Sweet Torture

Chapter-5

The woman didn’t take hints well. When he walked into his office, she was there, perched in the chair adjacent to his desk, her posture perfect, her legs crossed at those dainty angles of hers. Her legs were bare. It account for what seemed to be a wardrobe entirely populated by brief, fitted dresses. All very modest in the technical sense, but showing just enough to light his imagination on fire.

It would almost have been better if she had been dressed in something completely transparent. At least then the mysteries would be solved. If she was as pal and smooth all over as she looked, how full and round her breasts where without the aid of undergarments….important questions that were now overtaking his brain.

 If he had known that all it would take was the presence of a woman to reawaken his hibernating s*x drive he might have brought one in a long time ago.

He pushed all thoughts of Primrose’s body to the side and chose instead to embrace the extreme annoyance, the muscle- clenching tension that crowded in on him when she was around. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

“Like what?” he rounded his desk and sat in the plush chair that was positioned behind it. It was too short for him. Made for another man. His brother. He had never replaced it.

“Like you’re shocked to see me here. I said I would meet you here to discuss the agreement, and I am. It’s complicated stuff. With my father’s history of health problems there has always been the chance that whoever I married would have to stand in as the Acting Leader until Nathaniel reaches age, and that was, of course, taken into account with when Yazdan was selected to be my…..”

“Let me see.” He held out his hand, palm up, and produced a folded stack of papers, placing them in his hand.

He skimmed the documents. Most of the information pertained to the marriage. Heirs. Alliances and trade agreements. Towards the end was the section talking about what might happen if her father died prior to his heir coming of age.

“The decision- making power is yours. I don’t want it,” he said. “Write that in.” He pointed to the spot.

She blinked rapidly, looking a bit like a stunned owl for a moment before shaking her head and leaning forward in her chair. “ I can’t.” Not without bringing it to the other members of the gang . And would need my father’s permission and I…. I don’t think you’ll get it.”

“Is he too ill to hold a pen?”

Color crept up her neck, into her cheeks. “ He would rather have the power rest with you.”

“He doesn’t trust you?”

She sucked in a breath, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. “Well, I’m a woman.”

“I fail to see why that should matter. You have more guts than most men I’ve  met.”

Her lips curved slightly and a strange, heated sensation, almost like satisfaction, spread through her chest. It was warm, almost too much after so many years of experiencing nothing more than bitter cold.

She almost made him want to feel. Made him want to let go.

“He’s a product of a different generation,” she said. “I don’t hold it against him.” And yet he could tell she did. That it  lived in her, drove her forward. He knew about things like that. All too well. “This is my responsibility as far as he’s concerned. Protect the gang by marrying a man capable of serving as Acting leader.”

He looked at her face, so earnest, so determined. So beautiful. His pulse sped up, the heat spreading through him. I have my own gang to run, I would be absentee at best, negligent at worst.

“You couldn’t be as negligent as my cousin would be in your sleep.”

“Slytherine’s will be your responsibility, whether we write it in the paperwork or not.”

I thank you. She looked down at her hands, feigning an interest in her fingernails. We have a board of advisors in place. It isn’t as though I can change rules or budgets, or anything like that. It’s not terribly involved. Just giving advice and protesting when they notice any major change taking place.

The advisors.

He closed his eyes and braced himself, a sharp flash, hazy, fast moving images assaulting his mind as reality, his office, the desk, broke away piece by piece to make room for the memories. The advisors who were supposed to think of the welfare of the gang betrayed his father, the Capo and the gang. The deemed it fit to leak confidential information of the gang out to their enemy gang for their own greed and to destroy their gang. And the enemies were able to attack them when they were the most defenseless.  The war was nasty. It not only cost him his families’ life but also the life of his gang members and their families. They were merciless. They didn’t even spare the lives of children and women who had no enmity with them and were innocent. It was as if they were on a killing spree and killed whoever came in front of them. The smell of gun powder filled the air and sounds of cries and shouts of pain of the women and children filled his surroundings.

It was all he could see and hear. The sound deafening, roaring in his ears. And suddenly he felt He felt a sharp burning’s pain in his chest. He felt something wet covering his shirt. He placed his hand on his chest empty notice blood oozing out of there. The smell of gunpowder and smoke filling his nose the smoke choking him, his lungs burning. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.And suddenly everything started becoming black.

“Kayan?” Her voice broke through the fog.

