All He Asks 2

by Sparrow, Felicity

  “Talk to him.” Violetta rests a hand on my shoulder, curling her fingers so that her viciously long manicure brushes my collarbone. “Make him leave.”

  Grosvenor slips out the office before I can ask what’s going on.

  Alone with Violetta, the room feels a few degrees chillier.

  It seems that Grosvenor has no idea what’s happened between Erik and me, but Violetta is different. She already knows about my mentorship with the bestselling author. I’m afraid that she knows everything else, too. I don’t like the way her gaze feels on me, like icy fingers probing deep into my chest.

  I can hear Grosvenor and Raoul’s muffled voices in the hallway.

  “What do you mean, I can’t see her?” That smooth tenor is Raoul. He sounds outraged.

  “She’s busy.”

  “Busy? Busy?”

  “Excellent news. You don’t need your hearing checked. Yes, she’s busy.”

  I turn questioning eyes on Violetta.

  “You don’t need more demands on your attention right now,” she says. “You need to focus on the job at hand. You’re suddenly worth a lot of money to Durand-Price, young Christine.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way. I had considered myself a liability after my shifting relationship with Erik.

  But the thought that I might be able to save the publishing company gives me the shivers.

  It’s a lot of responsibility for one woman.

  “How long will it take you to write a new book for a new series if we need it?” Violetta asks.

  Is it possible that this really might end with my heading a flagship series for the publishing company? The amount of money that could involve is…ridiculous.

  The money doesn’t mean much to me. I have everything I need, and my wants are few.

  But the recognition. The ability to be more than just the daughter of the great Fletcher Durand.

  That could be worth everything.

  My spinning mind manages to do the calculations. I haven’t become merely a better writer under Erik’s tutelage; I’ve also found myself writing much more quickly, too. I’m more confident in my ability to craft plots. It helps that I’m working within established space where Sylvia Stone is concerned; she’s rather formulaic. But even with a new story…a new series…

  “I’d need a month,” I say. “Editorial support—”

  “It won’t be a problem,” Violetta says. “You’ll have the best.”

  She almost sounds proud.

  Erik Duke isn’t the only one who wants me to have my own series, it seems.

  The question is…why?

  Raoul and Grosvenor are still arguing, but it sounds like Grosvenor is winning. I will not be meeting with Moonlight Sonata’s new editor that day. It seems they’re trying to shelter me in an attempt to keep his influence away from an incendiary issue, but they don’t realize they’re doing me a favor by sheltering me from Raoul on a personal level, too.

  “Should I begin working on a proposal?” I ask.

  Violetta pats my shoulder.

  “Not today,” she says. “Not so soon. You need to rest after everything that has happened.”

  She definitely knows about my night with Erik Duke.

  How? Why?

  I tilt my head to study the wizened old head of marketing. She’s tough all over. Her bun is pulled back so tightly that it makes her skin look hard, more like an exoskeleton than flesh.

  “You were an acquisitions editor when Erik Duke came to Durand-Price, weren’t you?” I ask.

  She arches an eyebrow. “Yes.”

  “Did you handle Erik Duke’s first manuscript?”

  A long pause. Her beady eyes rove over my face. I can practically see her thinking, trying to figure out why I would be asking. And then Violetta says again, “Yes.”

  “You discovered him from the slush pile.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What was he like in the beginning?” I ask. “How much do you know about his life before he began publishing with us?”

  “Nothing.” The word snaps through the air between us like the crack of a whip. “As far as I’m concerned, Erik Duke didn’t exist before he was published by Durand-Price.”

  “But—”

  “You’re relieved of work early today, Ms. Durand.” Violetta gestures for me to stand, which I do. “You’d best go home and rest. We have negotiations today. Hopefully there will be a solution tomorrow.” Her gaze pierces right through me. “And then your real work begins.”

  Two

  I take the train home. It gives me time to organize my thoughts in the peaceful anonymity of the crowd.

  It also gives me time to research.

