Sweet Seduction Sacrifice

by Nicola Claire

  We stopped in front of my apartment as he finished the angry-inducing call, with a repeated, "Ten minutes," and a firm slamming of the phone shut.

  He took two long breaths in before he turned to face me. I almost didn't want to look up and see what his features would show, but forced myself to confront the angry bear beside me.

  "Sweetheart," he said in a soft voice, so at odds to the anger still rolling off him. "I'll see you to your door, but something has come up I must attend to. I am sorry. I had hoped we'd share a nightcap together."

  For some reason I was thinking he was using "nightcap" as a metaphor for something else. I was suddenly relieved he had to rush away, despite feeling enormously let down. I couldn't say no to this man and doing anything else, other than holding hands and allowing him to brush his lips against my temple on the first day we met, seemed like a really bad idea.

  I nodded, he leaned forward and then reached up and cupped my face, his eyes intense as they held mine.

  "Don't think for a second I wish to be anywhere else," he whispered. I thought he'd kiss me there and then, but he simply held my gaze for a moment and then pulled back and punched in the access code the building, pulling me behind him as he went in.

  We were both silent as we waited for the lift. Silent as the lift went up to my floor. And silent while he unlocked the door to my apartment and gave it a quick search after deactivating the alarm code. Every single thing he did was caring, but the more he slipped into my life as though he was meant to be there, the harder my heart beat. By the time he returned to my side - I was still standing immobile at the door - my heart was pounding in my chest, threatening to explode all over the floor.

  He took one look at me and frowned. Then without a word pulled me towards his chest and wrapped his arms around my back, one hand rubbing soothingly at the base, the other slipping up into my hair and tilting my head gently back. He looked down at me, his eyes flicking over my entire face as though he was memorising it. One last look before he left. It was so sweet, so unbelievably sweet, that my heart ceased its pounding and simply skipped a few beats instead.

  Dominic Anscombe was a dream come true. Shame I'd lived my one dream already and this was only a loan of someone else's, I was sure.

  His face dipped closer, when his eyes returned to mine, then I watched in a daze as they flicked down to my mouth, his intention so very clear. I couldn't help it, I wanted him to kiss me, I wanted another touch from this man. I licked my lips, watched stunned as his eyes slid to half mast and a soft breath escaped from somewhere deep within.

  And then his phone rang again.

  He stilled, cursed under his breath and then brushed his lips against my temple, in amongst my hair. I think he might have inhaled, while his nose was buried in the strands, but I was too disappointed to care. He pulled back, gave me a long look and then slipped silently out the door without a word.

  I stood there for several minutes, wondering if in fact Dominic Anscombe was a dream.

  It was only just after nine, so I flicked the TV on for some background noise and began to make myself a coffee. We have an enormous, behemoth of an espresso machine at Sweet Seduction. If you're serious about coffee, you need a serious coffee machine. Rancilio is my preferred, so I have a mini Rancilio at home. There is just no way I'd consume primo coffee during the day and subject myself to crap at home.

  The only problem with serious coffee machines is they take a few minutes to warm up. Whilst my mini-primo-espresso-maker did its thing, I let my mind wander over the day's events and the evening. How could 24 hours contain so much? My head was actually beginning to hurt and my heart had decided to beat like bongo drums all over again, as I catalogued the surreal events of my day.

  It was during this mental ticking off of the long list of never-before-happened-ohmigod-moments that made up this day, that there was a soft knock on the door. I had a moment to excitedly think it might be Dominic back, having already miraculously sorted his phone call issue out in the past five minutes he'd been gone - Kelly did say a lot could happen in five minutes - and then panic set in. If it was Dominic then he wanted something more. Could I handle more? On the first day we met? I seriously doubted it, so for second I chose to ignore the knock and pretend it hadn't happened at all. It was a soft knock, I could be excused for missing it if I was, say, in the bathroom, soaking the day away in the tub.

  Then the person knocked again. This time louder and longer. There'd be no missing that.

