by Maren Smith
“What’s your name, dovey?” he pressed, wishing he could be gentler than this, but knowing better.
“It’s right on the tip of my—”
“How tall was he?” he interrupted. “What color was his hair? His eyes? How was he dressed?”
“I… I don’t…”
“You’re not helping,” he cut her off.
“Why are you being so mean about this?” she cried, anger rising swiftly to hide her wounded stare. He felt that wound in the squeezing constriction of his own chest, but she was about to do something extremely foolish and he needed her to see it.
“That man down there is not your friend.” That she didn’t seem to know that already astounded him. “What do you think is going to happen if you go with him?”
“I’ll tell him what I know.” The way she looked at him, it was as if she thought he were the dense one. Her eyebrows buckled, bewildered. Missing memories was one thing, but this… was she sheltered or addled?
Cupping her shoulders, he mightily resisted the urge to shake her. “Dovey, luv,” he said, as gently as he could. “You are the only surviving witness.”
Seemingly every bit as exasperated with him, she cried, “But that’s why I need to help! If there’s anything I can tell them—”
“Like a basic description of the man what tried to kill you? They’ve got a long line of suspects to parade in front of you. They’ve right bungled this so badly, they’ll probably parade every bloody man in Whitechapel for you to gander at. Every butcher, furrier, foreigner and Jew. Based on what’s in your head, Florrie, if they put a man before you, could you say with certainty that man was him?”
When she hesitated, he pushed further, “More importantly, luv, would you be able to say it wasn’t him?”
She flinched back from him.
“Whoever you pick,” he ruthlessly continued, once more closing the distance between them when she tried to retreat, “they’re going to hang that man. Could you bear it?”
“That man butchered five innocent women!”
“Seven,” he corrected. Not ungently, he added, “Almost eight.”
“Five,” she corrected in turn, one hand on her hip, the other rubbing at her temple as if her head hurt. “The others were done by someone else. Emma Smith and Martha Tabram weren’t Ripper victims.”
He stared at her. After a moment, her eyes opened.
“Oh my God,” she said, every bit as surprised as he was. “How do I know that?”
“Do you know his name?” It was amazing how steady he sounded as he was by her proclamation. “Did you see his face?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I wish I did. I need to talk to the police.”
He grabbed her when she tried to slip past him for the door.
“They are going to put you in a cell!” Terrified Hatman might still be standing in the stairwell, perhaps even listening to this exchange, he forced his tone to soften. But this time, there was no stopping himself from shaking her. Just once, just to get her attention. It worked too, but it also roused her anger once more.
“Let go of me,” she ordered, shoving stiffly back, but his grip on her shoulders was not a lax one. “I’m not a criminal. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You don’t have to be a criminal to go to prison, luv. Sometimes you just have to be a witness. A witness with no memory of who she is or what she’s seen, and worse, no family to protect her. They are going to wear you down.”
“That’s not true. You’re lying.” Fear ran the undercurrent of her temper. He saw more than a glimmer of it in her gem-blue eyes just before she planted her hands to his chest and shoved. She needed a good six inches more height, sixty additional pounds, or a lot more muscles before she actually moved him, but Draven got the message. “They’re cops, not villains. Why are you so determined not to let me leave? You can’t keep me prisoner here! Who do you think you are?”
The man who, once upon a time, loved this woman’s twin with all his broken heart.
“You can’t tell me where I can go or what I can do!”
He shouldn’t, but the hell he couldn’t.
“You aren’t going with Hatman,” Draven said, in a voice so damned soft that it could almost have been calm.
She leaned furiously into him, her face as close to his as any woman more than a head too short could be. Her soft breath seethed before the corner of her entirely too kissable mouth curled into a sneer. “Oh yeah? Watch me!”
This time, instead of shoving she swung her hands up, solidly smacking the insides of his arm and literally knocked his hands right off her. His shock at having this tiny scrap of a woman best the strength of his grip didn’t last beyond her attempt to walk around him. She was only a few feet away from the door when he grabbed her.
It was shades of his dream all over again, only this wasn’t Elise that he hooked around the waist, hauling her up off her feet. And this sure wasn’t Elise who shot an elbow back without so much as an angry word of warning. She might have been aiming for his face, but her arm was as short as the rest of her and when he jerked his head back, she got his shoulder instead with nothing more vital than the soft part of her upper arm.
Still, as with a lot of things in life, it was the thought that counted.
Chapter 7
Florrie couldn’t remember any time in her life that she had ever felt so frightened, so angry, or so out of control. But then, Florrie couldn’t remember any time in her life.
Still, she fought Draven’s iron-like grip with everything she had and, still, he locked his arm around her waist, pinning her to his hip as he lifted her off the floor as if she were nothing more than a doll. He carried her to the nearest chair and she could no more evade that than she could avoid it when he sat and wrestled her facedown over his lap.
“Let me go!” Aiming for his kidneys now, she elbowed back hard, but got the back of the chair instead. “Ow!”
