His to Claim (9 page)

Wasted, they didn’t even feel the impact, but kept going at each other in a sex craze.

John strutting his way down the lane couldn’t resist kicking down harder the ploughing ass of that guy dry humping his horny girl.

The duo bawled, cursing at his retreating back, but they didn’t allow it to be a distraction for longer than it took them to bat an eye.

Unruffled, John pranced about, chortling. His spirits high, he raised hoots of
“We won! We won Trey!”

Trevor winced from the dong that holler tolled in his hungover head. The stupid fuck had banged on every door on this floor till he found the one Trevor was in.

Once the pandemonium outside was shut behind the door, his anxious eyes drifted over Elaine’s sleeping form.

The glimpse of her little white creamy shoulder peeking up from under the covers sent his cock standing all attention–wanting again the heated burrow of her tight, luscious channel.

For a long time now, even his guilt ridden conscience had proved ineffective in stopping him from imagining what it would be like in bed with Elaine. Her being six years younger than him and still underage always faded in a blood-rush he got just at the sight of her.

But, evidently, last night in a drunken binge he had callously seduced her. And the joke’s on him–he couldn’t recall much of what transpired between them. All he had got were some snippets to trace events together and, that incredible, that indescribable echo of the feeling of being inside her.

After calling himself crudest names, he determined what they needed to do now was some talking.

Easier said than done when the towel wrapped around his narrow waist was tented up.

Ignoring ruthlessly his dick’s brandished ultimatum, he walked straight into the bathroom for a cold dunk.

***

S
ound of the shower running should have released Elaine from her self-imposed immobility, but the will to move had gone. The blue sky, so clear and bright when she first opened her eyes, now appeared bleak and dismal.

What was she supposed to do? How was she going to..? Mortification churned in her stomach like venom, sapping her strength, injecting her veins with hurt and broken pride.

When the shower stopped, so did her heart.

It was time to salvage her self-respect, if nothing else. But how would she do that with chaos clouding her thoughts?

Trevor stepped out of the bathroom. His blue jeans clung to his waist, as washboard abs rippled above.

When he noticed where Elaine’s gaze was glued, a brilliant smile shone on his handsome face, blue eyes sparkled with mischief. And she shattered to a thousand pieces more.

Nonetheless, the loathsome scowl she pinned on him didn’t betray those strewn fragments of her agony.

Allowing her anger to charge her, she sat up and without thinking spat, “You!”

Shaking from the jumble of her rocking emotions it didn’t come out as hard as she would have liked, suffusing a trace of bemused accusation in it instead.

The smile and the sparkle in Trevor’s eyes dimmed. “Who did you expect? Had too much to drink, did you?”

He knew she didn’t drink at all, so the question was more a playful scoff, a teasing. But when silence from Elaine took long in breaking, a streak of doubt entered. And her stunned countenance only seemed to be proving her guilty.

With the passing of each second that stretched her silence, rage was rearing its ugly head higher and higher in him.

“Who?!” The report of his roar came a moment before his launch at her.

Elaine jumped off the bed brisk as a wily hare, dodging his long reach as she dashed into the bathroom. It was that, or run naked out the hotel room.

Trevor hadn’t expected her to run, much less so damned swiftly. He chased after her, but losing precious seconds to her slyness in surprise he had the door to the bathroom closing on his arrogant nose with a resounding bang.

“Open the fucking door, Elaine!”

Elaine heard his savage breathing coming from the other side as claps of thunder. She backed away, afraid, never before had she seen him like this. It looked as if he had gone lunatic!

Huffing herself, she turned to the mirror on the wall, her own reflection looking back at her. So this was how a girl looked like after.. her eyes had that languorous lure, her mouth pouting, hair in suggestive disarray..

And he believed she had been drunk enough to mistake him for someone else making love to her the night before?

Let him!

It was the perfect revenge. She couldn’t have devised a better plan to save her face and to slice his arrogance in half herself. He would never know her truth. This lie would be the Ace that saved her pride and broke his.

Her thoughts came to a startling halt when her eyes zoomed in on a small red mark at the base of her throat where a pulse beat in regular cadence.

Even drunk as the skunk, he had seduced her cold-bloodedly.

And hadn’t she been ripe for it?! Elaine felt revolted with herself.

His every move was premeditated. He must have known Damian being preoccupied with other things would likely ask Elaine to go in his place.

To Trevor, she had just been a bet to win!

Oh God.. he let his friends hear while he made lov.. no.. that was only sex to him.

Another of the dreadful thoughts occurred to her. Had they been watching too?

No.. Please
. Her trembling hands covered her flaming face. But that only whipped up pictures of them together in bed, with unseen faces sneering, laughing at her from the dark.

Elaine ran to the toilet bowl and hurled her guts in it. Her audible heaving brought the barrage of threats and banging coming from outside the bathroom door to a cease.

