And suppose I still can’t say anything?
I lean my head on the glass and try not to listen to the fists banging on the door.
That must be her.
I close my eyes. How will she do it? With a gun? With a knife? Maybe she’s got a scarf or a rope and she’ll grab me from behind …
‘
Ella, it’s me. Let me in.
’
There’s a crash behind me as the door bursts into the room. I still can’t move.
My eyes snap open and behind me, reflected in the glass, I see Darnley’s face. He spins me round and scowls down at me. He touches my cheek with the back of his finger. ‘Hey. You’re icy. Look at me, Ella. You saw her again?’
I nod, still paralysed.
Now the room is filling up with people. Someone switches on the lights and I blink in the glare.
Darnley starts barking orders to his men, his eyes still fixed on mine. ‘Scour the yard at the back. Check the fire escape. She may be on the roof.’
‘A woman climbed over the back wall, sir. She ran off. No sign of her now.’
‘Bullen?’
‘Sir?’
‘Miss Dean is in shock. Take her back to Lexington and make her a hot drink. I’ll finish up here.’
About twenty minutes later I’m sitting in his vast, steel-lined kitchen and clinging to a cup of hot, sweet tea. Speech is coming slowly back. I even manage to whisper a shy ‘thank you’ as Bullen presses the steaming drink into my hands.
I stare across the room, not really seeing anything.
I want to go somewhere dark and quiet and hide.
Outside a purring engine and the slam of a car door announce Darnley. He strides in and dismisses Bullen with a curt nod.
Now we’re alone.
‘You’re a terrible colour.’
‘Sorry about that,’ I mutter. ‘No time to change it.’ I avoid his eye and take a sip, courage seeping back with the heat of the tea. ‘Can I go home now?’
He draws in a deep breath. ‘Not for a while. She got away. She may be back. I stationed a man there while we change the locks.’ His eyes gleam. ‘Should take a day or two.’
Slowly I raise my eyes to his, my heart shorn of hope. His words in the car have cut me deep. I’m still stunned. ‘Thanks for the rescue. I’m sorry I panicked. I’ll finish my tea and then find a hotel.’
He looks down at me critically for a moment. Very gently, like I’m made of glass, he prises the empty cup out of my hands and sets it down on the table. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll stay here.’ His voice is low.
‘I can’t do that.’ I can feel his eyes on me and now I start to shiver. I stare obstinately down at the table. I must look dreadful with my sweat-matted hair, pinched grey face and work-tired clothes. It’s been a weird day.
He raises me to my feet, folding his arms around me and locking his hands together at the back of my waist. I shiver again and he clasps me tighter.
‘You’re moving in. Stay here till we get to the bottom of this.’
Feeling’s seeping back into my limbs and at last it reaches my brain; a little late in the day, but just in time to mount a protest. ‘
Here?
I don’t even know where we are. And tomorrow I’ve got to go to work. I’ve got to talk to –’
I break off. Best not remind him.
His expression is stern as his eyes lock on mine. ‘OK, fine. You can go to work, provided you follow my instructions. And tomorrow I’ll explain where you are and we’ll work out your timetable and when and how you travel in and out of town and who goes with you. I’ll even show you a fucking map. But right now you’re going to bed.’
He takes me upstairs and runs a bath, keeping his arm round me the whole time. I’m getting better by the minute. I laugh a little as I wriggle to get away.
‘Hold still. You’re not going anywhere.’ He’s not playing. He sounds grim.
‘I can’t just move in, Darnley.’
‘No? Why not?’ He turns off the faucet and tips in some bath essence. A strong aroma of lilies wafts all around us in the drifts of steam. Now he releases my waist and starts to unfasten my jeans, his fingers urgent, his eyes filling with heat.
He still sounds angry. ‘It’s a no-brainer. You get full-time protection and I get plenty of sex.’
I lift my chin. ‘Who says?’
He starts to drop tiny kisses all over my face, deft little touches of his lips that lure me into a long, sensuous sigh long before I ought to give him permission.
His scowl is so like his brother’s I have to smile.
He glares back. ‘You do. All the time. Every time you look at me, every time you move. When you’re around I can’t think of anything else. When you’re not around I can’t think of anything else. Anyway, it’s easier to look after you if I know where you are twenty-four-seven. Saves on food. Saves on electricity. Better for the environment. Healthier all round. Now get in the damn bath.’
