The Love Trap by Nicole French
39
Eric and I drove my mother to the airport soon after we returned to the house. Well, our driver did while we sat in the back with her and listened to her jabber about her plans to remodel the house in Evanston. Ji-yeon was going to move in with her there, but she would keep my room for us. It was obvious how happy she was to be going home at last.
“Tell me when you hear back from the school,” she told me over and over again as we approached JFK.
I swallowed. “Okay, I will. If I even get in.”
“We’ll celebrate at Christmas,” Eric said as he gave her a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek. “She’s a shoo-in.”
“Or Thanksgiving, maybe?” she replied.
He glanced at me, and I shrugged.
“We’re going,” I said. “Get ready to eat a lot of turkey and Korean food.”
Eric blinked, then nodded. “I can handle that.”
With one last hug, we watched my mother disappear into JFK. Eric shuttled me back into the car and held me securely while he checked his emails, realizing somehow that I wasn’t in the mood to talk. We had gotten better at that too, over the last several months. The just being together. No chatter. No repartee. Just…us.
As we drove into Manhattan, Eric put his phone away. “Are you up for another walk through the park? Might be nice before the weather turns again.”
I shrugged. “Sure, I guess.” There wasn’t much to do at the house now that I’d gotten my application in anyway.
Tony dropped us off near the East Seventy-Second Street entrance, and Eric and I strolled easily hand in hand, past the Bethesda Fountain and The Lake, where even in the chilly weather, tourists were taking out rowboats under the blue sky.
“I kind of like the park like this,” I said as I swung Eric’s arm back and forth. “Is that weird that I prefer it without all the foliage and tourists? A little moodier? A little barren, maybe?”
My choice of words wasn’t by design, but we both heard the double entendre. After all, we’d decided to eschew all forms of contraceptives about three months prior. After finding me holding my belly and rocking in my sleep one too many times, Eric had gotten up one night and thrown out every condom we had, then made love to me from four different positions until the sun came up. Both of our therapists cautioned against expanding our family too soon while we were both still recuperating. Babies aren’t Band-Aids, mine said succinctly.
But neither of us bought anymore condoms, and I refused my doctor’s offers of birth control. Every twenty-eight days, however, we were still disappointed.
Eric brought my hand to his lips. “Don’t worry,” he said, his breath warm against my hand. “When it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen.”
What if it doesn’t? I didn’t say it, but I wanted to ask. Though my doctor assured me that nothing had been permanently damaged last February, sometimes I wasn’t so sure.
Eric shrugged, as nonchalant as ever. But while that imperviousness would have once infuriated me, sometimes I found it comforting. It’s useful being with someone who literally knows he can handle just about anything life throws at him. The little things, somehow, didn’t matter so much.
“I have something for you,” he said, stopping near Strawberry Fields. Next to us was the famous stone, just across from John Lennon’s former building. Imagine, it read, to any passersby who might need it.
And isn’t that what we had always done together, when fear and pride didn’t get in our way? With Eric, I had found I could imagine almost anything, and he would support me in any way. I had found the one man in the world unafraid of a woman like me. My strengths, my weaknesses, my ambitions, my fears. He embraced them all, and what’s more, he genuinely loved me for them.
I turned to face him, noting again just how stupid handsome he was. He was dressed down for the weekend in his favorite navy wool jacket, a tailored wool shirt, and a pair of gray felt pants that somehow made his long legs even longer over leather brogues. Very Swedish Esquire, particularly considering the way the afternoon light was now playing over his cropped blond hair and the light stubble he allowed to grow on the weekends.
But it was never his basic attractiveness that always drew me to him like a moth to a flame. Together we burned, of course. It was a burn I craved. I needed. But aside from sex, aside from looks, aside from charisma. Underneath all of that was a man who was quietly one of the best people I had ever known.
Honest. Pensive. Genuine.
Eric.
“What in the world,” I wondered as I traced the line of his jaw with one finger, “did I ever do to deserve you?”
Eric smiled. His full lips spread shyly, then more confidently, with that curious effect of completely transforming his entire face.
“You know,” he said as he allowed me to play over his chin, nose, cheekbones, lips, “I think that pretty much every day. As soon as I wake up next to you.”
“You are the corniest,” I whispered, though there was no joke in my tone.
Eric captured my hand again and pressed a long, slow kiss to my palm. “Come on, Lefferts.”
I followed him out of the park and into our old neighborhood, across Central Park West and eventually down West Seventy-Sixth. He stopped in front of our building. We hadn’t officially decided we weren’t coming back here. But neither of us had voiced a single desire to do so in the last several months.
