Seduced (Royal Expat Series Book #1) Read online

  “I will, just not here. Can we get out of here—please?”

  “Of course, babe, but I’ll lose this job. I might not be able to stay here for you if I leave now.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Damian,” she said. “I’m leaving that life behind me. I’ve decided: I want to run away with you!”

  At those words, Damian’s entire face lit up. His worries seemed to clear up immediately in the face of this news. His eyes brightened, and he let out a boyish whoop of joy, before leaping bodily over the bar to embrace her.

  Despite her surprise, the feeling of his warm, strong arms around her felt so good that she simply melted into the embrace, her entire body immediately relaxing as she was encompassed by his comforting hug.

  His lips found hers and he kissed her, right there in the bar, to the ragged cheers of the other occupants. She yielded her lips to him, her entire body tingling with the delicious sensation. The kiss was full of the pent-up passion for weeks. It was like the first cigarette in the morning for a chain smoker, or the first sip of water for a man in the desert for a week. How could one person make her feel so good?

  He finally pulled away and tenderly brushed a lock of hair from her face—and frowned.

  “Matilda, this is a serious bruise,” he said.

  She started. She knew that Colin had hit her hard, but she hadn’t considered that he had left marks.

  “I—,” she started.

  “It’s that man, isn’t it? He tried to hurt you.” Colin’s gray eyes darkened and she saw the anger kindle there.

  “I don’t have time to explain right now,” she said. “Please, Damian. I’ll tell you everything, just—”

  “OK, never mind that now. Let’s just get you out of here first,” Damian said. Even though he didn’t know what was going on, he was taking charge. His instincts had overridden everything else, and he seemed to know exactly what to do. Matilda let him take the lead, just glad to be by his side again.

  -

  “OK, so where to?” Damian asked her.

  “I don’t know,” Matilda confessed. “Just somewhere that’s not here.”

  “OK, we’re going to get in my car and drive a little, since being right here is obviously worrying you—then I need you to tell me what this is all about. Is that OK?”

  Matilda looked up into Damian’s eyes. They were radiating sincerity and concern for her. She nodded, and he ushered her towards his car.

  She felt an immediate sense of relief as he started the engine, and leaned back against the seat, closing her eyes and enjoying the feeling of safety and contentment for the first time in weeks. Damian leaned across and took her hand, holding it tightly in his and squeezing it reassuringly.

  “How are you doing?” he asked her, his voice gentle and filled with concern. “Do you think you’re ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She needed to get it off her chest, and she needed to figure out what to do next. “We should stop somewhere first, though.”

  “How about the zoo?” Damian asked. “If that man is looking for you, that’s probably the last place he’ll think of. Besides, I wanted to take you there before, and we never got to go.”

  Matilda smiled at Damian’s suggestion. She had forgotten how warm and quirky his sense of humor was, and how he was always full of ideas.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  “I’ve missed you so much, babe,” Damian said. “It’s been torture.”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “But let’s wait until we get to the zoo.”

  Half an hour later, they were sitting hand in hand next to the flamingos. It was a nice evening, but the zoo wasn’t busy, and they had the area to themselves.

  “So what’s up?” Damian asked. “Is there someone I have to kill?” he said it jokingly, but his eyes were serious. “Nobody hurts you and gets away with it.”

  “I…can you promise me that you won’t freak out?” asked Matilda.

  “I won’t make that promise,” Damian said, his eyes burning, “but I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

  “I…you already know that Colin is very protective of me,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t call it protective—I’d call it obsessive,” Damian said darkly.

  “Whatever you like to call it, he was watching my every move and he got jealous of me dating you. He knew, even though I tried to keep it secret.

  “I don’t like to think of myself as a weak person, but he lives below me, and—” Matilda hesitated. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to go over the whole thing—the blackmail, the threats and everything—she was tired and afraid, and it upset her even to think about it. She decided that for now, she’d give Damian the simplified version. There was no need to get him too involved. Hopefully, it was all over now.

  “He made some threats,” she confessed. “I knew that there would be consequences if I tried to see you again. But tonight…”

  “He hit you,” Damian said gently, brushing the lock of hair aside again so that he could look at the angry purple bruise across Matilda’s forehead.

  “Yes,” Matilda admitted. “I knew then that I had to get out. There was no way that I could continue to live like that. But things were…complicated.”

  “Your family, I know,” said Damian. “You don’t want to disappoint them.”

  “No,” Matilda shook her head.

  “But your safety is more important than that. Surely your family can understand that?” Damian said.

  “I don’t know,” Matilda confessed. “I think they might take his side.”

  “But that’s awful. He assaulted you, Matilda. You could call the police on him.”

