Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  A diving suit.

  He wore a black diving suit.

  Like Nasty, only not like Nasty. A different feel, different scent.

  This man wasn’t Nasty, he couldn’t be. Why would Nasty do something like this to her?

  Polly mumbled against the hand. Slowly, the pressure on her face eased. “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

  Her feet left the floor. He swung her over his shoulders and slammed her down on the carpet. Her head hit something hard, and she bounced with the force of the impact to her back.

  “Scream again and it’ll be the last sound you make.”

  A whisper. It was him, the man who’d been watching her, and leaving messages on the answering machine.

  Polly blinked against exploding pain in her head. She looked up—into a blinding beam from the creature’s head. A lamp on his head—like a miner.

  Or like a deep-sea diver.

  The remaining lamplight in the room cast a fuzzy outline around a sleek, powerful body. Then the final lamp went out, and she was alone with the darkness and the shifting white beam—and the man’s vague shape.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  The beam hit her squarely in the eyes.

  “What have I done to you?”

  Closer again. He came closer.

  Polly scooted away, into a table beside the couch. A lamp overbalanced. The weight of its angled armature brought it down on top of Polly. She heard her crystal dragon shatter against the wall at the same time as a hard metal edge gouged her scalp.

  Another scream rose, but she clamped a hand over her mouth and managed to choke it down.

  “Do you want money?” she asked.

  He kicked her stomach.

  Winded, blind with fear, she huddled on her side.

  Unwavering, the beam remained on her face.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  Not a sound.

  When he moved again, it was so swiftly Polly had no chance to anticipate what he would do. Not that she could have resisted. He pushed her onto her face and settled a foot in the middle of her back.

  She cried, she couldn’t stop herself from crying. Her lungs squeezed against her ribs. Her breasts ground into the carpet.

  His only sound came with the faint grunts that accompanied each fresh insult upon his victim. Methodical. Economical. Practiced. An expert at meting out pain. Cruel.

  Swiftly, he pulled her arms behind her back and jammed them upward until she had to muffle her screams in the rug. She rocked her head from side to side and tears poured from her eyes.

  He was breaking her bones.

  As abruptly as he’d grabbed her arms, he released them. They remained where they were, heavy, aching, numb.

  Using a handful of her dress, he hauled her to her feet. Buttons tore loose and she felt air on her chest.

  All the darkness shifted. Light and darkness whirled.

  Polly’s arms hung useless at her sides. He shoved her forward through his precious beam, toward her bedroom. When she would have faltered, knuckles between her shoulder blades jabbed her on. When her legs threatened to give out, a punishing pinch to her buttock sent her stumbling onward again.

  The next pinch was harder.

  She sobbed silently, choked silently on her own mucus and saliva.

  He would rape her. And murder her.

  If she was going to be violated, and to die, she had nothing to lose. Polly flung around, flinched at the sound of her dress ripping. “Okay,” she yelled. “Do it, bastard. Just do it! You’ve had your fun. I’m scared out of my mind. Satisfied?”

  A series of short punches to her throat propelled her through the bedroom door.

  She retched.

  His next punch was to her sternum.

  An expert. A man who knew how to inflict pain.

  Fighting for each rasping breath, she staggered into a bedpost. She opened her mouth but couldn’t form any words.

  The bedroom door crashed shut. The beam swept one way, then the other. He was searching the room.

  Searching for what?

  “Why?—”

  “To make sure you don’t forget,” the awful whisper told her.

  She hadn’t expected a reply. “Don’t forget what?”

  “What you’ve been told.”

  Nasty would be back soon.

  How long ago had he left? It felt like hours. Polly knew it could only be minutes. Whoever was with her must have waited for Nasty to leave.

  He’d bring Bobby back.

  She cast about wildly. Not Bobby. Bobby mustn’t see this— see her like this.

  Bobby didn’t have a key. They’d have to call up.

  “A friend of mine’s coming,” she said. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  The beam drew closer.

  “If he finds you here, he’ll kill you,” she said.

  And closer.

  Her throat hurt. Her body hurt. Her arms ached. Where the lamp had hit her head, the tightly stretched flesh stung.

  He stood so near she felt his heat, she felt the heat of the beam on her face and closed her eyes, waited.

  “You haven’t done what you were told, have you?”

  Polly tried to cover her face.

  He smacked her hands away, and whispered, “Have you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” The remnants of her dress hung from her elbows. “I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

  “I told you what you had to do. You had to be good. But you’ve been with that man.”

  Denying that Nasty had been here would be useless. “You mean Nasty?” She managed to giggle. “He’s just a friend.”

  “Did he fuck you?”

  The crude, rasping question made Polly flinch.

  “How shall I punish you?”

  Finish it. Now.

  “Shall I make you ugly? If you’re ugly, he won’t want you anymore.”

  Despite trembling legs, she stood straight and gathered her dress about her as best she could.

  Something glittered. A silver sheen spun along what he held. Polly knew it must be a knife.

  Nasty would blame himself.

  The certainty came so sharply she blinked back tears. He would tell himself he shouldn’t have left her alone, yet she wasn’t his responsibility.

