“You may recall, I can control myself if needed,” he said, watching her face closely as a strange look appeared in her widened eyes.

Oh, damn! He’s comparing us.

“I am not comparing, Sophia. Never.” He sighed. Stupid move, Alistair Connor. “I thought she was hot, Sophia. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. You, with your innocence, are so much more.”

“But what was so wrong?”

“Everything you can imagine.” And things I’ll never tell you. Ashamed, he looked at yellow-orange flames in the hearth. “You don’t want to know.” Threesomes, toys, S&M, bondage and some other things. “Suffice it to say that she liked things rough.”

What? I do too. “But... I...”

He shook his head interrupting her thoughts. “Not the kind that you like. Violent, degrading things.” He noticed Sophia’s eyes growing gradually huge.

“And you?” she whispered.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Did you like those things?”

Alistair gazed at Sophia for a moment. “Some of these things I had already tried and liked.” S&M was a bit harsh but I grew used to it. “I like a bit of violence,” he shrugged, “I’ve told you before.”

You’ll have to explain this better later, Alistair Connor. She lifted her head to get a better look at his eyes. “I don’t understand... You like those strange things and still you list a quickie in the car with... things that are wrong?”

“Nae, Sophia. I don’t think a quickie in the car is wrong, no.” He shook his head again and cleared his throat. “What was wrong was the exhibitionist and detached character of the situation she put us through.”

She was stunned. “Do you miss the things you did with her?”

“Nae, listen to me, I’m quite satisfied with my sexual life with you.” This time, white teeth flashed in a crooked smile. “I won’t lie and say that I don’t have a few fantasies that I want to try with you.”

Are you sure? I’m not anymore. “Alistair Connor. I never did anything... violent. I don’t like pain.” She twisted her hair around her fingers. “I have never been to a sex shop. I don’t even have the creativity to imagine the pleasure a person gets from that kind of violence.” She was disturbed. “My sexual life is... too normal, too bland? Am I missing something here?”

“No, Beauty.” He studied her face. “Would you like to try something... different?”

Sophia froze and looked away.

Alistair could touch the sudden tension in the room, but waited quietly for her answer.

“I- Alistair, I’ve- Today, for example, the French maid costume... it was a different things. Yeah, I could try a few different things, however... I-” She frowned. We were talking about you and Heather, not about me and you. “What happened then?”

Sophia’s question wasn’t prompted by curiosity. It was a need to shed some light on the painful shadows she glimpsed in his eyes. She wanted to first hear his version of the facts. Perhaps, then, she could let Alice or Tavish Uilleam talk. Not before.

“In hindsight, what I had with Heather was all just one big bad experience. There were so many wrong aspects in our relationship that I’m still astounded - disgusted, even - by my own behavior.”

Alistair looked into her eyes. His face was grave and the pain in his eyes so fierce that it scared her. “I was her sex toy - or she was my sex slave - I don’t really know. And don’t ask me why, but I liked it. I didn’t see what was coming until it was too late.” He looked at his hands and whispered, “And then she got pregnant. I was careless... And after a few broken condoms, I decided to go on without them. She had told me she was clean and on birth control.”

How dare you, Alistair Connor. But even though rage coursed in Sophia’s veins, she knew it was not time to talk about the comparison and his mistrust.

“When she told me, I was ecstatic. I’d always loved children. It was to be my first child,” he muttered.

Oh, God. “Nathalie?”

He looked up at Sophia and gave her a sad smile. “Nae. I went to Craigdale with her and told my parents that I was in love and was going to marry her.”

“Were you?” she asked in a whisper.

He raised his ink-black brows, questioning.

“In love? Were you in love with her?”

“I thought I was.” He crossed his arms over his chest, in a defensive position. “My parents saw what I couldn’t. Heather was a greedy whore, without morals or feelings for me. She didn’t love me.” He looked down and his arms opened, his hands falling heavily on his thighs. “But then, how could she?”

How could she?! “How could she not?” Sophia edged closer, grabbed his hand, and putting it against her cheek, she murmured, “You are so easy to love.”

“Am I?” His lids lifted, there was no light in his green eyes.

