The Price Of Success (Fighting For Fireworks)

by Lee, Corri

  "Semantics." I scoffed in disgust, knowing that the same word was used when I defended him against the concept of said 'grooming'. "I did what I had to and used the tools at my disposal to make you see that you're my equal." Our jaws dropped at the same time and my eyes flared with anger.

  I took a deep breath and pulled my phone from my pocket. "How are you so bad with words for somebody who makes it his profession? You're going to need to give me coffee if you want me to stay here and duke this out, Alexander." I shook my head to myself and sent a quick text to Bethany.

  I'll meet you all at the cinema, this may take a while.

  I had no idea why I stayed there and let him insult me, but something glued me to that seat- maybe morbid fascination over whether he could dig himself out of the chasm he'd thrown himself into. I wanted him to redeem himself.

  I leaned my head down on the desk while I patiently waited for my coffee to arrive. I was too tired and sore to argue, but yearned to hard for him to leave. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place with no light visible to assure me that we would pull ourselves out of this rut as a stronger couple. I looked up briefly when Nathaniel put a mug down next to me. Something caught my eye, and it made me grab at his wrist and turn it to look at his cuffs.

  The simple silver cuff links I had bought for him shone from his shirt, NA reflecting a distorted image of my face as I stared in amazement. "You actually wear these?"

  "If you'd paid as close attention to me as I have to you, you'd know that I wear them every day." I released my grasp on his wrist and simpered. There would be no reason for him to wear something so cheap unless it was a sentimental attachment that drove him to- Nathaniel was too potent to fall foul to obligation. He was sentimentally attached to me, could I have said the same if our relationship had been a sham?

  "If this was genuine interest and not staking me out for a popularity boost, why didn't you just ask me out on a date like a normal guy?"

  "Would you have said yes?" Nathaniel stood over me with his mug in one hand, the other carefully examining the cut on my scalp.

  "No, but not because I felt inferior. I would have turned you down on the premise of you being a pompous megalomaniac."

  "You immediately thought I was devoid of personality- you were visibly perturbed by my presence until you caught me off guard with your question of 'why me?'. You needed to see weakness to realise that I wasn't the cold money-hungry vessel that you presumed. How could I do that if you gave me the brush off?"

  "You've had the chance and you're still not disproving my initial impression." If anything, he'd enforced the opinion. "So you've used my book as a means of luring me in, after berating Cole for doing the same," hypocrite, "and forced me to obsess over it hopelessly just so you could have the chance to prove that you're not all big bucks and snobbery. Explain the vetting and throwing me into the media spotlight when you know that I don't want fame and riches."

  He sighed and took his usual place at his desk, looking thoroughly beaten down. "I didn't want you to feel uncomfortable in being part of my life. You're used to it now, it's your life too now. And you wouldn't have accepted clothes and spa treatments as gifts." He was right, I wouldn't have. But I detested the fact that he had to change who I was to make me 'acceptable' to be seen with him.

  "My appearance shouldn't have mattered to you, Nathaniel, neither should anyone else's opinion of me. You didn't need to dazzle me with all of the ideas of romance that I wrote myself. You should love me for who I am, warts and all."

  "And I do, and I always have." He stood up again and walked around to my side of the desk, perching himself on its edge. "I understand that this looks awful, Cecelia. But I don't 'know' women. You walked into my building and essentially came with a manual to winning your heart, I couldn't see how I could possibly stand to fail. But I severely underestimated the effect that you would have on me. I see myself in you, and I don't even see any of myself in Isaac- the man I shared a womb with."

  I looked up into his eyes and that foul ogre of a man was gone. He was once again the man who had won my heart, and I had unintentionally told him exactly how to do so. How did I truly stand a chance against him when I made it so easy for him? "I would never take this crap from anyone else, Nathaniel- I think I must have sold my soul after all."

  He lifted me up from the chair and pulled me over to sit down on the rug in front of the fire, wrapping his arms and legs around me as though ensuring that I couldn't escape. "Souls are overrated, Cecelia- what one must do to keep them. I assure you that you have committed the six things the Lord hateth and the seventh his soul detesteth in the short time since you've known me."

