The Original Sinners: The Red Years

15

Zach pulled Nora’s latest chapter off his office printer and picked up his red pen. Skimming the lines, he rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. He needed to talk to Nora about the last few chapters she’d sent. They were going well, but he was afraid she was starting to lose her way again. She was obviously in love with her characters and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. But her musings slowed the story down. He had to give it up and face her again. It had been five days since that night. He still couldn’t think of it without hating himself a little more each time he remembered how he’d been unable to stop himself from touching her face…her skin was so soft and warm…and how he wanted to see her hair down and loose…so he pulled out the pens and let it fall…and her voice seemed to get inside him and stoke a fire he thought he’d long ago extinguished.

He raised his head, picked up the phone and dialed. After two rings Wesley answered.

“She’s not here, Zach. Want to leave a message?”

“Does she have her mobile on her? Do you know where she is?”

“She’s in your office, Zach.”

Zach looked up and found Nora standing in his office doorway. She knocked twice on the open door and waited.

“Never mind, Wesley. She’s here.” Zach hung up. “How are you, Nora?”

“We need to talk about the blow job.”

Zach stood up and rushed around his desk. He pulled her inside the office and shut the door behind her.

“The blow job scene in my book.” She raised her voice as Zach sat at his desk again.

“You will be the death of me. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m here to discuss my book with my editor. I still have an editor, don’t I?”

“Of course. I’ve been busy this week.”

“Busy ignoring me.”

“I have responded to everything you’ve sent me.”

“Yes, with notes and polite suggestions. I don’t need polite suggestions. Polite doesn’t help me. How do I know what I’m doing right if you aren’t telling me what I’m doing wrong? I need you to be angry again, not polite. I think I liked it better when you hated me.”

“I never hated you.” Zach forced himself to meet her eyes. He took a deep breath and sat up straighter in his chair. “I never hated you or the book. It’s only…about Saturday night—”

Nora opened her mouth and he raised his hand.

“About Saturday night,” he began again. “I need to apologize.”

Nora looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. “Zach—”

“Please, let me finish. I’m terribly sorry about what happened. I had too much to drink, and I was still reeling from Grace’s last email. That’s no excuse, I realize. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you in your condition. It was foolish and reckless and I—”

“Zach, seriously. You have to stop,” Nora said and laughed.

Zach stared at her. She shook her head.

“You know why I’m here? I came to apologize to you,” she said.

“Whatever for?”

“I thought I was here to apologize to you for taking advantage of you in your condition, but apparently I’m the victim here. Novel sensation for me, being the victim. Not sure I like it.”

“Nora, I’m your editor.”

“Yes, my gorgeous editor with his poshy British accent and his ice-colored eyes and tennis player arms with the veins running from the wrist to the elbow. Oh, no, please don’t ever force me to go down on you again, Mr. Easton. It’s a fate worse than death.”

“This isn’t a bloody joke.”

“No, it’s not a joke. It’s a blow job.”

“Will you please stop saying that?”

“Fine. I fellated you, sucked you off, gave you an Oscar Wilde. But call it what you will, Zach, I handcuffed you to my desk and blew you back to England. And for some reason you aren’t thrilled that happened. It’s a bit of a, forgive me, blow to the ego, but I’ll survive. What I want to know is why you’re taking it so personally.”

Zach sat back in his chair and counted the days until he was on a plane to California. If he were on a plane to California right now, a plane to anywhere, he wouldn’t be having the most humiliating conversation of his life.

“I take it personally because that night was the first night I’d been intimate with any woman other than my wife in over ten years. That may seem rather bourgeois to you, but I’m afraid I’m terribly bourgeois when it comes to matters of infidelity—”

“She’s moved on.”

Zach ignored the comment.

“Not to mention taking advantage of a woman I have some modicum of power over.”

“Power? You think you have power over me? You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you had power over me. You are helping me make my book publishable. You work for me as much as I work for you.”

“I have the power to decide if your book gets published. I alone have the final say.”