He opened his eyes again and saw only his office. And Primrose, sitting there, looking at him. He could see concern in her clear purple eyes. She had noticed. What had he done? He realized then that his fist was clenched tight, resting on the desk, so tight that his tendons were screaming at him.

He had lost himself for a moment. Lost where he was. It didn’t happen as often now as it had. Because he knew better than to let his guard down now. Than to let emotion take over control. She had distracted him. And now she had seen him… She had seen his weakness.

I don’t do that, he said, he’s throat constricted. Dammit.

“The advisor thing, I mean.” He took a breath and tried to re- orient himself. “I do what I deem is more beneficial for my gang.”

She smiled again this time the expression was tinged with a bit of discomfort, as if she wasn’t certain what the appropriate response was.

“You can laugh, it’s okay,” he grated.

She did then, a soft laugh, but it brought that feeling back, the warm one, stronger, spreading. He stopped it this time, cutting it off with the force of a tourniquet on a wound.

“Well I take a lot of advices and they advice me to make a lot of appearances,” she said.

“I know. You always seem to be in the news. Your fashion sense is much written about.”

She nodded. “Of course. Although, I often wonder if any one would care what color tie I wore if I was a man, but I can’t really complain. It’s nice to have my company featured in international news. Even if it’s  just for my shoes. It boosts new clients.”

Do you have a lot of clients in greeting? He reached deep for control, for total control, to find that kind of blessed numbness he was so accustomed to.

“Only recently. But that’s been part of what I have been involved with over the past five years.”

Since his brother’s death. She needed to stay busy, he supposed. If everything had gone according to plan she would have married Yazdan on her 21st birthday.

“And that is partly due to your personal campaigning, I would think.”

“Do you think I go to all those parties for the canapés?” She arched her brow.

“I did. But I would not think so now.”

Primrose swallowed, hard to do around the sudden lump in her throat. Kayan, who wanted her here about as much as he might want a root canal, had just had a longer conversation with her about what she did that in one in her family ever had.

Not only that, he seemed to understand. To see her as more than just a peripheral. Oh, her father was counting on her, he had made that very clear. But he was counting on her to marry someone. Not to do anything that required her specifically. This had nothing to do with her skills or talents.

You are beautiful. Of course he will say yes.

Oh, yes, she was beautiful. Her father had been confident in that being her ticket to marriage with Kayan. Funny, but Kayan didn’t seem to care at all. And if she didn’t possess anything more than a pretty face she would have failed.

Something her father would probably never know. She loved him, she truly did, but he saw so little of her it was stunning at times. Heartbreaking at others. But she didn’t have any energy to waste on feeling sorry for herself. Dealing with Kayan took everything she had.

“You might be surprised that some people do invite me to parties, though. Seeing as you have spent the better part of two days hoping to evict me.”

“I have agreed to this now, Primrose, I will not back out. You have my word. My protection, as does your gang. I don’t give any of those things lightly.” His hand tightened into a fist and she wondered if he was going to pound it on the desk again, as he had done a few minutes earlier. It had been so strange, as though he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Like he was seeing something else. And then he had been back, she had seen the change in him.

It had scared her a little. Not for herself, but for him.

“This agreement,” he said, “it was what my father saw as the right thing for the Scorpions. What Yazdan saw  as right. Who am I to disagree?”

“Then I suppose it’s time for me to call my family with the good news.”

Kayan looked at her for a moment, those forest green eyes boring into her. “Why exactly are you doing this, Primrose? For honor? Truly and simply for the good of your people?”

“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment about whether or not this was the place to speak words she had never dare say out loud before. But why not? In this room she had given him honesty, and he had listened. He hadn’t pretended there was no way she could have accomplished what she had.

“For that, and because it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.”  She couldn’t believe for a moment she had truly said it. Because it was something she had hardly acknowledged to herself. She had been afraid to. Afraid that if she admitted she was becoming unhappy with a purely duty-filled life she would find herself unable to complete the tasks set  before her.

“In what way?”

“After our marriage ends… Nathaniel will be Leader. And I’ll be….. I will always feel responsibility for my people, loyalty to my family. I will always work for the improvement of my gang, but… It won’t have to be my sole focus anymore.” Maybe then she would be free of that feeling that gnawing sensation that no matter what she did, she wasn’t doing enough.

He only looked at her, his expression unreadable.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a light you are aiming for?”

His hands curled into fists again and his gaze shifted slightly, his throat working. “ I’m glad you see a light, Primrose. For me, there is only darkness.” He looked down then, shifted his focus to the computer screen that sat on his desk. “Now that we have all that settled, I have work to do.”