Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) Read online

  Seconds passed. She frowned as if deciding whether to tell the truth. “My name is Lydia,” she said, putting out her hand. It felt cold and skeletal in mine.

  “Sophie Quinn.”

  She was looking at me in a new way, evaluating my face, clothes, and body. “Are you free for a few minutes?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s go have a coffee.”

  She returned to the register and said something to the salesgirl, who handed a red leather tote across the counter. Lydia nodded to me, and I followed her out to the street.

  We walked to a café a few doors down and ordered. As soon as the waiter walked away, she smiled tightly.

  “You have more than a business relationship with Marc, don’t you?” Her voice was almost robotic.

  “Yes, I do. It’s only been a few weeks.”

  “Did he buy what you’re wearing?” she asked, with a cool blink.

  My gaze skittered down to my dress and shoes. “How did you know? Did he buy clothes for you, too?”

  “No, but I recognize his taste. You’re wearing it, head to toe.”

  The waiter brought our coffees and set them down. Lydia dropped a lump of sugar into her cup and stirred, rattling my nerves with the clang of her spoon.

  “Tell me about the note,” she said. “How did you find it?”

  I gripped my coffee for dear life. “It was in one of Marc’s books. I came across it when I was staying at his father’s chateau.”

  “What was it doing there?”

  I felt pinned under her gaze. “Marc kept it,” I said. “I guess he put it in the book for safekeeping.”

  “Which means he found it in his drawer.”

  “He did, a long time ago. Probably just after you wrote it.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t throw it out,” she said. “All this time I assumed he had.”

  “He said it was a reminder of the reasons he’s changed.”

  She laughed sharply. “Oh, he’s changed, has he? Is that why you’re here? Because he’s a perfectly ordinary man who doesn’t hurt anyone?”

  I struggled to keep my voice even. “He stopped for a long time. It started again with me.”

  “I’m very sorry for you, then.”

  Her words stung me into silence. Her face was ashen, her eyebrows straight and low. “I have a husband and daughter now. It took me years to have anything resembling a life after my relationship with Marc.”

  “But you moved on. Fell in love and started a family.” I was almost desperate to hear her say it.

  “Move on?” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the phrase. “How much did he tell you? I mean, how did you find me in the first place?”

  “He told me your name when he saw the note. It wasn’t hard to track you down you after that.”

  “And what do you want, reassurance that you’ll be okay if you fall in love with him? I can’t give you that.”

  Anxiety swirled in my stomach. “Please,” I said. “Can you at least tell me what happened? He wouldn’t say very much, but I know it still bothers him.”

  Her mouth twitched. “You really want to hear it?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Propping her elbows on the table, she leaned forward. “Then I’ll be straight. You’ll never be the same after Marc. I love my family more than anything, and I still can’t forget him. Sex with my husband will never come close. That’s just how it is.”

  So Marc was a man who ruined his lovers for anyone else. I didn’t need Lydia to tell me what I already knew.

  But now that I was here, I was going to get as many answers as I could. “Are you submissive with your husband?”

  She smirked. “I don’t want to be. He has no idea what I’ve done in my past. I’m sure he’d laugh if I ever suggested it. I couldn’t do that with another man, anyway.”

  She considered me over the rim of her cup. “I know you haven’t been with him very long, but how far has it gone?”

  I hesitated, feeling the prickly heat of embarrassment. “Not far. Bondage. Spanking. Last night he took me to the M Society.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course. That place.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Too many times,” she said, her Even when Marc didn’t want to go, I did, especially toward the end. I thought if I could just…get him inside, the atmosphere would make him want me again. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t.” She looked down at the table, her voice barely audible. “The things I did there, the things I almost did – I’d have given myself to every man in the place if Marc had wanted me to, but he wouldn’t allow it. At least he saved me that humiliation.”

  I swallowed, my throat tight. “He said your relationship with him had a bad effect on you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Is that how he put it?”

  “He wasn’t specific. I’m sure he was trying to protect your privacy.”

  “Or he was trying to protect you from the truth,” she said.

  “Which is?”

  She stared at me before setting down her coffee. Her face had turned dark and harsh. Suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I wanted to run out to the street, but it was too late.

  “Nervous breakdown is such a polite term, isn’t it?” she said. “The truth is, after nine months with Marc I lost my mind over him and tried to kill myself. I took an overdose of painkillers and slit my wrists, and I would have died if he hadn’t found me unconscious in my apartment. It was Marc who called the ambulance and my parents and stayed with me in the hospital until I recovered. It’s a strange thing to admit, but I owe him both my life and my near-death experience. Funny, isn’t it?”

  Funny. My lunch churned like acid in my stomach. “You tried to kill yourself over him?”

