by Roxy Harte
I heave a sigh, in that all sobbed out way that sounds especially pathetic when nothing can be said to make things right.
“Better?” he asks, his voice like warm, smooth bourbon.
I nod my head, thinking, please let this go.
Garrett pushes me up and forward, readjusting my catsuit, pulling the fabric back over my shoulders, zipping me, snapping the straps over my breasts to hide my nipples. Shit, shit, shit, I’ve ruined everything.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but I know it is too late for I’m sorry. I start to stand but Garrett holds me in his lap, holding me while he pulls his cell phone from his pocket. He dials, saying, “Bring the car around,” then folds the phone closed.
“No, Kitten, I’m the one who’s sorry. I wasn’t brave enough to take you to the penthouse, I thought it would be easier to get reacquainted here, where we first met, but the thought of taking you to The Oasis…I can’t.” He brushes my bangs out of my face. “I’m not ready for that. When I take you back into The Oasis, to share you with my friends, I want it to be a celebration…that you are mine, and I am yours.” He tilts my chin up when my face drops. “I thought bringing you here would reverse time, make things automatically right, and I was delusional to think so.”
His gaze holds me still, searching my face for answers.
“I can’t reverse time. I can’t take what I shared with Lord Fyre back,” I whisper.
“I don’t want you to take it back, I don’t want you to regret it—but I do want you back. The question is do you want me back?”
The raw emotion in his eyes makes me start to cry again but I nod.
“Good. We’re going back to the penthouse now, so that we can restart where we left off. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Heart thudding because I think he’s implying that he wants to make love to me. Am I ready for this? I nod, trembling, nervous.
“Is that what you want?”
I nod.
“No, ask me.”
“Make love to me?” I ask and it sounds uncertain even to me.
The limo ride to Garrett’s isn’t nearly long enough. I sit on the edge of my seat, worrying a fingernail, and he lets me, not even attempting to touch me. This ride to his place is so much different than my first trip to his house. That trip seemed to take hours, but in a good way; this trip, speed of light, and that is bad, very, very bad. I need time to think, time to process, and time to figure out how I could ever convince him that I want him. I’m here, isn’t that good enough?
Sure, lots of really cheesy ideas come to mind—a strip tease, a lap dance, a welcome home blowjob—and I’m not up to any of them. I don’t want to play games. I lied my way into his life, got caught, and promptly got dumped. It doesn’t sound pretty when put that way, but damn it, that’s what happened. He didn’t want me. Even when I obsessed about him, exposed my soul to most of the California coast, and generally made a really big fool out of myself, he didn’t want me. Then, kidnapped and almost killed, I got his attention. I tell him I want his best friend to play with for a while, still not sounding pretty, but yeah, I got his attention on that one, too. Now, voilà, he wants me?
Does he?
What can I possibly do to make him believe that I want him?
Too soon the limo door is being opened by the doorman, Gerard. Too soon, we ride up the elevator to his penthouse.
God damn. I give up worrying the fingernail and rip the painted acrylic tip off with a solid grip of teeth. This shouldn’t be this stressful.
Fyre went to his wife.
I came back to Garrett.
All is right with the world. Right? I didn’t know it was going to hurt so much. I am happy to be here with Garrett and it hurts like hell. I miss Lord Fyre…and that hurts like hell too.
Garrett holds open the door for me and I am assailed by a million memories. It is said that everyone’s home smells a certain way, their scent, and I think that’s true because I wasn’t really homesick until this minute. Now that I’m here, I know I’m home. Turning to him, I can’t take another step. I reach out my arms, looping my hands around his neck, crying, because that seems to be all I can do tonight. “I’ve never had a home. Not where I knew I was loved, knew I was safe, until I came here. This feels like home to me and it’s not because of the walls or the floors or the ceiling, or anything that makes this place other than a building. It’s you, Garrett. You feel like home to me. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I do,” he answers, pushing his forehead against mine. “Welcome home, baby.”
