Monarch

21. Elena

21

ELENA

T he tension is thick as Lorne marches me down to the restaurant. I’m wearing flat shoes and my dowdiest dress. Atlas will have no temptation to look at me, and neither will my fiancé. I’d like to shrink down and disappear, actually.

Lorne hasn’t said anything yet other than that one text message . But I know he’s pissed about what happened at dinner last night. A reckoning is coming. Probably in about two and a half minutes when we’re alone with a pair of dinner menus.

What was Ivy trying to say to me? It must have been important. She seemed upset.

As we enter the restaurant, I keep my eyes carefully fixed on the carpet. I still know Atlas is there because Lorne hisses, “ Is he ever not lurking around?” and steers me ruthlessly toward the closest table, his fingers biting into my upper arm.

Lorne is furious, but my heart thrills. I’m happy that Atlas is here. Even if it makes everything worse.

As soon as we’re sitting down, Lorne demands, “Where were you all day?” He hasn’t even spared a glance for poor Olivia pouting over by the bar. All his aggressive, suspicious attention is focused on lucky ol’ me. “I came looking for you earlier. You weren’t in your room.”

Carefully, I say, “I was taking photographs.”

“In the garden?”

“I walked down to the town square.”

“What do you take pictures of?”

“Things that interest me. Things that don’t make sense.”

“Things that don’t make sense?” Lorne frowns but doesn’t wait for clarification. “Show me. I want to see your pictures.”

He snaps his fingers like he expects me to have some on hand right now.

“I’d have to develop the film.”

Each of my heartbeats throbs like a warning: keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth shut…

Lorne can’t know about the darkroom. He won’t like it. He won’t let me go down there.

I need to go down there. I need to develop my pictures. It was such a relief to see all the snaps I’ve taken of the garden, of Grimstone, of Ivy, of the hotel, all fixed in ink at last, the memories resolved like the last few bars of harmony.

And of course…that photograph of Atlas.

I already want to sneak downstairs to look at it again. To relive how it felt to turn and see him there, wind blowing his hair and the tails of his long black coat, dark eyes glittering in his broken boxer’s face, huge hands hanging by his sides…

Those hands were my first introduction to Atlas: one wrapping around my entire forearm, the other encircling my waist.

That’s what I dream about, over and over, alone in my hotel room in the dead of night. I dream of a pair of huge and powerful hands slipping under the covers, finding me and touching me in the dark. I lie in my hotel bed, thighs squeezing together, a burning feeling building low in my belly, a mounting sensation of heat and panic that builds and builds but never quite tips over the edge…

It’s driving me mad.

But I can’t kiss Atlas again.

That last kiss was a thank you. A goodbye. Atlas knows that. We both know that.

“I’ll get you a proper camera,” Lorne says. “You can download the pictures on your laptop.”

I don’t want that at all. I like what I’ve got. But Lorne’s gifts are not a suggestion.

“Thank you,” I say as sincerely as possible. “But I prefer film.”

“That’s stupid. Nobody uses film anymore.”

My eyes flash up at Lorne. “I like it.”

I didn’t mean to snap at him. But it’s starting to piss me off how he shits on the things I like.

I told him what that camera means to me. That it belonged to my dad.

Atlas understands how important it is to me. He even seemed to intuit the most crucial part of all that I can never explain to anyone…that taking the photographs is only the first step. The memory isn’t made real, isn’t fixed as a single image in my mind, until I see it there on the page in all its moody light and shadow.

Lorne catches the heat in my look, the annoyance I let slip.

When I’m with Atlas, moods pass between us as easily as smiles. We’re like two skiers carving the same mountain, swooping together and apart, symmetry in our lines.

Lorne is like a chemistry set of unknown ingredients. I never know what my reaction will cause in him.

Tonight, my irritation snaps him to attention. It makes him sit up a little straighter in his chair, his bloodshot eyes narrowing as he takes a closer look at me.

“You’re flushed,” he observes.

I sit still in my chair, trying to breathe at a normal pace, feeling like all my sins are written in ink across my face.

