Diamonds Forever

by Justine Elyot

  She felt the throb between her legs. She put her thighs together, but he seemed to understand why, and he paused in the spanking for a moment to investigate the area.

  ‘Turning you on, is it?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Well, we can’t have that. Hold it right there.’ He began to unbuckle his belt and she couldn’t take her eyes from the sight. It was electrifyingly hot, to see him pull the snake of leather sharply through its loops until it was wrapped around his fist and doubled up, ready to go to work on her tingling backside.

  The first little snap on her skin was like a static shock, a crackle of something akin to, but not quite, pain.

  But it soon burned into something more substantial. The belt fell, with increasingly loud force, over and over upon her tightening skin.

  Jenna held tight to the covers, bunching them in her fists as she bucked and writhed without effect. Jason kept his hold on her, plying the strap over and over again until she knew her rear end must be rosy red.

  ‘Getting it now,’ he said softly, under the crack, crack, crack of the belt. ‘Getting it good and proper. What you deserve. Don’t lie to me, Jen. Don’t ever lie to me.’

  The words, rather than the pain, brought a salty rush of tears to her eyes.

  He was hurt. She couldn’t seem to stop hurting him, although she never meant to. She did deserve this. And she would take every single stroke, if it meant she had to …

  ‘Oh God,’ she cried. ‘God, it hurts.’

  He stopped in mid-stroke, the belt dangling over her bottom.

  ‘Enough?’ he asked.

  She wiped a tear quickly from her cheek.

  ‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I mean, I wish I could stop … I wish I could …’

  ‘Hey.’ Her sobs had put an end to whatever it was she had been trying to say. She wasn’t even sure she knew what it was. Jason had put down the belt and got her quickly into his arms. ‘Hey, I didn’t want to properly hurt you. I’d never, I mean, this is supposed to be fun, really. You weren’t taking it serious, were you?’

  She shook her head, trying to smile through her tears.

  ‘It’s not you. Not your fault. It didn’t hurt that much, well, maybe it did, but … I can take it.’

  ‘Then what are you crying for, you daft thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just, it’s all been … The last weeks … It’s all been a bit emotional.’

  Jason had to laugh ruefully at that.

  ‘Yeah, you could say.’

  ‘I think I just need to let it out. And this has opened me up and let me do that.’

  Jason kissed the tears as they fell.

  ‘Go on then,’ he whispered. ‘Have a good cry, babe.’

  She wept into his shoulder for a few minutes, perversely enjoying her tears, and the way their release seemed to loosen her shoulders and turn her heart from a solid weight into something lighter.

  ‘Better?’ he asked, once she emerged and reached blindly for a tissue from the nightstand.

  She nodded.

  ‘Sorry. And thanks.’

  ‘Thanks for what? Walloping your arse until you cried your eyes out? Yeah, I’m all heart, me.’

  He looked truly guilty, and Jenna’s lighter heart gave her a pang.

  ‘No, for being so understanding. And for letting this happen. You know I don’t blame you for … what you were doing. I’m as kinky as you are. Don’t think I’m not.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s a relief,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘It’s hard to judge sometimes, Jen. I mean, you seem to be really into it and then …’

  ‘I am really into it. You know how it drives me wild – usually. I suppose I just feel genuinely guilty, about Kayley, and about not telling you about the shop and … I don’t like feeling bad.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Plus all this crap with Deano and Harville being out and your family connections and … God, it’s a lot to take in. My head’s all over the place.’

  ‘Where do you think mine is? Look, love, as long as both our heads are together, it doesn’t matter, does it? We can deal with anything they try and throw at us. We’ve proved it. We’re strong.’ He tilted Jenna’s face to his, smiling into it. ‘Aren’t we?’

  She nodded gratefully.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we got all that sorted out,’ said Jason briskly. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘Finish it off,’ said Jenna, picking up the belt and offering it to him.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He frowned, taking the belt from her.

