"I told you," Bitch Central gloated smugly. "Splat."
Angelique didn't know what had knocked her out of the sky and wasn't thinking about it. What Angelique was hysterically thinking about was staying alive and air. And she knew that the only way she was going to get any was to get out from under the kite that with each wave was pulling her down deeper. She had to get released.
What's the first thing? she heard Johnson's voice blaze across her mind. Don't panic she heard her own voice answer.
Screw that I'm drowning!
In the pounding opaque gray water she didn't know which way was up, which way was down; she couldn't see anything as she was tossed about like a cork in a blender, smashing against rocks and she couldn't get the harness unclasped. She groped frenziedly trying to unhook herself but it just wouldn't give, wouldn't unhook, and she couldn't in the roaring tumult even find the emergency release.
Not like this, I don't wanna die like this! Please! Please!
The harness would not unbuckle. She was out of air.
And she was out of tries. She had only one last try in her when her hand, scrabbling over the release, felt a puzzling tinge of warmth. It was incredibly slight, it was a miracle she even noticed it but she did, and for one moment the dim familiarity of it completely distracted her. And that allowed her to detect a touch, so light, so ethereal, it wasn't even there, it surely was her imagination, as it almost imperceptibly guided her fingers and she thought what the heh?
She went with it.
The clasp unhooked when she realized in her upside down state she'd been yanking it in the wrong direction. She was free and with one monumental kick she jackknifed up, under some shards of her demolished kite's wing true, but there was air for one precious breath before something, the kite or the harness probably, grabbed her and pulled her floundering back down. But she didn't care.
She was free, she could do this. By the time all of what was left of her kite was scraping along in pieces on the ocean floor, Angelique was being hauled up spitting and foaming, but alive, onto a small boat.
And above her, that thing in the heavens collapsed in exhaustion, all it's strength spent for a thousand years.
*****
Angelique snuck into the house. She had sworn Maureen and Tinka to secrecy over what had happened with Ira Silverberg, she didn't want Wyatt finding out about it. She needed her flying and if Wyatt discovered Silverberg was hassling her up in the air he'd give her one of his ridiculous I-so-own-you looks and tell her no more of that --nuh uh, no way. Best not to say anything, she'd just have to be more careful when she flew that Silverberg was nowhere around. No problem. Well, not that anyway. The few bruises and scrapes she had, yes, problem, but thankfully none were on her face and the rest she could cover with some well-chosen clothing decisions, careful bedroom lighting and a lot of luck. She was a fast healer. So, all's well that ends well.
Except that Angelique had not been in the family long enough to learn why George steadfastly referred to his ex-sister-in-law Maureen as Bitch Central. Angelique was, however, about to find out. The hard way. The very hard way.
Maureen had her phone video. Of the entire incident with Silverberg. Including audio. Which meant that asking Maureen to remain circumspect when her eager little mind was screaming she had ammunition (something she had a tendency to celebrate) was like asking Malcolm Cochran to reconcile his actions with decency, God, and scruples.
It wasn't going to happen.
The former Mrs. Cochran forwarded the video of Ira Silverberg's attack to Wyatt before the current Mrs. Cochran even crept into the house planning her subterfuge. And it was Maureen's action that ultimately secured Angelique a nonrefusible ticket into Malcolm Cochran's horror show.
"Angelique," Wyatt said, his eyes burning in deadly calm as the voice on the video still tore at him in his head That's Idiot Ira, he's been harassing her, giving her shit for weeks.
Weeks! And she'd said nothing. Weeks. Had he not been clear?
Ah, it appears our little fallen angel has not yet learned her lesson. But that is the way about May-May with most things, haven't you discovered? It takes a few tries with her.
"Are you hurt Angelique?"
He was in the large living room, seated on a couch, his eyes filled with shards of ice blue fire.
"Wyatt! It's afternoon. What are you doing home from work?"
"I came to see you. I repeat. Are you all right?"
"Why... why wouldn't I be?" she asked, troubled by a vague yet pervading sense of danger.
