Flesh & Blood (7 page)

Leah had to fight this. She could not give in, she could not bow and scrape before the arrogant bitch. And what if Mbweni was merely pretending to be interested? What if she merely wanted Leah to acquiesce so she had a hold over her? ‘I… I’m not going to trade my soul for a promotion,’ Leah said weakly, ‘nor my body.’

Mbweni chuckled throatily. ‘Why, my dear, I wouldn’t want you if you did. That would make you almost as weak as Yi. After all, a lovely young lady like you could probably engineer endless opportunities with senior male officers to get the same thing, and I wouldn’t want someone who would willingly trade herself for promotion.’

Leah was bemused, finding it hard to think straight, feeling she was being easily toyed with. ‘Then, what…?’

‘The accommodation I have in mind, MacInnes, is not one between equals,’ the disembodied voice told her. ‘It is when the weak acknowledges the strength of her superior, abandons the pretense of independence, and does as she is told.’

‘That doesn’t sound like something I’m interested in,’ Leah said, the shadow of her hand still moving rhythmically between her thighs, and she slid down the wall to her haunches, dreamily inserting a third finger into her wet pussy as she talked.

‘I know, my dear. That’s what makes it all the more interesting.’

The phone went dead and Leah put the receiver back in its cradle, shaking her head.

She ran her free hand slowly up her side, cupping her breasts and flicking her thumb across one erect nipple. Unwelcome but darkly arousing images of her and Mbweni naked came to her mind, of herself on her knees before the tall woman, and despite disliking her the images provoked a hot thrill within her body and her breath to falter in her lungs.

A bitch, that’s what the woman was. But she was a strong and powerful bitch, and very attractive. A week ago she would have cringed at the thought of sleeping with another woman, but since meeting her new superior officer she had begun to fantasize about it more and more. It was inexplicable and shameful for someone with such staunch moral parameters to even consider such a thing… but it was also breathlessly enticing.

Being ‘conquered’ by Mbweni might just be extraordinarily exciting…

But damn it, she was not that bitch’s plaything! She was a strong and determined professional woman, and she would not be toyed with by anybody!

She slid back up the wall to her feet, pulling her moist fingers from her sex, and moved towards the bedroom. She paused, staring out the window, then pulled open the door to the balcony and stepped outside.

Twenty floors up the chill wind swirled around her, lifting her hair and raising goose bumps on her skin. She moved to the rail, a stainless steel tube frame with clear glass beneath, and leaned over, staring down at the car park and the entrance to the building. Her outer body felt the chill, but the heat within her only grew more intense. It was being naked out of doors, as she was, open to anybody’s eyes.

There were a few nearby buildings with lights lit up and down their darkened sides. No doubt there were other people out on their balconies, a few, at least, but she could pick out none in the darkness. She bent from the waist, letting her breasts press against the cold steel of the rail, feeling the chill run through her nipples, and in doing so her bottom was pushed out and her feet almost subconsciously slid aside on the floor, as though she was positioning herself in readiness to be fucked from behind by a secret lover.

It was how Morales had fucked her as she knelt shackled to the posts. She had her arms stretched along the top of the cylindrical steel rail, shuddering a little as she shifted her feet farther apart, raising her bottom and easing it back a little more, letting her breasts sway, cool as the breeze wafted around them yet tingling with her excitement.

How would Mbweni take advantage of her, she wondered? Would she force her to her knees and instruct her how to please her with her mouth? She imagined she could feel the woman’s strong fingers in her hair, guiding her face towards her sex, and felt her pussy spasming and her body thrumming with sexual yearning.

A shadow moved over her, a cloud passing across the moon. She looked up, and the hair rose on her neck. Nothing was there. Nothing. Yet she felt a presence that both aroused and terrified her. She sensed movement behind her, yet did nothing, her heart pounding, her pulse racing, fear clutching her body. She felt an icy finger against her spine, between her shoulders. She gasped with shock, yet could not straighten up or turn her head. She felt as though she were in a dream, desperate to run yet unable to move, desperate to turn and defend herself, desperate to make her body comply with her instincts.

