CONTAINS CONTENT:
Sexual content.
{{Unedited}}
As Marielle walked back to her office, she jerked to a stop outside the door. Her tattoos shimmered in a wave sup her arms.
Oh no… Vincent.
She was unsure of what exactly was waiting for her on the other side of the door; having no idea what Vincent knew, or suspected. She wasn’t entirely sure what story she was going to give to him, either. She wanted to give him truth, but this truth hurt and was unforgivable. He shouldn’t forgive her; she didn’t deserve it.
Her core twisted and knotted. Vincent was in her office. Did he see Chocolate? Did he see the flower? Oh no, she should have thrown the contract away somewhere else; the kitchen maybe. She was headed there before Hazal interrupted her, after all. Why in the world hadn’t she burned that thing?
She took a deep breath in, reminding herself that she’d deal with whatever the consequences were of her actions. She’d chosen to have the affair, now she needed to deal with it and accept whatever happened as a result. She didn’t think that Vincent would hit or anything like that, but would he be upset? Absolutely. Would he get violent? Maybe.
She entered her office with a diminutive smile on her face; she was happy to see him, after all. That smile dissolved when she saw his back to her.
He was leaning on the desk, staring out the window at that fountain where they spent so many moments together when they first met. She had no idea that that fountain was also the place that he’d met her in his home dimension.
Her gaze darted to the trashcan and she felt the pit of her stomach sink.
Yeah… she asked for this. The crumpled contract was gone, and it was trembling in his left hand.
He said nothing at first, merely looked at her with angry, water rimmed eyes.
She looked down, shamefully. “You should have burned it,” he whispered, his tone almost dismissive. She was struck by how well he knew her. Despite not being able to read her mind like Austin could, he knew what she had been thinking a few moments ago. He sniffed, and straightened again. “So… how many pictures does Austin have of you now in red?”
“I – I don’t know I didn’t count,” she replied shakily.
There was a pregnant pause. “How many of them does he have of you nude?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “None.”
“Because you didn’t let him take them, right? They were for his eyes only?” He gave her a wry, disgusted smile as if he saw the James Bond joke from a million miles away.
She stared him down, her eyes intense and focused. “Did you think that I was going to keep this from you?”
“No, you couldn’t have. I knew what was going on when I left.”
She twisted her fingers together. “We- he and I hadn’t made plans to do anything when you left.”
“No, but I knew that you would.”
She paused, processing what he’d just said. “Then why did you leave?” She asked tightly.
He looked down, and squeezed the paper in his fist as if he thought that it would somehow die, or take the last forty-eight hours back. Then he flung it away from him like it was a rabid animal, tossing it back into the trash. “I told you. These things are up to you.”
“So, you have no intentions of fighting for me, then?”
Vincent scoffed, and glared down. “Typical woman behavior,” he spat under his breath. “You cheat, and you ask me why I’m not fighting for you,” he growled under his breath.
She looked down sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a tone that showed that she realized how horrible she’d just been. “You’re right, this was on me. But if it means anything, and you truly know me, then you know that I don’t do stuff like this. This isn’t normal,” she explained. He was still for a moment processing, finger curled under his chin in deep thought. “You know that I don’t do things like this.” There was a pause. “And please don’t hang all of woman kind’s behavior on what I did. This is neither my normal behavior, or is it typical…”
“No, I know… that’s why it hurts,” he replied stiffly.
She was silent for a moment. “Does it mean anything that I want you to fight for me?”
“I’ve been fighting for you. What do you think all of this is for?” He growled darkly.
She swallowed hard and sat on the couch, shakily horrified silence passing between them both before she whispered, “I didn’t sleep with him.”
