Wishing Well

by Lily White

  “Fine,” I answered as hatred rolled through me. But despite the ugly feeling, the betrayal, I only thought of the reward I would receive when Vincent took me to his suite again.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  Pushing to my feet, I pulled the shirt over my head and snatched the key from where I’d set it on the desk. I didn’t bother glancing back as I left his office and headed to the kitchens to find a silver domed dish as he’d said. My legs barely held me up as I made my way to the elevator, inserted the key and punched in the six digit code.

  I wanted to vomit from the consuming fear, wanted to scream at the way I was letting Vincent use me.

  Why hadn’t I seen this coming?

  The elevator slid smoothly down to the basement floor, the polished doors opening to reveal an entry lobby with black walls, black floors, leather seating and crystal vases full of roses. Stepping through, I could barely see by the flickering light of the flame wall sconces.

  My fear consumed me and I had to take a breath to keep from dropping the plate and running away.

  “Hello?” I called out, not sure where to leave the meal, not sure about anything anymore.

  A noise down a side hall drew my attention, the pathway lit only by flickering candlelight. I would have thought the scene to be romantic if I didn’t fear the monster lingering out of sight.

  Maybe nothing would happen. The thought occurred to me that like all the games Vincent had played with me over the past few weeks, this was just another one, a test to see how truly obedient I could be. I must have been truly sick in the head when the thought of the reward that would come thrilled me.

  Breathing out a heavy breath, I turned left to walk down the hall, pacing my steps as I peeked inside dark rooms waiting for something to jump out at me. Reaching the last door, I looked inside expecting to see a torture chamber or some kind of dungeon, but instead I found a brightly colored living room with yellow walls and brilliant, electric light. It was the tapping of fingers against a keyboard the drew my gaze to the right, the man sitting behind a computer staring back at me as surprised as I stared at him.

  This was not what I was expecting. Maurice appeared...normal.

  The relief was like a deflating balloon inside me.

  I wanted to laugh at how stupid I’d been to think Vincent would actually toss me to a rabid dog. That extra salary he’d promised me looked much better now that I understood the lie he’d told.

  “Lunch is here,” I announced with a smile. Where would you like me to leave it?”

  Maurice blinked, his lips pulling into an unsure grin. There was something off about him, but it wasn’t scary, not like I’d imagined it would be after meeting him in the garden. It was like he wanted to express emotion, but couldn’t. “Table,” he said with a voice as deep as Vincent’s. “To your left.”

  Glancing over, I spotted the small round table I hadn’t seen when first walking into the room. Maurice didn’t say another word as I made my way across the room to set the domed plate down. A scream tore from my lips when I spun again to find Maurice standing behind me. His hand flew up to cover my mouth as mine flew to my chest to keep my heart from busting out. The visceral terror had returned in a split second to see how silently Maurice had moved, to understand that, perhaps, Vincent hadn’t been lying.

  My body shook as Maurice pushed me back, his fingertips digging into my cheeks as he locked his eyes to mine with lethal curiosity. It felt like being stared down by a predator deciding whether to eat you quickly or take their time. My butt scooted across the table and I couldn’t stop the tears that welled in my eyes.

  Vincent’s words were a whisper in my head.

  Don’t make any sudden moves around him. Don’t scream or say anything. Don’t resist if he scares you. And if you want to walk out of the basement unscathed, just do whatever he wants.

  Remembering his instructions, I froze in place. Maurice leaned forward, his nose to my hair as he dragged in a breath to smell me. I trembled beneath his hand, my eyes wide, my muscles so rigid that pain blistered over my bones. Barely able to drag in a breath, I fought to keep from screaming.

  Maurice’s eyes met mine, his expression unreadable. It wasn’t until he spoke again that I realized how he fought to control himself. “Thank you,” he said, as if the words were foreign on his tongue. “For the food.”

  It was like watching a wild creature attempt to wear the skin of civility. He wasn’t used to behaving so cautiously.

