“Um…” Sweat broke out across my brow but surprisingly enough, Cosima stepped in to save me.
“They met in Mexico,” she exclaimed with just enough enthusiasm. “Giselle was feeling a little lonely so I sent her Iago’s information.”
“Where did you stay, Giselle?” Savannah asked.
My mouth open and closed but again, Cosima saved me by saying, “I recommended the Westin. Sinclair, weren’t you there too? I’m surprised you two didn’t cross paths.”
Savannah laughed lightly. “It’s a small world we live in.”
“Yes,” Elena said immediately, leaning forward in her seat to smile sweetly. “Savvy did I hear that Tate is producing Seb’s new film?”
I watched Savannah round eyes widen with shock. “I wasn’t aware he was interested, but I’m not surprised. Sebastian is wildly creative.”
My brother snorted softly but refrained from retorting. I tried to curb my selfish relief at the turn in conversation but I couldn’t resist looking over at Sinclair who was looking at me with those fathomless blue eyes.
“Weren’t you considering Jace Galantine for a role?” Elena continued, casually taking a sip of her wine.
Sebastian grew still, his fists clenched in his lap while Savannah’s comically wide eyes blinked owlishly.
“Giselle, how is the exhibition shaping up?” Cage asked, his black eyes sparkling with rage as they swept over Elena and on to me.
Elena pouted slightly, her attempt to derail the evening once again rerouted but I had no doubt that she would find something disparaging to say about my artwork too.
“Very well, thank you. I’m nearly finished and Sebastian was one of the best big brothers a girl could ask for, he sent me Kayla Kensington and my friend Stefan Kilos is visiting specifically to be apart of the showcase.” I laughed. “He was offended that he wasn’t my first call.”
“Stefan Kilos, the Greek shipping magnate?” Elena asked with her eyebrows raised in a haughty semblance of respect, as if she couldn’t believe her dubious bohemian sister could have such a connection.
“Exactly the one.”
“Will he stay with you?” Sinclair asked coolly, his eyes focused on Elena’s hand as he ran his thumb along the back of it.
My heart twisted painfully but I fought to keep my expression neutral. When had the dinner table turned into such a passive aggressive war zone?
“What the hell are those?” Sebastian asked loudly, leaning over the table to grab Cosima’s outstretched hand as she accepted a new bottle of wine from Santiago.
She tried to wrench her hand out of his grip but his other hand snatched her wrist and shoved down her long sleeve to reveal deeply purple bruises encircling her forearm.
Everyone gasped but Cosima stood up without embarrassment and snapped her arm away. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Nothing that concerns me,” Sebastian mocked in a high imitation. “You are kidding me. I think my sister wearing such ugly bruises would obviously concern me.”
“It’s nothing,” she insisted between clenched teeth.
I could see the anger rise in her like a tsunami, the receding calm before the rush of vicious fury.
“Cosima,” Mama tried, “who does this to you?”
“No one.”
“Cosima–” Elena said.
“No. I do not want to talk about this. I’m fine. Nothing was done against my will.”
“What can you mean?” Mama asked.
My eyes snapped to Sinclair and the same horrified understanding dawned in his eyes.
“I liked what was done to me, understand?” Cosima explained haughtily. Her chin jutted forward like an arrogant boxer’s, daring someone to hit her with censure. “These are reminders of pleasure, not abuse. It is no concern of yours anyway, but especially because these,” she bared her bruised wrists, “do not concern me.”
Awkward silence reigned at the table as her meaning sunk in. Despite my own experience with mild pain in the bedroom, the livid color of her markings scared me. Sinclair had never deliberately hurt me, his spankings were just firm enough to entice, and I couldn’t imagine true pain ever entering into our partnership. The idea of Cosima brutally bound as she must have been to incur those bruises made me angry despite myself.
“I will kill him,” Sebastian growled.
“You will not. You cannot find him and I do not want to choose between you or him,” Cosima retorted calmly. “Now, if we are done discussing my sex life, I think we should all get back to this delicious treat, hmm?”