  “Is it really that shocking?” she said with a quizzical frown. “I’d stopped being interesting to Marc, and I wanted to send him the strongest message I could. If he didn’t want me, my life wasn’t worth living. That’s what so much demeaning treatment did to me. I ended up in a psychiatric program back in England. I won’t pretend our relationship was the only factor because there were other things, family problems that went back years. But it was the trigger.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more but felt compelled, like a person drawn to the edge of a cliff. “When you say demeaning treatment – was it worse than what I’ve done with him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I thought if we didn’t take it to extremes he’d get bored. Whipping and spanking weren’t enough for me. I hardly took a breath without his permission. I wanted to be left tied up with a ball gag in my mouth when he left the apartment. I was pierced between my legs with a silver ring with his initials on it. I begged him to brand me but he wouldn’t do it. At the time I thought he didn’t want me enough, but he kept me from making a big mistake. I can’t imagine how I’d feel with his initials burned into my back. It would be a shame I couldn’t escape.”

  “He stopped all that after what happened with you,” I said, sounding defensive. “For eight years.”

  She shrugged. “He told me he was going to try. It sounds like he wasn’t able to keep it up. He relapsed like the hopeless addict he is.” She had a gloating tone that I despised.

  “Is he an addict if he does it with only a few women?”

  “A few women?” she scoffed. “He’s had a hundred lovers just like us. He told me about some of them, how hysterical they got when he ended the relationship. One of them showed up at his office drunk and crying. Another girl tried to trap him by getting knocked up, then she had a miscarriage.” She fell silent for a moment. “I can’t blame them for going crazy over him. He inspires it. But I’m stating the obvious, aren’t I? I mean, look at you.”

  Yes, look at me. My face went cold.

  This was Marc’s routine – get a woman hooked on him and drive her to obsession. Lydia was right. I was no different.

  She sat back and folded her long, thin arms. “Any other enlightening tidb
its you’d like to know while we’re at it? What he eats for breakfast? How he likes his cock sucked?”

  I’d already discovered far too much. I couldn’t stand to hear another word. “I wanted to know what your note meant, that’s all.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “I wrote it more out of spite than anything else. But I do think he’s dangerous, because he’s so addictive. You probably feel it already. You think about him constantly. He’s so handsome he overshadows everybody else. All you want is to please him. Otherwise, why are you here?”

  I had the feeling of being held underwater. “For information,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Tell me this,” she said with a frosty smile. “Does he love you?”

  I blurted the truth before I could stop myself. “I’m not sure. He hasn’t said he does.”

  “A man like Marc needs a constant challenge, somebody who won’t bow down to him. He wants to capture a woman but he wants to do it all the time, every day.”

  Now she was talking circles around me. “But isn’t that what being submissive is, bowing down?”

  She smiled icily. “That’s the problem. How can you challenge a man and be submissive at the same time? A relationship with Marc requires the impossible. You’ll figure that out, sooner or later.”

  She insisted on paying the check, waving away my Euros with a pink-nailed hand. “Let me. If not for that note, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for being honest.”

  She put her tote on her lap but didn’t get up. “All these years later, I still wonder about him. I go to his company website sometimes, hoping one day he won’t look so devastating. When I see a picture of him, the bottom drops out of me. It’s like…he’s looking right at me. I know it sounds insane, but that’s how it feels.”

  She stared blankly out the window, her expression wistful. “Sometimes I really miss him and other times I’m relieved that part of my life is over. Wanting a man that much can crush you. It almost crushed me.”

  It was an eerie echo of what Marc’s father had said at the chateau about his ex-wife. “It doesn’t have to, does it?” I said, more to myself than to Lydia.

  She just shrugged and stood up.

  We said goodbye on the sidewalk. The sun was a blinding white glow behind her shoulder, forcing me to shade my eyes with my hand.

  “One last thing,” she said. “Please don’t tell Marc I still think about him. I don’t have much pride left where he’s concerned.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t say a word.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That night, Marc insisted on making dinner for me. In a sudden burst of enthusiasm he’d bought a roasting chicken and vegetables, the only things he claimed to know how to cook.

  “This is my version of a very difficult Jacques Pepin recipe,” he said, unpacking a canvas grocery bag. “It calls for chicken, salt, and pepper, and when I don’t screw it up it’s delicious.”

  Sick from the secret I was holding inside, I eked out a smile. “How can you screw up a recipe with three ingredients?”

  “I have no idea, except it took two years of trial and error to get it right.”

  He flipped on the faucet and scrubbed his hands like a doctor prepping for surgery. On the counter he’d set out a potato peeler, a stainless steel roasting pan, and four different types of knives.

  “Can I do anything?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Get your lovely tush out of my kitchen. Go relax and don’t come back until dinner’s on the table.”

  Go relax, as if that were possible after the stunt I’d pulled. “You’re sure?”

  He pointed at the door with a look of mock seriousness. “Out. But leave on the dress and shoes until after dinner. They look gorgeous on you. Shout if you want a cocktail.”

  “I will.”

  While he cooked, I sat in the living room and tried desperately to accomplish something that wasn’t shady and deceptive. I stared at my laptop screen while Lydia’s words played through my head on a nauseating loop.

  I tried to kill myself. He’s had a hundred lovers just like us.

  She hadn’t answered my questions, she’d created a hundred more. She’d proved that there was a nearly invisible line between desire and the kind of obsession that wrecked lives.

