I let out a shuddering sigh, trying to expel the acidity in my chest that was worry for the future and the pain of the past.
He sensed my struggle and his hard face softened. “I don’t want to go back to the city before you feel secure in this, in us. We will have to face a number of monumental challenges in order for me to give you a happy ending and if you don’t believe in my love for you, we won’t be able to overcome them.”
I agreed with him but I didn’t know how to respond because I was unsure. For weeks, he had seemed content to stay with my sister even though he claimed to love me. I knew he loved me but I didn’t think love was enough. He didn’t know me enough, I figured, to see the deep fault lines that ran through my character. He could always change his mind about me, about how well I fit into his beautifully constructed life. The son of the Governor of New York, the CEO of a successful real-estate development company and a man of his incredible character deserved the best. I wanted that for him. I wanted to be that for him. I just wasn’t sure if I was up to muster.
“In a couple of superficial ways, I think Elena is better suited to you,” I confessed.
It was hard to do but I wanted to be honest now that I had the opportunity to be. Sinclair was finally in my arms, in my life in the way I wanted him to be and voicing my insecurities was a risk to that but not talking them out, giving them license to fester and haunt, was a greater one.
“In no way is that true,” he countered immediately. “I told you back in Mexico, there is nothing bad I can say about Elena. She doesn’t like my kink, of course, but that isn’t something to hold against her. She is a beautiful, talented, classy woman that I spent four years of my life with. I do not regret those years.”
A shiver tore through me and because I was in his arms, he felt it even though I didn’t want him to.
“They led me to you, Elle. You were always my destination, d’accord? I feel this and I know this in every way a man can know that he has found the right woman. I told you that I would fight for us and I will, even if it means fighting you and your own insecurities.”
I stiffened again but he knew why and addressed it before I could even fully digest the reason myself.
“I am not saying that your fears are baseless. I gave you reason to doubt me. I am just telling you that I am going to rectify the pain I caused by lavishing you with love and protecting you from anyone who may harm you. Until you feel utterly secure in that truth, I want to stay here in Paris. Are you okay with that?”
Stay in Paris, hidden away in my favorite city with my favorite man so that I didn’t have to face the awful consequences of our completely not awful love?
“I can do that,” I whispered.
“It may mean being here for Christmas,” he warned.
I hadn’t thought of that but when I did, I only felt relief. I couldn’t imagine spending Christmas with my family when everything was still so unresolved. It would mean either pretending I wasn’t with Sinclair or tearing apart my family just in time for the holidays.
“We will have to push back the date of your gallery showing too,” he warned.
It was currently scheduled for January so this was true, if we stayed any longer than a week or two it would need to be pushed back and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“We could reschedule it for Valentine’s Day,” Sinclair suggested. “Fitting, no?”
I grinned, because it was.
“Let’s stay here,” I said, going into a crunch so that I could gently bite his chin and then place a kiss there, a physical representation of the apology I wanted to give him for still having so many doubts.
“We’ll stay here. I’ll contact my office and Rossi to let them know the change in our plans tomorrow,” he said, holding me closer for a moment before readjusting us so that I was faced away from him and he was spooned up against me. “Now, get some rest because tomorrow we are going to spend most of the day exploring my girl’s favorite place in the world.”
“Okay,” I said as exhaustion crashed down around me. “Love you more than anything in the world, Sinclair.”
“My love for you is bigger than the world, my siren,” he said into my ear just before I fell into a heavy sleep.
Chapter Seven.
I made a stranger take a picture of us.
The primary reason for that was because I realized that we had no photographs together. As an artist, I collected photos, pictures, magazine clippings, sketches and swathes of material, anything really to document my life and inspire me. I only had the photos of Sin from Mexico when he was driving the boat to our little cove and then a few more that Elena had given me to start the painting she had wanted to commission.
The second reason was more base, selfish and common in a way that I didn’t care to shy away from. We cut a striking image that afternoon. Sinclair was in total black, from the tips of his Italian leather loafers to the button up he wore beneath a thick black cashmere v-neck sweater and the long Burberry trench he wore over top. He wasn’t wearing socks, which may have seemed like a strange thing to notice and like, as in a lot, but I did and I did. The subtle slice of brown skin when the rest of him was covered was so unbelievably sexy that I had actually salivated a little when I met him at the café around the corner from our hotel that morning.
In direct colour contrast to him, I wore a pale oatmeal cashmere sweater dress that fit my body like a glove and complimented the knee high chocolate brown boots that I had splurged on at a small local boutique that morning. I’d also had my hair done at a small hair spa that I had walked past countless times as a student but had never had the money to afford. They hadn’t done much but cut in a few layers and form the heavy mass into thick dips and curls across my shoulders and breasts. But I loved it and Sinclair had responded favorably to the stylish cut if the move-quality kiss he landed on me was anything to go off of.
So, vanity was definitely involved.
