Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (19 page)

Carla examined her trim but very definite curves, ones that Alex insisted he loved to see offered to him naked, restrained and vulnerable. How long would it be before she was ordered to undress and present herself to him here in this room?

She selected the top drawer of the dressing table for her underwear and stacked her tops and shorts in the middle one. The bottom drawer was empty apart from its lining paper, but her breath caught in her throat as she opened the fourth. The scent of lavender filled her nostrils. A tiny sprig of dried purple flowers nestled in the centre.

Around the flowers curled the leather fronds of a small and beautiful whip.

Chapter Nineteen

She reached inside the drawer, her heart beating faster as she fingered the leather tails and carved wooden handle.

“Carla?”

Turning, she found Alex in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel slung around his waist and his hands on his hips. It was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen the whip. Her fingers were around the handle now, and it was half out of the drawer. She didn’t say a word but turned and held it aloft in her hand.

His expression was hard to read; she thought she saw puzzlement, perhaps a flash of anger.

“Alex. What is this?”

“
C’est un martinet.
”

“A martinet?”

“A domestic whip or flogger. Call it what you want. Once upon a time—not that long ago—they were used in many French schools and homes. They still are used in some…situations.”

She swallowed, and her insides liquefied as she drew the tails across her palm. In itself, the martinet looked gentle, innocent, but the fact that the leather was so soft and worn must mean it had seen a lot of action.

“Is this an…original?”

“Yes. It’s, shall we say, a family heirloom?”

“Are you telling me that this was used on
you
? By your parents?”

“It was largely kept as a threat.”

Largely?
She weighed the whip in her palm, and a shiver ran through her. “But you
were
beaten with it?”

He laughed at her, at her surprise or naivety, she wasn’t sure. She’d thought she was getting to know him, making inroads into him, but this was a whole new dimension. The handle of the martinet was cool and smooth in her fingers. Perspiration prickled the small of her back. Her comfort zone was nine hundred miles away in Oxford. Here, alone, in this foreign place with Alex the only person she knew—she felt as if she’d landed on another planet, full of dangerous choices and dark, sensual secrets she didn’t know if she had the courage to explore.

“I know it sounds odd, but in many French homes, especially the traditional ones like ours, a few timely flicks of the martinet were not thought of as anything unusual or untoward. It was part of growing up.”

A few timely flicks of the martinet
. Once again, her twin personalities had taken over. Half of her, the conventional and decent half, was horrified and indignant. The other was desperate to know more, yet far too scared to question her dark motives. Alex, on the other hand, seemed to have leapt several steps ahead, recognising the conflict within her.

“Really, Carla, don’t get so upset. Olivier and I, well, we did play about with it a few times to test it out, and once or twice, we got a taste of it ourselves.”

“Who from?”

“In the school holidays, my parents employed a governess, I suppose you’d call her—to keep an eye on us. Madame Zidane used to flick our calves with it, but it really isn’t as terrible as it sounds. It could have been worse, because traditionally the martinet should be applied to the bare buttocks. No doubt we deserved it. We were horrible little rats, just like boys are.”

At the thought of those curving tendrils curling around her bottom and, perhaps, the tender places between her cheeks and thighs, a little fiery glow ignited within her—and a frisson of genuine fear. A spanking across Alex’s desk or his knee, even a robust one, seemed reassuringly tame in comparison to a taste of the martinet.

Her fingers slipped on the handle as Alex approached.

She was dewy inside, and if she’d been wearing any panties, they would have been damp.

“It sounds very painful,” she murmured.

“It can deliver a sharp sting, that’s true.” His eyes narrowed. “Of course, how mild or harsh the chastisement is depends on the skill and intention of the person in control of the whip.”

Was this why he was so into dominating and disciplining her? Did his brother, Olivier, have the same sexual tastes? That was a question her brain was too overwhelmed to process right now. She had to deal with her own conflicted reactions first.

He held out his hand, and she laid the handle of the martinet across his palm, its leather tails falling gently towards the floor like a horse’s mane. It was such a beautiful implement, she couldn’t imagine…

He held her gaze briefly, then smiled and dropped the martinet back into the drawer and closed it. “Do you want to take a bath now? I need to make a few calls, and I’m sure you don’t want to listen to me droning on about academic crap.”

Alex held it together just long enough to listen to the water running into the tub, in case Carla decided to come back into the room. If she did now, she’d find him sitting on the bed, his head in his hands, his fingers pressed to his temples as if he could rip out the memories physically.

This would not do. He had to get a grip on his emotions, for Carla’s sake if not for his own. He had to think rationally about the situation. Analyse it dispassionately. Come to a clear and well-informed conclusion based on the evidence.

He forced himself to stare at the drawer, even though the hairs on the back of his neck had risen and his flesh had crawled when he’d walked out of the bathroom and found Carla holding the whip in her hand. She’d looked so shocked, so out of her depth here at La Bastide, confronted by the martinet. It had taken all his self-control to laugh it off.

He closed his eyes tightly again. The last time he’d seen a martinet hadn’t been in Madame Zidane’s hand, but it
had
been on a day just like this one. A hot summer’s day when the dust blew from the south across the inner terrace. When the breeze had started to freshen, bringing the first hint of a cool front from the mountains and the threatened storm that followed. Earlier that day, before he’d known what lay ahead for him, he’d been laughing and lying in the sun with her—and with Olivier. They’d been out in the woods on the fringes of La Bastide. They were all so young, thirteen, maybe fourteen, certainly no more.

When he’d returned, his father had been waiting in the courtyard by the water trough.

Bile rose in his throat.

