by Kallysten
The thought made me falter and lose my pace. At once, he reached up to caress my cheek.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured.
I covered his hand with mine.
“Is that why your sister brought me here? So that we’d—”
He drew me down and kissed me gently until the question had all but disappeared from my mind.
“Did she tell you to sleep with me?” he asked then.
“No, of course not.”
He nodded.
“All right. Do you want this? For yourself?”
I didn’t hesitate for a second.
“I do, yes.”
He kissed me again, no more than a brush of his lips against mine, then clutched my waist with both hands and rolled our bodies over, laying me down on the cold tiles as gently as he possibly could. He was still inside me, as he lay prone above me. He captured my gaze again and slowly started moving, making love to me with such intensity it felt like he was trying to engrave each second in his memory—and mine.
Suffice to say he was doing a very good job of it.
Little by little, he increased his pace, and his cock caressed, stroked and reawakened every part of me. At first I let my hands play over his chest and shoulders, and tried to accompany his movements, but soon he was moving too fast, too hard, and all I could do was cling to him, my short nails digging into his shoulders.
“Next time…” My words came out as moans, each one pushed by another thrust from his hips. “Can we… do this… in a bed?”
Surprise lit his eyes and he laughed breathlessly.
“Already thinking about next time?” His rhythm never faltered; instead, it shifted ever so slightly and sparks lit up my vision like fireworks. “Is this time so boring that you’re thinking of something else?”
I had to struggle to answer coherently.
“No. It’s so good I… I want it to happen again.”
Now, he faltered. Now, he stilled mid-thrust, blinked down at me, then smiled. I smiled back, and curled a hand at the back of his neck, where tiny hairs were so soft, to pull his mouth down to mine.
The kiss started as sweet, as slow as sugar syrup trickling down. It ignited in a blink with a twist of my hips and his answering thrust. We were both too close to last much longer. Falling into him, with him, was almost too easy. It was—again, stupid, ridiculous, pathetic and yet true—like my whole life had led me to that very moment.
His body completed mine, and we trembled as one, not from the cool air but from the heat we’d created together.
When he ended the kiss, he looked at me for a long time and I couldn’t help but wonder why there was so much surprise in his eyes. He rolled away from me, lying down at my side, and I had to close my eyes for a second not to protest at the deep feeling of loss I felt. Silly, really, when I could feel him pressed alongside my body.
*
But then…
I opened my eyes. The world sort of shifted around me, I don’t know how else to explain it. I was still on the floor of the balcony, but in a different place, and Mr. Ward wasn’t lying next to me anymore, he was crouching at my side, his face so close to mine that I thought he would kiss me. He was wearing his shirt again, and me, my panties. I was clutching his arm, as I’d been doing when I stopped being able to breathe.
Except…
I remembered that. I remembered being sure I would die. I remembered the cold words we’d exchanged before that.
But I also remembered a different version of events, one in which we’d chatted, flirted, then succumbed to lust.
Down in the street, a police car was just passing us. Somehow, I realized that it was the same car I’d heard when I’d been so sure I was dying. Only a second or two had passed, even though my body and mind were telling me something entirely different.
“What…”
Air. Sweet, cool, delicious air. I gulped it down almost greedily. Next to me, Mr. Ward slowly stood.
“What’s going on?” I managed to finish.
After a beat, he held both hands out to me and helped me to my feet. His shirtsleeves were still fastened with those beautiful cufflinks, and yet I still couldn’t help feeling guilty at the way I’d lost one of them. Both versions of events were warring in my mind and confusing the hell out of me.
“Can you breathe now?” he asked, and there was a waver in his voice that hadn’t been there when we’d argued.
“What happened?” I asked again.
He passed a hand through his hair and sighed.
“Lilah happened, that’s what. You said she told you to be nice to me?”
I nodded, unsure what he was getting at.
“You were rude.”
My eyebrows shot up, and he amended that at once.
“We were rude to each other. When you realized who I was, Lilah’s compulsion kicked in but it was too late. You’d already broken it. That’s why you couldn’t breathe.”
It made absolutely no sense, and I wanted to say as much, wanted to demand an actual explanation. Instead, what came out was a plaintive, “Did we… did we just have sex?”
My panties were soaked. My entire body still shivered from pleasure. My skin remembered the touch of his hands, his lips, his cock. I knew exactly what his mouth would taste like, a hint of smoke and the headiness of champagne.
But at the same time… it hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have. That simply wasn’t how things had gone after I stepped onto the balcony.
Mr. Ward’s expression remained guarded.
“I did not lay a finger on you,” he said. “I gave you a second chance to be nice. It was all a fantasy. Your fantasy, I might add. I was just along for the ride.”
Did I say I was confused? Never mind confused. I was two seconds away from having myself committed for psychiatric evaluation.
Words were escaping me. I needed him to actually explain everything and start making sense, but I could hardly even think. Only when my teeth started chattering did I realize I was trembling. Every inch of my exposed arms and back was covered in goose bumps. Mr. Ward lifted his gaze to the sky, sighed heavily, then picked his jacket from the banister and thrust it toward me.
