Читать книгу The Virgin - Tiffany Reisz - Страница 12

4

DANIEL GAVE HER tea and put her in the downstairs guest room. The entire time she was in his presence she stared at the gold band on his left hand.

“Where are Anya and the baby?” Elle asked. She hadn’t seen either when Daniel brought her into the house.

“Upstairs in the nursery. Marius has the flu. We’re taking shifts. She’s on the day shift. I take the night shift so she can sleep.” He smiled and she saw the contentment on his handsome face.

“God, you’re so married.”

“I am. Again,” he said and smiled.

“Enjoying it? Being married again? Being a dad?” Elle asked as she pulled the blanket to her stomach.

“You show up on my doorstep with no warning and nothing but a bag and the clothes on your back and you want to talk about me right now?” Daniel pulled a chair up to the bed. It was barely two o’clock in the afternoon, but Daniel had seen right away that all she needed right now was rest. “Eleanor, please—”

“Elle,” she said.

“What?”

“I told him the day I met him that I went by Elle. Not Eleanor. My whole life my mom called me Elle or Ellie. That’s who I am. But he called me Eleanor anyway. He calls me Eleanor. I prefer Elle.”

Daniel looked at her, rubbed his hands together.

“Elle,” he said. “Please tell me what’s happening. Can you do that for me?”

“You don’t want to know.” She tried to smile. She hoped he appreciated the effort that took her.

Daniel met her eyes, and she held the gaze. Back when he was a regular player in Kingsley’s world, his blue-eyed Dominant glare was the stuff of legend. His late wife, Maggie, had even named it—The Ouch, she called it with equal parts fear and affection. When he gave her that look she knew she’d be saying “ouch” the next day, maybe the next week. But it wasn’t the infamous Ouch he gave her now. Instead, he looked at her steadily with curiosity and compassion. And pity.

She hated pity.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I needed to get away for a few days.”

“You didn’t come here because you needed to get away for a few days. You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days.”

“You go to the Hamptons to get away for a few days because you’re rich. Normal people do not go to the Hamptons.”

“Elle.” Daniel met her eyes. “You’re the most famous submissive in the entire city of New York. You’re owned by a Catholic priest, and you’re sleeping with the King of the Underground. You are not normal people.”

“I am now,” she said. “Trying to be anyway.”

“How did you get here?”

“Kingsley’s driver dropped me off.”

“Kingsley drives a beat-up Ford Thunderbird now?”

If she had had the strength to give Daniel The Ouch, she would have.

“I have security cameras,” he said. “I saw someone drop you off. It wasn’t King.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Does King know where you are?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t want to know,” she repeated. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

“I think I do want to know. Remember, I’ve known Søren for years. Not only do I know him, I like him. We’re friends. If I can know him and still like him, I think I can handle anything you tell me.”

“Maybe you can handle hearing it. I don’t know if I can handle saying it.”

Daniel moved from his chair to the bed. She tensed immediately and he seemed to sense it.

“I’m not going to touch you if you don’t want me to,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

“You’re married, you have a kid and I’m—” she paused to find a suitable lie and decided on a half-truth instead “—not feeling well.”

He reached his hand out but didn’t touch her with it, only waited. Slowly Elle leaned forward the three necessary inches and rested her face against the palm of his hand.

“You don’t have a fever,” he said.

“No.”

“I don’t see any bruises on your arms or your neck.”

“Søren didn’t beat me up or rape me,” she said, annoyed that he would even think something like that had happened.

Daniel nodded.

“But he did hurt you.”

“You didn’t put a question mark at the end of that sentence.”

“I told you, I’ve known him for years. It wasn’t a question.”

“Yes,” she admitted finally, closing her eyes. “He hurt me.”

“Kingsley?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t his fault,” she said, rolling over onto her side. “This is my fault.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Daniel said. “But you have to give me something here. If Anya left me, ran away, I would be so sick with worry I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Søren pisses me off too sometimes, and I consider him a friend, but I have never doubted his love for you. Unless you have a very good reason to scare him like this, you need to go home.”

“I can’t go home.”

“Tell me why you left him or I’m calling Kingsley right now.”

Elle weighed her options. She could tell him the whole truth, which would hurt more than the pain she was currently in. She could lie and come up with a suitable story he would believe to explain why she left. Or she could tell him a half-truth, just enough truth to get him to stop asking questions.

She went with option three.