  There’s only so much I can do on my cell phone, but I dig into articles from the nineties, searching for keywords relevant to newlywed men murdering their brides. It’s a grim search. I don’t enjoy skimming the titles, much less thinking of them as they may relate to Erik. Cross-referencing those headlines to Erik’s name gives me no results at all, so I must comb them one by one.

  After twenty minutes of increasingly horrible headlines, I have no appetite to continue, nor do I have answers.

  If anyone knows that Erik Duke was once accused of murder, it hasn’t yet come out on the internet. I imagine the story could cause quite a stir. “Horror author slaughters wife.” Talk about clickbait.

  Violetta had said that Erik Duke didn’t exist before Durand-Price. I wonder if she means that literally.

  Does that mean that he’s using a pseudonym?

  The man is secrets layered upon secrets.

  Tucking my phone back into my bag makes me feel fractionally better, as though distancing myself from the horrible things that have become part of my reality in the last day. It’s not enough to stop my thoughts from running wild, though.

  What if Erik Duke did kill his wife?

  Then I’ve made a terrible mistake by spending all this time alone in his home, and I should have listened to everyone who told me that it’s strange to work out of authors’ private residences, particularly the residence of a single man.

  I’d always dismissed my family’s concerns about the nature of my job. My aunts are overbearing worrywarts. They don’t like that I even ride the train alone.

  What’s strange about assisting an author in his home? No stranger than assisting Sylvia Stone in her home.

  Except that I’m never alone with Sylvia.

  And Sylvia is not Erik Duke.

  I’m not in danger of crossing lines with her that I might cross with Erik. Also, she couldn’t catch me to kill me if she had a five minute head start. The only threats presented by the woman are purely professional.

  Erik, however, is a hale man of considerable strength, a man who authors the darkest fiction I’ve ever read, and he doesn’t allow anyone in his home but me.

  When we’re alone, we’re very alone.

  I suppose a murder charge could easily explain why he’s so reclusive.

  On the other hand, what if Erik Duke didn’t kill his wife? What if he’s locked himself away on that remote lagoon because he was falsely accused, and that handsome young man lost the love of his life, his identity, and any semblance of a normal life to death?

  My heart aches at the idea of it—the idea that Erik might be suffering solitude because of something that happened to him, rather than because he chose it.

  It’s insane, but I’m not afraid of him the way I should be.

  I want to help him. I want to heal him.

  But first, I want the truth.

  -

  I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.

  Unexpected fatigue seized me when I got home, so I had crawled into bed immediately, before the sun had even dropped below the skyscrapers surrounding my condo tower. I thought that there was no way I’d be able to sleep, but I’d been wrong.

  It’s dark now.

  The texture of the air is silk on my skin, a last sigh of summer as we approach autumn. I i
nhale September’s decaying leaves and exhale breathless anticipation, the brief thrill of changing seasons. It’s a relief to feel summer heat leaving. I know that will soon mean the sadness of long nights, long cold, but for now, it’s a blessing.

  It’s still warm enough that I’m using only a single sheet in bed, where I recline, cradled by pillows. I drift on the tenuous threads between asleep and awake.

  Christine…

  There’s a presence shadowing my window. I can’t open my eyes—they’re too heavy—nor can I lift my head to look.

  This is a dream, and I am weighted down by the fluidity of dreaming. There’s nothing to fear.

  I’m not even afraid when I hear the familiar creak of my lock coming undone, the clatter of the wooden pole I use for flimsy security striking the floor, the brush of clothing against my curtains.

  My floor groans under the weight of a man.

  Still, I don’t move.

  This is a dream, after all.

  I smell him before I feel him—his graveyard musk, the aura of lagoon algae, a haze of secrets. He is musky and masculine. He engulfs me.

  Christine.

  My eyelids flutter. Briefly, I can see the shapes of our bodies in the mirror. He is the dark specter of death looming over the foam of my blond curls, my pallid and vulnerable flesh. I can distinguish no detail—only that he is very large and very threatening.