But we had also had an absolutely amazing day, the kind of daylong date that I never would have imagined happening. After waking up together, we had parted ways so that Sin could go to an early meeting in the 2nd arrondissement and I could treat myself to the spa and some shopping. I still wasn’t rolling in cash so I hadn’t seriously thought about hitting any of the city’s amazing shopping districts but Sinclair had pressed his credit card into my hand on his way out the door and ordered me to use it before I met up with him. He didn’t give me time to protest and I was actually thrilled for the opportunity to buy a new outfit to show off for him so I did as I was ordered.
Later, we met for brunch at an amazing Franco-Taiwanese restaurant, Le 37 m2, before we went Christmas shopping in the Marais. Afterwards, Sinclair sent the bags back to the hotel while we walked along the Seine hand in hand, enjoying the surprisingly unpopulated promenade and the crisp bite of the winter air.
In a word, heaven.
Now, we were at the doors of my favorite place in the entire world.
Le musée d’Orsay.
Sinclair was an art lover but I was fully aware that he watched me react to the multitude of paintings and amazing sculptures more than he viewed the pieces himself. He followed me as I bounced from my favorite work to my next favorite, skipping from exhibition to exhibition like an eager child. I was too happy to care that I wasn’t being chic and Sin didn’t seem to mind either.
“This is one of the pieces that inspired my collection,” I blathered on, as I had been since we entered the hallowed halls.
I had already showed him Edouard Monet’s Olympia with the naked, reclining woman with her velvet collar, and the famous Luncheon On The Grass with the naked woman bracketed by two fully dressed men but we were now stopped before L’Origine du Monde.
“When I was a student I used to come here every week, nearly every day in the first year I was in Paris. I tried to focus on a different exhibit each time, but inexorably I found myself in front of Gustave Courbet,” I explained, standing to the right and in front of Sinc
lair so that I could have a minimal amount of privacy. It was difficult to explain my struggle with sexuality but I wanted him to know.
“Sex had never been a good thing for me so I had never really explored my own desires, even when I got up the courage to date Mark in my second year here. We didn’t do much more than kiss and fondle each other over our clothes. Pathetic for a twenty-one year old,” I said, pulling a face.
“Elle,” Sinclair protested, but gently so that I would continue.
“I was so drawn to the erotic images here, especially this one. I would just stand in front of it like the closeted pervert I was, trying to make sense of the trauma Christopher had left me with and the latent sensuality I felt creep up my throat like bile each time I looked at this painting.”
I paused, warring with the echo of that feeling in my gut. It was easy to look over my left shoulder and imagine my younger self, undernourished, swimming in colorless, oversized clothes and drab under all that harsh black hair. I had been so unhappy and so confused yet utterly oblivious to it.
I turned to Sinclair, finding him braced like a sailor on a rocking deck, and I knew that my confession was hurting him because my pain was his own, because he had put himself in charge of my protection and this was one thing that he would never be able to change.
I stepped forward to press my palm lightly to his chest over his heart.
“You took that tangle of angst and desperation, Sin, and you unfolded it for me. You barely knew me and yet you saw my struggle, collected all the broken pieces that I couldn’t reconcile and bound them together. That week in Mexico wasn’t just magical because you made me fall in love with you. You made me fall in love with myself.”
“Elle,” he repeated, but this time the word was a benediction, a prayer of reverence.
He stepped close, bringing both hands up to cup my face lovingly. “We made each other whole, Elle. I was just as broken before you rearranged my life and brought it into focus.”
I leaned my forehead against his, grasping his wrists in my hands to feel the strong pulse there.
“I want to inspire that confidence and security in others. That’s why my collection is the way it is.”
“I know,” he murmured.
“I know you do,” I admitted. “You know me better than I know myself.” I pulled back slightly but he kept his grip on my face. “That’s probably why you make such a good Dominant.”
The softness in his expression glazed over with ice, hardening into a mark that hid his true self from me. I frowned up at him because I couldn’t understand what I had said to prompt the change.
“Sin?”
But he wouldn’t answer me. I knew before I even opened my mouth to appeal to him. When Sinclair decided to close him off, it took a sledgehammer to crack him open again and unfortunately, the middle of a museum was not the place for that messy business.
We continued our tour of the cavernous, converted train station but we didn’t recover our levity. I bid my time trying to figure out where I had gone wrong but I kept coming up blank. Part of me wanted to blame myself anyways but Sinclair was the man who had taught me to be strong and I didn’t want to jump to a conclusion where I was in the wrong.
We went for a quick but delicious dinner at Chez Berber after watching the sunset from the top of the extraordinarily ugly Montparnasse tower. He teased me about how effusively I complimented my lamb tagine to the waiter and told me stories about his youth growing up with Cage in the orphanage but it was as if his frequency had changed to another setting, one that threw just enough static into the mix of our interactions that I couldn’t fully enjoy it.
It wasn’t until we were back in the hotel getting ready for bed that I knew something was seriously wrong.
I had used the half an hour between getting my hair done that day and meeting Sinclair to utilize the other part of the spa to get a fresh Brazilian wax. So, I was fully expecting a deliciously volatile reaction when I emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a sheer black baby doll and a matching g-string.