  I craned my neck to look up at him and frowned. "I think we've already clarified that I've committed the seven deadly sins."

  "Different sins." Nathaniel pulled me down to lie next to him across the rug and wound himself around me anew. "A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief, a deceitful witness that uttereth lies, and the seventh, him that soweth discord among brethren."

  I ran through the list in my mind and matched an event to each one. A proud look- that was a given. A lying tongue, also obvious. A heart that devises wicked plots was my revenge on Cole at Cherry Vine and my thoughts to sabotage Nathaniel's relationship before I knew that his significant woman was me. A deceitful witness who uttereth lies, my lying to cover Bethany's cheating, and my divulging the information to Adam was sowing discord among brethren. But shedding innocent blood?

  "The only blood I've shed is yours in the throes of passion, Nate, and you're certainly no innocent."

  "Clearly not, but what happened to Fiore was as much your fault as mine."

  I heaved myself up onto my elbows and glared at him. I would take no responsibility for that crime. "Come again?"

  Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at me and spread his arms out behind his head. "Why did you come to my office yesterday if not to show me what he'd done to you and tell me that I couldn't have you? Did you honestly expect me to take it lying down and do nothing, wait patiently like a saint? You didn't have to come to me, Cecelia, you could have avoided me forever. His blood is on your hands too." I sank back down onto the rug numbly. He was right, I was as responsible as he was, but I must still have a soul in that I put an end to it.

  And yet, knowing that he had ordered an assault on one of my friends, I was still lying there with that man- as vindictive and jealous as he had been. I would give my life for him and he would ruin his for me. We were both as faulty as each other, and even knowing his worst of flaws, I didn't want to leave. I would lay with that man until my turn at his side was over. I had sold my soul to him and I thought that I must hold his in return.

  "Nathaniel?"

  "Mm-hmm?"

  "Our relationship is so warped and immoral."

  "Isn't it though?" He rolled over onto his side and smiled at me, like our reign of chaos was nothing to be ashamed of. "I'll buy you a throne to match mine when we go to Hell and overthrow the Devil."

  I only half smiled back, depressed by the awful person I had become in just three short weeks. I was greedy, selfish, malicious, vain and on the cusp of infamy. And it was all because of him, but yet he was the only person who could take that hurt away. I was dependent on him to feel complete, even though he made me evil. He was bad for me but he was the only one who could rapture me. "Kiss me and make all this go away."

  He looked at me dubiously and frowned. "You're very bruised and your lip is sore. I don't want to hurt you." The magnitude of his self-restraint was reflected in his eyes, which smouldered so much that they were practically molten.

  "I've been hurting for you for three weeks and I'll hurt for many more to come. This is nothing."

  And it wasn't. When his lips were on mine, any pain that I felt was drowned out by the completeness I felt from knowing that I was his. Our clothes fell into a pile and revealed that the marks we had
left on each other two days earlier still remained. We were both scratched and love-bitten, each a victim of the other, and our fear of the depth of our feelings was reflected in the way we made love. The usual carnal lust we expressed was traded for a cautious and emotionally driven battle to find our souls in each other, and we clung on in the hope that we might not lose our way again.

  His kisses erased the rawness of the muscles in my neck and my moaned utterances assured him that his inhumane actions hadn't been a waste. When our confidence in each other was rebuilt, we took selfishly from each other what we needed and mutually collapsed in the heap of bliss that we knew and loved so well. If this is what awaited me in Hell, I would sin every day.

  "Feeling better?"

  "Hmm." I reached behind me to slap his hand away as his fingers trailed up and down my side. "Bitch, that tickles."

  "Ticklish?" I pushed myself up with a hand on either side of his head and suppressed a smile. "You are."

  "No. And trust me, you don't want to find out what will happen if you test me." I gave him a look of warning and settled back down with my head against his chest with my eyes closed and my hand over his heart to accommodate my lasting need for solace that it hadn't been torn out.