  ‘Completely. I’ve let out all the pressure now. I’m ready for a damn good thrashing. And whatever comes after it.’

  He grinned and kissed her.

  ‘You’ve got it, babe. Now get that nice red bum up again, ’cos you won’t be sitting down for dinner tonight.’

  They made it through about a dozen more strokes before the belt was thrown aside and Jason’s trousers came down.

  Jenna, still on her knees with her bottom uppermost, welcomed Jason’s thick length barging its way into her without ceremony. She wanted to be taken and used and made grateful for her punishment. She rejoiced in the soreness of her cheeks every time his pelvis smacked into them. He thrust and rutted behind her, still holding her neck in a vice-like grip. With his other hand, he squeezed her belted buttocks, treating them as roughly as his cock was treating her pussy.

  It was every bit as cathartic as the crying jag, thought Jenna somewhere in her delirium of lust. Perhaps, for him, it was more so.

  She had a sense of her orgasm being forced from her, as if Jason had reached inside her and torn it out. She cried out through a haze of tears, the power of it overwhelming her.

  He followed her swiftly, adding his release to hers, until they were in a kind of animal harmony.

  Later, after much holding and whispering and a few tears, they came together again. More quietly this time, almost peacefully, a gentle connection to remind each other of the strength and depth of their new love.

  By the time they drifted off to sleep, Kayley was quite forgotten.

  Chapter Eleven

  THEY WOULDN’T TELL her where they were taking her, and the blacked-out back windows made it very difficult to tell, although she sometimes caught snatches of landmarks through the front windscreen.

  The high school, the leisure centre, and then they must be on the ring road, heading out of town.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ she said again to the hulk-like man beside her. As before, he remained silent.

  Flummoxed and scared, she stared hard at the back of the bull neck of the driver while she tried to think. He had a shaved head and a home-made tattoo at the base of his skull – the number 666. It wasn’t reassuring.

  ‘This is kidnap,’ she said. ‘Abduction. You won’t get away with it. I’ve got friends, important friends, more powerful than anyone you know.’

  The driver laughed briefly, but that was all she got from either of them.

  ‘At least give me my phone,’ she said to the man beside her, who had taken it from her the minute she’d pulled it from her pocket. ‘People’ll be worrying about me. My dad. He’ll call the police.’

  Again, she might as well have been talking to a block of granite. An icy chill crept down from her neck to her spine as she calculated the odds that they were taking her to a secluded spot where she would be made to dig a shallow grave.

  It was a small relief when the car turned into what sounded like a gravel drive, crunching on for about half a minute more before coming to a halt.

  She didn’t recognise the parkland or the house, but it had to be within twenty miles of Bledburn, given how long the journey had taken.

  The car drove around to the back of the house, a grey clad Georgian-looking place with tall rectangular windows and red ivy all over.

  Looking desperately around her after being shoved out of the car into a kind of back yard, she saw lawns stretching away for acres, and trees in the distance. Dusk was falling fast and the advance of autumn was suddenly in
the air after a day of golden sunshine. But the weather wasn’t at the forefront of Kayley’s mind.

  She looked fearfully at the back door she was being shepherded towards. The face she saw when it opened didn’t surprise her, but it wasn’t exactly a joyful sight either.

  ‘Ah, you made it,’ said Lawrence Harville, looking her up and down.

  ‘Where is this place? What the hell are you doing?’

  She was inside now, with the door behind her. The driver and the hulk stood behind her, ready to block any attempt at escape.

  ‘I’ve rented it for a few weeks,’ Harville said. ‘Just a little bolthole, until I can reclaim my ancestral home.’

  ‘What, you mean Harville Hall? Dream on. It’s Jenna’s now.’

  This didn’t seem to go down well with Harville, who seized her by her elbow and dragged her down some steps into a basement.

  ‘You might be wondering,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘why on earth I would invite a scummy little chav like you to be my guest here.’