My bath is hot in every sense. He leans over me, washing me with gel-smeared hands, making me kneel up, bend over, lean back so his fingers can reach into every cranny and hidden crevice of my tired, aching body. His touch is so soothing and at the same time so infuriatingly arousing that I’m aching for him when I finally rise to my feet, suds running off me in rills. Before reaching for the towel he runs his thumbs down over my breasts, my thighs and my belly to skim off the water.
When I step out he places my hands gently on his flies. I bite my lip in excitement as I learn my bath requires a small token of thanks – and quickly I free him and kneel to bestow it. But first his hand knits deep into my wet, tangled hair and pulls my head back out of reach of his surging, twitching manhood, looming before me, eager for my mouth.
‘You want this, Ella?’
I lower my eyelids, impatient now. ‘You want it in writing?’
His eyes flicker. ‘I just want to be sure. I’ve no right to force you. You’ve had a shock.’
I smile and kiss his crown with a light, reverent touch of my lips. The skin feels taut and smooth. I feel a tingle of sparkling lust in my eager mouth. At the same time I sense an answering twitch in his jutting shaft.
Above me he looks stern. ‘Do I take that as a yes?’
In answer I simply take him in my mouth and fold my lips around him with a surge of heat that flies straight to my groin. What my busy tongue and lips are trying to tell him is that I love him, I love nothing better than the chance to please him and I’m glad of my rescue.
What they also conveniently spare me from saying is that I’m scared now. Something terrible happened to him today and I’m somehow responsible. And if there’s any way I can make things better I’ll do it.
Starting now.
After a while he eases me away from his hot, pulsing column, glossy now with my saliva. I can see it’s an effort. His breathing is heavy, like he’s running a race. In a way maybe he is: a race to hold off his pleasure for long enough for me to join in.
I grin, ridiculously pleased that for once I’m calling the shots as he swathes me in a large, fluffy towel, hot from the rail. Bundled up like a wiener I’m still grinning as he carries me into the bedroom and dumps me on the bed, then joins me with a low growl and stretches out lazily beside me.
He unrolls me slowly, mussing my hair with one corner of the towel to dry it before sweeping it back from my face to fasten his mouth on mine. His kiss tells me not that I’m forgiven, exactly, but that in some respects things between us cannot change. Not just yet, anyway.
He wants me and needs me and he wants me and needs me
now.
His erection juts painfully against my thigh as he shifts position. For now he ignores it, clearly amused by my impatient, straying fingers. ‘We’ll eat soon. You understand we have a date later this evening?’
I smile up at him, relaxed and content, awash with relief that we’re still speaking and I’m not yet dead. ‘What kind of date?’
With a meaningful smile he reaches across the bed to the side table and slides open a silent drawer.
All at once I hear a clink. I stiffen as my mouth goes dry.
‘
This
kind of date.’
He’s smiling at me now, his look fond and loving, full of soft warmth and gentle promise. Very different from the object he’s dangling over my face: a pair of hard, glinting metal handcuffs.
We eat light. Me because I’ve hardly any appetite, what with the day I’ve had and the entertainment he’s got in store. Him because he’s a predator with prey in his sights, so food’s just a sideshow.
I avoid any mention of the play. I ask instead if he’s heard any more about Cola’s stalker.
‘Maybe you can tell me. Maybe there’s some link to yours.’ He looks grim as he says this.
I’d thought the same. Now I shiver. My stomach shrivels a little more. I toy with the Caesar salad Verna, his housekeeper, prepared for me. I’m not really hungry. She tossed in extra croutons when Darnley snarled I was losing weight.
Now he pours himself some wine and idly twirls the stem, holding it up to the light. ‘You’ll have a minder to drive you to work and back. They’ll shadow you during the day and try to blend in. Sit in back of your classes, maybe. That’s about it. It’s just for a day or two till we sort this out.’
‘
Sort this out?
As in, find out she’s not a stalker at all and I’m just a paranoid freak?’
His eyebrow tilts. ‘Or as in she’s an accomplice of the person stalking my sister. Or as in she’s some dangerous lunatic fixated on part-time poets.’
‘Actually, that would be you, Darnley.’
I duck as he flicks a crouton at me, and then another. Our Caesar salad quickly turns into a playground war and I drop the topic.
