Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission (26 page)

“Yes, thank you sir.” She wasn’t able to lift her head to look him in the eye anymore, but simply sat there, clutching her phone. “I’m very sorry,” she told him in a quiet voice.

“That’s quite all right,” the older man said, placing a hand on her shoulder that did not feel completely paternal. “Jenny has been singing your praises. I hope that we’ll be able to meet up again before long.”

When Kris explained to Daniel what had happened, he burst into fits of laughter, which were even more pronounced when she told him how Ronald Briskin had reacted.

“The old goat!” he roared. “I can see that I shall have to make it clear that you’re mine in the near future.”

“Oh, I am
,
am I?” She played up her distaste but was not so very secretly glad of his remarks. He did, however, slightly ruin it with his follow up.

“Of course you are. You’re my plaything, my own toy, my property.
Mine
.” If he noticed her riling slightly at this, he did not give any indication of this but instead remarked: “I know that man’s taste better than most. He can see it in you.”

“And what can he see?” Kris was curious now, her infuriation with Daniel at having placed her in such a position having gradually diminished. Indeed, considering she had experienced one of the most powerful
—
as well as one of the funniest
—
orgasms of her life, she knew that this would probably be the only day at the office that she would ever remember.

He smirked and looked around them from the private boat he had hired, observing the dome of the Invalides that lay before them. Having decided that he was a little bored with London and that they needed something different, they had flown to Paris and were now making their pleasant way down the Seine. An attendant (a rather beautiful Parisian woman, Kris had noted rather sourly) brought them drinks and something to eat, Daniel conversing with her in polite, easygoing French, but other than the pilot and his mate they were alone on the vessel. She was wearing an elegant Ralph Lauren V-neck dress in light blue, while he was dressed in a Paul Smith blazer and dark trousers.

“You’ve got ‘it’,” he told her, returning his eyes to her face. “Actually, it’s a very special kind of ‘it’, but you definitely have it. Not everyone would respond to it, and it was almost submerged when I first met you, but over the past couple of weeks you’ve started to display it
—
and with a vengeance.”

Kris pulled a face at him, though secretly she was extremely pleased with what he had told her. “So,” she asked. “What is ‘it’?”

“Oh, you know,” he replied breezily. “Looks alone aren’t enough. Personality too. But I know Briskin. He sees in you the kind of girl that would submit to so many things.”

Kris was aghast at this. “With him? Not on your life!” she responded hurriedly.

“No, it would have to be with the right man,” Daniel said, laughing. “But that’s the point. You’re not available for anyone, but when you do find the right man... the fireworks fly.”

“Really?” she asked, smiling coyly. She had been sitting on one of the leather seats across from him and raised one of her feet, brushing it against his leg. “But lots of girls have it, surely. That
woman
who just served us drinks, for example.”

Daniel looked thoughtful for a moment. She was about to hit him for teasing her when she realised that this was not his intention at all: rather he was giving her flippant, indirect request for a compliment serious attention.

“No,” he said at last. “She’s beautiful, sure. I’m sure she would appear more beautiful to a lot of men than you,” he raised his hands as Kris looked at him furiously. “Hear me out. I’m serious. She’s the kind of woman that most men would dream of, I’m sure. But... I can’t remember who said it, but conceit kills ‘it’. A woman who’s too full of herself, too self-conscious...” he shook his head. “You have to forget yourself to really have it.”

Kris was still scowling a little. The ideal response would have been for him to declare that he had eyes for no one else but her, yet she realised that Daniel’s response was both more honest and, ultimately, more flattering.

“But yours is something again,” he told herself. “When you let go
—
I mean, when you really let go, you surrender yourself completely. It’s remarkable. I mean, I can’t think of anyone else who would have let me take control of them so intimately as you did. You give yourself up to my pleasure in a way that... well, in a way that’s rather humbling, really.”

“So has no one ever submitted to you in that way before?”

He shook his head. “I thought they did, in the past. But no. There was always something in it for them, and actually, there was always something else in it for me. Don’t mistake me
—
for all my occasional desires to flee civilisation, I’m not some kind of back-to-nature purist who would deny anyone the finer things in life, far from it. I’m sure
—
and I hope
—
that you’ll get a lot from me that’s material. But you don’t think about that when we’re together, and the funny thing is, I don’t think about so many other things either.”

Kris sat in silence for a while, digesting his words. At last, she asked:

“Did she have it?”

“Who?”

“Karen?”

For a moment, Daniel’s face darkened and she worried that she had said the wrong thing, but then his rugged features smoothed. When he answered, he looked a little wistful.

“She had her own it,” he said at last. “It wasn’t the same as yours.”

Again, for a moment, there was silence between the two of them. She, however, could not leave her questions unanswered.

“
What was it like
?”

He smiled, looking downwards. “You’re never going to rest, are you? Well, I’m not surprised. It’s difficult for me to answer: I’ve spent so many times building barriers against the world that I’ve forgotten what it’s like when someone gets past them.”

He paused. “I suppose that like you, she did submit to me completely, but it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same man, for a start. What I wanted from her was nothing like the demands I make of you.” Again he went silent for a moment. “So many things have happened since... I guess they broke the man I used to be.”

“So, I corrupted you?”

He laughed. “Hardly. You make pure what was corrupted. To the pure, all things are pure, and that’s you, certainly. Still, she gave herself up to me, and I won’t lie, I was completely wrapped up in her. I guess that’s what you call love.”

