Besotted (11 page)

‘I didn’t plan it this way,’ he says softly. ‘It just happened. I fell in love with her.’

I look up at him with great, big eyes. ‘I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not even angry with you or her. But I am hurting. Real bad. It’s simple for you. “Let’s be friends,” you say, but it’s not so easy for me. I love you. I always have and I always will. It’s inside me, day and night eating at me relentlessly. My heart is bleeding, Blake. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I know you didn’t ask for my heart, but I gave it, anyway.’ I smile bitterly. ‘You’d be shocked if you knew how much I hurt. I feel as if I am going mad.’

He looks into my eyes, saddened, incredibly so. ‘Oh, Victoria.’

‘The heart was meant to be broken,’ I say, quoting Oscar Wilde. I know he will recognize and smile.

He half smiles. ‘I didn’t know it was like that for you. I don’t know what I thought. These arrangements,’ he opens his palms out helplessly, ‘they are not meant to be like this.’ He stops for a moment. ‘I didn’t think because I didn’t care for you, for me, or anyone else for that matter. I was a brute.’

‘Welcome to my world,’ I say.

I can see that he pities me.

‘I have to go,’ he mutters.

‘Look after my heart. You hold it in your hand.’

He kisses the top of my head and then he is gone, shutting the door quietly behind him.

‘I prayed for you,’ I whisper at the closed door.

How long I stood staring at the door, utterly devastated and uncomprehending, my dreams and hopes scattered around me, I don’t know. Perhaps I thought he might still return. Ring the bell and come in, tell me it has all been a dreadful mistake. I even waited past the obligatory one hundred and eighty seconds while my mind replayed the humiliation of my total rejection. I only really come to when I feel silky fur rubbing against my bare legs. I look down. Tia purrs gently.

I bend down and pick up her warm, soft body. I press her pliant silkiness against my chest and look into her beautiful face. She stares at me with her one blue and one copper eye, blinks and tries to snuggle up between my breasts. Even the cat has found contentment in its life.

Without warning that intense hot bubble of poison that is always lying in wait in the very depths of my bowels shoots sickeningly into my head. It explodes in a shower of red-hot sparks right between my eyes. As if hit by lightning I react. I lose it. Go ape-shit crazy. With a wild cry of fury and with all the viciousness of a female cobra on a nest of unhatched eggs, I hurl the unsuspecting cat against the wall. She crashes into the wall in a screaming confusion of distended nails and flying fur. The animal rights itself, curses, spits and hisses at me before fleeing in a chocolate streak of confused terror and pain.

My curled nails bite deeply into my own flesh, but I feel no pain, only the need to destroy. I turn and look at myself in the mirrored wall. My face is flushed and blazing with color, my eyes are savage, my mouth is open and breathing hard as if I have been running, and my breasts are heaving.

Something sick swirls in my stomach. My heart begins to race. I hear a rattling in my head and my mouth fills with the taste of metal. I feel the tremble begin in my fingers. It’s happening. At first slight, so slight it is like the shaking of an alcoholic in the morning before his first drink. But it becomes stronger, more insistent. I let it. It is a fine feeling. The way it sweeps into my body, takes over and becomes a roaring ball of pure energy.

The room in front of me swirls slightly. Objects come into focus, lose their edges and come back into being. My trembling body begins to shake violently. Suddenly, I am sucked into a vortex of energy and I feel myself flying across the room. I grab a bespoke dining chair as if it weighed nothing more than a matchstick, raise it high over my head, and running to the mirrored wall slam it against the surface. The sound of exploding glass is loud, satisfying. Again. And again. The chair breaks. I see myself in the broken mirror. Galvanized, I am indeed a terrible vision, flying hair, bared teeth.

I destroy everything!

Eventually when I fall down in an exhausted heap on the floor, the room is in total shambles. The expensive brocade curtains lie in shreds, every breakable thing accuses me in shattered silence and my beautiful nails are torn and bleeding. My eyes travel over the destruction I have wreaked, but I find no remorse in my heart. I am filled only with defiance.