The finger slid slowly down her spine, leaving a trail of icy fire behind, between her buttocks, and then prodded lightly at her tightly closed anus. Then the finger was joined by others, becoming a hand squeezing her bottom, a cold hand that possessively kneaded her trembling flesh.

A length of black silk a couple of inches wide dropped onto one of her wrists, and her head turned ever so slowly to stare as the whispering material seemed to move on its own, a long length of oily black wrapping around and around her wrist, layer after layer falling across her arm, moving upwards to her elbow, then past it to her upper arm, circling tightly, binding her warm flesh firmly to the cold steel of the rail. It continued across her shoulder, slithering snakelike, then began to wind its way down around her other arm as the hand continued to caress her bottom, and then the backs of her thighs. Whimpering, she felt another hand slip over her hip, a chilly finger laying against her sex and then rubbing ever so softly. She jerked, gasping, and then moaned as the finger curled and pierced her body.

She felt something at her feet, something which could only be the same soft silk, sliding slowly around both ankles then tugging insistently, forcing her feet farther apart.

She yelped at a stinging blow to her bottom, gasping and staring into the night. Fingers began to knead her breasts, twisting, rolling and stroking her nipples, then pinching cruelly so that she winced with each needle of pain.

The finger was ice-cold inside her, but she felt herself growing helplessly moist around it, felt her juices flowing, down her thighs as the finger pushed deeper… impossibly deep. Another crack of pain made her bottom quiver and she thought she heard, almost inaudible, a throaty chuckle.

The finger drew back, and then something larger, thicker, more rigid, prodded against her wet opening. As icy as the finger it pushed in slowly at first, and then thrust sharply. And with the pain the hard thrust induced a climax that set her body convulsing. Another thrust drove deep, and drew a cry of pain and feverish pleasure from her lips.

Machine-like the stalk began to stroke into her body, moving ever faster, driving to the deepest depths of her without the feel of a body ever touching her bottom. It filled her with cold, but Leah felt another shattering orgasm sweep through her. She cried out again, twisting violently, feeling the tightness of the silk strips binding her arms to the rail and holding her ankles wide.

A crack of pain across her buttocks made her cry out, and again she heard – almost heard – a throaty chuckle. Her eyes were wide as they stared down at the car park below, her mouth open as her breaths came in deep, ragged gulps, and she orgasmed.

But still her body was jolted forward again and again by the deep thrusts of the cold rigidity within, and her hair spilled over her face as she wailed in wondering pleasure and discomfort. Her mind, overwhelmed by the intensity of raw need and hunger, tumbled amid the waves of bliss as her body was used violently by a force she did not understand.

She felt another numbing crack across her raised bottom. Her breasts were squeezed and kneaded by harsh hands, her nipples tugged, and then she sensed a hovering presence just behind her head. Her hair was tugged back and she felt a sudden sharp stab at the nape of her neck. She screamed in agony, yet the agony was washed away almost at once. A crescendo of pleasure that made everything else pale into insignificance tore through her nervous system, and her voice rose in a long, undulating scream of ecstasy.

She collapsed against the rail, limp, chest heaving. Dazedly she heard doors sliding open in the apartments below, people stepping out onto balconies, muttering unintelligible comments. The silk strips unwound and she sagged to the floor of her balcony, slumping onto her back, panting for breath as she stared up into the moon.

Chapter Four

Leah rolled over with a sleepy groan, her eyes fluttering for a moment. She brought her hands up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then yawned. It felt as if she’d only just gotten to sleep.

Grumpily she slapped the alarm and stilled its buzzing. She lay on her back, naked but for the sheets bunched across her midriff. She did not normally sleep naked but her skin felt tender to the touch when she went to bed, and she’d not wanted to feel anything against it. She’d even replaced her normal cotton sheets with the black satin set she bought on a silly romantic whim a week into her last relationship.

Her skin still felt raw, but there was nothing to see but healthy pink flesh. She sat up, her eyes dropping to her breasts. When she went to bed they’d felt bruised and sore, but that had faded and there were no marks to see. Her hand dropped lightly to her groin and she winced ever so slightly. She was still tender there.

