Shades of Trust

Chapter 13-1

Chapter 13

Ells Hall

Friday, March 19, 2010

11:36 p.m.

Oh, no. Heather’s ghost is about to enter the room. Sophia sat up abruptly, moving away from his body, her eyes wide, her lips parted in surprise, nausea making her stomach roll.

Alistair scrutinized her face. “You don’t want to know?” His question was almost a statement, such was the wariness he saw on her face.

Sophia bit her lower lip and twisted a lock of her long hair around her index finger in doubt. “I’ll be right back.”

She jumped from the bed and picked up her long wrap, walking to the bathroom. She leaned her hands on the sink. Do I want to know? She blinked slowly. Deep inside she knew that all the dark shadows she had glimpsed on Alistair’s face were going to surface. Nothing can be that bad.

When she returned to the bedroom moments later, her face was perfectly composed. She had erected an emotional shield, but fear still lingered in the depths her eyes. She stopped at the end of the bed and hesitated. A sudden desire to flee from the room made her lightheaded. She gripped her cold hands to hide their trembling.

“Come here,” Alistair whispered the order, stretching out his hand.

Sophia took his hand and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. “Tell me your story.”

“As I was saying, I met Heather for the first time at the bank Christmas party I was twenty-five and she was twenty-nine. I was stupid and young and in awe of her. She was…even more beautiful than Emma.” If there is any beauty in them.

“In April 2001, I was promoted to financial director and moved to her department. My status then changed. I wasn’t a minor partner anymore. A week later, I found an envelope on my desk with my name on it. Inside was a photo of her with an explicit invitation, an address, and a key. You know…”

“No, I don’t.”

“She asked me to f**k her.”

The air left Sophia’s lungs. “Really?”

“She was never coy. She stated directly what she wanted although we barely knew each other.

Sophia was mortified. “God. You must have found my resistance ridiculous.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was refreshing? You are special, mo chridhe.” He hugged her and kissed her hair, lost in his bad memories. If you’d asked me for another month, I would have waited.

“Then?” she coached, quietly.

“Everyone at the bank wanted Heather. Her invitation went to my head, as you can imagine. They pursued her incessantly and she invited me—me—to her apartment. Well, to be brief—”

A morbid fascination possessed her. “Ah-ah! Now, I want details.” Sophia’s voice was deceptively soft, but she was restless. She had to understand the full story.

“Sophia, it was a kind of drug addiction. It’s not a pretty story. Are you sure?”

“Yes, introduce me to Mr. Hyde and his bed-partner. Let me be the judge.”

Counselor, your opinion about me is going to change if I tell you everything. “Heather was…insatiable. She wore me out every night and every morning, and on weekends, we spent the whole day f*****g. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was…sick. I didn’t even make the first move. I didn’t have to suggest things. Nothing was too much. Nothing was enough. It was a hell of a relationship. She aimed to please and to be pleased. She moved in with me at the end of the third month. I lived in a permanent state of arousal. I didn’t know if she would corner me in my office or in the men’s toilet for a quickie or what was going to happen at night. She usually went home earlier than me and prepared.”

“Alistair. It seems my…sexual education—or my imagination—is lacking.” Sophia’s strained her voice to mask her curiosity. “Please, explain.”

“Suffice it to say that she liked things rough.” He noticed Sophia’s eyes growing gradually huge.

“But…I…”

He shook his head interrupting her thoughts. “Not the kind that you like. Violent, degrading things.”

“And you?” she whispered.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Did you like those things?”

Alistair gazed at Sophia for a moment. “Some of these things I had already tried and liked.” Her S&M style was a bit harsh but I grew used to it.

She was stunned. “Do you miss the things you did with her?”

“Nae, listen to me. I’m quite satisfied with my s****l life with you.” This time, white teeth flashed in a crooked smile. “I won’t lie and say that I don’t have a few fantasies that I want to try with you.”