“Do you remember that thing you told me?” she asked.

“I told you a lot of things.”

“I told you I was happy, content. You said that I should enjoy my contentment because someday something would happen and it would be gone.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“It happened.”

“What happened?”

“Søren ordered me to marry him,” she said.

Daniel looked at her and looked at her and looked at her, and finally he spoke.

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“You have any other sheets?” she asked, her face warming.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she said, pushing the blankets. A red stain had formed underneath her. “I’m bleeding.”

It took ten minutes of begging and pleading to convince Daniel not to call an ambulance. This was just part of the process, she told him. Nothing to worry about. She was fine. A little blood never killed any woman...

Even after calming him down Daniel still seemed dubious and worried. He stayed in the bathroom with her while she took a quick hot bath. He kept his back to her to give her privacy although he’d seen her naked before. Once upon a time she’d been his lover. They’d fucked in this very bathroom. Down the hall was the library where he’d bent her over his desk and taken her from behind. In the living room by the fireplace, he’d fisted her and given her one of the better orgasms of her life. In the bed he now shared with his wife, he’d fucked her more times than she could remember. But now that felt like a lifetime ago. Had it only been two years ago she’d last been with him? So much had happened in those two years. He’d fallen in love with someone who wasn’t her, got remarried, had a son. And her? What had she done since then?

Elle got out when the water turned pink, and she drained the tub before Daniel could see it.

He ordered her to eat to some soup and then ordered her into bed. There was nothing at all erotic about any of these orders.

“You really are a dad now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t get any ideas. I don’t do the Daddy-Dom thing,” he said, pulling the covers up to her chest.

“Could have fooled me,” she said.

“Don’t flirt. Anya’s the jealous type.” He winked at her so she would know he was kidding. Not that he needed to tell her. She’d known Anya before he did. Knowing Anya, she would worry Elle would catch the flu from Marius, not that she would sleep with her husband. For the first time in Elle’s adult life, sex was the last thing on her mind.

He kissed her on the forehead once and on the lips twice.

She smiled up at him.

“Get some rest, Elle,” he said.

“It’s not even night yet.”

“I don’t care. You’re exhausted. Sleep.”

“Is that an order?”

He smiled down at her. “If I gave you that kind of order, would you obey me?”

“No.”

“Then no, it wasn’t an order.”

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. A fatherly touch. She didn’t remember him ever touching her like that. Becoming a parent had changed him, changed him for the better. But she knew that didn’t happen with every man. Her own father was proof. Her father, Søren’s father, her mother...

Her mother.

“Good night, Elle,” Daniel whispered, and she saw his reluctance to leave her alone.

“Good night, Daniel.” He started to leave. She stopped him with a question. “Daniel—what am I going to do?”

Daniel turned around in the doorway and looked back at her.

“If you took orders from me, which you don’t, but if you did...I’d order you to go back to Søren and marry him.”

Elle rolled onto her side and gazed at Daniel through the dark.

“Now I remember why I left you,” she said.

“Because I wanted to take care of you?”

“Because you don’t know me at all.”

The smile faded from Daniel’s face.

“Rest,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

It wasn’t an order, but Elle followed it anyway. She slept an hour or two and when she woke up, there was a terrifying moment when she couldn’t remember how she’d got here. But the moment passed, and she remembered.

What was she going to do? No Søren. No Kingsley. No town house. Jesus, she didn’t have a real job. She had a little less than five thousand dollars to her name, a college degree in English literature and almost no work experience other than a few years at a bookstore. What was she going to put on a résumé? That she gave good blow jobs and could take a beating better than any masochist in New York?

She sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Slowly she breathed, slowly she calmed herself. She would not cry. She could not cry. If she started crying over Søren, she’d never stop. And if she cried, that would mean it was real, that she had left him and that she was never going back.

When she was calm again she whispered into the quiet of her room, “What am I gonna do?”

No one answered, not even her.

Wincing as her sore muscles protested the movement, Elle got out of bed. She walked down the hall to the bathroom where she’d stored her duffel bag. On the way back to bed she noticed a light on in Daniel’s library. Wasn’t he supposed to be on the night shift taking care of Marius?

She crept to the half-open door and heard him speaking to someone. She saw no one else in the room and then noticed he had a small mobile phone to his ear.

“She’s not well,” Daniel said. “Let her stay here a couple days until she feels better. Than you can come get her.”

Elle froze.

