Knaves (6 page)

The rest of her body, more muscular than Karla
’s but lean and taut, moved with grace, a pair of small panties covering her crotch as she spread her legs slightly and, with the grace of long experience, dropped down so that her buttocks bounced slightly on the backs of her heels. Not losing her balance at all, she reached out so that her hands made contact with Hayden’s thighs and her fingers snaked upwards, coming to the very evident bulge in his trousers and beginning to tug at the buttons that were his last line of defence.

“
We shouldn’t…” he began to say. She lifted one long finger to his lips and pouted.

“
He wants me to,” she whispered. Then she was back at work, deftly loosening his final buttons and dipping her fingers inside where they clasped around him and drew him out.

“
Merde!
” she hissed as she pulled him free, and when she looked up at him this time, those expert fingers dwarfed by his thickness, her mouth formed into a leer. “He really wants me!”

Hayden looked up at the ceiling feeling utterly helpless. She was right. That treacherous bastard really
did
want her. He didn’t think that he’d had such a hard on in a long time, and swallowing back his guilt he realised that the simple
wrongness
of this situation was turning him on more than he cared to admit. The final moral atom inside him hoped that the sheer quantity of booze he’d drunk would stop him performing, but in the meantime those bastard devils on his left shoulder were popping champagne corks and getting ready to party.

He felt rather than saw Eloise
’s lips touch his cock and instinctively his hand lurched forward, grabbing hold of her hair—though whether to push her away or pull her onto him more deeply he couldn’t tell. She was doing some strange, rather porny things with her mouth, and when he finally looked down he groaned again and stiffened a bit more at the sight of her lips, wet with her own saliva, rubbing up and down the sides of his shaft.

Her eyes were gloating now as she parted those red, shining lips as wide as they would go and slowly started to descend onto him. One of her hands was holding his balls tightly,
her clasp ever so slightly painful but also, Hayden had to admit, extremely erotic as she used the other to masturbate the base of his erection. Her head bobbed up and down a few times, with each motion taking another fraction of an inch into her throat until, eventually, she emitted a strange gargling sound.

Shit! Her lips were at the base of him, and those blue, damning eyes of her were regarding him wolfishly as she swallowed him whole. Hayden
’s hips bucked slightly, a spasm throughout his body, and she choked slightly. Lifting her head slowly—far too slowly—he saw inch after inch of wet, saliva-coated flesh emerge from her mouth until a single strand of pearls was strung between her lips and the tip of him. Still squeezing him with one hand, she began to stroke him again with the other.

“
Damn, baby,” she purred. “You’re so fucking
big
! I mean, really! I’ve been with a couple of black guys who would give you a run for your money, and one Russian guy who was hung like a donkey but didn’t know how to fuck. You should be in the movies!”

Hayden didn
’t know what to say so he said nothing. Part of him had never felt so miserable in his life—unfortunately, that part was overwhelmed by the rest of his ego that was partying with the devils now, doing the double-backed boogie-woogie. He was fucked now—everything was fucked—so at least he might as well fuck.

Eloise, understanding his silence as consent, moved closer and lowered her torso, letting go of his erection now and instead grabbing each of her nipples, swinging those large, artificial breasts into place around his cock. Hayden lay there, completely passive as she began to move her body up and down, a large meat sandwich just beneath her chin. She, in the meantime, stared at him lasciviously, her eyes shining, her lips wet as she licked them with her pink animal tongue.

“You like that, baby?” she asked. Hayden grunted in reply. It felt fantastic and he was losing himself completely now. “You want to fuck me baby?” she asked, moving her breasts up and down more frantically now. “You want to fuck me in the ass? Oh, you’re a big boy, but I can take you. That uptight bitch ever let you fuck her in the ass?”

He didn
’t want to talk about Karla, not now. Even in the depths into which he was sinking, Hayden knew that this was wrong. He grasped her jaw in his fingers, strength suddenly returning to him, causing Eloise to gasp as her eyes flashed. He regarded her silently for a time, his eyes boring into her, seeing how she was playing him.

And all the time he knew that his cock was so stiff that he wanted to be played.