  Even after eight years and having a child with someone else, she still thought about him. She looked at his picture online. Her husband would always be second best to the lover who’d driven her to attempt suicide. This was what the craving for Marc could do to a woman, and might already be doing to me.

  All the signs were staring me in the face.

  A month ago I’d fit the dictionary definition of frigid, now I was wearing open-crotch panties to bondage clubs. Marc’s crop had left a trail of red slashes across my ass. I had sore ribs from tight corsets and raw knees from giving blow jobs. Every day I wore stilettos that bit into my feet, all so Marc could picture them on me while he was at work.

  This wasn’t love or even attraction. It was insanity, brought on by a man so seductive he’d made me a slave in under three weeks.

  “Mademoiselle!” Marc called. “Dinner is served!”

  If I were smart, which I obviously wasn’t, I’d go straight to the bedroom, pack my suitcase, and check into a hotel. Instead, I went to the kitchen as if walking to the gallows in five-inch slingbacks.

  Marc stood at the long glass table with his back to me, placing meat and vegetables onto two oversized white plates.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving. Everything smells delicious.” My smile felt as though it might crack my cheeks.

  He pulled out a leather chair for me and I sat down. The centerpiece was a huge vase of fully-bloomed white roses flanked by tall silver candlesticks. The napkins were the same color as the red silk blindfold, a thought that set my mind racing.

  How long had he owned that blindfold, anyway? Had he ever used it with Lydia? Or the hundred other women he’d played along the way?

  He sat kitty corner from me at the head of the table. “Wine?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” As soon as he filled my glass I took two generous swigs, hoping they’d erase the entire afternoon from my memory.

  While we ate, I tried to limit the conversation to Marc’s business and the challenges of properly roasting a chicken. I asked every question I could think of about technology start-ups, practically cross-examining him about how he chose which companies to fund. I complimented the food three times and drew him into a debate about French and American restaurants.

  But as he was finishing his second plate of chicken he turned the discussion to me, posing the one question I had no good answer for.

  “How was your day?”

  I jabbed a crispy browned potato with my fork, splintering it in half. “Fine. I took a taxi to Bistro Midi and back. I spent the rest of the day writing.”

  “Oh. How was the food?”

  “Not as good as your chicken, but I’ll give it a favorable review. To start I ordered the black mussels, which are the bistro’s specialty, and then I thought I’d better try the tuna tartare since I saw so many coming out of the kitchen.”

  I described my lunch in rambling detail, but not a single word sounded like the truth. It was as if one lie had infected everything I said and I couldn’t be honest anymore.

  Halfway through a critique of the restaurant’s lemon tart, I dropped my napkin and jostled the table when I sat up again, almost spilling my wine.

  “Oops.” I tried to laugh.

  “Is something bothering you?” Marc asked, knife and fork poised in mid-air. “You seem a little jumpy.”

  “Do I?” I stared at my plate, pushing a sliver of chicken from one side to the other.

  “Sophie?”

  I looked up, one cheek filled with carrots. “Mm?”

  “What’s going on? Is it last night?”

  I chewed and swallowed. “Last n
ight?”

  “You do remember last night at the club.”

  “I thought I was supposed to forget about it. That’s what you said this morning, anyway.” It sounded flippant and disrespectful but it was too late to take it back.

  “All right,” he said evenly. “If it’s not last night, what is it? Did something happen today?”

  “Like what?”

  He gave me a confused smile. “I don’t know. All you did was take a taxi to Bistro Midi?”

  “Yes. And come back here to write.” The lie was sour and sickening in my mouth.

  “Okay. Were you writing on the Metro, too?”

  “What?”

  “You took the Metro. Didn’t you?”

  Every muscle in my body turned to stone. “How do you know what I did?”

  “This morning you asked me to join you for lunch so I rushed out after a meeting, hoping to surprise you. There was traffic and I got to the restaurant late. The maître d’ told me you’d just left. I saw you walking into a Metro station when I was driving back to the office. I called your name but you didn’t hear me. I even tried your phone but it went to voicemail.”

  He raised his eyebrows, obviously waiting for an explanation.

  “So?” I said.

  “So, you said you took a taxi straight back here. I’m just wondering why.”

  “You’re following me now?” I said, my face hot. “Isn’t that going a little far, even for you?”

  “Even for me,” he said, setting his flatware down slowly. “Wow. What kind of nerve have I struck here, Sophie?”

  Suddenly the words were spilling out and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

  “You’re the one who has nerve, not telling me your ex-girlfriend went nuts and tried to kill herself over you. And before you ask, yes, I did find out where she works and I went to see her today. I know I shouldn’t have but it’s been way too intense between us, especially after last night. I’m trying to figure out what the hell this all means.”

  Marc’s sculpted face was a mask of disappointment.

  For a minute I thought he might never speak to me again. When he finally did, I hardly recognized his voice.

  “If you were trying to figure something out, you should have asked me. It’s ridiculous to consult someone I knew almost ten years ago about who I am today.”