Walking into the upstairs TV room, Alistair saw Sophia still asleep in the same place he had left her. Her raven hair made a dazzling contrast with her pallid face resting on a light orange pillow.

Tavish had given her the drug prescribed by her psychiatrist, patiently explaining how it worked and why she needed to take it. Alistair had never seen his brother use his magic on a person like that. And Sophia, who had been fiercely against taking any drugs, had yielded to him.

As he tried to pick her up without waking her, she lethargically opened her eyes.

She slurred to him, “That thing Tavish Uilleam gave me is good. I was having a nice dream.”

It made Alistair feel a pinch of jealousy. He brushed the thought aside and smiled down at her, picking her up in his arms. “What were you dreaming of?”

“You. It was about you.”

Her slow, sweet smile brought forth his deepest tender feelings. It constantly surprised him how drastically he had changed after meeting Sophia.

“Of course it was about me,” he whispered, laying her down on her side of the bed and covering her with the duvet.

“Lord I’m-so-handsome-and-I-know-it.” She made a face at him. As her lids started to close again, she asked, “Hold me when you come back, will you?”

“I will.” He stayed there for a moment more, smoothing her long hair until he was sure she was in a deep slumber again.

Only then did he rise to get ready for bed with a curling smile on his lips. As if I needed a reminder to hold you in my arms.

* * *

As she brushed her hair, Barbara watched Ethan in the mirror. Under the shower, head thrown back, the water pounding against his chest and the billowing steam that plumed around him only added to the eroticism of the picture he presented.

“See something you like?” he purred.

Barbara started, but turned and smiled sensuously at him.

Ethan’s eyes singed her, turning her on as his hand ran down his chest to his cock, grabbing it, pleasuring himself. She couldn’t take her eyes away.

“I think I asked you a question.” He was already aroused. He stepped out from under the water with suds all over his body and stood in the middle of the huge bathtub, his feet planted wide, his arm flexing rhythmically as he stroked himself. “Do you see something you like?”

Barbara licked her lips. The wide head of his erection was engulfed in his palm and she couldn’t help herself as she answered huskily, “Yes. You’re so fucking hot.”

Fucking hot. His lips twisted with disgust, the foul language reminding him of his mother. Forget Calista and enjoy the moment. His movements quickened, sliding rhythmically, his eyes fixed on her. With his free hand, he wiggled his finger at her and then slid it slowly up his abdomen, taking away part of the soap.

As she stepped in the tub, she grabbed his wrists. “Let me do this. I want to worship you.”

His eyes squeezed shut, as if the words were too much for him to take. When they opened again, the force of his need sent a shiver of desire through her. “Then do it.”

“You don’t how much you affect me.” Ethan was undeniably the most handsome and virile man Barbara had ever seen and she was completely in love with him. She backed him into the water, and cleaned him of the lather as she kissed him, delicately caressing his chest. While her hands moved to his back and grabbed his butt, his arousal squeezed between their bodies and she rubbed her breasts on his wet chest. She broke the kiss and before she licked her way down, she whispered, “You’re so beautiful.”

Beautiful?! No one has ever called me beautiful! He smiled. “You’re a beautiful woman yourself.”

Already on her knees, with her hand around his hard cock, she looked up at him surprised. He had never said a word of praise to her.

“What’s your name?”

Her mouth slackened. The surge of emotion that Barbara felt in that moment was devastating. After all these months, he still hadn’t asked her name.

“Barbara,” she managed to say.

“You are beautiful, Barbara,” he nodded, and tweaked a nipple between his fingers, before his hand moved to the back of her head and he nudged her mouth with the tip of his arousal. “Now, show me what I do to you.”

An unexpected burst of need flared through her, together with love and an immense hope.

She sucked and licked with all her might until with a painful hold that conveyed the rawness and anguish of his pleasure, holding her head in place, he plunged deeply one last time and came in her mouth.

A growl escaped his mouth, “Barbara!”

She embraced him tightly with her arm, her face pressed against his stomach, as her climax hit her with a final thrust of her fingers inside herself. “I love you, Ethan.”

* * *

Barbara was sound asleep when Ethan left the room quietly.

Downstairs, he grabbed a glass of cold milk and a banana, informing the waiter that he would return later to have a proper breakfast.