  This… thing wore a wet suit. Like Nasty. Because he intended to put the blame on Nasty? Or because a dive into the lake would clean away all evidence of whatever he intended to do to her.

  “If you don’t stay away from him, he’ll die.”

  Polly shuddered. What did it mean?

  “Listen.” The blade flashed.

  Throwing up her arms, Polly couldn’t smother this scream. The sound erupted in her head, in her ears.

  “No one will hear you.”

  She kept her arms over her head.

  “Where shall I cut you?”

  Polly sank to her knees.

  “Because of him, you will die. But he will also die—because of you. You are death to each other.”

  The cold touch on her back could only be the knife blade, the flat of the blade, sliding downward, under the fastening on her bra.

  “And the child will die, too. Because of you and the dive boy.”

  Bobby. “I won’t see Nasty again.”

  “No.” Still whispering, the voice became serene. “No, of course you won’t.”

  A single slice loosed her bra. A snick, another snick, and the straps fell apart. Holding her forehead to the floor, the attacker went to work, sliding his blade through fabric with calculated strokes until Polly huddled, naked, among the ribbons of her clothes.

  Steel, so smooth and cool, rested on her back.

  “I can come to you when I please. Whenever I please.” Let it be over.

  “But I could kill you now. Easier. Yes, easier to kill you now. Your friend will be back soon, you say? Good. I’ll wait for him. Someone must let him in if you can’t.”

  She didn’t want
to die. But if she did, Bobby would be looked after. As long as Bobby was kept safe from this monster.

  “Kill me and go. No one will ever find you. Nasty’s clever. If you wait for him, you probably won’t get away. He will punish you. He isn’t afraid of anyone.”

  “There is no man with blood who doesn’t bleed.”

  She must persuade him to go before Nasty brought Bobby back. “Nasty will know something’s wrong even before he comes up here. Kill me and—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” The whisper broke, rose to a grating shriek. “Shut, up,” the voice ended in a whisper once more. “I’ve decided what will happen.”

  “Please—”

  “Shut up, or I’ll cut your eyes out.”

  Polly swallowed vomit.

  “Shut your goddamn, sniffling mouth!” The toe of a hard shoe connected with her side. He kicked her twice.

  She braced for the knife.

  Then the tears came, the sobs she couldn’t stop anymore.

  Polly stayed where she was, folded into as small a ball as she could make. She covered her ears to close out all sound, shut her eyes tightly to obliterate the reality of this terror.

  She heard her own drumming heartbeat, saw flecks of red behind her eyelids. Her blood roared in her head and ears, roared to fill every space.

  The phone rang.

  “No,” she murmured. They must not come up here. “No, no, no. Go away.”

  It rang again.

  “Don’t.” Shudders racked her in waves. Her arms still throbbed, and her side where the intruder had kicked her. Every inch felt bruised.

  Again the phone rang.

  Polly rocked, and moaned. The darkness hammered her— darkness and fear, and the certainty that he waited, knife poised, to hack her to death, to kill Bobby, and, if Nasty wasn’t ready for the attack—to kill Nasty, too.

  Ringing. Ringing.

  It stopped.

  A voice. Rather than risk talking himself, he’d let the answer machine pick up. She hummed loudly to close out the sound of her own voice reciting the message. The man would open the door now and wait for Nasty and Bobby to come up. Polly listened to silence, felt the pressure of another presence, heard the build of soundlessness in a void.

  Seconds passed.

  He was waiting, too.

  She knew then what he planned, to use them—each of them against the other. Keep one at bay with the threat of stabbing another, then stabbing anyway, until only one remained.

  The one remaining would be Polly. He would kill Nasty first because he’d have to, or face a fight to the death when she and Bobby were dead.

  She beat the carpet with her fists.

  Why?

  A cool current slipped across the floor, curled over Polly’s wet face.

  He had opened the front door, just as she had opened it thinking it was Nasty who had returned.

  But he couldn’t have opened the front door because he was here with her. She held her breath and listened—opened her eyes.

  A hint of light tinged the darkness. Not the white light from his beam. This was as if it glowed from somewhere else in the condominium.

  Cautiously, she raised her head. The bedroom door stood partially open. The light she saw shone through the living room from the foyer. From where she lay the front door was out of sight.

  She could see the foyer mirror. Polly sat up. A shadow—a suggestion of a shadow—touched the edge of the glass. She rubbed her stinging eyes. Not even a suggestion of a shadow now.

  “Get away! ” There was nothing she could do but try to save Bobby and Nasty. “Run. There’s a man here. He’s got a knife.”

  She panted, expected the creature to descend upon her.

  No one answered.

  “Nasty! Get Bobby away from here. Please!”

  A tall shape launched itself across the threshold, smashed the door all the way open against the wall.

  The lamps beside her bed flooded on and she peered through her matted hair at Nasty. He braced a gun in his right hand and made sleek, sharp sights around the room. Nasty, but not the Nasty she knew. Remote didn’t describe his face now. Not even cold. No feature moved except his eyes, eyes turned to amber ice.

