MasterStroke (14 page)

“What happened?” Sandrine held her breath. This is where her world could end in a moment.

“She wanted things I wasn’t comfortable doing. So she found someone who was,” Jack said.

“She left you? Jack, that’s terrible.”

“I was so much in love with her. When she left, I went through a very bad period. I was angry at myself for losing her. I wanted her back so badly. It felt like my life was ending.”

“But you got over it?”

He was silent for a while. Sandrine noticed there were tears welling in his eyes.

“Not really.” His voice was coarse.

“What was her name?”

He shook his head emphatically.

“I’m not comfortable talking about it. Let’s just leave and go back to the library.”

“Jack, I can’t. This is a huge shock for me. I’ve given myself to you totally, I’ve given you my trust, my body, and I think I’m falling in love with you, Jack. And then I find this and it makes me doubt everything.” The anger, which she’d tried holding in check, was flaring dangerously. Her scalp prickled and her body temperature was rising, always bad signs. If she didn’t maintain some sort of control, she’d end up saying something she may regret later, striking back before she could be hurt herself.

He looked up. A tear was slipping down his cheek. Her heart ached for him right now. The pain and desolation on his face told one part of the story but there were other elements she didn’t understand. She was now beginning to question everything between them. As much as she loved him, and the realisation only came to her the moment she blurted it out, fear gripped her. If he was capable of this sort of activity, this perversion, he was not the man she thought he was.

The silence he returned only confounded her anxious mind. The anger within her burned through her reserve.

“Please, Jack. Talk to me. Make me understand. I need to know.” Sandrine’s tone was far harsher than it should have been.

He walked to the bed and sat down, his shoulders slumped forward. This wasn’t the Jack she knew, so confident and brazen, this was another man whose wounds were fresh. She didn’t know what to think. As she looked at the satin sheets and the elaborately shaped ironwork of the bed, she noticed a thick layer of dust clinging to everything. It was the same everywhere around the room. She ran a finger along a studded leather harness hanging from the ceiling and rubbed the nub of dust between her thumb and finger.

Jack was telling the truth. Nobody had been in this room for a long time. Was this place of strange sexual practices some sort of sick shrine to lost love? Did Jack treat this place like Mrs Haversham, shutting it up when he had been abandoned?

“I’m so sorry, Sandrine. I thought this room was locked. The cleaners know never to come in here.”

The more she regarded the lonely figure on the bed, the more she began to see his side of the story. It didn’t come close to explaining everything but it was a start. Pity surfaced, diluting her own revulsion.

She’d never been in such a strange place. She wondered at the minds of people who would be comfortable here. This wasn’t mere sexuality. This was fitted out for bondage and discipline, for sadomasochism, for inflicting and receiving pain. This went far beyond a sharing of mutual pleasures. Other men might be satisfied with a home theatre room; Jack’s tastes were obviously far more exotic.

She’d innocently opened a door and found herself in the dark basement of Jack’s soul. There were things slithering down there that she didn’t want to think about.

Her first impression was that such indulgences signalled a sick mind. How far had Jack gone to satisfy his lover? And how complicit, how enthusiastically involved, was he in it all?
Did he really enjoy all this? Is this what he expects me to do?
Her mind reeled although through the swirling clouds of confusion there prickled niggling doubts.

The events of their first sexual experience, when Jack had bound and blindfolded her, came vividly back. She took pride in being an intelligent, independent woman, yet she’d been a most willing participant that night. Despite it being so completely out of character, she had allowed it to happen. She should have firmly said no, told him she had no interest in it and walked out while her dignity was still intact.

But her attraction to Jack overtook everything and she found the act of being subjugated totally arousing. She wanted to be tied up. It was humiliating being treated only as a sex object, to be toyed with and used purely for his pleasure. And she’d loved it, enjoying such rapturous pleasures that she’d ended up drained physically and emotionally. She didn’t want it to end. She wanted more, so much more.

