She nodded.
“Now go, get out of here. I need to see if any of her things can tell me something.”
“Yes, Dante. I’ll go.”
“Oh… one more thing.”
She turned around, looking sort of hopeful. “Yes?”
“Inform everyone we’re closed for a week, out of respect for Shay. We need time to gather a new team, too. Let the members know I’ll give them a discount. Should salve their frustration a small amount.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“No. Now, go.”
I listened for her footsteps and when they got to the stairs, I breathed a sigh of relief. When her steps on the stairs echoed across the floors in the hallway, I rubbed the tension in my temples and regretted my own loss of control.
I’d never told anyone that once upon a time, I did sort of lust after and love Shay, but her barriers kept me away. My self-preservation and her barriers made for a volatile combination. Daltrey had been right all along – I should’ve cut ties all the way back then, before it got nasty.
I searched through drawers and closets, shelves and under the bed even, finding nothing but clothes, make-up and toiletries, plus the odd book.
I pulled out a notebook from her bedside drawer and in the first page, she’d tucked a grainy photograph of me.
What was more worrying was that she’d written in the moleskin notebook the same line, over and over again:
He always comes back to me, always.
He always comes back to me, always.
He always comes back to me, always.
He always comes back to me, always…
Flicking through the book, she had to have written the same line over and over, thousands of times.
In the bottom of the closet, buried beneath her riding boots, were similar notebooks filled with the same lines. And in their wrappers still, were several unused notebooks she was no doubt expecting to fill up in the months and years to come.
Shuddering, I closed the door on that room, and on that corner of my heart. When I got out into the corridor, I spotted Ciara standing against the wall in the shadows, looking at me with deadly serious eyes.
“I think you need to tell me everything… now.”
Biting my lip, I tried to stop myself, but couldn’t hide how anxious I felt.
“I don’t want to go over it all. That section of my life is done.”
“That section of your life is fucking in the present. It’s not done.”
“You don’t know what I was like after he died. I was a wreck. I don’t know if I can relive those days… and that time. All that matters to me is now.”
She pouted, crossing her arms. “Fine, then I’ll spank it out of you.”
I challenged her with a warning look but she shot me one back.
“It’s a closed archive, Ciara.”
“Maybe so… but right now, it’s threatening to blow wide open. I see it… I know you’ll get sick and angry if you don’t face this.”
“Ciara–” I growled.
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter what you say, this bitch doesn’t drop half-eaten bones, she sucks them dry.”
I walked over and swept her up into my arms, shaking all over. “What would I do without you?”
“Die, probably.”
I buried myself in her hair and she held me tight. Shay was dead… because of me. All because of me.
“Let’s go to our room,” she whispered, and she walked me there.
Thirteen
IN THE ATTIC ROOM, AGAINST my will, she forced it all out of me… how I came to Pernox curious but unconvinced about BDSM, how Shay was the one to suggest we try to make Teddy jealous… how I spanked Shay eventually, how she lied… how she didn’t let me get close. I got as far as telling Ciara about the first night Shay and me played in the dungeon, when she cut in…
“That person doesn’t sound like you,” she said, pausing for breath, “in fact, it almost sounds like you don’t think of yourself and the person you were as one and the same. Dissociation. I read up on it. You don’t see yourself as him, not anymore.”
“I don’t. When Daltrey died, a part of me died with him.”
Once upon a time, Daltrey showed me that certain situations – and people – didn’t deserve my tears. So I cried in private but in public, I worked. I slaved. I tried to give my brother justice… and failure in the long-run had made me bitter. Whenever I took the anti-anxiety pills my doctor gave me, they made me feel separated from myself and on them, I no longer wanted drink or women or flesh. I no longer had an appetite. The pills switched off all my feelings… even the really bad ones. Initially, the pills seemed like a miracle but then I met Ciara and suddenly, I wanted to feel again. But feeling… scared me. Being myself scared me because myself – me – he was wild. I knew that. The pills kept me steady. The streets of London always gave me high anxiety but in Paris, Ciara had seen a different version of me, a more complete Dante Sinclair.
Between grief, medication and all my exhaustion, I truly wasn’t sure who I was anymore.
She sat at the dressing table mashing a fresh pot of tea Tara had just brought up for us. I sat on the bed, a stack of pillows behind me, a headache growing in my forehead.
“Why don’t you feel the same?” she asked, in an attempt to understand me, though I knew myself even less than she did.
“I can’t explain grief, but it’s like a chemical reaction inside you, and the formula you once were isn’t the same after you come through the other side.”
Rain clouds outside had ceased pouring and a slither of sunshine snuck through the skylight. I stared across the room at my fiancée, the only true light in my world. Pity I’d already tarnished her. Her long hair, the hair I’d loved for as long as I’d known her, was now gone. She was still as beautiful, but without her signature.
“I shouldn’t have kept you,” I said suddenly, “I should’ve let you go but sometimes ownership of something seems like the only safe bet. Especially if you’ve hung out with the wrong sort of people for long enough.”
