‘Stay with me,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Don’t go. I need you here. Please stay, we’re meant to be together.’ Suddenly she wanted to change her mind but it was too late. His voice was fading and a few seconds later she was back in the cold outhouse of Moorhead House in her own century.
Chapter 10
Hastily Marianne checked her clothes but, to her relief, she was wearing the same ones she’d had on when she had left the house for her original walk on the moors. Stumbling to her feet, her arms still aching from the way she’d been tethered in the outhouse by Edward, she made her way to the courtyard and saw it was now dark.
Running indoors, she checked the grandfather clock she’d inherited with the house and saw it was eight o’clock. Five hours had passed since she’d set off for the moors, five hours in which she’d been trapped in a bygone era. What she didn’t know was where she’d actually been. She wondered what would have happened had Sandra called at the house. Would she have seen her in the outhouse, possibly over Edward’s knee being beaten and fondled? Or would she have simply thought that Marianne was out? There was no way of knowing.
She knew for certain that mentally she was in the past, but if she was now physically there as well then that was more dangerous. Things were changing; the past was reaching out and claiming her. At the moment she was still able to come back whenever she wished, but she wondered how long that would last – and, if it stopped, what would become of her?
Exhausted by all that had happened, she put a frozen meal in the microwave and tried to push Edward to the back of her mind. Somehow she had to fight her overriding obsession with him and spend time in the real world; otherwise she wasn’t going to be able to finish her book.
No sooner had she eaten than the phone rang. ‘Hi, it’s Sandra. Graham’s out with his mates tonight. I wondered if you’d like me to come over? Or you could come here if you preferred.’
Marianne simply couldn’t be bothered with the girl. ‘I’m sorry, I’m working,’ she said abruptly.
‘Oh.’ It was obvious that Sandra was offended.
‘Some other time,’ said Marianne quickly. ‘Right now the words are flowing and I’ve got to get them down.’
‘I rang earlier,’ said Sandra. ‘Were you out?’
‘I don’t answer the phone when I’m working.’
‘Then you should use an answerphone.’
‘I do sometimes, but I forgot to put it on,’ she said impatiently. ‘Are there any other instructions you’ve got for me?’
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ exclaimed Sandra. ‘I thought it would be nice if we had a girls’ evening together, that’s all.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Marianne.
With a sigh she replaced the phone. She knew she’d handled the whole thing badly but Sandra, Graham, and even Steve had no relevance to her now. They were an unnecessary intrusion, people she had to put up with, rather than people she wanted to be with. ‘That’s terrible,’ she murmured. ‘They’re the ones who are real, not Edward.’
Eventually, knowing she’d already let Angela down, Marianne returned to the study and recommenced work on her book. She was at last pleased with her hero and heroine, feeling that although the setting was modern, the obsession the girl had for her boyfriend in many ways reflected the obsession she felt for Edward. She was delighted with the way she was putting this across, and knew her readers would understand exactly what she was saying, but the plot had reached the stage where this obsession needed a physical outlet. She decided to do the first modern sex scene she’d written since coming to Moorhead House.
As her hero worked as a farm labourer she set the scene in a barn, albeit one which bore a strong resemblance to the outhouse where she’d just been tormented by Edward and his sister. As a result the scene sprang instantly to life, and soon she was lost as the words poured out, just as she’d told Sandra they would.
Nearly an hour later she stopped typing and printed the pages off. When she read them they shocked her; not because they were particularly explicit, but because the feelings she’d attributed to the heroine were so exactly those she was experiencing every time Edward touched her. Also, since her heroine was well-bred, her confusion at enjoying the things her lover was doing to her reflected exactly her confusion at enjoying the forbidden perversions of Sir Edward’s household.
After she’d finished reading she felt unbearably aroused. She longed to have Edward in the room with her, touching her, beating her, and then slowly but surely coaxing forth her orgasm while her flesh struggled to subdue itself. Unable to bear the sexual tension any longer, she turned out all the lights and went upstairs. She took a quick shower before taking her vibrator from the bedside drawer. Then she put a pillow in the middle of the bed, lay on her stomach so that her hips were raised, and reaching beneath her, began to masturbate with the deliciously vibrating plastic.
She always preferred to lie on her stomach when she was masturbating. Somehow her climaxes were more intense that way, but for the first time ever her rising pleasure was tinged with guilt. She knew how Edward would disapprove of what she was doing and remembered the belt so cunningly designed to stop her playing with herself. How she wished she could be with him, because even though it would undoubtedly mean she would be forced to wait for her pleasure, she would have the excitement and sexual confusion her body now seemed to crave.
Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t turn herself on. ‘Oh, I wish you were here,’ she whispered. ‘It would be so much better then.’
‘What are you doing?’ asked a deep voice and, with a cry of alarm, Marianne twisted on to her back. Edward Sharpe was standing there – there in her modern bedroom at Moorhead House. Despite his dated clothing he didn’t look out of place, because she was the one he was there for and the surroundings didn’t matter.