  I occurred to me just then that for as frightening as this man was, he was also beautiful. He had the same green eyes and tan skin as his brother, the same broad shoulders and dark, unruly hair, but there was also a vulnerability in him that I’d never seen in Vincent. It didn’t help ease the racing of my heart, the tightness of my body or the fear that drowned me, but it was there.

  “You’re welcome,” I mumbled beneath his hand, thinking that, maybe, he would release me.

  Our eyes remained locked for what felt like hours, my pulse fluttering beneath my skin, his gaze finally tracing down my face to watch the beat of it on the soft spot of my neck.

  “You’re scared.”

  Slowly, I nodded my head, trapping the inside of my cheek between my teeth to keep from screaming.

  “Je suis désolé .”

  My mouth still trapped by his hand, I mumbled. “I don’t know what you said.”

  “I’m sorry,” he answered, English not as fluid on his lips as French had been. This man was struggling to behave and communicate.

  I jumped when the fingers of his other hand clamped down on my knee, when his arm flexed to force my legs apart slowly.

  The tears in my eyes fell down my cheeks. He watched them, his head tilting to the side in confusion. “I don’t want to force you.”

  “But you will?” I mumbled from beneath his hand.

  The nod of his head was jerky, as barely controlled as him. Remorse flashed in his eyes, a sorrow so deep that I felt it in my chest.

  “J’aime quand tu me regardes comme ça.” He shook his head as if banishing the language. “I can’t help it. I’m not-“ his voice trailed off, ashamed.

  Taking a risk I knew could potentially endanger my life, I reached up to touch the hand he had pressed over my mouth. Curling my fingers over it, I attempted to pull it away. His brows tugged together in question, but he let me.

  I’d gone from frightened, to feeling foolish for that fear, to bargaining for my life. The sequence of emotions had made me dizzy.

  My voice quivering, the volume barely a whisper, I asked, “Will it be less violent if I cooperate?”

  No wonder his last caretaker had fled, the man was devastating and terrifying at the same time. The shame alone was a cloak he wore, as obvious to the eye as his fight to remain civilized. I feared for my life to be alone with him, yet I had this compulsive need to reach out and tell him it would be okay. And while enduring the clash of those emotions, I cursed the odd heat between my legs. Something about him was so familiar, but I didn’t understand why.

  “Oui .”

  In my time with Vincent, I’d learned the meaning of that simple word. Swallowing down the knot that clogged my throat, I said, “Promise not to hurt me too badly, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  Surprise. Frustration. Elation. Sorrow and shame. They all could be seen clearly in the shadows behind his gorgeous eyes. My heart hurt for him, despite only meeting him for the second time.

  Nodding his head, he released my knee, stepping back just far enough for me to slide down off the table and stand on my feet. My legs could barely hold me up.

  I didn’t have to ask what he wanted me to do, Vincent’s training came to mind, the rules he had set in place for me to follow every time I went to his suite. I could only hope they were the same for the beast that stared at me now.

  Slowly, so as not to move too suddenly, I gripped the hem of my shirt to pull it over my head. As soon as my breasts were exposed to his eyes, his hand
s clenched into fists, a rigidness moving across his shoulders as his eyes locked on my chest. When his jaw ticked, my heart beat like a war drum beneath my ribs.

  My hands were shaking as I unbuttoned my pants and slid them over my hips. The material bunched at my ankles over the floor, and as gently as I could manage I kicked it off my feet. I hadn’t worn underwear beneath my clothes because I thought it would be Vincent I’d entertain.

  Maurice’s chest beat heavy, a feral sound emanating that shook me in places I didn’t know existed. He stepped toward me and I flinched, insecurity flooding his eyes as if the tiny reaction had been a slap across his face. It was that fear of rejection inside him that made me regret my terror of him.

  “Remember not to hurt me, okay?”