“No,” Vincent replied quickly. “You just let him do everything else.” She nodded, that was fair. He had been looking at the contract, he knew what was and wasn’t in it. “Then there’s this,” he lifted the card that Austin had given her between his index and middle finger, then flung it across the room at her. It whirled in the air a few times, then landed a few feet from her left foot. She closed her eyes. He stood away from the desk, “answer me a question, Masin…” he began, his tone powerful and calm. “Are you done? Or will you continue to play this little game?” She was silent. She wanted to say that she was done, at least in theory, she was. He stood straight his spine turning to steel, his wrists behind his back. “Are you done?” He pressed, then like lighting, he pulled Headhunter from his arm and began toward the door, taking the room in three powerful steps. “Or do I have to go make sure that you are done?” He boomed.
“No!” She threw herself in front of the door. “No! Vincent, no!” She stopped him with her outstretched arms. “Vincent, please… I’m done, I’m done,” she breathed. “There doesn’t need to be any more death or pain.”
He was seething. “What, you mean the pain that you’ve caused me?”
Her eyes became dark as she glared at him, the fear and sadness that she felt a moment ago turning to ice now. She found her courage despite his strength, the gun in his hand, and his twelve inches on her as he towered beside her.
She began slowly, as if speaking to a small child, and tight lipped. “Can you take one minute to recognize the pain that you have caused me? Or are you beyond that right now?” His expression softened a little. She continued. “That no-” She raised her hand, stopping him from interrupting her, “that you have kept things from me repeatedly, that you knew-” she lifted her hand again, silencing him, and taking a step into him, “that you knew – Vincent, would affect how I felt about you!” She cried, and she shoved him in the chest, hard. He hardly moved, but was silent as he shifted Headhunter back into his arm, and put his hands behind his back again – crossed at his wrists – as he stared her down and listened.
Her eyes welled, and she continued, her voice escalating, “you’ve put me in danger, and I’ve experienced things that I would have never experienced if it wasn’t for the fact that you showed up and-”
“-Should I have never come here?” She stared at him with wide eyes. “Is that what you wish, Masin?” He asked brokenly.
She was silent for a long while before she spoke again. “That’s not a fair question. Because you are here.” She swallowed hard and tried to reach up to touch his cheek, and smooth some of his hair that had come loose from his motions a few moments ago. He jerked away from her hand, leaving it dangling in the air. “And I love you,” she peeped.
“Do you?” He asked, looking down between them.
She took in a deep, trembling breath and let it out raggedly. “Oui, Vincent…” She caressed his cheek, “Je suis tombée amoureuse de toi en premier. Je n’ai jamais arrêté,” she wept as she spoke. He swallowed hard and exhaled all his anger as he drew her against him, enveloping her with his strong body.
“This is all such a mess, and I never meant any of it,” he breathed, kissing the top of her head. “All I wanted was to protect you, and to-” his voice shook a little, and he lightly cleared his throat, “-and to be with you.”
They held one another for a moment until she pulled back entirely, and leaned back on the door. Their moment of levity had lessened the building rage, but she wasn’t done. “I want you to stop lying to me!” She barked, wiping away her tears. “I want you to be open with me and honest wit-”
“What, the way he is?”
“No, let’s not talk about him!” She wailed. He shrunk back a little. “I know every single time that you lie to me! I know it, and it hurts, and it closes me off to you!” He hung his head and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “I wanted to be with you. I kept resisting him to be with you.” She paused, her words processing in Vincent’s head. “I understand- you were grief stricken, you wanted me again, I get it! You didn’t understand what was going on with me and Austin in all the other dimensions… I… get it! I’m not sure that I would have done any better if I had been in your shoes.” She wiped her face of tears. “But, if you even want to attempt a future with me, you have to stop lying to me! You have to stop seeing me as weak, fragile… something to be protected.”
He closed his eyes and sat on the couch. “You’re right. Seeing you as something that needs protection was always one of my shortcomings. I always thought of you as something that needed saving because you were too blinded by Austin and your connection to break free from him. I don’t think you were ever truly free from him,” Vincent whispered. “I think the mistakes that you made with him in my world were letting him too close too quickly…” He shook his head and looked off distantly. “I kept so many things from you… and I have one more to tell you, now. But you won’t like it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she seethed.
