Sophia smiled. “By their behavior. Valentina is the youngest by two minutes and she’s more impulsive. Victoria is sweeter, calmer. When they were small - well, even now - Val comes up with mischief and Vic eagerly follows. A hint for you, Victoria has a small scar on her chin,” Sophia tilted her head and pointed to the right underside of her own chin, “right here. She fell from her horse trying to jump a fence and got three stitches.”

He grasped her hand, lacing his fingers with hers, drawing her attention back to his face. “Do you still miss your parents, Sophia?”

She almost choked with the unexpected change of subject. She put the glass on the table, swallowed the juice and dabbed her mouth with her napkin, clearing her throat. “Yes. I do. Very much. It’s a... An eternal void. It’s been fifteen years. I only remember flashes; my father pushing me on a swing or my mother helping me with my homework. But mostly, what I remember are...” She sighed and raised her eyes to his. “The senses. Her smell and her caresses. Her soft bosom. His laughter and booming voice. The feeling of freedom when he would throw me up in the air and catch me.” Her lips trembled. “Cherished memories.”

Whenever she looked at him with those sad, dark-brown, emotion-filled eyes, Alistair wanted to wrap his arms around her, shielding her from all harm and pain. To make love to her until she was laughing again, that tinkled sound that made his heartbeat accelerate to a thousand per minute. “How did you cope with it?”

“Family love and a special friendship between me and my siblings. We were very close. My family was only us. No uncles, no aunts, no cousins. When they died, Felipe, Carolina and I, we... We became inseparable. We had all our meals together. We slept in their room all the time. And we spent all the time we could with the twins. The best thing my grandparents did was to send me away. Me and Carol. After a week in Lausanne, I missed my parents so much, I missed my brother and my little sisters so much, all I wanted was to go back. I went through a month of unparalleled anger.” She gazed up to the blue sky and the sparse soft clouds, seeing her parents’ fading faces on them, remembering those times. “I know anger is acceptable when you’re grieving, especially when you’re a ten year old girl. Carol was eight, but she grew ancient in just a few weeks. And Felipe, he carried the weight of it all on his shoulders. He closed himself off and, like Carol, became an adult instantly. Always worrying about the future that he forgot to live his present. He was only sixteen. I think he thought he had to fill my father’s shoes.”

He brushed a lock of her raven hair behind her ear just to touch her. If he could, he would have pulled out all that grief from her soul.

Sophia leaned her face on his hand for a moment, closing her eyes and letting his warmth seep into her. “It was hard. It was a pain that went on and on and it never ended. It’s perverse to lose both parents at the same time,” she bit her lip and shook her head. A tear fell down her cheek when she whispered, “It was too soon to say good-bye. And what is even worse... Time dulls the pain, but then it also bleaches the good memories...” her words trailed away with a helpless gesture with her hand.

Instinct overcame him and he brought her onto his lap, nestling her back on his arm. Her pain unveiled his own. He couldn’t imagine Nathalie’s memories fading away. “I’m sorry, mo gràdh.”

Sophia sank on his chest. Solid. Warm. So real. When she looked up into his eyes, she saw her own heartache mirrored there, as if he felt her ache as his. Oh, Alistair Connor. You had it even worse than I did, didn’t you? She regarded him with love, as his pain-filled eyes reminded her he had lost a child. Nothing more perverse than that.

“That’s why I want Gabriela to have at least another sibling. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I were an only child. Yeah, my grandparents were there. They were supportive and loving. But... my sisters and my brother... We shared the same pain and we bore it together. In that year in Lausanne, I was always with Carol. Joined by grief, by need, by love. We helped each other the best way we could. We dealt with our, quote unquote, acceptable anger, by doing things like fencing and skiing and all sorts of mad things, the worst young girls that ever passed by that school. We won every fencing competition. And every horse race, giving the horses rein as if we were chasing their killer. We punched our dough in the Cordon Bleu class, instead of kneading it delicately for hours, like it was responsible for their death. After a while, every girl in the class was passing us their dough behind the teacher’s back for us to knead it.” She smiled sadly at him. “The teacher, he knew, of course. But he closed his eyes to that. Those were acceptable things. The only time we were punished was when we fought over something ridiculous with a schoolmate and we had a flour war in Monsieur Putton’s kitchen. He had a fit and called the head-teacher.” Her smile was sad and his fingers combed her hair, bringing solace to the dull ache that was always waiting to resurface.

