Chapter Twenty-Four
The sound of blood whooshing in her ears as she crimped the edges of the ravioli focused her, allowing her to ignore Ross’ massive, overwhelming presence in her cramped space. He’d settled himself into one of her two mismatched chairs at the table that held that over-the-top stupid cake. Keeping her back to him, she worked away, more than a little dizzy from all the things she’d said, all the words that had come out of her mouth, including The Monster’s name.
As she set the butter in the cast iron pan, she felt as if she had gotten a bit of her equilibrium back. She turned, and found him sticking one of the cherries in his mouth. “What do you think you’re doing!” She pulled the cake away from him.
Without a word, he snagged another cherry by its stem, wrapped his fingers lightly around her wrist and pulled her to him. He smelled of beer, and a little like leather and outdoors. Like a man should smell—not of silly colognes or perfumes. She wanted to kiss him. But she waited, smiling when he pressed the cherry to her lips. She opened them and ate it, relishing how its tartness was enhanced by the kirsch she’d kept them in for a month. It burst into her mouth, slid down her throat, and filled her entire being in an entirely inappropriate, purely sexual way.
She kept her face close to his, waiting for another of his toe-curling kisses. But he let go and jumped up. “The butter is burning,” he said, taking one short step over to her stove. She put a hand on his arm, loving the play of his muscles under her palm.
“It’s supposed to burn. Sit. Let me handle the cooking. And keep your paws off the gateaux.” She gave him a shove. The kitchen was small enough so that when she moved past him, their bodies brushed. She sensed how he pulled away from her, as if she’d burned him.
Focusing on the pan of browning butter, she let the meal prep distract her as much as she could. She dropped the pasta pouches stuffed with puréed butternut squash, truffles and light spices into the hot pan, moving them around so they cooked evenly.
“Would you mind taking the salad from the cooler?” She pointed to the fridge with her wooden spatula. “It’s already dressed.”
She tossed the ravioli a few more times until the nutty scent of the scorched butter mixed with the pasta into an ideal mix of aromas. She took two warmed plates from the oven and scooped three of the large ravioli out onto each one, sprinkled them with fresh parsley and thyme then reached for the expensive chunk of parmesan.
She smelled him before she felt his body against her back. The combination of leather, grassiness, malt and hops was something she already loved about him. But to feel both his arms around her, his large hand over her small one as she picked up the cheese, to see him take the grater in his other hand and angle it over one of the plates, was almost more than she could take. She leaned into him, letting him cradle her in his arms as they slowly grated slices of Parmesan together on first one, then the other plate of rich ravioli.
“I like a lot of cheese,” he whispered, taking extra time over the second plate, the action more erotic than anything The Monster had convinced her to try. Reluctantly, she set the cheese aside and the grater down.
Instead of stepping back, Ross wrapped his arms tighter around her. He stood in silence for several minutes, resting his chin on her head, and providing the sort of intimate comfort she’d never received from anyone in her entire life. To his credit, Ross didn’t let his hands roam anywhere. He simply held her. A single tear slipped down her face.
“Dinner is getting cold,” she said, wishing he’d never let her go, but knowing he must.
“You’re a convenient hole, my sweet little slut, my darling spinner. He’ll fuck you and run. As he should. Because no one wants you but me. So you deserve to get fucked and left in the gutter.”
Ross hadn’t moved, as if sensing her desire for him to hold her a while longer. She sucked in a shuddery breath. “I hear His voice in my head. He is telling me the things He used to tell me the last years we were…together. In Chicago.”
“What things?” Ross asked, letting go and turning her around to face him. “Look in my eyes, Elisa. You have no reason not to look at me.”
She met his gaze, even though everything in her screamed at her to focus on the floor, lest she get a hard slap across the face. “He was… He is a monster. He did terrible things to me. And I let him.”
“Yes, but at first, he was something else to you, right?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice small, fighting the compulsion to lower her gaze. “He was…my Sir. He was my Dom. I was his submissive. It was…exotic and sexy—or so I thought. I didn’t know any better. He was so much older than me—had so much more experience. He was never really gentle. He liked to…” She gulped and looked down.
Ross let her have a few moments to collect herself, then he lifted her chin. The sight of his bright blue eyes, of those full lips surrounded by the sexy red beard, his square jaw, his broad, strong shoulders made her knees turn to jelly. “He was rough with me from the beginning. But I was dumb. I thought it was how things were supposed to be. I thought the older, handsome, head chef wanting puny little, funny-looking me was worth the pain.”
