The Parlour (VDB #1) (37 page)

The moment the door closes behind Pascal, Alexander gets up in all his glory and towers over me. I raise my head and keep staring.

“Why, Lilah?”

“You said it was okay, that you’d help,” I reply, clenching my fists and waiting for an explosion of some sort.

“Why should I give him to you?” he says again. Christ almighty, what the fuck does he want from me? I should slap him for asking. The thought is tempting.

“I can’t say why. It’s just… I don’t know what I’m doing. I told you that, and you said you would help, so that’s why we’re here. He obviously thinks that–”

“WHY?” he shouts angrily, reprimanding my navigation of his question. “If you want my help, you’ll fucking well tell me why the hell I should give him to you. What do you want with him?”

“Nothing more than he asks for,” I reply quietly, shrinking away from his glower slightly but desperately trying to keep hold of my own temper. How dare he yell at me? I’m helping him, for fuck’s sake. I could really do with the rational Mr. White at the moment, the one I saw in the business suit, or the one who talked casually and made me feel somewhere normal around him. He snarls at me and glances at my tight fists.

“You know nothing of what he asks for. What he needs, or how that will impact your life. You have no idea what you are asking of me,” he replies, dismissing me as he moves away with a sneer of disapproval. My fists ball tighter. As if dealing with Pascal isn’t hard enough, now I’ve got a bigger one to appease, too? Christ, I’m at my limit. I can feel all those months of being dismissed crawling their way around me, rallying that poor unfortunate on the roadside to stand up for herself, for her rights.

“No, I don’t, you’re right. And in reality, I don’t care. He’s in here,” I snap out, tapping my head and snatching a gulp of my much-needed drink. “I want him to be happy, satisfied, and I can’t do that without your guidance, or your fucking permission, it seems. It’s like he’s some damn toy of yours to be torn apart as and when you see fit.” He just shakes his head and refills his drink, still with his back to me.

“He’s not my toy, Lilah. See how little you comprehend?” he snarls, snorting out a disgusted chuckle and making me feel like I’m ten years old. If there’s one thing I won’t put up with, it’s being made to feel incompetent. Who the hell does he think he’s talking to? I’ve survived far more than him, and I’ll fucking do it again if I have to. My anger rages through me at his mocking tone. Stupid little Lilah and her inability to do anything well. Arsehole. I don’t care how big or bad he is, I will not be treated like an idiot.

“You’re nothing but a child playing with something you don’t understand the rules of.”

That’s it. All reasoning abandons my mouth to brain filter.

“Well, it seems like
he
is to me, fucking odd as that might be,” I spit out at him, advancing a step and raising my head as high as it will possibly go. He still doesn’t turn but my mouth carries on. “You appear to treat him like one. I mean, who the hell are you to me, or to him? Why should any of this be of any consequence, other than the lying I’m currently doing to him, for
you
? I shouldn’t have to ask your fucking permission to date someone, least of all someone like him.”

I poke the bastard in the back to make him turn. He doesn’t, so I do it again.
Fucking man
. “Are you fucking listening to me? He shouldn’t need anyone’s permission for anything.” I’m rewarded me with a slight turn of his cheek.

Better.

I raise myself back again and snarl at his offered eye. “You dare stand there and question my intentions with your authority over him, like perhaps I should be bowing down to your good looks and sadistic proclivities, but I won’t. It’s not in my nature to bow down to anyone, not anymore. I’ve done quite enough of that in the last fucking year. And if I were going to, it wouldn’t be to somebody who uses violence and death threats as their only fucking weapons.”

That seems to strike a chord. His movement around the drinks tray stops instantly and he slowly turns to face me. The full effect of the sneer that fills the room with potential tempests makes me rationalise to some degree. I suck in and then blow out a breath to try and calm my swearing tirade at least a little. Holding my hands up at the darkening frown that continues to descend, I try for a more balanced approach instead. “Look, for some profound reason that even I don’t recognise at the moment, I only want what’s in his best interests. I need your help for that, which you did offer. You want your answer regarding why, there it is. I’m not divulging anything else.” I’m not. It’s none of his damn business and I don’t even understand it myself yet. “I shouldn’t have to.”

