But Charlie had blamed Will; he’d said Will was the ringleader.
God damn it, Charlie!
“You’re sure?” My voice sounded incredibly small, echoing around in my head.
“Like I say,” said Hammy, “it was a long time ago, but they were good friends of mine. They still are. It broke my heart to see them pulling apart after it all blew over. But yes, Will’s like that. He did all he could to protect them, but then afterwards Ethan and Charlie didn’t want to know him. I think whenever they saw him it stirred up bad memories, guilt, all that kind of thing. I think they even resented him a bit because he was able to help.”
“And Sally?”
“Yes, he tried to help her, too. He was the only one who did. Listen, Trudy, I’m not sure I should be telling you all this. I don’t know what good it does to rake over old wounds like this. Particularly at such a sensitive time, so close to her funeral.”
“It’s okay, Hammy. It really is. I needed some answers, is all. I really appreciate you calling, okay? I really do.”
“Okay.” He didn’t seem convinced.
“Thank you, Hammy. You hear? Thank you so much.”
“Okay,” he repeated, then added, “Catch you on Facebook, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Catch you on Facebook.”
§
“Can we talk?”
“Go ahead.”
“Not on the phone. Face to face. Can we talk?”
Silence.
I was falling.
“Please?”
“Ten minutes,” he finally said. “Be ready.”
29.
I threw on some fresh underwear, jeans, a strappy top and a cashmere shrug, with the heels I’d worn all day. My face was a mess from crying earlier, so I grabbed a wipe and swept it under my eyes, then powdered my face. A rush job, but at least it felt better. I was just glossing my lips when my cell phone buzzed with a new message telling me that the car was outside.
I grabbed my bag, and went out, down the steps, my heart pounding and my chest so damned tight I could barely breathe.
It was the same black limo. A rear door popped open for me and when I looked inside it was just Maninder in the front, not looking back, not saying anything, just waiting for me to climb in.
“Where to?” I asked, as I sat and pulled the door closed.
He said nothing for a time, then he half-turned to glance at me. There was a kindness in his eyes, I think. “He has a place by the river,” he said. “It’s where he usually stays when he’s in London. He doesn’t often let people get close to him. He’s learned not to. Remember that.”
I thought of what Hammy had told me. Will had been close to Ethan and Charlie, but that had all gone wrong. How many others had got close and hurt him before he’d learned to close down the shutters?
§
It was one of those apartment buildings by Canary Wharf. All glass and chrome and paved public areas with carefully tended trees and shrubs.
Maninder drove right up to one of the buildings, then down a ramp and through doors that glided open as we approached. The parking area must have been below the level of the river, and it was full of gleaming BMWs, Porsches, big SUVs and limos.
We pulled up by an elevator and Maninder leaned out of his window to key a security number into the pad by the heavy metal doors.
“Floor twelve,” he said, nodding towards the now open elevator.
Twelve was the top floor. Of course Will would have the penthouse apartment.
I keyed the button and almost immediately there was a surge and then the elevator had stopped and the doors were sliding open, straight into his apartment.
I stepped out, and right in front of me was a big oil painting in a heavy, ornate frame. I recognized the scene: Yeadham Hall and that fringe of pine trees that shielded the Bentinck-Stanleys’ family home from the North Sea. I didn’t look to see who had painted it. Nothing would have surprised me.
There was music playing, modern jazz, a clarinet leaping all over the place, a form of music I’d never understood.
Several doors led off the lobby, but only one was open. I passed through into a living room far larger than my entire apartment. There was a small table pulled up to a big leather armchair, a plate and cutlery on it, a glass of red wine. He’d been eating. Somehow it was hard to think of someone like Will up here eating all alone. It was a side of his life I’d not seen into before.
I dropped my small bag on a nearby chair and looked around. More art on the walls. What looked very like a Jackson Pollock right next to a small portrait of what looked like Will’s father as a young man; a beautiful landscape of a lake and forest, the light all blues and silvers, next to a blocky abstract.
Across the room, there was a piano, a mini-grand. How could the room be so big that a grand piano wouldn’t be the first thing you notice when you walk in?
The windows were floor-to-ceiling along the far end of the room, and one was slid open onto the balcony.
He stood there, his back to me, looking out over the Thames and the lights of London.
I went and stood in the opening, and still he didn’t turn.
“There’s a line you once spun me,” I said, “a line so beautiful that it’s been lodged in my mind ever since. You said, ‘You’re here because you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever had the luck to encounter. You’re here because I can’t get you out of my mind. You’re here because I keep making an absolute ass of myself to you and I hope I can redeem myself, at least a little. You’re here because I’m having a shit time and I’m selfish and you’re the most glorious, indulgent, beautiful distraction for me.’”
“You must be mistaken,” he said, still with his back to me. “I would never have said ‘ass’.”
“I’m here because I can’t get you out of my mind. I’m here because I’ve never known anyone like you, because I’ve never known anyone who makes me feel the way I feel in response to you. I’m here because I keep making an absolute ass of myself... an absolute arse of myself to you and I hope I can redeem myself, at least a little.”
