Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) (16 page)

I ran a hand down my
body – completely naked. I sat up slowly, head pounding but my
stomach a little better. In the moonlight I could see my dress folded
over the arm of a loveseat and my shoes under a table.

I lay back down, afraid
to jostle the bed and wake Marc. The sound of the clock seemed to
drill through my brain, every second a reminder that our time
together was almost over. And all I’d done to extend it was drink
too much and maul a waiter. In two days Marc would vanish from my
life forever.

I couldn’t just lie
here and let it happen. I had to try something. Anything.

The sheets rustled as I
turned toward him. I reached out and touched his smooth chest, then
skimmed my fingers along the strapping curve of his shoulder. For a
minute, he didn’t move. I held my breath and slid closer. Then I
felt his hands on my waist as he pulled me against him.

He kissed me slowly,
searchingly, as if he were dreaming. At first I thought he was, but
then his eyes flickered open and I felt his heart thundering against
my breasts. In an instant he was on top of me, naked and hugely
stiff, his breath warm on my cheek.

I opened my legs for
him and he entered me, driving his entire length into me with a low
moan. I wrapped my thighs around his waist, drawing him into me as
deeply as I could, tears filling my eyes. At last I had him again, if
only for a few short minutes.

“I’m sorry,” I
whispered.

“For what?” he
asked, his voice rough with sleep.

“Everything. Tonight.
Keeping secrets from you.”

He shook his head and
raised my ankles, setting them on his shoulders. Bending my knees
back, he shoved himself inside me with such strength that I gasped
and clutched the sheets.

“Marc.” I waited
for him to look at me, to talk to me as he always had, but he kept
his eyes closed, fucking me with a savagery I’d never felt from
him. On and on it went, one harsh thrust after another, until my hips
ached and my back felt raw.

“Marc?”

He opened his eyes as
if being dragged back to a world he didn’t recognize. “What?”

“Where are you?”

“Right here.”

“No, you’re not. I
can tell –”

“Shhh.” He put a
finger over my mouth and began to move again, dropping his head so I
couldn’t see his face. I lay rigidly under him, my body responding
but shame burning in my heart.

So this was “normal”
sex with Marc.

I’d never have
believed it could feel so degrading. When he was dominant I was his
focus, the one thing he couldn’t refuse. On those nights he’d
given himself to me completely, but now I had only a shell of a man
and a memory. Not really Marc at all.

He came with a grimace,
his body shaking violently against mine. In one brief, depressing
moment, it was over. I hadn’t wanted to come and hadn’t tried to.
Had he even noticed? Had he fantasized about someone else so he could
climax?

He rolled onto his
back, his breath slowing. Though he rested one hand on my ribs, it
seemed obligatory, the final act in a sad charade. I felt used and
dirty, like nothing more than a receptacle for a base physical urge.

I wouldn’t stay in
his bed a minute longer.

I got up in the dark
and put on my dress. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Back to my room,”
I said.

“Sophie,” he said,
sitting up. “Wait. Please.”

After slipping on my
shoes, I found my handbag on the floor near the closet. Without
another word, I opened the door and left.

We hardly looked at
each other the next morning at breakfast.

I picked at a bowl of
fruit and sipped my second cup of too-strong coffee. My head
threatened to burst every time I looked toward the window, which
gleamed with dazzling sunshine. Julien serviced a row of tables
across the room, his chin scratched from his dive into the rosemary
bush. He glanced at me with soulful eyes and I gave him a brief
apologetic smile.

Marc didn’t even
notice. He read his newspaper as if it held the secret to life, not
glancing up until our plates were cleared.

“Shall we get going?”
he said in a business-like monotone, pushing back his chair. “We
don’t want to keep Matthew waiting.”

“Heaven forbid,” I
said, matching his coldness with my own.

In the car, neither of
us said a word. The radio was all static, leaving us to sit in
grueling silence. In spite of everything, my body still ached for the
addictive feeling of his skin against mine. I was in full withdrawal,
my nerves raw and my stomach queasy.