He stretched out his hand to touch the drawer. His fingers were rock steady. It had been so long ago now; he had no need to fear the memory anymore. He was an adult, sophisticated, self-critical.

He knew himself.

So why had Carla made him doubt that?

Why had he felt compelled to bring her here?

The martinet lay inside the drawer, safe and out of sight. It didn’t take a professor of psychology to tell him the whip was a symbol of his fears and desires and that it was shut away inside the drawer for a good reason. He had no idea why the martinet was there. He’d thought it was long gone, and Carla was right. It had been placed there, as if someone deliberately wanted him—or her—to find it.

Of course, it could have simply been put away and forgotten, though he certainly hadn’t noticed it on his previous visit at Easter. Then again, he wasn’t in the habit of bringing enough paraphernalia to fill that huge chest of drawers. It might have been found by one of his mother’s housekeeping team in this room or another. Heaven knows they would hardly have handed it over to his mother. The younger ones, mostly barely out of their teens, would have been shocked or too embarrassed. The older ones would have shrugged and could, quite easily, simply have dropped it in the drawer without a second thought. As for the dried lavender, that could have been there months or years.

He thought of the notes that had been sent to Carla back in Oxford, and immediately dismissed them as irrelevant. They could have no connection with La Bastide, as far as he could see. Every piece of evidence pointed to the martinet being in the room for perfectly innocuous—if not innocent—reasons. Then why did he not believe any of them? And why could he not face up to his fears and tell Carla what was holding him back from giving her what he wanted: love, trust, commitment.

He went out onto the terrace, into the sun, leaving the room and Carla and everything behind him. Outside for a short time, he could pretend the past and the future didn’t exist. Only the present and pleasure mattered. If and when the time came, he would face the storm, but not yet, and not ever, if he could avoid it.

The shadows had deepened by the time Carla got out of the roll-top tub. Standing naked in the bathroom, she patted her skin with a huge white towel that reminded her of a spa clinic. Alex’s voice, speaking French, drifted through the door. There was no way she could keep up with what he was saying.

Her fresh underwear lay on the bed, and suddenly she was reluctant to emerge from the bathroom in the nude. She half wished she’d carried her clothes inside. While lying in the bath, anointing herself with all manner of French potions, all she could think about was the martinet lying in the bottom drawer, its leather fronds as delicate as a fern. She imagined it curling around her calves, the backs of her thighs and her buttocks. Surely he didn’t intend to actually use it on her?

A ripple of cool air startled her as she dried herself. Turning, she saw Alex in the doorway, his mobile clamped to one ear. He raised his wrist and nodded at his watch.

Coming
, she mouthed.

It was too late to worry about the creases in her dress, a pale blue linen shift that had seemed relaxed yet smart when she’d bought it in Oxford but now looked English and crumpled. She slipped it on and toed into ballet pumps as Alex laughed down the phone, wished his caller
au revoir
and dropped his phone onto the bed.

“Sorry about that. Are you ready?” he asked with a quick glance at his watch.

“Almost. Just need to put a bit of makeup on.”

He touched her hair with his fingers. “Why bother? You look beautiful as you are. Dinner will be ready soon, and my mother doesn’t like people to be late. You don’t want to be in anyone’s bad books this early in your stay, do you?”

Chapter Twenty

“So, Carla, you are one of Alex’s students?”

Olivier Lemaitre homed in on Carla from across the courtyard as she twirled a glass of kir between her fingers. Dinner was being served by the pool on the main terrace of La Bastide, but first the Lemaitre clan enjoyed aperitifs.

“Yes. I am.”

Carla gave what she hoped was a warm and confident smile. She’d been determined to be friendly and to hide her nervousness at meeting his relations. Confronting a family tribe for the first time was bound to be nerve-racking—her own lot were quirky enough—and with foreigners, sophisticated ones with a reputation for being eccentric, well, it was enough to put the most confident dinner guest on her guard.

“One of his PhD students,
non
?” said Olivier.

Like most of Alex’s relatives, he spoke good English, though not quite as well as Alex, who’d spent most of his life in the States and UK. Two years younger than Alex, Olivier had the same saturnine looks, yet they were tempered by his mother’s finer features. He was French-movie-idol-meets-rock-god material but less intense in manner and looks, and didn’t have the effect that Alex did on Carla.

“No. I’m an undergraduate, actually.”

Alex arrived with his mother and handed Olivier a kir. “Carla is one of my freshmen. I inherited her at the start of the summer term when Dr. Bhide had to go on maternity leave.”

Alex’s mother, a reed-thin woman with her silver hair in an immaculate chignon, regarded Carla with intense scrutiny. “Forgive me if I seem…impolite, but you are old to be a student?”

Olivier burst out laughing. “You
are
being impolite,
Maman
, and I’m not certain that Carla should forgive you.”

Carla didn’t mind. She’d heard and answered this question many times. “It’s fine. I’m a mature student. I decided to give up my job as a journalist to study at Oxford.”

“Give up your job? That is very brave.”

“It sounds a very good plan to me,” said Olivier. “Everyone should try it.”

Alex laughed softly, but Carla felt his hand snake around her back. “I thought you already had given up working for a living, Olivier.”

Olivier raised his glass. “Touché. Carla, I’m an artist and gallery owner, which my brother regards as not working.”

Mme. Lemaitre sighed. “Do not begin an argument,
s’il vous plaît
. You know where it will lead. Now why don’t you go and fetch some more wine? There’s a Meursault in the rack, and as Carla’s here, I think we should celebrate.”

“Of course,” said Alex with a tight-lipped smile.

After he’d gone, Mme. Lemaitre turned to Carla. “I did not mean to be rude about your job, Carla.”