As a matter of fact, I feel much better now. It’s been refreshing and deeply cleansing to damage so indiscriminately. Tomorrow, I will go shopping. And shopping always gives me a fantastic boost. I will get something nice for Tia (I shouldn’t have flung her against the wall) and something stunningly expensive and beautiful for me, for when Blake comes back to me. This is just a minor setback. Obviously, he will tire of her.

I stand. A sharp pain tears through my knee. I look down.

A huge bruise is coming up. The hem of my dress is torn too. I limp over to the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I gaze at myself. Moisture-filled luminous eyes in a pale face. I realize anew that I really am extraordinarily beautiful. I pout at my own reflection. Transfixed by my own beauty I form words, just to watch my berry lips in movement. Quite of their own volition they say, ‘I’ll get him back. Of course I will.’

Sixteen

Lana Bloom

I
have spent most of the day on the phone with lawyers and advisors discussing the best way for me to set up and run my charity. Now I am in the kitchen making a simple dinner while Sorab is napping inside his playpen. When Blake comes home I don’t rush out to the front door because the asparagus will be ready in less than a minute and I don’t want to overcook it.

‘We’re in the kitchen,’ I call out, keeping my voice fairly soft in order not to wake Sorab.

I hear Blake close the front door. He appears in the doorway, leans against it and simply looks at me.

‘What is it?’

He just shakes his head and continues gazing at me.

‘Blake?’

To my horror his eyes fill with tears.

I put down the colander of asparagus and run to him.

I put my fingers on his damp lashes. ‘Oh, my darling, what’s wrong?’

He catches my fingers in his hand and presses them against his lips. ‘Nothing. I am just drinking in the sight of you.’

His lips turn into a soft kiss on my fingertips. He sweeps his hand along my jaw line.

‘That’s a good thing, right?’ I joke.

‘I love you, Lana. I never stop thinking of you. Never. The only thing I am afraid of in this life is losing you. You know I’d risk everything for you, don’t you?’

Warmth starts spreading throughout my body. ‘I am right here, Blake. Where I belong, where I’ll always be.’

‘I went to see Victoria today.’

‘Oh.’

‘I told her I’m in love with you.’

‘How did she react?’

‘She fell apart. I did not expect it. She was pitiful.’

I move slightly away from him. ‘It was not your father who paid me to leave. It was her.’

‘I know. When I found out that Sorab was mine, I traced the money through its complicated trusts back to her. I was furious—she had caused me a year of excruciating pain—but confronting her was not a priority. All information is power, and everything I knew, and my opponent thought I did not was my advantage. So I never revealed my hand or acted on the knowledge.

‘When I went to see her today I was prepared to coldly dismiss her from our lives, but then she said something which made me pity her. The truth is, I did lead her on. I did renege on my promise to marry her. She has some grounds for her anger and suffering. I never wanted revenge and now I actually pity her. I have everything. She has nothing. I wish her well. One day I hope we will be friends.’

‘She didn’t seem pitiful to me.’

‘She is the spoilt daughter of a very wealthy man and she is used to getting what she wants, but even she has been broken by love. She will no longer trouble us.’

I say nothing.

That evening Sorab falls asleep on top of his father’s body in the living room. I follow to watch as Blake tucks Sorab in for the night. First Blake, and then I bend to kiss his smooth cheek as he lies asleep on his side. When I raise my eyes to Blake’s he is watching me. In the shadows and soft light of the bedroom he looks proudly proprietorial. We are his family.

He comes around the cot, takes me by the hand, leads me into our bedroom…and makes love to me, as he has never done before. With infinite gentleness as if I am a delicate butterfly whose wings can come off as dust pigments on his fingers, if he does not take the greatest care in the way he handles me. All of it is long, or slow, or deep, and when he climaxes he calls my name as if he is falling off a cliff and I am the last thing he sees. The longing in his voice is a balm to my heart.

