by Lila Dubois
“Come here,” he commanded, lowering the tone of his voice and sinking some authority into it.
Vivienne stopped as if she’d reached the end of a leash. For a moment Solomon thought he’d miscalculated. He’d thought she needed him to take control and break her out of the strange mental space she was in. However it was possible he’d read the situation all wrong, and now she was simply pissed.
With her back still to him, Vivienne reached up, gathering her hair and pulling it forward over her right shoulder, where she twisted it into a thick rope.
His heart ached. It was such a familiar sight. She used to do that while she was studying. Sometimes she’d sit there and braid and unbraid her hair while reading.
She turned, gliding elegantly around and through the various pieces of dungeon equipment until she stood in front of him.
“Vivi baby, I need you to talk to me,” he commanded softly. “I need to know what’s going through your head.”
“How can I tell you when I’m not even sure?” Her gaze slid to the door of aftercare room number four, and then to the St. Andrew’s cross beside him. “I’m feeling too many things to name, but I also feel hollow.” She shook her head, some of her hair sliding back behind her shoulder. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe not, but I understand.”
“You always did understand me.”
“But you’re done.” He tried to say the words as neutrally as possible. He didn’t want to accuse her, didn’t want to lash out. He also didn’t want to sound whiny or pathetic.
She folded her arms below her breasts, chin down, gaze on the floor. “Are there things we both still need to say?”
“There are things I want to say.” He wanted to tell her that she was his home. He wanted to tell her that he was going to come back to Paris, that he’d like to live with her but if she was uncomfortable with that, he’d get his own place not far from her. He was going to confess that he was desperate enough to settle for taking whatever scraps of her time and attention her family left.
He was formulating a way to start this conversation, when she jerked her face up, eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “Wait a moment. You said I was done… but you’re done too.” She inhaled audibly, almost but not quite a gasp. “Aren’t you?”
The double doors of the dungeon opened, the hinges squeaking. Solomon and Vivienne both turned to look.
Coward that he was, Solomon felt a little bit like he just been saved by the bell, despite the fact that he did want to talk to her about the future of them, however fucked-up and pathetic that future might be.
Vivienne, apparently snapped from her morose mood, adjusted her stance, raising her chin a fraction of an inch, placing her hands on her hips, elbows slightly back, in a way that said confident and prepared rather than aggressive.
“That certainly didn’t take long,” Nerio said. “Or perhaps you’re curious by nature? Couldn’t wait to open the door.”
Solomon started walking towards the other man, Vivienne at his side. “I had my suspicions when I saw the spotlights for the bed.”
Nerio nodded, then looked at Vivienne. “All the better to see a lovely sub with.”
Solomon saw red. “Don’t even look at her. You fucking terrorized her.”
Nerio pursed his lips. “Regrettable, but unavoidable. You should know she willingly placed herself in bondage to save you.”
“She told me. Also told me that you’re a fucking liar.”
“Truth and lies, black and white, these are arbitrary concepts.” Nerio gestured around the dungeon. “I prefer shades of gray.”
“How poetic,” Vivienne said dismissively.
Solomon hid his smile. She looked like a disappointed queen. Regal, and so far above it that the current situation wasn’t even worth being angry about. He remembered Celeste, and she was channeling her great aunt to a T.
“I believe you may have hurt my feelings,” Nerio said.
“Do psychopaths have feelings?” Solomon asked no one in particular.
“I’m not a psychopath. I’m actually, to my own detriment, a romantic.”
“And that’s how you justify kidnapping us? Because you believe you can fix us?” Vivienne asked.
“Do you need to be fixed?” Nerio countered.
“Everyone needs to be fixed. Everyone is broken. Putting the pieces back together, finding whatever you can to use as glue, that’s not something someone can do for you.” Vivienne’s voice lost some of the haughty quality as she spoke.
“Well said,” Nerio exclaimed. “And I agree. However, if we use your broken pieces analogy, I am perhaps the master craftsman. I can provide you space, a workshop if you will, and suggestions for the best way to go about reassembling your relationship.”
“There is nothing to reassemble. We made our peace with our past.”
“Is that so?” Nerio looked at him, and Solomon rolled his shoulders, aware that he was half naked, and hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth. He didn’t like the feeling of being underprepared.
“Solomon?” Vivienne asked.
“What will it take to get us off this boat?” Solomon asked Nerio.
“Ship,” Nerio said. “I consider her a ship. After all we keep smaller vessels onboard. A ship can carry a boat as they say.”
“Solomon, could you take him in a fight?” Vivienne asked coldly.
“Pretty sure.”
“Would you hold him so I can hit him?”
“Anything you want, Vivi baby.”
Nerio, apparently unconcerned by the threats of violence, grinned. “That right there is what I mean. You two are good together.”
“What we are, is none of your business,” Vivienne snapped.
“And yet, if I wasn’t here, the two of you wouldn’t still be talking.”
“We said everything we needed to say.”
Nerio looked once more at Solomon. “Maybe you did. But Mr. Carter isn’t ready to let you go. Isn’t that right?”