By way of explanation he flicked a remote control and a flat screen affixed to a far wall flitted on. And there she was, or rather her kite. Angelique watched the whole thing, wincing at the collision, cringing as she saw herself smash into the sea, and her kite, her poor kite...
"Wyatt," she said with what she hoped was a nonchalant and inscrutable smile, "it was nothing. I'm fine. Really."
Oh Christ he was angry. At Silverberg or her she couldn't tell.
"How long had he been bothering you until it escalated to this?" he asked pointedly.
Her.
"Not long, Wyatt. He was just... irritated that I didn't want to be around him. I could handle it."
"I saw you 'handle' it. Your neck could have been broken, you could have drowned. YOU COULD HAVE DIED."
"Wyatt I just wanted to protect you from--"
"According to the nuns, I'm supposed to protect you."
"C'mon Wyatt, they're nuns, you don't have to take what they say too--"
"I take my responsibility quite seriously, Angelique."
"You are not my Protector!"
"I am your husband. Same thing." He stood and Angelique instinctively stepped back.
"What are you going to do?" she asked with a wary edge abandoning her attempts to placate him.
"To Silverberg? I'm destroying a deal he needs quite badly right now. And I'm making sure he knows I'm the one responsible. You are a different story May-May. I told you."
You have to learn, Angelique. I don't demand much, but I do demand that you not take risks with your safety.
"Wyatt I--"
"What did I tell you? Someone threatens you, you tell me. I deal with it."
"What--"
She saw him reach around to the couch and pick something up.
"No, Wyatt, no, you can't be serious--"
"I warned you."
You can bet if there's ever a next time it won't just be my hand, Angelique.
He was holding a small paddle.
"You will learn this rule. You must. You tell me, you ALWAYS tell me. We can do this the hard way, Angelique, or the really hard way. Your choice."
"What do you mean?" she choked. He looked manic, crazed, red-hot.
"I mean you cooperate and this is over a lot faster."
"Cooperate? Wyatt, please, let's talk about this..." She knew he wasn't hearing her, he'd gone someplace else in his mind and that someplace else was her crashing over and over amidst the rocks into the waves. She had no inspiration as her back hit a wall and she couldn't retreat anymore. Never removing his eyes from hers, he reached out and silently grasped her wrist.
"Wyatt," she whimpered as he pulled her to the back of the couch, resting the paddle on it. He gripped her shoulders, turning her away from him. She felt his hands reach around her waist, unclasp the button on her jeans, her zipper pulled down. She should have run, it was too late now, his hands were on her, "please--"
And she was bare bottomed, her clothes trussed around her ankles as she felt one of his hands move slowly massaging her buttocks, searing her with almost gentle regret. She felt a hand between her shoulder blades pressing her firmly forward and down over the back of the couch.
"Know why, Angelique. In the future you tell me. The less you move now, the shorter this is. I love you."
WHOP!
She screamed, not because it hurt, which it did but not anything she couldn't handle, but because he'd done it. Her Wyatt.
<
br /> "Stop squirming." She caught desperation in his shuddering voice.
WHOP!
It was unhurried. It was deliberate. And to Angelique's horror, it was carnal. Impassioned. And the relief and misery of it was that they both knew in their souls it was effectual, achieving a necessity for Angelique to stay alive. She had to tell him.
"You okay baby? Are you okay?" she heard him call.
"Get away from me," she whirled, her eyes brimming with black ice shelling him with a look calculated to eviscerate.
"Hate me all you want, Ange, I'll live with it if it's the price I have to pay to keep you safe. Someone threatens you, you'll tell me now, won't you? 'Cause if there's a next time, a paddle will sound pretty good to you, I promise." The look on his face --of pained utter decency-- was unendurable.
"Next time!" she yelled, "next time? No next time Wyatt, we are done."
"You know that's not true, babe," he said guilelessly.
"Why would I know that?" she parroted him in scorn.
"Because of this," he said reaching up and touching the side of her face as his eyes seemed to envelope her in a kind of opalescent light. "This," he repeated, his tone vaguely narcotic.