  “I thought about it,” Matilda said. She thought about the photographs. He still had them. Even if she called the police and had him arrested, he would have access to them via the internet. He could still expose her. She had thought about it on the way to the zoo, and she had come to the conclusion that involving the police was only going to make matters worse. If possible, she wanted to forget everything that had happened. She wanted to make it go away. She hated the idea of a huge scandal. If Colin was arrested, there would be a trial. The photos would be evidence, and they would inevitably leak out to the press. As it was, nobody knew of their existence but her and Colin—and she intended to keep it that way.

  As soon as they had arrived at the zoo, Matilda had gone into the ladies’ bathroom. She knew that she had to stop Colin from spreading those photographs herself, and she finally had the means to do it.

  She called his number, which thankfully went to voicemail. She played the recording of him threatening to rape her and confessing to blackmail back to him, grimacing as she heard his vicious words and her screams repeated back to her. But it was enough for him to know that he couldn’t reveal the photos without being exposed as a blackmailer and would-be rapist.

  At the end of the recording, she had said,

  “If you ever reveal those photos to anyone, the whole world will know what you did to me.”

  With that, she hung up. It was over. They were at a stalemate, and hopefully, the whole thing could be buried forever.

  She went back outside to join Damian, and they walked hand in hand to the flamingo enclosure. As they walked, she felt relief that he never had to know what she had been through. They could just be happy together.

  “Well? You should call the police,” Damian repeated, bringing her back to the present.

  “I don’t want to cause any more trouble. I don’t want to deal with any of it,” Matilda admitted. “I just want to get out of here and be with you.”

  “Matilda…you know how I feel about you. The fact that you want to come with me and travel means a lot to me, but I need to know whether you’re doing it because you want to, or because you’re trying to run away from something.

  “I’ll be on your side either way—god, I don’t even know why I’m saying this—I’d stay with you no matter what your mot
ives are. I’m lucky just to be around you. But I want to know for your sake—can you really be happy with me?”

  Matilda thought hard about what Damian had just said. It was true that there was a lot she was turning her back on—her family, for one thing. They would hear sooner or later that she had run away with a man. The surge of guilt was strong enough for Matilda to experience a moment of self-doubt—but she was angry at her family for putting her in this situation in the first place. If it wasn’t for her controlling father, she would never have been driven to the extreme of escaping from her guardian. She wouldn’t have needed a guardian in the first place. If she thought that she could share the truth with them without being judged, she would have.

  What right did her family have to expect her to be loyal to them or do as expected? If she had done as expected, she would have been raped and blackmailed and completely dominated.

  Then there was the situation with Colin. What choice did she have other than to leave it all behind her? She didn’t want to relive any of the last two weeks, and the best place to leave them was in the past, dead and buried.

  She knew that what she wanted more than anything else in the world was to be free, to be with Damian without worrying about anything else. She wanted to see his face first thing in the morning, and feel his touch every night before she closed her eyes.

  Was it so wrong to run away with him? For the first time in her life, she would truly be doing what she wanted, without trying to fulfil anyone’s expectations of her.

  It was true that she would be sad to leave her job and Sylvie, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d have to call in the morning and explain—there was no time for anything else, and she never wanted to be in the same city as Colin ever again.

  “I’m not just with you because I’m running,” she said.

  “Matilda, you need to face up to the truth,” Damian said. “Be honest with me.”

  “It’s true that there are things I want to leave behind. There are things that I haven’t told you about my past, and about what happened. It’s not because I don’t trust you. It’s because they’re things that I find it impossible to talk about right now.

  “Can you accept me as me, and not worry about those things?” Matilda pleaded.

  “I will always love you,” Damian said. “You know that. I just want to know: am I just a convenient escape route for you?”

  A pain went through Matilda’s chest like an arrow piercing her soft, tender heart. After all she had gone through to be with Damian, how could he ask her that?

  “Damian, you’re everything to me,” she said simply. “The only reason I decided to break away from what my family wants and what I’ve been told to do is because of you. Just being around you changes the whole way I look at things.

  “Until you came into my life, I was content just to do as I was told and do what was expected of me. Being with you has made me realize what else there is. I feel alive, animated—special.

  “I’ve had to struggle harder than you would believe possible just to be able to see you. You have no idea how much I’ve been through—and it was all so I could be with you. So don’t ask me whether I’m just using you to run away from something. It breaks my heart that you might think that.”

  As Matilda finished her speech, Damian enveloped her in a fierce, protective hug.

  “I love you,” he told her. “You’re so precious to me. I didn’t believe it. I know that you’re the most honest, pure person in the world, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that you want me, of all people.”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?” asked Matilda, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Because you’re perfect,” he said, “and I’m just me.”

  He kissed her, pouring all his passion and love into the embrace. Matilda could feel the emotion swirling around her, blasting through her body, invading every cell. It was dizzying, but she returned the kiss with equal passion, relishing the feeling of his warm lips, the way his tongue felt entwined with hers.

  She pulled back, gasping, and blushed at the intensity of his gaze. His gray eyes were warm and alight with desire. It felt so incredible just to be near him again that she almost forgot her situation, wanting to milk every moment of their reunion.

