I shake my head pitifully, and say in my best French accent, “Zero.”
“It is too cold to go out anyway,” he says.
I gaze out at the outer pool and hedges covered completely in snow. It looks beautiful, but I wish Brand would come back. “Pierre,” I call.
He turns to me while rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. He deposits some soap suds on it and it extends his nose. He looks so funny I can’t help laughing.
I rise and take my empty glass over to him. As he takes the glass from me, I ask, “Pierre, what do you do if you want to get close to someone?”
He pauses for a moment to think before he responds. “Spend time with them.”
Fat chance of that happening when Brand has decided to become more evasive than a ghost. My face drops.
His smile almost blinds me. “You are in love?”
I nearly choke. I settle for a staggeringly hideous frown. “No, I am not.”
My answer seems to genuinely confuse him. “Why do you want to be closer then?”
“I owe him … a debt,” I say.
“Then pay him,” he says simply as if it is the most obvious answer in the world.
“You’re no help,” I say and return to my seat.
He wipes his hand and comes over to take the seat by my side.
“Okay, okay … maybe it is more … complicated,” he says. “Spend more time with him.”
“He doesn’t want to,” I explain. “Spend time with me.”
He gives me a dry look and I almost don’t want to hear it. He leans into me and says it anyway. “So, make him fall in love with you.” He links his fingers together. “You are beautiful woman. It is easy.”
“How exactly do you make someone fall in love with you?” I ask.
He leans back into the chair and raises up two fingers. “Two ways. Be helpless, or be mysterious.”
Propping my elbow on the table, I rest my head against it, before it explodes with his strange advice.
“Helpless? What do you mean?”
“Do something that make him be forced to spend time with you. Like break your leg, or your arm.”
Or go blind I add in my head. That would really up the ante.
He goes on. “Add to dis … show him you are good … exciting. Then maybe he begins to fall in love with you.”
“So breaking my leg doesn’t guarantee he will fall in love with me?”
To my surprise he takes the question seriously. “No. Fall in love is two other different things.”
I curse myself for even asking in the first place.
If he expects me to break anything else I will break his leg, I say in my head.
“Poison him or make him jealous.”
I blink, not sure that I have heard him well. “Pardon?”
“Joke,” he says, laughing heartily, obviously beside himself at his humor.
I have none left in me.
“Make him jealous,’ he says. “And he will begin to notice you.”
I think about this for a moment.
“Or give him woman poison.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not joke.”
“Woman poison?” I repeat, wishing I had never begun this conversation in the first place.
He shimmies his shoulders suggestively and lets his eyes drop to my breasts. I rise to my feet then, exhausted to my soul.
“Have a beautiful day,” I say to him and leave the kitchen.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Liliana
I settle in front of the television with a bucket of popcorn to await Brand that evening. Dressed in a pair of jean shorts from my suitcase and an oversized dress shirt I found inside Brand’s suitcase, I feel quite homely and relaxed.
The evening passes away and I nod off to sleep. The next thing I know I’ve jerked awake. The lights are still on, and I look around, slightly disoriented to check the time. It is past 2.a.m in the morning.
I hear a sound upstairs and quickly hurry up the stairs. I rap my knuckles on the wood, and even though I don’t receive a response, I take the liberty of pushing the door open and walking in. His room has a king-sized bed.
It looks mighty comfortable and reminds me of our first time together on a bed. A mini panic laced with hot-blooded desire instantly tries to bully me into turning away, but I stand my ground and keep walking forward.
“Brand?” I call tentatively.
As I near the bathroom I hear the sound of the shower running. Taking a deep breath, I push the door open. The clothes he wore that day are discarded on the tiled floor.
Through the frosted shower glass, I see the outline of his naked frame and my heartbeat starts to spiral out of control. What am I doing? This is Brand the Maniac I am intending on provoking. Have I gone mad? What has made me so fearless against someone who has threatened the lives of both my father and I? Then I think of Lindy saying he was like a mother bear with her cub when I was ill. He cares, but he hates himself for it. Before I leave I have to make him understand that I didn’t reject him deliberately. That I always regretted doing it and wished with all my heart I could turn back the clock and change the way I acted. The sooner I make this better the sooner I can return to my family.
You’re making this right, I remind myself. You’re trying to atone for past sins. You are doing this for you and him.
Even telling myself that doesn’t give me the courage to slide open the door and I find myself chickening out and turning around to exit the bathroom. I only manage two steps before I hear the shower stall door slide open. I freeze instantly on the spot.
His voice is as cold as steel. “What are you doing here?”
I am almost too afraid to turn around, but summoning all my courage I lift my chin and turn around to meet him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Liliana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crAgnI9BF6M
Simply The Best.
He is standing in the doorway buck naked but for some water droplets. My eyes nearly pop out of their sockets as I let them really study the tattoos on his arms, shoulders, chest and stomach. For the first time I have the opportunity of seeing them clearly.
They are beautiful.
High on his right shoulder there is a black rose with teardrops falling from it. A fierce tiger roars on his chest. An angel is on her knees in front of a demon on his bicep. Around them there are knives and other symbols that must mean something to him.
Of its own will my gaze slides down his narrow hips to his groin, to the virile, thick cock. I have to clench my legs tightly together to contain the ache between them.
“I asked you a question. What the hell are you doing here?”
My gaze flies up to his face. His eyes are strangely merciless. “Um … I … uh …” I stutter.
He narrows in on what I am wearing and his eyes become lidded. Alarm bells go off in my head and I find myself instinctively taking a step backwards. He is still such an unknown quantity.
“Did your little pussy get wet for me?” he asks nastily.
My jaw drops and he looks at me with a disgusted expression and slides shut the door of the shower so hard it makes me jump.
For a stunned second I can only stare blankly at the closed glass. He just outright rejected me! I offered myself to him and he rejected me. Confused and shaken, I turn around to leave, but then something inexplicable overtakes me. How dare he? How dare the bastard treat me like that when I am only trying to heal his hurt.
Well, woman’s poison it will have to be. As Mum once said about Dad. No point trying to tame a wild beast better to embrace its magnificence.
I march over to the stall and forcefully slide the door open. His head bent and under the cascade, water is rolling down his silky skin. His back
is wide and ripped with muscles that run all the way down to his firm ass. Billowing steam mists around him, making him appear almost unreal. My throat pulsates with thirst. He turns around, brushing hair out of his face.
I get my mouth to work before I can lose my courage. “You said you want me to be miserable, well I am. But do you know what makes me even more miserable? You fucking me does.”
I push my way into the stall and he looks at me with a strange expression. A mixture of desire and exasperation. Before he can stop me, I begin to undo the buttons of my shirt, but it damn well takes too long, so I rip it apart viciously. When that doesn’t take me far either, I pull the shirt over my head revealing one of the sexy bras he bought for me. I take that off too so the poison can take effect more quickly. My gaze drops to his rising cock.
“That was a four-hundred pound shirt you just ruined,” he says quietly, but his eyes are focused on my bare breasts.
“I would have thought four hundred pounds would be nothing to-” I start to say, but the words are stolen out of my mouth when he takes a step forward. He is suddenly dangerously close to me. My heart is racing in my chest and I am breathing too hard.
“Get out,” he says, “before you regret it.”
For the longest time there is no other sound, but the sound of water pattering down to the floor and our quick uneven breaths.
“I want to regret it,” is all I say.
“You fucking little demon,” he curses.
My heart flutters with fear and longing, but my hands go to the button of my shorts. I pull them down along with the thong he so thoughtfully provided. Kicking them aside, I hold Brand’s gaze as I close my hand around his cock.
“You’re no longer afraid of me?” he asks softly.