by Ella Brooke
She felt sick, because if Tucker wanted another woman in the flat without telling her, that was certainly something he could accomplish.
Safe in her studio, Luna shut her eyes tight, pressing her flat palms over them. After a timeless space, she finally straightened up, sure that she wasn't going to cry. She had nothing against crying in general, but she was very much afraid that if she started to cry, there was a chance that she might not stop for hours.
She inspected her face in the small decorative mirror hanging on the wall. Her eyes looked far too bright and there were bright red patches high on her cheeks, but otherwise, she looked calm. It was almost shocking how calm she looked, like a marble statue of some martyred saint.
"All right," she said. "All right."
Deep inside, Luna knew that she had signed up for this. Tucker had made her position painfully clear to her, and now she had to deal with it. He had fulfilled his end of the bargain, and the sooner she fulfilled hers, the sooner she could get away from all of this.
The thought of leaving Tucker felt like enormous steel claws raking across her soul, but the idea of him with other women, touching them and kissing them the way he did her, was equally bad.
There was no going backwards. There was no way to escape the trap she had willingly walked into.
Luna knew that she was trapped, and now, she simply had to make the best of it.
Chapter Twelve
Luna spent a quiet night in the studio. Though her hands itched to work, she kept herself on the chaise. Perhaps Tucker was right about some things. It surely couldn't be healthy to bounce from work to Tucker and back again. She had always been someone who was extremely independent.
"I am not going to let a relationship dictate this much of my life," she exclaimed to the darkness. It sounded pretty good, at least.
She had seen what happened to other artists who gave too much of themselves to their lovers, seen how it could take them away from the thing that sustained them and gave them that special spark. She had never seen if they regretted it; those people usually disappeared from her life sooner rather than later.
All right then, tomorrow, I'll get out a little bit. Murano glass is so beautiful, after all.
She rose in the morning to fetch the pastries that by now had become a staple, but she found that Tucker had left even earlier. The flat echoed with silence, and she was not sorry to get out of it. It was especially important after she remembered Tucker's four-hour lunch yesterday. There was a small, non-zero chance that if she had stayed in the apartment stewing over that information, she might have gone slightly mad.
Instead, she dressed herself in one of the gorgeous pale green dresses that had been sent to her, and after a moment, decided against the driver. Luna knew very much how her life hinged on Tucker at the moment, but surely there was nothing wrong about ignoring it for a short while? Using his driver, a friendly man of Turkish descent with a truly formidable moustache, would have been fine, but that would have been a link back to everything that she was trying to avoid.
Instead she called for a taxi service that would take her to the museum in question, and suddenly she was in another world, one that was not dictated by Tucker. There was a thrill to it, but even as she walked in awe among the art of another time, she couldn't help but miss him. There was one stained glass panel in particular that made her pause. Murano glass was justifiably famous for its blues and crimsons and greens, but this panel was done in glass tinted brown and gold. The result was a piece that looked unbelievably luxe and gorgeously decadent.
Luna spent a few minutes looking at the piece and trying to find a shard of glass that matched Tucker's extraordinary eyes, and finally, she had to shake her head with a slight laugh at her own foolishness.
"I love him," she said softly to herself, and the tears that came to her eyes were puzzling. It would have made sense if they were entirely sad or frustrated or grieving tears. After all, there was nothing pleasant about loving someone who did not love you back after all.
However, Luna's artist soul felt as if everything had snapped into place, as if everything now made sense in a way that it hadn't before. With the lens of love, it all came together.
A part of Luna had never thought that she would fall in love. That it had happened with a man who was so different from her was nearly funny, but when she thought about it, she would not have traded this for the world.
"I love him, I love him," she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. She felt as if she might curl up on the floor next to all of this beauty and simply die of the strength of her emotions.
"Oh, honey, are you all right?"
Luna looked up at the concerned voice, noting only belatedly that she understood it. The entire day, she had been walking in a babble of Italian, and now being addressed in English felt like being hit with a bucket full of cold water.
"I... I am," she stammered, and she turned to face a concerned older couple. At first she wondered if they were tourists, but there was something comfortable about them, something that made her think that they were no strangers to the city.
"You looked a little peaked," said the woman, small and tidy in demure brown suit.
"You should sit down," said the tall and gaunt man who was obviously her husband. "Here, there's a bench here."
Luna protested a little, but in the end, the couple was right. A few minutes on a cool stone bench with a concerned couple from Wisconsin fretting over her proved to be exactly what she needed, and she grinned up at them.
'Thank you so much," she said with a laugh. "I think hearing English did me a lot of good, too. I didn't expect to hear it from anyone today..."
"Of course, dear," said the woman, who seemed to be the more talkative of the two. "I'm Cherry Lawson, and this is my husband Jim Lawson."
"Pleasure," Jack said laconically, and Luna grinned even wider. She had met plenty of couples just like these two, and somehow, halfway around the world, she felt at home.
"I'm happy to meet the both of you," she said. "What brings you to Florence?"