Fur rubs around my ankles. “Monet!” I shriek, squatting in my four-inch heels to pick her up. “Oh my God! You kept her! Oh my God! Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say, standing with her in my arms, stroking her, but she doesn’t like the feel of the PVC and struggles from my arms, bouncing back down onto the wood floor with a thud.
“What was I going to do, throw her out?”
I shrug, screwing my face into the universal scrunch for “duh.”
“I’m a sadist, not heartless, there is a difference, besides, there were the kittens to think about.”
“She had kittens?” I gasp.
He points with his head to the sofa where five kittens sleep. I race across the room to see them, kneeling, stroking their round bellies while they sleep. I whisper, “Thank you.”
“You said that.”
“I really, really mean it.” My head nods, and more tears flow. When did I become such a baby?
“It’s okay,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me toward his bedroom. “Come with me.”
I stall in the middle of the doorway, shaking.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“To make you know that I want you because I want you to feel wanted, cherished, and I don’t even know how to reconnect with you.”
He pulls my hand and I go two steps farther into the bedroom. His eyes narrow. “Resistance isn’t making me feel cherished, Kitten.”
“I know!” I shriek, frustrated that I’m screwing this up…again.
He catches my cheek in his palm as my face drops forward and he closes the gap between us, lifting my face so that he can kiss me. I don’t resist and he kisses me like a man well skilled, making my body want to melt into him, but my brain rebels, thinking too much. He pulls away, holding my gaze, drawing my hand, me attached, to the bed.
“Look, Kitten, I know you don’t have a switch that clicks from on to off and off to on. I know that you experienced something very powerful and amazing at Lord Fyre’s, and for a while, you may even make comparisons. I’m not promising to not get really ticked off when you do, because I might, and I say that because I’m getting a little ticked off that you’re not trusting me enough to help you make this all right.”
I let him pull me forward.
“We do need to talk about the time you spent with Lord Fyre, and we will talk about it, but you can’t share the last two months in a few minutes. So, I am taking you to my bed, because what we shared once was powerful and sexual. I enjoyed you. You enjoyed me. And that is where we are going to start again. Someday, you may ask me to Master you. And if you can make me believe you mean it, I will Master you. Until then, if you are willing to let me, I want to love you, because while you were with Fyre, I wasn’t thinking about the times I spanked you, or the times I bound you. I missed the times you held my hand. I missed your smile and your laughter.”
My knees hit the edge of the bed and he pushes me down onto the mattress. Holding my shoulders he looks into my eyes, commanding, “Relax.” He rolls me onto my side and slides the zipper of my catsuit down my back. Drawing it down off my shoulders, he pulls my arms out. Lying me all the way back, my upper half nude, he lifts my hips and shimmies me the rest of the way out, leaving me nude, exposed, shaking. Just his gaze sweeping over my body makes me quake.
He runs his hand down the center of my b
ody, ending at my clit. Kneeling next to the bed, he looks closely, too closely, leaving me overwhelmingly selfconscious as his fingers press apart the lips of my labia. Looking. “I missed this too.”
Chapter 14
“…the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.”
-Charles Dickens, Barnaby Ridge
Thomas
I am exhausted and more than a little irritable, having been on the hunt for my wife and children for four days. I knew they wouldn’t be at her father’s house in Cairo and that they had left with him for the Sudan, but damn, the Sudan isn’t that big. I can fall off the face of the earth, I can disappear, but I always find those who think they can disappear. For the life of me I cannot believe my pregnant wife is dragging three small children through the desert. When I find her, and I will, I will kill her, if the rebels haven’t already had the pleasure.
Tonight I will sleep in Wadi Halfa, a juncture between Cairo and what used to be the Sudanese border. Technically, today it lies in Sudan; a month ago it was Egypt, country designation changing with the day’s guard, whoever has the most guns today wins. Ten years ago, I might have been persuaded to call it a town, but to say that it is a town would imply that any form of modern civilization exists.
