CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The passion Griff and I shared was all too soon forced to a stop a week later with the arrival of my period. I didn’t know who was more disappointed: him or me.
Other than that there was no slowing our appetite for each other so I’d visited Griff’s doctor who prescribed me the contraceptive pill. To my surprise Griff was neither uncomfortable nor embarrassed by the mention of my period. I’d gotten out of bed to use the bathroom after another thorough round of sex in my bedroom when it arrived. I’d left the bathroom to put on panties and a nightgown when I drew to a halt at the sight of Griff looking at my side of the bed. I could see a small stain of red that made my cheeks burn.
He looked up at me and said, “Well at least we know you’re not pregnant.”
I’d grimaced and hurried into the bathroom to change. When I came out I gestured for him to get out of bed. “I should change the sheets.” Usually I wasn’t ever caught unawares with my period. I was pretty regular so I knew when it was coming but Griff had me so distracted I’d forgotten I was due.
“It’s hardly anything. Throw a towel over it and come back to bed. You can change the sheets in the morning.” And then he’d promptly gone back to sleep before I could say anything.
So I got back in bed.
The next morning, I was awoken by him trailing kisses across my shoulder while he caressed my lower belly like he was desperate to move south. He groaned and pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “How long does your period usually last?”
At first I was surprised by how open he was. Eric didn’t talk about my period, would never talk about my period, and liked to pretend such a thing did not exist. My dad had been the same and—considering I was out with him the day I first got my period and he’d been so flustered and abrupt with me—I’d consequently grown up a little embarrassed by the whole thing.
“Four days.”
“Four days might as well be four weeks.” He raised his head, curiosity in his eyes, as he took the strap of my nighty and pulled it down to reveal my breasts. “I thought they looked fuller.”
“I should have known.” I squirmed as he brushed his thumb over my nipple. “My breasts are really sensitive.”
Griff took that as an invitation to experiment, sucking and laving and squeezing my breasts until I was a squirming, flushed heap of want. To come I needed his hand between my legs in conjunction with his mouth wrapped around my nipple but that was out. I playfully pushed his head away and pouted. “All you’re doing is torturing me.”
“Good.” He grabbed my hand and wrapped it around his erection. “Now you know how I’ll feel for four days.”
I rolled my eyes as I pushed him onto his back. “You’re acting like it’s the end of the world. At least I can still go down on you.”
Griff smiled, smug, as he caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “True.”
“Do you want my mouth on you or what, smug boy?”
He grinned at my teasing and laid back, his arms tucked behind his head. “Have at it.”
“Please?”
“No need to beg, love, I already said yes.”
I swatted at him as he laughed. “I’m not putting my mouth anywhere near you until you ask nicely.”
His laughter died as heat crept into his dark eyes. “Please, my luscious wife, will you wrap that hot little mouth of yours around my very hard cock.”
Grinning, I moved down his body. “Since you asked so nicely…”
I’d gotten him off while I’d unfortunately had to suffer through sexual frustration. And was still doing so. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if it was sexual frustration or worry.
Having spent the day with Amelia at an afternoon tea with some of her friends, I was at once weary and restless. The women had exhausted me with their questions about my marriage to Griff. Seriously, it was like an interrogation. They just couldn’t seem to believe he had settled down into marriage and not only wanted to know all about him but all about me and what it was about me that intrigued him so much. I avoided questions where I could and Amelia helped me navigate through some of the social land mines the women laid for me. Part of me was annoyed Amelia insisted I attend the tea but deep down I knew she was right to try to get all of it over with so I could eventually relax at the upcoming events Griff planned to escort me to.
Instead of wanting to curl up in my room with a cup of tea and a good book I wanted to find Griff. We hadn’t had breakfast together that morning and I was worried that if we weren’t having sex, he wouldn’t want to spend time with me. However, I knew I couldn’t force anything with Griff so instead I forced myself to stay put. To not go to him.
If he wanted me he knew where to find me.
Yet dinner came and went and I ate alone.
Worry gnawed at my gut and suddenly all those nights of passion between us started to make me feel dirty. Was I really just convenient sex after all?
It was around ten o’ clock that evening, I was sitting in the drawing room with a book I couldn’t get into, when I heard the bing of the elevator doors. Hearing footsteps come toward the room, I turned to look at the doorway. My stupid heart leapt when Griff appeared.
He pulled at his tie at the same time he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry I missed dinner. It’s been a long day.”
“That’s alright.” I closed my book, feeling like I was in the presence of a skittish animal and if I stayed perfectly still he might come closer.