  He reached over to his trousers and hummed contemplatively as he dug into the pocket, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "Cecelia?"

  "Hmm."

  "Do you think you might find your way to wearing this again and not removing it for the foreseeable future?" I opened one eye and looked at him, then looked at the familiar platinum wishbone ring that I'd returned to him the previous morning. The corners of my lips curved and I opened my mouth to speak, but he quickly jammed his free hand over my mouth and shook his head. "No sass from you, madame. A simple yes or no will suffice." Killjoy. I rolled my eyes and held out my left hand without argument, my mouth not released until the ring was firmly back on my finger. "Tell me about the Bermuda Triangle."

  It didn't seem like a particularly heartfelt way to seal a proposal but in the absence of a parade, I would settle for geography. "Located in the western part of the Northern Atlantic ocean between Miami, San Juan and Bermuda, subject to speculation over the mysterious disappearances of air crafts and sailing vessels- ah!" I yelped as his hand came down on my bare behind. "You told me to tell you about the Bermuda Triangle!"

  "I meant why you want to scatter your parents ashes there and you damn well know it."

  "Next time you spank me, you lose a nipple." His hand quickly slid up to my side away from the danger zone. "My parents always joked about going there when they were old and grey, sort of like a suicide mission. They'd either come back as the oldest couple to survive the Triangle or go down in history as another one of the mysterious disappearances. You don't get much older and greyer than ash."

  "Let's go there. Tonight." I wrinkled my nose and lifted my head to look at Nathaniel- his eyes twinkled with sincerity. "I don't care if we make it back or not."

  I brushed my fingers across his cheek and smiled. There was nothing I wanted more than to have him to myself in somewhere exotic. And honestly, I didn't care if we came home safely or not. "Tomorrow. I have plans tonight."

  He pouted with genuine disappointment. "Can't we go afterwards?"

  "They won't let me on a plane, Nate, I'll be tragically drunk. I'm owed an awful lot of drinks." I gripped his chin between my thumb and forefinger and pulled a face at him. "Tomorrow morning, I promise. If we're going to get lost in the Bermuda Triangle, Bethany is going to want to give me a good send off."

  He looked at me grumpily and huffed. "I don't compromise, Cecelia." And so it begins. "I want to spend the night with you."

  "Fine." I whined at him and pulled myself up from my human pillow. "I'll call you when I'm drunk enough to call it a night. Unless you wanted to come with me?"

  "What do you have planned?"

  "A bad Hollywood remake of a horror film and copious amounts of alcohol."

  He grumbled and began to pass me my clothes. "Alcohol maybe. A resounding no to cinematic twaddle. Why don't we go to The Duplicate? We'll owe Isaac for not turning up tomorrow." I had completely forgotten about Isaac's insistence that we all went to the club on the Saturday evening.

  I nodded once and murmured my assent. It would be our first night out publicly as a couple and I'd be sharing it with some firm friends. "Invite Aiden so I can break his nose in return." For some reason, I didn't really mind that he'd inflicted injury on me, nor that he'd attacked Cole. Nathaniel was right, he had been a loyal friend in doing so and had jumped at the chance to stand up for me. Could I really object to the principle, even if the execution was lacking in common sense? Sure, if I didn't have a soul. And I didn't.

  Nathaniel leaned over and kissed me to rouse me from my sleep. It was certainly one of the nicer ways to wake, and the sumptuous feast he'd treated me to had adequately made up for the severe lack of sustenance over the last two days, albeit been the trigger of my sleepiness. We were back where we had been on Wednesday morning- in that happy little bubble wherein I was completely shielded from harm and would never be allowed to skip a meal again. Somehow, our co-dependency on each other didn't really faze nor confound me- I was happy to need him when he needed me with equally as much urgency. Some might have argued that we were dysfunctional, but I would have argued that no car would work without an engine, and that the engine was redundant without a vehicle to power. My motor didn't turn over without Nathaniel, and without me, he had no reason to whir.

  "We're here, Lolita."