The Range Rover I drove into town will not see me out. Transportation from this point farther south seems questionable at best. Based on the east bank of the Nile River, I could conceivably hire a boat, a better bet than relying on the train that sometimes goes through, but most times doesn’t. I am hoping for a bus, also unpredictable, but more reliable than my other options because a regular flow of buses usually follow the road along the Nile. There is no bus stop, no bus schedule, and no organized itinerary, it’s sort of like sticking out your thumb to hitchhike and getting closer to where you want to go, if not the exact destination.
Since I am not sure where I’m going, taking the luck of the draw bus seems the best way to get there. Once upon a time, a little more than five years ago, I stumbled upon Lattie when I was leaving Egypt in a hurry. She hid me in her father’s tent. Until the morning I awoke to her note saying that she was joining her father in Cairo, we’d been together most of the years since.
I sit beneath the shade of a canvas lean-to, invited by one of the locals to share his dwelling and drink tea. I envy him his simple abode, cooler than my stifling hotel room. If only to keep me out of jail tonight, I rented a room, the accommodations the best in town, offering a thin, ancient mattress that sits on the floor, a green metal table and small plastic chair. The room is as clean as it can be, though the plaster is chipped, scuffed and painted an awful shade of blue that seems grey next to the brilliant blue sky beaconing from the small open window. After reading the temperature in the room, I escaped to the out of doors, where the air is unmoving but at least fresh. I’d give my soul for a shower, soap. I was told that the communal showers in the center of the Nile Hotel are closed temporarily, until the end of the water shortage comes. Sometimes, the desert isn’t so bad and water can be had for a price, other times, like now, no water for miles. Living in the United States, I have forgotten that simple daily hygiene is a luxury that can only be had for a price in other parts of the world, and sometimes not even money can answer your desires.
Time passes slowly in the desert, flies competing for a spot on my nose or lips, seeking moisture. I shoo them away, but they seem immune to my swatting. Several die for not taking the hint to go away.
Aside from drinking tea and watching the young boys stand guard over their small tables of wares, clear glass bottles of dark amber gasoline, roughly a liter in each bottle, and the Coca-Cola that marks today’s hot commodities, I have little to do. Each corner has a table set up, hosted by a young boy. Stranded here for six hours, already it seems like days. I place a travel thermometer on the table beside me—one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It is a dry heat, much like opening an oven door. My shirt is as wet as it could possibly get. I consider pulling it off and wringing it out, but that might be looked upon poorly by the locals. Here, the men wear a white long-sleeved garment that looks like a nightshirt, except longer, to the ankles. They look cooler than I feel in my cotton T-shirt and jeans, but then I want to stand out as the tourist in town. That and my fake American accent will see me at least delivered back to Cairo on a very bad day, whereas if I dressed in traditional garb, with my coloring, I could be shot on sight just because, depending on who is carrying the rifle and who is controlling the border today.
A roar in the sky alerts me to a helicopter, no doubt military issue. There is also little doubt that it is here for me, especially when it lands less than a hundred yards from where I sit.
The young soldier who hops out looks nicely starched; he is flanked by three others as he approaches. “Sir? I’m here to request you that you get in the helicopter, Sir.”
I note that the three men flanking him are pointing their Kalashnikovs at my midsection. I shrug, holding out my arms to my sides, sending out the I’m not dangerous vibe. I don’t mind going with them, the helicopter is definitely better than waiting another hour, or day, or week for the bus, and I recognize the men’s uniforms as those of her father’s brand of armed guns. I don’t bother asking where we’re going. I’m only mildly surprised when they don’t search me. Regrettably, I once took out three of his men because they’d decided I didn’t need my weapons and I was forced to demonstrate that I really don’t need my weapons. I am calmer with the small arsenal I have tucked away in my loose clothing: two knives, two small caliber guns. I’m glad they let me keep them. Knowing that they know I am armed but choose to let me stay that way, almost makes me feel that this isn’t going to go as badly as I think it’s going to go.