The two of them gave her wide grins of their own and answered her in unison.
"Bats!"
Luna blinked, and for a moment, all of her woes were forgotten as Jim and Cherry told her all about their project of studying a particular species of bat that had been living in the area even longer than the proud Florentines. They showed her pictures on their phones, as proud as they would have been of grandchildren, and when Luna expressed interest, they looked as if their day had been made.
"The glass is beautiful, but it's just us killing time until this evening," said Cherry. "There's a nearby cave where they come out, and it's amazing. We've been studying bats together for more than forty years, and every evening departure and morning return is unique. You should come with us! We're getting a light dinner at a restaurant we both adore, and then it’s off to the countryside."
Luna wondered if she should have some compunctions about going off into the Italian countryside with an older couple who seemed slightly insane (she refused to say batty), but she gave in to it with a shrug. She had wanted to be more independent, and maybe this was how it started. The old her wouldn't have hesitated for a moment to plunge into this new adventure.
"Hold on, just a minute," she said, and she reached for her phone. When she dialed Tucker, she wondered what he might say, and then it became a moot point because she only reached his voice mail.
"Hi, um, this is Luna. I'm going to be a little late tonight, it looks like I'm chasing bats with Cherry and Jim Lawson," she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to say I love you, but somehow she bit it back.
"I'll see you when I see you, I guess," she finished, and then she hung up.
He probably won't even notice that I'm gone, she thought with a sigh, and she turned to the excited couple.
"Well, I'm all yours," she said, and fell into step with them.
***
Eight hours later, she was cackling in th
e back of Jim and Cherry's Peugeot, hanging on to Cherry in the back seat as if they were old friends.
"You're too much, you are both too much," she exclaimed. "I honestly cannot believe that you actually climbed down into the cave."
"Only a little way, dear," said Cherry, though there was something very smug about her grin. "That's nothing, why, Jim descended nearly a mile into a cavern in Brazil just so we could verify the size of this colony we were trying to document."
"It was important," said Jim stolidly. "They were going to bulldoze the site, wreck the environment, without thinking of what a lack of bats would do."
After spending this much time with the Lawsons, Luna could appreciate how very bad losing a large colony of bats could be for a local environment, and she gasped accordingly.
"You should have come into the cavern with us, dear," said Cherry with a bright sparkle in her eyes. "You really don't know yourself until you've been caving, surrounded by rock, never sure what's going to happen..."
"No, thank you," Luna retorted. "I'll stay on the ground, thank you very much..."
From the driver's seat, Jim hummed thoughtfully.
"It's important to take risks though," he said. "Though of course, you should always choose the ones that you take. It should always be your choice."
Cherry laughed, suddenly sounding much younger.
"He said something very much like that when he proposed," she said fondly, and Luna felt a deep pang go through her even as she smiled.
Jim and Cherry Lawson were going back to a tiny subletted apartment in a rather poorer area of the city. They talked about getting to their study sites on burro, on buses crowded far past the point of claustrophobia and sometimes even on foot.
Despite their enthusiasm, she didn't envy their lives studying bats, but their happiness... that was something that she wanted fiercely and with a kind of hunger that startled her.
She threw her arms around Cherry in an enormous hug.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much for today.
"Well, of course, dear," said Cherry, a little puzzled.
All too soon, it was time to drop her off, and she waved to them cheerfully before heading up to the penthouse.
Glancing at her phone, she was startled to see how very late it already was.
I hope Tucker didn't stay up worrying about me, she thought, and then she dismissed it.
She was just opening the door, thinking that surely he was asleep or perhaps even still out, when she felt a vise-like force grip her around the wrist, yanking her into the dim apartment before slamming the door behind her. Luna opened her mouth to scream, but then she realized that it was only Tucker, though Tucker looking far more furious than she had ever seen him look before.
This is Tucker, he's not going to do anything to me, he's not going to hurt me, she thought, but then he glared down at her, a mad light in his eye.
"Just where the hell have you been?"
Chapter Thirteen
It was probably the dumbest decision that she could have made, but Luna couldn't prevent herself from laughing at his statement.
"Are you kidding me?" she blurted out. "I'm not seventeen, you don't get to give me a curfew as if you were..."
"When I pay for every part of your life and you have a goddamn job to do? You bet your cute little ass I do. Now where the hell were you?"
"I was out chasing bats," she snapped, and she could tell from the look on his face that he was sincerely not sure whether she was joking or not. All right, in all fairness that was a little hard to believe, but she didn't have a lot of sympathy for Tucker right this moment.
"What?"
"I met a nice old couple from Wisconsin, they're studying bats. Jim and Cherry Lawson, if you don't believe me. Look them up, they've written like a bazillion papers together or something like that."
He at least didn't do as she said, but instead, Tucker shook his head and started to drag her towards the bedroom. Luna gasped in alarm and tried to drag her feet, but she might as well have been pushing against a brick wall for all the good that it did for her.
"What the heck are you doing?" she exclaimed. "You can't think that we're going to... to..."
