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“She knows what I like,” he said, as if that should have been obvious.
“Yeah, but I mean, it was supposed to be a gift, right?”
“So?”
“So when you buy a gift you tend to pick it out yourself so that it’s personal, rather than send someone else to do it for you.” Alfie just looked at me as he chewed, clearly not getting my point. “Alfie, have you ever actually bought someone a gift? Like, you’ve gone into a shop and spent forever trying to find just theright thing for that person? Have you taken it home, carefully wrapped it in the nicest paper you could find, and then given it to them, kind of nervous about their reaction but excited too?”
“No,” he said simply. How was that possible? Was that just how rich people did it? They paid other people to buy gifts for them? When I was five I’d given my mother a bowl full of mud and sticks for her birthday and she’d loved it. It hurt me to realise that the reason he’d never given a gift out of love to anyone was likely because he’d never received one before.
“You should try it,” I told him, opening my mouth obediently to accept his offering of noodles.
“I don’t have time, Lola.”
“Do you have time to sit on the floor eating Chinese food with an obstinate redhead? You make time for the things that matter.”
He studied me long and hard and then scowled, returning his attention back to the food and looking thoroughly displeased. “What?”
“Nothing. I just hate that fucking dress.” I watched him in stunned silence as he lifted more rice into his mouth, chewing slowly. “I admit I may have made a slight error in judgement.”
I hugged my knees to my body, not even bothering to hide the glee on my face. “You fucked up.”
“An error in judgement,” he repeated stiffly, not looking at all amused. I bit back a laugh and quickly distracted myself by spearing another piece of pork with my chopstick.
He was quiet for a while, obviously chewing over his thoughts. As I was learning to do, I let him be until he was ready to air them. After a few minutes, he did. “I meant some of what I said this morning, you know. Seeing you wear something I have chosen for you, it does please me.”
“Did you do that with other girls? Dress them, I mean.” The frown on his face made me wish I hadn’t asked.
“In a sense, yes.” My stomach roiled at the thought of him fucking and playing with other women. I couldn’t even see their faces but I hated them. “I put them in costumes. Dressed them how I wanted them to look. I had to transform them into something I wanted.” The grey dress felt tighter than ever. It irritated my skin and I itched to tear it off.
“Alfie, if you feel the need to transform me in order to want me then we have a serious problem.” I was glad he was talking to me, but talking to Alfie was like walking through a minefield. I never knew when I was going to land on something that was going to blow up in my face and devastate me.
“There was my error in judgement. You don’t need a costume. You’re already what I want.” My chest constricted, a well of emotion threatened to rise up and make me cry.
“I felt like you were ashamed of me.”
“I don’t give a damn that you’re poor, Lola, though I do find aspects of your world distasteful.” I rolled my eyes but he continued. “But you, yourself, I don’t care whether you know the difference between a fish fork and a salad fork, I just know how the rest of the world, the rest ofmyworld, will treat you. Your world is a kind one, but mine isn’t. I’m trying to protect you from that.” Suddenly, so many of his actions and words made sense. How many times had he commented on my clothes, my behaviour? Those personal remarks had always felt like a rejection of who I was, but they weren’t, they were a warning. He was trying to prepare me for the world I was entering into.
“I’ll try to remember that. And just for the record, I don’t mind you dressing me from time to time, just?—”
“No costumes,” he finished for me. A wicked smile crept onto my face and I pushed up on my knees, sliding my hands along his thighs and lifting my mouth up to his.
“There are one or two costumes I could be persuaded to wear.” I giggled and watched, my heart threatening to burst, as a real, full smile spread over his face.
“I’ll remember that.” He kissed me gently through a smile, but the sweetness of our moment was once again interrupted by the shrill ringing of his phone. With a sigh he got up, leaving me hanging, and retrieved it from his desk. He picked up the call and immediately began speaking in rapid French.
It bugged me that our dinner had been interrupted twice now by work but I tried to let it go. Alfie had been putting off a lot of work to spend time with me and if I chose to leave with him, I knew that it was going to be a lot worse than this. I dragged myself up from the floor and flopped onto the couch to watch him.
I caught his eye from time to time. He’d switched the call to hands free and tapped away on his laptop as he spoke. I felt his eyes on me and when I caught them, he smiled. It was a calm smile for once, not the usual half-dead man that I found sitting at that desk. It was nice just being with Alfie. So much of our time together was spent either fighting or fucking that it felt good to just be around each other. No matter how much time I spent with him though, my heart still managed to skip a beat every time he looked at me and every time he smiled, it cracked a little too.
Fifty-Seven
Ifelt him before I woke, his presence alerting my dreams that he was about to steal me from them and jerk me back into his world. The cotton sheet was soft on my cheek as I lay on my front, sprawled in sleep. I felt him nudge my legs apart and my body responded without my permission, arching into him purely on instinct. My mind hadn’t caught up yet and it wasn’t until he slid inside me that I came back to the world. His fucking of me wasn’t a romantic wake up call, it was a proprietary right. It fell into his category ofsee, want, take, have. I didn’t fight it because if I was truly honest with myself, it was the only time I felt right. Everything else could be so fucking convoluted, but these things he did to me, they always made sense.
I don’t know how long he slowly drove in and out at the most maddening pace before he finally filled me, marking me up in a way I loved but didn’t understand why. He pulled out gently and I lay there, replete, while he went to the bathroom, returning with a washcloth. He turned me onto my back and cleaned me as I finally blinked myself awake. I expected him to be as naked as me but instead I found him in his usual charcoal three piece, sans jacket. He hadn’t even loosened his tie. I’d been so lost in pleasure that I hadn’t noticed he wasn’t naked like me.
“You’re already dressed? Am I late?” I looked at the clock but I had nearly an hour before we had to leave.
“No, I just had an errand to run while you were asleep.” He sat on the edge of the bed, one hand wrapped around my ankle, his thumb stroking idly.