I was surprised when Savannah Richardson was the one to clear her throat and swallow a large mouthful of tiramisu. “It really is delicious.”
There was a smattering of agreement from Cage, Santiago and I before everyone decided to take her lead and tuck into the cake.
I was so concentrated on acting normally that it took me a moment to notice the tension between Elena and Sinclair. She had removed her hand from his and angled her body fairly obviously away from him. As for him, his face was immobile, his body perfectly rigid. He was furious.
Finally, after a few minutes, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Jesus, Elena, I’m not going to bite.” He reached over to tug her seat closer to his once again.
Elena flinched.
“For fuck’s sake,” Sinclair swore, his face morphing into intense disgust. “I’m not a monster, Elena. I didn’t do that to your sister.”
“No,” she murmured, genuine fear in her eyes. “But you could have. You like that kind of thing.”
“I do not,” he roared, heedless of the half dozen other people at the table. “I have never hurt a woman like that in my life. I would never do that to you.”
“Only because I don’t allow it,” Elena whispered.
Sinclair pushed to his feet, his face slack with horror as he stared down at his partner. I couldn’t imagine how he must have felt, faced with a girlfriend who was disgusted by his sexual proclivities and who flagrantly denounced them in front of her family. I was just as horrified by Cosima’s confession as the rest of them and I could even vaguely understand Elena’s irrational terror, but to fight with him like that in front of other people? I shuddered with sympathy and revulsion.
“I am not Christopher,” Sinclair said softly, after a long minute of silently staring down at her. She still didn’t face him. “I am not that man and I have never treated you with any degree of violence. I worshipped you, Elena, and still it is not enough.”
He sighed, his hand lifting to tug at a lock of hair that was no longer there. “All these years and I still disgust you. I, for one, am tired of it.” He stared at her, waited for her to respond, but she only stared off into the distance. Finally, he turned to the rest of the table and smiled thinly. “I’m sorry for disrupting dessert but if you’ll excuse us, I think Elena and I need to be alone.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Daniel.” Elena straightened, suddenly remembering herself, her aversion to drama even though she was so often the cause of it. “Everyone, please stay and finish the cake. It’s Thanksgiving for goodness sake.”
Everyone remained seated, paralyzed by the frozen air between Elena and Sinclair.
“Yes, I’m sorry. Of course, stay and enjoy the cake. I have business at the office, so I have to go but,” Sinclair tried to smile but the result was more of a grimace, “please, stay and enjoy.”
Without another word, he crossed to the front door, unhooked his overcoat and left, closing the door softly behind him. All heads swung from the closed door to Elena, finding her dark eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Elena,” Cosima scolded softly. “Why do you do this to yourself?”
“You don’t understand,” she tried to explain.
“No, I think we do,” Cage said, standing up to look directly down into Elena’s face. “You are a coward, Elena Lombardi, and you do not even try to hide it well.”
She opened her mouth on a gasp but Cage was already bending down to k
iss Mama on the cheek and say his goodbyes. I accepted a kiss and a shoulder squeeze from him as well before he was out the door, Santiago following quickly in his wake.
Savannah was just standing up to do similarly, I think, when Elena finally croaked, “Please stay, Savvy. I know I’m wretched but please, stay for a while.”
The older woman looked quickly at Mama, who was thoroughly shocked into silence, and then at Sebastian who seemed to teeter between disgust and sympathy for his older sister.
“Okay,” Savannah said slowly. “But only if we can play charades.”
Elena’s lip trembled fiercely before she finally gave into a weepy laugh.
Chapter Seventeen.
I played one game of charades with the rest of the guests but my mind was hazardously preoccupied with thoughts of Sinclair and after one too many confused glances my way from Mama and Cosima, I said my goodbyes with the excuse of a stomach ache.
