Diamond (19 page)

‘No, you
know
.’ She knew he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. If she wanted satisfaction, she was going to have to override her embarrassment.

‘I don’t,’ he lied. ‘Not until you say the words. What’s got you so horny, hmm?’

She tried one last, agonised jerk then blurted out the words. ‘The spanking.’

‘Aha,’ he said, and she half-expected the word ‘Eureka’ to follow, but it didn’t. ‘I see. Is that right? Does it really turn you on when I get you over my knee and smack your bum? Does it?’

He smacked it again to make his point, not hard, but enough to send tremors back down to her clit.

‘Yes,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, please.’

‘All right.’ He had mercy on her, reaching into her once
more for a slow massage of her clit. ‘That’s good to know, Jen. Really good. Because I’ve got lots of tricks up my sleeve when it comes to spanking. Lots and lots.’

‘Oh God,’ she moaned. What the hell had she let herself in for now? Today, an over the knee hand spanking, tomorrow chained to the wall and bullwhipped? Not that he could chain her to any of the walls in this place. Now there was an idea for a decorative theme.

Her mind ran off its rails as her climax built, deliciously enlarged by the heat of her bottom and the excitement of her punishment. She felt like such a small thing as she bucked and yelped on his lap, reduced to her bare nature, known and understood and owned by him. It was terribly shaming, and the biggest turn-on of her life.

‘OK,’ he said roughly, handing her down from her awkward position on the stool. ‘Come over here.’

He led her to one of the armless white leather dining chairs ranged about the table by the garden doors. He unbuttoned his jeans and ordered her to her knees.

She was happy to obey. She wanted to please him now, after everything he had given her.

When he sat down, his erection standing straight up in front of him, she leant forward, eager to wrap her lips around it.

But he put a hand on her shoulder, making her pause.

‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘Ask for it. Nicely, mind.’

She shut her eyes and let the thrilling humiliation overwhelm her for a moment.

Then she spoke.

‘Please, may I suck you?’

‘Suck what?’

‘Your cock. Please, may I suck your cock.’

‘Thank you. You may.’

She did, deep and hungrily, while he tried his best to hold back for as long as possible.

He could ask anything of me, she thought, tremulous with alarm and adoration. He knows he has this power over me now.

What she had thought might be a secret, summer fling was moving far beyond her self-imposed limits, and fast.

What if I’ve fallen in love? It feels that way – as if he could kill me with a careless word. Oh, God
.

She accepted and swallowed the quantity of bitterish liquid he spurted into her mouth, as gratefully as if it had been champagne from a king. Without being asked, she licked his shaft clean and kissed the tip, then bent her head and waited for him to speak.

He didn’t for a while, lolling on the chair and recovering his breath.

When he revived, he bent forward and lifted her chin.

‘Are you mine?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t need to think twice.

‘I knew it. You’re still on your knees. You’re waiting for my permission, aren’t you?’ He stroked her cheek with his thumb, his gaze upon her so intense she thought it would shrivel her up. ‘Good girl. Come on.’

He pulled her up into his lap and they snogged like teenagers, all tongues and fumbling fingers and clashing teeth, until her face was raw with stubble burn and there was nothing for it but to go back to the mattress and fuck each other into oblivion.

Her last words before they slid into well-earned sleep were, ‘Am I forgiven?’

‘’Course,’ he murmured. ‘Cos you’re mine.’

Her last thought was that she needed to get that bed delivered, and soon.

Next day’s
Bledburn Gazette
brought an unpleasant little shock with it.

TALENT TEAM
COMES TO TOWN said the headline, then underneath, S
TARSPOTTER
J
ENNA
D
IAMOND TO JUDGE LOCAL CONTEST
.

‘Oh, fuck!’ she exclaimed, spreading the paper out on the kitchen table. Jason was painting upstairs, out of earshot, so she flipped out her phone and rang Lawrence immediately.

‘Lawrence,’ she said without preamble, speaking over his delighted noises of recognition. ‘You’ve spoken to the
Gazette
. Why?’

‘Why not?’

‘I never agreed to this! I said I’d think about it.’

‘But you were going to agree, surely. For Bledburn. For the kids.’

He seemed to put inverted commas around ‘the kids’ and it made him sound sarcastic, riling her up even more.