  I sighed, ran a hand through my hair and then walked to the door, stretching up on tip-toes to look through the peep hole. Why do they place them so god-damned high on the door? I'm only five foot five, it was designed, I was so sure, by someone's Dominic's height - over six feet.

  I didn't recognise the person on the other side of the door, he was dressed in a nondescript grey suit, had brown short curly hair and a clean shaven face. His hands were clasped casually in front of him and he was looking down at his shoes, which I could not see through the warped vision the peep hole gave. He seemed relaxed and patient, but wasn't stepping away even though I still hadn't answered the door. There was nothing for it, I'd have to see what he wanted.

  I have a chain on the door, its pretty thick, not one of those piddly little things that could snap with a good shoulder shove in the right place. The apartments might have been converted on the cheap, but the maintenance department did a good job of ensuring we felt safe. Including changing the code on the front of the building once a month. Which made me believe, someone must have buzzed this guy up or he was a resident here, either way someone knew him, because he wouldn't have come straight up to my door, unless he belonged. Right?

  I still attached the chain before I cracked the door the few centimetres it allowed.

  "Ms Cain?" The guy asked, his head coming up the second the door opened.

  "Yes. How can I help?"

  "We've just a got a few questions for you, Ms Cain." He flashed what looked like a police identification card, still in his wallet. He even let me read it, not moving it until I got a good look. It had his picture on the ID as well as his name and title. Detective Constable Ewen Beckett.

  My eyes flicked up to his. "What's this about, Detective Beckett?" I asked, thinking I had a pretty good idea. Too much of a coincidence not to.

  "We're looking for your boyfriend, we're hoping you can help us out."

  He kept saying we, but I couldn't see anyone else. Maybe it was just how cops talked, the collective "we" of the police force.

  "He's not my boyfriend anymore," I pointed out, not releasing the chain on the door. He may be a cop, but I still didn't know him. And who visits after nine at night to ask questions such as these? I'm not that stupid.

  "That may well be, Ms Cain, but his last known address is here."

  Ah crap, Brett hadn't changed any of his details yet.

  "Not for four months," I provided.

  "Even so, you may know of something that could help us and we very much need to get in touch with your boyfriend, Ms Cain."

  "Ex-boyfriend," I semi repeated.

  He didn't acknowledge my correction. "He could be in danger, you would be helping him by helping us."

  I was unsure how I felt about Brett being in danger, my emotions about everything that had transpired today making it impossible to pin my reaction to that statement down. What I did know, was I had nothing that would help the cops out, they were wasting their time. I didn't tell Detective Beckett that though.

  "I'm sorry, Detective, but I have no idea where he is, I have a Trespass Notice out against him and I haven't spoken to him in four months."

  "But you have had contact from him," the good detective offered, unfortunately correctly.

  "He sends me flowers from time to time," I admitted reluctantly. "I've destroyed or got rid of them all. I don't want anything to do with him."

  "But he wants something to do with you," he countered.

  I was starting to get a little annoyed.
It was late, I was beginning to feel exhausted from the emotionally packed day I had just had. All I wanted to do was climb into bed, even the idea of a coffee was no longer on the cards.

  "Look, I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can be of any help."

  "Can we at least come in and ask a few more questions?" he said reasonably. "We may be able to jog your memory, anything you say could be of great assistance to us. You'd be doing us a favour, Ms Cain. We really need to find your boyfriend before anyone else does."

  "Ex-boyfriend," I repeated automatically. "And it's getting pretty late. I have to work tomorrow." God help me, but I was lying to a policeman. I didn't normally work Saturdays, even though they were busy for us - untold number of shoppers on High Street - I had extra staff who normally covered for the weekends. But I had intended to go in and finish off the accounts, so it was only a little white lie, not a big old nasty fib.

  "Ms Cain, this is important, we don't normally knock on people's door this late unless it means life or death."

