The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Twenty-Two

After spending thirty minutes in the car together, Eric and I parted ways almost immediately upon parking in the business district of Southampton. We each needed time to ourselves, apparently, to think about what was happening—both the rising sexual tension we couldn’t quite get rid of, but also the strange events of the last twenty-four hours.

I for one couldn’t knock those last bitchy words of his female relatives out of my head.

“You knew they wouldn’t like me,” I kept trying to tell Eric as he steered his uncle’s Bentley way too fast around some of the streets toward the main drive. “We knew this was going to happen.”

I hadn’t told him about the ladies’ comments, but he was still upset about the rest of the pranks.

“I…I know,” he would respond each time, but nothing more than that as he would grip the steering wheel harder and whip around another turn.

So, I spent the afternoon alone, poking in and out of stores, eating a few too many pieces of saltwater taffy, and picking up some odds and ends. A bracelet for my mother. A gray and red tie, plus a hat that I knew would look gangbusters on Eric. And, when I spied a drugstore on the corner…some hair dye. Two types, so I could make a choice. I could retouch my roots myself with a bit of bleach and some pink, or, with the other box, I could just dye everything black again and start from scratch.

By the time I popped into a bookstore at the end of town, I still hadn’t made a decision. Not as I poked through the fashion section looking for inspiration. Not as I paged through my favorite Mario Testino photography books. And not as I rounded a corner to find Eric standing in poetry.

From his place near the window, the sunlight cast a warm halo around his concentrated form, shimmering through the edges of his T-shirt, but making his body, arched over a book, look more like a candlelit statue than a man.

I considered cracking a joke about reading old white men, but found I didn’t want to. I had actually always loved it when Eric recited poetry to me. And he looked very beautiful—and peaceful—standing there reading it. Actually, the fact that we both enjoyed certain things just because they were beautiful was one of the few things we had in common.

As I approached, I found he was actually arrested with Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, with another book tucked under his arm. So much for old men.

“Sudden craving for classical Greek mythology?” I asked.

Eric started, the book falling open to the section on Poseidon. “Ah, yeah. Reviewing, I guess.”

I snorted. “For what, work? Why would you need to review Greco-Roman folklore?”

He clapped the book shut and set it on the shelf. “Call it curiosity. What have you been doing?”

I shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that.”

He looked down at my bags. “More shopping?”

I didn’t mention the dye. “Well, yes, but it’s for you, actually.”

“For me?”

I smiled. “Yeah. I saw this, and I don’t know, I just thought you might like it.” I pulled out a straw fedora with a black band around the middle. “For the sun. I noticed you didn’t have a hat this morning when we played croquet.”

“Thanks.” Eric accepted the hat curiously, examined it for a moment, then put it on.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Eric actually wear a hat, even during the most frigid winter months in Boston. He was one of those people who wore his thick, close-cut hair as it was because it likely provided more than enough insulation.

But the second he put it on, it was like his smile—it transported him back to another time where no man walked around without something on his head. Eric suddenly looked mouthwateringly like a character out of a Hitchcock film. Like Cary Grant. Errol Flynn. Paul Newman. Classic, tall, and full of charisma that practically made the entire store sparkle around him.

“How do I look?” He tipped the hat jauntily to the side, and I had to look away.

“You, ah, it looks pretty good,” I said as I studied the spine of the book under his arm, then immediately regretted it as I read the name out loud: “Poetica Erotica? Going for the old-school porn, I see.”

When I looked up, Eric wore a self-satisfied smirk. “Vintage hat, vintage porn,” he said.

I almost fell over.

“Are we feeling a little hard up there, Petri?” I asked as I ran my finger down the shelf. “It’s been a while since you refilled your dish, hasn’t it? Is that why you can’t stop kissing me?”

When he didn’t answer, I finally looked up. He was not amused.

“What do you think, Jane?” he asked with a voice that was suddenly steely. His silvery gaze pinned me into place.

“I—I don’t know.” All my attitude flew right out the window.

Eric tipped the hat up so I could see his entire expression, but really, I was entranced with those fingers. Those long fingers that less than twenty-four hours ago had been between my legs…making me moan…making me collapse. And then those lips, which had stamped two solid kisses on mine within the last day as well. My mouth tingled. Fuck.

“Really?” he asked. “You don’t know?”

I swallowed. “Well…no. I guess not. You walked away pretty easily last night, didn’t you? And it’s not like you said anything else afterward. And then in the room earlier…” Lord, I really could not help myself.

“I walked away.” Eric studied me for a minute, then closed his eyes, like he was praying. “Sometimes, you really…” He drifted off, like he refused to complete the thought in his mind, much less out loud.

I really what? I wanted to scream. Tell me now! Tell me if those kisses rocked you like they did me.

“Want to hear a poem?”

I blinked. “Talk about an about face, Petri.”

“I used to read you poetry all the time.”

“Yeah, but that’s because you were trying to get some.”

“Who says I’m not now?”

What?

I rolled my eyes, forcing myself not to fold. “God, just when I think you have style, you lay a corny line like that on me.”

Eric grimaced, but instead of coming back with another sharp retort, just opened his mouth and intoned:

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

When he finished, he looked at me, cocky and full of pride.

“Big deal,” I said. “So the English major memorized ‘Leda and the Swan.’ Everyone knows that one.”

“Everyone does not. Least of all you, Ms. Fashion Design.”

“Hey, I majored in economics, asshole, and I took a few lit classes like everyone else at Northwestern. I may not be able to recite it all by heart like you, you big dork, but that poem is seminal.” I tapped my knuckles on the bookshelf. “You know, if you’re looking for advice on how to woo the ladies, I probably wouldn’t start with a poem about rape.”

Eric grimaced. “No, I wouldn’t. Although it depends on the lady.”

