“Run your thumbs over your nipples until they are hard.”
She whimpered but did as she was instructed. All the while he stood there staring at her with that scalding look blazing from his piercing blue eyes.
“Slide one hand to your mound.”
Another whimper wound its serpentine way through her soul but she lowered her right hand, spiking her fingers through the nether curls at the apex of her thighs.
“Rub your palm between your legs.”
She could feel the moisture that was seeping from the center of her. It was slick along her fingers as she glided them across her outer folds.
“Again.”
She obeyed him.
“Again.”
Her breaths were coming faster, shallower and she could feel the blood rushing through her ears.
And her cunt.
“Spread the hair over your clit with your thumb and middle fingers and retract the hood.”
Her knees went weak at those words and she looked at him beseechingly. She could feel the heated shame flooding her cheeks.
“Do it!” he ordered quietly.
Mouth quivering, she did what he demanded and a low moan escaped her lips.
“Mr. McGregor, please,” she pleaded, her eyes filling with tears. “Don’t make me…”
“Touch your clit with your index finger, Melina,” he said. “Touch it and leave it there.”
Another moan came from the very depths of her but she obeyed him. The moment the pad of her index finger touched her clit she released a shuddering breath.
“Hold it there,” he ordered. “Hold it.”
He pushed his hips from the desk and like a wild, dangerous jungle animal came slowly toward her. He wasn’t walking, she thought. He was stalking her and there was a feral look in his penetrating stare that sent a tingle up her spine.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t step back as he came forward, for the backs of her knees were pressed against the foot of the Murphy bed. There was nowhere for her to go to escape the relentless advance that was turning her blood to molten iron.
When he was close enough for her to see the wild thump of the vein in the column of his throat, he stopped.
“Rub it,” he said, his voice gruff.
This time her moan became an aching groan as she began to spiral her fingertip over the sensitive nub. She started to tremble from the force of her need and when she thought she could stand no more of the torture, he snaked his hand down to her arm and savagely pulled her hand away from her body.
“Stand still,” he whispered. The fingers of his left hand were clamped tightly around her wrist—almost painfully so—while he put his right hand to the fly of his trousers and unzipped it.
“Mr. McGregor,” she said.
“Melina,” he replied with a sarcastic twist of his lips.
“Please, Sir. Don’t do this.”
“You work for me, baby. I can do whatever the hell I want to,” he said.
He jerked her arm behind her so her right arm was pinned at the small of her back. He kicked her legs apart with his bare foot and in one move he had her lying on the edge of the bed. He leaned over her as he pulled his engorged cock from his trousers. She felt the wet tip at her entrance…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“Lina!”
She came awake with a start to find Spike bending over her. “What?” she asked, still numb from dreaming, her body on fire with an ache that made her squeeze her thighs together.
“He’s waking up, luv,” the tall blonde said, straightening.
She swung her legs from the couch and sat up. Jonny was standing beside the bed. He craned his head around to look at her. He smiled.
“He’s doing his damnedest to open his eyes,” he told her.
On wobbly legs she hurried over to the bed. Jonny stepped aside to let her take the Kiwi’s hand. The moment she did, those beautiful blue eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she said softly.
He tried to speak and couldn’t. He sent her a pleading look.
“You want some water?” she asked.
He closed his eyes, unable to move his head for there was suddenly a fierce pain radiating through his face, under his eyes and digging into his temples.
“I think that means yes,” Spike told her. “Jono, pour him some water. He looks like he could scull the cap off a can of beer.”
Jono moved down to the rolling table at the foot of the bed and poured water into a pale-pink plastic cup with a straw. He handed it to Spike.
“Lift his head, Lina,” Spike said.
She held his head and Spike put the straw to his lips.
Grateful for the iced water that filled his dry mouth, he all but inhaled the liquid, feeling the chill all the way down his throat and into his upper chest.
“Not too much now,” she told Spike.
“Poor little bugger,” Spike said. “His mouth is bleeding.”
He could taste the saltiness of his blood as she eased the straw from his lips. He swallowed hard, tried to speak, couldn’t, and then cleared his throat. He tried again.
“What is it, Kiwi?” she asked.
“How bad do I look?” he whispered.
“Will you listen to him? Bugger it, Synnie. You think you’re a flowerpot because you have a hole in your bum,” Jonny told him. When she looked at him for an explanation of that, Jonny shrugged. “It means he’s being vain.”
“Oh,” she said. She smoothed her hand over his forehead and he braced himself to keep from wincing for just that soothing touch hurt like hell. “You’re gonna be just as handsome as ever. No scars.”
“How you feel, bro?” Jono asked.
“Like ground meat,” he managed to croak.
“You look like it too,” Jono said then grunted when Spike dug her elbow into his ribs.
“We’ll leave you two alone,” Spike said, threading her arm through Jono’s. “Be gentle with him, girl.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
“How long?” he asked when Jono closed the door behind him and Spike. He lifted his hand from the bed and she took it. Her flesh was cool against his.