Catching her wrist, he wrenched first one arm and then the other behind her back. He pinned them there, locking both her wrists in the steel grip of his huge hand. Her kicking legs he caught in the vise of his, pinning her down with experienced ease as he yanked and tugged the skirt of her nightgown all the way up to her waist. She thought she heard it rip, but she couldn’t be sure. Her gasp when he whipped the cloth back, suddenly and vulnerably baring her ass, blocked out all other sounds.
“What the fuck!” She might not actually have said that out loud, but it was the only thought she had and it kept bouncing like a pinball off the startled bumpers in her head flashing bright and filling her up in equal measures of shock, horror, and no small degree of pure wonder. Right up until the crisp splat of his meaty hand flattened her right buttock, waking every slumbering nerve in a wave of stinging hurt. And that was just one slap.
The first of many, every one of which was just as hard, just as stinging, and just as unbelievably wondrous.
He was spanking her. One walloping swat at a time, from right cheek to left relentlessly, no matter how she twisted, no matter how she kicked and, once she got her breath back, no matter how she screamed. Wonder or not, Florrie screamed like a banshee. She swore too, calling him every horrible name she could think of, in every foul combination that came rushing to mind. But the flat of his equally horrible hand kept up the vigorous tattoo, and in the span of only a few breaths that pain became the only thing she could think of. The pain and the injustice, and the unbelievable heat because it didn’t just hurt now. It burned. Hotter, and hotter, consuming every quivering nerve in a bonfire of throbbing agony.
She twisted her wrists in opposite directions, but his one-handed grip was absolute. She couldn’t rip free of it any more than she could stand up, or roll off his knee, or (failing that) wriggle down far enough to sink her angry teeth into the first fleshy part of him that she could latch onto. His side, his thigh, his shin—she didn’t care, so long as he let out the same shouts of frustration that he was so effortlessly wringing from her.
Draven let go of her, but only enough to help her sit up. Slapping to get the tears off her face, his hands off her altogether, and her nightdress down far enough to cover her flaming backside, Florrie jumped to her feet. She almost fell twice trying to get out from between his legs, but he grabbed her.
“No, dovey,” he said firmly, and though she stiffened her legs, he was stronger than she was.
Losing that short, wordless battle for independence, she plopped back down to sit, stiff and as uncooperative as possible, upon his knee. His hand on the side of her hip felt abnormally hot; his other on her wrist was as good as prison bars for all that she could escape. The dark of his eyes was just as captivating.
“Look at me,” he ordered, but the moment she did, the intensity of his reproving frown shot straight through her chest into her stomach. She quivered, her temper faltering since he didn’t look at all angry with her in return. Just stern.
His stare burned too deeply. Turning away, she tried to get up, but the heat of his hand vanished off her hip to smack her tender butt. Then he grabbed her, not by the wrist like he had before. This time he seized her by the hair, fisting all of it that he could grab right at the back of her head. She collapsed back onto his knee, frozen mid-gasp by the unexpected pleasure of it.
With gently increasing strength, he drew her head all the way back until she had no choice but to meet his unyielding gaze. Her nipples pebbled. Her thighs began to tremble, victims to the insidious tendrils of heat wandering from the surface of her bottom to that point between her legs now pulsing along in time with the deeper, wounded throb beating like a second heart against his thigh.
His nostrils flared. As if drawn, his gaze moved to her mouth. The tingling that filled her lips made it impossible for her not to wet them, the tip of her tongue and the rolling press as she rubbed her lips together only heightening that tingle. Every breath made her nipples scrape the inside of her clothes. Once soft, the fabric had turned rough with her own growing need.
Breathing hard, she hoped he could read just how much she didn’t like him in the fury that stung her eyes and the unstoppable trembling that wracked the rest of her. If he did, it didn’t seem to upset him much. She frowned, struggling to hang on to the self-righteousness of her anger as long seconds bled out into a good full minute of absolute silence, broken only by the sounds of her own hard breathing, his much calmer breaths, and the rustling and coos of pigeons in the rafters above the windows.
“So,” Draven finally asked, “where is he?”
“He fucking who?” she replied, her own seething turning her normally soft voice hoarse. She wanted to consider his startled blink as her newest victory, but he recovered much too quickly.
“Answer me like that again and I’ll scrub your mouth with cod-liver oil.”
Wash her mouth out? The mental image of him pinning her bent over a sink, his fist in her hair while he scrubbed her mouth out, hit the pit of her quivering stomach as if it were hung on guitar strings and he’d just plucked them. The vibration of that threat went through her, leaving no nerve unshivered and no thought in her head unrattled. Her thighs clenched in response. So did her buttocks, both amplifying the growing heat and dwindling pain, and at the same time, locking them into the throbbing of her battered flesh as if on some subconscious level she were trying to hang onto it. She wasn’t, of course. Why would anyone want to do that? That would be crazy. And yet, why would anyone be this turned on by the unexpected lust of his controlling grip in her hair, his disciplinary heat burning deep in the tender flesh of her ass and, worse, now comfortably housed in the swollen folds of her needy pussy? What was cod-liver oil compared to that craziness?
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” he returned, sounding every bit as threatening as before.
The heat of her bottom now burning in her face, she squirmed. She also believed him.
“Well?” he asked.
She swallowed hard, but kept her tone extremely civil. “Well, what?”