He does nothing but raise a brow at my tantrum and then smirks. His chuckle comes after a few prolonged seconds of internally fuming at his audacity, and him casually glancing me up and down again.

“Sit, Lilah,” he eventually says. “And calm yourself down. If you can’t take a small amount of battering from me, you’ll never hold up to his persuasive ways. Didn’t I tell you it would be easier after this was all over? Now you’ll have to lie to him and try to manage him at the same time,” he continues, waving his hand at the sofa and chuckling again. “Believe it or not, I was trying to help.”

I watch his smile grow ever wider and chastise my own stupidity as I unclamp my fists. He’s been playing me, getting me to say what he wants to hear. Presumably, what he wanted was my temper and to see whether I have enough of it for his liking. I fucking do.

“Are you normal at all?”

“He would say not. She would say occasionally,” he replies, taking my glass from me and handing me another full one. “Do you have much control over that mouth of yours?”

“What?” Where did that come from? Are we talking blowjobs or something else? I stare back at him in confusion.

“I pushed you for an answer, and without much hassling, you gave me one. Can you do better than that? I can teach you all the ways to cause pain, Lilah, but it’s not about that for him. He does need it, but you have to get past his mind first in order to achieve results.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with my mouth.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he replies, sighing with a snort of dismay.

My mouth goes to open again, and then I realise I don’t even know what I want to ask. I’m lost. I’m lost and sitting in a room with Alexander White, having just screamed at him, trying to convince him to teach me to become a sadist. All of my bravado leaves me as I perch uncomfortably on the edge of his sofa and stare into the distracted eyes of a man I hardly know. He does nothing to ease the silence in the room. He just lounges in his own chair and stares back at me. I don’t think he’s even here with me. His face is blank, as if he’s cut off the conversation because I’m not worthy of continuing with. Or maybe he’s just got something else more interesting to think about.

“I do want this,” I eventually mumble out. He sighs and then stands abruptly, grabbing a pen and some paper from the desk beside him and starting to write something down.

“I want you to take this with you, and when you get his tears, I want you to do what’s natural in that moment,” he says, folding it and slipping it into an envelope. “The next day, when you’re on your own, open it. If what I’ve written is what happened then you can have him with my blessing. Is that fair?”

“I’m not sure I’d call it fair,” I reply, tucking it into my coat pocket and frowning.

“It’s the best you’ll get from me. I’ll teach you. I’ll train you. But be under no illusion, if it doesn’t work, I will rip him away from you in an instant with no thought to how you feel. He will be my priority through all of this. He and Elizabeth always will be.”

“Okay.” It’s all I can say, as if there’s any other response to give to such a proposal. My mind conjures up all sorts of images around the word ‘training’. What training? Am I to become stronger somehow? Bigger? How does one create pain when one is so small? And what on earth am I supposed to do in the day? Potter my way through legal documents and try to locate a missing sister while I bloody a man as much as possible in the evening? God, this is stupid. I’m an idiot. I hang my head in confusion and stare at the beige carpet, hoping for some sort of inspiration to make this more normal somehow.

A humming sound radiates through the room from the other end of the apartment.

“Is she here?”

“No,” he replies, nodding at the door. “That’s him. He’ll be running a bath.”

“A bath?” Nice time to relax.

“It’s his stress reducing technique. It seems he’s stressed, and given that you’ve taken his cufflinks, I’m not surprised. It’s the reason I’m agreeing to this.”

“How did you…?” I stop myself mid-sentence and laugh lightly. Clearly the man notices everything, although how he knew I’d taken them, I don’t know. “What do you mean, it’s the reason?”