‘How dare you railroad me? I didn’t want publicity. I
was happy to do something low-key for the youth club but this …’

‘Oh, chill out, Jenna. It’ll be great. Let’s meet up later and fine-tune it, shall we?’

‘I can’t promise anyone anything. I don’t want to be hustling record and TV companies for the winner. That’s
work
. I’m on a
sabbatical
. Don’t you understand?’

‘For God’s sake, a couple of phone calls won’t give you a nervous breakdown, surely.’

‘And my name isn’t Diamond any more. It’s Myatt. Why didn’t you tell them?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I did, but you know the
Gazette
– hazy on the details.’

‘That’s another reason why you shouldn’t have blabbed. Honestly, I’m really pissed off, Lawrence. Really, truly, pissed off.’

‘Well, I’m sorry if I pre-empted you. I thought it was OK, honestly. I thought you were up for this.’

‘You should have cleared it with me,’ she said, suddenly understanding Jason’s ire about her art gallery stunt of the day before. Perhaps she should take his approach and give Lawrence a good spanking. The thought made a tiny bubble of laughter rise inside her and she couldn’t sound as angry as she wanted.

‘OK, I should have. I’m sorry. But can we meet? We need to establish times, dates, prizes, details, all kinds of things.’

‘I’m a bit busy,’ she demurred.

‘Well, what if I come to you? Bring a bottle and a takeaway, if you’re free tonight?’

God, no!

‘No, no, that’s fine, I’ve got painters and decorators in,’
she lied, ‘and the place is an unholy mess. I’ll call you and we’ll do something at the weekend, yeah?’

‘But couldn’t we—’

There was a hammering at the door, reminding her that she needed to fix the bell.

‘Shit. Delivery – I have to go. I’ve already missed this one once.’

She ended the call and ran to the door. In the hustle and bustle of supervising the delivery of a fine big bed into the drawing room, she forgot her irritation and spent the rest of the day out shopping for sheets and pillowcases, and supplies for decorating the big front bedroom, her next project.

‘Nice to have a bed to lie in, isn’t it?’ she said contentedly to Jason, the new furniture having been tested for strength and durability in the time-honoured manner. Jenna was wrung out, stinging between the legs and ready to fall into the sleep of the just, while Jason was sitting up, finishing off a half-bottle of wine.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while, for me.’

‘I’ll get started on that bedroom tomorrow, if you’ll help.’

‘I’ll take a break from painting by painting,’ he said.

‘I know, but it is different, at least.’ She yawned hugely. ‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘Knackered,’ he said. ‘But I want to wait up and listen out for strange noises.’

‘What?’ She turned tired eyes to him.

‘Last three nights in a row I’ve heard noises,’ he clarified.

‘What sort of noises?’

‘Like somebody crying.’

‘Shit.’ She sat up, staring. ‘Somebody told me this place was haunted.’

He gave her a pitying look. ‘Don’t be daft. I thought it might be rats or summat like that. There’s a cellar down below, is there?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s likely. Wasn’t mentioned in the deeds, though.’

‘No? Cos it definitely sounds like it’s coming from under the floor.’

Jenna tried to dismiss the cold feeling in her chest. Ghosts didn’t exist.

‘Are you sure it’s not Bowyer, on the hunt outside?’

Jason snorted. ‘Bowyer hunting, that’ll be the day. Ever since you pitched up, the lazy fucker’s more likely to chase a tin opener than a bird or a mouse. It’s not coming from outside, I’d swear to it.’

Jenna racked her brains, sure she couldn’t recall any mention of a cellar. But all of these big old houses had them, she was certain. Had she seen a trap door anywhere, or anything that might give access to some stairs?

‘There was no cellar in the floor plan,’ she said. ‘And the agent never mentioned it.’

‘Probably been shut off for years, abandoned, like,’ said Jason. ‘Maybe there’s a murdered body down there.’ He grinned, ghoulishly, and waggled his fingers in a spooky manner.

‘Don’t. It’s not funny.’

‘You’re freaked out, aren’t you? Aw, don’t be. It’s nothing. Just mice or summat.’ He put an arm around her, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘And I’m here. No bastard ghost would mess with me.’