And it did ache; a deep churning that twisted my gut up like a coiled snake ready to strike out against my impure thoughts. I couldn’t help replaying the dinner over and over in my head, Elena’s intense disdain and Sinclair’s utter defeat. The perfect couple I had constructed of them in my mind was far from reality but the fractured nature of their relationship – very much like my own with Elena – didn’t make my love for Sinclair any more okay. We were still two people actively deceiving someone we had made a promise to love and care for; Elena’s bad behavior did not justify our own.
I self-flagellated myself the entire cab ride, each stroke harder than any Sinclair would ever land, and yet I still told the cabbie to take me to the Faire building, still walked the steps to the wide glass doors and buzzed in with the night receptionist who thankfully recognized my name from the gallery. I watched my reflection in the shiny chrome of the elevator doors as they closed and ferried me up to Sinclair’s 60th floor and, instead of running away from the villain I faced in the mirror, I smiled sharply at myself and strode from the elevator with the confidence of a seasoned sinner.
He knew the moment I entered his office even though I didn’t make a sound and he didn’t change his position, angled away from me as he stared out the glass walls behind his desk at the glimmering city rolled out before us. I stayed close to the door because despite my determination to see him, I didn’t know how to articulate my desire to comfort him. More importantly, I didn’t know if he would even accept it.
“I love you.”
That was what I wanted to say. I wanted to smooth it like salve into the wounds Elena had inflicted with her scared and bitter words, wanted to coat him in it until he shone with it for everyone to see.
How many times in the past few weeks had I imagined hearing those words from his lips? Imagined how the power of them would ignite the latent fire in my heart until it raced through my veins, eviscerating everything heavy and dull, the boulders of rationale and pain, the horrors of guilt and yearning. Burning it all clean until I wasn’t even a vessel anymore, maybe not even human, just red, smoldering flames feeding on shiny weightless air.
“I love you.”
Sinclair turned to face me but I tucked my chin in so that the long curtain of my hair would conceal the grotesque longing on my face. He didn’t need to see that. I didn’t want him to see that. It was bad enough that I saw it every day in the mirror, felt it in every single pore of my skin like old sweat and grime. I wanted Sinclair to see me differently, supple and shiny with love.
“Giselle.” His cold tone cracked through my simmering thoughts and I jerked towards him unconsciously. We were suddenly so close that I could see the texture of different blues in his crackling eyes.
“Are you going to say something?” he asked.
He was grinning but it was twisted badly, like a misshapen paperclip, rendered useless.
“I’m sorry, I must have been zoning out.” I clamped my sweaty palms together in my lap. “What did you say?”
“I love you.”
Blink. Pulse. Blink. Pulse, stutter, and pulse.
One hand ran through his hair and he looked away, slightly over my shoulder as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“I love you so much that I’m clumsy with it. There are so many times when I stared at you and waited for some sort of poetry to form, words that were worthy of my love for you, the intense, nonsensical, filled to the brim way that I feel about you. I pride myself on being an elegant man. I wasn’t born that way but I was raised it, and when those words won’t come, others do. The crass, dirty and poor part of me emerges like a fucking animal and all I want to do is claim you, put my scent onto every inch of your gorgeous skin, scream like a psychopath at everyone who looks at you that you are mine.”
He was panting, almost, his chest heaving and his features cracked wide open to reveal the massive crater I had unknowingly excavated, a yawning darkness filled with his love for me. The heavy sound of his breath and the sight of his pulse fluttering desperately in his throat reminded me to breath.
“Do you understand, Elle? What you do to me? I want to brand you and fuck you and marry you and breed you and do any God damn thing I can think of to bind us together so that no one, not one single fucking person, can get between us. Because, fuck, ever since I saw you pale and needy and so gorgeous my bones ached on that plane there have been things between us. Damned important things that just won’t go away.” He sucked in a deep breath and ran both hands through his hair before his eyes finally landed on mine, sliding into place like a key turning in a lock. “I know you don’t want to hurt your sister, you don’t want to cause any more turmoil in your family but, Elle, my siren, my love, I am being ripped to pieces every day knowing I can’t have you.”
