Seductive Secrecy (Shadows series) (9 page)

I tilted my head a little to the side, waiting for what he would
say next. After several seconds, it still hadn’t come. “You’re just
what?”

His lips moved to my neck; his breath trickled over my skin and
down the front of my shirt. Every time he opened his mouth, I
expected
words to come out, but that wasn’t what I was getting. He was
giving me kisses instead, and my body was starting to respond…even more than what was happening just between my legs. I slowly ground my ass against him, letting him know what else I wanted.

“I’m just surprised you gave her a mask.”

My hips stopped, my back straightened and I turned around to face him. The fierce, enticing blue that I had almost painted earlier was now tinged with what appeared to be sadness. “Why are you surprised?”

“I thought you enjoyed being unveiled…the idea that you no longer have to hide.”

“I do.” Or I thought I did, at least.

“Then I don’t know why you would want to do that to her.”

The throbbing in my clit came to a screeching halt.

“My work has always been dark,” I said. I knew that wasn’t the
answer he was looking for, but it was all I could muster at the
moment.

“There’s always been a certain level of darkness in your pieces,
yes. But this is completely different.” His head dipped, and he
looked
up at me from under his heavy brow. “And you know exactly what I
mean.”

I did know, and he was right. Gareth’s piece wasn’t the only one that I had added a mask to; I had also included a shadow on Olivia’s that could easily resemble one. But my work had changed since the
mansion—as much as I had. Regardless, there was a constant
gnawing that I felt inside, knowing what had happened to everyone who’d been killed there. I couldn’t seem to separate my sexuality from what I’d done in that house. He was right. The women in my paintings weren’t just dark.

They were hiding.

Cameron’s hands moved to my cheeks, holding my face steady
so I couldn’t look away. “So much good has happened in the last
several months
for you, for the names of those girls, for the
sacrifices
your father made
and you seem mired in that past somehow.
What’s it going to take, Charlie?”

I wanted to answer him. The information my father handed over
had made a difference. The girls who had died from the mansion
were being commemorated with a ceremony, and ultimately a memorial would be created in their honor. If they had immediate family, those individuals would be given restitution. It was everything the city could think of to do, an attempt to make things right…and still, I knew it would never be enough, that it would never be right.

And something inside
me
still wasn’t right, either.

I didn’t know how to fix it, and I didn’t know how to forget it. I didn’t know which of it was worse: the uninhibited, meaningless sex
with insignificant men who I’d never be able to name? The masks
they’d worn, or the ones I had? The overwhelming knowledge that I’d almost lost my life in that place? All of it haunted me. All of it confused me.

There was something I knew for sure, though.

“It’s not gone,” I whispered. “Not any of it. I still see those
fingers, those faces…I feel them on me, over me—
in
me—whenever I close my eyes.” Since leaving the mansion, I hadn’t lied to Cameron. This was just something I’d never told him. I honestly hadn’t known how to. “Will it ever go away?”

His hands tightened against my cheeks, his thumb pulled my lip out from between my teeth.  I’d bitten it so hard I could taste blood. “Charlie…”

“Will I ever be normal again?” I glanced down to his collarbone. Even though it was covered with a T-shirt, I knew what was tattooed behind that thin cotton. I had memorized the shape of it, and the position each letter held.

It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn
.

I had originally thought my darkness had arisen from the pain Lilly had caused. It was only made worse when I lost my Emma, my light. Once Lilly died, I was left with so much resentment, and so many questions surrounding my father and whether she’d withheld his identity from me just to be cruel or if she truly hadn’t known which man had gotten her pregnant. All of that blended with the
time I’d spent selling my body to the highest bidder. At some point,
I’d even believed that the darkness was really the aftermath of
everything,
the now, and that once I got through it all I would end up
somewhere else—somewhere that shone even brighter. But the more I thought about it, the more I recognized that the only constant among all of those timeframes was sex; it filled a void and numbed the pain. I’d run from the darkness as best I could.

It had followed along right behind me.

I didn’t know how to get past it, but I knew Cameron was my dawn, and my hope.

“How do I fix it?” I asked him. “How do I fix
me
?”

“I wish I knew, baby. I really do.” His eyes bore into me. I could feel his concentration in the skin that he squeezed and his lips as they hovered above me, in my breasts as his forearms rested against them. “I promise you this: whatever it takes, we’ll get you there.”