He turned, at last, and those eyes were not those of a predator, they were the eyes of a man who – I desperately hoped – wanted to believe.
“You really want to?” he asked. “You really think you can take all this shit?”
I nodded.
“I’m not a good person to be around, you know.”
He was leaning back against the railing, his arms folded, still defensive.
“People get hurt around me, no matter what I do.”
“Sally Fielding?”
He nodded. “She got caught up in things. My life is risky. People will try to protect me if someone like Sally plows in and stirs things up. This whole James Bond thing. It’s not glamorous at all. It sucks big time, as you might say. But it just happens that I’m good at it. I have a cruel streak. I make things happen, and I protect people.”
“I understand,” I said, and I thought then that I did. “I know about the Cabal, about what happened with Sally. I know you were just trying to protect people.”
“You do?”
Those eyes. They changed. There was a glint, a flash of something else.
I nodded, suddenly uncertain, suddenly feeling very exposed.
He stepped away from the railing. Two strides across the balcony and he was close enough to reach out his hand to my face, press the backs of his knuckles against my jaw. His touch was cold, hard.
He opened his hand, cupping my chin, tilting my head up.
“You like a bit of danger, do you?” he asked.
My heart was thumping and my head was racing. What had I just walked into?
“I used to be a kick-boxer at college,” I said. “I can handle danger.”
“You’ve said. You have a bit of fight. I like that in a girl.”
I raised a hand and took hold of his wrist. It was like seizing a cast-iron statue, he was that strong.
“You really
think you want to know me?” he asked. “You really think you can handle it?”
His other hand snaked out, his arm looping around my waist, pulling me abruptly against him.
And the hand that was cupping my chin slid round to the back of my head, fingers burying themselves deep in my hair.
His lips were hard against mine, his tongue stabbing, driving deep into my mouth. He tasted of whisky, and I breathed in that heady, citrus scent he wore.
I’d tensed, my body rigid like a board, but then I softened against him, melting into his hard embrace. Somehow we had stumbled inside, turned, and now I had my back up against one of the windows.
He pulled away, then, and said, “You want to know what happened?”
His lips on mine, softer now, his tongue teasing my lips, running over my teeth, meeting my tongue and then withdrawing.
“We were young. We were all equally responsible. Ethan. Charlie. Me. Sally. We used to party, but there was a great unspoken between us.”
His teeth on my neck, sending electric thrills coursing through my body. Then he took my hands, raised my arms above my head, and pinned them there with one strong hand around both wrists.
“We liked it rough. We liked a bit of fight. A bit of danger. One evening it all came spilling out and then I realized Sally was up for it. We all were.”
He was hard, grinding against me, forcing that hardness against my belly, and then bending his knees a little so he could work his way lower down. I squirmed, trying to press back, but he had me tightly in his grip.
“So we got a bit rough. You like that? You like it a bit rough, a bit uncertain? You do, don’t you. You know what you like, what you want. Don’t pretend that you don’t. You like the thrill as much as I do.”
His thigh was between my legs now, pressing hard so that I groaned, I couldn’t stop myself, and then his mouth found mine again, smothering my sounds.
§
I am a strong woman. I am a successful professional woman in a very competitive field. I am not some feeble submissive. No, really, I’m not.
And yes, perhaps I protest too much.
“Fuck me,” I gasped into his ear, as he pinned me against that window and ground himself hard against me. “Have me. Any way you want. Just fuck me!”
30.
He carried me through to his bedroom, another room with floor-to-ceiling windows.
He lay me on the bed and slid my shoes free, then undid my jeans and pulled them down. My shrug was already gone, somewhere on the balcony, and my little strappy top and bra went next.
I lay there in just my thong, and watched as he reached down to a set of drawers by the bed and withdrew something.
Handcuffs.
Not those flimsy little plastic ones you get for a bit of sex play. These were heavy-duty metal cuffs, the insides of the bracelets lined with leather.
“You like danger?” he said.
I looked up at him, meeting those predator eyes, and nodded.
The first bracelet snapped closed over my wrist and then the second, securing me to the metal bed frame.
I started to panic.
It came out of nowhere, like a black cloud descending over my senses.
Everything up to now had been a game, in my head, but now... now I was locked to his bed and totally at his mercy.
This was no game.
This was a man with a history, a man whose life, by his own admission, was dangerous. A man who liked to take things to extremes.
I pulled against my cuffs, but they were secure. I bucked and twisted, and then he was on me, his body pinning me down, one hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.
He was so wiry and strong! He pinned me down expertly, as if he had done this many times before, and then somehow he was between my legs, pressing hard against me, and I was pushing up against the roughness of his jeans, and my panic was transforming into something else entirely.
So much adrenalin racing through my body!
I started to subside, my body softening, responding to him as he pressed down. That hardness, right against my sweet spot, grinding roughly against me with a rolling motion of his hips.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, holding him against me, and his hand relaxed across my mouth, then slid away and was replaced by his mouth again.