I stretch luxuriously and lie on my stomach.

He lets his fingers run up and down my spine. ‘I love the feel of your spine, the delicate little bones that make your body. They are like skin-covered teeth, only they are not. As you move they flow under my fingers.’

I chuckle. ‘Oh my God! We have unearthed the poet in you.’

‘It’s love. The loved destroys the thing that loves it.’

I turn around to face him, a frown etched on my brow. ‘Are you saying your love for me is destroying you?’

He cups my naked breast possessively. ‘The more I love you the more of a stranger I have become to myself. Now I do and say things that I would never have dreamed of doing or saying. I can hardly believe that I lived all these years without you.’ 

I run my finger down his cheek. ‘Sometimes I get so scared. Everything I have ever loved has been taken away from me.’ I look down to the duvet cover. My voice trembles like the strings of a harp. I bite back the tears that have so suddenly arrived to spoil what should have been a beautiful moment.

He leans in and kisses the top of my left shoulder. ‘My love, my love, if you are still living and I am not, then I will haunt you until your dying day.’

I look up at him with hurt eyes. ‘That’s not funny, Barrington.’

‘I know, my darling heart. It’s only funny in the fucked up world I exist in. The real truth is, I want us to be like those ancient couples who have never been apart a day in their lives and when one partner dies the other follows in hours.’

‘Me too. I even hate saying goodnight to you. It means I’ll lose you again for a few more hours.’

He puts a finger against my temple. ‘Sometimes I wake up and watch you sleeping.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you know you sometimes smile in your sleep?’

‘I do?’

‘You always look so defenseless and angelic, like one of those fairy princesses from my childhood days.’

‘A fairy princess?’ I love the idea.

‘Yes, often I wish I could lock you away in an enchanted tower. Nobody could get to you except me.’

‘You don’t have to look me away in a tower. I’m always here for you.’

‘The princess is not locked up because she is bad. The princess is locked up because she is precious beyond words, and everyone wants a piece of her.’ His voice changes, becomes serious. ‘I have to put you somewhere you can’t be hurt.’

‘I am at that somewhere. Right here, beside you.’

He frowns. ‘But when I am not around—’

‘Brian and his pack take over.’

‘I’d still prefer to lock you up in an enchanted tower.’

‘That doesn’t sound quite fair. I get locked up while you go into the world and do all the things that you love to do.’

‘I don’t love what I do, Lana. I do it because I have to.’

‘Why can’t you walk away? You have more than we can ever spend.’

‘Sometimes we are given the illusion of choice. Give a man dying of thirst in a desert a glass of water and tell him it’s his choice. Drink or leave it. Is that really a choice, Lana?’

I say nothing. I remember when my mother was so ill that choice became an illusion.

‘I am like that man,’ he continues. ‘If I drink it will mean danger to you and Sorab. I know too much for them to allow me to walk away. I have responsibilities that I must see through.’

‘Responsibilities to carry on destroying the world?’

He smiles sadly and puts his finger on my lips. ‘No more. That will happen with or without me.’

‘Then why do you have to do it?’

‘What happens to the whistleblower, Lana?’

‘They get put in prison or they or their loved ones meet with “accidents” or they commit “suicide” and the agenda goes on uninterrupted.’

I frown and move my mouth away from his finger. ‘Why—?’

His fingers stop my lips, stop any further conversation. His eyes look so sad I wish I had never started this conversation. I move towards him and hug him hard. He is in pain. Terrible pain, but he cannot tell me. He is the man in the desert with a glass full of cool, life-giving water. I am asking him to drink, but he is resisting because of me and Sorab. I realize then that he has reason for the secrecy he maintains. He believes it is for the greater good. He believes harm will befall me and Sorab. I have to accept it. I decide then to stop pestering him. I will do my own research.