He sat on the arm of the couch and removed his glasses, looking down into them as if searching for a picture of something that he couldn’t focus on or see. “Nightwatch and Tundra, they…” He wasn’t sure that he could continue. For a moment – as Marielle knelt down – she wished that she could read his mind, so he wouldn’t have to speak whatever this was. She took his hand in hers, and looked up at him like she would be there no matter what his words were. He nodded. “Cory followed me when I hopped dimensions. I didn’t know. Somehow, he and – I don’t know who, my guess is Klara – completed the technology to leave. He followed me, Marielle-” he paused. “And he killed all of them.” His voice broke.
She sat, thinking for a moment, then her eyes widened. “You mean all of me…” she breathed, her eyes unfocused.
He nodded. “Tundra killed Austin.” She stood away, and turned her mind a blur of confusion and an inability to process. “In my world, they keep trying to figure out a way to bridge the gap between our worlds and all of the other dimensions… they need you to do it, Masin. It’s one of the reasons that I’m here, now.”
“They need me?” She drummed her lip for a moment in thought. “You’ve said this before. It’s the truth?”
He nodded. “They need you or something organic with your abilities,” he sighed, “I can’t explain it all, and even if I drew up a diagram it would be difficult to explain, but there is a way to stabilize the situation. The only thing that happens now is they’re able to come in, steal radianite if they want, blow stuff up, and leave. They can’t stay longer than a few months, if they do, they die.”
Marielle remembered Barbara saying something about this before she killed her. “Why aren’t you dying?”
He shrugged. “I was.”
She shook her head, “No, I know, I don’t mean about the cancer. I mean why aren’t you deteriorating?” She asked. He looked down between them for a moment in thought. “You are, aren’t you?” She asked, shakily.
He scoffed. “No,” he replied. Then he grabbed her forearms when her expression didn’t change, her eyes still filled with horror. “No, I’m not.”
“How?”
He scraped his teeth over his bottom lip for a moment and let out a breath, “I have the answer for that, too. Obviously, I’m keeping it well hidden.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want them here!” He cried. Then he let her go, “I gave the answers to Sabine.”
“Sabine?”
“Viper, my Sabine. If for nothing else than to save her and John.” He parted from her, and went to the window looking out over the courtyard, the fountain, the place where they spent so much time together when they’d first met. “That was something that I didn’t tell you. I was able to stop them in Italy. The spike planters- it was Sabine and John. Omen and Viper. I gave her my blood, told her how to use it, because…” his voice trailed off. He pleaded with her with his gaze, “Because I do care, Masin.” She was still, silent. “I’ve been trying so hard to make things right for months now. All I seem to be able to do is continue to crumble things.”
“Will you ever give someone else the answers?”
“Probably not, Masin. I don’t want Cory being able to stay somewhere long term. Do you?” he asked flicking his eyes to her over his left shoulder.
She shook her head slowly, dazed. “They raped me too, didn’t they? Nightwatch and Tundra.” She saw him tilt his head forward in a small nod, disgust twisting his face.
The way that Cory looked at her made sense now. “Wait, wait… Tundra didn’t kill me.” She turned back to Vincent. “He wouldn’t have allowed it… Cory must have done it.” Vincent narrowed his eyes, thoughtfully. “No, listen… I saw several things when I was inside of him. Killing me wasn’t one of them.”
Vincent’s eyes widened as he realized that this was true. “He’s honestly awful,” he hissed, the veins in his arms standing out, his heart pumping murderously. “In testing, he must have pushed you to the point that it killed you, driving Aust- Tundra further insane. He probably told him that they’d just get a new you each time,” Vincent said under his breath. “Perverted bastard.”
“Vincent,” she began shakily. “Do you understand the trauma that I’ve endured in the last few months? How I’ve been forced to process and endure things that no one should have to?” She asked.
He exhaled and looked to the window. “Masin, allow me to talk for a minute?” He begged. She nodded once. “You’re right. You’re right about all of it. I’m foolish, and selfish, and always have been. I’m a lover, and a fighter, and a cocky self-aggrandizing fool.” His head hung and swayed from side to side. “I have made a lot of assumptions, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of bad decisions. My biggest bad decision, Masin has been believing that you needed me to rescue you.” He looked her over. “Clearly, you do not.” He paused for a moment. “Austin was so bad in my dimension that I figured that you would always need help to get away from him. I was wrong,” he breathed out. “He’s not terrible here… but I think we are all helping him to work himself out,” he growled under his breath.