Two quarters of an hour later, bathed and dressed she stepped out into the busy hallway, alone.

After the shower when she had found their room deserted, the brunt of how little she meant to him had shaken her once again. Having won his bet, there was no other reason he deemed significant enough to have stayed and wasted a minute more of his valuable time.

But it was true as well, that she couldn’t have been more relieved by his absence. Facing him would have put a terrible strain on her already hard pressed restraint.

Elaine tightened her arms about her protectively.

About twenty boys scattered in the hallway were goofing around. By the looks on their sated faces and lewd grins, probably exchanging figures of how many girls they nailed–how many times–that night. Some three or four of those girls were still attached seductively to two, three of them.

The party still wasn’t over for most. And when they saw her standing, she felt their derisive, insulting, pitying gazes like the whip of a lash.

She started walking on quick steps, wanting to flee. But few paces down, her path got blocked.

“Look who I’ve got here, Stan. The frozen princess.”

She found John gawking lecherously up and down her body. Her dress was crumpled from last night, and her hair wet, clung to her from her bath.

“You look thawed, princess. Wonder whose
wand
set you on fire.” The vulgar glim in his eyes said he knew perfectly well whom he was insinuating at.

It wasn’t difficult for Elaine to believe, that he could have been in on that bet with Trevor.

Conscious of others listening, she coloured feverishly, but refused to back down from a pest like him. Glowering, she chose to skirt his rangy length, refuting his existence in her eye.

But were it that easy. John’s arm barring her way prevented her evasion. “Why the hurry, princess? What’s Trevor got that we-”

A warning hand on his chest halted him in the middle of his slur.

And up that hand they saw Stan, who, holding John’s gaze pointedly advised, “He wouldn’t like to hear about this. And I’m sure you don’t want him to.”

Oh, he wouldn’t like it, all right!
Elaine thought scathingly of Trevor.

Trevor liked to savour his victories, flaunt his power over the loser till he hadn’t had his fill of morbid schadenfreude. And it would be long before he tired of implying on Elaine just how easy and
productive
a lay she had been for him.

Until such time, he wouldn’t want another bully to rob her focus off him.

And
thanks again to Trevor
, every eye in the hallway was suspect to her, plaguing her with searing questions. Who else knew of her shame? Did
he
know of the bet? Did
she
?

Elaine felt like a fool to not have known better than to think a guy like Trevor, rich, handsome, college going, popular, sought after by horde of beautiful girls, could ever want her–a junior in high-school, ordinary, orphaned.

Despite what went on inside her, Elaine didn’t let her chin fall from its place in the air. She walked away from them as the princess John had called her.

A familiar car and its driver awaited her outside the hotel.

“Good morning, Miss. Sir Trevor, asked me to drive you back home.”

Her indignation at Trevor’s audacity to make decisions for her roiled high, but creating a scene there was the last thing she wanted.

Getting away from that place was her only priority then.

“My car-”

“That’s been taken care of.”

She nodded and silently mounted in.

It was only when she had had locked herself behind the doors of her own room back at the McBain house that she allowed tears of anger, humiliation and a broken heart to spill free with a resolve that this would be the first and last time she cried over Trevor McBain!

*****

CHAPTER 11

P
resent

H
enry listened to Elaine’s honeyed voice on his cell-phone, but his eyes–squinting as were their wont–glared at the despicable figure sitting in his office, behind his desk, on
his
chair.

“Yeah, don’t forget, Elaine. I’ll see you there. Bye, honey.” He added ‘
honey
’ at the end of their exchange for good measure, pleased to see the arrogant asshole seated before his eyes, narrow his own icy regard.

But to have chinked his impenetrable armour was little consolation to Henry’s resenting gut, where a noxious vitriol broiled inside him. “You won’t get away with this.”

When Trevor’s unsettling gaze didn’t waver from holding him imprisoned through the insidious vee of his polished shoes, crossed at ankles over the office desk, Henry’s bravado slipped.

Dressed in grey suit with strong shoulders thrown back in unflappable repose, black shirt flashing from under the open grey jacket, Trevor appeared hauntingly invincible. His personal reaper.

“S..Say s..something!” Nerves fraying under that hard scrutiny, his damned squinting got worse.

Without word, or warning, Trevor unwound from his position so lithely, Henry jumped back instinctively in defensive mechanism. It didn’t help either that the crystal figurine showcased on his desk, coming in way of Trevor’s one long gliding leg, hit the floor with a resonant shatter.

And it was to cover his fright at the noise that Henry burst out, “That’s a fortune you trashed! You ruined a perfect pair.” He hadn’t spoken falsely, but he instantly regretted pointing it out.

Just as that last sentence escaped him, he saw Trevor espy the second figurine at the other end of the desk, and before he could do anything, that piece reached the same consequence as the first one.