  I should be afraid. I should snap free of this nightmare.

  His hands slide up my calves, curving around the shape of my knees, as though molding me the way a sculptor molds his masterpiece. Rough fingers brush the tender flesh on the backs of my thighs.

  Those are the hands of a man who is familiar with hard labor, a man who doesn’t sit at a desk all day, but works on the property surrounding his lagoon in all his spare moments.

  He’s so strong. I can feel it in the dream—that coiled tension in his muscles waiting to be unleashed.

  In his grip, I am nothing. I am the brittle twigs at the tip of a tree’s winter-stripped branches.

  He could crush me easily, but the hands don’t crush. They cradle. They stroke.

  Where he touches, flames lift on my skin, burning from my knees to the hot core between my thighs. I press my legs together, but it doesn’t stop his explorations. He traces the lines where my legs meet hips, clutching my nightgown in his fist, and I have to exhale the fire building in my chest with a moan.

  He seems to like that sound. He approves of it. One of his hands explores my ribcage over the cloth of my nightgown.

  Those hands—they are frightening in their strength, and that fright only excites me further. He doesn’t use any of that strength to part my thighs. He simply touches my knees, silently asking for cooperation that I can’t help but surrender to him.

  My legs fall open. I can almost taste his sudden inhalation, as though he’s surprised that I had obey so readily.

  His hand slips inside of my nightgown for the first time. Bare skin on bare skin. His fingers are sliding toward the hot juncture that his presence has awakened, flooding me with liquid heat, making me hunger for his touch in places that haven’t known a man’s caress for years.

  I shudder as he draws lines along the hem of my panties.

  “Yes,” I whisper. There are no other words to be said, not a chance that I could ever refuse.

  I’m dreaming, and in this dream, I want to surrender everything.

  His lips fall on mine. Compared to the frantic heat he’s building between us, his kiss is slow, languorous, frustratingly lazy. He has all the time in the world that he needs. I feel like I’ll die if he doesn’t move faster.

  I want him so much. I need him. He’s holding back from me.

  “Take me,” I murmur into his mouth.

  His finger hooks around my underwear. Cool air touches my most private areas.

  At last. I can’t hold back my groan and I’m not even going to try.

  He’s touching me. My God, he’s finally there.

  He draws invisible lines up my nether lips, tracing the slit, as though savoring the moisture that he’s drawn from me. He’s careful not to touch the throbbing core of my need—so careful that I know it’s deliberate, a way of taunting me and withholding pleasure.

  My fingernails dig into his shoulder as he grazes my clit for the first time, brushing past it so quickly that I can’t get what I need from it. The needy sound in my throat makes him deepen the kiss, pressing his lips tightly to mine, drawing more sounds from me.

  His forefinger encircles the bud of pleasure. He massages it. Heat jolts to the tips of my fingers, makes my toes curl.

  One of my legs slides up the side of his body.

  He’s fully dressed, wearing some kind of coarse material. Perhaps flannel. Jeans. Strange for a dream. Strange in this fantasy. I feel vulnerable against him, on the edge of fear as tremors begin rocking through me.

  Fear is forgotten as he slides a finger inside of my body.

  I’m so wet for him. So incredibly ready.

  But it’s been years since I’ve known the touch of a man, and even now I’m too tight, tight enough that it aches when he slides a second finger inside of me.

  He never stops kissing me as his fingers stroke in and out. He devours every one of my gasps, every moan.

  Christine…

  I had no idea I could feel as I do now. Pleasure unfurls in my belly, and I grasp at it, clinging to the sensations, riding it toward the peak.

  He shifts his hand and finds that spot inside of me—that hidden place that nobody has touched before. My spine arches, hands clenching in the sheets at either side of me, ripping my lips from his as I struggle to breathe.

  It’s good, too good. I’m losing myself in it.

  His palm grinds against my clit as he continues to stroke, robbing me of the last vestiges of rational thought.

