Read Online Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire by M. J. Lawless - Free Book Online

pissed you off? Come on, Daniel. no hard feelings, eh? You know everyone’s equal here.”
    “Unless your property,” said Kris, feeling her venom rise within her. Francis looked at her confused for a second, and she suddenly realised he had not expected her to speak. When he finally understood what she had said, he began to move towards her but one of Daniel’s hands, large and heavy, interposed between them.
    “As I said,” Daniel remarked. “She’s not property. Give your regards to your father, Francis. Kris, come on. We need to go.”

 

Chapter Six
     
    “Property,” Kris scowled. “Property! I was going to say that was nineteenth-century thinking, but hell—it’s medieval!”
    The flight taking them to San Francisco was a private jet that Daniel had chartered. As such, there were only the two of them on board along with two pilots and a flight attendant, a young man in his early twenties who looked the archetypal role model for such a position and was polite and attentive. When Kris had asked Daniel why he had not gone with a woman, Daniel’s crotchety reply had been: “I think we’ve seen enough vacuous, beautiful women for a while, don’t you?” They were two hours into their flight, not yet halfway across the States, and Daniel had been somewhat distracted all the time they had been travelling.
    Now, however, he looked straight at her. His face was tired and his scars looked paler than usual against his skin, with slight dark shadows beneath his eyes. “I agree,” he said. “I stopped attending a long time ago, if you remember.”
    While unable to deny the truth of that, Kris was still not satisfied. “But, I mean... did you... did you really consider the others property ?”
    When he looked at her there was pain in those strange, hazel eyes of his and he did not reply immediately but instead looked out of the window at the clouds that were passing beneath them. Then his shoulders heaved as a profound sigh escaped his lips as he turned his head back around, not to look at her but to stare straight ahead.
    “I shouldn’t avoid this,” he said at last. “I told you that while I may sometimes evade the truth, I haven’t lied to you. So as for this... well, I guess I should face up to myself.”
    Something about the tone of his voice dissipated Kris’s anger and, though he didn’t speak for a few minutes, his brow creasing slightly as he thought, she did not interrupt him. This was important. She was pushing him, she knew, but just as he had once pushed her to a new freedom that she had not believed within her, she felt inside that it was essential for him to be aware of the thoughts inside him now.
    “I guess the truth is that I did, think of women as property. Damn it, everything was property for a time. After... after Karen died, I measured everything in terms of profit and loss. Nothing was safe from those calculations.” He paused again for a few moments, but still Kris did not intervene.
    “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” His face looked mournful as he looked towards the window again. Unable as he was to return his gaze towards her, nonetheless Kris did not force him: she did not need to look into his eyes to know if he was telling the truth. She was quite aware that Daniel had once belonged to that class of men that could sell their own souls with a smile and a twinkle in their eyes. The shame that he obviously felt at this moment was more telling than any show of honesty.
    “And I lost my soul,” he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. “Drugs, sex, money. I thought it was... important. But perhaps that’s too hard to explain.”
    Kris could not contain herself at this but scoffed loudly: “Oh, love,” she remarked, a little more sarcastically than she intended. “So, you took some cocaine—believe me, you can’t teach me anything about drugs.” She suddenly realised that the bitterness in her voice was born