Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) (12 page)

He was between my legs,
about to tear into my flesh, when his erection went soft. “Fuck!”
he said through clenched teeth.

I lay perfectly still
with the blindfold in my mouth, tasting the perfume Marc had given
me. The smell was so painfully comforting, so evocative of my
feelings for Marc, that I started to cry silently.

Trevor shoved me away
and got up, zipping his pants. I heard him going through drawers and
then, rummaging around in the bondage closet. He snickered, mumbling
something under his breath.

If I was very quiet, I
might be able to get to the hallway without him knowing. But as soon
as I stirred he barked, “Don’t you dare move.”

A moment later, he was
tying my wrists to the headboard with the rope Marc had used three
days before. Though it bit into the cut I still had from the M
Society’s restraints, I hardly felt it. He pulled the rope so
tight, my fingers tingled. He did the same to my ankles, and then
knotted the gag behind my head.

When he was done he
stepped back, tilting his head from left to right. “This the way
you like it?” he said, his voice edged with scorn. “Tied up like
some dumb animal?”

I bit the gag and
braced myself for the inevitable. Any moment now he’d be back on
top of me, and this time I had no chance of escape. I should have
struggled when he tied my hands. I should never, ever have let him
inside the apartment.

More than anything, I
should have told Marc that Trevor was in Paris. Things would have
turned out differently if I had. Somehow, being honest would have
protected me. It could have changed one seemingly meaningless event,
altering everything that came after. This was how terrible things
happened, one little mistake building on another until it was too
late to undo a disaster.

Trevor watched me for
what felt like an hour, walking around the bed with an expression of
sullen contempt. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at
him.

Eventually, I heard him
in the bathroom, the toilet flushing, water running. He cleared his
throat loudly. When he came out his face was darkened by shame and
confusion. I could imagine him seeing himself in the mirror, the jolt
of recognition and the horror that followed.

“I’m sorry I had to
do this,” he said, standing in the doorway. “It isn’t fair,
though. I gave two years of my life to you and you shit on my heart.”

Turning his back, he walked out. A
minute later I heard the front door close behind him.

I lay there, every limb
shaking. I was sure he was coming back. I would hear the door open,
and I’d know by the loping rhythm of his footsteps that he wasn’t
Marc. He would come into the bedroom with a terrible mocking smile
and this time he’d finish what he started, leaving me beaten and
violated, or worse.

Time passed. Shadows
were moving with aching slowness across the ceiling. The sky had
cleared – I saw a patch of blue through the window when I craned my
head. I started to nurture the faint hope that Trevor had gone back
to his hotel and to the airport, and I was safe.

It would be hours
before I’d know for sure.

A distant horn blared.
I dropped into a brief, troubled sleep, waking with a start to find
the room empty and the sun still bright. It couldn’t be more than
two o’clock. An entire afternoon to endure before Marc came home.
By that time, my hands would be numb and I could be dehydrated, weak,
slowly suffocating on the gag.

But I couldn’t think
that way. I had to stay calm, take one breath at a time. In and out,
in and out.

Through the
interminable afternoon, I thought about Trevor. How did I not see
this coming? What had I missed?

He’d always been
sensitive and easily offended, the loudest guy in the bar and the one
most likely to start a fight. Under his cocky exterior I’d
sometimes sensed a simmering frustration. Even small things could set
him off, like the weather or a rude cab driver. He’d slammed a lot
of cabinets and yelled during arguments, but he had never been
violent with me.

Of course, I’d never
rejected him before. I’d never made him feel small, weak, and
inadequate.

This was what I got for
spending two years with a man I never really knew or cared about. I’d
been so stupid to be alone with him and turn down his proposal. I
could have said I’d consider it, anything to get him out the door.
Now I was paying the price for being honest with him, and dishonest
with Marc.

My stomach rumbled and
my dry throat ached. Twice my phone rang distantly from my handbag in
the living room – Marc calling, maybe, or Katherine.

I struggled as hard as
I could against the rope, rattling the headboard and screaming into
the gag. I fought until my shoulders throbbed and blood rushed in my
ears.