“I stayed. I could’ve got away, you know? A million times. I chose to stay.”
“You couldn’t escape, trust me.” Folding my hands, I shook my head.
“Tell me how I couldn’t have got away. I could’ve done it in all sorts of ways. Told someone I was being held hostage… asked them to take me to the police.”
“I own the police. You’d have been handed back.”
“What do you mean, you own the police?”
“Like I own everything. Like I owned… her. Eventually.”
I watched her swallow thickly, an anxiety in her eyes. “Do I want to hear the rest?”
“We could be here all day… all night, even. If you don’t, now’s the time to say no.”
Part of me began to want to free her. It’d be one less thing to worry about. Ciara out of the equation meant only myself to worry about and I never worried about myself at all. Solitude had worked for me for so long. Perhaps it was better that way.
“I’m not giving up on you,” she said in a staunch voice.
“Then you’d better keep in mind what you just said about that person no longer being me, because you are going to like that person less and less. Very soon, you’ll hate him.”
“Why isn’t he you? Give me something specific. At least tell me that before we go on.”
I blew out a deep breath and felt a sharp stabbing pain in my chest when I explained, “When someone you love dies, it changes you forever. Unless you’ve been through it yourself, you don’t know how it makes you feel, nor the multitude of emotions it puts you through. At first you’re grateful to be alive and go into survival mode–”
“Denial,” she said.
“You think it can’t be real. There’s been some mistake. So then you see the body and when you do, and when you look down and see nothing but a mass there and the soul elsewhere, you know that the smile you knew as well as your own is gone, that laug
h he had… gone. His voice. His jokes. His rebukes, reprimands, his soul… it’s out of reach and it’s never coming back and you feel regret and remorse, guilt and obsession… the whole lot. But murder added to that and you’ve got a purpose. You’ve got a goal… for revenge. You’ve got something to live for and in the immediate days of grief, you cling onto what you’re living for and I’ve never learnt how to live without that. I cling on to that purpose… to getting to the truth. It’s what’s kept me alive because I don’t know what else I would have done. You and I would never have met if I wasn’t working as the fixer… and if I wasn’t trying to hold everything together, I would’ve indulged myself in sex and alcohol and never surfaced. Without a doubt.”
“I think you underestimate yourself. I think you would’ve found a way to survive because that’s who you are but this is how you chose to survive. Using this place… buying and selling secrets, fixing… whatever. You’re stronger than you realise.”
“Ciara,” I sighed, “you’ve always seen what you want to see with regards to me. I’m not a good man.”
“You can choose to be one, if you want.”
She poured the tea and I admired her imperious nature – but she was wrong. I wasn’t the man she thought she knew.
“So… you really do want to know everything?”
“Everything.”
“If you want to leave me this time, I’ll let you go. I mean, if after I tell you everything it becomes untenable for you to stay, I won’t stand in your way of freedom. Not this time.”
“You would?” She raised one eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“Why are you suddenly thinking about the easy way out? That’s never been your route before.”
“It wouldn’t be the easy way out.”
“Then, what?” she asked, throwing me an ironic smirk.
“It might be kinder to let you go than keep you.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Well, if that’s another attempt at putting me off, you’ve failed yet again. So let’s have the rest of the story.”
Taking a deep breath, I explained, “I was just saving face at first… showing up, you know? Proving I was as much of a man as Teddy, who wasn’t shocked by everything going on at Pernox. For him, he seemed strangely at home. Like a duck to water he took to it, and he fitted in there. But there began to be other reasons why I went. It wasn’t really my thing but I judged I had a vested interest in the place and… I saw how Teddy brooded over Shay. I wanted to see what he saw in her, I suppose but that was only part of it. She had me sussed so quickly, she knew I wasn’t a submissive, far from it in fact.”
“I knew it,” Ciara exclaimed.
“So did Shay… she knew, too. I was fascinated by her. I can’t tell you but she had the same commanding air you’ve got… and it kept me entertained.”
“So, what happened?”
“Shay taught me about who I really am.”
“Who are you?” Ciara asked, chewing her thumb.
“A control freak,” I said, “there, I admitted it.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“No but–”
“But what?” Ciara threw her hands up, wondering what point I was trying to make.
“Shay liked that about me. I think it was even what she loved about me.”
Ciara looked at me like that wasn’t a good thing – because someone loving the controlling arsehole inside of me was unnatural, I knew.
“Tell me the worst of it,” Ciara said in a low voice, “tell me what she made you do.”
So I told Ciara about the day Daltrey barged into Pernox and confronted the woman who had my mind held hostage. I told her about Shay fucking with my mind as I confronted her about their secret conversation. I said Shay let me cane her and then she cried wolf, turning it around on me as if I’d done it against her will. No doubt Shay simply wanted to demonstrate who had the power. She always had – and it had infuriated me. Domme or sub, she held all the power. Every nuance of it.