Marianne realised she was just as afraid of him here and now as when she met him in his own time. The aura of authority surrounding him and the way his pitiless gaze penetrated her soul was enough to have her trembling before he’d even touched her.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, taking the vibrator from her.
‘It’s for my pleasure,’ she murmured, too embarrassed to say more. He inquisitively touched the little switch, and as the tip started to vibrate he examined it thoughtfully, running it over his wrist and then nodding in understanding.
‘You realise I have to punish you for possessing such an obscenity,’ he stated softly, looming nearer the bed.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice shaking.
‘Fetch me rags with which to bind you.’
Marianne’s mind went blank for a moment, and then she scrabbled through one of her drawers and brought out some of her silk scarves. Immediately he tied her hands to the bedhead, stretching them up and out to the sides.
He eyed her nakedness thoughtfully. ‘You’re not wearing the belt,’ he eventually said.
She didn’t know what to say. It seemed he wasn’t aware he was in a different century, one where the belt did not exist. ‘I – I forgot,’ she blurted lamely.
‘No wonder the results of your training are so disappointing. I’m surprised my sister didn’t check on you.’ He glanced around the room and his eyes fell on the belt on her jeans. ‘That will do,’ he decided.
Marianne lifted her hips to help him slip the belt around her waist, but saw him raise it in the air instead and lash it down in a diagonal stroke that travelled from breast to hip.
‘Ouch!’ she protested. ‘That hurts!’
He frowned. ‘It’s meant to hurt,’ he said, his voice tight with rage. ‘What do you expect when you constantly disobey us?’
‘No!’ she screamed again as he raised his arm, but despite her protestations the belt swept down, hissing through the still air and cutting with a loud splat into her vulnerable flesh. Both blows were vicious, and she squirmed help
lessly, trying hopelessly to get out of his range.
She felt a moment’s relief when he tossed the belt to the floor before coming to kneel on the bed next to her, the vibrator gripped in his hand. ‘This was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted meekly, surprised at how easy it was to become Marianne Clifford, despite her modern surroundings.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ Edward muttered, again studying the buzzing head. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was a present,’ she said truthfully.
He didn’t pursue the point, but instead circled each of her breasts in turn with the vibrator and then, as pleasure spread through her soft globes, he moved the vibrator gradually to her nipples.
He was clever, using the sex aid with cunning dexterity until she was urging her breasts up to him, straining against the silk bonds, yearning, her moist lips slightly parted in mute appeal.
‘How wanton you are,’ he muttered, his voice thick with desire as he drew the vibrator down between her breasts, and then lower to circle her navel.
Edward watched her pulling on the silk scarves as she instinctively tried to free herself, in order to give herself sexual relief, but the scarves only tightened around her wrists and she moaned her frustration.
‘Don’t you understand that it’s wrong to do this to yourself?’ he asked quietly.
‘But why is it wrong for me to do it to myself, but right for you to do it to me?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘When I touch you I’m simply trying to discipline your flesh. It’s your own wanton behaviour that causes my touch to make your pleasure boil over.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ she objected. ‘You know exactly how to make a girl orgasm and you enjoy doing it. You like making me suffer, pretending it’s my fault when it’s really yours.’
‘You’re very argumentative tonight,’ he remarked, reached between her parted thighs, slid his fingers into her moist sex and pinched her swollen clitoris between finger and thumb. She gasped, feeling the first faint fluttering of her climax. Her muscles were tightening, and at last everything was gathering itself together.
Edward pushed down his breeches and lay on top of her, his hands gripping her shoulders, the tips of his fingers digging savagely into her as he moved himself up and down over her. She could feel his rigid shaft grinding over her lower belly. He was gasping and groaning, the tendons on his neck tight, the veins standing out. She squirmed desperately beneath him, loving the feeling of his body against hers, but no matter how hard she tried she was unable to get sufficient stimulation to trigger her climax.
‘It’s all your fault,’ she heard him mutter through clenched teeth as he pressed himself down against her, trapping the tip of his erection between her thighs. Then he continued to move until suddenly he was shuddering violently, spilling his seed all over her flesh, and she felt it oozing stickily between them as he gasped in ecstasy.
Raising himself, he stared deep into her eyes. ‘Such delight,’ he whispered quietly. ‘Such sweet release. Don’t you understand that’s what it’s really about? You give me so much pleasure and that’s why I employed you, to please me, not to please yourself.’
She was almost out of her mind with need, and to hear him talking about his pleasure, the release he’d achieved, was more than she could bear. Once more he was leaving her unsatisfied, and he didn’t care.
‘Make me come,’ she pleaded. ‘You’ve had your fun, now let me have mine. Touch me the way you were earlier, that’s all I need. I want to come, don’t you understand, I want to come!’
Even as she was begging she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and the door was flung violently open. Startled, she stared across the room to where Steve stood framed in the doorway.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded. ‘I heard you begging him to touch you. I’ll kill him, I swear I will.’