Eric pulled a key out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “If you want it.”
For a long time, I stared at the key. It was different than the old one. Thicker. Brass, not silver. It was attached to a keychain with a mermaid etched onto it.
Ariel, I thought to myself, clutching it for a moment.
“Say the word, and we’ll sell it,” Eric said, nodding at the building. “But I thought...before we do that...you should see what it looks like…finished.”
As his words registered, my mouth fell open. “Finished…you mean, you…”
“Accelerated the remodel?” he finished for me. “Yeah. It’s amazing what you can get done with three separate crews and a willingness to pay overtime.” He glanced up at the townhouse, which I now realized no longer had the buzzers marking multiple units.
I swallowed. I hadn’t been back here since May. Not since we had removed our things and ran away from the bloodshed that occurred there. I didn’t know what I would find.
“Okay,” I said. “Show me.”
* * *
The heavy oakdoor closed behind us and echoed through the newly emptied space. All the sounds of outside evaporated behind triple-paned windows.
I stared at my brand-new surroundings. The stairs were still here, but nearly every non-bearing wall dividing the old apartments on the first floor had been ripped out, creating a uniquely open-concept living space over shining wood floors. A kitchen gleamed from the back, leading into a general dining area, and a living room that would lend itself to being arranged around a huge stone fireplace near the front. This wasn’t a stodgy, traditional home that seemed lifted from an Edith Wharton novel, the way Heather’s home felt. Nor was it an icebox, full of chrome and glass, like Eric’s old place in Boston. It was spacious, modern, but clean and still comfortable.
Our footsteps echoed across the wood floors.
“There’s a bathroom by the kitchen,” Eric said, “and a patio out back that also leads to the downstairs. I waited on hiring a landscaper to see what you wanted to do with that.”
“What’s downstairs?” I wondered. This was what happened when you turned an entire apartment complex into a single house, apparently. Floor upon floor of...what?
Eric took me by the elbow and guided me toward a set of rear stairs that led down to a surprisingly airy basement, which included a small kitchen, a bathroom, and several spare rooms. “Right now, it’s a blank slate. A couple of bedrooms if we want live-in accommodations for the help.”
“For the help,” I repeated. “Does that sound as obnoxious to you as it does to me?”
Eric chuckled. “Maybe a little. To be honest, I was thinking it would be a good space for a startup business. Like a design studio.”
I gulped, though anticipation prickled my spine. “Don’t you think it’s a little early for that? We don’t even know if I’m even getting into that program.”
Eric turned to me with a spark in his eyes that matched my own. “I think you’re unbelievably talented, and so does the editor-in-chief of the biggest fashion magazine in the world. The world is your oyster, Lefferts. You could make this space your pearl. Whatever you want.” He tipped his head. “You helped me figure out what I was meant to be. I just want the same for you, gorgeous.”
I was quiet for a long time. And, I found, not quite ready to make a decision on that front. But the fact that he was offering this meant the fucking world.
“Show me the rest,” I said.
Eric’s calm facade betrayed nothing. “All right. Come on.”
The rest of the house was an equally beautiful blank slate. Another floor full of empty bedrooms that I could imagine as offices as easily as children’s rooms. Eric didn’t comment either way, but I was sure he felt the same.
He led me to the floor where our former apartment had been. The living area still had the same hardwoods, the same fireplace, the same windows that looked out toward the park. But that was it. The walls were empty. The furniture was totally gone.
“It’s very…white,” I said, though I mentally smacked myself for saying something so inane. Yes, it was white. But it was also gorgeous. Clean.
“I told them to make it a canvas,” Eric said as he trailed me. He was watching me, of course, not really looking at the apartment.
“Where is all our furniture?”
“Well, some of it wasn’t really…usable.”
I cringed. It was true. That night had been very...messy. In some of my worse dreams, I remembered just how messy it was to have someone—specifically my biological father—shot at close-range in my living room. There wasn’t a whole lot that went unscathed.
Now, everything in it had been removed. And the rest of the apartment was completely different. Nearly all of the bedrooms and the kitchen had been demolished so that now the floor primarily consisted of a single huge bedroom, a walk-in closet that could house about ten hibernating bears (much less the contents of our combined wardrobes), and the biggest bathroom I had ever seen.
“Eric,” I said as I explored the new space. “You turned most of our apartment into a single master suite? That’s obscene.”