“Get on your knees,” he said.

Her smile was wide and wet as she turned away from him, lifting her hands to the thong of her underwear as it crossed her buttocks.

“That’s it, baby,” she said in a low, seductive voice. “You can fuck me any way you want.”

Hayden froze.

Those buttocks, which had felt so sweet in his hands beneath his dress, were not what he was expecting, and he gulped rapidly as he forced his eyes to focus. Her back, her shoulders, her thighs as well, were pale and smooth, flawless in their beauty.

Her ass, on the other hand…

For a few seconds he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. The skin which should have been firm and as perfect as the rest of her body was a mass of welts—long, thin lines, some white and evidently old scars, others raw and vivid, fresh blows as though delivered by a cane or whip. Looking back over her shoulder, Eloise winked at him.

“
Like I said, baby, you can do whatever you want. I really don’t mind.”

A couple of the demons beside Hayden were
whooping and hollering even more, but even amongst that crowd a number of them were scratching their heads bemusedly while the solitary angel on the other side put his face in his palm. Hayden was not averse to a little slap along with his tickle, but this time the intrinsic wrongness of what lay before him even hit his erection, which suddenly started to wilt a little. This wasn’t kinky foreplay but full on sado-masochism.

Evidently his pause was a little too long because Eloise started to frown.
“What is it, baby? Don’t you like it?”

“
I… that is… I…” Hayden fumbled for the right words. The shock of that mess on her backside was beginning to sober him up. What the hell had he been thinking?

Pouting, her lips affecting a seductive shape but her eyes suddenly hard, Eloise turned around quickly and dropped to her knees.
“I’ve been a very naughty girl, daddy, but it’s okay—”

That was too much. Hayden moved his hands to his trousers and began to do up his buttons.
“I think you better go,” he interrupted her before she could say any more.

The hardness was clearly anger now as she looked at him. Disguising it, however, she
moved her hands quickly to his, attempted to force them to one side. That wasn’t going to work now, however, and Hayden shoved her hard, not even pretending to be a gentleman any more. It did occur to him that something in Eloise might like that, but he was beyond playing games now. As she fell backwards onto her buttocks, glowering at him, he continued to button himself up.

“
What are you?” she hissed. “Some kind of fucking queer?”

“
Get out,” he said, levelly. He was still drunk, but it was a different sense of inebriation now. He had the sense that before long he would throw up, but even that would be some sort of purgative, clearing his system.

She stared at him, gaping slightly. A rapid exchange of emotions crossed her face which then became a mask
—this time placid and supplicating.

“
I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “Perhaps I was too fast. I always forget what you English guys are like. I don’t have to go. We can take it more slowly.” Cautiously, she moved one hand forward, reaching out to grab hold of his trousers again, to inveigle her way back inside them once more.

“
So this is how you spend your time alone, is it?” The voice was French, icy—and all too familiar. It’s tone froze Hayden’s heart.

It seemed to take an age for him to turn his head, and when he did so he saw Karla standing in the entrance to their rooms. Her face was stiff, proud
—and also inconsolably bitter at this sight of betrayal. Her coat was pulled tightly around her figure and she had never looked more beautiful—or more frail—to Hayden. Her dark hair, as false as Eloise’s breasts but infinitely more desirable to him now, hung like a shroud about her pale face and her eyes were bright with barely restrained tears. Her face was so stiff, but her eyes were pleading with him as he stared at her.

“
I can explain,” he yelled, his voice catching on the feebleness of his reaction. She shook her head and, before he could even rise from his seat she had turned on her heels and had gone.

Hayden collapsed onto his seat and put both of his hands across his face, blocking out the light. What he done? How could he be so stupid?

“Hey, baby, it’s okay.” Eloise’s voice was gentle and he felt her hand on his arm. When he pulled his own hands away from his face, his expression was a vision of fury that made her draw back, genuinely shocked.

“
Get out of here!” he snarled.