  Surprised he could hear the words for how quietly I’d spoken them, I tried to smile and reassure him. But before he could lay a hand on me, I reached out, noticed the way he winced before forcing himself to become still and let me palm his cheek. The stubble of his skin was rough against my hand, the vulnerability in him staggering. I could have been touching a hungry tiger and would have felt less scared.

  “You’re beautiful,” I confessed. “Do you know that?”

  “I’m not,” he said, the truth of his belief sinking deep inside my heart. “I’m -“

  Shaking his head again, he snatched my wrist in his grip to yank my hand from his face, stepping forward to force me back onto the table, the surface cold against my skin, as he released my wrist to wrap his hand over my throat and forced me to lie down. I froze in place, refusing to move, to speak, to breathe, as he held me in place while lifting my legs to place my feet on the edge of the table. Shoving my legs apart, his chest beat with excited breath to stare down at my body so exposed.

  I couldn’t stop my shaking. Couldn’t help but feel like he would kill me without meaning to do it. Vincent kept this man caged for a reason and I was discovering that reason now. Maurice didn’t behave like an ordinary man. He behaved like an animal - an animal that had lost his restraint.

  Releasing my throat, he dropped to his knees, grabbed my waist and pulled me to the edge of the table. And before I could process what he was doing, he grabbed my ankles and forced my feet to his shoulders, holding my legs in place as his teeth nipped at the inside of my thigh, biting down one rough time before his mouth bore down at the apex, his tongue licking inside my body.

  The pleasure was instantaneous, the force of it divine. It was as if fear had left me stumbling and over-sensitized and that his mouth would drive me too high. My fear of pain was now a fear of the climax that was building so fucking quickly that I knew it would fracture me once the force of it exploded in my core. I was right to fear that release, the crashing wave of it sweeping me beneath the violence of its storm, dragging me up so high that I floated for only a moment before crashing down again.

  As if knowing what he’d done to me, Maurice shook off the last bit of control he had, stood to his feet, ripped his pants open, and with my legs still locked over his shoulders, he gripped his hands on my hips and drove his cock inside me.

  The rhythm was brutal, the force without apology, the claiming of me accomplished as his teeth gnashed with each violent thrust, as I looked up into a face that refused to look back at me. Moans poured from my lips as loud as the slap of his hips against the back of my legs, but despite the build of my next release I could see that he felt bad for what he was doing.

  Is it wrong that if I wasn’t gripping the edge of the table to hold myself in place, I would have reached up to touch his face again and tell him he wasn’t to blame?

  Someone had broken this man, had fractured him while keeping him caged, and I knew that someone was upstairs right now enjoying what he had done to me. It hadn’t been love I’d felt for Vincent before, I could see that now because of the depths of my emerging hatred.

  All those thoughts were blown apart when my body quaked with the rush of an orgasm, when I opened my mouth to release a scream as feral as the one from Maurice. We both found ourselves gripped in the cruel but loving hand of a release that was a terrifying as it was natural. And as I slipped back to an earthly plane, I opened my eyes to find Maurice watching me with sweat dripping down his strong chest.

  He moved away from me quickly, buttoning his pants and not even bothering to help me up before leaving the room entirely.

  A feeling of regret and shame had been left in his wake as a thought occurred, a whisper in my mind. However, as shocked and as breathless as I felt in that moment, I couldn’t put my finger on what my mind was trying to tell me.

  The aftershocks wore off after a minute or two, my anger surging to the surface. Not at Maurice, not at a man who was obviously so tortured and broken, but at the arrogant bastard I knew would be waiting for me just as soon as I returned upstairs.

  Climbing down from the table, I took a breath and got dressed, a million thoughts racing inside me, crashing against the wave of emotions I felt.

  Maurice was nowhere in sight as I made my way back to the elevator, inserted the key, typed in the code and pushed the button for the lobby floor. And just as I’d known he would be, Vincent stood waiting outside the doors.

  Except, instead of a slimy smile, he looked at me with concern. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No,” I spat, taking a left down the employee hall. I should have just gone to my room but I needed to go outside, to take a walk in the garden and calm down.