And then he started stroking her hair.
"You dickhead," she said but he could see the edge of wildness in her eyes diminishing as he stroked her.
"I know, but I'm the dickhead you're stuck with." He was guiding her as he ran his fingers through her hair and she realized she'd stepped out of and away from her jeans and underwear on the floor. Her lips twitched.
"Wyatt, you are... you..." she was yielding, it was just too irresistible, the sizzling current between them the violence had left, the strong and vital solace of his arms.
"I know," he soothed her, "I know." She leaned her head into his touch, her scalp prickling in a thousand luscious tingles.
"You'll keep me alive?" she whispered, "protect me?"
"With all that I have." His hands left her hair and were traveling her.
"I'm a screw-up."
"Understandable." He had her on the couch, his lips brushing hers. There was a cleansing peacefulness surrounding them, a sublime joy-filled private world with extraordinary sensuality, and the sex was more real, more tender, a higher pinnacle than it had ever been. Perfection. And when at last he had fallen into a pleasing weariness, his desperate need vanquished, and he napped, she took off her wedding rings and left him.
Chapter Twelve
"Give me tonight," she choked, refusing to be comforted, "I need tonight."
"No, Angelique, I'm coming to get you right now."
"No, Wyatt! I just can't do this to you. You don't deserve it. It isn't fair."
"Oh baby, don't you get it? It's fair. I get you."
"I love you so much, Wyatt. But I keep hurting you. I don't know why but I just keep dragging you into situations."
The way she survived was to book it whenever she wasn't sure of a situation... She doesn't try and deal or sort a situation out, she just runs. Like she did at the Gala. And, well, sooner or later chances are that you are gonna be a situation.
Anthony's words suddenly stung Wyatt. That's what she was doing --deciding whether to run or not. His instinct told him to fly to the houseboat and retrieve her but something else in him urged caution --if he overwhelmed her she would run.
"You need tonight to sort your thoughts out, babe?" he asked hearing the hopeless impasse she so obviously thought they were in. "If I give you that, will you honestly think through this? Discuss it with me in the morning? Not just take off or something?"
"Yes, Wyatt. Yes."
"All right. Just tonight. You'll call me first thing in the morning."
"I will."
"I love you."
"You shouldn't."
"Someday, babe, you are going to finally understand what you mean to me."
"I'll call you in the morning," she said, "and you know I love you too."
"That I do, Mrs. Cochran, that I do."
It would have been fine if Tinka hadn't called Angelique a few minutes later to warn her that Maureen had forwarded the video to Wyatt. And it would have been fine if Angelique hadn't told her, yes, they'd had an argument over it and she was at the houseboat cooling off. It also would have been fine if Tinka hadn't told her father what Maureen had done and the harm it had caused but she did and that was how Malcolm Cochran learned that Angelique was alone in her houseboat and opportunity had finally presented itself.
It was just after sunset when they came for her. Entry was easy, when she didn't answer her doorbell Donald just picked the lock, something he'd made a career out of before his employment with Malcolm. Indeed, this skill had been the only notable thing he possessed and was the basis of his happy coexistence and employment with Malcolm Cochran who'd found himself in need of it in order to install hidden cameras in the homes of potential candidates for his secure chamber. Malcolm and Donald crept up the houseboat's stairs and discovered Angelique in her clothes on her bed where she had cried herself and her smarting bottom to sleep.
Even asleep Angelique heard the faint squeak from the stairs, but squeaks were common in a houseboat, there was after all a great river running underneath the thing. Still, an uneasy gloom washed over her in her dreams and she struggled to awake. Opening her eyes she saw two figures above her in the twilight, one an enormously massive man and the other Malcolm Cochran.
Malcolm was staring at her with a ferocity of hunger focused like a laser beam. She screamed as the behemoth fell upon her, feeling her panties torn down, expecting rape, but instead felt a sharp jab in her rear end. A fiery shockwave ripped through her, she struggled, she fought, she cried out, but the giant simply held her down to the bed.