“
Hey, I don’t have to go.” Her eyes were flickering from side to side, plainly afraid. “We can still fuck—”

“
Didn’t you hear me? I said,
get out
!” He grasped her wrist and yanked her to her feet as though she were a rag doll. Her body, so desirable only minutes before, was disgusting to him now, with her fake tits and the mass of welts and bruises on her arse. Some remnant of decency held his violence in check so that he refused to hit her. In any case, the sick pervert would probably get a kick out of it.

She stared at him in fearful defiance, probably only for seconds though it felt like an age. Then she visibly wilted. Not daring to look up at him again, when his vice-like grip finally relented she pulled away sheepishly, quickly bending down to scoop up her dress and her underwear.

He didn’t watch her leave, but stood like a statue in the room, his brain a vortex of pain and hate and misery. He wasn’t even fully conscious of himself as he began to rage about the room, smashing lamps, shelves and ornaments as he swept about himself in futile self-loathing.

It was only when the storm had passed and he was standing amidst a welter of detritus that he remembered Karla. Not even stopping to pick up his jacket, he ran out of the room, shouting incoherently.

It was past nine when Hayden returned again to the hotel. Although the midsummer night had been pleasantly warm when first he had left his room, by the early hours of morning it had become bitterly cold. He had run from hotel to hotel at first, shouting at staff, asking if anyone had seen her. Most had looked at him as though he were a madman and in two he had been accosted and thrown out by security.

After an hour of this, he had remembered to return for his phone. Karla had still not come back and so he’d waited for her until he thought he would literally go out of his mind with a kind of sick terror. From then on he’d wandered the streets, shouting and calling, ignoring the cars which nearly knocked him down in the fast thoroughfares of Monaco, haunting casinos and lobbies like a deranged figure.

Sometimes he railed against Karla, blaming her for everything that had happened, and then he
’d remember what he’d done—how things must have looked to her—and he would cry self-pityingly. He had left so many messages on her phone, pleading with her, begging her to answer, but she never switched it on. Wryly he remembered that when he’d first met her, her unwitting partner in crime, Maarten Kropp, had installed a tracker on her phone to follow her movements: what Hayden would have done to know where she was now. It hurt him as though he’d been struck when he realised that—whatever cons they’d pulled since then in the time they’d been together—in the past year everything between him and Karla had been based on trust. Now he’d blown it.

He
’d barely slept in two days and, as he finally staggered through the doors, he felt as though he would collapse to the floor. He would return to his bed, get some sleep, and then if she’d not returned he would go. Where was irrelevant, though ideally there would be a big enough rock for him to crawl under for an eternity.

As he shuffled through the lobby, a hand grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. He tried to get his eyes to focus: although his head hammered as though a team of merry dwarves were digging for gold, his drunkenness had long been replaced by a wearying fatigue.

“For feck’s sake, man. You look like a tramp.”

Hayden tried to smile but it turned into a grimace. Still holding onto his sleeve, Uncle Coilin
stood slowly from his seat, eyeing Hayden warily. The older man was dressed in a tweed suit and, despite his corpulence and thinning ginger hair, looked almost dapper.

“
Where is she?” Hayden blurted out. “I need to find her.”

“
Ah ah!” Coilin now tightened his grip around Hayden’s wrist while wagging a finger of the other hand. “You and I need a little chat first. A cup of tea, that’s what you need to start the day.”

“
I don’t need a cup of fucking tea!” Hayden’s voice rose threateningly and he tried to yank his arm free. The other man, however, had a surprisingly tenacious grip and didn’t let go as he glanced around the room where a few other guests had looked up in shock at the pair of them.

“
Not another fecking word,” murmured Coilin, leaning in close to Hayden’s ear. “She’ll see you in her own good time, but if you try to get past me I swear I’ll break both your fecking legs.” He smiled, sweetly, a good-natured gentleman chiding his long lost friend, but in his slightly rheumy eyes was a threat of unspeakable aggression.

With a sigh, Hayden raised his free arm and indicated his willingness to remain in the lobby, but it was only when he moved to sit beside the table where Coilin had been only moments before that the older man released him. Taking his seat, Hayden noticed a
short, twisted walking stick, its length shiny and black but for a knot of brown wood on the end.

“
My shillelagh,” Uncle Coilin said, resting his portly behind across from Hayden.