  "Hmm, never use that pet name again." I yawned into my hand and blinked out of my drowsiness. I was completely over the idea of slumming it out on the town with my friends like a teenager, but was once again driven by bloody obligation to make an appearance, if only to celebrate Bethany's promotion. Unlike the last time I had been forced to part ways with Nathaniel in such a manner, there was no little voice nagging me to stay by his side, so I had no good reason to disappoint my friends. "Are you sure I can't tempt you with The Thing?"

  "I might ask you the same." He smirked and glanced down at his crotch. It had never occurred to me that he had it in him to be as crude as any 'normal' twenty-three year old man.

  "Seriously?" I laughed, scanning the Chrysler for any hidden cameras that Lobke may have installed- she could quite possibly live well off the profits from selling videos of the backseat action we so generously supplied. I spied Adam, Bethany and Cole walking into the small independent cinema, pointing towards the Chrysler, and sucked on my bottom lip. "Okay why not, I can spare five minutes."

  Nathaniel scoffed."I think you'll need longer tha- uh... What are you doing?" I looked up at him from my new position, crouched on the floor between his legs, making light work of his zips and buttons.

  "Making sure you never scare the crap out of me by walking out again." I raised an eyebrow and tugged him free of his underwear. I paused for a moment to cock my head at him, my hand resting on his thigh. "First time?" He didn't need to speak, the answer was clear in his face and he looked like a kid spotting a mountain of gifts under the tree on Christmas morning. "You'll never want another woman to touch you again, of that I assure you.

  His entire body, except one obvious area, went slack the moment I enveloped him with my mouth, twitching only occasionally to confirm that I was pushing the right buttons, so to speak. He made guttural groans that I'd never before and every inch of his skin flushed with a deep crimson. "Are you alright?" I pulled back and smirked up at him, drinking in his dishevelled state, "you look like you're about to explode." He gave me a look that would have burned through metal, and I ceased my tease.

  There was no part of me which that man didn't fit perfectly and I took great pleasure from feeling him wind up so tight that he battled to breathe through the build-up to his climax. I took him deep into my throat when the first thick burst of flavour hit my tongue, and it tasted as rich as he did. His hand reached to mine as he emptied, gripping me wit
h incomparable pressure.

  Only when his fingers loosened did I heave myself up onto the seat next to him and smile at him with undeniable smugness. "Good god, is that what you taste like? You might have to buy me a muzzle." He just looked back at me and sighed, shaking his head with the faintest hint of a smile. He seemed utterly bewildered and his silence meant only one thing. "Lobke, he's speechless."

  "Bullshit, Nate is never speechless." She stared up at him in the rear view mirror and laughed. "Nate? No way." He looked up at her eyes timidly and then quickly ducked out of view. "You might get a Nobel prize for that, Cici."

  I tittered and wrapped myself around Nathaniel, relieved when he swung an arm around me and pulled me into a kiss. "Consider Cecelia Douglas-Alexander." Not only had I blown the man's mind, I'd sent him into a such a spin that he was seeing wedding bells. I wondered if I could fight crime with my spectacular skills in felatio and incite world peace.

  "No, it's still pretentious." I hid my smile as I leaned over to collect my coat from the seat opposite. "I'll consider Cecelia Alexander."

  "What- really?" The kid at Christmas looked like he'd just unwrapped one of everything in Toys'R'Us.

  I was the end of the Douglas bloodline and would never pass my name onto my children. I had been without a family for six years and really, nothing tied me to the name. If I thought that it was the only legacy that my parents had left me, I was wrong- they had left me with all the preconceived notions of romance and fireworks that had led me to the man that made no secret of the fact that he didn't function correctly when I walked away. What was in a name, really? "Considered and approved." I couldn't deny that the name did have a certain element of sophistication.

  Nathaniel couldn't have possibly smiled any harder if he tried, I was convinced that his face might crack as he stepped out of the car and waited for Lobke to open my door so he could offer me a hand like a true English gentleman. He made me feel glorious when his eyes radiated love and pride, like I was truly the catch and he was the lucky one to have caught me. He was, but I was equally have blessed to have found a little devil of my own.