Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 1) Read online

  DESCENDED

  BOOK ONE

  ROSE DEVEREUX

  Copyright © 2015 by Rose Devereux

  Cover design by Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations

  Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers: Recently I read about a modern-day relative of the famous French sadist, Marquis de Sade. I started wondering, what if the Marquis’ carnal desires didn’t die with him in 1814? What if the need was passed down to everyone related to him, including a tall, gorgeous investor named Marc Brayden? And what if a young American journalist came to interview Mr. Brayden at a remote house in France? What if her innocence and beauty broke his resolve to never hurt or dominate another woman? What if he took her to Sade’s old castle for a night? And what if...?

  I hope you’ll join me for Marc and Sophie’s story, and find out.

  RD

  PROLOGUE

  He won’t tell me where we’re going.

  He sits across the backseat wearing a slim-cut black suit and a white shirt open at the throat. His profile is sharp, his eyes the color of sterling. Lips curving into a smile, he crosses his muscular arms and repeats what he’s said three times.

  “Be patient.”

  “I am,” I say.

  “You’re not. Not even close.”

  Through the car’s tinted windows I see fragments of the city – a river winding under gas-lit bridges, avenues that stretch for miles, gilded statues of goddesses and winged horses. Crouched gargoyles stare down from the side of a Gothic cathedral, their curved stone feet white with frost. I turn to look back at them but they’re lost in the February darkness.

  “Give me your hands,” he says.

  Dutifully, I hold them out. He kisses each one – first the back, then the palm. I’m surprised when he leaves them untied and places each one back in my lap.

  “Lift your skirt.”

  I raise the front but he shakes his head curtly. I should know by now. “I want your skin against the seat.”

  As soon as he sees my naked flesh, his breath catches but he doesn’t touch me. Except for the occasional kiss, he has not touched me in days. Tonight, I understand how someone could die from desperate, unfulfilled desire. I slide closer to him, the black leather cold and smooth against the backs of my thighs.

  He holds me away with a wave of his hand. “Not yet,” he says.

  “When?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just caresses my cheek so lightly it feels almost like my imagination.

  We drive into a dim, maze-like part of the city where the streets are twisted and narrow. Just outside my window is a cemetery enclosed by a speared iron fence, its rails rusted and broken. Looking over the crumbling headstones, I think of the long-dead madman whose wicked legacy brought Marc and me together. While the madman’s tools were poison and torture, Marc uses his hand, scraps of leather, the withholding of his touch. It’s always by way of pain that one arrives at pleasure, he says. Until he met me, he wasn’t able to admit that to himself. Now, at last, he can.

  “Look at me,” he says, and I turn to face him. The light from a streetlamp illuminates his dilated pupils and the hard angle of his jaw, then his face goes dark again. He reaches out and lets his fingers rest on the slope between my neck and shoulder. He loves my hair cropped short so that my neck is exposed and unencumbered, always available to him.

  “You’ve never been more beautiful,” he says in a husky voice.

  I’m so starved for him that his words make me breathless. Under my panties I’m shaved to the skin, and every vibration of the car reminds me of my hidden nakedness. I spent all afternoon preparing for this night, shadowing my eyes with dark purple powder and coloring my lips with a stain that won’t rub off no matter how many times I kneel between his powerful legs or bite the red silk scarf.

  He strokes his thumb over my throat, pressing just hard enough that I can appreciate the strength in his hands.

  “Marc, I –” I start to say, but force myself to stop.

  “What?” His sculpted lips are parted, his eyebrows slightly raised. His teeth gleam though there is almost no light.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “No secrets, Sophie. That’s what we promised each other.”

  “Yes,” I say. “No secrets.”

  He smiles because he knows what I was going to say. I love you. I can’t live without you. I’ve never spoken the words but I’ve never had to. I’ve come almost four thousand miles for him, left behind everything safe and familiar without a second thought.

  “We’re almost there,” he says. “Turn your face away.”

  When I do, I feel his hands on my waist, my ribcage, my shoulders. I close my eyes, knowing what comes next. The blindfold smells of his hot skin and my perfume, that intoxicating concoction he had made for me after our first week together. The aroma is like rain and crushed gardenias mixed with something haunting I can’t quite name. Blood. Smoke. A rushing river. If broken glass had a scent, it would be just like this.

  He knots the fabric behind my head and kisses the back of my neck. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says. “Just remember – I’m in control.”

  But I am afraid, and he knows it. He can feel my trembling hands, my icy fingers and damp skin. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he says. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t question my decisions, Sophie. I’ll always do what’s best for you.”

  “I know,” I say, but as I speak the words, I wonder if I really do.

  The car slows. I feel Marc shift away from me and lean forward to instruct the driver. “Up here,” he says in a barely audible voice. “The alleyway, yes. A little farther on.” A moment later, he says, “There it is.”

  We stop, and I hear the sound of the window lowering. I expect some kind of sound – music, voices, traffic. But everything is still and silent. I know we’re in another part of the city, but where?

