Once my hair was dried, lying knife sharp against my shoulders, and I was dressed in one of Blaise’s shirts, intoxicated by the scent of him against my skin, I padded into the kitchen to find him serving up a tantalising pasta dish from take-out boxes.
He smiled. “Hungry, babe?”
I smiled back. “Starving.” I accepted the glass of white wine he held out to me, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I blame you entirely so feed me.”
He chuckled. “Sit. I’ll bring this to the table.” He took the bowls to the table he had set with candles, providing illumination to the darkening room.
My heart squeezed. This was a side to Blaise I hadn’t seen before. I felt like I knew him intimately, even though it had been scarcely twenty-four hours since that fateful pub trip. He even seemed nervous, which was at such odds to his assertive dominance, his cold front, or even his dickhead behaviour that I had seen before. This was a new side to Blaise.
I smiled as he sat opposite me. I raised my glass in salute. “Cheers to us finding out more about each other.”
He smiled in return, clinking his glass with mine. “Santé.”
“So why all the mystery? What was the task given to you last night?” I hadn’t had a chance to ask this question yet and it was eating away at me. What could possibly be so mysterious that it warranted a trip to Paris?
“I can’t tell you, not least because I haven’t actually had a look at it yet.” Blaise paused, focusing on his food, playing for time. “I think the best thing to do is to tell you a story…”
“I’m not a child, I don’t need story time.” I interrupted him, sounding more hostile than I intended.
“Hey, it’s best for your understanding,” Blaise chuckled. Impenetrable gargoyle, I seethed. He smiled at my expression, his tone softening. “If it’s any consolation we all got the story… but I can’t tell you all of it because there are certain bits you won’t understand until the time is right. Years ago there were five boys who all grew up together, so close you could almost say they were brothers. Chosen but not by blood. That didn’t matter to them; they saw one another as brothers. Time inevitably passed and they became aware of the quickening of the days, the evolution of their lives, the changes forced upon them, fissuring their bonds. The leader of this band of brothers summoned them to the Church. The Church was an old, decrepit building hidden deep in the forest near where they lived and it was where they had spent their formative years, a safe haven from watching adult eyes. They gathered there at midnight, as instructed by their leader, and they made a pact, a blood-oath that they would stick together no matter what happened. They would help each other prosper. Now, it helped they were from wealthy, old families but still there was something about this bond that had the Midas touch to it. Whether it be business dealings or something more illicit, whatever these boys, now men, tried their hand at turned to gold under their touch. It might seem like Lady Luck was smiling on them but this group saw themselves as being special, as something to preserve and to hand down through the generations. Eventually all five had children and these children were sworn in similarly to their fathers. Their families grew up intertwined, as one it would appear; an impenetrable fortress to outsiders.” Blaise grew quiet at that, pausing to pensively sip at his wine, lost to the world of yesteryear.
The story was sending chills down my spine; it seemed to be a story as old as time. Yet I had a fear he was going to burst my bubble and tell me it wasn’t all that far away. He swallowed a mouthful of pasta, washing it down with a hearty gulp of wine and continued, his gaze refocused on mine, boring into my skull. “An impenetrable fortress. That was, of course, how the original five wanted it to be. They didn’t want any outsiders accessing their wealth but that, of course, was secondary to their deep-seated fear of said outsiders fracturing their sacred bond. They carefully vetted members to this exclusive gentlemen's club and nothing, not even love, stood in the way if someone or something was deemed inappropriate by the majority or, as seen time and time again, the leader.” He paused again, sipping his wine, his story holding me a captive prisoner. “Are you familiar with the phrase blood runs thicker than water?”
I nodded. I was spellbound by this yarn unravelling and wanted to hear the end. To find out how the dots joined up.
“Well then you’ll be surprised to learn that the second generation of this exclusive club, having amassed such great fortune, were not above excluding their heirs. They could always recruit an heir; it appealed romantically because of the old-fashioned notion of wards and from a public spin with how they could regale everyone with tales of benevolence. The leader of this generation, who happened to be my grandfather…”
I couldn’t help the gasp slip from my mouth, interrupting Blaise’s story. The dots had connected. That was the intrigue. I would be lying if I said it didn’t cause a frisson of fear to run through me. What had we got ourselves into?