Nora stood up and walked around the desk. She sat on the top and crossed her legs. Her knees and thighs were at Zach’s eye level. Zach refused to look at her legs, her sheer stockings and short red skirt and the boots that went up to her knees. He met her eyes and waited.

“If I gagged you right now and put you flat on your back and fucked you seven ways till Sunday right here on this fine mahogany desk…would you sign my contract?” she asked.

“Absolutely not. And that’s not going to happen.” Zach forced back the flood of images her words conjured in his mind.

Nora slid off the desk and onto her knees next to his chair.

“What if I just gave you my best Oscar Wilde again every day for the next three weeks? Would you sign my contract then?”

“Nora, you can’t buy your contract with sexual favors.” Zach reached down and pulled Nora up off the floor. “I told you I wouldn’t sign it until I’d read the very last page and I meant it.”

“I know you meant it. That’s my point. I probably could buy off a lesser man with sex, a lesser editor. But you and I both know that even if we’d had sex ten times Saturday night, you still wouldn’t sign my contract until the book was perfect. You might think less of me, or yourself more likely, but you’d read the book with the same eyes that see every flaw and the same mind that knows how to fix it. You’re just afraid to be mean to my face because you think I’ll think it was about Saturday night. Be as mean to me as you want, Zach. Trust me.” She leaned forward and met him eye to eye. “I like mean.”

Zach looked into her eyes and saw they burned black as night. In them writhed the shades and shadows of the things she’d seen and done; things that he couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine.

Nodding, Zach glanced away.

“Very well. I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you this week.” He stood up. “You’ll have my snide, churlish, cantankerous and bitter best from now on,” he pledged.

“God, I love a man with a big vocabulary.” Nora wrapped her arms around his neck. Despite how much he wanted to leave them there, Zach took her arms and pulled them off him.

“But this can’t happen,” he said. “Saturday night can’t happen again.”

“It can, and will in a few days. Saturday night happens at least once a week.”

“No more jokes. You know what I mean.”

“And you know I’m right. We could fuck all we wanted—”

“Perhaps I don’t want to.”

Nora took a step back and Zach cursed himself for his inability to say what he meant without hurting her.

“Zach, you had how many shots Saturday night, and I was still able to get you off with, let’s be honest, minimal effort on my part? Don’t pretend you aren’t attracted to me.”

“Attracted or not, we can’t sleep together. And not just because of the book.”

Nora moved closer. She seemed to be studying him.

“You act like you’re afraid of me, Zach. But you’re not afraid of me at all, are you?”

“I’m terrified of you.”

“No, you’re not. I know guys like you. You worship women, put them on pedestals, think they’re fragile and perfect. That’s why even though it was you on your back in the handcuffs Saturday night, you’re the one doing the apologizing. Zach…you’re afraid of yourself.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. I’ve never known a grown man to be so afraid of his own desires. What happened to you? What did you do that’s made you so afraid to let go?”

“This meeting is over.”

“Tell me. Whatever it is, I promise I’ve done worse.”

“Believe me, Nora, you’ve never done this.”

“It was Grace, wasn’t it? What did you do to her?”

Nora’s words pummeled into him but he couldn’t tell her to stop. He knew whatever pain she inflicted he deserved.

“Please,” he whispered.

“You know how to beg. That’s a good start.”

“No more games, either. I’m not like you.”

“We’re more alike than you want to admit.”

“I’m not—” he paused and looked for the right word “—free like you.”

“You could be.” She took another step closer. “I can show you if you’ll let me. The world I live in, you’ve never seen such freedom. Freedom like you can’t even begin to imagine. Try, Zach.”

“I can’t.” The sadness settled over him again.

“Come with me,” Nora said. Zach felt himself falling under the spell her words were weaving. “Let me show you what life is like lived in the moment. No past, no future, just the one perfect moment you’re standing in and there’s no guilt and there’s no shame and there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of…”

Zach closed his eyes and tried to imagine her world. But once his eyes closed he could see only darkness and he could smell only the copper of fresh fallen blood.