  Marc slides back beside me. He smooths my bangs, which sweep to one side across my forehead. I feel his lips, his breath, his tongue soft but insistent against mine. Mouth open, I gasp with an excitement so intense my hands curl into fists. For days I’ve been wet for him, craving his touch. He grabs my hips and pulls me roughly against him so I can feel his thick stiffness through his pants. For one blissful moment I think he’s going to push a hand into my panties, but he’s only checking to make sure my garters are well-fastened.

  “Good,” he says, draping my cashmere coat over my shoulders. “I think you’re ready.”

  He gets out of the car, grasping my wrist so that I have no choice but to follow. The air is sharply cold. My heels are high and I wobble a little stepping onto the pavement. I feel him straightening the pleats of my short silk skirt. Lastly, he slips his hand into my blouse to check the ties on my corset. He tugs them to make sure they’re tight, sweeping a finger across each of my nipples. They harden instantly, yearning toward him, but he removes his hand without seeming to notice.

  A tender kiss on the lips and he lets me go. I turn my head to listen, hearing him walk away. I don’t understand. “Marc?”

  “It’s okay, Sophie.”

  The car door opens and shuts. I extend an arm for him but touch empty space.

  He must be coming back. I imagine him speaking to a doorman, then returning to guide me to…what? I still don’t know.

  “Don’t t
ake off the blindfold,” he says, and I realize he’s back in the car. “No matter how long it takes.”

  Sick with fear, my voice rises. “How long what takes? Where are you going?”

  “No questions. Stand where you are and stay silent.”

  I start to argue but the engine starts, drowning out my words. “Silence,” he calls. “Be still. Submit to your instincts.”

  “My instincts? But how…” A single tear trickles past the blindfold and onto my lips. “You can’t leave me here,” I say, panic rising in my throat. “Marc? Don’t go. Please.”

  He doesn’t answer. I hear the window go up, and the car slowly drives off.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Four months earlier…

  My flight was two hours late, and that changed everything.

  A violent autumn storm was lashing the French Riviera, whipping the sea into a froth and forcing us to circle the airport in endless figure eights. Cupping a hand to my face, I peered through the window. There was nothing to see but wing lights flashing against ragged black clouds, nothing to hear but chaotic jazz on my headphones, spliced now and then with the wail of a child. Flight attendants swayed down the aisles, holding onto seat backs and gathering empty cups. The Australian next to me took a swig from a liquor mini and popped his ears.

  “Against some law, isn’t it, imprisoning us this way?” he muttered as the plane lurched to one side. “Ten more minutes and I’ll pull the chute.”

  First I was afraid we would crash, then I worried we’d be in a holding pattern for hours. Or they’d divert us to a distant city, preventing me from doing what I’d flown all this way to do: research the most notorious sadist in history, a man so cruel that the mere mention of his name conjured visions of screaming maidens in iron shackles.

  I had no particular interest in sadists, famous or otherwise, but I was determined to be the one to write about him. For two years I’d been paying my travel-writing dues in seedy Chinatowns and budget hotels and drafty trail huts, and I was ready for a cover story, a trip that would strain the website’s expense budget and help me make a name for myself. If I had to do it writing about a depraved Frenchman who’d been dead two hundred years, so be it.

  “He still has descendants in France,” Katherine, my editor at Wanderlust, had said. “They’re putting a collection of his manuscripts up for auction. I read about it on the Christie’s site and contacted the family last week.”

  “Can I interview them?” I asked.

  “A woman named Eleanor Brayden agreed to meet with you. Nobody else returned my messages. With a relative like the Marquis de Sade, it’s not surprising they’re media shy.” She hesitated, suddenly looking doubtful. She’d taken a chance on me when all I had was a blog about my vodka-soaked weekends at a summer share in the Hamptons. I’d come through for her on every other assignment, but she’d never trusted me with a high-profile piece like this one.

  “There’s a lot of history here,” she said. “Are you sure you’re ready to take it on?”

  I smiled with a lot more confidence than I felt. “Blasphemy, rough sex, insane asylums – are you kidding? This is the article I’ve been waiting for.”

  I spent my last day in New York cramming basic French and researching my very controversial subject, referred to in articles simply as Sade. Aristocrat and author of obscene novels, he had a bad habit of sexually tormenting prostitutes and maids. One woman had escaped him by throwing herself out of a second-story window. His obsessions included kidnapping, writing pornographic plays, and his wife’s younger sister. Even after going to prison he continued to abuse lovers both female and male, one no older than thirteen. And somehow, I had to make his various haunts around France sound like fascinating places to visit.

  “No problem,” I muttered, feeling a stab of anxiety. “Simplest thing in the world.”

  Katherine couldn’t possibly know the irony of giving me such a risqué assignment. Of all the female writers who worked for Wanderlust, I might be the only one who’d never had an orgasm with a man. I hadn’t even come close.

  Compared to my friends, I was way behind by every metric – number of lovers, amount spent on sex toys and lingerie, sum total of hot encounters with sexy strangers. While everyone else was busy planning weddings or moving in together, my boyfriend had recently cheated on me with a college intern from his office. Two days after I found a damning text on his phone (“will nvr frgt lst nite!!”), I moved everything I owned into a depressing walk-up studio that screamed twenty-six years old and alone.