  Oh boy, that got me biting my bottom lip. It's not as though I had completely stopped feeling something for Brett. Most of the good feelings had been replaced with something a little bad, but I still remembered when things were great between us. When he'd spend time with me because he wanted to hear me laugh. When we'd lounge in bed all day Saturday and only get out to grab food or use the bathroom. Otherwise our bed was our raft in a storm tossed world and we were each other's life preservers. There had been good times, they just got less and less as the years passed.

  "Is it really that bad?" I asked, still nibbling on that bottom lip.

  "I'm afraid so, he's got some rather determined enemies. If we get to him first, we can protect him. You want him protected, don't you, Ms Cain?"

  I briefly thought that was an unusual thing for a police officer to ask. Brett was my ex-boyfriend after all and maybe they didn't know that he had lost my gran's inheritance on a bad gambling bet, but they must have assumed that for him to no longer live here for four months, that things weren't perfect in our world. I'm not sure why I didn't cotton on to that suggestion more firmly, but it slipped from my mind as the detective went on.

  "Your boyfriend has upset the wrong people, Ms Cain. There isn't much time before they will find him, they are very good at it, and when they do, there won't be much left of him for you to have back."

  I didn't say, that I didn't want him back at all, I was kind of getting sick of repeating myself, and besides, what the detective was implying simply couldn't be true. Things like this didn't happen in Auckland. We weren't a big city like some overseas, where gangs fought and guns could be found on the streets. I'm not naive, drugs most certainly exist, I hear about them on the news every night, and if they exist, then I guess other more nefarious things do too. But I still thought this officer was being melodramatic, at very the least, exaggerating to get me to comply.

  "Perhaps if I come down to the station tomorrow, I can talk to you all then, although I really don't know if I will be of any help. But if you think it might assist you, I'd be happy to go over things then."

  I thought I was being more than reasonable, accommodating in fact. It was after nine at night, after all, and Brett was my ex-boyfriend, surely tomorrow would be soon enough.

  "You don't understand, Ms Cain. Your boyfriend will be dead by tomorrow if we don't get a lead right now and you're our only chance of that. His death will be on your hands. Now please, open the door."

  He'd said it in a low, firm voice. No doubt his trained policeman voice, the one he uses to control a stampeding crowd. Because even though the words felt like a slap against my face, I still think I would have stood my ground a little longer. I didn't love Brett anymore, even when I took him back those four times, love had somehow not been the impetus for my actions at all - which said something about me I didn't want to look too closely at right now. But his tone, his forcefulness, coupled with that policeman obey-my-command voice, meant I found myself slipping the chain off the door to let him in.

  The second the chain came unhitched the door was slammed back in my face and I realised, as the world turned slow black, that I'd been the worst kind of fool. The signs had been there, but I'd ignored them. I'd let any lingering feelings I had for Brett blind me, cut me off from my common sense.

  Cops don't browbeat everyday citizens. And they sure as hell don't slam a door in their face.

  Chapter 7

  This Is Definitely Going To Be Fun

  I woke with a killer headache and unable to breathe through my nose. Even before I started cataloguing my aches and pains, I knew that police-detective-that-was-so-not-a-police-detective had done some serious damage. Who would have thought a door to the face could achieve so much? I now, unfortunately, knew the answer to that question.

  I lay with my eyes closed for a while, trying to decipher any noises around me and the condition I was in, before I let on to my captors that I was lucid and awake. There was some muffled conversation, probably behind a closed door, that I couldn't make out. Male voices, low and gruff, and more than one. It sounded like they might have been arguing, but not raising their voices to do it. So, thinking I might be alone, I chanced a look through slitted eyes.

  No one was in the room I was in. It was a bedroom, in what looked like a low-rent motel, but the phone - if it had existed at all - had been taken from the night stand and the curtains were closed. Sun shone through a gap in the centre. Holy crap. I'd been here, wherever the hell here was, for the rest of the night and into the next day. I sat up gingerly and immediately regretted it, my hand flashing to my forehead in a pitiful attempt to keep the pounding inside. And then I realised I wasn't tied up. I was completely free and had been placed on top of the bedspread fully clothed. Things were looking up.