I placed my palms on the wide marble countertop that spread from one end of the room to the other, the length of at least two king-sized beds, above which pristine mirrors ran the length of the walls. This bathroom alone was bigger than my old apartment in Chicago.
A pair of hands encircled my waist. Eric’s lips touched my collarbone.
“I told you,” he said against my pulse. “I need room to spread you out.”
Without waiting for me to respond, he turned me swiftly, then lifted me up and set me on the counter. It really was enormous. Solid. Unbreakable.
He set his hands on either side of my hips and looked at me, unflinching. Unwilling to let me look away either. But when he spoke, it wasn’t what I expected. Instead, it was poetry, which I hadn’t heard him recite in a very long time:
Had I the heavens’ embroidered clothes,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark clothes
Of night and light and the half light.
I tipped my head. “Well, that’s beautiful. Is that yours or…”
Eric shook his head, a little bashful. I knew he had been writing a lot over the last several months, but he hadn’t shared anything with me. Yet.
“No, no, that’s Yeats, of course,” he said.
“Ah. Your favorite. I should have known.”
“That poem…it always reminded me of you. All about the fabric of heaven. His lover makes clothes, just like you. And all he wants to do is give her everything he can if it would make her happy. I thought of it last year, when I bought you all those textiles from Milan.”
I tipped my head, a smile playing across my lips. “It is fitting. How does the rest of it go?”
Eric took a deep breath, then stepped closer to me as he recited the rest:
I would spread the clothes under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams
He stepped between my legs, then unbuttoned my coat.
“I have spread my dreams under your feet,” he continued as he pushed it over my shoulders and helped me remove my arms. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
By the time he finished, the room around us had faded. His silvery eyes, as celestial as the heavens evoked in the poem, shone with intensity, lust, and, mostly, love. I couldn’t see anything but him as he cupped my cheeks.
“Happy anniversary, pretty girl,” he said as he gazed openly at me.
I blinked. “What?”
His mouth quirked again into a sly half smile. “It’s November second. One year ago...we got married. Well, the first time, anyway.” His thumb hooked lightly on my lower lip and pulled a little before releasing it. “It didn’t really go the way I imagined when I met you, but I wouldn’t take it back for a second.”
“You imagined marrying me when you met me?”
Eric didn’t look away. Not even for a second. “Jane,” he said softly as he pushed a lock of hair out of my face. “I knew I’d spend the rest of my life with you the second I saw your bright blue hair in the middle of the Harvard lawn. You woke me up, gorgeous. Just like you do every single day.”
“Eric,” I whispered, searching for a response. Even now, even after all this time, the man simply overwhelmed me in the best possible way.
“What do you say?” Traces of vulnerability crept into his stolid features. “Are you ready to come home, or…”
He was clearly scared to articulate the other option. That we would abandon the house we had worked so hard to make our own once before. Find someplace new, someplace unmarred by the traumas of the past.
But the fact was, those pains would follow us anywhere we went. Life, death, love, hate. They imprinted permanently on your heart, leaving patterns as eternal and terrifying as any actual person or thing. I considered all the years I had done my best to run from this man, whose intensity speared me to the core, but whose love doubled every dimension I knew.
That was when I knew my answer without a single doubt.
“I think,” I said, “that we should christen our new-old home. Properly, this time.”
Eric grinned. Fully grinned, the kind that made his entire face transform from a staid Upper East Sider, born and bred for poise and comportment, into a walking fucking sunbeam.
“Right fucking now,” he agreed.
Before I could reply, he set his mouth on mine, slipped his tongue past my waiting lips, and let our bodies say naturally what I struggled to say with mere language.
Because for all of the hard times we had, this would always be easy. There were so many ways to speak between souls. Words were one. Bodies were another.
“Off,” Eric murmured as his hands slipped under my sweater.
“Off,” I agreed as I shucked his coat, then yanked at the buttons of his shirt.
It didn’t take long until our clothes lay all over the bathroom floor, and I had six feet two inches of glorious, golden god of a man leaning over me, looking at me with a delicious expression that was more devilish than celestial.
“I have one more gift for you,” he said as he reached for his jacket.
I leaned back against the mirror, happy to put my own body on display. Mostly because he seemed to take as much joy out of admiring my skinny limbs as I did in his lean, stacked muscle. Lord, he really was a work of art.
He stood up with a small velvet bag in one hand, which he turned over to pour a chain of some sort into his palm.
I sat forward curiously. “What’s that? Jewelry, eh?” I winked at him. “First anniversary is paper or clocks, you know. You’re going a bit overboard, but I suppose I shouldn’t complain considering I didn’t even remember.”