“
Your Sheila-what?” mumbled Hayden, his eyes darting around the room, hoping against hope that Karla would appear at any moment.

It was Coilin
’s turn to sigh. “Fecking ignorant English bastard,” he muttered, then smiled sweetly before lifting the stick in his hands. “You know,” he mused, to no one in particular, “the traditional way to prepare a Shillelagh is to butter it all up with lard then hang it above a fire, so that the smoke cures it, all black and shiny like.”

“
Is that what you did?” Hayden asked, feigning curiosity, his eyes searching, searching.

“
What? Me go to all that trouble? What sort of fecking idiot do you take me for? I picked this one up in Dublin. People tend to get all peculiar when you try to take, I don’t know, a knife or a gun on a plane these days. Security gone mad, if you ask me. But a good stick, ah, no one would take that from an old man.”

As he spoke, he leaned forward, and though he wasn
’t looking directly at Hayden the younger man started to recognise the menace in his words and stopped hunting for Karla. “What are you doing here?” he snarled.

“
Karla called for me, and when Karla calls, I come.”

“
Where is she? I want to see her.”

Coilin turned his eyes towards Hayden now and, for a minute, said nothing, his lips pressed tightly together. Shit. Hayden recognised that expression enough from Karla and, for a moment, his courage failed him.

“Is she upset?” he asked, lamely.

The older man let out a hollow laugh.
“Let’s see. She comes back to find you with your cock out and some porn star, naked, on her hands and knees.”

“
She wasn’t on her hands and knees and I didn’t have my cock out!” Hayden snapped.

“
Oh, but she was naked. You don’t deny that, I see. Perhaps the two of you were making preparations for the vicar’s tombola, or whatever it is you lousy limey shitebags get up to when you think no-one’s looking. Ah! Our tea!” Coilin’s eyes lit up as a waitress momentarily appeared between them, placing a tray with two cups and a steaming silver pot. He smiled jovially at the young woman and then, when she departed, lifted the pot. “Lemon or milk?” he asked.

Hayden waved his hands in irritation.
“I need to talk to her. It’s not what she thought.”

“
No, no, of course it isn’t.” As he spoke, Coilin poured a stream of golden liquid into his cup before taking a small flask from his inside pocket. “A little something to help the morning after. Are you sure you won’t join me?”

Begrudgingly, Hayden accepted the flask after Coilin had added a dash of clear spirits to his drink. Swigging it back, some kind of volcano exploded in his throat and he almost spat out the alcohol.

“My own recipe,” said Coilin with a wink. “Sorts the men out from the boys. I used to splash some on Karla’s bread when she was a baby. Would help her sleep if she was teething.”

“
That explains a lot,” Hayden muttered.

Ignoring him, Coilin settled back in his chair and sipped his tea. Despite the bitterness of the poteen, Hayden also sipped from the flask, though more slowly this time.

“In answer to your question, I’m here because Karla asked me to. She thought you might need some help with this Marquis of yours.”

“
Help?” Hayden sneered. “What kind of help can you give?”

Raising one eyebrow, Coilin stared hard at Hayden.
“Well, the kind of activity you were thinking of last night, I might not have been at my best, though even I must admit I would have been tempted—though not where my darling niece is concerned, you understand.” Placing his cup on the table, he stared levelly at the other man. “She wanted information, so I did some digging around.”

This made Hayden scoff.
“What the hell could you find out in a couple of hours? I had my brother look for all that we need to know.”

“
Your brother?”

Again Hayden waved his hand in irritation.
“He works in the City. He’s found out enough about Valmont—he knows that he’s rich, and where the money is.”

“
And does he know about the prostitution rings? And the special parties that this Marquis de Valmont likes to organise?”

That stopped Hayden in his tracks. He thought of the scars on Eloise
’s buttocks and shuddered. “No, he doesn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

Coilin leaned back in his seat.
“All of it’s very hush-hush, of course. It always is with these upper class types. After all, they’ve had centuries to get it right—most of the rest of us have only been playing catch up for the past couple of hundred years or so.” He shrugged and sipped his tea before looking at Hayden over the rim of his cup. “The flask, sonny.”

