Everything remained a blur.
“Daltrey got shot,” he finally said.
“No,” she murmured.
“Yep.” He nodded, barely able to focus on his surroundings.
He was marrow-deep exhausted, the kind of tired few people on earth would ever experience. He’d lost years of sleep as an insomniac and now, his body couldn’t take the crushing weight of grief pressing down on his heart, his soul and his spirit.
“Put the news on,” he said.
She put BBC News on and there were a load of reporters on the street where Daltrey had been shot, speculating on what had happened. A hate crime? A random attack? Given Daltrey’s ID, wallet and keys remained in his pockets, investigators had already decided the attack wasn’t motivated by greed or a thief desperate to break hospital supplies from where Daltrey worked. It was all confusing.
“I am so, so, so, so sorry,” she murmured, and turned the set off.
She lay herself in his arms and held him, curling around his body. The feeling was the quintessence of comfort, and having her close like this, was all he had wanted for a very long time. So tired, and so spent, he finally let the flood flow and cried in her arms. She hushed him, caressing his hair and face. She gave him a little kiss on the cheek, and bestowed even smaller kisses to his mouth, while he broke apart in her arms.
HE slept around the clock for the next seven days, hidden away at Pernox where nobody could find him. When he emerged from the coma his mind had been in, to block out the pain in order for the body to survive, he couldn’t remember how he even got to Pernox. He remembered none of Shay’s nursing him, none of her whispers and her helping him to the bathroom, nor her feeding him and taking care of all his basic needs.
His phone was broken and for a whole week, his mother had presumed him dead, too. Thrown himself into the river or something, never to be found.
With lucidity came the reminder that Daltrey was still dead but like a historical memory, it seemed less painful after sleeping a full seven days, during which he’d been in total denial of the fact his only sibling was dead. Less sharp now, and numbed, the pain had hunkered down in a dark corner, tucked somewhere deep in the back of his mind. Like a switch had flipped, he suddenly remembered Shay and Daltrey’s conversation, which he still knew nothing about. He imagined, as he woke and felt clearer, that she had taken care of him over the seven days he’d lain there incapable of even getting himself to the toilet – but did that mean she was trustworthy, just because she’d been willing to watch him pee?
The Dante that rose from the ashes of grief was a different man to the one who had existed before. The breathtaking yoke of pain he’d been trapped beneath for seven days was now fully harnessed and buried, like his brother would be, beneath layers of impenetrable scar tissue. The softer tissues of his heart were now folded under, tucked away and covered with thicker muscle; toughened up because now he had a purpose, a cause – to find out what had happened to Daltrey.
He broke himself out of bed and walked downstairs towards the dungeon, taking the stairs down. He saw all manner of people engaged in play, most of them not even noticing him as he shuffled down corridors, dressed in a white robe Shay had dressed him in a few days before.
When he entered the main playroom, Shay rushed over to him. “What are you doing out of bed?”
It looked like she’d been merely observing the crowds tonight so he doubted her pet was due for a visit, unless he had already been. Not sure of the time or the day, only that Shay had whispered to someone in her room earlier that he’d been like this for seven days now, and she was worried – Dante felt feeble and vulnerable.
“Can we go somewhere else?” he said and she nodded.
Teddy rushed over from out of nowhere, tackling his black, silk robe, which was half-open. He’d obviously just left a scene behind in a hurry.
“God mate, you’ve looked better. You should call your mum–”
“Fuck off, Teddy,” he said, shame making him say the words.
He didn’t want help and especially, from someone he knew deep down he’d wronged. Teddy had fancied Shay from the start and all Dante had wanted was to make him jealous.
Would Teddy one day realise he really did need help? And a friend? Or would he keep letting Dante push him away? Dante hoped for the latter, because he didn’t need anyone anymore. He’d decided – no friends, no love – and there’d be nothing to lose.
Shay helped him back upstairs, to the bedroom, and once they were alone together he said, “Stay with me.”
“Where else would I go?”
“Back down there to watch all that filth going on.”
“I’ll stay, if you want.” She looked frightened, a fear she never, ever wore coating her eyes in encroaching tears. “I was only down there because you’ve been sleeping all day and night and I thought… I thought it wouldn’t hurt.”
“It’s okay. Just stay.”
He lay down on the bed and held out his arm for her to crawl under. She obeyed, sliding along his body, her fingers teasing the dusting of chest hair poking out of his robe.
“Come here,” he demanded.
She shifted upwards and leant over him. He tugged her on top of him and she kissed him. Then he kissed her back. Her hands in his hair, she began gasping for breath, dragging air into her lungs. He couldn’t have tasted nice but she didn’t seem to care, letting her tongue rub over and around his. She rubbed her meek form against him but he didn’t grow erect. In fact he didn’t believe he would ever feel aroused ever again. The man he used to be was dead.
Dead and buried.
Like Daltrey.
“Oh, Dante,” she said, and he rolled her over quickly.
Before she could protest, he pulled out a set of handcuffs he’d tucked into his robe pocket earlier, shackling one of her wrists to the bed.