Now I knew what it was
like to be tied against my will, truly overpowered and forced to
submit. It was nothing like what I’d done with Marc, not even when
he’d roped my arms behind my back and taken me from behind over a
chair. With Marc there was persuasion and gentleness, a hint of
danger but no cruelty or coercion.

Trevor didn’t
understand that. I hadn’t either, until now.

It was almost dark when
I heard Marc’s footsteps in the foyer.

The front door closed
and I saw a light turn on down the hall. Though I tried to make
noise, I was too exhausted to move.

I heard music and then,
a cork popping out of a wine bottle. He moved around the apartment,
hanging something in the coat closet, opening a living room window to
the clear night. Ten or fifteen minutes went by in agonizing slowness
while I lay there, so depleted that even swallowing took tremendous
effort.

Finally, I saw his
backlit figure in the doorway. He didn’t see me until he’d
crossed the room and switched on the closet light.

“Sophie?” he said,
sounding confused.

All I could manage was
a quiet moan.

He rushed over to the
bed, throwing his suit jacket to the floor. “What the hell –”

As soon as he pulled
the blindfold from my mouth, I began to cough. “I can’t feel my
hands,” I whispered hoarsely.

Frantically, he tried
to untie the knots binding my wrists. “For Christ’s sake. How
long have you been like this? Did somebody break in? Is that why the
alarm wasn’t set?”

“No,” I said, but
after that my voice failed.

As the blood flowed
into my hands, my palms prickled, a thousand tiny stab wounds so
painful I started to cry.

“It’s okay,” Marc
said, pulling me against him. “I’m here now. You’re safe.”

I’d never felt so
weak. Without the strength of his arms, I would have slumped back
helplessly onto the bed.

He stroked my hair and
held me until I could speak again. “What happened? Who did this to
you?”

“Trevor,” I said
against his shirt.

He held me away and
looked into my face. “What? What was he doing here? Did that son of
a bitch rape you?”

“No. He tried to but
he couldn’t.”

Between gasps for air,
I told Marc everything. About Trevor showing up at the other
apartment. Our agreement to meet this morning before he left. Trevor
walking into the building and going upstairs. The marriage proposal
and the unspeakable things that came after it. Trevor catching a
flight back to the United States, leaving me bound to the bed.

“I didn’t tell you
he was in Paris,” I said. “The whole thing is my fault.”

Marc shook his head and
held my face in his hands. “That fucking bastard,” he said. “You
must have been so scared. If I’d come home I’d have ripped him
apart.”

“I’m sorry,” I
said. “I didn’t tell you the truth. I didn’t want you to find
out he was here.”

“Let’s not talk
about that,” he said, and kissed my nose and forehead. “It
doesn’t matter.”

“It
does
matter! None of this would have happened if I’d been honest with
you.”

He held me to his
shoulder, which was wet with my tears. “No, no, no. If there’s
any fault here, it’s mine for making you feel like you couldn’t
talk to me.”

When I’d finally
caught my breath and finished crying, he turned on the lamp. He
examined my wrists and ankles, and the dark purple bruise on my upper
arm.

“I want you to see a
doctor,” he said.

“No, Marc. I’m
okay.”

His face was stern.
“You’ve been tied and gagged all day, and you need to be looked
over. They make house calls here.”

“All right.”

“Do you want to call
the police?”

“I don’t know. He’s
on a plane by now. There’s no evidence.”

“Except his
fingerprints all over my apartment and the injuries on your wrists
and ankles. It’s up to you, but I think you should make a report.”

Later, I would have
trouble remembering the events of the next few hours.

I knew that a doctor
arrived, a kind, gray-haired woman in her early sixties. Then three
police came, and there was a policewoman who spoke passable English,
but I couldn’t recall the questions she asked me. Someone took
photographs of the bedroom and my bruises, and various surfaces were
dusted for fingerprints. A middle-aged policeman wearing latex gloves
deposited the cappuccino cup and my torn panties into plastic bags.

There were frowns, and
cocked heads, and endless questions in French as Marc tried to
explain the closet filled with paddles and handcuffs. Too shattered
to be embarrassed, I watched the proceedings as if they were taking
place behind a glass wall. Whole hours vanished in a shadowy blur,
and it was almost ten o’clock when the door shut and Marc and I
were alone again.