Noticing my distress, he smiled and pressed a kiss to my lips, the velvety softness calming my knee-jerk panic. “It’s okay, Xanthe. I’m nearly done anyway.” He paused, refilling our glasses from which I took a welcome sip, before continuing. “My grandfather, in part worried at the dissolute debauchery of his heir, decided to create a test. A test of loyalty to decide if the blood-heirs were worthy of inheritance or if they would need to find substitutes. It helped, I suppose, that they had more than enough daughters to marry the heir into the fold… but anyway, I digress. A test was created and my father’s generation were the ones who passed. Of course,” Blaise paused, smiling wolfishly at me in the dim candlelight. “The story is thicker than what I have just imparted but I’ve already said more than I should.”
I smiled and pushed aside my plate, the pattern near cleaned off, and cuddled into him. I pressed a kiss to his mouth, my tongue dancing briefly over his. “It’s okay,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster. I pulled away to look at his turbulent expression. “I knew there was something more to you guys when we met in the pub but I had no idea there was a story of such intrigue behind it. I’m here for you, for the attraction we share. Not to sound psychotic but I know there’s more to this than twenty-four hours in Paris.” I paused to glare at him. “You know it too.”
“I do but you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. I’m trying my level-best to protect you, Xanthe. This is why I betrayed my family’s trust to tell you this tale. My father’s generation are unusually ruthless and cruel. Forgive me for not wanting to lead a sweet innocent girl like yourself into their fucked-up games.”
I scowled at him, crossing my arms. “I am no sweet, innocent girl. I can rescue myself, thank you very much.”
“I am under no illusion that you can’t. I am just trying to protect you. This Xander guy sounded like he put you through a hell of a time and I care about you too much to do the same.” He paused, breathing heavily. “Dammit! Can’t you understand that this is an act of love in letting you have some boring, ordinary guy rather than me?”
I paused, peering up at him, my heart seizing. His gaze shone with determination to make me understand, barely masking the pain he felt. Life would be so simple if we both weren’t bewitched by the connection that had ensnared us both last night. If we could walk away from each other at the end of this weekend.
Taking a large sip of wine, I smiled and kissed him slowly as though I had agreed to his madly unjust proposal. I had one guaranteed night left and I was damned if it wouldn’t be spent in indulgent pleasure. I smiled at him, staying snuggled into his embrace, luxuriating under his hand stroking my back.
“Want to take this to the terrace?”
“The terrace?” I arched my eyebrow.
“Follow me,” he said, getting up and taking my hand to lead me out of the kitchen, glasses in hand.
We headed up some stairs adjacent to the kitchen and Blaise pushed open a door that opened up onto a patio. We sank down onto a comfy couch running along the side of the wall, facing the city illuminated with light
s and, if I looked to the left, I could even glimpse the Eiffel Tower. It truly was postcard perfect, picture perfect. The quintessential nightscape of Paris.
Blaise leant forward, putting on some soft music, and taking a joint out of a silver case. He lit up and I snuggled back into his embrace, breathing in the sweet smell of the marijuana.
I laughed to myself, thinking of something. “So I guess we should finally have that conversation about birth control?”
He chuckled somewhat nervously. “Guess it’s too late if you’re not on anything?”
“Would it change things?” I challenged. Would he stay with me? Or would something as paltry as a baby mean that he would stick to his original, flawed plan?
He considered this, taking a deep pull on his joint. “It would make things more complicated. It’s like I said, darling, it’s not that I don’t care about you but there are certain things that are out of our control.”
He handed me the joint and I sucked on it, the smoke filling my body with sweet, light-headed relief. “It’s fine. I’m obviously on the pill and, if I was that desperate, I probably wouldn’t have gone so wild.”