Her mind shied away from thinking about what had happened to her. It was Friday, and she had work to go to.

It was a struggle to lift herself out of bed, but she did and shuffled her way to the kitchen, turned on the coffee, then shuffled to the bathroom. Having showered she felt a little better, until she caught something out of the corner of her eye, half turned and looked closer, and then her stomach fell at the very visible image of a blotchy handprint across her bare buttocks. Her pulse quickened and she grasped the edge of the basin to keep her legs from buckling at the incomprehensible and disturbing discovery. She remembered with shocking clarity the pain, as if… as if someone had spanked her.

She tore her eyes away, struggling to deny what she saw, stumbling out the door and hurrying to the kitchen for a mug of hot, strong coffee.

‘Good morning, detective.’

‘Good morning, sergeant,’ Leah returned, as she pushed through the office door. She wore a sleeveless black turtleneck sweater beneath a cream linen suit jacket. The sweater was a little too formfitting for work, but the jacket offset it, and more importantly it hid the bruising on the nape of her neck.

She continued on to the briefing room, where she found her colleagues gathered around the long tables, and Sara sitting amongst them, uncharacteristically quiet, her back rigid. Her dark hair was tied in a pair of loose pigtails, which gave her an oddly young and out of place look for a police detective, and she wore a dark blue blazer. Leah sat next to her, smiling, but Sara did not smile back.

‘Mbweni’s been playing God again,’ Leah whispered, and Sara nodded. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ the girl said, not looking at Leah.

Lieutenant Trask stood and moved behind the podium, and the muttered conversations went still.

‘As you all know, we’ve had a small break in the case,’ he started. ‘The startling similarity between the missing girls and the fact that none of them knew the other means our fellow must have some kind of access to a picture database, and that’s offered up a whole new area for us to investigate.’ He rubbed his hands and smiled grimly.

‘We’ll be looking into school and college databases first to see which ones contain pictures. Right now we know that many of them do. We’ll also be looking into such things as photography firms and organizations that develop film. We’ll also be checking the Internet. But we don’t know for a fact that our fellow only accesses one database. He could be trawling multiple systems, so we’ll want to check into the feasibility of that as well.’

He leaned forward against the podium and scowled out at them.

‘There is more than sufficient information out there, more than enough evidence for us to determine who this fellow is,’ he said sternly. ‘You simply haven’t put it together yet.’

‘It went from
we
to
us
pretty quick,’ Leah muttered to Sara.

‘None of these girls have turned up anywhere yet,’ Trask continued, ‘and we believe they’re still being held. I want everyone to put in their best effort at solving these disappearances.’

‘As opposed to doing nothing, I suppose,’ Leah mumbled resentfully, so only she and Sara could hear.

They were assigned to visit a group of Internet service providers to find out how easy it would be for outside people to get such records from schools and colleges. Everyone rose more or less at the same time, and it was only then that Leah noticed Sara was wearing a daringly short tartan skirt with her blazer, really showing off her slender legs.

‘Let’s go,’ the girl said brusquely, snatching up her purse and marching off before Leah could ask why she was wearing such a revealing skirt when on duty, but Leah noticed male heads turning in her wake as lecherous eyes followed her exit.

Leah hurried to catch her up, and from behind, with her pigtails, blazer, and tartan pleated skirt, it looked very much like she was chasing a schoolgirl, although she suspected any school principle would send a girl home for wearing a skirt that short, and she could only wonder what Mbweni would think of it. It was probably, she thought, a silent show of rebellion against Mbweni, and she doubted it would be tolerated for long. She caught up with the petit girl, but Sara’s eyes remained fixed straight ahead as they reached the stairs and took them down to the car park.

‘I’ll drive,’ Leah said, and Sara didn’t reply. They got into the car and Leah turned to Sara, the tartan skirt high around her thighs and giving a glimpse of white silk panties.

‘Okay, what’s with the skirt?’ she asked.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my skirt,’ Sara replied, scowling.

‘It’s way too short,’ Leah argued. ‘And why the pigtails? Are you going undercover in a school or something?’