  If only the room would stop spinning.

  I shifted my body to the side of the bed, knowing time wasn't on my side. Those deep masculine voices would soon come to check on me, I needed to make my escape through the window as soon as I could. It took, what felt like, an eternity to get my body to obey any commands. That first moment of sitting upright had led me to believe I was in charge, but the next however many years it took to swing my legs over the side dispelled that illusion pretty much completely.

  I kept thinking of moving one body part, only to find another moved instead. This would have been hilarious, if I hadn't have just been knocked out, kidnapped and in a strange, unknown environment, fearing for my life. My hand smashed against the night stand, making the lamp clatter to the floor, when I had been expecting my leg to move sideways instead. The resultant reaction to the sound of the pottery lamp base shattering, made my other hand punch out and crack my knuckles against the same night stand - and had there been a second lamp, no doubt that would have been destroyed too - when I was attempting to stand and take a step away.

  Fuck!

  My head swung towards the door - it was obeying commands, even if my limbs weren't - and my heart leapt into my throat. The quietly arguing voices had stilled. Silence reigned on the other side of the closed door. I swallowed past a suddenly very dry throat, flicked a glance towards the window, which, for some reason, felt further away than before. And then shifted my gaze back to the door - all the while internally cursing the way the room spun crazily with each movement of my head - as the door came open.

  "Baby? Are you awake?"

  In the split second I heard that familiar soft voice, all cognitive thought left me. My heartbeat became erratic, my breathing laboured, sweat started to coat my skin. Escape kept repeating on a permanent loop inside my head, but my body simply shut down.

  Well, the part of my body that didn't include my mouth. "Brett?"

  He pushed the door open further and stood just inside the room, as though afraid to come any closer. And well might he, I thought numbly. Even in a spinning room though, with a pounding head and a staccato drum beat in my chest and burning lungs and a sore-as-fuck nose, he looked kind of good. But t
hen Brett always did. Tight faded denim jeans, worn white T-shirt stretched over well defined muscles. Slightly unruly blond hair, needing a cut about two weeks ago, with a small smattering of stubble across his square jaw. His hazel eyes were pinned on me.

  "Baby, I heard something crash. Did you hurt yourself?" He stepped closer, concern written all over his face.

  I lowered my head to catch up with my jaw.

  "I didn't get the broken nose from a lamp, Brett," I said, after finally finding my voice again.

  "Yeah, about that. Lofty didn't mean anything by it, he kinda tripped as he pushed the door open and well, he's a big guy, his weight behind the door made a bit of an impact."

  "A bit of an impact," I murmured, jaw still firmly out of my lowering head's reach.

  "I've had a go at him. He wasn't meant to harm you in any way. Once he got inside the apartment and got to talk to you, you'd have understood what all the fuss was about."

  "All the fuss was about." I seemed unable to form my own sentences, I just kept repeating bits of his.

  "Yeah, your place is being watched. And what's up with that?" he asked as though that was the most important thing and me not informing him was all somehow my fault. I glared at him, jaw firmly back where it should be and lips now in a thin line. He accepted I wasn't going to answer, so went on. "He couldn't tell you what was what in case they had surveillance in the hallway and could hear, so he pretended to be a cop and once inside, he was gonna tell you the plan."

  "Tell me the plan." Oh god, I'd returned to repeating his words again.

  "Yeah, but he couldn't tell you, 'cause you were unconscious, so he and Greeny carried you out the back of the building and into the van and then after driving around to make sure they weren't being followed, brought you here. I had a real go at him, babe, he's made a fuckin' mess of your face. You look like a bleedin' raccoon."

  "Raccoon." It was getting worse, I was regressing. Repeating only one word now.

  "Yeah, but you understand, eh?" I blinked at him, it felt extremely slow. Like maybe it took a good few minutes, I'm not sure, but with the spinning room and pounding head and thumping chest and everything, slow seemed OK by me.