Blaise laughed, tilting his head back and allowing me to admire the gorgeous column of his throat. “True that, Xanthe?” he paused to take another hit. “Is the unexpected day off tomorrow going to go down well?”
I swallowed my gulp of wine down at that, nerves bubbling in my throat as I considered my answer. “I guess… we’ve talked enough about how shit work is and I guess that I’m kind of done with that. I mean after breaking up with Xander, and I get how I must sound like such a self-centred millennial at this, but it’s kind of made me reevaluate everything. Re-evaluate everything that’s important. And sucking up to some stuck-up bitch doesn’t count as important to me.”
“It’s about having respect for yourself. Despite what you think, I do believe life is about having fun.”
I propped myself up to look at him at that. “Do you really believe that?”
“Of course. Don’t say you believe Delacourt when he accuses me of being a stiff uptight bastard?”
“But you are a stiff uptight bastard,” I teased, taking the joint from him. He just laughed, not deigning to respond to my comment. I breathed in before exhaling contemplatively. “So… what’s the endgame then?”
He took the joint back, melancholy clouding his gaze. “To enjoy life, I guess. Live with the woman of my dreams but that’s clearly not possible.” He laughed bitterly. “I’ve got a few business interests that I’ve hidden from my father that could provide me with a life. Not the one that I’m clearly living but one where I’m not tied to the drudgery of the 9-5. A safety net, I suppose.”
I gazed at him, turning over his cryptic phrases in my head. I wondered what the business was that he spoke of but more than that I wondered if maybe he would fight for me if it came to it. If we could give this a shot of being a real thing. It tore at my heart that he was being vulnerable with me, trusting me, when I knew that as soon as the grace period we had in Paris ended he would be back to being a dickhead. That is if he even kept in contact with me beyond the barest interactions we’d have thanks to Bastien and Gemma.
Ignorant of my inner turmoil, Blaise pulled me onto his lap for a searing kiss and, cradled in his embrace, we turned to lighter topics, to the pointless task of learning more about each other.
Blaise
Slowly waking up, I noticed the sun streaming through the window and Xanthe’s dark head curled up against my shoulder, her sweet smell invading my senses. I closed my eyes again. Monday. The end of our hedonistic weekend of blissful ignorance was fast approaching.
Reality equated to obligation and the task loomed large on the horizon. I closed my eyes as if that would magically make it evaporate. Whatever our elders had cooked up, I didn’t doubt that it would be sadistic in a way personal to only us. A simple hit job, like our older brothers had been given, would be too easy. Too simple for his little, cold-blooded killer, as my father had affectionately called me.
He had pitted my brother, Elliott, and I against each other since we were small. Elliott was effeminate, romantic. In love with life and his wife, Elena. He toed the line and did whatever was required of him. Dance monkey, fucking dance monkey. The perfect son who was being groomed to take over the family business; an expansive PR company that spun many a fine tale for certain politicians, as well as numerous other enterprises. My brother was a stronger man than our father but they showed the same affinity for pulling the wool over people’s eyes, diverting their gaze away from the sordid ruin of reality to lush, green pastures. That’s what made them so content to live the life we did as dictated by the Club. They swallowed their own lies. They refused to acknowledge that The Club was rotten at its very core. That it could no longer go on despite my father’s relentless quest to restore the family honour. To atone for his sin of not being the alpha of the generation. He looked at me with stars in his eyes when we entered a room, me at the head with the others fanned behind me. A glorious reflection of him. Made in his image but more powerful than he could ever dream. It fucking sickened me.
The blanket of ennui I had perfected over the years had hardened me, made the sickening falseness easier to bear. It was easier in a way, to regard the passing world with cool disaffection. The flame to my melting ice murmured in her sleep, diverting my attention down to her. She looked so damn adorable in her sleep. I caressed her throat, squeezing lightly. It would be so easy to kill her. She was trusting. It would be her own fault in a way. If she hadn’t chipped away at me like the melting permafrost of the tundra I wouldn’t have to deal with the noxious gases that spewed forth. Joie de vivre. Love. Affection. Feelings that made me fallible, prone to folly.
