Well, at that point, she was sitting on my cock so conversation sort of ceased at that point.” I stride from the dining room and head toward the stairs in the hall.

  Sim chuckles. “Okay. I get the picture. So why don’t you just email her another scene and see what happens? Seems like she can’t resist adding to your draft when she reads it.”

  51

  Alaric

  He stood outside Erica’s room, his hand itching to open the door and go to her, lose himself in her. He’d not been back to the madam’s since the evening with the new girl. As enticing as she had been, he had left something there that night. The desire to punish himself. For that’s what he had been doing there, punishing himself for his injuries, punishing himself by denying himself his own lovely wife.

  But for what reason? Erica had never indicated that she would refuse him. On the contrary, she’d made it perfectly clear that she wanted him in her bed. It wasn’t her fault he’d been injured, nor was it her fault that his desires were inappropriate for the marriage bed. It wasn’t her fault he liked to turn a woman over his knee and spank her luscious bottom until she squirmed and screamed in pleasure. It wasn’t her fault he liked to fuck hard enough to bang a bed against the wall.

  It also wasn’t her fault that he had ruined himself as a respectable husband worthy of the love–and body—of a loving wife.

  “I am so so sorry, my love,” he murmured as he turned from her door and walked away.

  It’s a short scene. I don’t want to burden Caterine if she isn’t interested in writing with me. I add a short note to the email—I’m in Dallas for a book signing but call me anytime, if you want to talk—then hit send.

  I lean back into the plush pillows of the hotel bed. It’s been three weeks since I was home to Maine and I’m surprised to realize I don’t miss being there. Nor can I envision ever inviting a woman to live there with me. Not even Caterine.

  The estate in Maine had become my own brothel. I scrub my palms over my face. That’s it, isn’t it? I had turned my home into a brothel and now I no longer want to go to the brothel. Like Charles no longer wants to, but can’t find his way to what he really wants.

  Erica.

  Caterine.

  That’s what you want, dumbass. You want forever with a woman you’ve debauched, a woman who knows all too well your past life.

  All these years, I thought I was punishing my father by writing erotic romances—embarrassing the old man, taunting him with my refusal to be the perfect son—when really I had been punishing myself.

  I had behaved like the whore my father was—a different woman every six months to a year, using women for my own physical needs, never letting myself be human with any of them.

  Had my father ever gotten to that point, run headlong into a day where he no longer wanted to be a smug, evil bastard—but a human being? And then wasn’t able to find the path to that destination? I doubt it, but I know without a doubt of my own that I have reached that place.

  I no longer want women I don’t care about living in my home. If that means I can no longer write books, then so be it. Sim is right. I don’t need the money. I can fix up my mother’s home in Middleburg, buy some horses and live the life of a gentleman farmer. I’ll teach my kids to ride …

  I will teach my kids to ride, and I’ll be the father Weston White never was. And I will raise my kids in Middleburg because there is no way in hell I could ask Caterine to raise children with me in the house in Maine, a house that is contaminated by all that has taken place there.

  And if we live in Middleburg, she can keep her job in Virginia if she wants. Or she can do whatever the hell she wants. I will support anything she wants to do, if only she will consent to doing it with me.

  I watch my email inbox for several more minutes, hoping—but not really expecting—a quick response from her. Then I set the laptop on the nightstand and pull the hotel’s duvet up to my chin. I don’t much believe in God, and I haven’t prayed for anything since the phone call years ago telling me that my mother had taken her own life. But I offer up a quick prayer now, a prayer that it isn’t too late to be a better man.

  52

  Caterine

  I sit at the table in my apartment, eating a bowl of cereal before work, and staring at my phone. An email had come in overnight. From Alaric. With an attachment. Do I dare open it? I spoon more cereal into my mouth, wash it down with a gulp of milky coffee.

  Nah. I will wait until after work. If I open it now, I’ll be distracted all day and unable to give the students my best attention. But at ten-thirty, I peek at the subject line during a faculty meeting. And again over lunch. Then finally, in the school parking lot before driving home.

  I deserve a freaking medal.

  Zoe is working the dinner shift at the restaurant so I reheat leftovers and eat by myself. I open my laptop and download Alaric’s email there. The email message itself says very little. He’s in Dallas for another book signing with Sim. I am aware of that already, thanks to Zoe. Apparently, she and Sim aren’t through with each other yet. He’s been phoning her every night.

  I download the attached file, another scene for Alaric’s book. It’s a short scene. Charles is torn. He doesn’t want to go back to the brothel but he still isn’t able to simply give himself over to Erica. Of course, the problem is that he already has—he just doesn’t know it.

  I finish my dinner and uncap a bottle of beer. I carry my laptop into the bedroom, change into sweats and make myself comfortable amidst the pillows and comforter. Is this what I want to do? Finish his book with him? By email?

  Yes.

  Her bottom was sore for days afterward, and she reveled in the pleasant achiness of it. She would never have believed that pain could push her over into so much pleasure, and she wanted his hand on her again.

  But he had been absent from her bed since the evening in the brothel. She was desperate to be with him again, but fearful of returning to the madam’s. How many times could she go without the madam realizing that she didn’t belong there? How many times before another man would come to her room? She had no desire to be with any other man besides her husband.

  But him? She wanted to be with him every night.

  But how to ensure that? She had gone to the brothel to learn what Charles liked. And learn she had. She learned that he liked to lick a woman’s most intimate parts until she wanted to cry. He liked to spank them until they dissolved into spineless delight on his lap. He liked to fuck them hard and rough and deep.

  And she had learned that she liked all those things too.

  But now he no longer came to her bed and it was the worst torture imaginable. The thought of him with another woman at the madam’s had ripped a giant hole in her heart. Going there had perhaps not been the best idea. To learn what he liked—and to learn that she liked it too—how could she live with that knowledge … and with the feeling of deprivation that know
ledge had carved into her soul? She couldn’t live without his touch, without his body inside hers, without his mouth on her—and she would go wherever she had to in order to get it.

  The next evening, she hurried to put on her red silk dress and get to the madam’s. Charles had left half an hour earlier, and she suspected that was where he was headed. In the parlor, one of the other girls touched her arm.

  “Your client is waiting in the top floor room.”

  Erica climbed the stairs quickly, excited. He had come back for her. A lovely warmth was spreading through her veins with each step she ascended. The top floor held just one room; the closed door beckoned to her from halfway down the narrow hallway. She wrapped her fingers around the doorknob, took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Inside, the room was dimly lit and she paused a moment to let her eyes adjust. She wasn’t surprised by the dimness. Even here, Charles evidently preferred that people not look upon his face. When her eyes were accustomed to the light, she scanned the large room—and gasped at what she saw at the far end of it. Charles was tied to a giant X-shaped frame made of wood, his arms and legs spread above and below him. His eyes were covered with a wide black blindfold.

  And he was completely nude.

  Erica leaned back against the door, taking him in and letting her shock subside. This was most certainly not what she had expected. Indeed, she’d never even imagined the existence of such a contraption like the one Charles had fastened himself to. It looked like some medieval instrument of torture, to be frank.

  She glanced at the rest of the long room. There was a bed in the middle but at the other end sat a table covered with scarves and ropes, whips and paddles. Clearly, this was a room designed for both pain and pleasure.