“I’m sorry.”

Nora was still looking at him when he opened his eyes.

“Fuck your sorry,” she said with angry eyes and turned on her heel. “I’ve got a book to write.”

16

Three weeks left…

“Why do you stay with me?” William asked. With his fingertip, he traced the outline of a welt that ran shoulder to shoulder across her back.

Caroline turned over in bed to face him. “Because of the Wives of Weinsburg,” she said as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the ladies of which you speak.” William ran his hand over her hip and she shivered at the sensation. For all the pain he inflicted on her, he resolved every day to inflict equal pleasure.

“They may only be a legend. I like to think they were real. Once the city of Weinsburg in Germany was under siege. The enemy emperor was dangerous but not unmerciful. When it became inevitable that the city would fall, the men of Weinsberg pleaded for their women, that they be allowed to flee with their lives. The emperor relented and allowed the women to leave the city with only the valuables they could carry on their backs. The day came and the gates of the city opened and the emperor watched in shock as the women stumbled through the gates nearly breaking under the weight of their husbands and fathers who they carried on their backs. Their love humbled the emperor and he declared all would be spared.”

“For these women who may or may not exist you stay with me?” he asked, laughing at her as usual.

Caroline reached out to touch his face but pulled her hand back. He’d taught her so well not to touch him without permission. There were moments he regretted how well he’d trained her.

“Every day you battle an enemy I cannot fight with you or for you. But if there is ever a chance for a reprieve, then I will bear you across the world on my back to see you finally at peace.”

William smiled at the twenty-year-old child who loved him more than he could or would ever deserve.

“But what if the enemy you think I fight isn’t the enemy at all?” he asked, reaching out to take her face in his hand. He forced her to meet his gaze and for a moment he let his eyes fill with all his darkest desires. “What if this enemy is only me?”

Caroline didn’t flinch at what she saw. He had taught her that, as well.

“Then I will save you from yourself.”

Poor Wesley, Zach thought. Did that poor smitten lad have any idea that he was the inspiration for Nora’s latest hopeless, love-struck heroine? Did Nora even know it herself? I will save you from yourself…he could hear Wesley saying those very words to Nora. He hadn’t learned yet you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.

Zach wanted to be saved. He tried to conjure the image of Grace, six inches shorter than he and light as a sparrow, trying to lift and carry him on her back. She’d had the chance to save him once. That day he told her about the job at Royal House, that he would be moving to the States, she could have saved him with a sentence—“I’ll go with you.” She could have saved him with a word—“Don’t.”

Zach opened his email. Nora—you cut half this chapter or I’ll cut half this chapter. Either way half of it is getting cut.

He hit Send without remorse. Nora truly worked better when he was at his most brutally honest with her. He didn’t have to couch a criticism inside a compliment. She didn’t want compliments. She wanted her book to be better.

Zach closed his laptop. Stretching out on his sofa he stared around his flat. Grace would be horrified by its austerity. If she ever saw it she would tease him that minimalist was not a synonym for empty. But when he’d come to New York he knew it was temporary. He’d have about eight months at the East Coast offices until the current chief editor in L.A. finished off the last of her projects and then he was off to yet another city. He saw no reason to have anything but the bare minimum—a sofa, a bed, a television that he only ever tuned to the occasional Everton football match, and a landline phone sitting on the floor. Why even bother with an end table for the living room? Just one more damn thing to pack.

He picked up his lager and took a drink. Only seven o’clock on a Monday evening and he already felt so exhausted he considered just calling it a night. Only his masculine pride kept him from going to bed at such a geriatric hour. Even his sixty-six-year-old widowed father never went to bed before eight.

Thoughts of his father stirred a fearful thought—Nora’s pills in the medicine cabinet. He still couldn’t believe that she was as ill as the bottle portended. Perhaps it was only a mild condition, an arrhythmia or something innocuous and treatable. He tried to talk himself out of his fear but couldn’t quite rationalize it away.