Sinclair sat on the end of the bed in those amazing drawstring grey pants, his torso on prominent display as he leaned back on his hands. I wanted to play his abs like a xylophone with my tongue so I was momentarily distracted from see the clench of his jaw and the flash in his eyes that spoke to anger.
When I did look up, I only caught the tale end of it. I was about to question him when he stood abruptly and moved passed me, placing a chaste kiss on my forehead like I was a God damn child before he went into the bathroom.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom, stunned and reeling. It was the first time I had really done anything like that, taking the initiative.
And he had totally brushed me off.
My stomach fell out of my body along with my ability to breath. I couldn’t orientate myself, the room twirling around me, because the foundation I had been building with Sinclair had suddenly, crudely, been pulled out from under me.
“What the fuck just happened?” I whispered, just to hear my own voice.
Oddly enough, it helped.
So, I said again, louder so that he could hear me in the bathroom. “What the fuck just happened?”
Sinclair appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame, his pose deliberately casual as if everything was fine when it so clearly. Was. Not.
“Elle,” he said as if beginning a sentence, but then he didn’t continue.
“Yes? Are you going to explain why you just brushed me off like that?” I asked, hands on my hips in my own power pose.
“We’ve had a long day and I’m jet lagged.”
“Merde, Sin, that is a lie and not even a good one. What is going on?”
He stared at me for a long moment.
It struck me how much he looked like one of those beautifully carved marble statues that I admired so much in the musée d’Orsay; gorgeously constructed but utterly cold because it was not alive.
“Don’t go back to that cold man who treated me like shit in Mexico because he was scared,” I breathed, the flaming anger gone and replaced with the glacial chill of fear.
“I know you aren’t well-versed in relationships, but most couples don’t have sex all the time,” he explained calmly, condescendingly.
“I can’t believe you would say that to me,” I said, pressing my hands to my stomach where I felt the wound that his words had inflicted like a physical agony.
His eyes squeezed shut, woven tightly closed behind his thick russet lashes. I could see the tension in his body and realized how much he hated what he was doing to me. So why was he acting this way?
“Don’t you want to touch me?” I breathed, not in despair this time but with feminine authority.
I walked forward with slow purpose as his eyes snapped open at my tone and found me. Those blazing blues carefully cut across my skin like knives, erotic but dangerous. I could sense the tenuous hold on his restraint.
“I’ll make love to you,” he conceded, but it was enough and we both knew it.
“I want you to take me,” I said, stepping close and up on my toes so that I could drag the edge of my teeth across the sharp angle of his jaw.
His sharp breath gave me confidence.
“Please, sir, I need you to help me.”
I ran a finger between my breasts, watching his eyes follow its path as I dipped into my panty covered mound and emerged with a wet slicked finger. I tried to bring it to his lips but his eyes cut to mine with a warning that hit me like a thunder strike.
Instead, I brought it to my mouth, flicking my tongue out to taste myself. My moan was overtaken by the rumbling growl that emerged from his chest.
“I need you to tell me what to do,” I begged softly. “I need you to teach me how to make myself come.”
A vicious shudder ripped through his body but he held still. The predator in him, the part of himself that he called savage, called out to me from the cage he had locked inside him. I could practically hear the rattle of
the bars, the baying howl at the moon. Each muscle and tendon was starkly delineated under his dusky skin as he strained against his primal urge to take and dominant.
Why was he resisting me?
“Sin,” I begged, an edge of desperation to my voice.
He didn’t move but his eyes burned, burned, burned, hot but suppressed like the destructive force trapped under the cap of a volcano.
Locking his eyes to mine, I back away slowly to sit in the old-fashioned armchair in the corner by the scroll desk and shed my underwear. I sat down and hooked my legs over each arm so that my pussy was completely exposed to him.
The muscle in his jaw ticked like the second hand arm of a clock.
I swallowed the minimal discomfort that my prudish former self might have felt and slid two fingers down to my core, opening myself blatantly under his scrutiny. His regard was so intense that his gaze was a physical caress against my slick folds.
“Should I touch myself here, sir?” I asked, dipping one finger, then two just inside.
His head tipped further so that he could really watch but still he didn’t move, didn’t speak. I think we both knew that if he did, he would be done. Mine.
“Or here?” I asked on a gasp as I twirled my index finger over my throbbing clit.
I set up a steady thrum across the sensitive bundle of nervous, licking my lips deliberately as I latched eyes on the erection almost comically straining the front of his pajama pants.
“Would it hurt if I pinched it, do you think?”
Sinclair flinched as I did so and my back arched steeply at the sharp swell of pleasure that arrowed up my spine.
“Do you want to see my fingers inside of me?” I asked, trying to channel what Sinclair might order me to do.
It wasn’t the same as his commanding presence but I enjoyed the thrill of playing with a predator, the danger I was knowingly putting myself in. Prey could only dance so long before a true animal before they gave into their nature and took.
The Consequence Page 7