In my memory, he’d wrapped it over my shoulders ever so gently. The dissonance made my head hurt, but I did take the jacket and slipped my arms in the sleeves. It was too big, but that hardly mattered. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to warm up. The fabric was too light to help much for that, but the scent clinging to it, his scent, the barest hint of cologne mixed with cigarette smoke… Heat zinged through me.
“Come on.” He sighed again, picked up my purse and handed it to me. “Let’s get you inside before you die of hypothermia.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer and opened the window; I followed him inside, my mind still churning over images and sensations—a fantasy, he’d called it. My fantasy.
What on Earth had just happened?
Without thinking, I followed him through two guests-filled rooms, and a tiny part of me noticed that he’d been right. No one stopped him to congratulate him on his birthday. No one knew who he was. No one, or almost.
In the back of the second room, a man was standing against the wall between double doors and a tapestry that had already been ancient by the time this country was founded. He wore an expensive-looking suit, but his white tie and gloves marked him as one of the staff, as did the way he inclined his head toward Mr. Ward.
“Stephen, would you be so kind as to find my dear sister and invite her to join me and my… guest upstairs?”
The man inclined his head again. His eyes flicked toward me and something gleamed in them. I almost want to say recognition, but I was pretty sure I’d never met him before. I‘m good with faces, and he had distinctive features that looked finely chiseled from a dark wood. A neatly trimmed goatee was barely more than a shadow around his mouth and down to his chin, a few gray hairs betraying he wasn’t as young as the rest of the servers offering drinks and canapés t
o the guests.
“When you say ‘invite,’ sir,” he said in a deep but quiet voice, “how forceful do you wish me to be?”
Mr. Ward had started to reach for the door handle. He paused and looked at Stephen, his eyebrows furrowed as he considered the question.
“Don’t get yourself hurt,” he finally said. “If Lilah is reluctant, please tell her she already insulted me once tonight. That should be enough to convince her.”
Stephen inclined his head again then pushed away from the wall. He was gone without another word. And I was more confused than ever. A ‘forceful’ invitation? Not getting hurt? An insult?
“Come,” Mr. Ward said, and my body was moving before I even knew it.
He’d opened the door, revealing a narrow staircase. Well, when I say narrow… The other staircases in the house were on a ‘Gone With the Wind’ scale. This one? Three people could have climbed side by side. He closed the door behind me, and at once the sounds of the party faded. They weren’t just muffled. They just ceased. Talk about insulation. Someone could have screamed, right where I stood, and no one would have heard even if they’d been standing right outside the door.
It did not make for a pleasant realization.
Mr. Ward started walking up the steps. When I didn’t immediately follow, he glanced back at me. I jumped into motion and went after him, my hands clenched on the sides of my dress, lifting it up so I wouldn’t trip over it.
We soon reached the third floor. Like the first two, it was decorated with pieces of furniture and art as beautiful as they seemed old. We stepped through a small salon and into a sitting room, and while I paused to take in my surroundings Mr. Ward went to the fireplace on the far wall. If he’d extended his arms on each side of him, he still couldn’t have touched both ends of the carved stone mantle. He crouched next to the hearth, fiddled with something on the side, and fire came to life, the faux logs instantly glowing like embers.
“Well?” he said as he glanced back at me. “Don’t just stand there. Come warm yourself.”
I shuddered at his impatient tone, remembering the gentleness of his words in my ‘fantasy.’ Dropping my gaze to the floor like a scolded child, I crossed the room to approach the fireplace. Even as I did, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with me.
Why was I jumping at each of his commands? He was bordering on rude—no, forget that. He was rude, snapping orders at me and glaring without reason. And instead of telling him what I thought of his manners, I just obeyed.
“What’s happening to me?” I mumbled when I was standing two feet away from him, close enough to the fireplace that already the flames were warming me. “This isn’t me. I don’t let people talk to me like that. Order me around like… like…”
I didn’t even know how to finish. I looked at him, and was surprised to see a flash of guilt cross his features.
“I’ll try to get a grip on myself,” he said as he walked away from me.
I watched him go to an ornate cabinet against the wall. The whole front was carved, colorful glass panels set into branches and leaves so realistic I almost expected to see them move against his hands.
He opened the topmost door and drew two glasses out, setting them on the flat surface below. After a beat, he pulled out a third glass and closed the door. He then reached for the larger doors beneath. They opened to reveal a collection of bottles. I don’t know much about alcohol, but when he poured a deep amber liquid in each glass, I assumed it was some kind of scotch or whiskey.
He drank deeply, refilled his glass, and then put the bottle away. With his glass in one hand and a second one in the other, he came back toward me.
“It’ll help clear your mind,” he said as he handed me the second glass.
This time, there was no order to take the glass and drink. I crossed my arms and refused to take it.
“I’m pretty sure alcohol is the last thing I need to clear my mind,” I said. “How about an explanation instead?”
Shrugging, he poured the contents of my glass into his and took another sip. Four plush armchairs were set in a semi circle around the fireplace. He sat in one and placed the empty glass on the floor.