  They were in a public place, though, and she didn’t want to be conspicuous, so she held herself back, contenting herself with the warm hand wrapped around her own.

  “For now, can’t we just enjoy our evening together?” Matilda asked. “We can decide what to do and where to go afterwards.”

  “OK. I just want to know that you’re safe, and that you’re with me because you want to be, and not because you are hiding from something.”

  Matilda thought guiltily of all that had happened, and the weight of anxiety which was still pressing on her shoulders, but she waved it away, not wanting to think about it. She wanted to enjoy the present, here and now. She had been denied that simple pleasure for so long that she wanted to simply forget about everything else for now.

  “Damian…can we save the tough questions for tomorrow? There are a lot of things going on, it’s true, and I haven’t told you everything. But for now, I just want to be with you.”

  “If that’s what you want, babe, then that’s what I’ll give you,” Damian said, giving her a swift kiss on the lips. “Now, where do you want to go first?”

  As they made their way, hand in hand, through the different enclosures, Matilda felt a weird sense of disassociation from reality. A few hours ago, she had been beaten and nearly raped by a man who had been blackmailing her. Now, she was laughing as Damian, the man she loved, tried to coax a lion into roaring by doing his best impression.

  It seemed almost too good to be true that life could suddenly be this simple. Perhaps it was, but Matilda couldn’t bring herself to care. She watched as Damian tried once again to roar impressively at a very bored, disinterested lion, getting strange looks from everyone else in the vicinity. He looked back at her, a grin on his face, and she found her heart swelling with happiness. Once again, she felt like the luckiest person in the world.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time when I was in Malawi?” asked Damian, as he finally gave up on his impossible task and came back to join Matilda.

  “No,” Matilda said, settling back to enjoy another of Damian’s tales.

  “It was a few years ago. I went over there as a volunteer and helped to build a school near the capital. You know that in Malawi they have monkeys which just run around all over the wild?

  “Nope, I didn’t know that,” Matilda said.

  “It’s fun—but those things are the worst criminals you’ll ever meet,” Damian said. “If you put a sandwich down for five seconds, one of them will run up and steal it—then eat it right in front of you. Either that, or it’ll throw it right back to you in pieces as if you were the animal.”

  Matilda laughed, enjoying the idea of Damian being pelted with bits of food by a monkey.

  “I missed your laugh,” Damian said, and Matilda blushed, looking down at her hands. “It’s been so long since I heard it, I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.”

  “I’d forgotten how to laugh without you,” Matilda confessed.

  “Well, let’s make a promise never to be apart again. If we ever are, I promise that I will come and find you and make you laugh again. Do I have your promise?”

  “I promise,” Matilda said. She shook his hand solemnly, and enjoyed the feeling of happiness welling inside her like an unquenchable spring.

  “Come on, it’s getting late. We should head out,” Damian said.

  Matilda’s heart sank as she thought about their next step. She had managed to bury her worries for a few blissful hours, but now they had to decide what to do.

  She had no clothes or possessions apart from the few things she had thrown in her backpack, and she needed to contact her job, her family and even Colin, to reassure herself that he would be off her back.

  Maybe, after all, she
should even call the police—but then how could she explain that she had been enjoying herself at the zoo all afternoon instead of contacting them?

  “Don’t worry, babe,” Damian said, as if he had read her mind. “I’ll figure out what we’ll do. You don’t need to worry about anything.”

  “But—,” Matilda protested, then stopped. She could trust Damian. She didn’t need to worry herself about anything else just yet. She had time to sort all that out. For now, she would concentrate on her and Damian.

  “Do you want to go back to your place and get some things?” Damian asked. “I’ll make sure nobody tries to stop you.”

  “No,” Matilda said. “There’s nothing there I can’t replace. Just some clothes and things.”

  “Right, well let’s go back to mine first then. I’ll pick up my stuff, and we can drive. You pick a direction—north, south, east or west—and we’ll drive until we find a place where we want to be.”

  “Perfect,” smiled Matilda. She couldn’t believe that she was about to embark on this adventure with Damian.

  They drove back from the zoo towards where Damian was staying. Matilda was curious, since she had never seen where he lived. She knew that he moved around a lot, so she had half imagined him living in the wild, or camping out under the stars.

  Instead, he led her up the stairs to a sparse but beautiful studio apartment. The windows were bright and open, and the pale wood floor was clean and made the space seem new and fresh. The walls were covered with artwork, and there was an easel set up in one corner.

  The only furniture was a futon, faded but comfortable, and a desk, complete with a worn chair.

  It was pleasant, the perfect place for an artist. Matilda was astonished by how much like a real home it felt, even though Damian had been there only a few weeks.

  “The place belongs to a friend,” he told her, answering several of her questions. “He’s an artist, but he only comes here when he’s feeling blocked. It helps him think to have a small, simple place. The rest of the time, he lives in a huge house in the Hamptons.”