A pregnant silence gripped the air around them. Through the open doors at Nerio’s back he could hear the sounds of the ocean—wind and waves.
“Solomon?” Vivienne asked.
“You’ve had your fun,” Solomon snarled at Nerio. “Now take us home.”
“‘Take us home’? Does that mean your island is her home now too?”
“Shut up.”
“You hesitated, Solomon,” Vivienne breathed. “When we were on the helicopter, I said we were done. You hesitated before agreeing.”
“Not now, Vivi.”
“Yes, now. Why did you hesitate?”
Solomon stalked towards Nerio. “Let’s go. You’re going to walk us up to the helipad and tell your pilot to take us home.”
“Don’t walk away from me.” Vivienne’s voice was laced with anger. “Don’t walk away from me again. Answer.”
He turned to her. “I’m not going to talk about this with him here.”
“We were alone a minute ago. I cried in your arms. I was vulnerable, told you what I had been feeling. Why can’t you do the same?”
Anger, familiar and comfortable, surged inside him. He ignored the little voice warning him that getting angry with her would mean repeating the same mistakes he had in the past. If he was going to make it work with her, if he was going to find a place in her life, he’d have to let go of his anger.
He couldn’t do it here. Not with the stranger looking on. A stranger who had taken away Solomon’s precious control.
He would humble himself for Vivienne, but he couldn’t do it in front of this man.
“I’m not having this conversation with you right now,” he snapped.
“When then?”
“I would have had it this morning if you hadn’t decided to sneak out.”
“Sneak out? I left, because that was always the plan. One more night together. Closure. Then I’d leave.”
“Closure… I really fucking hate that word. What does that even mean?”
“Are you angry with me because I used your signature move—walking away, or apparently sneaking out—on you?” The derisive pity in her voice made Solomon see red.
He opened his mouth, ready to fight with her, when Nerio stepped between them, arms out.
Solomon snarled and smacked the other man’s hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I had no intention of touching you.”
“And stay the hell away from her.”
“Angry with her one moment, protective of her the next?”
“Don’t touch me,” Vivienne said coolly. “I was willing to…be in your custody…when I thought it meant protecting Solomon. You lied to me in order to gain my compliance; I will not make that mistake again.”
“You have my apologies for any lies I’ve told.”
“Does that mean you’ll tell us the truth from now on?”
Nerio smiled. “Absolutely not. As I said, I don’t believe in the binary definitions of truth and lies.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Solomon snarled. “You sound like some fourteen-year-old wannabe philosopher.”
The wry amusement that defined Nerio slipped a bit, and the hairs on the back of Solomon’s neck stood on end. It was as if the person they’d been dealing with was a mask, and for a moment Solomon saw the beast beneath the facade.
And what he saw scared the shit out of him.
He’d told Vivienne he’d been terrified on the helicopter, and he had been…for her. Not for himself. Looking at their captor now, Solomon was once more gripped by a desperate need to protect Vivienne, but also a primal awareness of the danger he too was in.
Once, on a family vacation to Santa Cruz, he’d swum out too far from shore. He’d turned back, but the current had been too strong. No matter how hard he’d kicked, he couldn't escape the pull of the riptide. The moment he realized that he wasn’t going to make it, that his strength was simply no match for that of the ocean, had been the first time he’d been viscerally aware of his own mortality.
He’d survived, because while his strength was no match for the ocean’s, he’d used his head—in that moment of panic, a long forgotten tidbit of information had come to him.
When caught in a riptide, don’t swim directly for shore, swim on a diagonal path. He changed his strategy, and made it, exhausted, and both elated at his success and terrified at how easily that could have gone wrong.
This was another one of those moments. The situation he and Vivienne were in was obviously dangerous—they been kidnapped—but the fact that this all started as some sort of movie-worthy absurd plot by their friends had tempered that danger.
Underestimating Nerio was a very dangerous mistake. He was the riptide, unseen, and deadly if not handled correctly.
Solomon held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, let’s talk.”
“I’m not going to talk to him, I expect you to—” Vivienne’s voice was hot with anger, but Solomon cut her off.
Stepping around the other man, Solomon slid one hand under her hair, grabbing the back of her neck and squeezing just enough to make her stop talking.
Vivienne sucked in an angry breath, but her words cut off mid-sentence.
Nerio stared at them, and Solomon watched the mask slip back into place, a polite, if slightly wry, smile curving his lips. “Interesting,” Nerio said.
“The conversation is going in circles,” Solomon said softly. “How about we change the approach?”
“And what would you like to discuss?”
“What will it take for you to let us leave?”
Nerio’s smile widened into a grin. “Very good. Come to my office, and we’ll begin negotiations.”
Solomon’s hand on the back of her neck was both calming and irritating. The sense of calm it provided her was learned. The irritation was because he’d done it to stop her from talking.
When he’d first touched her, she’d been tempted to slap his hand away and keep berating Nerio, but something about the way Solomon had placatingly spoken to the other man stopped her. She trusted him. He had to have a reason for changing the tone of their conversation with Nerio.
