I set the bullet down, then I walked out of the room.
Though I knew Sylvia wasn’t a good shot and couldn’t load the gun up fast enough, it didn’t stop the danger from prickling in my back as I turned away from the most evil person I’d ever met.
As I walked towards my car, I heard the sound of the gun firing.
Chapter 21
Ellie / Jenny:
In a few days, it was all going to be over, and my heart hurt with a fiercer ache than my bottom.
There were still twinges of pain where Sylvia had caned me, but I was healing. My skin had been split open only in two places and the cells had already begun the process of knitting themselves together.
I stood inside the huge closet in Alexander’s bedroom and eyed my wounds in the three-way mirror but though my gaze was on my bottom, my thoughts were far away.
A cough sounded and Alexander walked in. His expression darkened when he saw what I was doing but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said anything since that night where he had held me close and told me that I was the only person that mattered. I’d slept in his bed and he’d hugged me all night, but he hadn’t reached for me. He hadn’t inclined his head towards the playroom with a toe-curling grin and he hadn’t pushed me down on my knees with a dark look of need in his eyes.
Yet I craved his dominance. I wanted him. Sleeping with his arms around me wasn’t enough. I needed to belong to him the way I did only in the playroom. I needed to submit to him.
I’d gone into the playroom yesterday. I’d been expecting a panic attack, but it hadn’t come. There had been far more good memories in this room than bad ones. Alexander tying me up and tormenting me with his tongue. Alexander laughing as he made me read a book out aloud to him, some silly romance thing I’d been engrossed in, while he held the Hitachi against my weeping *, testing my commitment to my book. In this playroom, the wounds inflicted in Abeokuta had healed and the scars that would forever be seared into me had faded.
I let go of the fact that Sylvia had caned me. Unlike in Abeokuta, I hadn’t been helpless. This time, Sylvia had hurt me because I’d allowed it. I’d weighed the prospect of my beating and my goal of revenge and I’d picked revenge. I’d had choices and in the end, it was the fact that I’d chosen that kept me from panic and made me want to reclaim Alexander’s playroom.
I didn’t want my last memories of this room to be of my ordeal at Sylvia’s hands. I wanted Alexander.
But he didn’t make a move towards me. There was guilt in his eyes when he gazed at my bruised ass. I could tell his failure to protect me from Sylvia was eating away at him. Sylvia had held power over me for too long. Now, she was affecting the precious last days I had with Alexander.
I wasn’t going to let it happen.
Just like the other night, when I’d entered his bedroom and pleaded for his touch, it seemed like I would have to make a move. I had the perfect weapon, one that Alexander himself had given me. My contract, the one he’d drawn up when I’d first arrived in Paris, had promised me four sessions a week and I was about to hold him to it.
“Can we talk?” I asked, my voice loud in the quiet.
He nodded. “Of course.” His voice was emotionless. “Where would you prefer?”
I reached for the pale green cotton dress I’d taken off to study my wounds and shrugged it over my shoulders. “In your study?” I asked.
I hadn’t been in that room since my snooping expedition. With a start, I realized I still didn’t know why Alexander had a list with my name on it. I’d conveniently chosen to push that to the back of my mind, focusing instead on the pleasure he brought me in the bedroom and the playroom.
Not too long ago, I would have torn myself to shreds with harsh words for being so weak and so pathetic that I’d traded my soul for a little pleasure in the bedroom, but after Sylvia, I understood myself just a little better. In Paris, two years ago, I’d chosen to go home with him to try and heal a bone-deep fear of desire and the wreckage it left in its aftermath. This time around, ever since that night at the Palais Garnier, I’d chosen to let myself trust him in the playroom so I could reclaim my own sexuality without panic or fear.
I might have fallen in love with the man who revealed himself to me, an intriguing blend of dominance and humour and genuine kindness, but just as I wore a mask that hid my true motivations, so did Alexander. The way Sylvia had been brushed aside prickled at me. The list of fifteen names was still unexplained. Alexander had his secrets and in some way, I was entwined in them.