Hand gripping the
armrest, I began to count down the kilometers until I could escape
the car. I was picturing jumping out into the road when we came to a
farmhouse on the outskirts of a picturesque town.

“Thank God,” I
whispered, a little too loudly. Matthew grinned and waved from the
front steps.

“If you could at
least pretend not to hate me, I’d appreciate it,” Marc said,
parking next to Matthew’s car.

“You know what?” I
blurted. “The last thing I needed was to feel violated again.”

My words rang out like
a shot. Marc stared straight ahead, his fingers clamped around the
steering wheel.

“A lot went on last
night. This is not the time or place to talk about it.”

“Oh, okay. Let me
know when it’s convenient for you,” I said, and threw open the
car door.

I pasted on a happy
face for Matthew, hoping he wouldn’t notice my hoarse voice and
bloodshot eyes. Marc followed, calling out a forced, “Good
morning!”

Matthew opened the door
with a giant tarnished key and led us inside. “The estate was built
in 1885 and used to produce cognac,” he said.

“That’s what I’m
looking for,” Marc said, so falsely chipper he wasn’t fooling
anyone. “History.”

I trudged behind him
from room to room, each decorated in some variation of depressing
floral. The ceiling sagged from water damage and the kitchen
wallpaper was peeling at the edges, as if it didn’t have the
strength to stay up anymore.

“There’s plenty of
history here, all right,” I muttered under my breath. “Plenty of
termites, too, I bet.”

“The house seems to
be in relatively good shape,” Marc said to Matthew. “It just
needs an interior designer and some cosmetic work.”

While Marc took
pictures of the rooms with his phone, I asked Matthew about the
process of financing a vacation home in France. I did have an article
to write, after all, and the showing was meant to be research. But
every time I glanced at Marc, the same truth rang like a cymbal
through my head.

He was gone.

He might be walking
around, a tantalizing vision of masculine beauty, but the man I’d
known had retreated to a place I couldn’t go. I’d tried talking
him out of it, provoking him, and fucking him, but nothing had
worked. Nothing ever would.

His phone bleated from
another room, what sounded like miles away. My heart shrank as I
imagined who it might be. An ex-girlfriend, or a pretty young partner
at his firm. I heard his voice somewhere above me, quiet and deep.
Always soothing, even now. It stopped after a minute, and I heard his
footsteps come down the stairs and stop behind me.

I turned around. His
face was white.

“Marc?”

He stared at me. As I
stared back, I saw his control collapse.

“Who was it?” I
asked.

“Eleanor.”

“Why? Is something
the matter?”

“It’s my father,” he said, his
voice stunned, almost hollow. “He’s in hospital in Lyon. They’re
not sure he’s going to live.”

The drive north took
more than two hours.

Eleanor was on a flight
from London and out of reach. Cell service was spotty, and Marc was
able to speak to a doctor at the hospital only once during the drive.
His father was unconscious and undergoing tests. It could be a
stroke, a heart attack, a seizure.

“Madeleine found him
in the front hallway this morning,” Marc said when he hung up.
“Lying unconscious on the floor with his head bleeding. In his
pajamas, for Christ’s sake.”

“Why was he alone?”
I asked.

“She had the weekend
off to visit her daughter. He could have been lying there for two
days.”

I reached over the
center console and took his hand. His fingers gripped mine with
almost painful force. Finally he was himself again, the Marc I’d
always known.

Maybe it wasn’t right
to be glad to have him back under the circumstances, but I was.
“Eleanor will be surprised to see me,” I said.

“She probably knew
about us anyway, Sophie.”

“She asked me about
it last week,” I said. “I told her I wasn’t interested in you.”

“Well, it’s our
business, yours and mine. We don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

The traffic was heavy
on the highway and dark clouds were rolling in on a buffeting wind.
Marc called the hotel and arranged to have our things packed and our
luggage dropped at his father’s house, half an hour from Lyon.
After two wrong turns, he found the hospital and parked, sitting back
with a long sigh.

“Okay,” he said. “I
guess it’s time.”

