Permanent Marker (The Kinky Truth)
Page 12
He wasn’t delusional. He knew they’d only started a foundation here. He knew the world, especially the media, would label him a sex-starved lecher, her a scheming status seeker, and both of them a pair of fools who’d let island breezes and mai tais get the better of them. More importantly, he knew Rose still didn’t buy that a Dominant/submissive relationship could be normal or right, even if destiny had smacked her full in the face with it. Could he blame her? On the sole occasion she’d opened up to someone about her “alternative” tastes, the bastard turned tail and left her at the wedding altar for it.
But best as he could figure, that incident wasn’t the first time Rose had been made to feel a fool for who she was. Her self-inflicted brain beatings were the result of being held up, time and time again, as the cautionary tale for a social elite who maintained their power on threads of disapproval, censorship, and a social code as obsolete as it was ludicrous. And the more he spoke to her, hearing how ingrained that shit was in her psyche, the more he guessed that the ones feeding her this diet of degradation were people on an intimate basis with her insecurities and emotional triggers.
In short, her family.
Much like the storm clouds still strung in the sky, that last conclusion wove a mixture of light and darkness across his thoughts. Yet just as the rising sun promised to burn them away, so did the next image that filled his head. He saw Rose at the crest of her climax this morning, crumbling for him, blinking at him with eyes awash in tears of joy and realization. It was so right. It was so significant.
A chuff slipped out. The irony of the impression didn’t escape him. He’d accomplished much as a senator, crafting laws that helped millions of people, serving on committees that influenced millions more. All of it fell in the world’s textbook definition of “significant.”
All of it turned to dust when he thought of Rose after that orgasm. Her smile graced the face of a submissive who’d discovered her power for the first time in her life. In letting him have the control, and therefore all the worry, she’d given herself the freedom to explore her deepest passions, her wildest arousal.
And somewhere between surrender and freedom, she’d found something even more amazing. Herself.
A grin started in his chest and made its way to his lips. Significant? No, even that wasn’t a perfect qualifier. Rose was his revelation. His miracle. The key that had unlocked his own power again. And if the world didn’t understand that, then it could kiss his rock-hard ass.
He broke into a jog as he headed toward the lobby. It was time to be in a hurry. His beautiful submissive was waiting for him.
Chapter Twelve
Maybe, Rose thought, I’m stuck in another reality.
If so, she never wanted to leave.
She stretched and sighed between the sheets, giggling when realizing she’d just sniffed all the pillows simply because they still smelled like him: a little bit of wind, a little bit of spice, a hell of a lot of man. After finding the one with the strongest scent, then going a little light-headed because she breathed too deeply, she tossed the thing to the side. The ceiling fan overhead turned lazily, making her dizzier. Or maybe that was the whirl of her thoughts.
“All right,” she muttered. “Admit it. You’re smitten.”
She wanted to laugh at that too. She tried. A ragged sigh escaped, instead.
She was more than smitten.
Broadsided.
Swept away.
Terrified.
Yep. That about summed it up.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the words—no, the promise—he’d given her just a few minutes ago. “We’ll talk about this. We’ll figure it out.”
Warmth suffused her face. But most importantly, it filled her heart. And inside that heart, three soft words resounded.
“I believe you.”
Her breath hitched. She pressed fingers to her lips. Oh God. Did she believe him? Could she really break herself open for a man again? Not just a few selections of herself either. Unlike Owen or anyone before him, Mark wanted everything. Could she turn over all of herself, all of the time, and expect to be accepted, treasured, safe?
The answer to that, in either direction, turned her into a frozen block.
The phone on the nightstand blared into her reverie.
She forced steadiness to her hands. “Stop it and chill. They’re looking for Mark, not you.”
Sure enough, after half a dozen rings, the caller hung up.
Thirty seconds later, the rings began again.
She used the bathroom, determinedly ignoring them.
