by Jaye Peaches
The nameless girl—why hadn’t she asked for her name?—stirred Gemma’s drink with a straw and handed it over. Gemma put it to her lips to take a tiny sip, to check the ice was freezing the liquid to her preferred chilly temperature. A masculine hand appeared next to her cheek. Not Jason’s. The fingers curled around her glass, wrenching it from her clasp.
“Don’t drink it, madam.” Remy’s voice.
Gemma spun round on the stool to find her bodyguard with a fierce expression. He put the drink back on the bar and turned to her dancing companion. The sallow face looked even paler. She went to stand up, but Remy pushed her back down onto her stool.
“Stay there,” he barked at her.
Gemma glanced back to Jason, now upright in his seat. Lubinsky leant over, talking urgently into his ear. The American gestured at Gemma, and Jason’s expression rapidly changed. Across the room, even with the obstacles of dancing bodies, she watched Jason rise up. His shoulders straightened, maximising his height, which easily went over six foot. His hands bunched into fists. She turned away, not wanting to see him unfurl his displeasure further.
Remy had waved over the barman and demanded to see the manager. He pinned the unknown girl down on her seat, using a large hand on her shoulder. The turn of events scared her. Her hands shook as she clutched her handbag. Suddenly, she started to jabber away in German, trying to make a fuss, to attract attention. Gemma was sure the girl hoped to force Remy into releasing his grip on her. However, he maintained it, standing guard over her with his hand clamped firmly in place.
For Gemma, confusion reigned. Nothing made sense.
A pincer grabbed her upper arm. She gasped, pained. Jason had come over. He propelled her through the crowd, nearly dragging her along behind him. With a brisk shove, he plonked her down in a chair at their table. Standing over Gemma, with hands on his hips, Jason stared down. She ducked her head, cursing under her breath. Sometimes the man was impossible to look at.
“Stay here. Don’t fucking go anywhere. You stupid girl.”
With no explanation, he headed back to the bar to where the manager had appeared. For what seemed an eternity, all hell seemed to break out by the bar and the cause remained the strange girl. Gemma could do nothing but watch from a distance.
The club’s own security man arrived. Everyone seemed to be pointing at Gemma’s glass of orange juice. The bouncers snarled at Lubinsky, jabbing their fingers in his shoulder. Jason took the manager to one side, and whatever he said had an immediate effect. Suddenly, the staff behaved co-operatively towards Jason and his two bodyguards.
The security man sniffed the drink and shrugged at the barman. The girl fidgeted. Remy hadn’t released his grip. The bouncer took her handbag, tearing it out of her hands, and emptied the contents on the bar. He rifled through the items and picked out a small foil wrapping. Drugs? Perhaps she had wanted to sell stuff.
Some of the clubbers closest to the bar area had stopped dancing and watched the situation unfolding by the bar, forming a small audience. The gyrating lights and strobes seemed to make the situation unreal, as if she was watching a flickering film in an old cinema. The girl argued with her accusers, remonstrated, and pointed at her handbag. She rattled away until Jason bent down and spoke to her. Her face shifted, mouth opening, eyes widening. She hadn’t expected to be understood. Her approach must be to plead ignorance, deny knowledge of the contents of her handbag. Whatever Jason said to her, she instantly shut up. Jason spoke immaculate German. Fluent for many years, he rarely slipped up with his pronunciation.
The club’s security team whisked the girl away, and Lubinsky followed them out with the offensive glass of orange held carefully in his hand. Gemma’s bewilderment remained.
Jason returned, and she still couldn’t look at him. He picked up her purse and thrust it in her hands. “We’re leaving.”
He dragged her to her feet and marched her out of the club. She kept her mouth shut. There was going to be no princess tonight. She was convinced she had blown away any chance of pleasure in the next few hours. Pain now occupied her thoughts. Whatever she had done might warrant punishment, if she knew what transgression she had committed. Gemma had done something wrong, and she couldn’t understand what else she had done, other than taking off a silly bra without permission.
