“Elle,” Sinclair protested, but gently so that I would continue.
“I was so drawn to the erotic images here, especially this one. I would just stand in front of it like the closeted pervert I was, trying to make sense of the trauma Christopher had left me with and the latent sensuality I felt creep up my throat like bile each time I looked at this painting.”
I paused, warring with the echo of that feeling in my gut. It was easy to look over my left shoulder and imagine my younger self, undernourished, swimming in colorless, oversized clothes and drab under all that harsh black hair. I had been so unhappy and so confused yet utterly oblivious to it.
I turned to Sinclair, finding him braced like a sailor on a rocking deck, and I knew that my confession was hurting him because my pain was his own, because he had put himself in charge of my protection and this was one thing that he would never be able to change.
I stepped forward to press my palm lightly to his chest over his heart.
“You took that tangle of angst and desperation, Sin, and you unfolded it for me. You barely knew me and yet you saw my struggle, collected all the broken pieces that I couldn’t reconcile and bound them together. That week in Mexico wasn’t just magical because you made me fall in love with you. You made me fall in love with myself.”
“Elle,” he repeated, but this time the word was a benediction, a prayer of reverence.
He stepped close, bringing both hands up to cup my face lovingly. “We made each other whole, Elle. I was just as broken before you rearranged my life and brought it into focus.”
I leaned my forehead against his, grasping his wrists in my hands to feel the strong pulse there.
“I want to inspire that confidence and security in others. That’s why my collection is the way it is.”
“I know,” he murmured.
“I know you do,” I admitted. “You know me better than I know myself.” I pulled back slightly but he kept his grip on my face. “That’s probably why you make such a good Dominant.”
The softness in his expression glazed over with ice, hardening into a mark that hid his true self from me. I frowned up at him because I couldn’t understand what I had said to prompt the change.
“Sin?”
But he wouldn’t answer me. I knew before I even opened my mouth to appeal to him. When Sinclair decided to close himself off, it took a sledgehammer to crack him open again and unfortunately, the middle of a museum was not the place for that messy business.
We continued our tour of the cavernous, converted train station but we didn’t recover our levity. I bid my time trying to figure out where I had gone wrong but I kept coming up blank. Part of me wanted to blame myself anyway but Sinclair was the man who had taught me to be strong and I didn’t want to jump to a conclusion where I was in the wrong.
We went for a quick but delicious dinner at Chez Berber after watching the sunset from the top of the extraordinarily ugly Montparnasse tower. He teased me about how effusively I complimented my lamb tagine to the waiter and told me stories about his youth growing up with Cage in the orphanage but it was as if his frequency had changed to another setting, one that threw just enough static into the mix of our interactions that I couldn’t fully enjoy it.
It wasn’t until we were back in the hotel getting ready for bed that I knew something was seriously wrong.
I had used the half an hour between getting my hair done that day and meeting Sinclair to utilize the other part of the spa to get a fresh Brazilian wax. So, I was fully expecting a deliciously volatile reaction when I emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a sheer black baby doll and a matching g-string.
Sinclair sat on the end of the bed in those amazing drawstring grey pants, his torso on prominent display as he leaned back on his hands. I wanted to play his abs like a xylophone with my tongue so I was momentarily distracted from seeing the clench of his jaw and the flash in his eyes that spoke to anger.
When I did look up, I only caught the tale end of it. I was about to question him when he stood abruptly and moved passed me, placing a chaste kiss on my forehead like I was a God damn child before he went into the bathroom.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom, stunned and reeling. It was the first time I had really done anything like that, taking the initiative.
And he had totally brushed me off.