thought of the woman
I’d been just a few weeks ago – ignorant of her own body,
closed-off – and she was a stranger to me.
“And if I’m not the
same, so what? What are you afraid of?”
Hs gaze was like
shattered glass. “That I’ll destroy you and you’ll hate me for
it. Don’t you see? Indulging this craving doesn’t satisfy it, it
only makes it stronger. Today I committed three million Euros to a
mobile ad company and I can hardly remember their presentation. My
focus is shot. This firm has been my life for nine years, but to see
you submit to me, your vulnerability – nothing else compares. But
that doesn’t mean it’s right, or good for either of us.”
I stared at him. All he
could think about today was me? While I’d tottered miserably in my
high heels through the city, convinced he didn’t want me?
It showed how little I
really knew him, and how skilled he was at hiding his feelings.
“There were a lot of
other people there tonight,” I said. “They weren’t all
destroying each other, were they?”
“You can’t see into
someone’s soul at a place like that,” he argued. “Is Louis at
peace deceiving his wife and flogging his mistress? The poor girl
couldn’t have been more than twenty-four.”
“She looked like she
was in love with him.”
He snorted. “The
attention makes her feel important. She’s too young to know she’s
being used.”
I squeezed his cool
fingers. “But remember what you said to me at dinner the other
night? It doesn’t matter what we think. It’s about what makes
them happy.”
“As long as they both
know how all-consuming it can be, and I doubt she does. Not everybody
can handle this kind of life. Remember – I saw a woman driven crazy
by it.”
Just when I thought we
were done with his ex, she was back with a vengeance. “You mean
Lydia?” I said, almost choking on her name. “Why does that still
bother you so much?”
He looked at me
intently and shook his head.
“What is it, Marc?”
“Please,” he said.
“I’d rather not revisit something that ended eight years ago.
Suffice it to say…I’ll never forgive myself for my part in it,
and I can’t make the same mistakes with you.”
“What are you saying?
You want to stop?”
He sighed. “That’s
the last thing I want. But there’s fallout from living this life. I
have to protect you from it.”
“I scraped my arm,”
I said. “That’s all.”
“I know. But
sometimes things are more than they appear to be.”
Henrik pulled up in
front of Marc’s apartment building, forcing us to leave the
conversation unfinished. When we got upstairs, Marc washed and
dressed my cut, still wearing his suit, his expression somber.
I watched him dab on
antibiotic ointment, unwrap the bandage, and apply it to my wound
with a quiet tenderness. There was nothing he could have done to me,
no kiss or caress, that could have made me feel as cared for as I did
right then.
“Thank you,” I said
when he was finished.
He kissed the back of
my hand. “Come to bed with me,” he said.
First he took off my
clothes, then his. Under the sheets, he held me against him as if
afraid I might vanish.
Though he was hard
against my bare stomach, he didn’t try to make love to me. When I
asked why, he squeezed me very tightly.
“But we are,” he
whispered. “That’s exactly what we’re doing right now.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was barely light
outside when Marc kissed me awake. Smiling a sexy half-smile, he
brushed my hair back from my forehead and watched me wake up.
I blinked at him,
amazed that he wasn’t a gorgeous image from a dream. Over a blue
suit he wore a Burberry scarf and a black trench coat that turned his
eyes the color of storm clouds.
“How’s your wrist?”
he whispered.
I stretched out my arm.
The bandage was still firmly in place two inches above my hand. “It’s
fine. I don’t feel a thing.”
“Good.” He stroked
my cheek with the back of his finger. “I’m sorry I
Rachel Phifer
Gertrude Chandler Warner
Fiona McIntosh
C. C. Benison
Bill Dedman
S. Ganley
Laura Dave
J. Alex Blane
Nicole Martinsen
Jean Plaidy