Unraveled by Him (18 page)

“Eight: After which, my session with the girl of my choice would begin.

“Murray, clearly a greedy man, naturally agreed instantly to my lucrative proposition. And from then on, I repeatedly made visits to Le Château in the dead of night, and lived out my most intense desires with the submissive of my choice there.

“This gave me an outlet for my passion to dominate, punish, and control, Miranda, but not one that truly satisfied me. The girls were beautiful, and readily agreed in advance to submit to whatever I demanded of them, but none of them were born submissives, not like the woman of my dreams, not like the woman I longed to have in my power. Not like the woman I longed to love and marry.

“But surely Georgiana?” I can’t help saying, then wish I hadn’t, because he gives me one of his scathing looks, then carries on as if I weren’t in the room. I feel like a schoolgirl reprimanded for talking in class.

“Late one evening, I was about to leave Le Château when I discovered that while I was in the dungeon with my submissive girl of the night, outside another storm had broken out and my limo was stuck in traffic.

“So while I waited for it to arrive, I passed the time drinking with Murray, who turned out to be smart and far more sophisticated than I originally assumed, as well as obligingly eager to forge a friendly relationship with me—hardly a shock, given how wealthy I was making him.

“During our protracted conversation, Murray confided in me the story of his personal life. A married man with a wife and five children, many years ago, one night in a diner not far from here, he locked eyes with a woman who turned out to be an experienced dominatrix, fell in lust with her on the spot, and told her that he had always yearned to explore S&M, whereupon she took him home to her dungeon.

“There she tied him to a Saint Andrew’s Cross and started to whip him. At that he went crazy, twisted around, grabbed the whip from her, ordered her to untie him, and she did. Then, with her consent, he tied her to the cross in his stead, dominated her, and discovered his true vocation.

“Soon after, he left his wife and family, and he and the dominatrix founded Le Château together. However, after a few months, she decided that she preferred to be a free agent and work all over the world instead. So, after promising they would always remain friends, Murray bought out her share in Le Château for a pittance, and they parted amicably. And now Le Château was one of the foremost S&M fantasy parlors in America, owned and managed by Murray, who spent most of his days and evenings there, supervising the proceedings, and reveling in all the power and access that entailed.

“Charmed by Murray’s openheartedness in confiding his life story to me (which is probably what he intended), I started talking about myself, my own desires, my experiences, and my dream to find a true born submissive with breeding and intelligence, one who craved to be dominated to the same degree and extent that I wanted to dominate her.

“A woman who burned with her vocation as a sexual submissive, just as I burned with mine as a dominant.

“ ‘And if I find her for you?’ Murray said, his eyes glittering with barely suppressed excitement.

“I stated a sum of money, and he smiled.

“ ‘She’s as good as yours already,’ he said.”

Chapter Nine

I am alone, and Robert is back in his suite, clearly shaken by his memories. Although I am thrilled at his trust in telling me his story, I sleep badly, haunted by the image of him in Le Château, searching for the submissive of his dreams, and Murray, the sleazy man who promised to fulfill them.

I toss and turn, fall asleep, then wake abruptly to find myself standing by the window of my suite, looking into the darkness beyond.

Part of me realizes that I’m sleepwalking.

The other that I’m still dreaming.

This hasn’t happened to me for years, and when I wake up fully, I’m rattled to the core.

Somehow, I get myself back into bed again and manage to grab a few hours of sleep, but when I wake up I’m covered in sweat.

I have a vague memory of the night before, and the fact that I’ve sleepwalked here, in Hartwell Castle, terrifies me.

What if I had sleepwalked into the corridor, naked, and run into Mrs. Hatch?

I make a mental note never to go to bed naked again, and to lock my door tonight and every night I’m at the castle.

But when I go down to breakfast at ten, just as Robert has decreed, I’m still feeling so rough that I can hardly eat a mouthful.

Today I am wearing the black and white L’Wren Scott Head Mistress dress he gave me, with black Louboutins. And the black Hermès Kelly bag he gifted me in Geneva. On my wrist, my dazzling new emerald and diamond watch.

In a way, I’m relieved that he hasn’t demanded I go straight to Dungeon 2 for my next test. As much as his dominance of me yesterday swept me off my feet, literally and figuratively, and made my body vibrate with pleasure, I long to spend more time with Robert the man, as opposed to Robert the harsh and cruel dominant.

By noon we are once again sitting together in the back of Robert’s Rolls—this time a navy one, with the license plate RH5—bound for Manhattan.

I’m glad to be so close to him, but not overly so, as he spends the entire journey calculating a series of figures in a large maroon ledger. He is so intent on his calculations that he doesn’t say a word to me, and I stop myself from holding his hand, or touching his arms, his thighs, as I long to. Instead, I look out the window at the street signs, the houses, and the people, as we speed on toward the city.

The limo glides to a halt outside a grand and imposing apartment building on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.

As I follow Robert into the building, the doorman greets him as if he were the president, not of a mere company but of the United States of America, such is the level of his respect for him.

In the glittering glass and gold elevator I look up at him, so tall, handsome, and broad-shouldered, and decide it’s a toss-up between president and Hollywood superstar, as he could have succeeded magnificently at either.