“Today is Saturday. They brought you in Thursday night.”
“Damage?”
“Your nose is broken and you’ve got a few broken ribs. Is your head hurting?”
“Like a motherfucker,” he mumbled.
“That’s the concussion and that’s why you were unconscious for so long.” She smiled. “Do you want me to call the nurse to bring you something for your head? I should let them know you’re awake anyway.”
“Yeah.”
She picked up the call button and depressed it. When the nurse answered, she told her he was awake and needed something for his head.
“I’ll let Dr. Tonika know. I’ll send someone in.”
“They are looking for Olivia,” she told him.
He didn’t know what to say. A flash of memory of his mother sitting in the chair, watching as he was beaten, shot through his throbbing head. Any love he might have left for her was long gone now. She had sat there, smiling, smoking and sneering at him as the men she had hired tried their best to cripple him. The last sight he had of her was as she stood over him as he lay there broken and bleeding.
“You’re not such a clever little fucker now, are you, you little snot ball?” she’d asked. “You fucking spawn of Satan!”
One last kick from the bastard with the cowboy boots and he’d passed out to the sound of her laughter.
“They’ll find her and they will arrest her,” she said.
“Her word against mine,” he said. It hurt to talk. His jaws were killing him and that only added to the agony in his head. There was a tight restriction around his chest that told him his ribs were taped and the tape across his nose was itching. He doubted there was a single inch of his body that wasn’t saturated in misery.
“We’ll see about that,” she said and glanced around as a nurse came bus
tling in.
“Dr. Tonika is on his way over,” the nurse said. “He ordered a shot for you.” She pulled a syringe from the pocket of her uniform, looking at Melina as she did. “Would you wait outside please?”
“No,” he said, his voice as firm as he could make it. “She stays.”
The nurse pursed her lips but did not argue. “Which hip do you want it in?”
He tried to roll over and couldn’t. Every inch of him hurt. He tried again and gasped as the pain in his chest doubled.
“I’ll help you, Kiwi,” she said. She put her hands on his shoulder and hip and gently eased him to his side.
He had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. She had inadvertently rolled him onto the broken ribs and he could hear them, feel them grating against one another.
The nurse pushed the hospital gown out of her way, dabbed his arse with a cotton pad. “A little stick,” she said.
There was nothing little about the stick. It hurt—as it always did—and he tensed, drawing in his breath.
“Wiggle your toes,” he was instructed. “It helps.”
As she helped him lie flat again, he felt Melina’s fingers lightly digging into his shoulder and knew it was her silent way of disagreeing with the nurse. Nothing helped the fiery pain of the Demerol and Vistaril mix.
After applying a two dollar and fifty cent plaster he was sure he didn’t need, the nurse fluffed his covers. He saw her level a pointed look at Melina.
“You need to go home, take a shower, and come back tomorrow morning,” she said. “Visiting hours are—”
“She stays,” he said.
The nurse squared her shoulders. “I’m sure Dr. Tonika will have something to say about that.”
“She stays,” he repeated, his voice stronger this time.
“Thank you for your concern,” Melina told the nurse. “If Dr. Tonika asks me to leave, I will.”
“No, the fuck you won’t,” he stated.
Heaving an irritated sigh, the nurse rolled her eyes and departed, leaving the door wide open in her wake.
“I think you pissed her off, Kiwi,” she told him.
“She can lie down and I’ll fry her an egg,” he replied.
Melina gave him a look that said she had no idea what he meant and was too afraid to ask. He grinned at her. That seemed to reassure her that he hadn’t gone down the road to the funny farm from the thrashing he’d taken.
“Is the shot kicking in?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said. He still couldn’t lift his arm without experiencing excruciating pain though he had an itch in the center of his chest that was driving him mad.
“Why don’t you close your eyes and…”
“I just woke up, woman,” he grumbled.
“You are a dickwhacker,” Craigie said as he came strolling in. “My nurse said you think you’re the head sherang ‘round here, bro. I’m here to tell you that you ain’t. Mind your manners with my girls.” He bent over and kissed Melina on the cheek.
“The gunga ordered my woman to leave,” he told Craigie.
“Your woman is it?” Craigie repeated then held up a hand. “Don’t pack a shitty with me, bro. The little beaut has been here since we brought your arse in. She needs a break, don’t you think?”
“I want her here,” he said. Without warning the wool coating began to creep down his body from the narcotic.
“What you want ain’t worth two knobs of goat shit. She needs to go home and rest.” Craigie looked at his watch. “It’s after visiting hours anyway.”
“I want her here,” he said between clenched teeth. “With me. Where I know she’s safe.”
Craigie grunted. “When I said home I didn’t mean her home. Kit and Jono have a place set up for her and there will be guards 24/7, bro. Did you really think we’d allow her to be put in harm’s way?”
“Go and dunk your left eye in cow shit,” he said, his words beginning to slur.
