by Jade West
Plaything
Jason Luke & Jade West
Plaything Volume 1 copyright © 2015 Jade West & Jason Luke
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.
Cover design by Letitia Hasser of RBA Designs http://designs.romanticbookaffairs.com/
All enquiries to [email protected]
First published 2015
Prologue
Amy
No.
The word had always seemed so powerful.
But not here.
The tears came despite my best efforts, a ragged release of adrenaline as I held onto the door handle for dear life.
The old brute merely yanked harder at the chain until the tight leather cuff began to choke me.
I screamed for help, the same gurgled string of obscenities as every other night. This night, as every other, my pleas went unanswered.
“Come on, girl. You know he doesn’t like to wait.”
“Stop!” I wheezed. “Please!”
“I haven’t got time for this.”
I clawed at the collar, desperate for air, but the brute just used the opportunity to topple me from my feet. He dragged me along a few paces, ignorant of the burn of naked flesh against the carpet. I struggled to my knees, reeling against his efforts, but I was so tired. Long nights with little sleep and even less food were taking their toll. My body was aching and beaten. I didn’t need a mirror to know the welts were still raised on my back, I could still feel every single one.
Sometimes I wished I could submit, accept my fate and beg for mercy.
Sometimes I wished I could stay quiet and let Alistair have his way with me without the onslaught of my vicious tongue.
Sometimes I wished I was dead already.
But today I still had fight in me.
The corridor seemed shorter than usual, the battle for ground up in no time. The old brute gave me a final yank until I was on my knees in front of Prince Charming, handing over my chain before I could make another dash for it. Alistair had a smirk on his face.
A horrible smirk.
His cock was already in his hand as he stared down at me. He hacked up a fresh load of spit and slathered it on.
“What’s it going to be?” he leered. “Are you going to play nice this evening or are you still learning your fucking manners?”
“Fuck you,” I hissed. “Just fuck you.”
He laughed a horrible laugh. “No, bitch. Fuck you.” He took a step forward, standing over me with his flabby thighs pressed together. “Open wide, my sweet little slut. Open wide and show me you want me.”
Never.
If looks could kill he’d be a dead man a hundred times over.
I gave him the middle finger, and I was laughing, an unhinged sound I didn’t recognize as myself. His lips pressed in a mean little line.
“Last chance, Amy. Open that pretty little mouth for me like a good girl.”
“Fuck you.”
Alistair was so much stronger than the old man. With one strong pull of the chain I was up on my feet and being hoisted on my tiptoes. I gasped for breath as he wrapped my binds around a hook, holding me in position as I fought for breath.
“Bad girl,” he said. “Bad fucking girl. You did this to yourself.”
I closed my eyes as the whip came down.
Chapter One
Robert
I came through the Customs gates with a scowl and a simmering ache of temper crouched just behind my eyes. The airport was filled with bedraggled travelers who had all made the flight from Europe. They milled in small groups and stretched weary bodies. I walked through them, stiff-limbed with my jaw clenched until I saw the familiar face of the man waiting beyond the glass doors of the terminal.
Fresh cool night air washed over me, the sounds of the distant city carried on the breeze. I stood for a moment and took a deep calming breath. The man came through the crowd of people and pressed his hand into mine.
“Good to see you again, Bobby,” he smiled. “Welcome back.”
I shot the man a withering glare. Suddenly he had become the focus of my irritation. “I’m not back,” I snapped.
The smile on the man’s face faltered then slid from his lips. His eyes went dull and dark. He handed me a set of car keys.
“Ferrari?”
The man nodded. “It’s parked out front of the airport.” His tone sounded stung, as if my words had slapped him.
“Good.” I slipped the keys into the pocket of my jeans and glanced at my watch, trying to figure the time difference.
“I’ve booked you a hotel room…” the man offered the words like some kind of a peace gesture.
“What time is it?” I cut across him.
He glanced furtively at his watch. “9.30,” he said.
I grunted and scraped the palm of my hand across the stubble of my jaw. The sound was like the crackle of electricity. “Cancel it,” I made the decision. “I’ll drive straight to the house.”
I saw the shock on the man’s face – it was there for just an instant and then hidden again like the sun disappearing behind a dark cloud. He nodded his head in acquiescence.
It was an hour’s drive to the house – an hour of winding roads up through the narrow canyons, but I was in no mood to put this off until the morning. I had flown halfway around the world in response to a phone call. I wanted this thing done as soon as possible. I wanted my life back. It couldn’t wait until morning to be resolved. It had to be done now.
I drove quickly — steering the sleek sports car along the narrow mountain roads with a kind of confidence that bordered on reckless abandon. As the miles flashed past and the car steadily climbed up from the basin of the city into the hilltops my mood deepened and darkened into that black melancholy I had recognized from my past. I was heading back into darkness, and even if it was for just one night – just one last meeting – I could still feel the pall of resentment and bleak memories drape their heavy cloak of despair over me.