‘No, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I’m going to look for a cellar
tomorrow. Not tonight though. Tonight I think we should just get some sleep.’

‘Aye, you’re right.’ Jason snuggled down under the covers with her. ‘It’ll be nothing, anyway.’

All the same, she was slow to fall back into that lulling, pleasant weariness again, her ears seeming to pick up the lightest of sounds. The house being old, it tended to creak and crack all night long anyway, and each little clank of water pipe made her heart race. She heard nothing that sounded like crying, though, and she fell asleep without incident.

The next day they were too busy steaming and stripping off the ancient wallpaper in the big front bedroom to be much concerned with the possibility of hidden cellars, but when they broke for lunch and she put together her edamame salad (much to Jason’s disgust) she looked down at her beautiful granite tiles and wondered if the elusive cellar entrance was below it. How awful to have to pull it all up again. She didn’t think she’d have the heart, or the energy.

Jason, having grilled some bacon for his own lunch, slapped it into a bap and squirted generous amounts of ketchup all over it.

‘One wall to go,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll finish this then I’ll refill the steamer. Did you find anything interesting underneath yours?’

‘No. What do you mean – underneath the paper?’

‘Yeah. There was writing on part of mine. Said “I am lost” in that kind of old-fashioned, curly handwriting.’

“’I am lost”.’ Jenna felt that creeping feeling of chill again. ‘That’s …ugh!’

‘Dead faint, like. Could hardly see it, but it’d been kind
of scratched in, so the ink was faded but you could read what it said still.’

‘Christ.’

‘Probably kids,’ he said, shrugging and smiling at her consternation. ‘Don’t look like that. Whoever did it is long gone.’

Or still in the cellar, in spectral form
.

But she had a stern word with herself before returning to the bedroom with her scraper.

The writing still upset her equilibrium, though, written as it was in a wobbly, old-fashioned hand. It had to be about a century old, maybe older.

‘Who do you think wrote it?’ she asked Jason, but he shrugged.

‘Anyone who married into the Harvilles,’ he said. ‘Poor bastards probably didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for.’

‘Or children, being children,’ she said, to cheer herself. ‘Maybe a child playing hide and seek, genuinely lost in the house. A visitor.’

Jason turned to her and cast an appraising, amused eye over her.

‘Blue-sky thinker, as one of my idiot teachers used to say. You don’t like to think of bad stuff happening, do you? You want to make everything all lovely and nice.’

‘What’s wrong with that? It got me out of Bledburn, didn’t it?’

‘And now you’re back here, because everything in La-La-land stopped being La-La. Stopped going your way. So you didn’t want to play any more.’

Stung, she sucked in a breath.

‘Is that what you think of me?’

‘Controlling? Well, aren’t you? Just a bit?’

‘Jason, I’m
tired
. I’ve worked flat out for years. I deserve a break.’

‘You’re tired of moving people around like pawns,’ he said. ‘You want a break from that. Let someone else take the strain.’

‘Like you, you mean?’

He held up his hands, one carrying a scraper.

‘I’d be up for it,’ he said.

‘Fine, I’ll give you my office number and you can take care of all the calls and texts then.’

‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it.’

‘What do you mean, then?’

‘Well, all right,’ he said, putting down the scraper and folding his arms with a frown. ‘If you want to know. The other night, when we had our little clash, you didn’t seem too unhappy with how I dealt with it. Right?’

She looked at her feet in their battered Converse boots. ‘Right,’ she muttered.

‘I’d say it came as a relief to you. And maybe even something that’d been missing from your life. Am I reading it wrong?’

‘No,’ she said, still focusing on the curls of old wallpaper around her toecaps.

‘So perhaps you’d like to get a bit more into it?’

She looked up.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, not so much the handcuffs and floggers and stuff, unless you’re into that, but the submission thing. You seemed to like giving in to me, like it took a weight off you.’

‘That’s how it felt,’ she said, more to herself than him.
‘Like a weight coming off. Not having to be responsible for everything. I never thought I’d want to give up control to anyone but … It’s weird.’

‘We’re all a bit weird, duck,’ he said, and she smiled at the local term of endearment. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t make you any less of a power broker in your outside world. But if you want to leave that at the bedroom door, well, why not? I’d be into it. And I think you’d be into it, too.’