  “Please,” I say. And again, “Please.”

  When he responds, I realize I’m hearing him. Really hearing him in the room with me. And the single, growled word pushes me over the edge: “Now.”

  The world shatters.

  Three

  I sit up with a gasp, snapping free of the dream. My bed sheets fall around my waist.

  I’m alone in my bedroom, unmolested but breathing hard. The bright light of sunrise coats my wall. I look down to find that I’m still wearing my nightgown, pulled neatly down my thighs. My underwear show no signs of being disturbed.

  So it really was no more than a dream.

  Even so, my whole body is humming. I feel like I’ve had the best sex of my life.

  “My God,” I whisper.

  The early morning breeze fluttering through my curtains is actually cold, reminding me of winter’s slow approach. It’s much too cold to have the window open. I don’t remember propping it open the night before—but I had gone to bed in such a hurry, it’s entirely possible that I’ve forgotten.

  A knocking at my door.

  The pounding jolts me to the bone. It shatters the last of the dream’s reverie.

  I clear my throat. “Just a moment.” I’m not sure I’ve spoken loudly enough to be heard.

  Gathering a robe around my body, I shut my gaping bedroom window and go to the front door.

  Someone’s knocking again.

  Peering through the peephole, all I can see is a broad chest wearing a suit with a blue tie. There’s a chain for a pocket watch dangling from the right breast of his jacket.

  My heart skips a beat.

  Raoul.

  I have to gather my composure before I can make myself open the door. And then he’s there, right in front of me: Raoul Chance. A man who’s been trying to talk to me for hours and looks incredibly angry that he hasn’t been able to reach me.

  “Can I come in?” Raoul asks.

  My thoughts skitter past potentially obscene interpretations of that question. I’ve been writing too much Sylvia Stone-like material. Her perversity is rubbing off on me.

  He asked m
e a question. I should have invited him inside before he had to ask. I’m being terribly rude.

  “Please do.” I step aside, catching his scent as he brushes past me. He’s soapy clean, with some kind of expensive cologne I can’t place—a smell that transports me to sunny Italian canals, bakeries and vineyards, rolling fields of grapes.

  His long hair has been braided tightly to his scalp so that it looks short from the front. My hands itch to loosen that braid and run my fingers through his hair.

  “Strange happenings at Durand-Price,” Raoul says. “They’ve had me worrying about you.”

  I shut the door and lean back against it, contemplating escape. It’s not that I want to leave Raoul’s presence—seeing him has filled me with warmth, like a hot air balloon drifting high above the petty concerns of the world—but I don’t want to have to explain anything to him.

  I’m not even certain what I’d explain. I still don’t understand what’s been happening, why I ended up at the center of this strange tug-of-war, how things will unfold.

  “Are you all right?” he asks me.

  My eyes sting with tears. “I’m fine. I’m just…I’m so worried, Raoul.”

  “About Sylvia Stone’s demands?”

  I almost laugh at the idea that Sylvia’s tantrums could be causing me such stress. “Something like that.”

  “You’re working with an author who has a very big personality, and also happens to dislike you. She’s using you as a way to play petty games with the publishing company.” Raoul shrugs it off. “Don’t worry about it. That’s Lateen’s problem.”

  It must be nice to dismiss it so easily. I’ve barely been able to stop thinking about it since Grosvenor told me what was happening.

  Raoul is watching me closely, as though attempting to read my thoughts. Cheeks warming, I hurry to step around him, moving for the coffee maker.

  He hangs close by my side. “What’s going on in your beautiful head, Little Christy?”

  I wonder how affectionately he’d treat me if he knew what had transpired at Lake Symphony the night before.

  “It’s not easy to be caught underneath the disdainful thumb of someone as powerful as Sylvia Stone.” I remove a pair of chipped coffee cups from my cabinet, pretending that I don’t notice Raoul’s gaze. If I look into his eyes, I might fall into the depths and never be able to emerge again.