“You maniac!” Henry exclaimed, his hands pulling at his hairs.

Rising to his full height of over six feet, Trevor buttoned the jacket of his business suit. It was after all, business he came here for. “I did you a favour, Whitler.” Then shrugging his shoulders in a ‘can’t be helped’ gesture, he added, “One wouldn’t have been the same without the other.”

“Damian will not like this.”

Trevor knew, Henry wasn’t alluding to the destroyed crystals.

Coming round the desk, standing indomitably before him, Trevor’s refractory stance, his piercing eyes, were inherently intimidating to the other man. “Damian would like it even less that you kept such an important information from him. It’s damned lucky for you I found out about your deception instead of him.”

“Things would have worked out fine if you hadn’t interfered.” Henry took a surreptitious step back, convincing himself it wasn’t a sign of cowardice. “The banks were willing to extend time on my debts. It’s my business that’s at risk.”

“You moron, what about the capital McBain Industries was going to invest in you? And what of its credibility in backing your company when you failed? The banks agreed to give you time only because you professed you have our favour.”

“I wouldn’t have failed.” At least, Henry hoped. “Do you really believe Damian would have put his faith in me if he didn’t think I had it in me?”

“You’re right.” Trevor concurred. His brother possessed an unquestionable business acumen. “But the fact remains that you got that faith keeping us in the dark. And if you were under the notion that Damian would have finalised things before digging deeper into your affairs, then you’ve another thing coming. He set me onto it the very day you tabled your proposition before McBain Industries.”

Placing his hands in the pockets of his fine slacks, Trevor exuded authority. But he didn’t shy away from conceding his own foible. “My mistake had been, I took this long to come around to it.”

Now it was time he drove the final knell home so there was no two ways about it. “Do it without us, Whitler. And count your damned stars I haven’t yet told my brother of this. You are hopping on one leg at the moment, and as much as Damian loves a challenge, he isn’t into staking bets on lame horses. He would destroy you if he knew of your deception.”

Henry visibly shuddered. “I did all you asked. What more do you want?!”

From facing Henry directly, Trevor changed their position shoulder to shoulder. Both dramatically staring into the opposite ends of the mahogany panelled office. Side by side, the difference in their height and breadth couldn’t have been more stark.

“That’ll do for now.” Trevor’s voice levelled. Free from hint of anger, or hostility, it relieved Henry immensely.

But before he could even consider the wisdom of showing his relief, Trevor rounded on him like a menacing, territorial terrier. “But if you ever cross me and what’s mine, Damian would be the least of your worries.”

Henry squinted rapidly, watching the cold bastard stride out of his office. Involuntarily his hands reached up to rub his worn face, and then did he realise the heavy sweating he had been doing. “Shit.”

When Trevor had looked into his eyes with that parting vow, it felt as though he had reached into his chest with one bare hand, and started twisting at his palpitating heart.

Henry had done a major error in dismissing Trevor McBain. If Damian was the eye and brain of McBain Industries, then Trevor was a hound with the sharpest nose and the slickest brawn behind it.

Henry pitied the next man who ever underestimated
that
McBain.

***

T
he cool breeze caressed her skin, played with her hair, danced with the hem of her pale yellow summer dress.

In the hustle and bustle of the new travelling Carnival arrived in the city, Elaine felt the noose of her tightening heartache finally loosen to proffer her some respite after two accursed days.

As glitter of vibrant lights overhead greeted the twilight evening with gaiety, resplendent revelry all around evoked so many of the cherished memories of her girly days and dreams.

At that moment, it was the most beautiful place on earth for her.

She would have to thank Henry for this. Though, she did wonder how a staid guy like him could come up with a spot like this to meet? His tastes were far too sophisticated for such a frivolous amusement.

The most excited she had ever seen him was when she had accepted his proposal of marriage and, even then it was nothing great to dwell on.

But she can’t blame him for something she was equally at fault. Her matter of fact tone and practical reasoning would have dampened the spirits of the most doting lover. Not to mention he had come expecting only dinner, not a mad woman’s burst of, “So, do you still want to marry me, or what?”

Her out of the blue question had thrown him in such a shock, he sputtered food in air and then suffered a fit of nasty coughing.

Envisioning him suited-up here, squinting, and thoroughly uneasy in the midst of so many rapturous, carefree faces, made her smile.

She had taken a good decision. And she truly believed mutual respect and liking will be enough for their marriage to work.

Couples roamed hand in hand, kids leaped and joked around the fair. Rides everywhere were packed to capacity, long queues snaking in front for their turn.

Her keen observations were brought to a pleasant interruption by a cute little girl gallivanting about the place with her mother play-chasing after her. Her baby shrieks of joy when she innocently thought of having gotten the better of her mother by feinting out of her reaching arms, melted Elaine’s heart.