“We?”
“Chamber, myself, you.” He gestured to her with his glasses. “That was partly what this was about, oui?” He gestured to the contract. “You’re trying to draw out Tundra so he has to deal with it?” She was tight lipped. So tight lipped in fact, that four of her fingers pressed into her mouth as she remained silent. “Well, that’s a yes.” He replaced his glasses on his face and looked her over. “You’re so strong, Masin,” he whispered. Then his eyes wandered down her body. “Do you remember when I made love to you the first time?”
She flushed a little. “I will never forget that. You were so still for so long that I got scared.”
He shakily went to his knees. “I thought that I would never feel you ever again,” he breathed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I want you to tell me now, Masin. Are you done?”
She nodded. “Unless you and me are over. I am done.” She shook her head. “I will not go back to him like that.”
“Even though you love him?”
She twisted her fingers together. “You can love someone and know that they are not ready for you and you are not ready for them.”
“So what happens when he’s ready for you?”
She pursed her lips and shrugged one shoulder. “We’re done… he knows that we’re done. He’s going to China at the end of the year, nothing’s going to stop that.”
“To follow ISO.” She nodded. “We encountered him, you know.” He breathed out, slowly. “He almost killed me.”
Her eyes became saucers, and she caressed the side of his face, smoothing back the bit of hair that he hadn’t let her touch a few minutes ago. “Wait… are you telling me that you almost died in Cambodia?”
“Oui.”
“Oh, Vincent,” she breathed, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly.
“It made me realize what I needed to do.” He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me. I told Chamber that I would help him one more time because we agreed to it… then I’m done,” he explained. “I want to take you away to that little cottage. I want to be with you.” She inhaled, and exhaled slowly. “So, I want you to tell me now-”
“I won’t go back to him like that,” she repeated. “It’ll be hard, we hear each other’s thoughts, but I won’t give in.”
He swallowed thickly and his gaze found hers, his brown eyes betraying his steely nature. He was scared. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you did not sleep with him.”
She shook her head. “Vincent,” she breathed. “I didn’t have sex with Austin Rancor. I promise.”
Vincent looked off distantly, letting out a breath that seemed like he’d been holding in since she’d walked into the room. “Then I can forgive you, and we can move on…” He paused, then glared down at her, his eyes becoming dark. “But you know that I’m going to have to punish you.”
“Punish me?” She asked, her skin pricking with both terror and excitement at once. The hairs on her arms stood up.
He stood. “Oui,” he said flatly. He looked her over, possessively, then grabbed the back of her neck and jerked her into a deep, possessive kiss as he pressed her against the back of the door, forcing his tongue between her lips and speaking a language that she’d never experienced before. He was mad, crazy, impassioned. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
“W-why?” She asked. His gaze remained hard on her, his jaw tensing. “Am I to dress up, love?”
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I want you to dress up… in something that you don’t care about. Because I’m going tear it from you before the end of the night,” he explained. “And you will remain silent,” he pressed her into the wall, his body hard against her. “And do as I command so you remember whose you are. Are we understood, Masin?”
She went rigid in anticipation, heart thudding wildly with excitement. “When do I start being silent, love?” She asked, tears of dread, relief, and ecstasy welling in her eyes.
“Right now,” he replied. “Obey me,” he added.
She nodded, and tipped her head toward him in respect.
He took hold of her wrist, and jerked her through the door, but not before she glimpsed Chocolate… he was okay, she sighed, relieved, and let it go.
Vincent marched her out of her office, and down the hall. Then down the elevator, to the car, and drove her home, in deep silence. It scared her, it excited her. She wanted him so badly.
He took her through the door, and to the bedroom where he pointed for her to stand, and she did, waiting as he threw open her closet doors and began to look through her clothing.