I was coming home…
I drove through the wrought iron gates and the Ferrari’s big tires squealed as the blacktop became gravel driveway. A shower of pebbled dust burst against the car and fell like rain across the dark manicured lawns of the estate. I followed the narrow tree-lined path that meandered for almost a mile of dark shadows before I finally saw the lights of the house.
The building appeared from out of the night, lit up like a cruise ship on a vast black ocean. Lights seemed to burn from every window. I braked hard and then sat for a long moment of heavy silence as the engine ticked and pinged.
My fingers were like claws on the steering wheel, my body tensed. Below the tight clench of my jaw I could feel the trip of a nerve. The breath escaped me with a sound like a soft explosion.
I had come back to Hell.
“Good to see you, Mr Bobby,” the man said from the top of the staircase. He was impossibly old, his face creased, his hair a fuzz of wispy gray. He was wearing a dark coat and trousers, his tie knotted perfectly, his manners immaculate. He had his hands clasped together in front of him.
“Hello, Albert,” I grunted. For just a moment my dark mood lifted. In many ways this man had raised me since I was a child. There was a benevolent
fondness in his eyes and on his lips that was almost paternal. I flicked him a smile and went up the stairs to greet him. We shook hands and the pleasure on his face was genuine. “Welcome back,” he said.
The snap of a retort leaped to my lips but I bit my tongue. I inclined my head just an inch. “It’s only for one meeting, Albert. I’ll be gone again in an hour.”
The old man said nothing. His face stayed bright, his eyes alive with a twinkle of fond memories. He bobbed his head and held the big double doors open for me. I stepped into the foyer, heard the sound of my own footsteps echo on the marble floor and resonate off the high walls and ornate ceiling.
“Where is he?”
There was no need to ask anything more. Albert pointed to the top of a broad staircase that led to the second floor. “Mr Jonathan is in the library,” the old doorman said. “Where he always is.”
I grunted again, the sound like I had taken a fist to the ribs, and then turned back to Albert. I gripped his arm. “You know why I’m here, don’t you, Albert?”
The old man nodded and his face became sombre. “Yes, Mr Bobby,” he admitted.
“You know about the phone call?”
“We all do,” Albert said.
Nothing in this house stayed a secret for long. By now my return would be common knowledge both here in America, and perhaps even back in Europe.
I paused for a long moment and studied the old man’s eyes. They were nestled deep in a cobweb of wrinkles: the dark intelligent eyes of a man who had kept a lifetime of family secrets… but also honest eyes.
“Is it true?” I asked at last.
Albert pressed his lips together into a thin pale line as though to say the words aloud was too much.
“He’s dying?” I wanted confirmation.
“Yes.”
“Really dying, Albert? This isn’t another of the old bastard’s tricks?”
Albert tried to look dutifully outraged but we knew each other better than that. “Mr Jonathan is dying,” he said. “The doctors have given him maybe a week or two…”
I felt a lift of relief; a giddy sense of vertigo. It was true, then… and I didn’t know exactly how I should feel. For all my life the old man’s shadow had been cast across my life, the tentacles of his reach seeping into every corner of my existence – even after I had walked out and blazed my own trail in the business world. Through it all I sensed his presence, dark and brooding like a vulture waiting in the distant tree tops to pick the flesh from my carcass and to drag me back into the clutches of his control.
Now it was coming to an end. Now he was dying. I would be free at last.
He could do no more damage…
I reached the top of the grand staircase and turned left down a wide corridor. The carpet was thick, the walls decorated with the gaudy opulence of wealth that lacked any sense of taste. There were oil paintings in heavy frames along the walls and crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the passage was an antique sitting chair and standing beside it, a young woman.
She was blonde; a slim pale-skinned girl, no more than twenty years old. She was wearing a pink slip, the fabric so sheer as to be almost transparent. I could see the dark shadow of her nipples as she straightened her back and turned towards the sound of my footsteps. Her eyes were like dark pools of sadness and restrained fear. It was etched on her face – the way she trapped her bottom lip between her teeth and the nervous flutter of her hands as she clasped them behind her back and stood to attention.
She was wearing a simple black collar around her neck – a thin strip of leather joined by a small silver padlock. She shifted her feet apart, adopting a classic stance of the submissive, and the fabric of her slip was drawn tighter across the tops of her thighs so that I could see the hint of her naked sex through the backlighting.
She said nothing. She was standing in front of the library door and I realized she had been waiting for me. Her eyes drifted furtively across my face then down my body with a feminine curiosity I had long become accustomed to. Her lips parted slightly and the pink tip of her tongue made them glossy. When her gaze traveled back to my eyes I was staring at her. She seemed to flinch.