Sometime later, she had owned a friend in little Susie–certainly, as inducements go, the chocolate that now smeared the girl’s chubby face and the bright red little mermaid balloon floating above her head with its string clutched in her pudgy hand, vastly helped.

“Say thank you, Susie. I taught you better, young lady.”

“Thunk yu, Aine.” Bobbing her blonde locks, Susie grinned. The row of tiny teeth that emerged looked like a scurvy pirate’s coated with a thick layer of dark chocolate and a tooth or two missing.

Glenda mock-scolded her daughter for that mess. She and Elaine had a laugh riot at the girl’s antics until it was time for mother and daughter’s next ride after the chocolate break with the crazy lady.

Meeting the little girl had reminded her how much she craved a family of her own. A husband and a house full of children had been a long-wished desire of the orphan inside her.

Waving and waving, and waving again to Elaine, Susie skipped into the crowd.

Even after they were gone the smile on Elaine’s face remained.

However, that pleasant serenity didn’t last long. That all too familiar prickly sensation rose at the back of her neck.

It had been so long…, she had nearly forgotten about this raising awareness.

There had been so many occasions during her visits to these Carnivals when this sensation of being watched had rendered her perplexed. She would stop whatever she was doing to scour the surroundings, but to no avail.

Except for that one time, when an unexpected rain had forced people to scatter for shelter. In that blurry haphazard, for a moment she thought she had seen a tall guy, ducked in a hoodie, uncaring of being drenched, looking straight at her.

That had been so small a glimpse before it poofed into thin air, that she came out doubting if she hadn’t just imagined him.

Right now though, at the periphery of her vision a particular stillness caught her stiff. It was the only unmoving animation among a caravan of moving throngs.

Someone was watching her–still as she was.

The knowledge raced up her spine, and with fainting heart, Elaine turned to face the vision who had always walked with her like a second shadow.

He stood tall and dark beneath an arbour of starry night in a navy blue hoodie covering his head and torso. The black cargo pants sheathed his powerful astride legs. There was no way of telling who he was.

Perhaps a wraith in the midst of men?

No, to her he was every bit a man of blood and sinew with a passion darker than onyx. The stance, the towering height, the width of his shoulders, they all bespoke of an insurmountable strength that called out to her.

And as it were, he was studying her with the same absorption she evinced in him. Nothing diverted them from each other. Minute after minute ticked by unheeded. Theirs was a world severed from tangible reality.

Then all of sudden he moved, striding away, wading his path farther through herds of frolickers roving up and down.

Elaine snapped out of her dazed trance refusing to let him vanish out of her sight this time. And with that purpose in mind she trailed after him.

In her efforts to not lose him in the bevy, as well maintaining a safe, prudent distance, for now, she barraged right and left into people. “Oh, sorry.” “Sorry.” “I apologise.” “My fault.”

“Nohh..!” A squawking screech rent her hearing as white snowfall of popcorns showered all around.

She staggered to a halt in front of a young couple clearly unhappy with her.

The girl was looking daggers at Elaine. “Ugh, are you blind?!”

“I’m so sorry. Here, please buy a new cup. I was in a hurry-” Chagrined, Elaine tried to make up for her gaffe.

“I don’t want your money, bitch! Buy yourself
eyes
with that if you can. Now, get out of my way.”

“Come on, baby. She said she’s sorry. I’m sure she meant-” The mohawk sporting boyfriend rushed in to placate his hot and bothered redhead girlfriend.

“Shut up, Donald. I know the moment you see a pretty enough bitch, you wanna fuck her. Keep in mind, bozo, the only pants you’re ever getting into are mine.”

Elaine and the wrung-out looking boyfriend flustered at the tactless comment.

There was no wisdom in staying there a moment longer and worsening the situation further for the poor fellow. As their lover’s spat continued, nodding them another ‘silent’ apology, Elaine sidled away.

But the mysterious man she had been tailing was gone.

Crowd milled about in every direction. Shrieks of people enjoying the rides rang in the background. A Local band played nearby. Though, the one she sought was nowhere to be seen.

A sinking feeling was taking her over. It felt as though finding him was too vital for her survival. She, however, didn’t stop to think why it was so? It just was.

Her eyes darted every which way, incising the mob for a sign of him. Just when her hopes were dashing, she got the tell-tale tingle at her nape that infallibly heralded
he was there
, somewhere close, stalking her as if she were his quarry.

And sure enough, with the next gust of wind she espied him.

In the past, he would have taken advantage of the diversion and disappeared on her.
Why hadn’t he now?

And there was something else different this time. But what?

Elaine found out shortly when with a single enigmatic jerk of his head, he stunned her.

As if she wasn’t just dealt a blunt surprise, he–without giving her a chance to recover–began treading down a path.