He did. He leaned over the couch and took the book out of my hand. “The Nightingale. Any good?”
I shrugged. “It’s supposed to be. I haven’t been able to concentrate long enough to tell.”
He gave it back to me, studying my face. “How did the luncheon with Amelia go?”
“Fine.” I made a face. “Those women are fascinated by you.”
“Probably because I’m not fascinated by them.”
“Griff,” I huffed at his arrogance.
But he just shrugged. “It’s true. It’s only human nature to be curious about someone who makes you feel invisible.”
“Why do you deliberately try to make them feel invisible?”
“Because they’re like your sister. They only want one thing.”
I frowned. “I don’t think that’s true. You underestimate yourself if you think that’s true.”
He smirked and leaned over to brush his lips over mine. “And you forget most women aren’t like you.”
A pang echoed through my chest at the compliment and I smiled. “They are. You’ve just never been forced to spend time with one before.”
He laughed at that and straightened to his full height. “Is that what I am? Forced to spend time with you?”
I shrugged, enjoying flirting with him. Always. “I’m not saying you don’t enjoy the enforcement.”
His gaze smoldered. “Oh I definitely enjoy it. Every fucking inch of me enjoys it.”
I squirmed, feeling his words between my legs. “Don’t. Not when we can’t do anything about it.”
Griff chuckled. “I barely said anything.”
“It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.”
He looked far too pleased about that. Rounding the couch, he held out a hand. “Well in the interest of saving you from combusting with sexual frustration, I suggest a distraction.”
I took his hand and let him pull me up off the couch. “What kind of distraction?”
“I promised you I’d take you into the hazard room, didn’t I?”
The thrill of knowing he’d found me to spend time with me outside of the bedroom scored through me, as did the thought of seeing the hazard room in full swing. “Let me change first.”
“Come as you are.” He pulled on my hand and began leading me out of the room.
“I’m in yoga pants and a sweater,” I complained. “Let me put on a dress.”
“You’d look beautiful in a goddamn garbage bag.” He threw me an annoyed look over his shoulder. “And I don’t need my patrons fantasizing about you more than they already are.”
I sighed as we got in the elevator. “I know you may find this hard to believe but not everyone wants to have sex with me.”
“No but most of them do and the rest are idiots.”
I pressed my lips together to stop myself laughing. He sounded so put out. I think I was getting under his skin. Yay me!
Griff did not once let go of my hand as he led me into the hazard room and introduced me around. I gazed in wonder at how the beautiful room could be transformed with the energy of people. Wait staff wandered through the throngs of members with trays of canapés and champagne in their hands. The noise, chatter and music was like something out of a Vegas casino with the exception of the ringing of slot machines.
Croupiers called out things I didn’t understand as we moved from table to table. Griff tried to explain everything to me but I could only take in so much.
“No wonder the rest of the club is so quiet in the evening,” I said to him, grasping his arm with my other hand as we moved to the black jack table. “They’re all in here.”
He smiled down at me. “It is a gambling club, Scarlett.”
I tried not to be dazzled by his smile. It wasn’t easy. “I know that. I’m just… only fully realizing it.”
“Finally allowing your wife to mingle with us commoners, eh, Mandeville?” an older gentleman teased from across the black jack table. There were some snickers from the other members.
Griff just shrugged. “Well, I know you have a reputation for stealing married women, Franklin.”
Franklin seemed extremely flattered by this. “I’d never steal yours, Mandeville.”
“Yes, he doesn’t have a death wish,” another man said.
“Mrs. Mandeville should be more worried about women trying to steal her husband.” A glamorous woman who looked to be in her early forties eyed me over the top of her champagne flute. “Your husband is quite the catch around these parts.” There was something antagonistic about her tone I didn’t like and I felt Griffin tense beside me.
Oh no. Had he slept with this woman?
“Was a catch,” I replied.
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me.”
“I said he was a catch. I’ve caught him. Thus since he can no longer be caught he’s no longer a catch.”
The men grinned at each other and I felt Griff’s gaze. I didn’t turn to him. I was too busy watching the woman skewer me with her eyes. “How sweetly naïve to assume that a wedding ring permanently ensnares a man.”
“A wedding ring, no. Interesting conversation and phenomenal sex, yes.”
The men guffawed around us while the woman glared before she slunk away from the table. I dared a look at Griff who appeared caught between annoyed and amused. I sighed. “It needed to be said.”