“Alistair Connor. I never did anything…violent. I don’t like pain.” She twisted her hair around her fingers. “I have never been to a s*x shop. I don’t even have the creativity to imagine the pleasure a person gets from that kind of violence.” She was disturbed. “My s****l life is…too normal, too bland? Am I missing something here?”

“No, Beauty.” He studied her face. “Would you like to try something…different?”

Sophia looked away.

Alistair could touch the sudden tension in the room, but waited quietly for her answer.

“I—Alistair, I’ve—Tonight, for example, the French maid costume…it was a different thing. Yeah, I could try a few different things, however…I—” She frowned. We were talking about you and Heather, not about me and you. “What happened then?”

Sophia’s question wasn’t prompted by curiosity. It was a need to shed some light on the painful shadows she glimpsed in his eyes. She wanted to first hear his version of the facts. Perhaps, then, she could let Alice or Tavish talk. Not before.

“In hindsight, what I had with Heather was all just one big bad experience. There were so many wrong aspects in our relationship that I’m still astounded—disgusted, even—by my own behavior.”

Alistair looked into her eyes. His face was grave and the pain in his eyes so fierce that it scared her. “I was her s*x toy—or she was my s*x slave—I don’t really know. And don’t ask me why, but I liked it. I didn’t see what was coming until it was too late.” He looked at his hands and whispered, “And then she got pregnant. I was careless…and after a few broken condoms, I decided to go on without them. She had told me she was clean and on birth control.”

How dare you, Alistair Connor! But even though she was angered by this revelation, she knew it was not time to talk about how it was an absolute requirement that she be checked before going without condoms.

“When she told me, I was ecstatic. I’d always loved children. It was to be my first child,” he muttered.

Oh, God. “Nathalie?”

He looked up at Sophia and gave her a sad smile. “Nae. I went to Craigdale with her and told my parents that I was in love and was going to marry her.”

“Were you?” she asked.

He raised his ink-black brows, questioning.

“In love? Were you in love with her?”

“I thought I was.” He crossed his arms over his chest, in a defensive position. “My parents saw what I couldn’t. Heather was a greedy w***e, without morals or feelings for me. She didn’t love me.” He looked down and his arms opened, his hands falling heavily on his thighs. “But then, how could she?”

“How could she not?” Sophia edged closer, grabbed his hand, and putting it against her cheek, she murmured, “You are so easy to love.”

“Am I?” His lids lifted; there was no light in his forest-green eyes.

“Yes. So lovable,” she reaffirmed, soothing him, and pulled his hand on her lap, between hers, caressing his knuckles. “What did your parents do when you told them you wanted to marry her?”

“Well, they refused to acknowledge her as my fiancée and we got married at a Registry Office. Just the two of us. Not even Alice or Tavish Uilleam went. They also disapproved of her, by the way,” he huffed. “I had no more friends. I spent my days working and my nights and weekends having wild, depraved sex.” He laughed, disgusted. “Heather wanted money, status, a handsome face and an insane, dark lover with stamina to handle her. I wonder…” A lock of his raven hair fell over his eyes and he let it remain there. “She had never wanted me, Alistair Connor. I was just another step she used to get her way. But then, what did I really have to offer her?”

“Oh, Alistair Connor. Your—” She couldn’t bear to say wife, nor was she going to soil her lips with her name. “You are…breathtaking. Not your beauty, not your money or your status. You. Your heart. But she has damaged you too much for you to believe in what I am saying, hasn’t she?” Sophia began to feel an incredible anger for that execrable woman.

The room quieted as Sophia protectively hugged the fierce and broken man who made her heart beat faster. She traced his jaw, asking, “When did you get married?”

“On her birthday. March the fifth, two-thousand-four. She was two months pregnant.” His mouth contorted and his eyes darkened. “A month after the wedding, she had an abortion.”

Sophia gasped, indignant. “She…she…killed your baby? Her own baby? How could she?”