Jack looked so forlorn that her heart, that shock had meshed over with chainmail just minutes before, began to soften. She knew she shouldn’t, none of the hard questions had been answered and she knew barely more than when she’d first walked into the room, but she sat down on the dusty bed and pulled him close.

He folded into her silently. The tension in his body was like coiled steel, a vibration of hurt and pain and anger pulsing through him.

Oh, Jack,
she thought,
you’ve been wounded so badly. I want to help but I don’t know what I can say or do.

Jack was breathing easier as Sandrine stroked his hair. His face was buried in her neck, his hot breath almost scalding.

It was crazy but the closer Jack was to her, the quicker any trace of logic disappeared. There was a point when she simply could not remember what she’d been so appalled about. This place, that looked so much like a torture chamber but which Jack had flippantly referred to as the Games Room, had initially shocked her so badly but now she was eyeing a bench nearby and wondering how it would feel to be tied to it awaiting the extent of Jack’s punishment.

That’s not right! It’s scary. He’d be treating you like a whore.

She tried to shake the image out of her mind.

But wouldn’t you like to know what’s it like?
a voice inside her responded.
Isn’t that exactly what you want Jack to do? Imagine how hard, how huge, Jack’s cock would get if you were naked and splayed immoveable before him?

Sandrine whimpered quietly.

This other woman: how much of a hold did she still have over Jack?
Did he think of her while he was making love to me? Were we even making love?
Sandrine wanted to think so but, once again, she was examining the issue from far too many angles, getting confused between what she wanted in her heart and what her body was telling her, with her brain taking the role of devil’s advocate.

Were we making love or were we just fucking like animals? Was it a sign of emotional involvement or our libidos out of control?

It certainly didn’t become any clearer. The more she tried to make sense of it, the more it was becoming like a game of tennis, logic being the ball that was going from one side to the other and back again. It didn’t end.

Haven’t I made mistakes before? Didn’t I think I deserved forgiveness? Jack is a good man and he deserves a second chance.

“I’m sorry,” he said

“You’re in love with another woman. She’s never left you,” Sandrine said.

“You can’t help who you fall in love with,” Jack said. “But that was the past. You’re my future.”

She knew what she needed to do. There was a ghost haunting their relationship, fashioned from tainted love and twisted desire, and it had to be banished. From this room, from Jack’s life. Sandrine felt she was the only person who could achieve it. She wanted Jack for her own and, in his own words, he indicated that he wanted her in the same way. They were so good together, had been since the moment they locked eyes on each other. It was as if every planet had aligned, slipped into their rightful places across the cosmos, and spelt out their future with galactic certainty.

When she saw him, touched him, even just thought about it, it felt so incredibly right. She snuggled closer into him on the slick black sheets and pressed her body into his and she bloomed, opened up like a flower touched by the sun. Inside her, a sweet mass flowed, creating a warmth that was unmistakably erotic.

Sandrine found his mouth and it devoured her hungrily. His hands roamed over her body. She arched her back, grinding her groin against the solid lump in his jeans, feeling it grow. The urgency overwhelmed her. A power flowed through them. There was no stopping this. They couldn’t keep their hands off one another, nor did they want to.

While they kissed, Sandrine’s hands found Jack’s jeans, deftly lowering his zip until she could get her hand inside. She could barely wrap her fingers around his cock, so engorged and smooth and hot. Jack moaned into their kiss as she pumped his hard flesh.

“No.” he said finally.

“Yes, Jack. Look at me. I’m here and no-one else. I want you inside me now.”

They fumbled out of their clothes. Jack tore the musty sheet off the bed with a flash of anger and tossed it aside. Sandrine opened her legs wide and pulled him onto her, his weight pinning her to the bed. She was gripping his raging hardness, steering it towards an overheated slippery welcome.

He held back, just inches from her. She gripped his hips and slid down the bare mattress, trying desperately to impale herself.

“Now, Jack, please. Don’t tease me. Don’t make me beg this time.”

He was resting on his elbows so his weight didn’t crush her. When he looked into her eyes, she could see, in the green-flecked hazel deepness, his torment.