“Lilah owes both of us an explanation,” he said, his eyes fixed on the flames behind me. “She’ll be here soon.”
Something told me it was useless to argue with him, but I’d only been too compliant so far. Now that I could fight back, I did.
“How about we begin without her? How about you start by telling me what the hell you mean by fantasy? Why did you say I broke her… her…” I struggled to remember the word he’d used.
“Compulsion,” he breathed. “It’s called compulsion. Or sometimes, thrall. That’s what she did to you when she told you to be nice to me. It was an order, like when I told you to follow me up here. You can technically refuse to follow that order. But if you do, you die. That’s why you couldn’t breathe. It was your punishment for not being nice to me like she told you.”
Punishment? Thrall? I wanted to laugh at the idea. It was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous.
At the same time, I remembered all too well being unable to breathe.
I remembered, also, how I’d been unable to even think of saying no, back in Miss Delilah’s dressing room, when she’d told me to try on the gowns. I remembered her tone of voice, the depth of her words. It had been the same strength in Mr. Ward’s words every time he had told me to do something. And every time, I’d obeyed without so much as a hesitation.
Feeling a little weak in the knees, I stumbled to the armchair opposite Mr. Ward and sat down, clutching the purse in my lap simply to cling to something.
“Is this… is this like… Did you… hypnotize me or something?”
Still a ridiculous idea, but I was trying to put things in a frame of reference I could at least recognize if not understand.
He took another sip from his glass, watching the fire over the rim for a while.
“Some people call it that,” he said at last. “It’s a bit more complicated—”
Heels clicking on the room’s wooden floor interrupted him. He didn’t look back toward the door, but I did. Miss Delilah had just come in.
She threw a glance toward me, but said nothing as she walked over to the liquor cabinet. She set down the empty champagne flute she was carrying, and picked up instead the last glass Mr. Ward had filled. She came over, then, perching herself on the arm of the chair next to Mr. Ward.
“Morgan.”
“Lilah.”
He still didn’t look at her.
“Do you like your gift?” she asked with a faint smile.
His jaw tightened.
“Stephen didn’t mention—”
“That I supposedly insulted you? Yes, he did. I thought it was your sense of humor peeking through.”
That finally drew his eyes to her. Out on the balcony, I’d thought it was the night that made them seem so dark, but here, with plenty of light from the chandelier over us or the fireplace, they seemed as dark, as deep as ever.
“My sense of humor, yes. I’ve been told I’m uproariously funny.”
Delivered in such a deadpan voice, the remark was funny. Miss Delilah didn’t smile.
“Honestly, would it kill you to say thank you? She’s absolutely perfect, you can’t deny that.”
She gestured toward me at that, but barely threw a glance in my direction. It was like I wasn’t there. Or actually, more like I was an object, a thing that couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand what was being said about her. Annoyance flashed through me and I cleared my throat.
She raised an eyebrow in my direction. Every angry word that had filled my mind disappeared in a blink.
Mr. Ward’s eyes remained on her.
“I told you repeatedly I don’t need you meddling in my affairs.”
“Well, if you had affairs I wouldn’t need to meddle.” She emptied her glass and set it on the chair, then stood, hands on her hips as she stared him down
. “Mother agrees with me, so don’t bother running to her. It’s more than time you moved on. Put her in your bed, feed from her, kill her. I don’t care. She’s your charge, now. You’ll have to take care of her, one way or the other.”
A sound erupted through the room, a low, deep growl, and it startled me to realize it was coming out of Mr. Ward. I’d have been less surprised to discover a lion or a tiger crouching behind him.
He stood and faced Miss Delilah. In his hand, his glass was empty. It shattered in his fist, sending shards flying as far as the fireplace. A few landed at my feet. Mr. Ward and Miss Delilah didn’t even seem to notice. They continued to glare at each other. Anxiety surrounded me like a cold, unpleasant fog until I wanted nothing more than to hide, but I didn’t dare move.
“Do you think I have any desire to play this childish game?” He all but growled the words. “Do you think I’ll take that child as a replacement?”
“Like I said, I don’t care what you take her as. But she’s yours.” She glanced at me, and the cold smile on her lips sent a shiver to me. “Your ward, Morgan. See? I have a sense of humor, too.”
“A sense of humor? Is that what you think this is? A joke?”
But she wasn’t listening. She came to me, and glass crunched under her feet. I flinched when she reached for me and cupped my face in her hand.
“Tell me something, Lina. Do you remember what I said to you when we arrived?”
I nodded, as unable to look away from her gleaming eyes as I was to speak.
“Tell my brother what I said to you, dear.”
Again, that voice… My mouth was opening before I even decided to say a word. I tried to fight it. Hypnotism, thrall, compulsion… I didn’t care what it was, I didn’t care how she did it, I just knew I was me, and I had free will, and I wouldn’t let her manipulate me.
The words spilled out and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
“You told me to be nice to Mr. Ward,” I heard myself say. “And not to leave without you.”
She smiled that cold smile again. Her nails were pinpricks against my cheek and it was all I could do not to whimper at the pain.