After supper we toy with coffee and toss back a small brandy, then he leads me to the bedroom. It’s getting late now and the strange looks he’s been giving me since I got in are playing havoc with my arousal. Now it leaps into overdrive.
‘Strip.’
His quiet command sends heat rocketing through me, where before I was simply aching. While he lounges in a sleek armchair I slowly remove my clothes and pirouette for his inspection. I was told to prepare for this session with a thin, strappy bra in simple black. Diving into my Darnley-date overnight things, still in the bag I’d left in Billy’s hallway and transferred here by his staff during our meal, I unearthed a pair of lacy black hold-ups and shiny high heels.
Now I see myself in the mirror the effect is startling. I look raunchy, but somehow exposed and vulnerable. The effect on him I can only guess.
His dark gaze gives me no clue but I fear the worst.
He rises to his feet and silently signals me to stand easy. ‘Hands behind your back, legs straight, shoulders back and head up.’ He walks slowly around me, inspecting me from all angles.
‘And don’t giggle.’ He looks so stern I stop, but only for a second, as more laughter bubbles up.
‘I’m trying. I find this ritual thing hard to handle.’
‘Good. That’s why you need practice. Now come over to the bed.’
He clamps my wrists into one half of the cuff and clamps the other half onto the bed rail.
‘Remind me why we’re doing this? Sir?’ I add quickly, in case he’s being picky over etiquette.
‘Because I want to talk about what happened this afternoon. And this will help you to focus.’
I swallow.
Focus?
Right now all I can think about is what he’s going to do and what it’s going to feel like. My brain’s in a whirl, my senses consumed by sex. This is going to be hard. ‘I told you. I don’t know anything about what happened.’
He’s making tiny adjustments to my position, bending me lower, pulling my legs apart so I’m wide open, fingering the taut line of the bra straps cutting into my arms, which are stretched out before me, my wrists clamped into the brutal, unforgiving metal, my hands pressed together in prayer.
I try hard not to think what this reminds him of. But of course, that’s just why he does it, and why I’m letting him,
urging
him, to do this, in the hope it’ll eventually change the experience for him and make it fun.
What it’s doing to me is another matter. I keep quiet about that part, even to myself.
His cold look hints this discussion may take a while. ‘I find that hard to believe. Eldon told me you’d been rehearsing for a couple of weeks. He must have hinted at something like that before.’
I sigh. ‘It’s true. Tomorrow I’ll ask him what he was playing at, if you don’t. Until then that’s all I can say. Except –’
He leans close. ‘Except what?’
Is it the right time to say this?
Is there ever a right time to say this?
I close my eyes and take the plunge.
If I never tell him he’ll never know.
‘Except, I love you, Darnley. I’d never knowingly hurt you.’
In the silence I feel the long, smooth sweep of his hand on my backside. I whimper. Things are already stirring down there, complex, disturbing things that may take an awful long time to reach full orgasm.
He can prolong his play for hours when he wants. He leans over me and follows his long, stirring caress with hot touches of his mouth in a low trail of kisses that fill me with heat.
His voice lowers, deep and sensual. ‘I know. That makes it worse. Think, Ella. You must have hinted at it somehow. Maybe without even knowing?’
He’s growing impatient now. His touch is firmer and more purposeful. He starts to knead and squeeze my bottom like I’m dough. The thought of what he could do to me is scary. I’m completely at his mercy. And now the thin black straps of my bra are starting to cut in as my muscles pull at the unforgiving metal cuff.
‘Nothing, truly, could have been further from my mind.’
‘Did you whistle that jingle, maybe? Hum it one day? Did Eldon refer to it in any way? Maybe he talked to the students about the filming, about the things he liked as a kid, about TV commercials? Passed round some popcorn candy bars? You must have noticed.’
All at once he slaps me hard and I cry out – not from pain, exactly, I really need this – but from shock. ‘
Ow
. That’s unfair. No. There was nothing like that.’
He strokes me again. ‘It came from somewhere. So it can only have come from you.’ His voice is lower now and hard-edged.
I sense trouble. His hand slips deep into me, his touch live as a wire, sending instant heat through me. ‘I’m going to spank you, Ella, and before you ask, yes, it’s because I want to. And then we’ll fuck, because I know from
this
–’ he eases his hand away from down below and dangles his fingers casually over my face ‘– that’s what
you
want too. Fair?’