  “So you submitted?” Vincent followed behind me. If I weren’t so afraid of being fired, I would have turned around and launched myself at him to beat his face in. Instead, I ignored his question.

  “Are you quitting?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, still storming off.

  “Will you come up to my suite tonight.”

  Stopping suddenly, I spun on my heel to face him. “Fuck you. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I’m still working here. Until then, leave me the fuck alone.”

  Surprisingly, he stopped following me, and slamming my hands against the back door, I walked out into the garden alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I spent several hours of that late afternoon deciding what I would do with the cards I’d been dealt. An hour in the garden, and then leaving through a back, employee gate, I spent more time walking the streets of the city, eventually stopping inside a small cafe to grab some food. Choosing a quiet table by the window, I wrapped my hands around a cup of coffee, my head hung as I contemplated the sudden change in Vincent, the heartless way he’d told me that if I didn’t take on this new job he’d offered, I wouldn’t have a place to sleep.

  Lifting my eyes to watch the traffic on the streets and the crowds moving down the sidewalks, I realized that during my wanderings I’d returned to the place where it all began, to a cafe facing a particular alley where I’d taken shelter from the rain. Had Vincent been sitting in this very spot when he first saw me?

  A shiver of disgust rolled through me, but while staring at the small overhang that had done nothing to shelter me from the freezing rain, I realized I could never return to the streets. For a moment I was crushed beneath the hard truth that I was out of options...until I remembered one.

  It would be an admission of defeat, a figurative crawling, but there was one door left that I could open, I just didn’t want to make that step, to choose to admit that I’d been wrong.

  God, how we’d fought when I told my mom and Meadow that I wouldn’t move with them to Germany. In her anger, my mother had screamed that I was a stupid girl, a teenager caught up in what she foolishly believed was love. And while she’d been right to point out that Blake and I were too young to use words like ‘forever’, she hadn’t been right to call me every horrible name in the book.

  Only Meadow had been strong enough to stay silent, had refused to judge me for my decision, and had wished me luck the day I hugged her before walking her to the airport gate. If I had to open that door, if I had to test the waters, it was Meadow I
should contact.

  Standing from my seat, I left my coffee half full on the table, dropped some money for the waitress and headed for the door. A hand gripped my bicep as I attempted to pass through, a familiar voice that said, “I owe you for the slap, you know?” His voice dropped to a whisper, “And I’ll pay you back before too long.”

  Glancing up into Barron’s face, I scowled. “If you don’t take your filthy fucking hand off me, I’ll scream as I rake my fingernails down your pretty face.”

  Barron laughed and shook his head as he let me go. “You haven’t changed at all. Vincent is going to owe me so much fucking money.”

  He walked off as if the exchange hadn’t happened, his expensive suit perfectly tailored to his body. Glancing back, I watched him take a seat, my disgust so thorough that I didn’t pay attention to what he’d said. Storming off down the sidewalk, I resisted the urge to return to the hotel and cry into my pillow. Instead, I forced myself down another three blocks to an internet cafe where I could use their computers. After paying the cashier for a half hour, I selected an empty desk and pulled up the email I’d kept active since before Meadow and my mother had moved away.

  Pulling up the last email Meadow had sent - the one that used all capitals to tell me she knew I was no longer with Blake - I clicked the button to reply and paused because I had no idea what I wanted to say. At that point I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Wishing Well just yet. I had too many thoughts to sort out before I could make a decision as important as that.

  Reminding myself I was merely opening a door through which I could escape, I typed a non-committal response apologizing for staying out of touch and informing her that I’d found a job at a wonderful hotel which also provided me a place to stay. At first, I was hesitant to name the hotel, but with a shrug I decided avoiding the name would only draw Meadow’s suspicion. It wasn’t like she was going to leave college in Germany to come rushing to investigate. At most, she would be relieved to know I was okay and we would correspond back and forth until a time I made my decision.