Steph was, in a way, one of those borrowed things. I smiled and for a few seconds the crystal-clear vista down through the water to the white sand and darting fish faded out. Despite her bobble-headed way of approaching life’s decisions, she was growing on me. Like Jodie, I was not looking forward to the day I let her go. And it wasn’t just the pasta marinara, though that seemed a damn good reason. It was more the cute way she looked up at me from the floor when I ordered her there—big brown amazing eyes.
If I didn’t know better I’d think she was some naïve innocent, but she wasn’t. I’d fucked her every which way, introduced her to mild S and m, and showed her what Dominance and submission meant. The woman loved it, but that didn’t mean I could keep her if she wanted to leave, and she did.
“You coming?” Jodie shaded her eyes. She and Chris, who carried the basket with our food, had waded halfway to the shore.
I waved to them then jumped into the water. It was cool and reached to the bottom of my board shorts. They waited for me to catch up.
“You coming with us back to the island?” I asked Chris. Wet sand squashed between my toes, turning the water cloudy as a wave washed past.
“Sure, and thanks for the lift. Much faster than catching the ferry to the port and then getting a ride out here.”
“Not a problem. We won’t go without you then. They’re supposed to be having a BBQ around twelve so I’m guessing we’ll leave about three.”
“Okay.” Chris smiled. “If I snag a hot submissive who wants me to take her back to her mansion and whip her I’ll tell you.”
Jodie chuckled. “If. Good luck with that.”
We reached the shoreline and walked up the beach toward the gathering in the park ahead. Color speckled the scene—bright beach umbrellas sprouted above a crowd of people in bikinis, shorts, and t-shirts. Next to a row of council coin-operated BBQs, six or seven big trestle tables were piled with tubs of food and esky coolers.
“Off to a good start!” Chris nodded toward the people. “Food, beer, and women in bikinis, can’t beat that.”
“Don’t rush, man. There’s hours yet. If you’re too keen, you’ll scare off the newcomers.”
Not that there seemed many new faces. This munch was supposedly to introduce those curious about the lifestyle to a few friendly faces and to let them talk about their concerns and interests with people who could help them get into kink safely. But, like the last one out here, it seemed mostly the old hands who’d turned up. Bushland Beach was an idyllic spot but the drive out here seemed to daunt those new to BDSM. The inner city ones attracted more people.
Chris scanned the crowd. “Not much chance of scaring anyone. Can’t see anyone new except the tall guy in the cowboy hat. He’s not my type. Have you two ever thought of finding another sub to scene with?”
Though Jodie looked discomforted for a second, I shook my head. “No. We’re pretty exclusive right now.”
“Only Kat, hey? And that’s not going to be repeated from what you’ve said.”
“No, it’s not.”
“She’s not much of a sub anyway. She needs a Dom with balls of steel. I’m going to join in on the beach cricket.” He slapped my shoulder. “I have to blow all the marching numbers and dollar signs out of my head. Catch you later.”
“Sure.” I watched the man lope back down to the beach.
We found a shady spot off to the edge of the gathering and chatted to those who came past, and to some friends we spotted. A rule of these was that no one was to get drunk, so light beers and non-alcoholic drinks made the rounds. I tried out the beach cricket for ten minutes and Jodie had a go at an impromptu game of Twister where the subs got to compete against the Doms. A lady switch with a sense of humor tried to get on both teams at once only to be wrestled away by her latest Dom. Mostly things were low key and non kinky. Locals used this park too and it was a Saturday.
Lunchtime meant the BBQs were fired up and soon sausages and steaks sizzled as the cooks tortured them. Jodie went off to find a friend. When I noticed Moghul lazing on a picnic blanket near the BBQs, I went and sat next to him on the grass.
Our mingling and making ourselves seen act was going well. I’d checked the apps that monitored the house a few times. Nothing doing back there.