“He fought me over you, then tells me he kisses you, and now he’s allowed you to take my gift from him. If you were me, wouldn’t you think there was someone reasonably important sitting in front of you?” My smile slowly increases.

“What does that mean for the work I’m doing for you?” I ask, trying to remove my smug grin and find my rational head again, because the glower descending onto his face does not appear happy.

“You just carry on doing what you’re doing,” he says, turning away from me and walking towards the sound. “Preferably better than you currently are. We’ll meet every other day at 8pm in Eden to train.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding.

He disappears around the corner, then reappears a few seconds later with a length of black rope in his hand.

“Okay? You say it as if you’ve just agreed to feed a dog,” he says, coiling the rope and tying it into some kind of knot.

“Well, I have, haven’t I?” He laughs and continues with his coiling, wrapping it over into another knot until it looks like a yachting masterclass. “What’s that for?”

“Training,” he says, throwing it by my feet and putting his hands in his pockets.

“What do I need rope for?”

“You think he’ll just stand there and let you hurt him? You’re small, Lilah. You’ll need to deny him his strength against you, not something I have a problem with. The sound of metal keeps him anxious and doesn’t allow his subspace, so handcuffs and shackles are useless. Look up the term Shibari. Learn as much as you can. Quick ties and release knots – or perhaps not on the release front. I’ll leave that up to you. He doesn’t have a safeword, so…” He doesn’t finish that sentence as I gawp at the terminology suddenly erupting from him so casually. He’s just standing there talking about these things as if they’re all perfectly acceptable. He doesn’t appear worried in the least as he openly talks about the most effective way to restrain a man. Hurt him. “Can you fight?”

“What?”

“Fight, Lilah. Defend yourself, or more importantly, attack?”

“This is about sex, isn’t it? Love?”

“Yes, and I would assume so.”

“Then why would I need to–”

“Fight? Imagine a captive wolf, Lilah. Imagine it gnawing at a metal cage, even chewing through its own flesh to get free? Then take its cubs away and taunt it with them. Rile it up to the point where it knows no boundaries when it comes to exacting its revenge. Can you imagine the ferocity of that situation? Can you picture the severity of the backlash when you eventually open the door?”

I’m nodding, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do with that explanation. “I can take the brunt of his weight when that happens. You can’t. So you use the rope, and you use it until he’s calmed down.”

“You make him sound like an animal.”

He just raises a brow again and smirks, and for a second or two, I find myself falling into his darkening blue eyes. Is he aroused just talking about this? I could deal with that for him. I’m feeling pretty wound up myself. My thighs are trembling and some odd sensation is riding up my throat, making me want to fuck anything that moves. What is that? Christ. I need to get a handle on myself.

I cough out the need to rip my clothes off and look down at the rope. Rope. Shibari. Sounds like an arty thing. I’ll have a look later.

“Should we call him out again?”

“No, I’m enjoying the distraction.”

“Distraction from what? Is something wrong?”

He slumps down onto the sofa and pinches his brow, suddenly looking utterly different than the man of a few seconds ago, lost in turmoil of his own.

“I’m a sadist, Lilah. I’m in love with a woman who has a heart of pure gold. I have killed my brother. I have a missing sister who I’m beginning to worry about, and a funeral that I couldn’t go to because I’m too ashamed of my father’s behaviour to be able to stand by the dead man’s family. The only thing that is not wrong is the man in that room, and I’m considering handing him over to you. Does anything sound right?”

Sometimes, “Oh,” is the only response to give.

“And I shouldn’t have said any of that to you. Fucking Cognac.” My snort of laughter echoes around the space so loudly that he drops his head back on the sofa and chuckles to himself. “Shall we get more inebriated and set the world to rights?”

With a real live killer, who happens to be far too attractive for his own good, and far too tempting for mine?
Yes, please.
I think the cognac is also getting to me, so I sip at it again and then put it down on the glass side table.