The Parlour (VDB #1) (30 page)

“All good points.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, but clearly he likes the truth so I might as well spill it out. “But he’s also a human who has the right to know he has a child. I’m certain you know as well as I do that there’s another man hiding beneath his exterior who would probably make a good father. Are you sure you’re not confusing the fact that he’s not capable with the fact that you want to keep him to yourself for your debaucherously entertaining relationship?” I flick my eyes away slightly at his angry frown before deciding that, no, he asked for it, so he’ll get it. My brow rises to counter his and I sit myself up straighter, still rubbing my hand and thinking of the Pascal who could possibly be a very good father if he chose to be.

“That was biting.”

“I’m tired of not being who I am. You’re employing me to do a job, and you’ve asked for my unbiased opinion. So, regardless of the pain you’ve just inflicted, and that worrisome brow of yours, my legal head is screwed on, Mr. White.”

He snorts out a laugh and pushes his coffee glass away from him.

“Did he cry?”

“What?”

“Tears, Lilah? Did you hit him hard enough to draw tears from him?”

“No,” I snap out in protest, glancing around at the other customers again.

“Mmm. Would you like to know how to?”
Jesus, no.

“No, why would anyone–”

“It’s what that hiding version needs,” he cuts in, suddenly standing up. “And if he’s going to have you help him, now that Roxanne can’t anymore, then you need to know how to do it sufficiently. It will tide him over until I can give him the rest.”

The thought is both disturbing and intriguing. I stare at the table and consider the implications of both possibilities. My legal head doesn’t seem to help me at all, no matter how rational I try to make the thought process. It’s all emotive, and involves me justifying my own actions and thoughts, something I’d rather not have to do at all. All pretence that I’m upright and comfortable abandons me as my body slumps into the seat and a sigh falls from my mouth.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’ve never done it before. He asked and it just happened, and now I don’t know what to do.”

He smiles and leans in close to my ear, close enough that I can taste his aftershave and feel the warmth of his skin against mine. My eyes automatically close to drink it in further as his being overwhelms any sense in my mind.

“Nothing
just happens
where Pascal is concerned. He smells it in you, just as he smelt it in me all those years ago, and just as I can now. Do your fingers still itch for him?” he says, lightly brushing his skin against mine and sending shivers of confusion through me.

Yes, they do. Regardless of the pain in them at present, I can still feel him under my fingertips, still smell and taste him. Even when this huge presence is in front of me, there’s nothing but Pascal. He backs away and rises to his full height with a chuckle.

“He will fight you, Lilah, hide himself. He will tell you that you are too young. A child, probably. And he will need more than you know how to give. So, when you need guidance for more painful activities, feel free to ask me how to achieve it.”

My eyes open again to find him hauling his long, wool coat on and tucking the folder under his arm just like any other normal person. I’m almost transfixed as I watch his frame move around, perfectly balanced and methodical. He has none of Pascal’s flamboyance, nor his splendour. He just fills the space with nothing but himself, and it dawns on me that Alexander White is just unadulterated man. Once you get through the charm, the clothes, the charisma, and the money, he’s just a pure, prime, cultured and yet overwhelmingly uncivilised male.

“Presumably he still knows nothing?” he says, his tone bored once again.

“No, even he isn’t good enough to get information out of me should I choose not to tell him.”
Regardless of the near drowning I took to keep your secrets from him.

“Mmm. Good. Keep that way until I decide otherwise.”

“What do you want me to do about Claire? Does Roxanne know you know?” I eventually say, pushing back my errant thoughts on perverse copulation and trying to form business thoughts instead.

“Nothing more. This work looks good. I’ll get it to the lawyers,” he says, switching back to charming mode and smiling at a woman who has also noticed his good looks. She giggles and hides her face as it turns beet red, which causes another low chuckle of amusement. “Roxanne knows nothing. I watched Vixon take the girl somewhere from the car and put a man on her. How is your investigative work on missing people?”

“What? Who’s missing? What man? What does that mean?”

“Someone is tailing her. And my sister is missing. With a lot of my money. I can’t find her, and the man I used before is dead.”

“Oh.”
Dead. Great
. That fills me with confidence about working for him. “Yes, I can try and track her down, if you want. Just let me have whatever you’ve already got.” He nods and turns for the door, and I can’t stop my damned mouth from opening again. “Why do you need to do it?”

He spins slowly and looks at me. Something flashes in his eyes that looks like confusion before quickly schooling back to his usual blank stare.

“It helps me to understand who I am, Lilah. We become stronger when we accept ourselves,” he replies as he opens the door. The chill from the street blows into the café and freezes the warm air instantly, and he simply hovers there, looking back at me and staring straight through to my heart. He sounds so much like Pascal in that moment that I find myself gazing back and nodding in agreement at something I’m not really sure I understand at all. But as I watch his mouth broaden into a warmer smile, and then turn from me, I begin to understand his dynamics a little better at least. He’s just a man searching for answers as much as the rest of us are, albeit in a slightly sadistic manner.

I sit and wonder what to do next, as I watch him walk away from me and up the road. More research, I suppose, although I can’t think of another way of proving the child is his. And, let’s be honest, if both Mr. White and I think she is, then she is. It seems she is Roxanne’s, too. I could go there and dig up more information, I guess, but he’s just told me to not do anymore. That leaves me to get back to the apartment and concentrate on finding this sister of his.