“Ach,” Ross said, gathering her close again. She fit right against him, her face in line with his chest just below his collarbones, pressed into his pectoral muscles. She was shaking from lust and terror that she’d told him so much. She’d never told anyone all of it. Not even Evelyn, although she had given her the basic outlines.
He let her go rather suddenly, she thought. But he dropped into the kitchen chair and pulled her to him, holding both her hands in his. He pressed his luscious lips to each of her knuckles, then to each of her upturned palms, then her wrists. Elle had never felt the sensation before but was certain that her panties were soaking wet.
She placed her palms on his bearded cheeks. “Let’s eat, Hoffman. I worked hard on this meal. And I think we should talk a bit more before…” She bit her lip when his smile widened in a way that made her entire scalp tingle.
“All right,” he said, grabbing another cherry off the cake. She yelped and smacked his chest, then picked up the plates and took them back to the futon and coffee table.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a proper dinner table.”
“I like this one,” he said, bringing out the other bottle he’d brought, along with the vase of roses.
She went back for the salad plates and utensils, blushing harder when she spotted the cheese and grater. If nothing else ever happened with Ross Hoffman, she would never again feel the same way about such a simple kitchen chore.
She picked up the cloth napkins with the utensils and headed back to the living room. Ross was gazing at her wall of books, pulling one, then another off then sliding them back. “Like the scary books, eh?” He held up the latest, German-translated, Stephen King blood and gore-fest. She shrugged.
“I guess I like to think there are worse things in the world than what happened to me.” She sniffed the open liter of beer, shocked all over again at his prescience with the beers. “Great choice,” she said, pouring them each a portion of mild brown ale.
He shrugged, put the book back and fiddled with her phone. The music changed to piano classics as he sat on the floor in front of his plate. She frowned. “You can sit on the futon,” she said.
“No, this is better.” He grabbed a thin pillow and tossed it to the floor next to him. “Join me.” Before she could protest, he pulled her plate closer, so she was at right angles him instead of at the other end of the table. She sat, noting the way his sharp blue eyes followed her every move, as if he were afraid she might bolt. He picked up his glass. “Prost.” She smiled and clinked and sipped, admiring his brewing artistry.
“Crystal malt,” she said, smacking her lips and holding the light brown liquid up to the candle light.
“You have an excellent palate,” he said, cutting a corner of the ravioli and taking a bite. She observed him, eager and nervous. There was nothing quite like watching people enjoy something you’d made for them, be it food or beer. He closed his eyes, chewed, swallowed and sighed with pleasure. Without a word, he devoured one of the large pasta pouches, then he sipped. “Not hungry?” He pointed to her untouched food.
Startled, she looked down at her plate. “Yes. But I like watching you eat.”
He blushed, which made her almost faint with longing. When he reached over and cut a corner of her pasta and brought it to her lips, she took it from him, chewed and swallowed. “I like watching you, too,” he said, before he repeated the process until one of her ravioli was gone. He sat back against a second-hand armchair, his face gone pensive.
“What?” She covered her lips with one hand, self-conscious and borderline embarrassed by how wonderful she felt, right here, right now, with this man.
“How did you get away from him?” he asked.
She cut a corner of another ravioli on his plate, and held it up until he leaned over and took it off her fork. Then she speared some spinach and a two pomegranate seeds, holding her fork up for him to eat from it. The sheer intimacy of this action made her warm all over. So she let her guard down.
“I tried to escape from Him, from our so-called home, once before but He found me. I hadn’t gotten far enough away fast enough. I paid for that.” She leaned away from him and put her fork down, her eyes moving down on reflex at the frustrated anger on his face.
“Don’t look away from me, Elisa. Please.”
“I’m sorry. It’s ingrained in me.”
“I realize that. I also realize you have to try to fight it and I’m going to help you with that.” He sipped his beer. “Tell me the rest.”
“Why?” she demanded, angry all of a sudden at his incessant nosiness. Why couldn’t they just enjoy this night, their first date, and what would no doubt be a very pleasant time together afterward. “Why do you want know all of this…awful…shit about me?”
He reached over and tucked one of the stray dreadlocks behind her ear, touching her earlobe and her jaw before he settled himself once more. “It’s not shit, Elisa. Stop thinking that.”
She sighed and averted her gaze again, biting her lip. “About seven months after…that first time, I was able to drug Him. I used some pills I’d been hoarding a while, dumped them into His nightly triple pour of Scotch. I’d spied on Him using the safe in his office enough times I thought I knew the combo and thank heaven I did so I was able to get my passport and some money. That’s all, though. Everything else I had I left behind. Not that I would want any of it. It was all of the things I associated with Him. With The Monster.”
“What made you run the first time?” His voice was tight. She glared at him.