“What was the punishment?” His voice was intense as if he would take revenge on the teacher who dared punish her.

Her eyes turned wistful. “It was not that bad. Monsieur Putton had a very gentle heart. He was fun and talented. We lost our weekend outings for three months in a row. He said he was going to teach us to respect our elders, other people’s opinion and food.” Her lips curled up softly. “We learned to respect the kitchen. Oh, we did. For a few weekends, we were in the kitchen from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon. We peeled vegetables, we polished the pans and cooking utensils. We cleaned the kitchen until it shined. And we cooked. So many different recipes that we were never the same again. Carol cooks even better than I do. She’s always wanted to be a chef.” Her smile grew. “The sacrifice was rewarding. A lesson taught with love and sweets. That is the way lessons should be taught. With love.” She licked her lips and took an apple from the fruit plate. “I promise I’ll bake cookies and my decadent chocolate and fresh wild berries tartlet for you next week.”

Before she bit the apple he snatched it from her hand and bit it himself and offered it back to her.

The sinful look he gave her made her mind reel.

She was unable to make sense of the changes that came over him without explanation. One minute he has profoundly sad and the other, extremely aroused. She’d never experienced anything like it.

“You are scandalously debauched, Lord Mercurial,” she whispered to him.

He brushed her hair away and kissed her neck, nibbling the soft skin under her ear and sucking her earlobe lightly, before he confessed, “I’ve become so many different men since I met you that sometimes I don’t even recognize myself,” he said inhaling her vanilla scent deeply.

“And that’s a good thing? Becoming Lord Multiple Personality?”

He raised his head and looked at her very seriously. “Sophia, in hindsight, I know that my relationship with Heather was... the worst kind that could have happened to me. However, I can understand why I entered it. I, as any healthy man, have sexual fantasies, but she... She was obsessed with sex in the most perverted way.” His lips curled in a half grimace. “I’m still asking myself why. Have I told you I started seeing a therapist?”

“No,” she breathed, surprised. “Do you like it?”

“Aye,” he smiled amused. I was surprised myself, sweetheart. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? I wonder, mo chridhe, if you realize how much you’ve changed me. It’s miraculous.”

Stop. I’m not responsible. You are. “Why did you start going?”

“First, you said I should. Then Tavish Uilleam. He said that I was poisoned. That Heather had awoken my dark side. He convinced me to at least try. Andrew, my therapist, made me see things in a different light.”

“Like what?” She shifted on his lap to sit up straighter.

He looked away from her face and sighed. “I told him about my- Heather’s sexual preferences, which I gladly indulged. Just like a drug addiction, it started with small experiences, and I had an illusion of self control. That I could control myself, her and all the, uh, partners we had. At first, it was only linked to the idea of physical and psychological gratification, that we were learning and being rewarded, and... I think this idea created a dependence.”

“Yes,” she nodded her head, “this dependence was created by the psychological abuse she inflicted on you. She demanded more from you that you are willing to give. And, every time you indulged her, you violated yourself. Saying no to a person you love is very difficult, but it’s much more important than one can imagine. To stand your ground requires more determination and an understanding of how both partners feel and how they can help themselves by deepening their intimacy. It’s not about control or dominance, it is about communication and real closeness. Trust.”

“Exactly what was lost between me and her. We had no intimacy, communication or trust between us anymore. In a BDSM relationship those are absolutely essential-”

“Alistair Connor,” Sophia gently cut in. “I would say those are essential in any relationship.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. Right, my love.

“Alistair, you know that I’m not prudish. Many women would have accepted anything to please you, even if they didn’t enjoy it. So, when I stand my ground and you accept it, this makes our relationship so much stronger. We trust each other, we respect our desires, we are developing a new path together, growing together and finding mutually desirable ways of exploring our needs and still being true to ourselves. This is what makes our relationship a success. It’s quite different.”