By nightfall the heat of her anger hadn’t abated, and Grace resorted to a cool shower to lower her body temperature. Getting ready for bed, she could taste her fury through a mouthful of toothpaste and growled as she spat it out.
The last few weeks raged inside her. Rubbing herself off for him at his wish. Fucking another man for him. Coming all this way for him, and for what? So she could writhe around his bed alone and have another conversation with a disembodied voice.
‘Fuck you,’ she said out loud and tore her nightgown from the hook behind the door. ‘Just fuck you, Jacques Taureau. I should have left with Reeve when I had the chance.’
She hoped hearing her words cut him as deep as it cut her to say them, but she doubted it.
She squirted lotion into her palm, turned her back to the mirror and rubbed it in. The fog was clearing and she couldn’t bear to look at her own reflection and face her own role in all this.
She was ashamed of herself for losing the control she had exercised over her sexual activities for so long. She had enjoyed being Taureau’s plaything. With her other lovers it had been a dance, move this way, move that way, you lead, I lead, but with Taureau there was no question who led and who followed.
Even her display of bravado in the bedroom with Reeve that night had still resulted in the outcome he wanted.
What was the ending? Had he brought her here simply for the pleasure of knowing she was closer than ever? Had he left the rope in his bedroom for her to find and merely be turned on by? Was she only a bird in a cage to him?
She tucked her hair up in a ponytail and wound it tight, then finally took a good look at herself. It could have just been the lights overhead, but it seemed to her that every flaw had become glaringly noticeable. Lines around her mouth and eyes. Old acne scars that had long ago ceased to be anything to worry about. Red splotches. The size of her pores. She’d never felt less desirable than she did at that moment, and so she hit the lights and moved into the bedroom.
It occurred to her to go into his office and find something to do, or grab one of those paperbacks and try to lose herself in some over-the-top tale of intrigue. Anything to keep from thinking of the distance that still lay between herself and the object of her desire.
She wondered if he had tried to call the phone again, or if he had noticed it was still in the kitchen where she’d left it.
Moving through the darkness of the bedroom, she decided on getting drunk in front of the television.
That’s when she saw him.
For a moment, she didn’t quite realise what she was looking at. She stared at the shape in the doorway, wondering at first what could have cast such an odd shadow, and waited for her brain to catch up with her eyes.
It was only when he moved, when he took a step forward and she recognised the definition of shoulders rolling against the grey, that she realised he had finally come to her.
And she wanted to run.
The fact that he blocked the only exit thrust cold fear into her. She stepped back and with one hand sought the bedside lamp, but the mad clicking of the chain brought no light.
She took a step towards the steam coming from the bathroom, and he stopped her with a word.
‘Don’t.’
Just that. Don’t. One word and she was turned into a statue by the sound of his unfiltered voice. There was authority in the word, but now, so close to him, there was also power.
He said nothing. Save for the rasp of his breath, he held his silence, his gaze pushing and pulling her in the semi-darkness.
After all this time, she wanted to drop to her knees, beg him to let her turn on the light and let her look at him, at all of him. She wanted to run her hands over him, to explore every inch – and there was so much to explore. It was no trick of the shadow. The young man in the pictures was a wiry little scrap. This creature was enormous. She had gotten a glimpse of his bulk, but she had no idea that he had transformed so drastically.
She struggled with herself in the silence, trying to find some word, some phrase that would end it, but it was as though his mere presence had robbed her of the ability to speak.
It was on his terms that he ended it.
‘You told me that if I wanted something from you I’d have to take it, Miss Neely.’ He drew closer, and the air around her became so stifling she felt the heat with every breath she took. ‘Well, then, I’ve come to take what I want.’