Zach picked up a handful of Nora’s pages and skimmed the lines. Why do you stay with me? He had never spoken those words to Grace, though they echoed in his head almost every day of their marriage. Their marriage had begun in terror and shame and then in time changed into something he didn’t want to live without. Zach knew why he stayed. But why had she?

Standing, Zach rubbed his neck and tried to think of something or someone else for a few minutes. But his only other thoughts were of Nora and that was an even more dangerous rabbit hole. Nora… It had been over a week since their drunken night of idiocy. He remembered how her mouth felt on his skin, how foreign it felt to be touched by a woman’s hands again, how strange it was to be awake and conscious and thinking of something other than losing Grace, not thinking about anything at all except that whatever Nora was doing he would be content to let her keep doing until the day he died. Only afterward did the guilt set in—the guilt that for a few minutes he let himself stop feeling guilty.

Zach performed a quick mental calculation. Seven o’clock in New York equaled midnight in London. He knew Grace would still be up. A night owl in the worst way, she took long naps after coming home from school and then stayed up far too late reading.

He picked up his phone and dialed. It rang once and no one answered. A second ring and still no answer. Zach’s heart dropped with every unanswered ring. Between the seventh and the eighth ring Zach whispered, “I miss you, Gracie,” and hung up the phone. On the floor next to the phone Zach sat with his head in his hands. Midnight and she wasn’t home. A school night and she wasn’t…

For a horrible second an image of her with another man tore through his mind. But he knew he couldn’t be angry or jealous. After that night with Nora, he’d lost all right to be hurt.

Nora…he remembered what she’d offered him when she’d come to his office last Thursday…a chance to see the world she lived in, to see what it was like to live free of guilt or restraint. He envied Nora her freedom. He wondered if her mysterious former lover, Søren, was the source of her vivacity. Nora said the first day they worked on her book together that Søren had owned her. He couldn’t even imagine what that meant, what such a relationship would be like. But perhaps only someone who had been a slave could truly appreciate the worth of freedom.

Let me show you what life is like lived in the moment. No past, no future…no guilt…no shame…nothing to be afraid of…

No guilt, no shame, no fear—he’d forgotten what it felt like to live without his three most constant and cruel companions. Could Nora really do that for him? Even just a few minutes of freedom seemed worth any price he had to pay.

Zach looked down at the useless phone and his empty flat and made a quick decision. He stood up and grabbed his coat. He fled his building in one minute and hopped on the train in ten more. He wouldn’t turn into his father, he told himself. Not tonight.

* * *

On their third morning together, she woke up in his bed and found it empty. Slowly, she sat up, careful of her bruised and aching body. Last night had been the roughest yet, and she smiled at the memory of the sensual crimes he committed against her flesh. He’d spent two years mentally preparing her for what he would demand of her once they finally consummated their relationship. Although she’d known what was coming, had even watched him with others, she hadn’t truly known how much it would hurt until the first blows landed on her virgin back their first night together as lovers. Waking up the next morning with welts on her body and blood on her thighs and his sheets, her first thought was not of regret or fear, but that it had all been worth it—the wait, the pain, the sacrifice that now felt like no sacrifice at all. She belonged to him and always would. He’d said those words to her but now she felt them singing in her skin. The collar he’d locked around her neck now encircled her heart. She raised a hand to her neck and found it bare. He’d taken off her collar in her sleep. Knowing he did not expect total submission from her right now, she rose from the bed and followed the sound of running water to the bathroom. She found him in the shower and without asking permission joined him under the steaming water. He was not angry. She knew he wouldn’t be. Everyone she knew was intimidated by him—by his intelligence, by his imposing height and strength, by his ethereal beauty—but she knew him as a man of flesh and earthy desire who loved her beyond comprehension. She knew his kindness, his generosity, and although he could make the surface of her body ripple with fear when as he locked her in her bonds at night, underneath that fear moved deep ocean currents of trust. For five years he’d been teaching her how to trust him. And as he bent his head to kiss her, she laughed into his mouth, proud of how well she’d learned the lesson.