His lips, soft and tender, small kisses across my lips, my face, my closed eyes, and I held him there, stilling him, just holding that pressure against me as my belly convulsed and it felt like every muscle in my body was tightening.
I cried out, throwing my head back as my body tightened and heaved against him, and finally, gradually started to subside.
§
He disentangled himself then, and stepped away from the bed.
He stood surveying me as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt. That hard torso, the thickening of hair down his belly, the first two buttons of his black jeans open.
I was a woman obsessed, then. A woman possessed.
He pulled his jeans down, and then his black shorts, and his manhood sprang out from its confines, long and hard and thick.
Back on the bed, he kneeled at my side, not quite touching me, one hand slowly stroking that long shaft against the flat of his belly.
“You want to know about Sally?” he said. “You want to know how we locked her up and did what we did and she begged us to keep her there? You want to know how she begged us not to release her?”
That swollen purple head, slick with his juices. He leaned forward then, still stroking, lowering himself towards my face.
So close!
My mouth open, he carried on stroking himself, his fist wrapped tightly around his shaft now, gradually speeding up.
“You want to be released?” he asked. “You want me to let you go?”
§
The Stockholm Syndrome: a condition where someone identifies with their captors and doesn’t want to be released. Where someone who’s locked to a bed just wants to stay there forever, just wants to submit, to be owned, to be had.
Never let me go.
Had I been brainwashed somehow? Possessed, just as this enigmatic, dangerous man had possessed others? Was this really me, lying there, my body still heaving with the after-quakes of one of the biggest orgasms of my life... lying there with my mouth open, the swollen head of his manhood now pressed against my lower lip as he pumped hard with his fist...
I craned upwards, closed both lips around him, and started to trace delicate circles around that purple head with my tongue, and then he pushed forward, pushed me back, down, and started to thrust against me, into me, pushing so deep with each thrust that I almost gagged.
Those eyes.
Those predator eyes.
They were opened wide now, and his mouth was open too as he gasped with each thrust.
I clamped my lips tight around his shaft, slowing him, intensifying everything as I pressed against him with my tongue, and then he paused, holding himself deep, and there was a throbbing filling my mouth, a surge, and then I was swallowing, swallowing, swallowing.
Gradually, he softened, and I kept on sucking, slowly and tenderly, until finally he withdrew, settling back on his haunches.
§
He leaned down, took my chin in that strong hand once more, and kissed me, his salty juices still lining my mouth.
And then his lips were working down my neck, kissing across my collarbone, and down to the swelling of my breasts.
I gasped as teeth closed on a nipple and his tongue started to flick, and I pulled hard against my bonds.
“You want me to let you go?” he asked, peering up at me, then. “You want me to unlock you, now?”
That tongue, flicking my nipple again.
“Or am I going to keep you here? Keep you here for as long as I like?”
And those eyes. The predator, the tender lover, the man of danger.
For a moment, I panicked again, and then it became that strange feeling where adrenalin intensifies everything. D
anger. Risk. That’s what he was, and it did things to me I’d never known before.
Just then I didn’t know if I was his lover or his captive, and just then I didn’t care, as his mouth worked lower and he reached down and roughly spread my legs.
Just then, I was his.
Part four: Her Desire
31.
It’s all the silly little questions that run through your head...
Like was he a hand-holder, or did he prefer to avoid such public shows of affection?
I didn’t know the answer to that, even though Will and I had got together several times, including one rather awkward date in London, lunch at the House of Lords, and the most romantic evening of my life when he flew me out to his hotel in the Austrian Alps just for dinner.
Are you a holder of hands? I’d have to put him down as a very probable ‘no’ for that. Too many barriers. Maybe somewhere deep inside the real Will was a hand-holder, but the public Will would never show that kind of vulnerability.
Do you wear anything in bed? Well no, not that time when I’d slept over in Austria, but that was hardly typical.
Do you leave the seat up after you’ve peed?
Do you like animals, or funny birthday cards, reality TV?
What’s your favorite movie, your favorite color, your favorite member of the Beatles?
Trivialities; silly details. These are the things that you might find running through your head as you lie there on that wide bed in your lover’s penthouse apartment, your body aching from sex, and from the need for yet more sex, because you can’t get enough of him... lying there with your arms stretched wide up above your head, and your wrists secured to the bed frame with heavy-duty metal handcuffs.
Now, with morning light slanting in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he lay on the bed by my side, Will Bentinck-Stanley, his body half-curled, one leg drawn up tight to his body, his breathing steady, quiet. He looked good like that: peaceful, slim, supple; his body hard with well-toned muscle. He looked so at peace, sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
I hurt. Oh my but how I hurt!
I’d never had a lover like Will Bentinck-Stanley. He was strong, and he had so much stamina... He could switch from hard, fast, urgent, to tender and attentive; he could keep you right on the edge, taking you to the brink so many times before finally pushing you over. He was skilled with cock and fingers and tongue, with all the surfaces of his body and yours; going from another man to Will was like comparing an inept lover’s clumsy massage with the attentions of the most skilled masseuse.
Shades of Submission: Fifty by Fifty #1: Billionaire Romance Boxed Set Page 46