He doesn’t know anything. He’s just trying to make you nervous.

Lorne scoots his chair closer.

Across the restaurant, Atlas prowls the far wall. He’s watching me and watching Lorne. When our eyes meet, I shake my head a tiny fraction. I do not want a repeat of last night.

Lorne lifts my hair away from the side of my neck. My throat, my bare shoulder, that whole side of my body closest to him feel horribly exposed.

He tilts his head, leans in, and inhales, his nose and lips millimeters from my neck. I feel the air sucking away, the heat lifting off my skin. And I’m cold, cold, cold.

But I hold still and pretend nothing is happening, while my heart beats so hard I’m afraid it will explode.

Lorne hisses in my ear, “ Did you have an orgasm today?”

“No,” I whisper.

Just the best kiss of my life…

I close my eyes so I won’t look at Atlas. And so I don’t have to look at Lorne.

Lorne inhales again, this time with his nose pressed against the side of my neck, holding me steady by a handful of my hair.

“You smell like you did.”

My scalp is burning. I can’t look at Atlas, but I know he’s a ticking time bomb over there.

Beneath the table, Lorne’s hand fastens on my thigh like a clamp. He types all day long—eight thousand words a day sometimes, he told me. His fingers are strong and vicious, biting into my flesh in the most tender places, making me want to beg, to submit.

Can Atlas see what Lorne is doing under the table? He’s going to figure it out. I’m dreading another conflict, terrified of how it might escalate, but some desperate part of me wants Atlas to see, wants him to know. Wants him to save me.

But Atlas can’t save me. No one can.

Because I already bound myself to someone else. His ring is on my finger. His name is on my visa. And his cold, cruel hand is climbing higher on my thigh like an intrusive spider, pinching as it goes, leaving a trail of bruises…

Lorne knows I’m trapped.

Atlas is watching us. He’s not even pretending to work anymore. Lorne can see him watching. But his hand moves higher anyway, beneath the table, concealed by the gloom of the candlelight, pinching, biting…

Lorne is testing me and testing Atlas. Seeing if I’ll beg for help, verbally or silently. Goading Atlas to further violence.

Atlas has the barely restrained look of someone whose patience is wearing thin. There’s something strangely frozen in our three positions—Atlas seeming half-stuck to the wall as if he’ll tear away at any moment, me barely breathing, Lorne with his hands on my body…

Lorne dances a maddening line, dragging his fingers tauntingly across my collarbone while his other hand pinches beneath the table so hard that tears fill my eyes.

But I don’t move. I don’t cry out. I really have become frozen, trapped in some kind of waking sleep paralysis, eyes open but completely unable to move.

Lorne’s fingers fumble at the edge of my underwear. “I can check, you know,” he hisses in my ear. “I’ll know the truth soon enough.”

I flush from my scalp to my toes, an instant guilty red.

I haven’t had sex with Atlas.

But I did kiss him an hour ago. And I’m pretty sure if Lorne touches me, he’s going to find me ten times wetter than I’ve ever been when he’s touched me before.

Low and quiet, I mutter, “You’re going to get us thrown out of the hotel.”

That’s the right way to phrase it…like the two of us are a team. Like I’m also the one pulling my hair out by the roots right now and putting my hand in someone’s underwear beneath the table.

Lorne relaxes his grip. His hand leaves my lap, and he sits back in his chair.

The candlelight in the Reinstoff is gentle. Lorne looks young and handsome in his white dress shirt. You can’t see the lines on his face, which are also hidden when his hair is messy or he wears those black frame glasses. Sometimes, Lorne can almost look like a kid. I might have thought he was a college student back in Lviv. But when we filled out the immigration paperwork, I learned that he’s actually forty-four.

In this moment, he could be the moody, artistic member of a boy band. That’s how he’s dressed, lean and chiseled in the loose white shirt, his hair growing long and shaggy, a crucifix necklace dangling from a silver chain around his neck. Though Lorne told me he’s not religious.