Moghul lay on his back with a folded beach towel for a pillow and his baseball cap pulled low to shield him from the sun. His big feet were bare and he was toeing up the sand while looking utterly at peace.
“How’s it going?” I raised my one and only light beer toward the cook. “Do you know him?”
Moghul tilted the cap and showed one eye. “It’s going well. Twister had at least one sub lose her bikini top and the random game of tag had another mostly lose her shorts for all of two seconds. No locals have been horrified though.”
I snorted.
“Yes, I do know the cook. Meet Randy Dale. Man of the hour and my employee. From Texas. His mouth, dick and balls are all bigger than life, and I just had to convince him not to expose his thirty-eight revolver to the public.”
“You’re joking. He brought a gun here?” From where we sat, I could hear the man’s Texan accent.
“He did. Bought it illegally after he got here. It’s common in Texas to carry, as he calls it. He was horrified we all weren’t packing. I convinced him it’s only the koalas he needs to be scared of here. If I ever see him with it again, I told him I’d hand him over to the cops myself. Hope he chucks it in the river. He’d never get a license for it.”
“Is he a Dom?”
Jodie had wandered over and started talking to Randy. The man certainly seemed to amuse her.
“Yes, he’s a Dom. He’s doing porn for me. D/s and bondage. Brilliant rigger. But hell, what a bragger. The women love him, though.” Moghul adjusted his cap again, shading his eyes with his hand as well. “I hope he can cook as well as he fucks and talks.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “Okay. You got me though. What the hell is it with you employing a man to film porn. True?” I squinted down at Moghul. “I never knew.”
“It’s true. How do you think I made all my money? It’s a lucrative business. Like all BDSM it’s consensual, only you get paid a shitload.” He searched blindly for his drink, found the bottle and took a swig. “I think I owe you the truth. Kat’s got it in for you and seeing she’s my second cousin twice removed or some such, I had to come clean. You need to watch her.”
“Oh?” More news—I’d not known Kat was related to Moghul, even distantly.
“I’ve told her to be careful. Being in the lifestyle she should know not to talk about people without having facts.”
Fuck. “What’s she saying?” Now the Texan had tipped back his cowboy hat and was smooth talking Jodie while going on about how Aussie banana prawns were almost as good as the shrimp from back home but the laws about firearms were crap and the beer wasn’t half as good. “Are all Texans like this?”
“Not the others I’ve seen. Randy is a whole special case.”
“I see.”
Moghul waved his drink bottle toward Randy. “You want to go rescue her?”
“No. If he goes too far she’ll just kick his balls in. Chris and I have been teaching her some good martial arts moves.”
“Okay. Well, back to Kat…she’s just going on about you not being the squeaky clean guy everyone thinks you are. Which is so nebulous and basically nasty that I told her to get facts or say nothing. So, now you know. I’m sorry I steered you toward her. I would never have thought she’d get jealous like this.”
“You still think it’s her lusting after Jodie?”
“What else?”
“Don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, be careful. She’s like a terrier after a rat when she thinks she’s right.”
“Sure. Will do.” What the hell. Not good. “I might go see the guy in action.”
“Don’t get too close. He’s got a ten inch prick and isn’t afraid to use it.”
I grinned. “Thanks. I’ll be careful.”
On the far side, Chris was leaning on the wire fence with Kat next to him, talking. Shit. But the man was loyal, completely. I couldn’t stop her talking to people.
As I walked up to the BBQ, Randy was drawling about all the Aussie words he was learning that meant different things like trucks and thongs and how what we called an egg flip was really a spatula. To demonstrate he waved the mentioned device and turned over a sausage. He didn’t seem dangerous but then a spatula cross egg flip was less lethal than a thirty-eight.
After lunch, even though I had a stomach full of hamburger, someone I barely knew convinced me to join the next round of beach cricket.
“Go!” Jodie gestured from her comfortable position on a towel under an umbrella. “Be brave. I’ll watch the app. Would you like a token of mine to tie round your arm? I saw the knights get those at that medieval festival. I could find a table cloth from the picnic basket?”