  “He’s got a knife,” Polly whispered. “He wants to kill us all.”

  “Stay down.”

  With only a flicker of a glance in her direction, he moved smoothly through the room, repeating his slammed entry into her bathroom before turning his attention to the closet.

  “Where’s Bobby?”

  Nasty didn’t answer. Like a powerful wraith he skimmed the room and left. Polly sat with her knees drawn up, the ragged shreds of her clothes tumbled about her.

  She heard doors bang in other rooms, then, so clearly she flinched, Nasty’s loud, “Shit!”

  Polly almost made it to her feet before he erupted back into the room and swept her into his arms. Swaths of red slashed his high cheekbones. He set her on the bed and stripped away the tatters of cloth. His hands were gentle but firm as he examined her.

  “Please,” she begged, feebly batting at him. “Don’t.”

  “Did he cut you?”

  “I don’t know. Bobby—”

  “Bobby’s with Dusty. I shouldn’t have left you.”

  “You were going to get him.” Her jaw clenched.

  He looked into her face. “I turned back. This is what I do—what I trained to do. Instincts. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t understand anything but that she felt his anger.

  “I felt”—he smoothed her hair away from her face and some of the icy control slipped—“I felt you needed me. My mistake was trying to fight what I felt—and not making you do what I wanted to do in the first place.”

  “He pretended to be you.”

  Nasty pulled the quilt around her. “He beat you.”

  Polly leaned against him.

  “Your head. It’s still bleeding.”

  “A lamp fell on me.” She giggled. “He made me smash my dragon.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

  Polly giggled afresh, and hiccuped. “And… and he cut up my clothes. And he said he would kill Bobby, and—” Her laughter sealed her throat. She bumped her face against his chest and moaned.

  “And? What else did he say? Did you see his face?”

  “No.”

  “Did you recognize his voice?”

  Yes.

  “Polly, did you know him?”

  “I think he’s the man on the answering machine.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “The phone. When you called up to be let in.”

  “I didn’t call.”

  She looked into his face.

  “The downstairs door was blocked open. I just came in.”

  “But the phone rang.” Bursts of trembling shook her. “It doesn’t matter. It stopped him.”

  “Thank God,” Nasty said. “He won’t get another chance at you.”

  She would not sacrifice him to save herself.

  He slid a knee onto the bed and sat where he could look at her. “Darling,” he said tentatively. “Hell, I’ve never been this scared, or this angry.” Gently, he tipped her against him and smoothed her hair over and over again. “You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you now.”

  And she almost believed him. Polly turned her face into his chest.

  “We’re going to have to call the police.”

  She nodded.

  “They’ll ask a lot of questions. And they’ll want you to be examined.”

  Polly shook her head.

  “I’ll take you. And I’ll stay with you, if you want me to.”

  “He didn’t rape me.”

  She felt him let out a big breath. “For that, I’ll always be grateful,” he told her. “I couldn’t stand to think of you going through—that. And I don’t know how easily I’d live with so much hate.”

  “I think I’m going to cry.” Her throat clogged. “
I want my robe.”

  Nasty stopped her from getting off the bed and brought her blue terry-cloth robe from the bathroom. With sensitive efficiency he removed the quilt and helped her to get comfortable. She wrapped the robe more tightly around her.

  He paced, stopping from time to time to study her.

  “I’m okay,” she said, still shaking. “I can tell the police everything. You don’t have to stay.”

  “I’m staying.”

  “I’ve got to get Bobby. He’ll be worried.”

  “No kid was ever worried with Dusty. He’s every kid’s dream grandpa.”

  “You’ve already done too much for me.”

  “I haven’t even begun to do things for you. You’re going to be my life’s work, Polly Crow.”

  And if she gave in to what she wanted and accepted that wonderful offer, she’d kill them both. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got a business to run. This is something the police will have to deal with.”

  “They’ll go through the motions. But you’d better get used to knowing I’m never too far away to hear you breathe.”

  “Xavier—”

  “That means I’m going to be very close. All the time.”

  And if she didn’t refuse, that could mean she’d be very dead anyway. “He said I had to do what he wants me to do.”

  Nasty came to stand over her. His lips curled away from his teeth. “You only have to do what you want to do. What did the sonovabitch say to you?”

  “He…” She wanted to trust love, and to trust it with this man. To send him away would be to send a part of herself away. “He wants me. That’s all. He just wants me for himself. He’s mad.”

  “Shush,” Nasty said, gently touching her cheek. “It’s okay. I’m here with you now, and I’m not leaving.”

  Polly smiled at him. Her stomach knotted so tightly she felt sick again. “Nasty, will you let me tell you the way it is? Without interrupting.”

  The downturn of his mouth was mutinous but he gave one short nod.

  “I’m afraid to let you stay.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “You said you wouldn’t interrupt. I’m just as afraid to let you go.” She had his entire attention. “And I want you as part of my life. I’m so muddled up I don’t know what decision’s the right one. There isn’t a right decision. Whatever I decide is going to kill one or both of us.”