When he smiles at me, it’s a charming smile. Perfectly symmetrical with lovely white teeth. But when I look at his face, really look at it, the whole face, not just that dazzling white smile…it doesn’t look so nice around the eyes. There…it’s just a little bit strange.

My heart goes cold, and I begin to wonder…is everything a costume to Lorne? A role he plays?

I’ve noticed his exaggerations, the things that don’t quite line up. But as I search for what’s real, for the genuine core of his identity, all I seem to find is a deep black hole.

Lorne has always been hard to fix in my mind. I can never quite seem to visualize his face. It’s always flickering, changing.

When I picture Atlas, he’s scowling. Because Atlas is consistent. He’s intense and suspicious, aggressive and protective—with me, his employees, his brother, and the guests at his hotel. You know what you’re going to get.

As I look at Lorne’s face, at the smile I don’t quite trust, I realize…I have no idea what’s about to happen. My fiancé is a stranger to me. I have no clue what to expect.

And I’m beginning to believe that is highly intentional.

“I’m concerned, Elena.” Lorne is still smiling. He doesn’t look worried. But he doesn’t look friendly, either.

“Why are you concerned?” Playing dumb sounds easy, but it isn’t. Not if you actually need to be convincing.

Lorne is not convinced. He’s not smiling anymore, either. He stares me down coldly, his blue eyes flat as glass.

We’re in a crowded restaurant. Atlas is twenty feet away. But dread spreads like frost across my skin.

“I’m not sure you’re properly committed,” Lorne says softly, “to making yourself a good wife for me.”

“Is there…something I’m not doing?”

Never mind what I am doing…sneaking away to kiss Atlas.

But Lorne doesn’t mention Atlas. His eyes narrow, and his upper lip thins and curls, exposing those perfect white teeth. “How about the fact that you haven’t learned how to have a fucking orgasm yet?” he hisses. “What’s wrong, Elena…aren’t you attracted to me?”

“Of course I am.” Or at least, I was…

“Then it should be easy.”

But it isn’t. Not even close.

“I’m sorry.” My face is burning, my eyes smarting. “I’m trying.”

Lorne’s lips lose all their color when they’re pursed or twisted, going pale as drowned worms. The thought of kissing those lips, of letting them touch my body, makes me feel sweaty and sick.

Lorne can feel it. He can feel me pulling back, drawing into myself, and he leans closer, hand on my wrist, demanding that warmth, that adoration, that energy he feeds on when Olivia simpers over him.

“What is it, then, Elena?” he hisses, fingers digging into my wrist. “What’s the problem?”

“I’ve never had one. I told you. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Do you need me to teach you?”

“No!” The horror that shoots through me cannot be examined. “I’m practicing. I’m close.”

“Good,” Lorne says coldly, letting go of my wrist. “Why don’t you go practice right now?”

I stare at him.

“But…our dinner hasn’t come yet.”

We haven’t even ordered. The waitress is still getting our drinks.

And I’m really hungry. I have to wait until Lorne is done working to eat dinner. Sometimes he doesn’t finish until nine thirty at night when he’s “on a roll.” He doesn’t apologize, either. It’s a “good thing for the book,” so I’m supposed to act excited while my stomach is growling.

Lorne got mad the time he saw that I’d opened a bag of chips from the hotel minibar. He pouted and said, “I want you to eat with me.”

So I’m basically starving at the moment. I haven’t eaten since noon, and I do not want to go back up to my room to practice . I want to order a fourteen-ounce steak.

Lorne waits like he expects me to get up from the table this instant.

I slowly stand, staring at him, almost hoping he’ll say, “ don’t be silly, sit back down. ”

But all Lorne says is, “Don’t leave your room until you’re successful.”

His eyes are two ice chips in an otherwise handsome face.

Or at least, I used to think it was handsome.

Now, I can hardly remember when I thought this man was good-looking. This man who is very clearly threatening me.

I lick my lips. “What happens if I can’t?”

Coldly, flatly, without a hint of a smile, Lorne says, “Do you want to find out?”

I don’t even try to swallow the lump in my throat. I let my voice come out in a scared little squeak.

“No, Lorne. I don’t.”