Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Bianca

We didn’t speak for two weeks.

I couldn’t even blame it entirely on Tiernan, because I was avoiding him just as assiduously as he seemed to be avoiding me.

Fourteen days and I still didn’t know what to make of the incident in Tiernan’s office.

I wasn’t so much shocked by my reaction to his domineering manner as I was by the extent of my longing for it to happen again. I’d always harbored dark, wicked thoughts. Always dreamed of being bent and twisted like origami into the shapes of a man’s choosing. It shamed me, because I was a smart, independent, young woman with a spine and a healthy dose of self-respect. What kind of woman loved being throat-fucked until her voice was ragged for days? What kind of woman loved to be used like a wet hole for a thick, gorgeous dick? What kind of woman thought being called “a good little thing” was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard?

Me, I guess.

There was no getting around it.

My nipples hardened into jeweled peaks every time I remembered being filled up, clutched tight, and fucked in the face. It was hard to understand that my deviancy could exist separately from my identity, but I forced myself to carefully detach the two, like stuck pages in a magazine.

I did research on it, found out it was called pain play, rough sex, Domination and submission.

I found examples of deviancy in art, because that was a medium I always turned to for solace and for understanding. I found a Rembrandt sketch of a monk breaking his vows with another man in a field of corn. My favorite artist, Pablo Picasso, had a rather astonishing collection of erotic art, including La Doleur, a painting depicting a woman shamelessly fellating a man in the same manner I had sucked off Tiernan. Artists from Michelangelo to Cezanne and Correggio who had painted scenes of the beautiful mortal, Leda, seduced or raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. The same Japanese artist known for the famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa created an erotic tangling of a nude female and a massive sea monster.

It proved to me that humanity had always been transfixed by the sharper edges and darker corners of sexuality. It soothed me to know that if I was a deviant, so were many of the brilliant artists I’d idolized since my youth.

My sexual predilections were mollified, but not the painful, unreliable stirrings of my heart.

I couldn’t research how I felt about Tiernan because I didn’t know how to put it into words.

I was, in a sense, captivated by him. In the way a child was afraid of the monsters under his bed yet refused to look beneath it, to banish them in the light forevermore. Some part of me liked that I didn’t understand him, that he could be cruel and heartless, then unquestionably, erratically kind.

Case in point, the day after he fucked my throat raw and told me I was a better whore than my mother, he took Brando to an appointment with the top neurological surgeon in New York City. They had him on a new regime of drugs meant to help with the increasing frequency of his seizures. They also had him booked in for laser interstitial thermal therapy in January when he was off school for winter break.

I’d locked myself in a bathroom stall at Sacred Heart Academy in the middle of my fourth-period math class to cry when Brando had called from Tiernan’s phone to tell me the news.

And then today, when I’d returned home from school exhausted from a chemistry exam I’d stayed up the entire night prior to study for because I needed perfect scores in the subject to go on to university for art conservatism, he’d rocked me again.

I’d stared at the lion’s head door knocker for a long moment while I gathered my composure in case I saw Tiernan and was forced to interact with him before I pushed into the house.

Chaos met me.

The house rang like a cacophony of bells with child and adult laughter and a distinct noise that was unmistakably canine.

A deep, alerting bark.

I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the dark of the entrance hall, then gaped as clamor sounded in the hall leading back to the kitchen and seconds later a streak of grey shot into the hall between the legs of a suit of armor.

It came bounding toward me on legs capped with white feet, its compact body shaking with the force of its wagging tail.

The dog didn’t slow down as it reached me, barreling into my legs, then weaving around them like a herding sheepdog.

“What the hell?” I asked before I could curb my language because I noticed Brando had come into the hall after it, followed shortly after by Walcott and Ezra.

“Anca! He heard you at the door and he got so excited,” Brando cried, laughing with pure joy as he sprinted across the hall to my side, then sunk to his knees.

The dog abandoned me immediately, jumping up to place his paws on Brando’s shoulders so he could lick at his face. My little brother giggled, the sound scouring through me.

Brando had always wanted a dog but we hardly had the money to fend for our family of three as it was, let alone after introducing vet bills and dog paraphernalia.

“Whose dog is this?” I whispered, suddenly as hoarse as I’d been the day after Tiernan fucked my throat.

But I already knew, with sinking clarity, whose dog it was.

“Mine!” Brando cried as the dog pushed him onto his back and peppered his face and hands with doggy kisses. “His name is Picasso, like after your favorite painter. Do you like him?”

He was worried I wouldn’t, knowing I’d spent years telling him that he couldn’t get a dog. Jealousy and resentment warred with gratitude in my chest, a tug-of-war over the swampy ground of my heart.

“He’s beautiful,” I murmured, which was true.