On the third attempt, she glared at the contraption. “It’s called a cell phone. He’s got it in his pocket. Did you think of using that number?”
When round four began, she sighed—until thinking it might be Mark himself, calling and needing her for some reason. Or—shit—maybe it was an emergency from Washington or from GRI that couldn’t be trusted to cell lines.
She dived for the receiver.
“Uhhh, good morning. Senator Moore’s—”
Now what? Senator Moore’s office? Villa? Den of decadent Dominance and submission?
Just like the white-hatted cowboy he evoked, Brandt Howell took over the line. “Mornin’, Ms. Fabian. My sincere apologies for cuttin’ in so soon after sunup, but the senator didn’t want to be disturbed last night, and gave me his cell to monitor for calls. About a half hour ago, damn thing started goin’ off wilder than a fire alarm in a hay barn at a fireworks convention. Didn’t recognize the number so I disregarded it at first, but apparently the bastard got hold of it from someone high-up at GRI, and the shithead hasn’t stopped since.”
“What is it?” Her heart stopped, picking up his uncomfortable undertone. “The senator will be back in a minute, Brandt. Has something happ—”
“Actually, Ms. Fabian, the caller’s looking for you.”
“What?” Her pulse returned, but it sped with trepidation. “Me? But how does anybody know I’m…uh…” Lying in the man’s bed with scrapes on my arms from where he tied me up, then gave me the best orgasm of my life?
“Hey, nobody else knows. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back as well as the senator’s. But this guy tried your cell a bunch of times and then got on the line to the hotel’s security team, who were also instructed not to bother the senator. So they routed him to me, and here we are.”
“Shane.” The word spilled out as the gears of logic clicked together in her head.
“Who?”
“My brother,” she explained. “The MO fits. He’s a little persistent.”
There was a commiserating snort from the line. “Maybe the senator should keep him in mind if he ever runs for office again.”
“Right.” She knew Brandt wouldn’t mind her inability to muster a laugh. At the moment, possible reasons for Shane’s urgency jabbed her mind like hornets, with the same reaction: a little irritation, a little fear. He was going through a lot of trouble to get to her, which meant he was wound up. And Shane never got wound up over good news.
“So you want them to patch the call through?”
“Yes, please.” She forced a smile to the words. “Thanks, Brandt.”
Through the next ten seconds, she pulled the covers tighter against herself and again reached for the pillow that smelled so much like Mark. She set her chin. Though there was no way for Shane to see that, she hoped he’d hear it. No, she’d make him hear it. If she couldn’t summon the strength for herself yet, she was going to be more clear, more determined, for Mark.
“Hello? Hello? Who the hell am I talking to now?”
She sighed. “Shane, calm down. It’s me.”
“Rose! Thank fucking God, at last!”
A giggle slipped out before she could stop it. “Wow. Congratulations, brother. You do know how to use the big-boy words.”
“Don’t start now, Rose. Please not now with the sarcastic sass. I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours on your cell. Where the hell are you?”
“Who all tell me you weren’t answering the door at your room. So you know damn well what I’m really asking.”
“Wait. You sent them to my—” She rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I should’ve known you’d do that.” She took a steadying breath. “All right, so I’m not in my room. I’m a grown-up, Shane. And I’m not out in the middle of the beach with someone—”
“I should hope to hell not!” A rough scuffling filled the line. She practically saw him pacing his chic apartment overlooking the river, gazing out on the spectacular view but not even seeing it. “Sweet heaven, Rose, please tell me you’re being discreet. If word got out you’ve been sleeping around at this ‘training,’ well—”
“Well what, Shane?” Her spine went stiff, and she felt like a lightning rod of frustration got jammed up it. How many other times had she felt just like this, charred yet soaked, absorbing the jolts of his and Mother’s judgment? But that was her part to play, right? The one who always laughed too loud and smiled too wide, who felt too much and spoke too honestly. Because of it all, she’d cost the family an alliance that would have…
Gotten her a lifetime of the exact same thing.