I tossed her the phone. “No, but thanks for sacrificing me. If I get a mouthful of sand your backside will pay.”
She scoffed. “Just don’t get sunburnt.”
Easy for her to say, she was in the shade of an umbrella.
But I jogged down and joined in—diving for the tennis ball and fetching it from the water when it was batted in by a giggling woman in a green bikini. At least I got to watch the women running about with all their bits jiggling. Not bad compensation. By the time the game finished I was well toasted and my neck felt hot. Sunscreen never ever covered the bits you thought it did. I flopped onto the towel beside Jodie.
“Excellent running!” She grinned. “You sure have losing down to a fine art.”
“Brat.”
I stared out over the mostly flat blueness of the ocean. Sea gulls cruised in on the wind and trotted about the beach with wings out-stretched while they squawked at the other birds. The ever-present background roaring roll and surge of the waves had to be the most peaceful sound in the world.
“Beautiful.”
Jodie crept her hand into mine. “Yes, it is. This was a nice day. I’m glad we came.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I looked over at her. “How much longer do you want to stay? Where’s Chris? Does he want to stay much longer?”
“I think he left with someone else. I haven’t seen him for an hour or so.”
“Really?” I sat up. “He was supposed to say if he left with anyone.” Why would he do that? Chris was normally so reliable. Danger seemed to prickle up my spine. Cold, distant, but there waiting.
“I’m pretty sure he has. I saw him walking toward the car park with someone, and then after that, nothing.”
Christ. He’d been talking to Kat. “Have you been looking at the camera app?”
“Yes, last was fifteen minutes ago. No alarms though. Here.”
But as she handed it to me the phone rang. The text message sent a chill through me. “The burglar alarm’s been triggered.”
“Oh no.”
“I’ll check the cameras.” There were three internal ones including the one in the room. The front one showed no movement. The back one was black. Shit.
“The back camera isn’t working.” The prickle sharpened to ice cold.
“Might be a power problem, or it’s broken?” Jodie leaned in, frowning.
“Might be broken. A power surge?” No, the other cameras were working. The fire alarm was too and it hadn’t gone off. “Steph’s still in the room.”
“Maybe reboot the app? You know some of these things have bugs.”
“Maybe.” Coincidence.
I did that, waited a few seconds then restarted it.
But all I saw was black. I stood and searched the crowd. No Chris. I couldn’t see Kat either. Crunch time. Decide what to do.
“Right. We both go look, and we meet back here after we do the left and the right of the crowd. Ask one or two people if they’ve seen him. If not…” I stared at Jodie. “We head straight home.”
After blinking for a second or two, she nodded. “Okay. Or I could phone him?”
“No.” If he was up to no good, that would only warn him.
But as I walked up the bank, I was checking the room camera again. I grabbed Jodie’s arm. “Stop. Now the room camera’s black. We’re going home. Now. If he’s here somewhere he’s going to have to catch a lift back.”
A few minutes later we were in the boat heading back. “Nothing?” I shouted above the throaty roar of the engine
She checked the phone again with the wind blowing her hair backward. “No! Nothing.”
Things had gone bad. Maybe. I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was a coincidence. On the other hand, maybe someone had turned off the cameras and she wasn’t in the room anymore?
“I changed my mind. Phone him.”
“Okay.” Mouth tense, she quick dialed and waited with the phone clamped to her ear, before giving up. Her expression grew ever more worried before she finally lowered the phone. “He’s not answering.”
Chapter 21
Stephanie
No one ever said that kidnapping was half the time terrifying and half the time boring. And the rest of the time wondering what evil plans Klaus had in his head. Though evil was a little too far. Jodie was right. He wasn’t all bad, just a fraction, and it was a fraction which seemed to shrink with every extra day that I knew him.