Jason pushed her into the back of the limo, and the door slammed behind him. Remy sat at the front, and the car sped off before the queue of clubbers outside could become curious. As soon as the car began moving, Jason brought up the privacy screen, and she shrank back into her seat, waiting for the disciplining hand to descend on her. He took her by her long locks of hair as she expected and dragged her down into the foot well at his feet. Her eyes stung with smarting tears. His act humiliated her. He had put her where his feet went.
Gemma closed her eyes. Jason’s burnt into her like ballistic missiles on course for their intended target. She wanted the day to end, to wake up to find another beautiful day dawning, washing away the nightmarish night.
“Open your fucking eyes. Remind me, Gemma, when you had your chat with security about how to take care of yourself at nightclubs and bars. What were you told?”
Protocols? Why did he want to know about security procedures? She recalled the conversation she had had nearly two years ago, shortly before she had married Jason. A lengthy, detailed lecture by his personal bodyguard in the ground floor office. A blow-by-blow list of what she could and couldn’t do when out in public. She tried in vain to recall some of what had been said, but she was imbued with alcohol and her recollections fuzzy.
“Tell someone if I go to the bathroom. Uh. Stay in sight....” She stumbled over her words.
Jason took her chin between his fingers. “Drinks, Gemma? What about buying drinks?” His voiced hissed with rage.
Now, Gemma knew what she had done wrong. “Only you or people we trust can buy me drinks.” She had let a stranger buy a drink—a definite no-no.
“Did you not think?”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I let someone be nice to me. I should have told her to get stuffed.” The alcohol had loosened her tongue. A dangerous game to play with Jason, to speak her mind or show him disrespect.
“Politely, yes. That’s precisely what you should have done,” he said quietly.
“What’s the big deal? It was one fucking orange juice. Nothing alcoholic!” She swayed. Her knees hurt badly, as did her scalp. He’d let go her chin but not her hair.
“Did you really think I would have made a fuss with the club staff about someone buying you a drink? She spiked it. Remy spotted her slipping something into your drink, stirring it in with the straw.”
Jason released her. Gemma’s emotions swung from annoyance to shock. Her mouth dropped into a gape and, for a moment, she felt sick. A sense of terror replaced her defiant mood.
“Spiked? Drug me? Why…?”
The implications rushed through her brain. She had told the girl she was on her own. The German believed Gemma was at the club alone and friendless. She should have put a big bull’s eye on her top. Vulnerable, lonely foreigner. Line up here to fuck me!
She needed reassurance, words of comfort from him. She wasn’t the disobedient schoolchild her mother would have frowned upon, the one who stayed out late and told lies. She was a damaged woman with a traumatic past.
***
In the back of luxurious spacious limo, Jason could see his wife process the information. The realisation of what might have transpired if she hadn’t been watched, protected by others. He thought she was about to faint. Her eyes drifted. She would remember being tricked by a woman before, a precursor to an attempted abduction. He cuffed her face, not hard, but sufficient to bring her back from her memory trail. She jolted, her bleary eyes trying hard to focus. She let out a low sob. A strangely forlorn sound of distress.
Jason quickly displaced his anger. He would not allow her to disassemble in the back of the limo. He pulled her up into his arms and lap, holding her tight in h
is arms.
“Shhh. It didn’t happen, Gemma. Look at me!” He waited for her lost eyes to find his. “You’re safe. You didn’t drink it?”
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, God. Jason. I...why me? Why is it always me...?” Tears held back, filling the brims.
“Bad luck.” Jason shrugged, trying to comfort her. Something in Gemma’s demeanour told him different. Always, she had struggled to lie to him, to hide her true feelings and inadequacies. Now, yet again, he could see guilt bubbling to the surface of her facial features.
Her pupils flittered. Her lower lip trembled. “I told her…I was on my own.”
He spoke through clenched teeth. “How could you be so idiotic!” He inhaled deeply, trying hard to keep his anger in check.