Eric smirked. “I guess I should correct myself. The house is your present, pretty girl. This one is mine.”
“Oh?”
He nodded, and his gaze darkened as he held up the chain. “That’s right. Now, place your hands behind you. There’s nowhere to restrain you in here…yet. So you’ll just have to do what you’re told.”
That familiar thrum of excitement grew in my belly, but obediently, I moved my hands behind me so my chest was thrust out.
“Beautiful,” he murmured as his eyes drew over my body.
I squirmed. “You going to do something about it?”
His hand found my breast in a short, quick slap that made me gasp. Out of pure desire, of course.
“What do you think?” he asked as he pushed my legs apart so he could step between them. He was already hard, the length of him resting against my thigh. I edged forward, but he shook his head. “Not yet, gorgeous. Not yet. First…”
He held up the chain, which was bright gold and extremely delicate. At each end hung something that looked like gold tweezers. I grinned.
“Well, either you’re going to play some messed-up version of Operation on me, or those are the prettiest damn nipple clamps I have ever seen, Mr. de Vries.”
“Have you ever used any?” he asked. “We haven’t.”
I shrugged. “Once. A long time ago.” I took my chance and leaned forward enough that I could whisper in his ear. “He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, though.”
Unlike most men, who might get jealous or refuse to hear about previous lovers, Eric just chuckled with satisfaction. “Well, of course he didn’t. He wasn’t me.”
“Someone thinks a lot of himself.”
“Am I wrong?” The knowingness all over his face might have been maddening.
“Why don’t you get started?” I asked. “Since you’ve got such a reputation to uphold now?”
Eric’s smirk deepened. “You got it.”
I watched openly as he fastened one of the tweezer-like parts to my right nipple.
“You know, in some of the French courts, they used to wear dresses cut under their breasts so women could show off jewelry like this.” I turned my chest back and forth, admiring the chain as it swung lightly. “Do you think that’s the way I should go for the Met Gala next year? It is Marie Antoinette-themed, you know.”
Eric’s eyes burned, whether at the sight of my pinched nipples or the idea of me parading around society with them looking like this, I wasn’t sure. He tugged lightly on the chain, then kissed me slowly, tongue twisting around mine until I was fully out of breath.
“I think for now, the only person who gets to see your nipples is me,” he said, giving another swift tug that made me gasp again.
His other hand wrapped around my ass, pulling me to the edge of the counter so that his cock was perfectly aligned with me. He pressed his thumb over my clit, then drifted it down, slipping it in and out of me, then back up.
“Look at that,” he murmured as he did it again. “In a hurry, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t lie. The second he pulled that chain out of the bag, I was turned on. Hell, the second he kissed my neck, I was basically ready to go.
He kissed me then, taking my lower lip between his teeth and worrying it slightly while he tugged on the chain again. And again.
I moaned as his cock slipped between my legs.
“Holy shit.” My breath was already choked. “Did you—you didn’t, did you?”
Eric pulled back. “Did what, pretty girl?”
I looked down at where we were nearly joined. “It isn’t possible that you had the contractors build this counter at exactly this height so you could…”
Eric tugged again on the chain. I hissed at the minor pain and burst of pleasure.
“I think you will find,” he said as he just barely slid in, “that nearly every surface in this house”—a few inches more—“is constructed so you”—just one more—“will be perfectly”—kiss—“accessible.”
My thighs spread wider as he pushed in completely, finding his seat within my darkest places.
I arched, clamped nipples rubbing against his hard chest while my head dropped back.
His teeth found my neck with a growl. “Fucking hell, you look hot like that.”
The sound of him losing a bit of that careful control only made me that much hotter.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. “Please, Eric. I need it.”
He pulled out slowly, then thrust in, just as slowly. Another pull on the chain. Another suck on my neck.
“Eric…” My voice wheedled. Begged. “Please.”
“Shit.” Clearly the sound of my begging wasn’t helping with that control. “Say it again. Tell me you need it.”
Another slow pull. Another equally tortured push. Chain. Mouth. Rinse and repeat.
“Eric!” I shouted as he sucked on my neck. “Oh my God, pleeaaassee!”
“Fuck, yes!” And then, like he couldn’t help himself, he pounded into me, those measured movements replaced by forceful thrusts that threatened to undo us both in as much time.
“Say it, Jane,” he ordered me. “Tell me what you need.”
I was dying to touch him, but I wouldn’t dare go against his orders. After all, that was the fun of it. The torture of having to do what I was told for once. The gleam in Eric’s eyes as he waited for me to break.