“It certainly did. Good for you,” a feminine voice sounded from my right. I glanced over to see an older woman smiling at me in interest. She had a cultured English accent like Griff’s. “Victoria has been trying to sleep with your husband since the club opened, isn’t that right, Mandeville?”
I practically felt the breath of his sigh on the back of my head.
The woman continued, “If you hadn’t fought back she would have tried to skin you alive outside of the walls of this club where her claws might actually have had an effect.” She held out a wrinkled hand. Her wedding rings were set with the most ostentatious diamonds. “Araminda Windemere.”
“Lady Araminda Windemere,” Griff corrected.
Good grief. Aristocracy! And yes, I knew Griff was technically an aristocrat but he had rescinded his title. I tentatively took the woman’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“You too. Especially witnessing how fun you can be. Though, Mrs. Mandeville, I do suggest you wear something other than yoga pants. Dreadful invention.”
I frowned up at Griff. “I told you.”
My husband pressed his lips together to contain his laughter.
“I said I wanted to change into a dress before we came down here,” I explained to Lady Windemere.
“Oh my dear, you can wear whatever the hell you like. I just hate yoga pants.” She nodded toward the table. “Do you have a penchant for black jack?”
“Honestly, I’ve never played.”
“Excellent, I shall be your guide into the world of black jack then. Mandeville, run along and grab your wife a champagne and something to eat, won’t you.”
This time it was me trying not to laugh. I’d never seen anyone, man or woman, so easily dismiss and handle my husband. Funny thing was that he didn’t even seem to mind.
An hour later Lady Windemere left the club for the night a couple hundred dollars richer than she’d left.
“You like her,” I said to Griff as he led me out of the hazard room to the elevator at the back of the second floor.
He stepped into me, forcing me back against the doors. “What makes you think that?”
I laid my hands on his chest, smoothing his lapels. “She orders you about and you don’t seem to mind.”
He was silent a second and then he said, “I suppose she reminds me of my grandmother.”
My breath caught at this personal information, given without coercion. “Maternal or paternal?”
“Paternal.” Griff’s gaze turned introspective. “She was very no nonsense, like Lady Windemere. Not easily shocked and very outspoken. She was feared and respected. She also greatly disliked her own son. An opinion we shared.”
For not the first time I wondered about Griff’s father. I wanted to know about the man who would try to force his son into marriage. “You and she were close,” I guessed.
He nodded and then cleared his throat. I saw the guard slam back down on his expression and disappointment flooded me. “Anyway, I better get back. I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast.”
Realizing we wouldn’t be sharing a bed tonight, I felt tears burn in the back of my throat as he walked away. I knew it was partly just being overly-emotional because of my period, but I couldn’t hold in those tears as I took the elevator to the penthouse. I’d loved sharing a bed with Griff this past week and not just because of the sex.
I just liked knowing he was there.
He made me feel warm.
Maybe even safe.
He obliterated my loneliness.
Trying to pull myself together I talked myself out of my melancholy. At least I told myself I had and after showering the long day off me, I crawled into my clean, freshly laundered bed.
And then I laid there.
And laid there.
Sleep never coming despite my exhaustion.
Instead my brain kept whirring with the conversations Griff and I had shared these last few months. The lawyer had compiled a list of questions he thought we’d be asked at the interview and Griff and I were both memorizing our answers. I already knew some of it from our trivial conversations way back when I first moved into the penthouse. However, I realized, other than little tidbits like what he shared tonight about his grandmother, and other than knowing exactly what to do to make him come, what did I really know? I was learning about his nature and I think to a certain extent I understood him. But without knowing anything about his past, how I could really know anything about who he’d become?
At around two o’ clock in the morning I finally threw back the covers and got out of bed to get a glass of water. I shuffled into the kitchen in floral pajama shorts and white t-shirt that were girly more than they were sexy and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. When I turned to leave I jumped, startled at the sight of Griff.
“Jesus, you scared me,” I huffed.
“I was just going to bed.” His eyes darted down my body and back up again. “Nice PJ’s.”
I smirked. “Thanks.”
“Can’t sleep?”
I shook my head.
“Is it your period? Do you have cramps? Because I’m sure we can find a hot water bottle.”
His concern caused a flare of pleasurable pain in my chest. “I’m okay. Sometimes it just makes my brain hyperactive. I can’t stop thinking and that means I can’t get to sleep.”
Putting his hands in his suit pockets he leaned against the doorjamb. “Thinking about what?”
You. You. My sister. You. “Just… stuff.”
Instead of responding, Griff pushed off the jamb and held out his hand to me. “Come with me.”