These words were better than anything I could have possibly thought to long for, to imagine, and they settled around me like fine silk, the softest satin. But instead of luxuriating in the feel of it, I tangled myself up until I couldn’t breath.
“You don’t mean it, I mean, not really. It’s the excitement, the novelty and mystery of being with someone new, someone so different and, I don’t know, maybe younger?” I turned away from the slow freezing of his features; I couldn’t bare to watch the ice creep over my favorite blue eyes. “You think you want me but maybe you just don’t want Elena, especially right this moment when she was just so cruel to you, or maybe you’re having a midlife crisis or maybe you just want a submissive or—“
His hand on my arm was firm but not painful as he pulled me around to face him, our hips flush and his breath on my cheeks. “That is an awful lot of maybes, Elle.”
“We barely know each other,” I lied and it felt like blasphemy.
“I will tell you anything you want to know. You have free reign to dissect my soul, it is yours to do with as you please.”
My heart beat rapidly at the back of my throat, so fiercely that I almost gagged. I had never pictured a declaration of love like this. Everyone spoke of softness and ease as love words spilled from their lips, of euphoria and the miasmic shift as a yearning heart clicked into place with its soul mate. So why did I feel sick and aching, poised on the edge of an abyss so gargantuan and dark that I could see no means of escape. My fears lived within that crater, the deepest and darkest of them, and as I looked down at them I knew the decision I had to make – to love Sinclair or not – would mean the difference in facing them.
“They’ll hate me,” I whispered brokenly as tears slipped over my cheeks and seeped into his fingers.
He pressed his forehead to mine, so hard it almost hurt. “They might.”
I was both furious and relieved that he agreed so easily.
“How can you know it’s worth it?”
His face spasmed with hurt but he recovered quickly. “I’ve never been so certain of anything. Mon amour pour toi est aussi plus grand que le monde.”
My love for you is bigger than the world.
I sucked in a breath and choked as it fractured in my lungs.
“I just got them
back, Sin,” I tried to explain.
He lifted his head and stared down at me with eyes that were half-shuttered. He was beginning to understand that I could seriously be rebuffing him.
“They will forgive you. They are your family and they also understand ways of the heart. I think they will know that we tried to stay away but…” He shrugged in that Gallic way that made huge issues seem ridiculously easy.
“They won’t.”
He stared at me for a long time. I watched his eyes shift through ten different shades of blue. I watched as his heart calcified and I felt mine crumble in my chest.
“So, you will not,” he finally said.
I bit my lip but it was answer enough for him.
With a suddenness that made me gasp, he grabbed my shoulders between his hands and shook me slightly. His beautiful face was twisted into a snarl, his habitually cool mask shattered.
“Why are you choosing heartbreak? It will not stop when you wake up tomorrow, Giselle, it will not stop in a week or a month. This pain will haunt you until it devours you whole. You are saving your sister, you think? You are wrong. I had to choose between you and Elena, and I have. I made the right choice. But you had the same choice and now,” he snarled and took an abrupt step away from me, “you are choosing wrong.”
He turned on his heel without giving me a chance to speak and disappeared into the darkness of the unlit building behind me.
Chapter Eighteen.
I woke up hollow as a dried reed, my brittle limbs creaking in protest as I awkwardly swung myself out of bed. The light slanting in through the gap in the curtains was winter white and dim in the gloom of early afternoon. I’d slept the day away. Recovering from a crying jag was the worst kind of hangover. The throbbing pulse in my head was stronger than the weak one of my fractured heart.
I tried not to think about him but everything – from the way the scalding shower water pounded against my skin in a parade of pained and pleasurable sensation to the leftover crepes I ate for breakfast – reminded me of my Frenchman. Finally, after I absent-mindedly put dish soap into my coffee for the second time, I succumbed to the cyclone of Sinclair-related thoughts that threatened to dominate my psyche.
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