Gritting my teeth, I dragged my attention from her slender, breakable neck and picked up the letter resting on the bedside table. The task. This was why she was a threat. She was already driving a wedge between my brothers and I. We had always opened the tasks as one. Performed them as one. I should wait until I returned so that I could open it with them but I had a feeling that this was something my father had orchestrated in a particularly cruel way. As de facto leader, the last task and, by definition, the most challenging, was mine and mine alone.
I picked up my knife and slid it across the seam. I scanned the contents impassively and ice-cold resolve settled over me. Forty-eight hours of fun only it would seem.
I twirled the knife pensively in my hand as I looked down at the sleeping beauty beside me. It would be so easy to slit her throat like I had the envelope. A problem solved. Buy some time until freedom. Libertas. The sweet reward for a lifetime of servitude in a golden cage. I breathed in her sweet vanilla scent, just like freshly baked cookies, and sighed, letting the knife fall to the floor in resignation. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t fight the irrefutable fact that she was mine and mine alone. Mine to cherish. Mine to drag to the infernal depths of hell.
Feeling Xanthe wiggle closer to me, I smiled and slowly moved my body further down her body until I was positioned between her legs. I breathed in her sweet smell once more and pried her legs apart, running my tongue up her core. Pressing kisses to her entrance, I stuck my tongue in before withdrawing and biting her nub softly.
She squirmed and moaned. Good, I thought. She was waking up. Resuming my assault on her pussy, I intensified the kisses, flattening my tongue against her folds, biting her clit so hard that she cried out, limbs flailing. I paused. It wasn’t a cry of pleasure. It was a cry of distress.
I immediately sat up next to her, gazing at her panicked expression, anger coiling viciously in my gut. She was clearly triggered by something. The evidence was suggesting Xander and that intensified the anger I had to rein in so as not to frighten her any further.
“You okay?” I asked, stroking her shoulder as if she were a wild animal about to bolt. Her eyes wide with distress held mine. Growing recognition of who I was, of her surroundings, slowly simmered the panic down. “Wh
at happened there?” I asked gently.
Xanthe breathed in deeply, centring herself. “It just brought back some memories.” She gazed at me, pressing a kiss to my lips as if to console me which only breathed further fire into the anger coiled deep within. She laughed, as if that would make light of the matter. “Xander didn’t exactly know when I was happy.” She paused, considering her words. “I guess he didn’t exactly care so long as he was happy. That,” she gestured down her body. “Just brought it back I guess.” She gazed at me now, worry shining bright, and said firmly, “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want you to do that though. I just got confused, I guess.”
Her uncertain laugh, forcibly light, set me off. How fucking dare he? I wanted to kill that bastard slowly with my bare hands. No wonder she was skittish. I couldn’t hold in the anger any longer and launched myself out of bed, pacing the room. “That’s fucking ridiculous. Have you told anyone?”
The look on her face said it all and I roared in anger. That bastard needed to be brought to justice. Xanthe leapt out of bed and crowded me against the wall, giving me no room to escape. “Hey, Blaise. It’s okay. I promise. Let’s just enjoy the last few hours we have before going back to normality.”
I gritted my teeth, gazing at her beautiful eyes and breathed in. Why the fuck did I even care anyway? It was like someone had drugged me, made me take leave of my senses. I wasn’t known to have such visceral, visible reactions. That gave people the upper-hand. In this world it was imperative that at all times. No exceptions. This was the universe reminding me of how weak she made me. Of how I should have seized the opportunity but I hadn’t because of her.
Xanthe had crawled under my skin like no woman had ever done in the twenty-four years I had spent on this sorry Earth. I wanted to figure her out, to crack her unique code for reasons that were unknown, but I had taken it too far this weekend. I had given her hope. Hope was dangerous. Hope gave life to dangerous ideas. Hope escalated situations.
Little Doll: Queens of Chaos 1 Page 11