“Is the old man in there?” I gestured at the closed library door.
The young girl nodded.
“Is he waiting for me?”
She nodded again.
“Is he alone?”
The girl shook her head and the flicker of fear I had seen in her eyes became something closer to terror.
“Who’s with him?”
She averted her eyes. “Mr Alistair,” she said in a whisper, as though even mentioning the name was to curse herself.
I squared my shoulders, bunched my fists and took a last calming breath. It was time to enter the lion’s den one final time.
“Open the door,” I said.
The library was thick with the acrid blue stench of cigar smoke. It writhed in lazy tendrils around the low, dim lights and seemed to pervade the antique furniture and the shelves of books so that everything in the room seemed tainted by the odour. I wrinkled my nose and stood for a long moment in the doorway, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom.
There was a large writing desk in front of the far wall and a leather sitting chair in the corner opposite. The old man stood hunched over the desk, his hands planted on the polished timber top, his shaggy mane of grey hair like a silver shock above the drawn parchment of his face. He lifted his eyes to mine and they were dulled by his illness, his features wracked with pain. But there was a menacing glint in his gaze, like the flash of a cold steel blade. His thin pale lips pressed into a line like a cruel scar that twisted his features out of shape. He breathed hard, the sound of it rattling in his lungs.
“Robert,” his voice croaked, but still the tone was oily with condescension. “I knew you would come.”
He pushed himself upright and it was almost as if I could hear the old bones of his body creak. He reached for the cigar box on the edge of the desk and then stilled his hand at the last moment. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Well I’m here,” I said and folded my arms. “I heard you were dying. I wanted to be sure.”
He laughed then – a spluttering gasp of sound that doubled him over. He clutched at his chest and his eyes became rheumy. I watched his body cramp as the pain seemed to cut him in half… and I prayed that he would fall dead to the floor.
“You never change,” he said bitterly. “Still the wounded little boy who couldn’t measure up to expectations. Still the black sheep of the family who thought he was too good for his brother… his father.”
I shook my head. “I never thought I was too good,” I said levelly. “I just knew I was better than…than this,” I made a sweeping gesture with my hands that encompassed the room and everything it represented. “Trading in women – training them and selling them for sex…” I curled my lip into an expression of distain. “It’s criminal.”
The old man arched his eyebrows. “It would be,” he thrust a bony finger at me, “if that was what the family business was.” There was a flush of temper under his cheeks now, and I could hear it in the sharpening edge of his voice as he bridled at the accusation. “But you know damned well our family business is for the placement of models and hostesses to our international client base,” he said the words without thinking because it was a carefully measured line rehearsed and repeated a thousand times over the years. “Nothing we do here is illegal.”
The old man and I glared at each other and the room seemed to suddenly charge with the electricity of confrontation. Finally there was a rustle of sound to my left and I flicked my eyes in that direction. Alistair was reclining in the leather sitting chair like a resting leopard, swinging his leg like a predator’s swishing tail, his eyes bright and his lips hanging slack with the prospect of what was to come.
“Alistair,” I said the name as if it was a curse. “I didn’t expect to see you sitting there. I thought you would be under your
father’s shoe. Isn’t that where you normally find a piece of shit?”
The man sprang from the chair in an instant, a growl of outrage in the back of his throat. He was my age, and my build, but the years of indulgence had left soft weight across his shoulders and gut; smudged the line of his jaw with soft pouches of flesh. He swung wildly at me, his eyes flashing murder. I ducked neatly and then swung a short right fist into his unprotected ribs. The air exploded from him with a sound like a burst balloon and he folded over at the waist. I snatched a handful of his hair and lifted his face so that I could see the pain in his eyes. “Sit back down,” I said calmly, the words a menacing whisper. “Or I will hurt you, Alistair. I will hurt you like you hurt your girls… do you understand?”
“Enough!” the old man snapped. His voice cracked like a bullwhip, and the instinct of obedience was so ingrained within me that for a split-second I hesitated. Alistair wrenched himself free and staggered back against a bookcase. He had one arm wrapped around his chest like a bandage and there were tears of pain and humiliation in his eyes. He glared at me and then looked to the old man for retribution. The old man stared back at me.
“Enough,” the old man said again, this time like a peace offering from a man made weary by endless war. “You’ve proven your point.”
I shrugged my shoulders, let the tension slip from my body. I moved across the room a little to keep Alistair in the corner of my eye. For a long time no one spoke. The old man slowly deflated.
“I am dying, Robert,” he said at last, measuring each word as if to utter them was to concede mortality. “I have a week left to live, maybe two. Certainly no more than that.”
I said nothing. The old man narrowed his eyes and tilted his head as if trying to see me from a different angle.
“I summoned you here because I have a proposition,” he said.
I shook my head, clenched my jaw until my teeth ached. “No,” I said.