He looked to be a silvery grey pit bull mix of some kind, with big blue eyes and a sloppy grin. He wasn’t nearly tragic enough to be named after Picasso, but I loved that Brando had tried to think of a name I’d like too.

“He’s a trained seizure dog,” Walcott explained as the two gentlemen crossed the hall to our side and Ezra closed the open door behind me. “Ostensibly, he should be able to detect when Brando begins to have an aura and alert us or protect him until someone can get there. Picasso will lie against his body to keep him stable during the seizure or clear the space around him of clutter so he doesn’t harm himself.”

“What?” I whispered, something indistinct clutching my throat.

Walcott’s kind eyes were warm on me as he stepped closer to squeeze my shoulder. “We all saw what happened in the kitchen and none of us want that to happen again. Tiernan started searching out the best training facilities the night after Brando’s episode. When it happened again last week, he paid to bypass the waitlist.” Walcott shrugged as if it was no big deal, as if my heart wasn’t exploding in my chest. “We all have to have training for the next three weeks to make sure we know how to handle Picasso, but after that, he should be able to make a real difference to Brando’s life.”

There was something wrong with my knees. They wobbled like poorly set gelatin. Before I could lock them tight, they collapsed, taking me to the ground. Seconds later, Picasso himself was on me, licking my chin.

“He likes you,” Brando told me proudly, scooting over on his bum so that he could wedge himself between my splayed legs and rest against my chest. He called Picasso to him and the dog happily curled up on his lap with his chops on Brando’s chest, tongue lolling.

“Do you like him, Anca?” he asked again, tipping his head back, then giggling as the dog licked his chin. “Can I keep him? Tiernan told me it’s my late birthday present!”

Emotions clogged my throat in an ugly, swollen mass that made it hard to breathe let alone talk, so I only nodded and kissed the side of my little brother’s curly head.

Ezra caught my eyes and signed slowly because I was still getting the hang of ASL, Tiernan is in his office if you want to speak to him.

He meant if I wanted to say thank you.

I flinched slightly at the mention of his office, the scene of my sexual crimes. Slowly, I shook my head at him and hugged my brother tight before I let go and surged to my feet.

“I’m going to go for a run,” I declared, desperate to get out of the house before I broke down for everyone to hear.

Ezra and Walcott frowned in tandem, the latter saying, “I don’t think Tiernan would like that. He, uh, doesn’t want you gallivanting around Bishop’s Landing. It can be a dangerous place.”

My laugh was hard and hollow. “Bishop’s Landing is the wealthiest strip of land in the country. I doubt I’ll be mugged on the sidewalk, Wally.”

Still, he looked worried. “Let me talk to Tiernan before you leave.”

I shrugged, already jogging up the right curved staircase to my room. I had no intention of waiting for Tiernan to “sanction” my desire to go for a jog. I was seventeen for God’s sake and I’d taken care of a seven-year-old boy for most of my life. I was responsible enough to go for a run and not get myself killed.

I shucked my uniform quickly, trading it for black spandex shorts and a sports bra Tilda had forced me to buy because apparently my ratty old tees weren’t acceptable now that I was a makeshift McTiernan. I grabbed my earbuds from my school bag and raced back through the hall and down the staircase, pushing through the door just as Walcott appeared at the mouth to the other hall, calling after me.

The door slammed shut on my name and I was off like it was the firing shot at the starting line.

I realized as I sprinted through the small pedestrian gate in the massive walls guarding Lion Court that I hadn’t yet explored the perfectly landscaped scope of Bishop’s Landing beyond Tiernan’s gothic manor. I took a left out of the gates and started down the road along the curve of the ocean, passing massive lots filled with expensive homes, manicured lawns, tennis courts and heated pools wafting hot mist into the cool evening.

Music pumped through my earbuds, the echoing melancholic strains of Imogen Heap filling my ears as the sentiment echoed through my heart. I was running away from Tiernan, from the calamity of emotions he beat out of my chest with each passing day. I’d spent the last few weeks wondering why a cruel man like Tiernan would take in two orphans and I knew it wasn’t simply out of the ‘goodness of his heart.’ He was guarded and rude, clearly out to get something from Brando and me, maybe something to do with Aida, but more likely, something to do with my father.

Only, Lane hadn’t left us anything to find.

No money, no assets, no last letter filled with love.

Only a locket he’d given me that Tiernan had stolen and a brother I’d love and protect until the end of time.

I pushed myself harder, sweat beading across my forehead, chest heaving.

Tiernan was our guardian because he’d chosen to be, for whatever reasons, though I doubted it was because he couldn’t stand to see Aida’s children left out in the cold. It was more obvious now than it ever had been before that he’d never loved my mother. It panged in me that I’d loved her for being my mom, but that the loss of her didn’t echo painfully through the days of my life. She’d already been gone more often than not when she was alive, barely contributing to our family life unless she had just broken up with a boyfriend or felt unusually tender toward us.