  He opened a door at the bottom of the stairs and pushed her into a windowless cupboard.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you in my own good time,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, why don’t you have a little think about it?’

  And with that, the door was shut on her and locked.

  It was pitch black. The room must have been a cellar or pantry at one time. It had no window and the floor was stone. Kayley, moving towards the wall to flatten her palms against it and get her bearings, hit her shin on the metal frame of a low camp bed.

  She sat down on it, finding a nylon sleeping bag rolled up at its head.

  The air was cold and tinged with damp, and the blackness was already getting right into Kayley’s head and poisoning it with every fear she’d ever entertained. She would die here. She would never be found. She would lie in this cellar, and only be found, like the body they’d discovered at Harville Hall, years and years later.

  Her sob echoed around the darkness, sounding strange and inhuman to her ears. She got up, pushed back her shoulders and let out the loudest yell her lungs could manage, hoping that the noise of it would drown some of her terror.

  It did, but not for long, so she shouted again.

  Soon enough she was hoarse and there was no sign of anybody coming to reprieve her, so she lay down on the camp bed and wept.

  Time had ceased to have any meaning for her long before the door was unlocked once more and a light entered the room.

  The light was all Kayley could see to begin with, but then she heard the clatter of a metal tray on the floor and smelled something like sausages.

  ‘Dinner,’ said a gruff voice, not Harville’s, and then she was left alone again, but with the lamp this time.

  At least it was something. Light and food, things she would normally take for granted, seemed like precious gifts.

  She ate the sausages and baked beans and looked around her. There was nothing to see. Brick walls hemming her in on every side, a small grille very high up at the back of the room. Cobwebs. Lots of cobwebs but apparently no spiders. Well, what would they live on, in here?

  She picked up the metal tray and weighed it in her hands. If this was a movie, she’d wait behind the door with it until someone came to retrieve the dirty dishes, then clonk them over the head and make a run for it. Could this be a plan? To be honest, the heads of those thugs in the car had looked bullet-proof, let alone able to withstand a half-hearted blow from a girl with a tray.

  All the same, she picked it up and stationed herself behind the door.

  She gave up when her legs started to ache, and wrapped herself in the sleeping bag.

  Lying there in the dim light of the lamp, she thought of her history with Lawrence Harville, cringing as the memories crowded in.

  It had all begun at college. She’d left the lecture theatre with a lad off her course she’d clicked with and went to get a coffee, as they usually did.

  Ross wasn’t her type and he hadn’t shown any signs of fancying her, but he was a lot posher than the boys she knew from the estate and she was rather flattered to be singled out by him as good friendship material. He was a few years older than her, doing his NVQ in Youth Work after dropping out of Nottingham Uni, and he’d been to a fee-paying school. She loved to quiz him on this, asking him over lattes about whether he’d been a fag or been beaten by old geezers in capes.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he’d laughed back at her. ‘It’s not like that any more. It’s just a school that you pay for. Smaller classes, more extra-curricular activities. No canes and definitely no fagging any more. It helps if you can play rugby though.’

  ‘Ooh, can you?’

  ‘Scrum-half for the First XV,’ he said proudly.

  She was none the wiser.

  ‘I was in the netball team once,’ she offered. ‘Got kicked out, though, for smoking at half-time.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You were a rebel.’

  ‘Oh yes. Weren’t there any girls in your school then?’

  He paused to swallow a foamy mouthful.

  ‘In the sixth form there were,’ he said.

  ‘We never had one of those. A sixth form. Different world, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, not really,’ he said, smiling warmly at her. ‘We’ve had different childhoods but it doesn’t mean we can’t move in the same circles now.’

  ‘Oh, get off. My social life consists of going down the canal bank with my mates and a bottle of White Lightning.’ She bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t mentioned this. ‘At least, it used to. Not any more. I don’t really knock around with them these days. Stay in with my dad and watch Hollyoaks on telly now.’

  Ross was silent for a moment, regarding her over the top of his waxed coffee cup as if trying to read her thoughts.

