“Umm-hmm. Why I didn’t believe a word she said, I don’t know. I just don’t like that house Cai, I want you to get rid of it before we marry. Agreed?”
He kissed my wounded shoulder, easing the burn of his imprint. “I do want to get rid of it. Lord knows I do, Chloe. It’s just that if I did, where would Claire and Dirk go?”
I felt sheer exasperation. “Retire? For fuck’s sake, Cai… they’re old! Give them some money to retire and everybody’s happy.”
“Listen… they’ve never known anywhere else. I get the feeling they’ve seen too many things in that house to find themselves at ease in the outside world, you get me? Plus if I sell that place, Jennifer will fuck me up, okay? She can’t let go of it. She can’t get past what happened. I know it’s difficult for her and I really don’t need the money, so whatever.”
I took a deep breath, trying to be the more reasonable one. I could tell he was irate, his breathing heavy. “Cai, how could she possibly fuck you up?”
“Jennifer has too many contacts in this city. I’d never work again if she had anything to do with it.”
“Oh, god. Listen,” I glanced at him fairly briefly, unable to keep eye contact less he saw how much I feared or suspected. “That rose. I need to know…”
He sighed dejectedly. “Honest to god, I don’t know who sent it to your desk in London, I don’t. I certainly didn’t.”
“It wasn’t just one,” I admitted, teasing my fingers through his. “There were more… and in different shades. Orange, pink and red. It got me worked up enough to ring round lots of men and even visit a florist to see if she knew anything about it.”
“A florist?” He chuckled.
“Yeah, I’m ashamed to admit… she said a woman could have sent it. Not only men send flowers apparently.”
He kissed my temple. “How did it get there? That place is secure!”
“Exactly! Beats me. I phoned reception and they had absolutely no idea! They even said they hardly ever get flower deliveries in that place!”
We still weren’t making eye contact, but from his voice he was just as genuinely perplexed as I was.
“Tell me about your mother, Cai.” I ran my hands over his forearms, trying to let him know I was with him, no matter what he told me. Trying not to sound too Freudian…
“My mom was… really sick. You know, mental health issues. Sharp objects, medicines… were all locked away. My father stood guard at her door nearly all his waking hours, keeping her from harm. Sometimes I crept in when she was alone and found her trying to paint, but she struggled to, and I don’t know why. She didn’t have the arthritis like my grandmother and Jennifer. You wouldn’t have seen with all the snow covering the house but that place is called Sub Rosa. That same rose you got sent once grew there before I destroyed it… you see my mom was obsessed with capturing it just right. She wasted years painting that one rose over and over and over again.
“Jennifer might claim that my mother finally managed to paint something… but I don’t know where it went, or who took it. If she didn’t tear it up… it was only because she died before being able to destroy it. My father warned me the rose had bad associations for my mom. Ultimately, if that painting is all we have left of her… it might be worth millions. If it is hidden within that house, then, perhaps that is another reason why I shouldn’t sell.”
“That house gives me the creeps, Cai. I don’t like it. Please don’t make me go back there.” I couldn’t shake off a foreboding sense of dread, like a cold hand wrapped around my throat.
“We should never have gone but at least you know now what I’m dealing with. I don’t like that place. In fact I fucking loathe it. Now we’ve been there, now you’ve seen it, we can hopefully forget all about it? I’d like to, anyway.”
“For now, I’d like that too. This is meant to be the holidays not ghost hunting season.”
“I know what you mean, baby,” he said, curling his arms and legs tight around mine.
My mind racing, a random thought took hold. “The marriage clause to your inheritance… was strange, don’t you think? Given your mother never married?”
“It was an old-fashioned clause, but my mom inherited at the age of 27 so she wasn’t exactly a baby, like I was.”
“I think it’s archaic… a trust fund on the proviso of marriage.”
“I don’t know, it kinda makes sense if you think about it. Why would a young man need all that stuff unless he had a family? You know? Even so, I don’t really give a damn about that money. It’s tainted. Didn’t ever bring them any happiness… why would it bring me any?”