"Relax, Angelique," Malcolm said in the conciliatory voice of one who knows he is completely in charge, "just relax. Nobody's going to hurt you." Her struggles were becoming even less effective, more like twitches and jerks. "I've just given you a little muscle relaxant, it'll wear off soon." Malcolm signaled the man on top of her who Angelique now recognized as Malcolm's driver to get off of her. He did and Angelique tried again to rise, to run, but she simply convulsed and contracted like a drunken ragdoll.
"Okay, I think we're ready now," Malcolm said staring down at her with a smile she knew he thought was reassuring but in reality looked like a polite boa constrictor about to feed. "Stop trying to move, Angelique, you'll only hurt yourself. We wouldn't want that," he added with a hint of cold persuasion, so sure of himself he didn't bother to suppress the arrogance.
Malcolm's driver scooped her up in his arms and her head flopped backwards. Malcolm lifted it up and rested it against the man's shoulder.
"Careful going down those stairs Donald, I don't want her damaged for tonight," Malcolm said like this was an everyday event for him. And in a moment of deepest dread Angelique thought maybe it is. As she was carried down the stairs she heard him above, still in her bedroom, like he was collecting things or maybe straightening things.
The Goliath of a man had her by her front door as he paused, waiting for Malcolm. He leaned down to her.
"I can't wait," he sniggered into her ear.
"Here," Malcolm said and suddenly a blanket was thrown over her, she could see nothing, but she felt it. She was carried out from the houseboat, into a car, she felt Malcolm there and heard the car start up and drive away. The blanket was removed and she saw that she was laying lengthwise across the backseat of a car, her head in Malcolm's lap who was stroking her hair.
"You have such marvelous hair," he permitted himself some shivering anticipation reveling in the resplendence of his new possession, "if it doesn't get in my way, perhaps you'll keep it." His touch on her hair was loathsome, agony, fire. Again she tried to move, only succeeding in jolting her body about.
"Stop," he said sharply, "or I'll give you another shot." She tried to speak, to ask why, but her throat would make no noise. "Just rest, Angelique, we'll be home soon."
The ride in the car, positioned on Malcolm's lap (and her cheek felt in revulsion what was under there) was interminable but at last it ended. Malcolm was on his cell phone.
"Margret, we're here. Where's Tinka?" Angelique heard. "Good. We're coming in through the back door, meet us there. We'll take the service staircase up. If you hear her coming you stop her."
Angelique was being carried, smuggled it seemed to her, into a house. Once again she was being transported in Donald's arms, directly past a dour looking middle aged woman who she heard whisper something to Malcolm but all she caught was "Tinka" and "pool." Angelique was carried up staircases and into a room painted lavender where she was deposited on a large bed. Malcolm arranged her arms and legs in a restful pretty position which she immediately jerked out of. He took her shoes off and covered her with the blanket he'd used before and she recognized it --it was from her own bed.
"Sleep, Angelique, you'll feel better shortly. I'll be back then." The light clicked off.
She could not move her head to see where they went, but she heard a door close and then total silence. She knew where she must be --the home of Malcolm Cochran. And from the whirring noise the door had made when it closed, she knew she was in some pretty deep shit.
It was less than an hour before she was able to stagger from the bed, promptly falling onto her face but still able to awkwardly get up. She lurched to the door finding the no-doorknob thing. She backed up, heading to the window, when she heard a clicking and whirring noise and turning, saw Malcolm Cochran entering the room, the door closing behind him. For him to have arrived so quickly upon her recovery she knew he must have been watching on a camera.
"OPEN THE GODAMN DOOR MALCOLM!" she slurred in rage, her mouth feeling still anaesthetized.
"Sit down, Angelique," he said unperturbed.
"Open the door!"
"I will not tell you again. You left Wyatt today."
"What? Is that what this is all about? It's none of your business! You've kidnapped me, Malcolm! Friggin' kidnapped. Now open the door!"
Angelique Rising Page 18