The temperature hits me again as I begin the journey back to my apartment and consider, yet again, everything that happened last night. I end up meandering my way into the park instead of heading straight back. I don’t really understand why my feet have led me here, but it feels close to him.  There’s obviously no point in denying any of what happened, so I find myself embracing the memory. People laugh and joke around me, and runners zoom past, trying not to slip on the ice as they divert around me. Melancholy is a good way of describing the thoughts in my head. It’s not that I’m saddened at what happened; it’s more that I’m bothered about why I enjoyed it. It’s not normal behaviour. People don’t go around hitting and beating each other unless there’s something seriously screwed up going on in their brain. Is something going on in mine? I didn’t have a rotten childhood or an abusive family member. Nothing happened in my past that should make me feel the need to hurt someone out of revenge. I didn’t think I was that bothered about all that has happened in the last year. It just did, and while it was no particular fault of my own, I don’t necessarily blame everyone else for it, either. I should have made myself louder, taller, bigger somehow. I should have made people more aware of my capabilities and not accepted being fired. Maybe none of the last year would have happened if I’d done that.

I find myself imagining Pascal and Mr. White, Elizabeth even, although she has a different air, but I can’t see any of them ever being belittled or pushed around by someone else. I can’t even fathom the possibility that anyone would dare try, let alone win. This world of theirs seems so filled with structure, maybe an order to the chaos we’re surrounded by. The more time I spend around them, the more I can feel it. Mr. White may well be able to hurt me, but that’s not the reason he deserves respect like I first thought. He just owns himself, and the people around him know that. Pascal is the same. They have this presence about them, as if no one will ever mean enough to them for them to need to justify themselves. I feel humbled by the fact that I’ve been allowed in at some sort of high-ranking level, that these people are talking to me and giving me a chance to prove my worthiness around them, regardless of who I am or where I’ve been this last year. I’m not being made to kneel, nor am I being used as a piece of meat. I am being listened to. Christ, he even asked my opinion on what he should do about Pascal’s daughter. Why is my opinion important at all?

Daughter.

My brow scrunches over again as the snow begins to creep into my boots, and I eventually look up to see where I am after endless wandering. Strangely, I’ve ended up at the restaurant again. It’s somewhere I’d never been before because I simply couldn’t afford the price-tag for the coffee, but with this wad of cash in my pocket, I find myself aiming straight for the door. Why, I don’t know. It’s not like I need more coffee, but the draw pulling me back in there is so strong I’m opening the door and pulling my woolly hat off before I’ve thought any more of it. Waiting quietly, I scan the room and find nothing but a few couples and the odd gathering of friends, but it’s actually really quiet, which is just what I need for continued thinking.

“Ma’am, a table for one?” the waiter asks as he waves his hand in front of him.

Yes, I suppose it is just one, and that thought saddens me more than I could have imagined. Just one. Just me, on my own, without his green eyes to sparkle at me and fill me with confusion and amusement.

“Yes, just for one please,” I mumble out. He guides me across to the window seat and hands me a menu. I order a hot chocolate and then stare out at the revellers. I can’t see a miserable person out there, and given this is New York, that’s quite a statement. Everyone is throwing snowballs at each other, or holding hands taking romantic strolls. Children are still building snowmen and laughing with rosy cheeks and happy smiles. The negative energy in me disperses and I feel the corners of my mouth turning upwards to smile with them. I can almost feel his skin as I shoved snow into his neck. I can hear his laughter, his real laugh, that one that sends visons of happiness racing through me. And if I just close my eyes, I can still feel the bruises littering my own body. I can feeling them wrapping me in a blanket of comfort, of safety. It’s as if he’s all there is – just him and this connection I have to know more about. I have to understand it. I have to understand why I did that for him,
to
him, not because he asked, but because I wanted to. I felt strong, empowered, but in the same breath, I was overwhelmingly concerned about him and his needs. The moment I saw that belt rasp at his flesh, I wanted to absorb his moans of pleasure and fall into the cadence of the whole depraved situation. As if it were completely normal. I’m sure it is for him, but for me, it’s just confusing, and I don’t know how to think about it logically. I’m a young woman who has never even entertained these sorts of thoughts. Maybe I have always needed to be in control of how things happen during sex. Perhaps, now I think about it, I have always been the one to take what I want rather than letting them manhandle me into positions that are of no use to me. Who knows? The only thing I’ve ever known with any sort of clarity is that men are generally a let-down in the bedroom, boring to a degree. Pascal Van der Braack is anything but boring.

I need to talk to him.

The waiter gently places my hot chocolate down as I try to remember the things Pascal said when he left – the exact words, because he meant every one of them. Many might think they were over the top, or maybe even unnecessary, but for him they weren’t. There was a reason for each one, as if he was trying to explain his life in every single syllable and phrase.

“Do not allow your judgemental sentimentality to tarnish our moments, Lilah. They have been exquisite in their complexities.”

Tarnish. Quite a good word for how I feel about our moments. The beauty in them is being drowned out by this strange fear I have over what I did. It is tarnishing something that I should remember as exquisite. I still do in some ways, but not knowing why spoils it. My legal brain is desperately trying to find a logical explanation for this type of debauchery. It’s just not me. Well, I didn’t think it was. Maybe it is. In fact, it must be. It makes me wonder if a good chit chat with Mr. White would be more enlightening than any conversation with Pascal. How can one have a conversation about Dominance with someone who wants to be subservient? I shake my head at myself and chastise the word.

“Submissives are not subservient, Lilah. They are neither weak nor inconsequential. They yield in the correct moment because they choose to enjoy the silence, not because they are forced to comply.”

Choose to yield. Choose to yield. Why?

“Some enjoy rape play. Some enjoy the feeling of being overwhelmed. Most desperately, seek the experience of pain in some manner, violently or mechanically. All need to feel controlled, whether safely or not. It is in the nature of a submissive to need a peace which can only be delivered by someone who is prepared to ensure their freedom, whatever the cost to their own sanity.”

So that’s what he needs from me, or more likely Mr. White? A sense of freedom? How is it possible that a man like Pascal needs that deliverance in the first place? How can he be as he is one minute, and then on his knees the next?