Her eyes flicked to the back of the closet where she had wisely hidden her dress from the opera with Austin. He wouldn’t see it. Even if he did, he wouldn’t know it’s significance. She breathed a soft sigh of relief.
He turned to her holding a long black skirt and a button up teal blouse in his hands and lifted them for her yes or no. She nodded. They were fine to be destroyed.
Tossing them to the bed, he gestured for her to put them on and she obeyed.
He broke for a moment to look her over, desiring her consent. “Are you okay with this?”
She nodded. “I want it.” She figured that now wasn’t the time to try and fight back after what she’d done. It was better to experience this with him. She’d been caught, and maybe understood, but he needed catharsis as much as she did.
“Then be silent again,” he hissed. She complied. “I’m taking you to dinner. You will sit and enjoy yourself,” he explained. Tears of relief rolled down her cheeks as she nodded. “You will not stop me from touching or kissing you unless you are in pain, or something is wrong, are we clear?”
“Yes.” She tucked her lips in, realizing that she’d spoken.
He cocked his head at her and lifted his nose. “Did you just speak without permission?” She kept silent. He pointed at her, and came into her space. “Do it again, and you’ll be punished further.” He straightened his collar, and his tie, and stood back, taking her in. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. Then he wiped the tears from her face. “Are these tears of relief?” She nodded. “Just nod, you want this?” She nodded again. “Is this what you need right now?” She nodded. “Then I’m happy to comply,” he hissed, again taking the back of her neck and pulling her mouth to his for a hungry kiss. “Now, let’s go to dinner, love.” He took her hand, urged her to the car, and drove them to a fine restaurant.
The night went as he said it would, she was quiet, compliant, and meek.
Her desire to relinquish herself helped her to straighten out her mind; when someone else was in control, she could let everything else go and relax. At the dinner table, she smiled and slumped back, full, and happy, gazing at him lovingly.
He gave her a soft grin before squeezing her knee under the table, and gently lifting her skirt so he could stroke the same knee. “Tu n’étais pas censé me briser le cœur ce week-end, Masin…” he whispered into her ear. “Alors maintenant je vais briser ton corps,” he growled, darkly as he gently let her go. She shuddered in a good way. “Mais ne t’inquiète pas, Masin. Vous allez en adorer chaque minute,” he purred hotly. She flushed.
Then he took her back home, where he let his true frustrations reign; the beast coming out in him.
Vincent pulled her into the bedroom by her wrist and pointed at the space at the end of her floor. “Stand there,” he ordered. She obeyed, feeling small; her fingers twisting together nervously at her navel. “Don’t make a sound,” he ordered. She nodded, feeling the spirals and churning deep inside of her; the need for his body against hers.
He paced behind her for a moment, his arms taut with anger, hurt, betrayal.
When he approached her, he slipped a gloved hand around the front of her neck, and pulled her temple against his face,
She shook, tears beginning to flow down her cheeks. She was desperate for him… excited, terrified.
He was loosening his tie. “Tell me that you want me, and only me,” he ordered.
“I- I want you,” she whimpered, full of need.
“Do you?” he asked laying her back against the bed.
She nodded, her body aching for him. “Yes!” She panted, feeling those same things that she did the first night; she needed him. She would never not need him. “You can take me,” she breathed. “I won’t fight.”
“No, you’re not going to fight,” he chuckled cruelly. She struggled against him, groaning. “Every part of you is mine tonight. Is that clear?” She nodded, stilling, obeying. “You…are…mine…” He began to place soft kisses against her skin, setting her on fire. “Don’t worry,” he breathed against her lips as he moved back to her ear. “je ne laisserai aucun bleu.”
They finished, and lay in one another’s arms.
Finally, Vincent’s mask fell away, and tears overtook him as he cried against her. “Oh, Masin… Masin, please tell me you’re done,” he sobbed.
“I’m done.”
“Say my name,” he breathed.
“Vincent. I won’t do that to you again.”
She fought internally to mean it; desperately wanting it to be true.