Curious, I followed his lead.
To my surprise he led us through his side of the penthouse to huge double doors I knew led into his suite. “What…”
He opened one of the doors and pulled me inside. Despite the high ceilings and grandeur of the size of the room whoever had designed the interior had managed to make it cozy. The biggest fireplace in the entire club took up one wall of the room. A large flat screen TV was fitted above it. A sofa and two armchairs surrounded it. There were two sets of French doors that I knew led out onto balconies that sat over Commonwealth Avenue. Heavy, navy drapes hung from the windows, pooling luxuriously on the floor. A clutter of bookshelves, seating areas, and armoires brought the room in, giving the huge space much-needed coziness. There was a door near the bed that must have led to the bathroom.
The bed was masculine but stylish— a large chocolate leather sleigh bed. There were scatter cushions all over it, making it look inviting, but I couldn’t imagine Griff had anything to do with those. He just seemed too practical for scatter cushions.
When he started throwing the cushions carelessly onto the floor I guessed I was right. He pulled back the duvet and then started making work of his own clothes. “Get in.”
Confused, I could only stare at him.
He raised an eyebrow. “I assure you it’s perfectly comfortable.”
“But…” I frowned. “You know we can’t have sex, right?”
Griff shrugged off his jacket and threw on an armchair. “Do you think I’m incapable of functioning as a human being beyond the needs of my cock?”
I flushed. “Of course not.”
“Then get in the bloody bed, Scarlett.”
I glowered at his irritated tone and stomped over to the bed. “Only because you asked so nicely.”
To my continued annoyance he chuckled at my sarcasm.
What was going on?
Griff had never invited me into his room and now he was doing so but not to have sex?
I pulled the duvet up my body and leaned against the pillows, the opposite of relaxed.
My husband rolled his eyes as he shrugged into a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and got into the bed. “Stop acting like I’ve forced you in here.”
“I’m just confused, that’s all.”
“What’s there to be confused about? You can’t sleep. You’ve told me you can’t stop thinking about things. So we’re here. Talk. Get it out.”
Now I was really confused. “You? You want me to talk?”
He scowled at me. “You’re making me regret this.”
“What is this?”
“For fuck’s sakes, Scarlett, this is me being your fucking friend but if you’re not interested get out the bloody bed and go back to your own.”
There was a flush high on his cheeks and it was the only thing that stopped me from doing just that.
Instead I felt a twinge of something for him in my chest.
Griff Mandeville was trying to be my friend and it made him feel vulnerable. Elation moved through me but I didn’t let it show. Instead I turned toward his prickly majesty.
“No need to snap at me, you big jerk.”
He shot me a look. “Jerk?”
“I call ‘em like I see ‘em. Now, you’ve agreed to be my therapist for the evening then, yes?”
“Therapist? No. I said friend.”
“Friend.” I smiled at him and something tender flickered across his expression, making my breath catch. “I like the sound of that.”
And then he ruined it. “Don’t read too much into it.”
I flopped back on the pillows with a groan. “Oh, well, it was almost a moment.”
There was quiet from his side of the bed before his voice rumbled toward me. “I want to be your friend, Scarlett. I like you. I just don’t know how to do it without… confusing things for you.”
Understanding what he meant, I turned my head on the pillow to meet his gaze. “You are my friend. You’re one of the few real friends I have right now. I won’t confuse that for something more. I promise.”
He nodded, relaxing, and then he shifted onto his side. “So tell me why you can’t sleep? Sexually frustrated?”
I snickered at his teasing. “Maybe.” At his widening grin I huffed, “It’s your fault. I went six years without sex until you, buddy. You have a lot to answer for.”
“Fuck, six years. I can’t imagine.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad. I have a trusty vibrator.”
“Let’s veer the conversation out of a zone where I get a hard on from imagining you with a vibrator.”
Chuckling I nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Why don’t we talk about your sister?”
I tensed, the thought producing the knife-like pain of betrayal in my chest. “What’s there to talk about? She conned me. My own sister conned me.”
“Has she tried to contact you?”
“She’s emailed. But I… I’m not ready to get in touch with her. I don’t know if I ever will be. She was… she was all I had, Griff. I, mean, we were never really close but I clung to the idea of her after my parents died. They were everything to me. My best friends. Without them…”
“You must miss them terribly.”
“I miss them so much that I can’t think about how much I miss them – the pain is too crippling. I can’t explain the horror of finding my parents like that… trying to shake them awake and knowing that who they were… they were gone. All that was left were cold bodies.” Tears slipped down my cheeks.