Gemma rattled off her confession with an air of resignation. “She bought me a drink because I implied I had no cash. I didn’t want her to know about your tab. I was pissed at you for making me put the bra back on. It’s all my fault she picked on me.”
Jason turned away from his wife in disappointment. Through the car window, he could see the waterfront and the illuminated Sublime.
Gemma had come clean. She had been unwise and had played into the girl’s hands, making herself vulnerable. The opportunity had been given to trick her, and Gemma hadn’t been innocent as she appeared. Now the truth was out, she would find out what the information meant to him.
“When we get back on Sublime, go to the stateroom and wait for me. The police have been called, and Lubinsky has stayed to speak to them. The girl was probably a lure, the bait. She would have taken you somewhere else. The drug added to your drink was probably Rohypnol or GHB. You understand, Gemma? This is what they do. They ensnare women. Once Lubinsky is back, I will deal with you.”
He pushed her off his lap and handed her his handkerchief. Gemma wiped away her tears, sniffling and blowing her nose. His anger had returned for a second time, and it proved harder to keep it at bay.
***
Gemma made her way to the stateroom, ignoring the welcome-back smile from Esteban. His face switched to a neutral expression. He would quickly surmise something bad had happened onshore. Maria joined her as she curled up on the bed in disarray. The groggy maid, summoned by somebody, wrapped in her dressing gown, didn’t question why she had to keep her company. Gemma said nothing to her. She suspected Maria was to report to Jason if she should become excessively anxious or distraught, almost a form of benevolence from him.
Deciding he was going to be some time, she undressed and bathed her tear-streaked face. She took the offered towel and satin dressing gown from Maria then sat staring out the panoramic windows to the docks and commercial areas of Dubrovnik. A long, sprawling city whose bright lights hid its historical turbulent past. She had been so looking forward to exploring the old walled city.
Curled up in an armchair, Gemma waited. It was nearly three in the morning by the time Jason arrived in the room. He quickly dismissed the dopey Maria. Gemma took a deep breath and looked up at him.
Chapter 28. Surrender
Jason placed himself in an armchair opposite his wife, his shirt half-unbuttoned and jacket gone. He noted the glass of half-drunk water on the coffee table and a pile of used tissues. Her makeup had been removed, making her face especially tired with her hollow eyes and her hair hanging loose about her face—tangled strands with no grace or form.
At that precise moment, when Gemma looked at Jason, he had only one wish on his mind. He had struggled to watch her dance, sharing her with the occupants of a nightclub and having men’s eyes ogle her all evening. In the club, he had witnessed yet again her vulnerability when left to her own devices and not simply to the opposite sex, but to her own trusting nature.
If there was a reason why she might easily be victimised, it was because she believed in others more than herself. A beautiful woman who liked attention and wished to be pleasing to others, desperate to be desired and needed. She had forgotten to keep him in her sights and mind. A flaw in her attitude, which had proved dangerous to her safety. She should have been dancing for him all night long, not for a hooker.
His loins ached for her, to claim her back from the clutches of others. Those eager men and temptresses who tried to lure her away from him. Seemingly decent people with wicked intentions to ply her with drugs and sweet talk. His eyes devoured her beauty, and his erection grew rapidly, hardened by her pathetic stance.
Gemma straightened herself up, then she slipped onto the floor, the robe discarded, and crawled to be at his feet. She came towards him, her nudity and silence her consent, her submission.
She looked magnificent, his painted wife. Seducing him with her tanned skin and parted legs, showing her sex right there before him, beckoning to him. Jason knew she had a romantic vision of the night’s endpoint. He loved her, and yet what he wanted was to repossess her. The sexual gratification he needed and the control he demanded all facets of his love for her.
“If you had kept me in mind while you danced as you said you would, you wouldn’t have been tempted away from me.” He let his final words of judgement hang in the air between them.
Gemma said nothing, but shifted closer to his legs and gingerly rested her head against his thigh. Jason closed his eyes, letting his head tilt back to rest on the back of the chair. His hand hovered for a few seconds before he brought it to rest on her hair and lowered it in a slow stroke down her twisted strands. A tiny sob slipped out of her mouth.