Still, I’d hooked up with my mom’s ex-boyfriend.

Shame snapped at my heels like a rabid dog.

Which reminded me of Picasso, making Brando laugh back at Lion Court. Making him safe because Tiernan had gone out and blown a wad of money on the best service dog he could find.

So, not heartless, at least, not enough to write him off entirely which was dangerous.

Not for my safety, per se, but my heart.

Which clanged as I ran too hard, Tiernan’s name a question called out with each beat.

Who was he?

Monster or man?

Could he be both?

Could I be drawn to both sides of him, the dark and light with little space in between? He wasn’t so much a spectrum as two sides of a coin pressed back-to-back, one or the other. It was a coin toss every day, each moment, to see which side he’d land on.

But I could admit that I liked the risk.

The meanness stirred my blood and made it heat.

The kindness…well, the kindness blew the walls around my heart to smithereens.

It was utterly wrong to want him the way I did. He was my guardian, my mother’s ex-boyfriend, twelve and a half years older than my seventeen. Taboo didn’t even begin to cover our relationship.

It didn’t matter.

Now that I’d had a bite, I couldn’t seem to forget the taste of that forbidden fruit.

I was so mired in my thoughts, Tiernan’s scarred face and sun-bleached jade eyes in the forefront of my mind, that I didn’t notice the car pulling into a palatial driveaway until it was too late.

The impact wasn’t as terrible as it could have been, the car crawling forward as the gates yawned open, but it was enough to send my body rolling up the hood of the car to crash hard against the windshield.

My breath exploded from between my lips, lungs clenched so tightly no oxygen remained in the tissues. The right side of my body throbbed dully as I lay still, desperately trying to drag in air.

Indistinct noises filled my ears beneath the roar of blood rushing through them and then someone was gently peeling me off the windshield, helping me to sit up on the hood.

“Bianca?” a familiar voice cried out, drawing closer.

The person in front of me, probably the driver, swam in my vision, then was replaced by the newcomer.

“Bianca.” I squeezed my eyes shut, then tried to refocus. Elias’s handsome face rearranged itself like a kaleidoscope in my vision. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Um….” I hummed, trying to take stock of my pounding head and throbbing side. There was nothing too damaging, just a knock that would leave me bruised and a ringing in my brain that was already starting to mellow. “I think so.”

“What the hell were you doing? We could have killed you,” he demanded, squeezing my shoulders like he wanted to shake me.

“Out for a run,” I mumbled, blinking slowly as I checked in with my body. “I needed some air.”

“You need more than air,” a cool, elegant voice inserted. “Clearly you don’t have a lick of sense if you go barreling around the streets without looking where you are going. It would have served you right if you were more seriously injured.” Then a pause. “Though it would have been inconvenient to get the car detailed if you bled all over it.”

“Aunt Caroline, what the hell?” Elias almost growled, stepping slightly to my side as if to block me from the woman.

Everything in me halted.

Breath, pain, heartbeat.

Caroline.

Caroline Constantine?

I turned my head slowly, almost scared to finally land eyes on the woman my father had married, the woman he wouldn’t leave for my mother no matter how much he claimed to love Aida.

What breath I’d collected into my ravaged lungs leaked out my mouth like a puncture wound when my gaze met the glacial blues eyes of the Constantine matriarch.

She was, in short, utterly exquisite.

Her pale blonde hair was collected into a chic chignon at the back of her neck, not a lock out of place, showcasing a high, elegant forehead hardly creased despite her middle age. I knew with the trained eye of an art lover that her features, classically beautiful, were perfectly symmetrical on an oval face that could have been staring out at me from a Rembrandt or Da Vinci painting. Dressed in an ivory suit that brought out the pale shade of blue in her gaze, she looked every inch the Queen of Bishop’s Landing.

I was so in awe of her grace that it took me a moment to see the faint sneer tucked in her cold expression, eyes slightly narrowed, mouth pressed into a tight line but curled disdainfully at the edges.

She thought I was beneath her, hardly worthy of notice unless it was to call out my stupidity.

Embarrassment flamed through me.

It might have been odd, wanting to make a good first impression on the woman who had monopolized my father’s time, my mother’s rival, but I did. Lane had always spoken highly of his wife when I pressed for information about her, especially about how she had been back in the days when they’d first met and fallen in love.

She brought me peace, then, too, he’d said wistfully, holding me close. I think she became so obsessed with keeping that peace, she lost sight of what it once meant. Peace isn’t power and prestige. It’s about happiness. About protecting and cherishing our loved ones. Our world.