“Now, that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I think the shot is taking effect,” he heard her say.
“He told me to go away,” Craigie said.
“Well, that makes perfect sense now that you explained it,” she said with a shake of her head.
Craigie pulled a pen light out of his pocket, leaned over and pried his eyelid back.
“Fuck off with that.” The light was agony shining in his eyes. “You’re killing me, Craigie!” he protested.
“Shut up, you pussy,” Craigie ordered. “Those pricks used your head for a soccer ball. I want to make sure there’s no intracranial bleeding.”
The pain vanished and he smiled dreamily as the drug took complete control of him. “No wucking furries,” he mumbled.
“I got that one,” she said. “I think.”
“He’s going under,” Craigie told her.
“I’ll stay until he’s asleep,” she said.
“Jono will drive you home. He and Spike are downstairs waiting for you.”
He turned his head on the pillow, trying to focus. Her face kept skittering away. “Stay with me,” he asked. He tried to tighten his grip on her hand but his strength had completely evaporated.
“I’ll be back after Mass tomorrow morning,” she said and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead.
He couldn’t hold on to consciousness and was sinking beneath the warm blanket the drug was dragging over him but as he went under he distinctly heard Kit’s voice from the doorway.
“They’re on their way to arrest her. The man we needed came forward and is down at the station right now giving evidence against her.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Night Twenty-Four
It was after seven p.m. She’d been with him for over nine hours and he was finally sitting up, slurping on the bowl of orange sherbet the nurse had brought in for his snack. Between them on the rolling table was a backgammon set. She had lost ten out of ten games to the man.
“You haven’t said anything about Olivia,” he said as he licked the last of the sherbet from the back of his spoon. He was looking at her through the fringe of his long lashes.
“What about her?”
“I heard Kit when he came in last night,” he said. He dropped the spoon into the bowl and set it aside. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to say something.”
“About what?” she hedged.
“Don’t,” he said in a stern voice. “Don’t do that. You know fucking well about what.”
“We wanted her leathery old ass in jail for what she did to you,” she told him.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” he said. “Did you think I would?”
“Yes,” she told him. “She’s your mother.”
He cocked his mouth to one side. “Giving birth to someone and being a mother to them are two separate things. Olivia was never a mother to me. As far as I’m concerned she was the laying hen and I was the egg she dropped in the nest then hopped down to scratch around in the dirt with the next rooster.”
She could not stop the wince that shifted through her. “That’s a cold way to look at it, Kiwi.”
“So what did Kit mean about the man you needed coming forward?” he asked.
Releasing a long sigh, she sat back in the chair. “We knew Olivia was in the room when you were being beaten. There were cigarettes on the table beside your chair. The police collected and tested them, lifting her DNA from the butts. But knowing she was there and knowing for sure she hired the men who beat you were two different things. We needed testimony from someone else who was there.”
“One of the bastards who punched my lights out,” he stated.
She nodded. “In order to find that man, we put an ad in the paper. We offered a reward and immunity from prosecution to the man willing to testify against her.”
“How much did that cost me?” he asked.
“Not a thin red cent,” she said. “Between them, Jonny, Craig, Jake and Spike chipped in to pay it.”
“How much?”
“$100,000,” she said and when his eyes widened, she shrugged. “We had to make it high enough to get his attention and make him greedy enough to come forward. He did and now Olivia is in jail.”
He was silent so long she began to fidget. His intense stare began to unnerve her.
“Say something,” she said.
“What do you want me to say?”
“That you aren’t mad about what we did,” she replied. “If you’re going to blame someone, blame me. It was my idea.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why would I be mad, baby?” he asked. “You guys had my back and I appreciate that.”
“Are you upset about us paying one of the guys who beat you up?”
“Well, I’m not jumping for joy about rewarding the prick for trouncing me but that’s neither here nor there. If you had waited it wouldn’t have cost them anything at all.”
“It would have been your word against hers,” she said.
“It would have been more than that,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I have the beating on video.”
She felt a tingle down her spine then her entire world tilted off its axis. “The Room is wired?”
He nodded.
All the moisture left her mouth. “You taped everything we did in there?”
“Yes.”
Stunned, she put a hand over her mouth and stared at him. She spoke through the constriction of her fingers. “Why?”
“Why do you think? I tape all the sessions because I don’t want some woman claiming what we did in the Room wasn’t consensual. It was to protect me from someone like the Ukrainian bitch.”
“All the sessions,” she echoed, bile rising in her throat.
“Melina, you had to know you weren’t the first woman I’ve been there with,” he said gently. “Why do you think the Room exists?”
What Craig said came back to her, rolling down on her like a ton of brick: “The Room where he takes all his hoors.”
“How many?” she asked, bile rising in her throat. “How many women have you brought there?”
“I don’t know, baby. I honestly don’t.”
“Did you pay those women, too?”
He shook his head and lied, unable to tell her the truth. “No, Melina. I didn’t.”
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