Right now though, what I wanted was for them to come home. How wrong was that? No matter how many times Jodie said she had been in this same situation and come out unscathed, I would never stop worrying. I was locked in, for fuck’s sake. If the cliff crumbled and the house slid off into the sea, I would be inside this room, dead, at the bottom of a pile of rubble being washed by the waves. Why couldn’t they trust me? And let me go?
Then I heard the crunch of footsteps outside the window and I froze. It must be them. It’d been hours.
But when they returned from anywhere, they never came around this side of the house. They came in through the front door and the gate entry was the other side anyway. Who was out there?
More footsteps. Foolishly, or maybe wisely, I kept still and quiet. There was the spang sound of metal being tapped and a scrape, and a cell phone was thrust into view through the blades of the outside shutter. Whoever held it had to rearrange their grip when the phone knocked into the window glass. Distantly, I recognised the click of the phone again and again as the phone’s owner took pictures.
Of me, staring back.
Shit. I hovered, fingers clenching, torn between running to a corner, or under the window, or waving my arms madly and screaming. Terror tightened its grip on my stomach. Whoever was taking photos of the room, they were not Klaus or Jodie. They couldn’t know I was in here, could they? Maybe the picture wouldn’t turn out. Maybe they planned to come in here with an axe and chop me into bloody pieces. Maybe they meant to free me.
My eyes seemed stuck in the open position. What should I do?
I was nervous. So what? I did want to be freed. Who wouldn’t? I’m normal.
With my senses tuned to high alert, standing in the middle of the room, I listened.
The sounds were muffled but I knew them. Someone climbed the back steps—one person, deliberate, and heavy, perhaps. Someone unlocked the back door, came inside and prowled about for a while before making their way down the internal staircase, toward me. There was nothing else down here except for storage, I was pretty certain.
The owner of the foosteps stopped outside my door. The key hung on a cord out there. The handle jiggled then a moment later the key scraped in the lock, and slowly, the door opened.
Crap.
The man who entered was taller than Klaus, more muscular, though his eyes were somehow kinder. Black board shorts. Red t-shirt. The smell of sunscreen. The whitest blond hair I’d ever seen in office-worker hairstyle. He hesitated, murmured a somewhat surprised, “Hello,” then, as carefully as he’d opened it, he shut the door behind him. He shut the fucki
ng door. The key was in his hand.
What was this? He could get out again, but I still didn’t have a key. Why had he shut it?
Fear snuggled in next to my heart, cold and scrabbling. A little desperately, I studied his face. Friend or bad guy? What the fuck was he? Who was he? As he drew closer, I backed away into the wall, then waited, shivering, as he came to within a yard of me. His eyes were the lightest of blues, like the blue of a dry summer sky seen through glass.
“Who are you?” I croaked.
“First I need to hear who you are.” Deep assured voice—the opposite to what I’d expected. Hannibal Lector had a nice voice.
Should I say? I opened my mouth to reply and was stuck on the words. Say the wrong ones and Jodie and Klaus might go to prison for a very long time. Maybe me too. “I don’t think I…” I shook my head. “Look, just leave.”
“Leave?” He sounded incredulous.
“Yes. It’s not your house. Leave the door open, and go, and I won’t tell anyone you’ve been here.”
“You won’t? But you want the door open. Nice of you. And naughty of you, hey?” He tsked. “You’re Stephanie.”
Not a question. A statement. I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat and nodded. Naughty?
He nodded back. “Good. I knew it was you from the picture.”
I dredged up some courage again. “Then open the door, please. I’m being held here against my will.”
“Oh?”
I’d learned ever so well what a man could do to me over these last few weeks. This guy looked stronger than Klaus and his quiet attitude bothered me. Maybe I had a problem with my concept of what was normal—but this was not it. My creepy-crazy detector was going off. He should be jumping up and down about now going, oh my god, it’s you. Are you okay? Let me call the police—all that and more.
But all he did was go over and sit on the BDSM implements chest. “I can see you’re scared of me. You don’t need to be.”
Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 Page 21