"It's either that or I lock you in your bedroom and make sure that you really understand what it means to get in at a decent hour..."
His words were so stunning that Luna was shocked silent until she was in the bedroom with him, and then with a cry of fury, she shook him off. He watched her with glittering eyes to see if she was going to run, but she had never felt less like running in her entire life.
"You sure are one to talk about decency," she snarled. "You and your...your four-hour lunches!"
He scowled at her, and it was a scowl that had had investment bankers and crown princes looking around nervously. It had absolutely no effect on her right then, however, except to make her just a little angrier.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about you ignoring me," she ranted, too pent up and furious to keep any of it to herself. "I'm talking about you keeping me here like some kind of bird in a cage while you go see... whoever you want in Florence! I'm talking about how it feels to know that I'm second best at best to all of the women that you are spending your time with.... that you wouldn't be with me at all if... if we weren't..."
She paused, trying to stop her chest from heaving, trying to stop the tears from coming, because god, she could not take that. She could not take dealing with that at all right now, not in front of this man.
"All the women?" he asked, and there was a catch in his tone that she would have noticed if she had looked up.
"Yes," she said miserably. "All the women. The blondes, the brunettes..."
"Luna," he said, putting a hand on her elbow, but she pulled it away.
"Ugh, I can't stand to look at you right now," Luna snapped, turning away. "I'm too angry."
"Well, let's fix that then, shall we?" said Tucker, and she turned as she caught the purring, dangerous note in his voice. That tone alone should have sent her running, but instead for some reason, she allowed him to grasp her by the wrist, circling it with his hand. She was caught tight, held not uncomfortably but with absolute firmness. Luna refused to embarrass herself by struggling, instead looking up at him with a defiant tilt to her chin. Instead of realizing that he was acting like a barbarian and releasing her, however, Tucker only chuckled, shaking his head in appreciation.
"Things are never boring around you at all, are they?" he asked with a slight smile.
He didn't wait for her to answer, instead pulling her along behind him to his closet. There was a glimpse of gorgeous suits and clever cupboards for ties, cuff links, and other accessories, but none of those things were what Tucker was after. Instead he reached towards the hangers were his scarves were kept, and the one he pulled out startled her.
Surely it was too thin and filmy to be a man's scarf, and when she glimpsed the rose motif on the edge, she was sure. This was a scarf that had belonged to one of his conquests, and her eyes shot up to his face accusingly.
"So whose scarf is this?"
"The owner left it here, so it's mine now," Tucker said cheerfully. "Now hush or I am going to need to find another for your mouth."
Another? Luna had time to wonder, and then he was looping the scarf over her head, settling it with expertise over her eyes. Before she could do much more than gasp, he was knotting it firmly behind her head. She was blindfolded in dark silk, and when she realized that she could not see at all, she went utterly still.
As an artist, Luna had always known how much she depended on her vision, but this was the first time that it had been taken away like this. Suddenly, the heavy hand that stroked her cheek felt more like an anchor than an invasion, and against her will, she leaned into it.
Tucker chuckled, but there was no mockery in it this time. Instead, there was a kind of affection that she was surely making up and a sweetness she wasn't sure she had eve
r heard before.
"There now. Venetian gentlemen were renowned falconers. They took birds from the wild and hooded them, covered their eyes, and then introduced them to food from a human hand, comfort from a human voice. They kept them in the dark because it was the best way to keep the bird calm. When a falcon was hooded, it would not hurt itself trying to escape."
"It would make it easier to handle a bird that was so confused that it no longer wanted to claw your eyes out as well," Luna noted, and he chuckled in agreement.
"I have always thought that those falconers would be a very demanding and exacting lot," he went on, as if they were simply engaging in a conversation about medieval falconry, as if she wasn't blindfolded and he wasn't stroking a gentle finger down her cheek. In the absence of her sight, it felt as if her sense of touch had intensified. She could feel his hand and the warmth of it trace the curve of her cheek, the arch of her throat, resting for a moment on her pulse point before coming to rest at the center of her cleavage, tugging her neckline down slightly.
"Do you think you could be so cruel?" she found herself saying through dry lips. "Do you think that you could keep a bird in darkness until you broke its will and it agreed to hunt for you?"
He drew her close, and though there was still a small part of her that wanted to resist him, the rest of her was drawn as if like a magnet to his warmth and his strength. One trembling step and then another, and then she was resting lightly against his chest, her cheek pressed against the smooth fabric of his shirt. She could hear his heart beating under her ear, and when he smoothed her hair down, she shivered.
"I would never break your spirit," he whispered. "Have no fear of that, my beautiful little falcon. It would be far better to simply seduce you to my will, to make sure that you flew where I wished because you simply wanted to please me."
"You think I want to please you?" she asked, trying to put that touch of haughtiness back into her voice, but it was lost when he cupped one hand over her breast, squeezing gently.
"I think you might be convinced." Tucker responded. "At least, you would be if you understood how pleasurable flight under my command could be. This is something that is sometimes easier to see when you are blinded."