“And is this thing between us, is that love, too?”

He didn’t reply, but instead looked at her, a half smile
—
sincere and thoughtful
—
on his lips. “You know,” he said at last, “when first I met you
—
God! I wanted you. Wanted you in a way that hadn’t affected me for a long time, a very long time. But... and I know this will sound fucked up, I wanted to hurt you, punish you.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her mouth twisting at the unpleasantness that the thought brought with it. “That does sound fucked up.”

“Of course, it wasn’t you I wanted to punish, but her. Shit. Here was I, lost in thoughts of her like I had always been at that time of year, our dark anniversary. I wanted to punish her, for dying on me. And then you turned up, like her ghost, and... all this buried anger, this... emotion inside, it burst through. And of course I wanted to punish myself.”

“Do you still want to? Punish her, punish me? You?”

He shook his head. “What’s the use of punishing ghosts?” he asked, staring back at the buildings on the banks of the Seine for the moment, enjoying the view of a bridge as it passed over the boat. “You can’t kill them after all.”

She moved around on her seat so that her shoulder was touching his and looked up at him as she placed her small hand over his. “Don’t punish ghosts, Daniel. But... don’t fuck them, either.”

He looked down at her, watching her intently with his hazel eyes. “No,” he said. “I want you, not her. I’m afraid the man she would have known also died that night in the car. They pulled the body out of someone else.”

His mood was a little subdued as they continued through the afternoon, but as they posed as regular tourists
—
a handsome, confident pair visiting the Notre Dame and
Musée d’Orsay
—
he began to smile again. And when they made love that night in their hotel on the Champs Elysées, she did again surrender to him completely. There was no other way she knew to be with him.

When they returned to London, however,
she
surprised
him
by asking
to spend
a night at her old flat. He looked shocked and disappointed, and she thought at one point that he would forbid her, but she raised a finger to his lips. “No,” she said. “This isn’t about you. This is about some of my own old ghosts. They haven’t quite disappeared just yet. Give me tonight
—
just tonight. That’s all I ask.”

Letting herself into her apartment, she was immediately struck by how oppressive and small it felt. After the space given over to her in Chelsea, indeed, in their hotel in Paris, the flat was minute. Daniel, indeed, was surprised that she still paid rent on it, but she knew after the weekend spent with him, after the intensity of all her time together, she required one thing. She didn’t know if this was the right and proper way for a submissive lover to behave, but she didn’t care. She realised that if Daniel did love her, then it was also for being herself: and what she needed now, more than anything, was a little space.

Certainly, for all its faults, its damp and cramped corners and slightly decrepit furniture, her flat felt as though at least it had been a home once to someone, if not precisely her. Unlike Daniel’s penthouse, this old house could not simply afford for the cleaners to move in and strip out every ghost, every remnant of human contact before the next occupants moved in. Its flaws, its faults, were the old marks of everyone who had ever lived here, the boring, mundane human world in contrast to the ethereal sphere of the masters of the universe to which Daniel Stone belonged.

It was a little depressing to be back here, she had to admit. This wasn’t the world of Ralph Lauren and Paul Smith, and she had an inclination that she wouldn’t remain here for much longer. However, for this night at least, she knew what she had to do. Finally, after so long avoiding it, something had sparked again inside her.

She found out the drawing pad she had taken with her to Dalrigh and Comrie, leafed through the charcoal and pencil sketches. She smiled at them, and also viewed them critically, seeing where her technique was flawed or could be improved.

Changing into one of her old jumpers and a pair of jeans, she took up a new drawing pad and crouched down cross legged on the floor. It was far from ideal
—
she had not been entirely lying to Daniel when she had told him that one of the things holding her back was a lack of space
—
but at least there was enough room here to stretch out a little.

She took up her charcoal again. She looked forward to the day when she would be able to paint once more, but that day hadn’t quite arrived, not yet. Instead, she held the long, thin stick of burnt wood in her hands and moved it lightly across the white paper. Black and white, night and day,
chiaro
and
scuro
. In the end art, like so many things in life, was the attraction of opposites, the meeting of dark and light, the marriage of heaven and hell.

Before, it had been the birdman who obsessed her, the recognition and reaction to something deep and dark that she had seen in Daniel. Now it was a similar but different creature that appealed to her. She recalled again Ernst’s
Robing of the Bride
, the resplendent red plumage reserved not for
him
but for
her
. Long, delicate fronds of charcoal flickered across the page, feathers rising from the spines of wings extending towards the edges of the page, beyond even.

The woman to whom these wings were attached was no angel
—
that was not what this was about. Rather she was one of the old daemons, easily with the capacity to be one of the Erinyes, the Furies, but also the winged Victory of Samothrace. This was not a ghost that she drew, but a psyche, winged and full of fury and desire.

Turning page after page, Kris continued to draw late into the night, a pool of light from the lamp she pulled down onto the floor next to her capturing her features as she stared with complete concentration at the pages below her.

Over the following few days, Kris would occasionally return to her own, old flat. Realising that, for whatever reason, she could not create in his apartment, Daniel offered to set her up somewhere else. She could not quite explain her reaction, but Kris held back from this. What they had would have to change somewhere down the line, but for the moment she was content to trust the fragile ecosystem that existed around them.