Who did he really cry for? His mother? Or himself? How did he feel? I wanted to ask but I didn’t know how. He sounded emotional sometimes and at others, indifferent and cold, pragmatic and straightforward. Had he been through therapy? Just how awful was his parent’s relationship?
“Does it make you sad talking about it?”
“No, it just makes me wonder why I lived in the shadow of that so many years, when all the time there was love out there for me. It took someone as special as you to show me that.”
Nobody had ever called me special.
I lay my head back against his shoulder and he nipped my throat, sending goose pimples racing across my arms. I turned my head to offer him my already bruised lips and he pressed gently, kissing me with his whole heart.
Chapter 38
IN THE DAYS leading up to New Year’s Eve, we visited galleries and ate out every night. We took long baths and he pressed me for details about my own family traumas, but I was unwilling to unload them on him. Not just yet. He understood. In a way, I was protecting him.
New Year’s Eve itself was spent in the apartment, laid on the couch under a blanket, some fizz in two flutes as we watched fireworks outside and on the telly. Who would have thought I might find a boy who was as much of a home bird as me? We agreed it was much nicer, just us two, avoiding the cold and the queues for clubs or bars or restaurants.
After the fireworks died down, he leaned over and kissed me a Happy New Year. He made love to me with so much intensity it hurt my heart. I couldn’t get enough of him and I was already dreading going back to work in the new year, being apart from him for hours on end and answering questions about what happened at the country pile. The gossipmongers would be out in force, no doubt.
We slid into bed on New Year’s Day at around one a.m., sated and exhausted from two consecutive rounds of sex. I dropped into an ephemeral kind of sleep, buzzing with champagne and thoughts of things to come. Cai next to me was dead to the world, sleeping off his exertions.
It was around four a.m. when my phone rang next to me. I ran for the bathroom and answered.
“Chloe, it’s Mum,” she said shakily.
“I saw on my screen. What’s wrong?” I bristled.
“I know it’s early, late… or whatever. I had to call, though. What time is it there, actually?”
“Four in the morning, Mum. Just tell me, whatever it is.” Amanda… what has she done now?
“Your father has been in hospital the past few days. I tried calling your mobile but it was switched off.”
Oh, only him…
“I was in the country and sometimes a signal is difficult,” I explained.
“Yep, I know… Bel explained that might have been the case.” On the line, she took a deep breath and told me, “We thought we’d lost him but he pulled through.”
She cried for a few minutes and I waited, for something. An explanation of perhaps why I needed to know.
“He had a heart attack and they brought him back to life I don’t know how many times. He had surgery after they did a lot of tests and whatever… he’s going to be okay. He’s really going to be okay.” Her relieved tone reminded me of my sisters’ high-pitched voices when they were little girls.
She must have expected a reaction from me, but I didn’t have one. “If he’s okay, then what’s the problem? Are Anabel and Amanda okay? What else has h
appened? I did say, it is four in the morning here.”
She coughed. “Didn’t I just say? I know I’m rambling, but I thought I just said… your father had his chest opened. He could’ve died. I thought you’d want to know.”
I shut my eyes even though I stood in the bathroom in darkness. I felt angry and blurted, “Is that really all you called me about?”
“Yes, but I… I don’t know what I thought.”
“How about the time I could’ve died, Mum. How about that time, eh? I’m sorry but I have a life here, you know?”
“Chloe, really…”
“Really? Really? Look, I’m sure Dad has the best doctors looking after him. A blockage is easily treatable but what about a broken heart that’s severed so deep, there’s nothing but gloopy glue to fix it? What about a fucking millimetre deeper, Mum? Don’t you remember?”
“I know you must be upset, darling—”
I hung up on her. She had no idea what she was talking about.
I held the phone in my hands and wanted to smash and tear the fucking thing apart. My entire body shook with something I couldn’t explain. I felt sick.