“Do you want me to
come in? I mean…because of last night, I’d understand –”

“I don’t feel very
good about last night,” he broke in. “And I want you to come in
with me. I need you to. Please.”

I got out and walked
with him across the parking lot. Outside the front doors, he took my
hand.

The building was gray
concrete, with the same bright, noisy interior of all hospitals, the
same acrid smell of disinfectant. We waited for less than a minute in
reception before a young doctor came out in blue scrubs with cloth
booties over her shoes.

“Monsieur Brayden?”
She and Marc spoke in hushed French, then she took us down a hallway
to a private room.

Madeleine sat at
Simon’s bedside, her eyes red. Her voice broke as she told Marc the
story in French, which he interpreted to me. She’d gone to the
chateau that morning, nearly hitting Simon with the door when she
opened it. There was a pool of dried blood and a broken glass on the
floor. Simon hadn’t opened his eyes even when she’d shaken him
and shouted his name.

While Madeleine went
for coffee, Marc and I stood by his father’s bed, our fingers
linked. Everything else – Trevor, last night, what might happen in
the future – seemed small and insignificant. It was just us without
the complications of sex, the past, or secrets.

We sat with Simon until
a nurse wheeled him away for more tests. Just after two orderlies
brought him back, Eleanor arrived with a brisk, practical air.

“Sophie?” she said,
frowning.

“Hi, Eleanor. I’m
so sorry.”

She started to speak,
then shook her head as if my presence were the least of her worries.

“How long have you
been here?” she asked Marc. “Where’s the doctor? Why don’t we
know anything yet? It’s been hours.”

As if she’d been
summoned, the doctor came into the room with a manila folder in her
hand. Though her accent was strong, I understood most of what she
said.

Simon had fallen after
a night of drinking. Though he had no bleeding in his brain, he had a
hairline fracture of the skull. Even worse, his blood tests showed
that he was killing himself with alcohol. He might recover from the
fall but die from liver disease. If he didn’t stop drinking now, it
would be too late.

As soon as the doctor
left, Marc turned to Eleanor. “I don’t care what he says, he
can’t live alone anymore. That’s the end of it.”

Eleanor looked at him,
her hands twisted together. “For God’s sake, Marc, didn’t you
hear what the doctor said? He may not live at all.” And then she
started to cry.

A cold rain was falling
when Marc and I got to the chateau.

He’d insisted on
bringing his father a change of clothes in the morning, even if it
was less convenient to the hospital. The hotel had delivered our
luggage, which sat by the front door barely out of reach of the
storm.

Marc wheeled the
suitcases into the foyer and switched on the chandelier. Though
Madeleine had cleaned up the blood, one of Simon’s slippers lay at
the bottom of the stairs. I shivered, almost wishing we were sleeping
on cots in the hospital room with Eleanor.

After carrying our bags
up to his bedroom, Marc lit a fire in the huge stone fireplace in the
kitchen and took out the cold roast beef Madeleine had left for us.
He mixed a salad and opened a bottle of wine while I set the table
with Simon’s heavy monogrammed silverware. We sat side-by-side
facing the fire, a single candle burning between us.

“I’ve always known
something like this could happen,” Marc said, pouring Beaujolais
into my wineglass. “I should have hired someone to watch him full
time.”

“He’s an adult,”
I said. “From what little I know of him, he’s very stubborn.”

“Stubborn or not,
what happened today is a result of my inaction.”

I sliced into the
tender, peppered beef. “Eleanor could have taken him,” I said.
“She has a family to help her.”

“The fact remains, I
should have intervened sooner. He might die because I didn’t.”

“Your father made his
own choices,” I said, putting my hand on his knee. “Those choices
aren’t your fault.”

He stared at the
blazing logs, his knife and fork crossed over his half-finished
plate. “I guess it’s my need for control coming out. It isn’t
always good for me, or other people.” He looked at me so intensely,
my heart began to pound. “Which brings me to last night. I owe you
an apology for how I treated you.”

“Okay.” Finally, we
were going to talk about it.

“I was trying to be
the person I should be, but I don’t think it felt that way to you.”