Suddenly that loss didn’t seem so huge anymore.
“Spit it out, brother.” Oddly, Shane’s stunned silence made her smile. “Come on, tell me. Exactly what would happen if I decided to indulge in some ‘island delight’ with one of my colleagues? Maybe more than one? Isn’t that what everyone’s talking about, anyway? Isn’t that what you and Mother have been busy with lately, more ‘Rose damage control’? How many committees did Mother have to sacrifice herself to in order to make everyone forget I’m actually off—gasp—helping the world?”
She braced herself for his signature huff or perhaps the sneering laugh that Shane had perfected at one of the city’s leading legal teams through the years. When he gave her only thick silence, she got a little scared.
“Mother hasn’t had time for any more volunteer projects. She’s been filing for bankruptcy.”
She took her own turn for silence. Hers resonated with shock. “But how? Why?”
“Now stay calm. I’m having enough trouble keeping Mother tethered.” The huff finally came. “Thank God for sedatives.”
“Sedatives?” She felt her lips pursing as she echoed the word, her concern real. What was Shane getting at, throwing in a word like that? Her brother had more fathoms than the Mariana Trench, murkier now because of the real fear he’d stirred. Yes, Mother was childish and superficial, but she was still family. Their mother. “What are you saying? Is there an emergency? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, Rose. Did I say she wasn’t?”
Aside from just implying that their mother was now sucking down her martinis in pill form every four hours, she supposed he hadn’t. “I really don’t understand,” she stated. “Father left her millions in the settlement. Even so, if she sold off just half her furs and jewelry, she’d regain a nice part of it.”
“Not going to happen.” There was a decisive pause, as if Shane was squaring up his stance. “She’s going to need them. We’re moving forward with a new plan.”
She stifled the urge to let out another laugh, this one not so amused. “Of course we are. Which is why you’re calling.” The impetus for his urgency in reaching her began to crystallize. He wanted to make sure he still had the marionette strings attached to her, the control still wielded.
She shook her head. Control. What a chameleon of a word. She’d hated it all her life, equating it to sleepless nights of pondering Shane’s catalogs of her mistakes at some dinner or agonizing over what shoe Mother would approve of for the charity tea or, in true Eliza Doolittle fashion, wondering what was appropriate to yell at one’s horse at the racetrack. In her world, control was about containment, reins, and everything she couldn’t be. But Mark had changed that. In his hands, the term had become a gift, a treasure she gladly gave because of the world he opened in return, tying her in a connection she’d craved forever. Something so different than the irritation now jabbing her, courtesy of the voice on the other end of the line.
“Every minute right now counts, Rose.” Shane’s tone gained a new edge. “Every move we make, all three of us, will count from here. So, yes, that’s why I’m calling.”
She pulled in a deep breath and wished Mark sat beside her right now. She tried to imagine him at least, tawny eyes glittering, and half a smile tugging at his beard. “All right. Let’s have it, then. What’s this spectacular new plan?”
She could almost smell her brother’s anticipation through the line. “Do you remember Tristan Rhodes?”
“Yes.” She said it as if telling a four-year-old that the Earth was really round. “It’s hard to forget one of the founders of your God’s-gift-to-the law firm, Shane.”
Instead of the defensive snort for which she braced, her brother actually laughed. “He’s on the governor’s short list to fill Mark Moore’s seat in the Senate. It was announced yesterday morning.”
Her stomach tightened. True, it was the last thing she expected to hear. But the announcement tripped her less than the tie-in to Mark. Even hearing his name on Shane’s lips…it bridged her old caterpillar to her new butterfly like a tenacious cocoon that wouldn’t fall free from her spirit.
“Okay.” She drew the word out with sarcasm to mask her anxiety. “And?”
“And we’re going to help him land it.”
“Now I’m lost. Help him? He can’t run for a seat in Indiana, can he? And if so, how’s he going to do it with Mother’s furs and jewels?”