Desire raged in her eyes but he saw only the opportunity to drag the truth from her.
Taking a second set of cuffs, he made sure her other hand was useless too.
“Oh, what are you going to do to me?” she said, thinking this was real, that this was a game.
He had other ideas.
“Torture you until you tell me the truth.”
Her eyes widened and she went still, thinking for a moment maybe.
“I do need to tell you something, actually,” she said.
“Tell me. If not, I will drag it from you.”
She glared and remained steadfast, now less frightened than she was before.
“I’m a class four masochist which means I only get off on pain or humiliation, and I can’t reach arousal any other way. You can’t hurt me. I’m in love with you and any pain you inflict, I will welcome.”
He grunted. “You disgust me.”
“I know you love me, too.”
“Love? What a joke,” he said, mocking her.
“And another thing–”
“What?”
“I won’t ever tell you what was said between Daltrey and me. I won’t tell you because I’m protecting you… and I’m protecting Pernox, too. I’m protecting all our interests.”
He ignored her, and took off his robe, collecting implements of torture from the cabinets spread around her bedroom.
He cut off her clothes until she was entirely naked – but in contempt of him – she spread her legs to show him how aroused she already was.
He placed pegs on her nipples and on the outsides of her pussy lips. He gave her an orgasm with a wand massager, which made her squirt the bed beneath her.
He remained cold, heartless and calculated as he began to test how far he could push her.
His cock remained flaccid.
He blindfolded her and shoved a ball gag into her mouth to cut off her senses.
Then he removed the pegs from her nipples and seeing they were already raw, he smiled to himself, ready to inflict the next round of torture. He replaced the pegs with nipple clamps and fed an electric current to her pert breasts.<
br />
She threw herself about, orgasming in multiples, soaking the bed, tiring and then climaxing again and again. Even if she didn’t want the pain to be over, eventually she would want to give her sex a rest.
So then he placed electric currents through her clit and she arched, her skin dripping with sweat, her body leaking fluids from its mouth and various other orifices, so the room became pungent.
He remained as unconcerned and as unconnected as possible.
Removing the gag, he let her breathe through her mouth for a few moments and he finally heard what he’d done to her. Hoarse and panting, she was in a state of total euphoria. He hoped this would make her talk.
“Are you ready to tell me now? Tell me what happened with you and Daltrey? Why did he say you are malevolent?”
“Because…” She whimpered, dragging in more breaths, “…he saw a girl tied up in here and all my stuff and he was vanilla, he couldn’t see past it…”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said you weren’t the same.” She swallowed hard, trying to catch her breath. “He said you’d stopped going out for Sunday lunch with them, stopped chasing skirt, he said you seemed obsessed…”
Dante didn’t want to admit it, but he had been obsessed with Shay and what made her tick. He’d wanted for so long to know who she really was, why she came to live at Pernox and why she wouldn’t let him in.
“So what did you say?”
“I told him you got spanked here and always left happy. That’s all I said.”
Dante growled and shoved her ball gag back on.
He lubed up a butt plug and pushed it inside her roughly, making her shake. She took it and went still again, relaxing against the feeling he thought.
Next up was a vibrator he pushed inside her vagina and at the same time, he leant down to lick her. She moved on his tongue and if Shay wasn’t a woman enjoying pure ecstasy in that moment, then no woman in history had ever known pleasure. She was unmistakably far gone.
She tasted of fuck and yet, still he didn’t feel aroused. Normally the taste of pussy would be the one thing sure to make him fully erect. Tonight, nothing.
With her pelvis attended to, he reached one hand up and slipped the ball gag open again. She moaned and groaned as he teased his tongue over her clit. Already soaked, he didn’t know if she could come again, but he was going to try and persuade her that she wanted to.
“Tell me again,” he demanded, “what did you and Daltrey say to one another?”
“I told you already. He was vanilla and didn’t get this!”
A fury built inside his head and with that fury, he licked mercilessly at her clit until she came, pushing out the butt plug and the vibrator, her whole body bowing to him.
“Daltrey and me, you know… we knew our dad was a proper dick but my brother never even once used a word like malevolent to describe our dad. Even him. And we knew what he was. Is. He’s a vile fuck who’s pumped his cum into dozens of other women while married to our mother.”
Shay remained panting, catching her breath, her silence giving him chance to get things off his chest.
“Daltrey never said anything bad about anyone. He wasn’t the sort to use words like malevolent. He didn’t even call Dad that, just a prick or a bastard or whatever. But I knew Daltrey and for him to have said that about a girl he barely knew and only spent minutes with, then you must have done something to upset him! Tell me!”
The scene was going bad, he knew it, but he was desperate.
Crying, she told him in between ragged breaths, “I told him something he didn’t like, and he didn’t believe me, and I will never tell you what that something was. Never. Do what you want to me. I will die for you, if it comes to it. I will die… for you.”
He grunted in disgust and took out a riding crop.
When that didn’t force her to open up, her took out a bullwhip.
When that didn’t work, he caned her until she bled.