When I left the bathroom, I found Cai still sound asleep. I couldn’t wake him, it wasn’t fair to, there was no real reason for him to suffer too. It was only my father after all, almost dying of a heart problem. Like he even had a heart.
I went down into the lounge and stared at the world outside, looking out across all that life that I knew was there but couldn’t quite see. It was pitch-black, everybody sleeping off the jolly time they’d had on New Year’s Eve. What I needed was to understand, to feel something, but I felt nothing but anger.
I ran upstairs and slipped on my sneakers and some baggy sweats, a t-shirt then a roll-neck jumper, a hat and some gloves. I left the apartment with my iPod and keys, and just ran.
In the freezing, biting conditions I ran through deserted streets still housing the odd vagrant. I ran in the gutter where it was less icy because it didn’t matter, there were no vehicles. Accuse me of jaywalking at stupid o’clock in the morning? Go ahead!
I stood in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge and tried to scare myself into feeling something, but I couldn’t. Why don’t I care about my own damn father? Why, even against the wind and lashing winter snow, did I not feel a thing?
I ran back home and knew there must be some way, just any way, to make myself feel. I shut the door behind me and still, Cai did not wake, induced by champagne and happiness no doubt.
I went into the studio and to his punch bag, finding strips of gauze and rolls of tape. I got to work wrapping myself up with only those to protect me—Cai’s boxing gloves far too big for my hands. Already pumped from my jog, I was loaded with adrenalin and verve. I wanted to know what it might feel like to hit him where it hurt me, right in the goddamned heart. I threw a tame punch at the bag’s midsection, the mild sting against the taut skin of my knuckles letting me know I did know pain after all.
I kept on at it, there, I don’t know how long. It wasn’t just punching, I needed to kick the hell out of something too. With my kicks, I almost took the bag right off its hinges—a flying kick, scissor kick, roundhouse kick. I’d not forgotten anything I’d learned, my balance and posture still as strong as ever. I felt it would only take a little training and I would regain all the strength I used to have, all the lean power I once wielded until I saw the potential it gave me to hurt someone else.
A hand caught my ankle and held it high in the air. I hadn’t even heard him creep up on me and I stumbled a moment on my other foot, catching the fierce blue flare in his confused eyes.
“You want to fight?” His eyes were wild, dark, shrouded in a deep frown. He caught me mid-kick.
“I am the fight,” I told him, my chest pumping rapidly to find some air.
“I see that now. So, fight me.”
“You’re stronger, too strong.”
“Fight me,” he said, his neck flush with a sweat of its own.
I unwrapped my bloody hands and faced him. “Present, then.”
He stood ready, his hands held somewhere in front of his face, his expression showing he was fighting not to dance on his feet. He clearly wasn’t prepared for my brand of attack.
I dropped to the floor in a swift squat and swung my leg out, taking him clean off his feet. Dirty, but effective. I stepped back, giving him chance to get back up. He stood in only his boxer shorts and rearranged what was growing inside them, eyes blazing with passion and curiosity.
He lifted his head back, shaking out his fall with a smirk. “Oh, like that is it?”
“You don’t want me to drop you right away, not from the head anyway.”
“What if I do?” He stood rubbing his knee.
“I could put you in hospital.”
“You won’t.” It was a challenge. In that moment, I was responsive.
Within seconds, I took one finger of his and bent it the wrong way, his discomfort derailing him. With a back jab in his kidneys the next point of his confusion as to my tactics, I undid his standing state again. Quickly, I got him on his belly in a four-point lock that had his back screaming in agony and my limbs wrapped around his in just the right way to squeeze him clean of fight. He was in surrender, trying but straining to fight against me. I was fast and didn’t mind playing rough, or dirty, or underhand. That was how it used to be, anyway.
I stood and walked away. “You let me win.”
“No I didn’t. I just don’t knock out women.”
He raced after me, pulling my t-shirt so that my back ripped against his flush chest.