Griff reached over to catch them, wiping them away with his thumbs. “You were so young. It took a lot of strength to get through that, Scarlett.”
“Maybe… but the truth?”
He nodded.
“I’ve never told anyone this before.”
“Anything you tell me I will hold in the strictest of confidence.”
My heart pounded at the thought of saying the words out loud. But somehow I knew Griff wouldn’t judge me for them. He’d understand. “Eric was diagnosed before they died and I sometimes think… that his illness, his dying… well it saved my life. He gave me someone to focus on.”
Griff hesitated a second before prompting, “And when he died?”
“The only way to survive was to go on autopilot. To shut everyone out. I trailed after my sister but the truth is I shut her out, too.”
“Like you said, you did what you had to do to survive.”
I looked at him, all the pain I felt blazing in my eyes. “How could she do it? Knowing what I’d already lost? How can someone who is supposed to be your flesh and blood knowingly hurt you like that?”
Griff sucked in a breath and exhaled it shakily. “I don’t know. But I know how it feels and I’m more sorry than I can say that you feel that betrayal.”
Afraid to push but wanting to know more about him I asked tentatively, “Your father?”
His lips pressed together and he nodded before falling onto his back to stare at the ceiling.
I waited.
I felt like my heart might burst out of my chest and shatter if he didn’t confide in me.
And then, “My father was a very controlling man. Everything went through him. Every aspect of the running of the house, the estates, our daily schedule. Everything. He told my mother what to wear, what to eat, who to be friends with. My mother eventually couldn’t take it anymore. She divorced him, with great difficulty, but thankfully had her own money so she was able to flee home to Boston. She won custody of me and my father, well,… he continued to interfere in her life. When she met someone, he would blackmail, cajole, pay these men to disappear. She tried to get beyond him, to be happy, but the bastard couldn’t let her go.
“I used to wonder if he really loved or if he was just obsessed with her. Obsessed with controlling her. At her funeral the bastard,” Griff took a breath, “The bastard actually cried. Like a fucking baby. And I knew that whatever he felt for her he at least thought it was love. As for me, I adored my mother and part of me was relieved for her. That she was finally free of him.”
Tears slipped silently down my cheeks. There was no denying his mother’s pain had been his own. “Then you moved back to live with your father?”
“For a bit, yes, before he sent me off to Eton. I’d lived a rather nice life with my mother. My grandmother would visit us in Boston during the summer and despite my father’s interferences we had a good life here. But when I returned to England not even my grandmother could stop my father from turning his focus on me. It was me he wanted to control now that my mother was gone. I wasn’t allowed to play football—soccer—because it was too common. I had to be tutored in Latin, not Spanish, because all Manderville men had been tutored in Latin. If I made friends with boys he didn’t approve of I had to sever the connection.”
“Did you?”
“Did I fuck. And when my mother died my father started drinking so let’s just say he made his disapproval of my continual disobedience extremely clear.”
Anger flooded my gut. “In what way?”
He rolled his eyes to me. “What way do you think?”
“Did he… Did he hurt you?” I was appalled by the idea. I wanted to wrap my arms around him to protect him from the very thought.
“Every now and then. Until I turned sixteen, grabbed him by the throat, and told him if he ever laid a hand on me again I’d kill him. And that was the end of it. The end of my father being able to control me. Until the inheritance. It’s… the inheritance is my mother’s estate in Weston. It includes the house and grounds she grew up in. She often told me how much she loved that house. Her parents, like yours, died when she was young and somehow my father managed to slip an ancient piece of law into their fucking marriage agreement. Her parents estate was given to him as a dowry. He knew… he knew I’d do anything to make sure it didn’t end up in his brother’s hands, a man even more worthless than my father if you can believe it.”
Jesus Christ.
I remembered all those months ago Griff mentioned his father was controlling and that he’d deliberately put the codicil in the will because Griff told him he’d never marry. I didn’t understand then. Now I did. “What a bastard.”
Griff snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”
I reached out and brushed the back of my fingers across his cheek. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
He grabbed hold of it and for a second I was sure he was going to push my hand away, refuse my comfort. But it was like he thought better of it and squeezed it instead. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
Relaxing, I snuggled closer to him in the bed.
“Thank you,” he said, the words sounding gruff with disuse.
“What for?”
He turned his head on the pillow to lock eyes with me. “For helping me snap off the chains of his control for the last time.”
I smiled softly. “What else are friends for?”