“I’m waiting for my answer.”
Her face burned hotter, but not as hot as the furrow between her legs. Moisture trickled as the drops spilled through her folds. “I’ve forgotten the question.”
The corner of his entirely too handsome mouth curled. He didn’t make fun of her, though. Instead, he nodded to the closed apartment door. “Our sergeant friend in the stairwell, luv, not to mention his peelers in the shop below. Every one of them heard what just happened in here.”
That she didn’t burst into combusting flames right there was nothing short of a miracle. The guitar strings in her belly pulling from her nipples to her clit. Until he said it, the thought that anyone might have heard her getting spanked was the last thing in her mind. Now she’d be lucky if she could ever forget it.
“Not a one of them rushed to your aid,” Draven continued, not rubbing it in, but simply stating a fact. “Do you know why?”
Not one of the answers she could think of were civil enough to avoid getting her into more trouble, so Florrie kept her mouth shut.
“Because that’s not their job,” he told her. “They don’t care.”
And he did? He didn’t even know her! She tried to keep it back, but her sharp laugh came out hard and bitter. “They’re policemen! Of course, they care—”
“About catching a killer before those in charge are made to look an even bigger fool, yes. They care about that,” Draven shot back. “But about an addled lunatic from Whitechapel? Sorry, dovey. They’re going to use you for bait and when they’re done, they’re going to lock you in an asylum. You’ll become their prize showpiece. The unfortunate who survived old Jacky-boy’s knife. Come one, come all. Only a tuppence for a gander.”
The heat inside her turned cold, the erotic throb building low in her belly dying the more he said.
“I can protect you only so long as you stay here, with me,” Draven continued, neither his tone nor his expression softening. “But go with Hatman and he will lock you in a cell first, a sanitarium second, and you will never get out. Not unless you’ve family looking for you. Hopefully, a family with money, influence, and what wants you back enough to stand for you.”
Her chest was so tight now, Florrie couldn’t feel herself breathing. She had to touch herself, pressing her hand flat between her breasts just to make sure she was. If he wanted to scare her, he was doing a good job of it. Her face felt brittle from the effort it took not to show the stark panic rising in her skin, but something must have shown. His hand rose from her hip to wander her back in a comforting caress.
“I know you’re scared,” he offered, the harshness of his angular features softening at last. “I know you want to go home. I would want that too, were I you. I’ll make you a promise. I’m going to do everything I can to find out who you are and where you belong. Where ‘home’ is, I’ll make sure you get there. Until then, please stay here. Be patient”—he leveled a near paternal look on her—“and be good,” he warned, “or we might just have to have this talk again, yeah?”
One would have to be an idiot not to understand what he meant by that. Florrie wasn’t an idiot. Head bowed, she nodded. “I understand.”
He patted her. “Good girl. Up you go.”
Smoothing her nightdress down around her thighs, Florrie stood. A tiny twinge of discomfort was all she felt as she took that first step back from him. Small as it was, that twinge was enough to rekindle the heat.
> “Go on,” he told her, motioning her back towards his bed. “Get dressed. I’ll fetch some tea and a sausage for your breakfast. Then I’ve work to do.”
She neither argued nor agreed, but he walked away as if he had no doubt that she’d fall right into line just like the ‘good girl’ he’d called her. Chastened as she was, she probably would too, but it felt wrong somehow to let him go with that being the last thing said between them.
She reached her clothes, still draped across the back of the chair where he must have laid them after stripping her down the day before. He’d taken care of her, all day yesterday and all last night. Here they were well on into the next morning, and he was still taking care of her. She tucked a hand behind her, giving her bottom a rueful rub. Tender as she was, what he’d done there smacked a little like being taken care of that way too.
“Draven,” she called just as he reached the door.
One huge hand on the door latch, he half turned.
Her apology stuck in her throat, but she managed the next best thing. “Thank you… for everything. I’ll try not to be too much trouble.”
His mouth quirked into a half smile. He nodded once, then winked. “Never mind it, dovey. I’m fair sure I can bring you back into line should you change your mind.”
Florrie snorted. The idea of a repeat spanking was far from funny and yet, she had to catch herself to keep from smiling back.
The minute she did, however, he seemed to catch himself. His own smile faded and a shadow of loss haunted his eyes just before he looked away. He cleared his throat.
“I’ll, uh… bring you up some water so you can wash your hair.” The smile he gave her right before he left was just a shadow of the one before it.
What, she wondered, was the story behind it?
Chapter 8
This room was driving her crazy. Florrie paced restlessly. Eleven steps from the stone hearth to the bedside window; fourteen steps from the wall with nothing on it except that godawful bright green fleur-de-lis wallpaper to the door that led downstairs. It sounded busy as hell down there. More than anything she longed to go down there, or at the very least to open the door. Having already experienced Draven’s preferred method for instilling obedience and having absolutely no desire to experience it a second time, particularly since—if the tolling of distant church bells could be used to judge the passage of time—that had been almost two hours ago and she still felt a little tender, Florrie was determined not to go down. She just wanted to sit on the steps and listen to something other than the lonely insecurities of her own thoughts.