AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, and once this auction is over, I’ll never knock on it again. I’ll stick around long enough to make sure Anya survives this without getting hurt. Then I’m gone.”
Daniel started down the hall.
“It was a test,mon ami.”
Even as he spun around to face Kingsley, Daniel regretted the decision. “What was a test?”
“That week together—you and her. It was a test.”
Daniel glared back, and Kingsley laughed his infuriating French laugh.
Kingsley strolled toward him. “Lest you think he sent her to you out of some great affection for you…let me explain, it was a test.”
“Let me guess—I failed.”
“You were not the one being tested, Daniel. She was. And she passed.”
The cold truth of the statement hit Daniel hard in the stomach and harder even lower. He wanted to answer, wanted to say something, to deny it. But he had no words. She could have had him—someone rich, someone single, someone free. She could have had someone who could have married her, given her children, a life in the open…and yet she’d walked away from it all and chosen Søren instead. Instead of a wife, she was the mistress of priest. Instead of children, she had secrets. Instead of Daniel, she had Søren.
Daniel closed his eyes. Not even a masochist would have enjoyed this kind of pain. Daniel took one second to imagine punching Kingsley’s handsome face into an unrecognizable pulp. It made him feel better. A little.
“Let her go,” Kingsley said, and his voice was almost, but not quite, kind. “She’s not for you. She never was. You’re in love with a fantasy, a girl you can save from a sadist who will never marry her or give her children. That girl doesn’t exist.” He put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Maggie loved you and would want you to find love again. That way,” he said, nodding his head toward the darkened stairs, toward Eleanor, “is not where you’ll find it.”
* * *
Daniel said nothing.He stared at the dark stairway, wanting to go down it, to call Eleanor’s name, to hear the truth from her own lips. Until he did, he wouldn’t believe it.
He didn’t. And he didn’t wait for Kingsley to speak again, either. Daniel left by the main stairs. He went out the front door and hailed the first cab he saw. It took him home, but only long enough for him to change clothes. Then he went for a run, a long, hard run through Central Park. The heat was nearly unbearable. It felt like running in a sauna, but he craved the mindlessness, the release of endorphins, the punishment.
But he couldn’t outrun memories of her.
He remembered the night he and Eleanor had played a game of strip poker. He played to win. She played to lose. After three hands, she was down to her white lacy panties. He dealt another hand.
“Hit me,” she’d said, rolling onto her stomach, her bare legs in the air and nothing on her from the waist up but a smile.
“This is poker,” he reminded her.
Every evening was spent in the living room by his fireplace talking, fucking, sometimes both at the same time.
“Poker? I don’t even know her.”
Daniel reached out and flicked the end of her nose. “Behave yourself.”
“Never.” She threw a few cards down. “Hit me.”
“Poker,” he repeated. “Not blackjack.”
Eleanor looked up at him through the veil of her wavy black hair. “Maybe I’m not talking about the game.”
Daniel nearly dropped the cards. “You do realize we’ve only known each other for a few days,” he reminded her.
She shrugged her shoulders, her soft, pale shoulders he’d bruised with bites and rough kisses just a few hours earlier, though the hunger to bruise her with a flogger was growing.
“You’ve fucked me more times than I can count, ordered me around, made me call you ‘sir’…but still you haven’t hit me. You know you want to…sir.”
She flipped onto her back and looked up at him. Was there anything in the world more beautiful than a woman’s naked breasts bathed in the light of a fireplace? Especially Eleanor’s breasts by his fireplace?
“I take inflicting pain very seriously,” he’d said even though everything in him ached to tie her to his bed and paint her pale skin bright red with welts. “That’s a lot of trust. Do you really trust me that much? After only a few days?”