The day was sunny and beautiful and the peace of the park seemed in agreement with his mood.

He didn’t know when he had decided to end the farce but he was glad he did it. It had taken a huge weight from his heart. Sophia was gone and it would do him no good to be thinking of her.

He elongated his calves and thigh muscles and was off for a run. The day before, he ate a three course meal plus champagne and red wine, which was unusual for him.

He palmed his flat stomach and shrugged. He was thirty-six years old and in fine shape. He had tried to coax Barbara to accompany him while running, but she said she didn’t like it, that she preferred yoga. As long as she stayed fit he didn’t care what she did.

He had only asked to be polite. He didn’t mind running alone. In fact, he liked it. It was when his thoughts were clearer and his mind at peace. He even had a treadmill at home and one in his office for when he felt the need to ease his mind from weird jumbled thoughts.

He loved coming to Esclimont castle with its stone bridges, turrets, and façades enlivened with niches, balconies, and sculptures. But what he loved most was the tranquility that the large expanses of woodland provided. He wished his grandfather had bought this castle instead of the one in Scotland, although he liked Altreck too, with its enormous golf course, its loch, and its stories and legends.

Ethan was so distracted on his way back, he didn’t notice a couple who were almost blocking the stone bridge that lead to the castle reception.

He only stopped when a feminine hand gripped his arm and a velvet voice purred, “Ethan.”

No. Not here. Not today. He could not make a scene. Appearances, appearances. The damned appearances. He turned, dismayed, and was rewarded with the faces of his stunning mother and his father.

His first thought was that they still made a beautiful couple although his father’s face had started to bear the brunt of his debased ways.

Discreetly, he shrugged his mother’s hand from his shoulder. “Calista. What are you doing here?”

George intervened, putting his arm around his wife. “Don’t talk to your mother like that. Didn’t your grandfather teach you any measure of politeness?”

Ethan pinned him with his azure eyes, so like Calista’s, and answered in an icy tone, “Yes, he did.”

But the arrow didn’t hit the mark. George and Calista were emotionless about their son. In fact, for them, Ethan had always been a nuisance. But not anymore.

“Ethan, my dear,” Calista said in a shocked voice, “we gave you much more than just manners. We gave you life. You owe everything to me.”

He snorted, rudely. “Then Calista, you should have killed me before or as soon as I was born, because I’ll not thank you for my life.” Never, ever.

Calista’s face crumbled and she gripped George’s arm to steady herself.

Do you think you fool me? Ethan knew it was all pretense. “Why are you doing this, Calista? Were you following me?” He turned to George. “What do you really want?”

“I saw that your girlfriend got married,” Calista softly said.

And George complemented, “Not to you, of course. To Lord Ells, heir to a traditional and old dukedom and a great European fortune.”

“Are you so far in the dirt that you think Sophia would choose her husband based on his fortune or his status? She has much more than you could ever imagine. I’m wealthier than he is and she, she is wealthier than both of us. Your point in telling me this is?”

“No one seems to want you, Ethan. You’re thirty-six, almost thirty-seven and you’re still paying for your women.”

“Both of you’re right on the edge of what I’ll allow from you,” said Ethan in a growl, crossing his arms over his sweaty T-shirt.

“Ethan, dear, I still want you.” Calista gripped his arm, her nails marking his skin.

“But I don’t,” he said firmly, feeling a different sort of sweat run down his back. Ethan Ashford, don’t panic. There’s no need for panic. You’re out in the open.

He took a step back.

“Aaah, dear,” she mellowed at him. “That’s a pity because I’ll have a piece of you anyway.”

“I know you don’t want a scene, my son,” said George. “As your grandfather used to say, appearances count.”

“You can’t think of a way around me?” His voice had lost its firmness. He was losing his hard gained composure.

Calista smiled darkly, sensing the change. “Do you think I want to ask you anything? To be fucking refused again? But we need money. The crumbs that my father left me are almost all gone—”

“Because you spent a fortune on orgies and expensive trips for you and your partners, instead of saving a bit for old age.” He turned to George and spit out, “Or working, for a change.”

“It should all be fucking mine, not yours,” Calista said between clenched teeth, anger barely showing on her surgically altered face. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

Ethan was more than used to his mother’s radical change of moods.