He lost count of the times she called out his name, screamed, “Yes, yes, yes,” and she was so thoroughly sated and so thoroughly euphoric by the end, he felt sure she would now finally tell him the truth.
“What did you say to him,” he said, his pores pouring with sweat, the sight of her covered in blood shaming him, disgusting him.
Pleasing him.
The control she granted him was unlike anything he’d ever felt before and now he stood hard, finally – inside his boxer shorts – both hating and pleased with himself.
“I told him that Dante Sinclair likes a cock up his backside and he thought I was sick,” she whispered, and he knew, no matter how hard he pushed her, she would never speak the truth – a truth which could potentially tell him the root motive in his brother’s murder.
Anyway he wouldn’t go any further; he didn’t trust himself to stop if he did. This woman had no threshold and it was impressive. He didn’t doubt she’d had the other girls torturing her night after night. She was no doubt so fit from all the fucking she did with them.
Straddling her body, he removed her blindfold and masturbated on top of her. She watched with envy as he touched himself while she remained tied up. He poured his cum all over her cuts and bruises and at the end, she whispered, “Thank you, sir,” though he was in no doubt she was hurting.
“I love you, sir,” she said, and though a part of the old Dante had loved her, the new one only saw a general example of human nature – imperfect at best – evil at its worst.
He got dressed and didn’t even unshackle her. She lay still, as though soaking up the tendrils of pleasure still feeding through her veins.
“Dante?” she asked as he put his hand on the doorknob.
“Yes?”
“I’ll never forget this night. I’ll wish for it to happen again but I have a job to do. My place is here. I won’t compromise that.”
He looked at her, hoping he sounded and looked cold. “I will hopefully forget this night very quickly. I despise you.”
He slammed the door behind him and felt neither sorrow nor joy.
Feeling inside his pocket for the copper’s card, he fished it out and collected his car outside. He had a call to make.
Eight
ARRIVING BACK AT HIS FLAT in the dead of night, he carried a new phone still in its packaging, thankful of the new wave of 24/7 shops. He was surprised to see his place had been cleaned up since he’d been gone and even more surprised to find the furniture he’d trashed had actually been replaced with new stuff.
Not bothered about how it’d been cleaned up, he got to work tearing out the phone from its protective casing.
Waiting ten minutes for the charger to start boosting the battery, when he had signal he called Detective Kitchen, who answered promptly.
“DC Kitchen speaking.”
“Hi, it’s Dante Sinclair. I’m calling about my brother’s case. Is there anything new?”
The DC cleared his throat. “A moment, please.”
It sounded as though Kitchen had put his hand over the phone he was holding and muffled noises seemed to signify he was going someplace quieter.
“Mr Sinclair, I have a dozen other cases vying for my attention. Be assured, we’re doing everything we can.”
“Put everything you’ve got on Daltrey’s case! I’ll pay you. Whatever it takes.”
Kitchen sighed. “You know it’s not as simple as that.”
“You saw the news; it was on the news! Surely his murder takes precedent.”
“This was a hit, do you know what that means, Mr Sinclair?”
“No.”
“It was not only premeditated but carefully organised. CCTV in the area went down around the time of his death. The Mazda car has disappeared off the face of the Earth. The bullet he died of was custom made. It was early in the morning. There was only one, partial witness.”
“God, there must be something… did you search his place? Did you question the staff… did you question his ex girlfriend. Her father’s
loaded! Maybe he hired the hit. Come on! Please tell me you’re exploring all these avenues.”
Kitchen sighed again, like this was a completely pointless conversation.
“He didn’t have any outstanding cases filed against him at the hospital, in fact his sheet was completely clean. Your brother was the man you described him as… everybody loved him. Everybody. He didn’t do anything to upset anyone, not as far as we can tell. We can only surmise that someone silenced him to cover up a secret and I don’t think the person whose secret Daltrey obviously knew will ever be found.”
“I’ve got this friend, Shay Lawrence. She and Daltrey argued before his death, only a couple of weeks before in fact,” Dante said in a hurry, desperate to find a way to deal with all this.
“A friend or girlfriend of yours?” the DC questioned.
“Not even a friend, really. A casual… I don’t know…” Dante didn’t know how to explain it. “…casual girlfriend, I suppose, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. I’m married with three kids and I was supposed to be home with them three hours ago but another stiff came in.”
“Don’t give me your fucking excuses, Kitchen.”
“May I remind you, you’re talking to an officer of the law?”
“Sorry.” Dante cursed himself; Kitchen was now the only way forward. “Just, please, help me.”
“You’ve got as much chance at finding out anything as I have. I’ve filed my reports, I’ve kept the case open, but if nothing else alights, we’ll have to close this thing. We’ve got literally nothing mate.”
Don’t call me your mate.
“Was there… please… was there anything at all, anything you thought was out of the ordinary. Please. Just help me,” Dante pleaded.
“There was one thing,” DC Kitchen said.
“Please, tell me.”
“Your brother made a will just before his death and in it, he left everything to you but since your alibi checked out, I can only assume he made it of his own free will and perhaps did so because he knew he was under threat.”
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 8