No, Jack, do it. I can make you feel better. I can heal you.

He rolled with her so they were lying side by side. His cock slipped further away but was still firmly in her grasp. As long as his need was so strong, so conspicuous and intent, the disappointment was not as gutting as a complete refusal.

“Beautiful girl, not now, not here. You know I want you. But I want it to be right. I don’t want to screw it up.”

They rested that way while Sandrine’s heart fluttered like a panicked caged bird. After a while, their breathing slowed and they fell asleep still locked in a tight embrace.

She dreamed and was at peace. When she awoke, Jack was watching her lovingly. He smiled and lay gentle butterfly kisses on her eyelids.

Sandrine wondered if she ever entered Jack’s dreams.

Chapter Eighteen

“We could be jumping to conclusions,” Jack said lightly. “There might be an entirely innocent explanation. Maybe the Russians are simply shopping for first-edition Tolstoys.”

Sandrine shot him a disbelieving glance. They were back in Jack’s library, sitting either side of his desk and sipping Earl Grey tea from delicate bone china cups. She was still feeling the effects of their time spent in what Jack had called the “games room”; while she’d passed through such a range of conflicting emotions, from stark anger and desolation to a grudging acceptance when Jack exposed his previous relationship to pity and then returned to the intensely physical attraction she felt for him, the one thing that remained was the realisation that she was falling in love. It had come to her so quickly, and felt so immediately right, that she was still giddy. Yet her conscience was raising some important issues. Was she one of those women who became attached to inappropriate men, whether they be emotionally abusive – she rejected out of hand the idea he could ever be physically so – or unattainable?

Had Jack been so damaged in loving and losing that earlier woman that he could never love Sandrine the way she loved him? Or would his expectations be so high that she could never measure up?

Certainly she had no intention of entering a relationship based around S&M. She didn’t like the thought that Jack would want to hurt or humiliate her. She didn’t want to be the slave to Jack’s master. While dressing up and role playing sparked a certain frisson of excitement within her, and the humid dampness at her core demonstrated there was a definite interest there, she drew the line at physical pain.

Yet she also knew that the key to releasing whatever Jack had locked away lay in the Games Room. They would have to return there; to banish the memory of his previous lover, she had to face this head on. And on her terms. No whips, no chains, no cuts or bruises or torture of any kind.

She shivered at the thought of some of the things in that cabinet. No way could she wear those primitive-looking nipples clamps, for instance. Her breasts were far too sensitive. Or the clamps with weights attached, the purpose of which she didn’t wish to comtemplate.

There were items she could consider and she’d allow them to intrude into their lovemaking if Jack required them. But, on the whole, Sandrine considered that she had enough to satisfy Jack all on her own. While she would never consider herself skilled, she was an enthusiastic lover, giving and responsive in equal measure, and Jack had so far seemed very happy with their physical relationship. He worshipped her body. She made him so very hard that the attraction was undeniable. Men couldn’t fake that sort of thing.

They fucked like their lives depended on it. In the moment, they blocked out everything but each other. The world didn’t exist beyond their own needs. The hunger they felt for each other made sex such an intoxicatingly satisfying experience. But they’d also had incredibly tender times, slow gentle lovemaking that was no less capable of bringing her the ultimate pleasure. There was light and shade, an indication of a deepening emotional attachment.

Sandrine had no doubt she’d made the right choice in becoming involved with Jack. Despite the sharp shock of the Games Room, she still felt that way. As she looked across the desk at Jack, with his floppy foppish hair, high cheekbones and lop-sided smile, desire continued to blossom inside her. She felt herself opening up for him and she wanted to sweep the desk-top clean and lay herself out on it.

The hunger was overwhelming. The physical emptiness she felt on those dusty satin sheets urgently needed to be filled. The image of his thick hard cock made her mouth suddenly dry; she’d sought his body on that bed and he’d refused her and the tension was only getting worse. It was requiring all her focus to think of other things but it wasn’t quite working.