“Not tonight, King. She’s not in good shape. Mentally or physically. Let her rest. We’ll take care of her.”

Rage welled up in Elle. She took one step forward and then stopped. Kingsley had warned if she had to flee, she’d have to be smart about it. She’d been stupid before but she wasn’t going to be stupid again. She crept back to the bathroom, grabbed her duffel bag and got dressed. As quietly as she could, she left the house. She didn’t leave a note, didn’t lambast him with accusations and recriminations. She didn’t call him a traitor or an asshole or an arrogant piece of shit who thought he knew what was better for her than she did. She did something much worse and much better at the same time.

She stole his car.

Thankfully Daniel wasn’t some rich dipshit who drove a flashy Maserati or a Ferrari to show off his money. Daniel had a classic black Mercedes-Benz sedan. Nothing that would attract any unnecessary attention. She took the keys right off the rack in the kitchen. She coasted out of the driveway with the lights off and resisted the urge to squeal the tires as a final fuck you and fare thee well.

He wouldn’t call the police. That wasn’t Daniel’s style. And he wouldn’t have to. She’d dump the car somewhere the cops would find it, and it would be returned to him in one piece.

More or less.

After ten minutes on the road the adrenaline rush faded and the reality that she was alone again with nowhere to go set in. No...not nowhere to go. She had lots of places to go. Unfortunately there was nowhere she could go where Kingsley wouldn’t find her eventually. Especially now that she’d stolen a registered car. Wherever she dumped the car, that’s where Kingsley would start looking, and he would find her in a matter of hours.

Which left only one option. She would have to go somewhere Kingsley and Søren couldn’t follow her. Even if he knew where she was, it would be somewhere he couldn’t enter. She thought about getting herself arrested and sent to prison. Seemed a better option than her only other choice.

Then again, she’d faced prison once before and Kingsley and Søren had got her out of going then. He would do it again if she was foolish enough to get herself arrested. Kingsley took care of things. That’s how it worked. She needed a ride somewhere? Kingsley’s driver would take her wherever she wanted to go. If she needed a vacation, Kingsley would send her and Søren to Europe. If she got injured during kink, he’d send her to his doctor, who knew how to keep his mouth shut. If she got pregnant...well, he took care of that, too, didn’t he? Whether he wanted to or not.

Kingsley...she kept her mind on him. If she thought about Søren, really thought about him, she’d turn the car around and drive straight back to Connecticut. Instead, she focused her mind on Kingsley. Was he okay? She hadn’t seen him in a few days. He hadn’t offered to go with her to the doctor. He’d made the appointment for her, had the car take her. But he wasn’t there when she left, wasn’t home when she got back. If she’d asked him to come with her, he would have. She knew that. That he hadn’t volunteered was proof that he didn’t want to face it any more than she did. So she didn’t ask him. She went alone and didn’t make him more a part of it than he already was. Kingsley was more dark knight than white knight, but whatever his sins, he had one bright, pure and beautiful hope—that he would be a father someday. She wasn’t going to make him stand there and watch her put an end to that dream.

“King...I’m sorry,” she whispered as she reached a crossroads. If she drove south, she’d be in Manhattan in four hours.

Or...

Elle pulled the car over on the side of the road.

She had to do it, right? What other choice did she have except to go back? And that was no choice at all. Because if she went back she’d be admitting defeat. If she went back she would be walking straight into a different sort of prison.

Even now, her heart raced at the thought of Kingsley tracking her down and bringing her home. That wasn’t right. She should be able to leave if she wanted to leave. She should be able to go if she wanted to go without fearing someone was following her. That’s how it worked in the real world, right? Women got sick of the lives they were leading and they could do things like move out and move on and start over without an ex-assassin for the French government dragging her home by her hair.

Right?

Was it too late for her to be part of the normal world? If it wasn’t, did she really want to go there? She didn’t know the answer to either question. But she did know the longer she sat in the car, the sooner Kingsley would find her. It was nine o’clock now. The summer sun had finally set. By sunrise, Daniel would notice she—and his Benz—had disappeared. He’d call Kingsley, and Kingsley would start the search for her. She needed to be somewhere safe by morning, somewhere no one could follow.

That left only one option.

She was twenty-six years old.

She was the ex-lover of a Catholic priest.

She was recovering from an abortion.

Might as well go all in.

Goodbye, men. Goodbye, sex.

She headed west to her mother’s convent.

She didn’t look back.