Their captor led the way out of the dungeon. It opened onto the small foyer at the foot of the stairs. To her left was the hallway they’d gone down to get to the aftercare room.
Rather than going up or down, they skirted around the stairs down another hallway with a single, frosted glass door at the end.
Solomon’s steps slowed, allowing Nerio to pull far enough ahead of them that they could talk privately. His lips hovered near her ear, and she wished that his hand on her skin, his breath washing over the side of her face, wasn’t enough to make her nipples hard.
But it was.
“He’s dangerous,” Solomon said.
That statement cooled her ardor. “We knew that. He kidnapped us.”
“Yes, but I think that was a game to him.”
“It wasn’t to me,” she whispered back.
“I know, and that’s why we need to be careful. What kind of person thinks kidnapping two people is a viable way to fix their relationship?”
She wanted, oh, she desperately wanted, to ask him if that’s what they were going to do—fix their relationship.
Earlier she’d been sure he hesitated because he still had feelings for her, he hadn’t wanted her to leave.
“You think he’s truly dangerous?” she asked instead.
“I think if we piss him off, he’ll kill us and dump our bodies overboard.”
“Mary, mother of God,” she breathed.
“Exactly.”
“Are you sure? He seems…eccentric, perhaps a bit mad. Not homicidal.”
“I would’ve said he was just weird. A nutcase. But for a minute there he slipped, and I saw something in his eyes that scared the shit out of me.”
A shiver slid down her back.
“We should call for help. I don’t care if it’s an international incident.”
“I think we might have to,” Solomon said. “First chance either of us gets to be alone with a phone, that’s what we do.”
Vivienne swallowed hard. “All right. And what if we’re never alone with the phone?”
“Then we do whatever it takes to get you safely off this boat.”
“To get us off,” she stressed. “Do not plan some insane self-sacrifice.”
“Like you tried to do on the helicopter?”
“Exactly.” She raised her hands and spread her fingers. “Look where that got us.”
He snorted. “Fine. We’re leaving together.”
There was more she wanted to say, to ask, but they’d run out of hallway. Nerio was waiting for them at the glass door. He smiled politely, and Vivienne looked for whatever it was that had alarmed Solomon enough to cause him to change tactics.
“This is my Dom-in-residence office,” Nerio said when they stopped a few feet from him and the door.
His attention shifted to her, and for a moment, Vivienne saw it—a darkness inside him, lurking like a jungle cat camouflaged in the shadows.
“No shoes allowed for submissives,” he continued.
Vivienne’s back and shoulder muscles tensed and tightened.
“She’s keeping her shoes on,” Solomon said. “She’s not here as a submissive.”
Nerio grinned. “Fine then, prisoners aren’t allowed to wear shoes. Is that better?”
Solomon’s hand tightened almost painfully on her neck. She could feel him fighting the urge to lash out at the other man.
“After all,” Nerio continued, “you aren’t wearing shoes, or much of anything.”
Solomon looked ready to explode.
Vivienne reached up, tugging his hand off her neck, and lacing her fingers with his. Holding on to him for balance, she raised each foot in turn, untying the laces of her designer athletic shoes and then toeing them off. She slipped off her no-show socks and tucked them into each shoe. The glossy wood of the floor was cool beneath her bare feet.
She scooped up her shoes with her free hand, letting them dangle from two fingers.
She straightened, making sure her body language and expression told Nerio that she wasn’t cowed by being forced to remove her footwear. Solomon gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
Nerio quirked one eyebrow at her, but didn’t comment. He opened the door, preceding them into his office. Solomon went first, and she stayed close at his back.
For the second time in as many days, she was awed. Nerio’s Dom-in-residence office looked out over the stern of the boat. A long rectangular room, it was roughly half the width of the vessel. The wall opposite where they’d entered was made of tinted glass, offering an unobstructed view of the deck for this level, and the decks below, which stair-stepped down the profile of the ship.
On her right, the exterior wall, with larger than expected porthole-style windows, offered a view of yet more endless blue ocean.
The long wall on the left of the room was also made entirely of glass. Several doors interspersed along the expanse offered access to the massive “L” shaped deck that wrapped around the office. Lounge chairs were positioned in the shade offered by the overhang from the floor above—she was fairly certain they were now standing under the helipad.
The office itself was lush and elegant, with the occasional touch of nautical whimsy. The desk and chair, positioned at an angle to take advantage of the views, were glass, brass, and blue-gray leather, but an ornate, antique captain’s desk was displayed not far from its modern counterpart. A small conference table with six chairs around it was positioned not far from where they stood. It, like the desk, was glass-topped. The pedestal base of the table was wrapped in the same blue-grey leather as the desk chair. Around the table, straight backed parsons chairs had brass nailhead accents, and sailcloth seats and backs.
A massive rope basket held a stack of navy velvet floor pillows, a curio cabinet displayed an oddly harmonious collection of shells and antique nautical instruments, and almost every piece of furniture boasted shiny brass diamond eyeplate anchor rings—diamond shaped pieces of metal with large D ring anchors sticking out of the center.