Three hours later, I find myself sipping more tea, though this time in a tent on the Egypt side of the border. It is a luxurious tent set in the middle of nowhere. Large oriental rugs, overlapping and covering the wide space, oversized pillows in slick satins and shiny silks, each embroidered in intricate patterns, litter the floor, serving as beds, seats, tables, whatever is needed at the moment.
I am unimpressed because, as far as I know, Lattie and my children are on the Sudanese side of the border with her father. Somehow, when I hear the commotion outside my tent, I’m not too alarmed. Only my wife can curse in six languages simultaneously, and when she is tossed into my tent unceremoniously, I know that I’m really racking up a debt-bill with Charles François Charbonneau, her father and the second wealthiest man within about two-thousand kilometers.
“You!” she screams, pointing a finger at me. I follow only every other word after that as she skips in and out of languages faster than my brain can translate, I roughly catch the drift of the one-sided conversation as who in the hell do you think you are and several impossible suggestions involving camels. I wait for her to stop screaming and for the tirade to drop to only two languages so that I can jump in with both feet.
“How dare you follow me here!” she says in French, followed by, “I told you—I need time to think!” in English, and “Why are you always so dangerous?” in French again.
I stick with English, not that it matters, but I hope she’ll follow suit. “Me? I am not the one who took three small children into a war zone!”
“Vous exagérez.”
“No, I’m not. That your father encouraged this insanity is not surprising, since he raised you between three warring countries, but come on—three children under the age of four and a pregnant woman? Were you sightseeing?”
“Je vous ai dit que c’était une réunion de famille!” she screams. “Did you even read the note?”
“I read the note, but it didn’t say anything about crossing into Sudan.” I use my calm voice.
“You wouldn’t have let me come if I had.”
“As if you’d ask permission!”
“We crossed the border for a day and a night! We’re safe, okay? I’m sorry if I scared
you.” She sighs, then starts pacing. “Mon père est ici, Thomas. Qu’avez-vous pensé qà arrivé?”
“I don’t care if you are with your father! Anything could happen out here!” I sigh heavily and she argues nothing further. We are left merely staring each other down. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
Shaking her head, she says, “A daughter’s love holds only so much sway here, Thomas. He wanted to kill you and I begged him not too.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have. I’m not a good person, Lattie. It’s having you in my life that made the difference. You bring balance to my life…you and the children. Please, come home.”
“I know, baby.” She lifts her eyes to me and smiles.
Of all the women I’ve shared my life with, Latisha understands my conflicts, my demons, even if she isn’t privy to the details of my dangerous past. If this tantrum is as bad as it ever gets, I still think we’ll be okay. Sometimes, I think she may even love me.
I hold open my arms, hoping for a truce with my wife at least and I’m glad when she walks into my arms and I find her pliant. I stroke the small of her back, knowing from past pregnancies that she likes it when I do. I am rewarded with her sigh.
“I’ve missed you, Lattie,” I whisper into her hair. It smells fresh and clean, scented with jasmine. Obviously her father can afford the luxuries.
“Sh-h.” She presses her fingertips to my mouth. “We don’t say things we don’t mean, Thomas. Even if it seems the right thing to say, remember?”
I start to argue with her, to tell her that I honestly missed her, but she replaces her fingers with her mouth, silencing me with her tongue. In the silence of her kiss, I am forced to realize that I did miss her. I missed her expertise in the erotic arts, I missed the knowledge she has of my body.
I have missed my children. I love them, all of them, even though Hektor isn’t biologically mine. When she talked me into helping her get out of Cairo, I hadn’t realized she was pregnant until after we were away safe. If I’d known she was pregnant, would it have made a difference? I don’t know. I do know that she was so afraid of losing her independence to a man she didn’t love that she would risk everything to keep her pregnancy secret.