He shrugged. He didn’t have an answer, since he didn’t understand such a barbaric act himself.

“And what did you do? It was one of the main reasons you married her, wasn’t it? The baby?”

“She told me the baby had spina bifida. It’s a—”

“I know what that is,” she interrupted him. “And?”

“I found out afterward it was a lie. Another lie. At the time, I was too devastated to investigate further. I didn’t see the web she was spinning around me. Three months later, life returned to normal. If you can call debauchery normal. Day after day, she introduced more perversions into our lives. Until—” She asked me to have a threesome with another man. He paused for a second. “We had our first fight. She moved into Emma’s apartment, but a month later she was back. We agreed on some ground rules. At least, I thought we had. I had fulfilled my fantasies. I’d reached my limit.”

“But…you told me you liked it.”

“Sophia, I believe in equal rights. If she fulfilled my fantasies, she should have the right to fulfill her perversions.”

“Perversions,” she repeated, baffled. What kind of perversions?

He sighed and nodded, “Aye. She needed them like the air she breathed, but I thought I could prevent them, that I could supply her with other sensations. She was too damaged though, too sick. It was an addiction. The more she did, the more she wanted.” He waved his hand in the air. “Fool that I was, it never crossed my mind that she would look elsewhere to fulfill her desires.”

Sophia cupped his face in her hands. “She cheated on you? I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” he rasped.

“I thought you had cheated on her.”

His laughter was bitter. “She did it time and time again. I was working too much to notice it. I bought more shares of the bank in August, 2005. We started to work on different floors and it was easier for her to lure others into our house. She did it all, s*x, drugs, and rock n’ roll,” he mocked.

Horror crept over her face and she didn’t try to disguise it.

“Drugs? You too?” She breathed, relieved when he shook his head. “Why didn’t you divorce her?”

“I didn’t find out immediately. She was always eagerly waiting for me. She did it all and still had the energy to f**k me.” And f**k me, she did. His lips thinned to a line. “She got pregnant again. She was so engrossed in her immoral self-indulgence that she didn’t pay attention to her own body. One night, when she was almost five months, I felt the baby kicking my hand. Nathalie.” He breathed the name of his daughter with so much love, like it was a blessing.

“Five months? Impossible. I don’t believe it.” She shook her head.

“She was very, very lean; thinner than you, even. She’d never had regular periods. And she was always on a diet. She was crazy about fitness.”

“But almost five months…didn’t it show?”

“A little, round belly, but that was all. She was sleeping when the baby moved. I didn’t recognize it at first, but I had remembered Alice’s first pregnancy, so when I felt the next kick I knew it had to be a baby. I panicked. The very next morning I took her, kicking and screaming, to Craigdale and locked her under my mother’s supervision. I threatened her with exposure, if she didn’t stay put and take care of herself until the end of the pregnancy. One month after Nathalie was born, I brought her back to London, and she returned to her perverted life.” He closed his eyes tight, the skin around them crinkling. “But I was too busy to see.” I didn’t want to see that I was a failure as a man, as a husband, as a lover.

“And?”

“I only discovered Heather’s betrayal because a very dear friend of mine insisted I hire a detective. I tried to make things right with her when I discovered it. She promised she would behave, but it was in vain. I was enraged with myself for not seeing Heather’s true colors from the beginning, for not heeding my parents’ advice. Feeling guilty of everything that was wrong in my life and Nathalie’s, I sank deeper into the mud. I don’t know what happened to me. I took off my wedding ring and each night, I f****d a different woman. I mean the word, Sophia. I didn’t make love—or have s*x with these women. I punished them for Heather’s and for their own existence and I punished myself for being so stupid. I was ruthless. Vicious. I wanted to make them suffer.” His body was so stiff, that if not for his mouth moving she’d have thought he’d turned into a statue. “And do you know what made me even madder? They kept returning and asking for more.”