“So, the point is, Ethan, who is that woman with you?” she asked.

Jesus. What are they planning? “A friend.”

“The one with contact lenses and raven hair. She is your ex’s twin,” George sneered.

“How did you meet her?” Ethan blanched.

Calista smiled maliciously. “I had a nice talk with her yesterday.”

“A-a talk?” Ethan stammered. I don’t stammer anymore.

George, seeing the breach in his son’s wall, didn’t lose a moment to pounce and dive his claws to secure his share. “Unless you give us the money, let’s say a million pounds per year, for each, of course, we will divulge the photos we have taken this weekend.”

He felt little again. The fearful child and the abused teenager. “This we-week-weekend?” Photos?

Calista smiled as her nails dug deeper in his arm. “Oh, what a lovely couple! When you arrived, you called her Sophia, but yesterday evening you were calling her Barbara.”

Her free hand pushed his sweaty bangs back. But it was not a caress; her nails racked his temples, dug in his scalp and nape as she stepped closer. “I wonder what you’ve been thinking.”

“Or under what name she’s registered,” George finished.

Ethan heaved a breath and put a hand on her shoulder. “M-Mum, I’m not sure what I’ll do if you come closer. So step back and take your hands off me. P-Please.”

Calista leered at him and the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip. “Mum. I like that you remember I’m your mother.”

She’s a snake. Ethan was disgusted.

“One million to each one of us. It’s nothing for you. Oh, no? What a pity, then.” George paused dramatically when Ethan shook his head. “You know how the English tabloids are curious about rich people’s lives, don’t you? I don’t think Lady and Lord Ells would find it funny that you’re dating a woman who could be her sister.”

“I don’t trust you.” He frowned. He didn’t recognize the childish voice that had just said those words. He edged around his parents.

“In this case, you better.” Calista took her hands off him. “I’ll call your office when my schedule permits. You see, we are on our honeymoon again. With friends.”

George made his last point, “They’re our witnesses, if we so wish.”

Ethan turned, trembling, heading to the hotel’s entrance, but he heard Calista asking, “By the way, my darling, is there anyone left that you didn’t buy or corrupt? Is there anyone you can still trust, Aethon?”

Hearing this last word, his pace faltered. He detested when she called him by that name. He knew that in ancient Greek it meant burning, blazing, shining; and that there were many characters in Greek and Roman mythology known as Aethon, mostly horses. It could have pleased him much if she had once used it as a praise, but she didn’t. Calista was uncultured and used it in a perversion of its mythological meaning, as she was fond of horses and their sexual intercourse.

Damned be appearances. Ethan regretted stopping to talk to them. He tried to control his urge to run the last few paces to his room as he entered the hotel, but his control was lost the moment his mother touched him.

Instead of taking the elevator, he ran up the stairs, two at a time. Opening the door of his room, he went directly to the bathroom and banged its door. He took a deep breath. Calm down. One, two—

He only had time to reach the toilet and throw up.

A great sob broke from his chest in the middle of the constant retching and he started to cry. He didn’t know exactly what he was crying for. Or for whom. The only thing Ethan wanted in that moment was a kind mother to hold him, a loving woman to kiss him. To make him feel loved.

Things he had never had in his whole life of wealthy coldness.

He closed his eyes at the resulting nausea as he flushed the toilet. A hopeless feeling rose from his gut to damage his heart and soul with its acid, putrid strength.

He spat in the toilet, sickened. He didn’t acknowledge any of the many issues inside him while with the back of his hands he dried his face as a child would do.

A brief knock on the door and his name being called by Barbara made him compose himself. Grandpa had raised me to be my own man and a simple meeting with my abusive parents has left me in this state? So what if I have no one left to trust? So what if I have to buy everyone’s affections?

“Barbara, we are going to Paris now. Please call Scott and pack.”

He heard her asking if everything was all right.

“Yes, I just changed my mind.” Grabbing his toothpaste and brush, he stepped into the shower to clean himself. He just wished he could clean his soul, too.

When he was drying his hair and still sifting through all his friends’ and employees’ names and images, one came flashing through his head.

Sophia.

Sophia never sold her soul to me in spite of all the expensive dinners, clothes and jewelry I bought her.