“That it does. What would it be for me?” I should have regretted the question, but I didn’t. I wanted to know. Or maybe, a small voice said, you want to know if he still knows how to do it. Oh, who are you kidding? Of course he does.

He examined me for a second, then opened Poetica Erotica to a page he’d apparently marked. He stepped closer, and with a smirk, caged me against the bookshelf.

“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously, trying and failing to ignore the drift of cologne that suddenly floated around me.

“Jane, just shut up and listen.” Then he leaned close and intoned the poem next to my ear:

Teach me to sin—

In love’s forbidden ways,

For you can make all passion pure;

The magic lure of your sweet eyes

Each shape of sin makes virtue praise.

Teach me to sin—

Enslave me to your wanton charms,

Crush me in your velvet arms

And make me, make me love you.

Make me fire your blood with new desire,

And make me kiss you—lip and limb,

Till senses reel and pulses swim.

Ay! Even if you hate me,

Teach me to sin.

* * *

“Here,” Eric said. “And here.”

His big hands covered mine as he placed each on top of the wide wooden headboard above his bed. I watched, transfixed, as he threaded the two pieces of silk through the eyelet hooks that were drilled into each side. They were delicate, almost unnoticeable before today.

“I wondered what those were for,” I said as he began wrapping one piece of silk around my wrist, tying me to that side. “I thought you liked to hang Christmas lights or something, like college students in their dorms.”

I snorted to myself. The idea of Eric doing something so pedestrian was truly laughable.

Eric laid a kiss on my shoulder. “I put them there for you, pretty girl,” he murmured.

It was so unlike him. Most of the time, our interactions were playful, contrary, or somewhere in between. Tenderness wasn’t in Eric’s lexicon.

“I—” I didn’t know what to say to that. To the kiss. To the other silk scarf that he was now tying around my other wrist, pinning me to the headboard. After that, a third piece of silk wrapped around my eyes, blindfolding me to the room.

Eric tugged my ass toward him so that I was leaning toward the wall comfortably, but also displayed for his pleasure. Immediately, my skin tingled with anticipation.

“Hush,” he said as he slipped one hand between my legs to tease the slickness there.

“That feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked as he toyed with my clit.

I nodded as I pressed my face to the wall, sinking into the pleasure. This wasn’t new. He knew how to touch me there like he was playing an instrument, knew how to read my body’s cues like he was reading one of his books. Who would have ever thought it? Pretentious, calculating, unflappable Eric de Vries. The best I’d ever had.

“How about that?” he asked as he slipped his thumb into my pussy, effectively holding both points of pleasure in his grip while his other hand massaged my skin.

“Ummmm.” Words were starting to fail me now. It was happening faster than ever these days. I was hot before I got to the place to see him, and by the time we tumbled into the apartment, I was already halfway to orgasm. It was Pavlovian, really. Just the thought of the man made me want to come.

Eric chuckled, low and wise. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He continued his massage, internal and external, driving my pleasure in a slow, simmering frenzy. I couldn’t take much more of this…until he forced me to.

His other hand squeezed my ass, then slid to the middle, where slowly, surely, his thumb teased that other entrance, the one most people never dared to cross. I froze, lip clenched between my teeth, as the digit worked its way in until he had me effectively clasped between his two hands. His cock brushed the inside of my thigh as he leaned over me.

“And this?” he asked, his deep voice suddenly hoarse.

“Mmmmm,” I said. “Yessss.”

He continued to work both entrances, manipulating the energy coursing through me like I was a puppet, and he was my master.

“Take it,” he instructed me. “Feel it. Feel the way I control every fucking inch of this body.”

“Are you trying to teach me to behave, Mr. de Vries?” I asked, though my voice had lost its bite. I could hardly think of anything other than the feel of him behind me, pressing between my legs, a threat, a taunt, a stroke of desire. I was certain it would just take once to undo me completely.

But instead, he removed his thumb from my ass, and his cock replaced it, finding its seat in my darkest place, one slow inch at a time.

“No, pretty girl,” he said with a guttural sigh as he slid in completely. “I’m teaching you to sin.”

* * *

“Jane? Jane.”

The snap of a book in front of my face yanked me out of the past, and I blinked to find Eric watching me with a wry, amused expression.

“Everything all right there, Lefferts?”

I readjusted my glasses. “Um, yeah, sorry. Just got…lost there for a second.”

I stared at the ground, examining the uneven wood slats beneath my feet. Lord, even our feet were so different. My toes were painted in ruby-red polish and wrapped in my black espadrille wedges, pointed toward his light gray boat shoes. The idea that we might ever fit together permanently seemed even more ridiculous than those women had inferred.

But really, the bigger surprise was how disappointed it made me feel.

Two fingers slipped under my chin and tipped it up. Eric studied my face for a long time, his deep gray gaze penetrating me to the bone.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

Like a book. That’s how well he could once read me. How could I have forgotten?

“How do you know?” I asked, trying and failing not to sound pitiful. “How do you know it will be all right?”

His thumb brushed gently over my bottom lip as his expression softened. “Because they’re just kids,” he said. “They don’t know you like I do. Not yet.”

Oh. He thought I was upset about a few stupid pranks. He had no idea how deep it really went.

His hand dropped from my chin. “Your mom arrives tonight?”

I nodded. “On the seven o’clock. She should be here by nine or maybe ten, when the party is going. I told her to dress for it.”

“Good.” Eric took a breath, then expelled it, long and low. “Jane, we need to talk,” he said quietly. “Things have…things have changed.”

I swallowed heavily. Yes, they certainly had. “Okay,” I whispered. “But not now.”

Eric studied me a minute more. “Tonight? After the party?”

I nodded again. “Yes. Okay.”