‘There’s no one here,’ blurted Marianne as Edward slowly faded from sight.
‘What do you mean there’s no one here? You weren’t talking to yourself,’ shouted Steve. He began rampaging round the room, pulling open wardrobe doors, going down on his knees and peering under the bed and even flinging open the windows, as though imagining her lover had escaped that way despite the fifteen foot drop to the cobbled courtyard below.
‘I told you there wasn’t anyone,’ said Marianne.
Steve stared at her as she lay on the bed. ‘Why are you hanging on to the headboard like that?’ he demanded.
Marianne realised her wrists were no longer bound. The scarves – like Edward – had disappeared. ‘I was afraid,’ she said defensively. ‘I heard footsteps on the stairs and didn’t know who it was.’
Steve stared at her suspiciously. ‘Have you any idea what you look like?’
She had a pretty good idea. She was naked, trembling, and visibly aroused.
‘If there’s no one here, what were you doing?’ he asked accusingly. ‘I heard you begging. Have you gone totally mad?’
Marianne didn’t know what to say. Things had got well out of hand. Having Edward in the room with her had seemed wonderful, but now she was left to explain the inexplicable, and it was obvious Steve was in no mood to be fobbed off with stupid answers. ‘It’s for my book,’ she said feebly. ‘I was acting out a sex scene.’
‘I thought you said you’d given up that erotic writing lark.’
‘This is for the one that’s been commissioned,’ she assured him.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve turned that into a kinky one, too?’
‘Of course not, but my heroine’s obsessed with this farm labourer who she’s known since childhood. She wants him desperately but the first time they’re together he does these extraordinary things to her, only he won’t actually make love to her because he knows how much trouble it could cause.’
‘You don’t need to tell me the whole plot,’ snapped Steve. ‘I’ve never known you act out scenes from your novels before.’
‘I was trying to get the emotion right,’ she explained. ‘You know how in Wuthering Heights—’
‘I’ve never read Wuthering Heights,’ he snapped. ‘Quite honestly, Marianne, I think you should see a doctor or something.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she snapped back. ‘How was I to know you were going to come bursting home like this without so much as a phone call?’
‘What do you expect after our last conversation?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You made me feel I was intruding, that you had something – or someone – more important on your mind.’
‘I did – my book.’
‘I still think there was someone here.’
‘Now you’re the one who needs to see a doctor. You’re getting paranoid. If there was someone here, where do you think they’ve gone?’
‘Perhaps there’s a secret hiding place,’ he said, clutching at straws. ‘The house is old enough. A priest hole, perhaps.’
Marianne sighed. She was beginning to pull herself together, to feel more in command of the situation, although she realised how dangerous the situation was. No wonder Judith Wells had ended up being taken to a mental hospital. If Steve had arrived quietly, creeping up the stairs and peering round the door, then presumably he would have seen Marianne begging Sir Edward to touch her without being able to see the man. If that had happened she couldn’t possibly have explained it away because her body’s responses would have shown that her flesh believed the fiction to be fact.
‘Come on, now you’re being ridiculous,’ she said gently, getting up and pulling on her jeans and a sweatshirt. ‘How long are you home for?’
‘Only one night.’
‘I’d better get you something to eat,’ she said, suddenly feeling sympathy for Steve, and a degree of guilt for what she was putting him through.
&
nbsp; Suddenly he grabbed her arm. ‘You haven’t got a lover, have you?’
Marianne shook her head. ‘No, Steve, there is no other man here and there never has been.’
He let her go, but she had the feeling he didn’t believe her, and she couldn’t really blame him. Things were becoming too complicated now. She knew it would be better if Steve were to stay away, but at the same time he represented a safe anchor, an anchor she was beginning to think was necessary for her own survival.
‘Was that all right?’ Marianne asked Steve as he pushed away his empty plate, having eaten his cheese omelette and salad in absolute silence.
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘You’re not going to sulk all night, are you? I dread to think how you’d have behaved if you had caught me with a lover.’
‘I don’t know where I am with you any more,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m beginning to think your books are more real to you than I am.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Well, perhaps not the books, then. Let’s say the characters in them.’
Marianne stared at him. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I think your fantasy lovers give you more satisfaction than I do.’
Hearing him say it, hearing the truth spoken, was shattering. Marianne knew she should laugh, make it clear to Steve that he was being totally ridiculous, but she couldn’t because he was right. Only Edward wasn’t a fantasy lover, he was a ghost. He really had lived, breathed and done the things he was doing to Marianne to other women as well. She wished she could confide in Steve, explain to him what had happened to her, because none of it was his fault. But how could she admit she no longer needed Steve; all she needed was Moorhead House and her journeys back into the past.
‘I think I’ll ignore that,’ she said. ‘It really isn’t worthy of an answer.’
‘You mean it isn’t true?’
Slave of Darkness Page 16