As I explained to Ciara, on the day of Daltrey’s death I arrived at Pernox not myself, and then a blackout resulted for a week after that. The day I rose from my bed with a mind to torturing Shay, I thought I would surely get answers. But what I did to Shay, who enjoyed every moment of it, sickened me to my stomach for months after that.
“I wasn’t born kinky. I don’t even like to inflict the sort of pain she liked, I just got a thrill from seeing how my control affected her. I’d fucked hundreds of women but what we did together was out there, like right out there, and she got the most enormous pleasure from pain, it intrigued me greatly. I can honestly say I never fancied her in the traditional sense but she fascinated me, truly. She was so mysterious, and even now, I still wonder about parts of her life… and I wonder which stories she told were lies and which were true.”
“Do you think anyone is ever born kinky though, or are we conditioned to become so?”
Shaking my head, I reasoned, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was born that way. For her, there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. Not a moment’s doubt. She loved to submit and receive pain. It wasn’t a question for her, but a necessity. It was like oxygen or water. It was wholly who she was. She was kinky. No denying or querying it. Whereas for us, we question it all the time but for her, it was just life. There was no separating her from it.”
Sat tapping her head, she admitted, “This is a lot to take in.”
“Listen. Since I was young, I’ve been highly sexed but never did I engage in sadism or anything like that, until I came here, or if you want, until this place found me. Because it shaped me, it did. It found me,” I insisted.
Ciara peered at me with inquisitive eyes. “Why did you come looking for me? Honestly, just tell me.”
“Some of all this irks me. I admit it. The world of Pernox irks me, truly. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. Sometimes when we went to Cohésion as well, I often yearned for a bed for the two of us instead of that place… but…” I gasped on my anxiety, not explaining myself well.
“You know…” She spoke with a hollowness to her tone, so I knew she was hurt. “…you made me spank you for six years. Six years of my life. I need better explanations than the ones you are giving me because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you used me.” Her lip wobbled and I saw her pain – and I knew she was absolutely right to feel ill-treated.
I paced the room, trying to find better words. “For a long time I was fucked up about who I am… and why this place exists. I’ve never really understood the lifestyle… and yet I’ve wanted to understand so bad! After all, I do own it. Anyway, I thought I should know why BDSM makes a difference to people’s lives… but I still… it’s like an extension for me whereas for others, it’s a part of them. So, I just abused it. There, I admit it. I abused BDSM. I abused myself in allowing, no, even – forcing you to brutally hurt me just so that I would be so wrapped up in dealing with the pain, I could zone out and forget myself. That’s why I’ve had you spanking me over the years. I came off my pills so I could feel again and I had you spanking me instead… to replace the pills. I admit it. You were my drug instead. You were the best drug I ever had. You were the only cure I needed. I… needed you more than I ever needed anything. And now that you don’t spank me like that anymore, I have to take the pills again and… I don’t like them. I don’t like myself at the best of times, but I feel nothing whatsoever when I’m on the pills, and I feel complete indifference towards myself and everyone else. Do you understand?”
She looked at me, shocked. “I need some time with this.”
She gave me that look. That one that said, “It’s all been a lie. My life is a lie.”
She left the room and left me in no doubt I was in the shit.
Fourteen
Ciara
I LEFT THE ATTIC ROOM and headed for the outside, sneaking out of the French doors in the orangery. Stood behind the house, looking out
across the expansive lawns to where Cook lived in her diminutive cottage at the bottom, the air was damp and though the rain had temporarily ceased, it would make a return soon, I could tell. Suddenly oxygenated and full of new revelations, my mind whirled a million miles an hour, absorbing everything he’d just told me.
We’d been up there in the attic room all day and now the sky had turned lilac, the night returning. Always it seemed like night here, no matter the time of day. The place rang true of its name, Pernox.
Nightlong.
He’d told me the story in such a matter-of-fact manner, as though he didn’t anticipate any sort of reaction from me – except maybe that I would threaten to leave him again. He didn’t seem to accept that perhaps one day, I would get away. He was arrogant enough to think I was too stupid to one day make a bid – and it be successful this time.
Did he not see that what was the worst thing for me was that all our time together had been a lie. He wasn’t even kinky! For so, so long, I had felt an unease about the way in which he wanted me to treat him.
Now… it just felt…
It felt as if I’d become part of some sick game.
I remembered how in the beginning, when I first started spanking him, it had become so vile to me that a part of me thought that if I gave him an orgasm as well, it didn’t feel so sick then. I don’t know what it was, but the pain thing on its own was hard for me to swallow so I started devising ways he could also get off. Like the pocket pussy. Or allowing him to touch himself with one hand. Or rubbing himself against the vault box until he came inside his pants. At least when he made orgasm after a session, it made me feel better. It made me feel like what he was asking of me wasn’t just punishment – it was sexual.
I’d just found out that during all that time I was his dominatrix, he wanted pain as an escape. He was only ever thinking of himself. He never put me first. He never considered how lonely and sad I was during those six years… nor how my needs were neglected.
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 13