“Yes. So lovable,” she reaffirmed, soothing, and pulled his hand on her lap, between hers, caressing his knuckles. “What did your parents do when you told them you wanted to marry her?”

“Well, my parents refused to acknowledge her as my fiancée and we got married at a Registry Office. Just the two of us. Not even Alice or Tavish Uilleam went. They disapproved of her, by the way,” he huffed. “I had no more friends. I spent my days working and my nights and weekends having wild, depraved sex.” He laughed, disgusted. “Heather wanted money, status, a handsome face and an insane, dark lover with stamina to handle her. I wonder...” A lock of his raven hair fell over his eyes and he let it remain there. “If she ever loved anyone. She had never wanted me, Alistair Connor. I was just another step she used to get her way. But then, what did I really have to offer her?”

“Oh, Alistair Connor. Your-” she couldn’t bear to say ‘wife’ nor was she going to soil her lips with her name. “You are... breathtaking. Not your beauty, not your money or your status. You. Your heart. But she has damaged you too much for you to believe in what I am saying, hasn’t she?” Sophia began to feel an incredible anger for that execrable woman.

The room quietened as Sophia protectively hugged the fierce and broken man that made her heart beat faster. She traced his jaw, asking, “When did you get married?”

“On her birthday. March the fifth, two-thousand-four. She was two months’ pregnant.” His mouth contorted and his green eyes darkened. “A month after the wedding, she had an abortion.”

His pain was so acute that Sophia couldn’t bear it and her eyes teared. “I’m so sorry she lost the baby.”

He squeezed her in his arms. “Sophia, she didn’t lose the baby. It wasn’t a miscarriage.” He looked down at her face and repeated bitterly, “She. Had. An abortion.”

Sophia gasped indignant, “She... She... killed your baby? Her own baby? How could she?”

He shrugged. He didn’t have an answer, since he didn’t understand such a barbaric act himself.

“And what did you do? It was one of the main reasons you married her, wasn’t it? The baby?”

“She told me the baby had spina bifida. It’s a-”

“I know what that is,” she interrupted him. “And?”

He paused for a second. “I found out afterwards it was a lie. Another lie. At the time, I was too devastated to investigate further. I didn’t see the web she was spinning around me. Three months later, life returned to normal. If you can call debauchery normal.” He lowered his eyelids, his long lashes shadowing his cheekbones. “Day after day, she introduced more perversions into our lives. Until-” She asked me to have a threesome with another man. “We had our first fight. She moved into Emma’s apartment, but a month later she was back. We agreed on some ground rules. At least, I thought we had. I had fulfilled my fantasies. I’d reached my limit.”

“But... you told me you liked it.”

“Sophia, I believe in equal rights. If she fulfilled my fantasies, she should have the right to fulfill her perversions.”

“Perversions,” she repeated, baffled. What kind of perversions?

He sighed and nodded, “Aye. She needed them like the air she breathed, but I thought I could prevent them, that I could supply her with other sensations. She was too damaged though, too sick. It was an addiction. The more she did, the more she wanted.” He waved his hand in the air. “Fool that I was, it never crossed my mind that she would look elsewhere to fulfill her desires.”

Sophia cupped his face in her hands, “She cheated on you? I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” he rasped.

“I thought... you had cheated on her.”

His laughter was bitter. “She did it time and time again. I was working too much to notice it. I bought more shares of the bank in August, 2005. We started to work on different floors and it was easier for her to lure others into our house. She did it all, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll,” he mocked.

Horror creeped onto her face and she didn’t try to disguise it.

“Drugs? You too?” She breathed relieved when he shook his head. “Why didn’t you divorce her?”

“I didn’t find out immediately. She was always eagerly waiting for me. She did it all and still had the energy to fuck me.” His lips thinned to a line. “She got pregnant again. She was so engrossed in her immoral self-indulgence that she didn’t pay attention to her own body. One night, when she was almost five months, I felt the baby kicking my hand. Nathalie.” He breathed the name of his daughter with so much love, like it was a blessing.

“Five months... Impossible. I don’t believe it.” She shook her head.

“She was very, very lean; thinner than you, even. She’d never had regular periods. And she was always on a diet. She was crazy about fitness.”