“I was pregnant,” she said. “And I wanted the baby. I knew he didn’t. That he’d make me have an abortion. That was the only reason. To protect my baby.”
His brow furrowed. She reached out and touched the stubborn line, smoothing it off his face. “Don’t, Hoffman. Please,” she said. “It’s over.”
He gripped both her wrists, sending a bolt of alarm up her spine. Her flight instinct kicked in, making her struggle against him. He let go immediately. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I shouldn’t have…” He ran a shaking hand through his hair.
She sat back, rubbing one wrist, then the other, her rage growing into something she couldn’t control. “You want to know it all? Really? All of it? Fine.” She stood and yanked her dress up over her head. Ross sucked in a breath. “This,” she said, pointing to a long scar from her left hip to her lower right rib. “This is where He cut me with a blade, punishing me just enough, just deep enough to scare me and make me bleed. This is where He almost bit my god damned nipple off.” She held a hand under her right breast, letting him see the full mangled glory of the body that she no longer believed was hers.
She lifted her chin and put her hand to her neck. “I got this collar in Paris, before we moved to the US, before He turned on me. But this,” she turned so he could see her backside, pointing to her left cheek. “This is what He gave me after the first time I ran, after I told him I was pregnant.” She could practically feel his fury, could taste his anger—not at her, she understood that. But part of this was her fault. She had let The Monster bend her over his knees and burn his fucking initials into the soft skin of her ass. She’d never lose that—the fact that he’d branded her like a prize heifer.
She crouched down to the floor, no longer able to hold herself up on her wobbly knees. In an instant, she was transported back to the times He’d make her stay on her hands and knees for hours—once for an entire day, well into her pregnancy. In the old days, he would soothe her after that sort of torture. He’d apply ointments to her abraded skin, to open candle wax burns, to her extended nipples. But something about being in Chicago changed Him, turned Him from a mildly abusive asshole into The Monster.
She felt a blanket drape around her and let Ross pull her to her feet. But she yanked herself away from him, tugging the edges of the blanket close. The blanket, like every other damn thing in her life, she’d either been given by her brothers after running all the way home to Germany at first, or she’d bought at some second-hand crap store, saving as much of the money from her Oma’s inheritance and her many brewery jobs as possible.
He stood, hands at his sides, looking utterly miserable. But that was too damn bad, she thought. He asked for it.
“How long since you ran?”
“Ten and a half years,” she said, picking up her dress and slipping it back down over her naked torso.
“And he never found you, never confronted you, nothing?”
“No,” she said, draping the blanket over the back of the futon. “And for the record, I didn’t get an abortion either,” she said, glaring at him.
His mouth dropped open. “But…”
“But what? You can count, I assume. I was with him another seven months. He kept at me, of course, doing everything he knew to do to cause me to miscarry. It was…the worst seven months of my life, but…I would have the child. In the end, I would have my baby.” She sank to the couch, wrapping her arms around herself.
Ross remained where he was, halfway across the room, open-mouthed and horrified, no doubt. “I had the baby in the hospital, but He… He… He gave it away. He sold my baby to some childless couple, in New York, He said. But who knows where, really. I saw him…my son, once. They laid him on my chest after his birth and I touched him, then they took him. They all thought I was in on the adoption thing, of course. He made sure of that.”
Ross sat beside her and tried to drape an arm over her shoulder but her ears were ringing and her heart pounding as an inexplicable rage filled her. Rage at The Monster, at herself for allowing those years of ridiculous behavior, for letting Him take her child, for allowing His violent manipulation of her for years.
But mostly at Ross, for daring to dredge it all up and out of her like so much disgusting vomit.
“Leave,” she croaked out. “Go. I don’t want you here anymore.” When he tightened his arm around her, she wrenched herself away, grabbing the blanket and wrapping up again. “I hate you for this,” she whispered, shaking so hard her teeth rattled. “I hate…this. I hate my life and I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”
He tried to hold her but she ran to the one other room in the flat and slammed the door shut. Her chest heaved with sobs. Tears burned tracks down her face as she leaned against the door, palms flat against it, willing the last thirty minutes back.
“Elisa,” he said. “Open the door, please.”
“Go the fuck away!” She screamed this last, meaning it. Not meaning it. Not knowing what she meant anymore.
“Elisa, open up.”
She turned the lock, then backed away from the door, dropping onto her thin mattress and curling up in a ball, hands over her ears until she was certain he’d left.
Lightning flashed through the crooked blinds. Thunder boomed, making the whole building shake. A deluge of rain smacked against the single window.
Great. The very weather to enjoy a solitary dinner and that stupid, fucking cake all by yourself.