“Rose.” Now he sounded like she was the four-year-old. “He’s got a bigger house in Indianapolis than he does in Chicago. And he’s single.”
“Yes. So is Mark Moore.” Her guts took her by surprise again. They definitely didn’t like the sound of that. They also made her wonder, for a split second, if Mark himself would either.
“But he wasn’t when he got elected. A successful candidate needs a good woman.”
Understanding started to glimmer. “And Mother is going to be that woman for Tristan.”
“You mean Senator Rhodes?” He chuckled again. He sounded just like he was eleven again, beating her at backgammon. Only now the playing pieces were people, and the stakes were much higher.
“And what if ‘Senator Rhodes’ doesn’t see her as that woman?”
“That won’t be an option.”
She wanted to roll her eyes, but Shane had ridiculed that out of her years ago. Even in a phone conversation with him, she didn’t dare. “And that’s where the plan comes in.”
She listened to him take a hefty swig of a drink. Since it was just six thirty in Chicago, it was likely his daily cup of custom-blended coffee. Or maybe he’d skipped straight to the celebration-party champagne. “The public devours good love stories, sister. They crave a nice, gooey fairy tale. But with most political candidates, they have to hear about it after the fact. Tristan and Mother are going to let them live the story as it happens. She’s going to become their living, breathing, real-life princess.”
“And as her prince, Tristan rides to the senate.”
“And in a few years, perhaps beyond that.”
She practically saw Shane’s fantasy unfurling now. He’d probably scoped out the floor plan of the White House and already picked out his office. The odd, scary truth was, it wasn’t an unrealistic hope. She remembered rumors of the same thing swirling about Mark himself, last summer.
But all of it still confused her in one distinct and disconcerting way.
“Shane, I’m still not sure why you plowed your way through half the phone lines and most of the security team in this place to tell me this.” She picked a nervous finger at the corner of the bed sheet. “It’s not like I’m going to be around to screw things up for you, right?”
She held out a tiny hope, which fizzled fast, that this time he’d deny the implication, that he’d protest how proud he really was of her for doing this. Sure, and Lake Michigan would sprout real icebergs. “In two weeks, I’ll be almost ten thousand miles away.”
“And Mark Moore is training you to get there, right?”
Her stomach clenched tighter. “Yes. What does he have to do with—”
“He’s your teacher, right? And nothing more?”
She swung a wild stare around the room. Shane’s incisive tone…it made her wonder about hidden cameras they didn’t know about, or even if his question would morph into a laser beam, slicing open the wall and exposing her here, clad in nothing but the sheets Mark had ripped from her body less than two hours ago.
“Wh-what the hell kind of question is that?”
“Listen, Rose. Tying yourself to the headboard for Owen was a tough enough mess to clean up. But this is a new playing field. It’s muddy, it’s brutal, and it’s not for a green nymph to run around in with her knickers at her knees. You’ll get hurt—and this pain will be deep wounds, not knee scrapes. But more importantly, the collateral damage will be insurmountable. The press has already started sniffing around at the firm. Not the glossy tabloids either. This is the Times, the nightly news stations, CNN…”
As he droned on, she clawed her hair with a shaking hand. A messy playing field, indeed. She already felt dragged through the mud, though Shane technically hadn’t gotten the details right. She hadn’t really tied herself to the headboard, that fateful night at the Fairmont. She’d never gotten that far.
The memories hit, so clear now, of how dashing Owen had looked when they’d gotten back to their suite after the rehearsal dinner. He’d had a scotch or two more than his norm, and he’d been a bit frisky, especially because she’d put up a playful protest about not “doing the deed” so close to the wedding. She’d looked at his growing erection and his heavy gaze and decided to get bold. “Have I been a bad girl, my love? Do you need to spank me? Do you need to do it hard?”
He’d bolted from the room thirty seconds later.