But this time I wouldn’t. This time I wanted to be perfect. Just for him.
I stuck my chin out and licked my lips, closing my eyes just to feel the delicious pressure of him as he filled me, again and again.
“You,” I cried as I took everything he wanted to give me. “I need you.”
“Fuck!” Eric’s shout bounced off the stone surfaces, and he pulled on the chain again, this time that much harder.
“Oh!” My eyes flew open. What the hell was happening.
But even as he seemed to get even bigger within me, Eric slowed his movements, clearly conscious of what was happening. He started to focus on a rhythm he was setting with the chain. Short, deft tugs in time with his hips.
“Are you…” He gasped, looking for breath. Clearly he was trying to hold back himself. “Are you close?”
“Am I…” I barely had time to answer him before his thumb brushed over my clit.
“Oh!” I gasped.
Then he pulled off the clamps. The chain dropped to the counter just as sensation flooded my nipples, feeling returning to the slightly distended tips just in time with an orgasm that exploded through the rest of me.
“Eric!” I shouted, grasping for the man since I definitely couldn’t keep myself upright.
“Fuck!” he cried as he drove into me for the last and final time.
And then we fell back into the mirror, heaving and driving home, home, home again. Grabbing desperately for each other as we wrung every last solitary sensation out of our bodies. Together.
* * *
We did it again.And again. Once on the counter of the kitchen, just to test Eric’s assertion that indeed every surface had been made for us. He was, of course, infuriatingly correct.
After the second time, we collapsed onto the plush carpet of the bedroom, staring at the lone piece of art on the wall: the Gustav Klimt lovers gifted to us from Celeste.
Eric pulled me onto his chest, and I sighed, content to listen to his heartbeat.
“So it’s a yes on the apartment?” he wondered as one hand lazily stroked my back. “Do you think we’ve adequately cleansed it of its ghosts?”
Was that what we were doing? In a way, I supposed he was right. And maybe it had worked. Any trepidation I had had about living here again was long gone by now.
“Do you think,” he wondered as he stared up at the box beam ceiling, “do you ever wish you could take it all back? Go back to that day in Chicago when I asked you to go along with this scheme? You could have had a nice life. None of this last year would have happened?”
I set my chin on his chest so I could look up at him. “Are we feeling a mite unsure of ourselves for once, Mr. de Vries?” I won’t lie. The petty side of me was a little thrilled by my immovable husband having one of his rare human moments.
Eric rolled onto his side, slipping me off his chest so we were facing each other, then propped his head up with one hand to look at me. “You did hate me an awful lot back then.”
“Well, you were kind of a jerk sometimes too. It was like being in love with a brick wall. Totally impervious.”
“Come on. I wasn’t that bad.”
I made a big show of blowing raspberries through my lips, sticking them out like a trumpet.
Eric just stared at me like I was growing horns. “Lefferts, what are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “I’m the big bad wolf blowing the house down. Except I can’t because it’s made of bricks.”
“Does that make me one of the three little pigs?”
“No,” I replied. “It makes you the brick house. Get it?”
“Ahhh, I see.” He laid on his back again, chuckling.
“Okay, okay. Not my best material, I know.”
We lapsed into silence, letting my bad jokes and our chuckles filter through the room. I started daydreaming about how I wanted to decorate our mini palace. How I’d shape this room in particular to complement its crown jewel in the Klimt kiss. Our kiss.
“Well?”
I frowned, pulled out of my visions of upholstery and bedrooms sets. “Well, what?”
Eric didn’t actually reply. It took me a second to realize that he did actually want me to answer his original question. That even with everything, he still had those moments of uncertainty, just like I did. The thought was incredibly endearing.
All desire to tease abandoned me, and I was left with only the desire to make this man feel as good as he made me feel just about every damn day.
I clasped his cheeks between my hands and brushed his skin with my thumbs.
“Here’s the truth,” I said. “I don’t regret one single solitary fucking thing. Not any of them. Not with you.”
Those somber gray eyes sparked with obvious relief. “Yeah?”
I nodded, edging closer. Should I? No, I shouldn’t. Now wasn’t the time for jokes or the brazenness that tended to get me in trouble.
But then again, it was me we were talking about. And Eric knew that better than anyone. There was no sense in holding back now.
“Well, I might have hated that very first vow,” I said honestly as I drew him in for one more kiss. “But, Eric de Vries? I could never hate you.”
* * *
The End
Or is it?
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