I wasn’t so sure we would.

THE MORNING AFTER I’D FINISHED GARETH’S PIECE,
Cameron told me he had come up with a way for me to conquer my
past. My question was obviously still on both of our minds. He mentioned it while we were in bed, waking up after just a few hours of sleep. He wouldn’t tell me what his idea was, what he planned to do, or when any of it would take place. But less than a week later, I came home from class and found a box on top of our bed. It was the size and shape of a clothing box, short and flat and wrapped in white paper. Next to the bow was a note with my name written in the center. I figured the gift was from Cameron. But I couldn’t stop the sickness that swirled from my stomach all the way to my throat.

It was almost exactly how my outfits were presented to me at the mansion: placed in a box with a large bow on top, waiting for me in the back of the limo. 

It had to be from him, I thought. He was the only one present in the apartment who even knew details like this. Still…I couldn’t keep my thoughts from wandering to that place
that house behind the wrought iron gates that whispered seductive shadows over my body. The way Victoria’s eyes had so carefully watched me while I had sat in her dungeon, the way her red acrylic nails would stroke the hardwood of her desk as she waited for my words, my reactions, so she could assess everything all at once.

I wondered if she was somehow watching me now, from
wherever she was.

You spread your legs for the devil. Of
course
his mistress is watching you now.

I pushed Lilly’s voice out of my head, but I didn’t move from the doorway of the bedroom. My hands clung to the molding; my heels pressed into the floor for stability. The mix of emotions that pulsed through me was almost too much. Fear was in the lead…I could feel it clawing its way up my body.

I rested my forehead against the door. I told myself how silly this was. I knew Victoria wasn’t here, watching me from inside the apartment or through the windows. I would have rested much easier if the authorities had known where she was. But I couldn’t let my uncertainty rule me.

I forced several deep breaths to steady myself and moved across the room. My palms were sweating, my breathing shallow. I was winded by the time I reached the bed. My fingers shook as I lifted the tab on the envelope and opened the folded black stock of the note inside. It was covered with silver ink and Cameron’s straight, all-caps penmanship.

THIS IS JUST A LITTLE SOMETHING I PICKED OUT. I’VE BEEN FANTASIZING ALL DAY ABOUT HOW IT’S GOING TO LOOK ON YOUR BODY, AND HOW YOUR SKIN IS GOING TO TASTE WHEN I
TAKE IT OFF YOU LATER. BUT LATER WON’T
COME FOR A WHILE…I HAVE A WHOLE EVENING PLANNED FOR US.

MEET ME DOWNSTAIRS AT SIX.

—CAMERON

Relief passed through me…but so did a flood of confusion. The box and the bow and the note weren’t just a coincidence. Cameron knew about the limo rides each evening and morning, about the dresses and the notes, about the heels and the masks and the details
of my wing in the mansion. During the months at my father’s
apartment, we’d had so much time to discuss everything. We’d explored topics
that taught us more about each other—our likes and dislikes
regarding just about everything, why art was such an important force for us both. The mansion, of course, had come up quite often, and all the activity that happened within. I didn’t know if it was normal to tell a
boyfriend those types of things. But what we were experiencing
together hadn’t exactly been conventional. I’d felt a welcome sense of relief
when I’d finally aired everything to him, even when we analyzed all the mansion’s efforts
the planning and preparation the staff had taken to pamper and please me when their real intention was just to
kill me.

Somehow, it had once again become a nightmare for me.

My hands didn’t stop shaking. But now that I knew it was from him, my curiosity fueled me. I tore off the bow and lifted the lid of the box, pushing through the tissue paper. I gripped the black fabric and pulled it out of its fold. My eyes roamed over the knee-high dress as it unraveled in the air. It was nothing like one of the gowns the mansion had once supplied. This was elegant and sexy; it would hug my frame and accentuate the small curves I did have. The top was V-shaped, and there were two thin swatches that would run from my shoulders to my waist, barely covering my breasts. The top layer was a black sheer; the bottom was beige satin. A piece of the sheer then wrapped around the waist like a belt, leading to a skirt made entirely of sequins. I dropped the dress on the bed and dug back into the box. Beneath more tissue paper I found a pair of heels. They were the same color as the satin layer of the dress and made of
a rich suede, with a basket weave design. Stripes overlapped each
other from the back to the middle, leaving an opening for the toes and continuing up past the ankle. The heel was well over three inches.