  ‘There’s a party on Saturday,’ he said slowly. ‘Someone from school. Would you like to come?’

  ‘What, from your rich kids’ school? Won’t I show you up?’

  Kayley laughed, half horrified and half excited by the idea.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ insisted Ross. ‘You’re a good person and a good laugh. That’s all they’ll be interested in. Go on, say yes. I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘No,’ said Kayley quickly, not wanting Ross to see where she lived. ‘I’ll meet you somewhere. Is it in Bledburn?’

  ‘Yeah, Harville Hall. Do you know it?’

  Her jaw dropped.

  Two days later, she stood outside the McDonald’s on Bledburn High Street, wearing an outfit she hoped wouldn’t disgrace her in the company of aristocrats.

  Ross laughed when he pulled up in his car and stuck his head out of the window, and she nearly turned and walked away.

  ‘Since when do you wear pearls?’ he said, opening the car door for her.

  ‘They aren’t real,’ she said. ‘They’re plastic. I borrowed them off my auntie.’

  ‘Kayley, this isn’t a dinner party. You didn’t have to go to all that trouble. Most of the girls will be in jeans.’

  Her face fell. ‘You could have said!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. You look lovely. Get in, then.’

  Kayley hadn’t been near Harville Hall since the last gala. She had been a very tiny girl then. She knew that lots of estate kids liked to trespass in the overgrown back garden, but she had never joined in. Truth to tell, she found the place a bit creepy and thought it was probably haunted.

  But she was too old for that kind of fantasy now, and she followed Ross through the rusting front gate into a place that had fallen into very obvious neglect.

  At the gala, the gardens had been smart and colourful and the façade of the house splendid, its pale grey stone seeming to shine down on her four-year-old’s gaze. The jolly tiddly-pom of the brass band blared from the rear of the building and everywhere were people, holding plastic cups of beer, playing games at the different stalls and marquees. It had felt like a wonderland.

  Not so much now, with the grey stone falling away and the g
arden wild with brambles.

  But the front door was wide open, and a cluster of people sat on the front steps, drinking out of champagne bottles.

  ‘Yo, Ross,’ called one man in an Abercrombie hoodie. ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Nice dress,’ said a girl in the group, giving the others a droll look.

  Kayley bristled. They were taking the piss out of her. The dress had cost thirty-five quid at Florence and Fred, and she wasn’t about to take any crap from some stuck-up bitch with a rich daddy.

  ‘Thanks, lend it you if you want,’ she said belligerently, giving the girl a hard stare.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the girl, but she appeared to have been neutralised, no longer rolling her eyes at the rest of the group.

  ‘I see Ross has gone native,’ she heard one of them say as they walked on through the open door.

  ‘Ignore them,’ muttered Ross. ‘I always do.’

  ‘I thought they were meant to be your friends.’

  The entrance hall was dusty and unkempt, but underneath the layers of grime she could still make out the splendour that had once been. She walked into the centre of the room and looked up in wonder at a great cobwebby chandelier. It wasn’t working – the place was lit only with candles in every alcove and nook – but Kayley could imagine how glowing and beautiful the hall had once been.

  People stood or sprawled in corners, drinking and smoking and, in some cases, sleeping.

  ‘Ross.’

  A confident voice addressed them from a side door. Kayley saw a handsome, well-dressed man leaning against the door frame, holding an opened champagne bottle.

  ‘How’s it going, Loz? This is Kayley, a friend of mine from college.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Loz, coming forward and holding out a hand to shake. ‘College, eh? A scholar. And a lady. Delighted.’

  He shook hands and offered her the champagne bottle.

  Kayley, somewhat flattered by the way this very elegant gent was giving her the full beam of his approving attention, giggled and shook her head.

  ‘Don’t you have any glasses?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m afraid we’re barbarians here,’ he said with a charming smile. ‘Especially barbaric of me not to have introduced myself. I’m Lawrence Harville.’