Then the familiar doubts wash over me.

I’m just a regular girl from Hoboken, a writer with more than a dime to her name, but certainly not a fortune, a fairly pretty face, but not like her, not like Lady Georgiana. So what the hell is Robert Hartwell doing with me?

As we step out of the elevator and enter a dimly lit room with gold-leaf walls, chandeliers, and alcoves with statues of muscular Greek gods in them who remind me of Robert, he takes me by the arm and leads me over to an enormous green baize table with a roulette wheel in the middle of it.

A group of players are already sitting at the table.

“May I introduce you to Count di Palazzo, Miranda?” he says.

The count, who is half as tall as Robert, has gray hair and a long row of medals stuck on his narrow, sunken chest. He grabs my hand, lifts it to his lips, and deposits a butterfly kiss on it.

“
Enchanté, mademoiselle
,” he says.

I give him a smile, then take a look at the other people at the table: a blond, freckled actor, a household name; a football star; and a Californian politician, all focused on the game about to begin.

“Wish me luck, Miranda. You can watch from here,” Robert says, and pulls out a gilt and red velvet chair for me a little away from the gambling table.

Gambling? Illegal in Manhattan . . .

“Who owns the club, Robert?” I whisper.

“A consortium,” he says, and I’m left wondering whether he is part of it.

Even though I’ve only known him for a few days, I know that Robert Hartwell is a lone wolf.

Then the croupier calls, “
Faites votre
jeux
,” which, I remember from French class, means “Place your bets.” I watch as the other gamblers around the table place their chips on the numbers.

Only Robert doesn’t.

Robert waits.

Then, at the very last second, before the croupier announces, “
Les jeux sont faits,
” and all the chips have been placed by the other gamblers on a variety of numbers, Robert places his chips on just one.

Which, after the croupier spins the wheel, comes up.

Two hours and countless glasses of Cristal later, plus platefuls of the delicate canapés that a series of beautiful casino hostesses regularly pass around to me and to the players, and Robert has an enormous pile of chips in front of him.

Beckoning me to follow him, he hands them in at the cashier’s desk, whereupon the cashier exchanges them for $650,000 in large bills, which Robert immediately puts into a big, black crocodile briefcase that has miraculously materialized at his feet, courtesy of one of the casino hosts.

I’ve never seen so much cash in my entire life.

I’m dying to ask Robert what he’s going to do with it.

But I daren’t, as no matter how close I sometimes feel we’re becoming, he still intimidates the hell out of me.

We are back in the Rolls again, headed for an address somewhere downtown.

Next to Robert sits the black crocodile briefcase with all the dollar bills in it.

Six hundred and fifty thousand of them.

The car stops in front of an art deco building in Tribeca and a big, beefy blond bodybuilder type approaches the car. I see the grip of a pistol peeking out of his waistband.

He opens the Rolls door.

“My bodyguard, Troy,” Robert says to me over his shoulder, as he climbs out of the car, taking the crocodile briefcase with him.

I’d love to follow him, but he hasn’t invited me to.

So I stay put.

After a few minutes, though, I open the compartment between the backseat and our driver and tell him that I need some air.

I get out of the Rolls, take a walk on the opposite side of the street from the building where I know Robert is, look into a shop or two, then cross the street and come back.

As I pass the building where Robert, his bodyguard, and the black crocodile briefcase with $650,000 in it now is, I glance quickly at the sign on the door and check out the nameplate:

“The Lady Georgiana Hartwell Foundation.”

Five minutes later Robert comes out of the building, with the bodyguard but without the briefcase full of money, and gets into the car, next to me.

I’m still dying to ask him about the money, and the Foundation, and am in the midst of trying to come up with a delicate way of doing that, when he leans close to me, strokes the inside of my wrist, and then gently removes the beautiful emerald and diamond watch he gave me.

First he sets the bottom face to East Coast time.

Then he starts winding the top face.

“European time. For our next visit,” he says, and I feel as if I’ve won the lottery ten times over.

Back in my suite at the castle, I’m in the midst of deciding what to wear tonight when there is a rap at the door. The valet with three large Bergdorf Goodman boxes.

In one, a red silk Versace gown; in another, bloodred Louboutins. In a third, a red satin corset, red fishnets, and long, red satin gloves.

Plus a note:
Miranda, you will dine alone tonight, in silence. And if your silence and solitude give rise to fears regarding the second test to which you are about to be subjected, that is my intention. Robert.

As I attempt to put on my corset, my hands tremble, particularly as it is so tight that I have go into contortions just to pull it across my body. When I manage to fasten all the hooks, I glance at myself in the mirror and see that my breasts are spilling over the top of the corset.

Clearly, the corset is one size too small for me. Which must be as Robert intended.

Downstairs in the dining room, I ask the waiter for some wine and he shakes his head.

“Mr. Hartwell’s orders, Miss Stone,” he says.

I say something polite to the waiter but seethe inwardly. How dare Robert treat me like a child!

I am so furious that I get up just as the waiter is bringing me chocolate mousse and leave the dining room.