  The plane landed hard on one wheel, sending a ripple of alarm through the passengers. Though it seemed like a bad way to start a trip, I refused to see it as an omen. I stayed stubbornly optimistic when my suitcase burst open on the baggage carousel and said, “Merci, no problem!” when I got pulled out of line at customs. I even smiled when the car rental agent handed me the keys to a tiny but économique hatchback parked a ten-minute slog in the rain away.

  Grinding gears as I turned into traffic, I still believed that any second now, the miserable part of the journey would end and the thrilling part would begin. My first time here couldn’t possibly be this horrible. It wasn’t until the car’s navigation quit in the hills outside Nice that I saw the trip for what it was – a convenient escape from my real and very flawed life, a mistake it was too late to undo.

  Just yesterday, it had seemed like a fine idea to fly from New York to France, sleep upright in my economy seat, and drive to meet a stranger in a country I’d never visited before. Now, hurtling down unfamiliar roads in a downpour, it seemed like suicide. This was what you wanted, I thought, squinting at the tiny map on my phone. Risk and adventure. A life you couldn’t predict. Well, here you go.

  Exhaustion clouded my eyes like gauze. I peered through the one spot on the windshield I’d wiped clear with my sleeve and plowed ahead, a pair of red tail lights my only guide. When I finally left the highway, I realized I’d been clutching the steering wheel in a death grip for a hundred miles.

  I drove down a twisting, two-lane road into a lush countryside dotted with hill towns. Though it was early October, tall bunches of wildflowers still bloomed along the asphalt. The rain had stopped by the time I drove between two marble pillars marked with nothing but the number 4. After several minutes of bumping down a dirt driveway, I spotted a villa through a row of cypress trees. There was no other house nearby, just an ancient church perched on a cliff in the distance. The sky was purplish-gray, throwing an eerie glow across the lawn and overgrown gardens.

  Two cars were parked outside. I pulled up behind them and got out. Long white drapes swept in and out of a second-floor window with every gust of wind. I glanced up, half-expecting to see a face looking down at me, but saw only a blackbird watching in silence from the roof’s edge.

  I walked up a brick path worn smooth from weather and footsteps. Lifting the brass knocker on the door, my neck prickled. For the first time since leaving New York, I wished I hadn’t come alone. Not only was Eleanor Brayden from an infamous family, but I’d arranged to meet her without telling anyone the time or place. Nobody in the world, even Katherine, knew where I was. I didn’t know where I was.

  A minute passed before the door opened. In the entryway stood a slender woman in her early forties wearing a V-neck cotton sweater and summer-weight wool pants. I could see years of sun-drenched holidays in the fine lines etching her skin. “Hello!” she sang in a bright British accent. “You must be Ms. Quinn.”

  She was so unlike the demon of my imagination that I almost threw my arms around her. “Eleanor Brayden?”

  “Wonderful to meet you,” she said, taking my hand in both of hers. “Did you try to call? My mobile doesn’t work here and I didn’t think to give you the number of the house phone.”

  “I tried you four times and then lost service myself,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m late. My plane was delayed and I had to drive through a storm.”

  “I’m just glad you made it safely.” Thunde
r rumbled and a large raindrop splashed the walkway by my foot. “It looks like we’re getting that storm you mentioned,” she said, glancing toward the horizon. “Come in. You must be knackered after such a long journey.”

  I wiped my ballet flats on the doormat and followed her into the entryway. The floors were terra cotta tile, the walls white plaster, the ceiling intersected by dark wood beams. On top of an antique credenza sat a pair of gardening gloves and a dented watering can.

  “Are you staying in Villette?” she asked, taking my trench coat and hanging it on a hook behind the door.

  “I have a reservation at a hotel there. Is that the village I saw from the road?”

  “Yes. It’s a twenty-minute drive. Villette’s a lovely town, and there aren’t as many of my countrymen milling about this time of year.”

  “You’re from England?” I asked.

  “My father’s English but all the interesting history is on my mother’s side, which is French. She was related to the Marquis de Sade going back eight generations. We spent our summers and holidays in France. My husband’s French so I’m here part of the time now.”

  “I’m glad we speak the same language,” I said. “It will make my job easier.”

  She smiled. “Yes. I considered having you meet with our lawyer instead, but his English is hopeless and he’s usually in a terrible mood.”

  She led me down a hallway to an airy living room furnished with a white slipcovered sofa and chairs. Other than a mirror over the fireplace, there was no decoration. A rolled-up Persian rug lay against one wall. I saw faint dusty outlines on the walls where pictures had once hung.

  “We’re in transition, so please forgive the state of things,” she said. “Can I get you a glass of wine? Something stronger?”

  “Wine would be great.”

  She took two glasses and a bottle of Bordeaux from a sideboard. “I’m sorry I can’t stay, but my family’s in the cottage across the property and the children will be wanting their dinner,” she said, pulling out the cork.