***
Love. Gemma had wanted love that night. Sexy lovemaking between man and wife. The kind of passionate intertwining that made her feel good about herself and not about yielding control to him. She had only wanted his body next to hers, loving her and comforting her. Circumstances had changed. He needed to know she was his to enjoy and savour. When she strayed from the rules, Jason would call her back and expect her to be contrite.
He tipped her head up so he could see into her eyes. Their wateriness would be evident, and she tried to show him her emotional state. A state not brought about by drugs or alcohol, and entirely of her own making—her surrender.
“You’re tired. Yet, having you here at my feet makes me want you more than ever. You understand?”
Gemma felt him tug on her arm, lifting her upwards into his lap. She curled into a ball, letting him bring his arms about her thighs and shoulders, holding her against him. Her face buried into his neck, sniffing the cologne and, amongst the manly fragrance, she smelt another—fresh perspiration. The odour of a man who had seen her drift away from him in the club, had his emotions sharpened when told what his wife had nearly drunk, and then witnessed her distress in the car.
She inhaled the remains of his angst and disappointment, adding her own soup of scents, perfume and sexual arousal—she couldn’t thwart its arrival.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Please, don’t be cross with me anymore.”
His hand stroked down her bare flesh, setting off a string of bumps and tingles in its wake. “I’m not. I keep thinking I might have lost you. I cannot bear it.”
“Take me back, then,” she said quietly, shifting her head so he could see face. She wiped away the tears and matched his blue eyes with her own green ones.
Jason took her against the wall of the stateroom. She didn’t favour the position. However, he preferred it when he wanted to make a point of showing his lust for her body.
He rose up into her with a cry of delight. A rigidity remained inside her. She coiled around his erection, like elastic bands. He groaned abruptly, along with a sigh of relief. His pleasurable vocalisation a clear signal to her. She forgot about the mess of the evening and focused entirely on him.
Lifting her legs up, he encouraged her to wrap them around his naked waist. His hands grasped her buttocks and squeezed hard while she gripped his shoulder to add support. Lips travelled about her neck and face, a smattering of kisses or a nibble on her parted lips. Still pounding his cock in and out, he ceased his kisses to speak.
>
“You’re mine. Mine! Oh, Gemma. Gemma.” With a raucous cry, he ejaculated and filled her with a rapid spurt of hot milk. Withdrawing, his semen trickled down her legs.
She would remark on any other day his ability to recover, to regroup his stamina and dig down deep to keep his body active. He lubricated his cock in her mouth, encouraging it to regain its hardness with a display of his dominance as she knelt at his feet. She licked, sucked, and held him in her throat, gagging. Then he carried her to the bed and engaged in fucking her pussy again. A more sedately paced intrusion into the reservoir between her legs. She held him in check as much as she could, squeezing and tightening her exhausted muscles about his cock.
The final conquest of her body came when she lay on her belly and surrendered to him, knowing it would bring him satisfaction. She was compliant, a plasticized body for his delight. His hands caressed her buttocks to aid his penetration, soft fingertips holding her flesh in place. With her head on a pillow, she accepted his occupation of her body even when his hands gripped her arms, dragging them behind her. Her anus stretched about him as she arched her back and he lifted her shoulders up away from the bed. A small act of bondage, another little moment when he chipped away at her emotional barrier and reminded her she was his. Gemma couldn’t resist the sense of control his constraining arms brought to her body—she welcomed it.
“Oh, babe. So gorgeous to behold you beneath me. Good girl.” His words kept her going. She crept closer to the inevitable conclusion.
He maintained a pedantic pace, neither his usual pummelling speed nor a slow, sensual penetration. Having spent the evening seated, he coursed with energy even in the middle of the night. A rich, coarse vocabulary burst out of his mouth; it told her of his passions, his ecstasy and keenness. The fullness of his cock, penetrated up to the hilt, was perfect savagery. Raising her head, she drifted away, only aware of his heat against her skin and the constant movement inside her.