“What’s happened to bring my tigress out fighting?” He snarled, hands on my heavy, aching breasts.
“Nothing.” Damn it.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” he growled in my ear, his teeth biting my lobe, his hand releasing the drawstring of my jogging bottoms. “You had me on the floor then… all 200 pounds of me. Surrendered, to you.”
His voice like a drug, my system swirled with the command of his decadent tone, so in awe of the tigress beneath my skin.
“I told you… you always knew… I was a fighter.”
“I always knew… but I still don’t know why you stopped.”
The bottoms kicked away, he planted a hand inside my shorts and squeezed my pussy in his palm, drawing ragged breath from me.
He tore it all away so I was bare from the waist down. He dropped to his knees and turned me to face him, his tongue lapping my small V until I spread my thighs to him and rested a calf over his shoulder. His tongue danced around my centre while his hands smoothed along the backs of my thighs, up and down, up and down. He chewed my layers, my flesh, until I caved and pressed the back of his head into me. His hands came up to my buttocks to fasten so tight there, his mouth suctioned at my clit until he made me come.
He stood and picked me up in his arms, walking me across the room until we were at his clinical, white work desk. He threw everything off it, even his precious cameras and files of slides and proofs. My t-shirt, he tore until it was shredded. He threw me down on the desk and pulled my sports bra cups down roughly, spanking my breasts only once.
I shouted, “Now.”
He entered me without another moment’s hesitation, standing while I was splayed on his desk. He sucked my toes into his mouth and shouted, “My sweaty tigress, all riled up. Hmm.”
“Shut up.”
“You can get angry, I like it,” he growled, digging himself so deep inside me I moaned for more. He pulled my legs wider and shuttled my body toward his like I weighed nothing. “Tell me you like it deep.”
“I’m… I’m…”
“Coming?” He grinned wickedly, this Cai not like the other. Who was this man?
I came so hard my body shot up and I put my arms around his neck, screaming while he kept pumping me hard, working himself to his own orgasm. He filled me and then released me, falling in his office chair with exhaustion and confusion etched in his brow.
&nbs
p; A moment to think, and react, and I didn’t like how I suddenly felt.
I chased away, ashamed and distressed, locking myself inside the bathroom upstairs. When I didn’t come out after half an hour spent just sat on the floor, he knocked gently. “If I have to, I will break it down.”
I let him in and he sat on the floor beside me, afraid to touch me. He looked frightened when he asked, “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“Yes. Get the brandy. Then, just listen.”
“Okay.” He kissed my cheek and carried out those commands.
Chapter 39
Past
TO MY RIGHT, Kay talked the talk as usual. Dario and Lutz were two boys we’d hung out with since Sixth Form. Now in university, somehow we were all still together. They walked at Kay’s side and where I stood in the formation, I was near the curb and had a view of all the cars passing us.
Dario was good-looking and I was going to give my virginity to him. He had wild auburn hair, huge, comical sideburns that were the butt of drunken jokes, and piercing green eyes I had stared into many times as we laid side by side in bed, night after night. I was 19 but I’d made him wait two years. If you had a best friend like Kay who had been abused by her rapist stepfather, and heard all the baggage that went with that—oh and seen the evidence too—you’d know exactly where I was coming from. I was cautious. Lutz was so obviously in love with Kay but she was happier to mess around, have flings with other boys, nothing serious. I think it was always a test to herself—to see whether she had it in her to be adventurous, to enjoy sex. All I saw was a girl seeking love, in entirely the wrong way. Lutz pined right beside her day after day but she joked around that they’d get together when they were 30, if they were still single then. Truth was, Kay was terrified of love. Aren’t we all? Having it, losing it, wrecking it—possibly tasting it and never getting that same thing back again.
Did I love Dario? I thought I did. His eyes made my stomach clench and I felt hot and bothered when we kissed. Like me, he didn’t give a shit if locals thought his gothic look was too mad. I loved it.
Unbind (Sub Rosa Series Book 1) Page 29