Passing it back to him, Hayden couldn
’t help but ask: “So, these parties. Any details?”

Pouring a little of his poteen in his drink, the other man frowned.
“Not too many details, though I know I haven’t asked the right people. Yet. All I can say is that this one leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”

“
For any man who can say that after your home brew, it must be strong stuff indeed.”

Now Coilin regarded him seriously.
“You think you can just make it all right with a couple of jokes, don’t you? You go and break my niece’s heart and then you sit down here as though nothing’s happened.”

Shame suddenly overwhelmed Hayden and, despite himself, he blushed deeply.
“It wasn’t like that,” he began to protest, but his voice sounded petulant even to his own ears.

“
And what was it like?” Coilin asked. “Ah!” He sat back and waved a hand in disgust. “Save it! I don’t want to hear. All I know is that Karla was crying her eyes out last night. I’ve never seen that, never seen it before in my life. And over you as well!”

Hayden sat in silence, staring at his hands. For all that it tasted foul, he wished he could have
Uncle Coilin’s flask back so that he could crawl inside it and drown his self-pity.

“
I never understood why she took up with a fecking Englishman,” Coilin continued. “‘Never trust ‘em’, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen, not with you. That’s what happens when your heart rules your head.”

This caused Hayden to snap his eyes up and stare across the table.
“What do you mean?”

“
Jesus!” Coilin rolled his eyes upwards. “She loves you, you stupid bastard. That’s what that means.”

His heart leaped slightly in his chest, only to sink downwards almost immediately as guilt overwhelmed him. What an idiot he
’d been! Coilin, however, must have seen something in his eyes because he leaned forward and, placing his cup down carefully on the table, took hold of the shillelagh.

“
There’s nothing better I’d like to do than shove this so deep up your arse it would never see the light of day in a thousand years.” His eyes were fierce and Hayden didn’t doubt that he meant every word that he spoke. “But I’d suspect you’d enjoy it a little too much. I promise you this, though: you ever cross my niece again, and I’ll take great pleasure in cracking open your skull to let some sense into that dim lump of meat you call a brain, and don’t think all your fancy body-building, pumped up preenery will stop me. Do I make myself clear?”

“
I think you’ve made yourself very clear, Uncle.” The accent was French, trilling letters in a thrilling way, but Hayden couldn’t mistake the voice. He looked up to see Karla staring down at him. She looked beautiful, her black hair carefully coiffured into a bun on her head, a satin jacket covering her cream blouse and pale slacks. If she had been crying, she had masked everything behind her perfect makeup.

“
You look gorgeous,” he said weakly.

“
And you look like a tramp, Sebastian. Where on earth have you been all night?”

“
Karla, I’m sorry—” She raised a hand and a brief look of anger flashed across her face.

“
I don’t want to hear it,
Sebastian
.” Regaining her composure, she moved across to the other side of the table to sit down next to her Uncle. She crossed her legs primly and regarded Hayden with careful eyes.

“
I see you had fun last night,” she said. “I’ve just been up to the room. That finance company in Berlin we’ve got paying for it won’t be pleased when they have to pick up the tab. We might have managed another week before they noticed, but it looks like we’ll need to move on.”

“
Yes,” Hayden replied shamefacedly. “I kind of lost it after you left. I need to explain Karla—”

“
Jeanne
!” she hissed. “Can’t you keep your mind on anything other than that preposterously oversized organ down your trousers? We have work to do.” Her eyes were blazing again, but now he could also see pain mixed in with her anger. Whatever she was planning, she hadn’t forgiven him—not at all.

“
Yes, of course—Jeanne.” He became meek, ignoring Coilin’s glances between the two. The older man was clearly enjoying Hayden’s predicament. “What do you propose we do?”

“
I’ve picked up some useful details from Coilin,” she continued, as though they had just been discussing the fine, Mediterranean weather. “And I’ve managed to do some research of my own. At first I thought your original plan was utterly stupid, but now I can see its merit. The Marquis de Valmont is a rich man—a
very
rich man.”