A shiver rippled through me and I realized I had been quiet too long. Fixing a crooked smile between my cheeks, I extended my hand to Caroline. “Hello, Mrs. Constantine. I’m sorry to have to meet you this way. I’m Bianca, a friend of Elias’ from school.”

Something flickered across the frozen pond of her eyes, then went flat. She looked at Elias with a slightly raised brow that didn’t indent her smooth forehead. She didn’t shake my hand, and finally, I dropped it. “This is the girl you told me about.”

Elias almost winced then nodded.

Caroline fixed me with her thousand-yard stare, eyes moving from my sweat-soaked hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail to the curves of my body tucked away in clinging spandex. She made me feel like the Texas white trash I hadn’t been in months.

“Bianca Belcante,” she confirmed finally.

“Yes, ma’am.”

A tremor whispered over her lips but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or something meaner. “Please, do not call me ‘ma’am.’ I’m hardly ancient enough to warrant such a term, am I?”

Immediately, I shook my head. “No, not at all.”

A whisper of a smile crossed her face, slightly reptilian, like Tiernan’s when he was faking niceties.

“Elias tells me you are staying with the McTiernans.”

“Yes, they were kind enough to take in my brother and me after our mother died,” I explained, dashing at a cold bead of sweat as it rolled down my temple. Elias held my other hand, his thumb grazing my wrist as if to soothe me. It surprised me that it worked.

“You have an accent,” she said, but it was a question without a mark.

“Texan,” I explained, happy it wasn’t stronger because Caroline’s own voice was crisp and clean, a true blue blood American.

“Hey, this healed nicely,” Elias interrupted to note, his thumb touching the edge of my dove tattoo. “Looks good on you.”

Caroline followed his gaze, her nostrils flaring. I worried she didn’t like her nephew hanging around a poor backwoods orphan, but when she looked up at me again, there was a small smile on her face.

“An orphan, poor thing. We must have you over for tea sometime soon. Perhaps I can help you acclimatize to your new surroundings,” she offered magnanimously.

Elias started, brows furrowing as he stared at his aunt, but I beamed back at her. The idea of spending time with her was somehow like getting to spend time with my father. I wanted to learn to be as graceful and elegant as Caroline, a woman my father respected and loved. She had the class and refinery, the keen intelligence that Aida lacked and I was eager to soak it up in any way I could.

“I would love that,” I said honestly.

Elias stepped closer. “Bianca, I—”

“I’ll check my calendar. Elias, why don’t you get back in the car? We’ll be late to dinner if we linger any longer and we have so much to discuss.”

He grimaced, but didn’t move from my side as Caroline took her phone from her Chanel purse.

“I thought you didn’t mix with Caroline and her kids,” I murmured under my breath.

“Not by choice,” he agreed, squeezing my hand in his. “But Caroline feels everyone in the family has to answer to her and I’ve done some things she doesn’t…agree with.”

“Like hanging out with poor orphans?”

His laugh was sharp and hollow. “That’s the least of it, trust me. Don’t worry about me. Worry about why she’s interested in you.”

“Elias, the car,” Caroline interrupted with a perfectly arched brow.

She stared at him without blinking until he reluctantly let go of my hand after giving it another squeeze. When he had truculently slammed the car door behind him, Caroline stepped closer as she reached into her quilted purse and produced a business card. It was typed up on thick, expensive card stock I bet cost more than Aida, Brando, and I had spent on groceries in a month.

“I have an event next week that will keep me rather busy,” she explained as she handed me the card and closed the clasp on her bag with a pop. “After next weekend, my schedule opens up. I would be happy to take you to tea, talk about your plans for the future.”

“Wow,” I said, before I could curb the impulse, blushing badly at my gaucheness. “This is incredibly kind of you.”

Her smile was thin but beautiful. “Yes, well, anything for a…friend of the family.”

Without another word, she stepped away and moved around to the other side of the car. The driver got out to open the door for her, then shot me an apologetic look.

“Sorry about hitting you,” he muttered.

“Sorry about hitting your car,” I quipped, sliding off the hood, then giving it a little pat. “This thing is definitely worth more than I am.”

He made a funny face at me. “If Caroline Constantine just paid you the time of day, I wouldn’t underestimate your worth. At least to her.”

Before I could question his odd statement, he ducked back into the driver’s seat and took off, pulling the car through the gates and up the winding hill to the palatial oceanside mansion beyond.

I blinked at the Constantine Compound, the place my dad had bought and made his palace, a home suffused with his history and memories. I yearned to go inside, to touch the walls and stand in the same places he’d once stood.

Instead, I clutched Caroline’s card in my hand, put my fallen earbuds back in my ears and started a slow walk back to the gloomy, troubled halls of Lion Court.