I took a long, hot
shower and tried to scrub off the feeling of Trevor’s hands on my
skin. Marc dried me with a towel and wrapped his robe around me, then
took me to the kitchen. Though my stomach felt like a tight fist, he
cooked pasta primavera and made me sit at the table with him. He was
very quiet. His jaw muscles flashed as he chewed and his eyes were
smoky slits.

“What’s wrong?” I
asked, voice scratchy from shouting into the gag.

“What’s
wrong
?”
He looked at me, his lips trembling with barely-controlled rage. “The
rope is what’s wrong, Sophie. The closet in my bedroom is what’s
wrong. I made it very easy for your thug of an ex-boyfriend to tie
you up, didn’t I? And then I got to explain it all to the police,
who didn’t believe a fucking word I said.”

“Look, Marc,” I
said, trying to sound calm, “if what happened today isn’t my
fault, then it certainly isn’t yours.”

It was as if I hadn’t
spoken. “I should have burned those things years ago. If I didn’t
think you might need them as evidence I’d torch them all right
now.” He wouldn’t even look at me. His anger was a force-field, a
blast of heat I couldn’t penetrate.

“Please don’t be
upset,” I said. I felt almost sick after three forkfuls of food.

He laughed joylessly.
“I passed upset three hours ago. Now I just want to put my hand
through a wall. I promise you, if that weak little prick weren’t on
a plane right now I’d destroy him.”

I drank a glass of red
wine too fast, prompting a flood of pent-up tears. Putting my face in
my hands, I sobbed. I was turning into Lydia before Marc’s eyes,
and though the reason was different, the result was the same: a
complication he hadn’t bargained for, the opposite of exciting and
arousing.

“Pet,” he said,
getting up and crouching by my chair.

“I’m okay,” I
said, hiccupping.

“No, you’re not.
Come here, sweetheart.”

He pulled me out of the
chair into his arms. I sat on the floor and let him rock me until I
was out of tears. As much as I needed his touch, my body felt dead
and unreachable, just as it had before I’d met him.

How could I make love
with him tonight, or ever again? The idea of lying underneath him
gave me the feeling of being buried alive.

As he stroked my hair,
I had a sudden image of the red blindfold stuffed in my mouth and
shuddered. Could we ever again be the people we were? Would this
disconnected feeling pass, or was I scarred for life, frightened back
into the cold shell I’d only just escaped from?

Though I tried to block out
everything but the feeling of Marc’s soothing hand, the truth was
inescapable. Trevor hadn’t been able to rape me, but his plan –
to humiliate me, to ruin my happiness – had worked perfectly.

Even after Marc changed
the sheets and erased every sign of Trevor from the master bedroom, I
wasn’t able to get past the doorway. Lovingly, he made up the bed
on the other side of the apartment and joined me there, wrapping his
arms around me and rubbing my back in a futile effort to relax me.
Though the doctor had given me a tranquilizer, nothing could quiet
the turmoil spinning through my head.

If
only, if only, if only.

I could think of
nothing else as I lay there, feeling Marc’s warm breath against my
shoulder. If only I hadn’t followed Trevor inside the building. I’d
have gone to lunch, and written all afternoon at the dining room
table, and thought about Marc and smiled. We’d have laughed over
dinner and made love, and afterwards, talked about whether I should
stay in France for a few weeks, a month, or even longer. It would
have taken only the slightest bit of persuasion for me to say yes.
Our future – my future – would have been there for the taking.

But now, staying with
Marc seemed like another in a long line of reckless decisions: moving
in with Trevor. Dropping out of law school. Becoming a travel writer
for no other reason than that I craved adventure. Getting involved
with one of the Marquis de Sade’s descendants, for whom I’d
honestly considered tossing my life aside and moving to Europe. I’d
imagined that I could continue to write for magazines and websites,
but I wasn’t sure how, and I spoke no French, and that night as I
lay in bed next to Marc it all seemed like a pathetic fantasy that
would hurt both of us in the end.