Personal Protection (25 page)

“I’m not going back, Randall. I hated it. They’re big and prestigious and they pay well. But it was… What was that word you used? Tawdry!” She made a face.
“Businessmen looking down on you, treating you like furniture. They hold business meetings there! We might as well have been wallpaper. There wasn’t an ounce of honest lust or respect
for what we were doing. It pervaded the atmosphere and dragged you down. There was no excitement. No electricity. No incentive to do your best, dazzle the clients. By the end of the first week
I’d given up hope.”

She shuddered. I stroked her shoulders, urging her to continue.

“By the end of the second week, I’d had so many financial propositions – and they couldn’t believe it when I turned them down – that I could have papered all the
walls in this apartment with money and still had some left over, if I’d accepted. I didn’t! I wouldn’t have let you put your tongue to such magnificent use if I had.”

She kissed me, in spite of the uses I’d put my tongue to.

“Even if I had been able to stand the drudgery, the property prices would have been prohibitive. Every penny I earned would have been spent on rent or mortgage. The reason all the girls
are so skinny in London isn’t fashion; it’s because they can’t afford to eat!”

Now I was satisfied. “So you came back.” I moved my hand from her shoulder to more intimate places.

“Um…” She pressed herself against my stroking fingers. “Yessss… I came back. I’m taking a few days off, then I’m back at the Bird Of Paradise.
‘Direct from Stringfellow’s in London’ makes good advertising. I suppose it helped that I didn’t ask for a raise! I saw this place had gone up for sale when I was coming to
visit you. But you weren’t here – I assumed you must be working. I remembered what you’d told me about your financial situation. So I went to visit the man who owned it. I made
him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Now I’m a property-owning member of the bourgeoisie.”

“What do I have to do to convince you I’m a tenant worth keeping on?”

“Just keep on doing what… aaah!… you’re doing right now. If I could persuade you to put your tongue to creative use again, I might give you a rent rebate.”

“For a rent rebate you can tie me to the headboard, cover me in maple syrup and lick the stuff off.”

She laughed that wonderful laugh. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Give me time. I’ll come up with something.”

I was grinning like an idiot when I got into the office the next morning. Even the camp strip lighting couldn’t shake me out of my good mood.

Dean had obviously been pacing for some time. He grabbed my arm and dragged me to the inner sanctum. Then he started trying to peel me out of my clothes.

“Hey! Did you turn straight overnight?”

He glared at me. “You went to see the Wicked Witch of the North and didn’t phone me to tell me how it went! Now you’re smiling like a loon.”

“Moi?”

“Stop taking the piss! This is serious! You can’t just waltz in here looking like the bloody Cheshire cat! What am I supposed to think? Either you’re high on something, or
you’ve learned to love pain. Whichever it is, there is no place for you in my business. You’re my friend, but I can’t afford to give you the benefit of the doubt. You’ll
either get yourself killed, or you’ll get our clients killed. I care about you too much to let you to do the first and the second wouldn’t benefit the business.”

He was serious! “Dean, I have never touched Class A drugs. I’m clean and I’m sober.”

“Then show me the scars.”

“I don’t have any! At least, no more than I did when I left last night. You really think I’d learn to like pain?”

He started to run his hands through his immaculately coifed hair, then thought better of it and stuffed them in his designer trouser pockets instead. “I sincerely hope not. But
you’re a bodyguard. You risk your life for total strangers.”

“For pay! For a great deal of pay!”

“That’s the only reason? The money?”

“Yes!”

Shit, how to explain?

He wouldn’t be happy unless I gave him justification he’d understand. Like the man said, it isn’t logical to take a punch, or a knife, or a bullet for somebody you don’t
even know, or care about. No matter how much you’re getting paid.

“I don’t enjoy the pain. I accept that it goes with the job. I try to find as many ways to avoid getting hurt as I can. I live with it when it happens, as shit inevitably does. And I
make sure I get paid well enough to make it worth it. That makes it much easier to bear. But I’ve never liked pain with sex.”

I said the last with fingers crossed. I had cause lately to question the truth of that.

“You sound as if you’re telling me the truth. I’ve seldom known you to lie to me. It’s just that I know the lengths you’ll go to to get what you want. I know how
much that squatty little flat means to you.”

Then he frowned and looked at me hard, striking the heel of his palm against his forehead. It was a melodramatic move. Pure Queen Dean. “That’s it! How can I have been so blind!
You’ve found somebody else, haven’t you?”

“I didn’t have to. And I didn’t have to become Sadomasochist Cecily’s sex-slave to keep my apartment either – squatty or not! She’s come back, Dean.
Tori’s the one who bought my building. She’s the one living downstairs.”

Dean whooped. “The clever cow!”

“Hey, that’s my significant other you’re calling a cow!”

“I wasn’t maligning her at all! She has my undying admiration! Tori has just done the only possible thing to allow you both a happy ever after. She’s found a way to live with
you without actually living with you. And given you security with no strings.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that. I still have to pay rent.”

He gave me a penetrating look.

“She has a mortgage! I’m no freeloader.”

“I never implied you were! But don’t tell me she hasn’t reduced the rates for you.”

“Well…” His smug ‘I told you so’ look reminded me why he is the brains of this outfit. Queen’s intuition. I wonder what our clients would say if they
knew?

Days went by without sight or sound of Cecily. She was either off up country representing somebody professionally, or lying low.

I was told she was mentoring law students at college. I found that hard to believe. Aside from teaching Ashley, who she was fucking, I didn’t think she had the patience. But it would
explain how she came to meet Lisa Moran, who to my knowledge had never been on the scene.

But whatever the reason for her absence, I didn’t miss her.

Tori and I settled into a comfortable rhythm. Life and work went back to normal. With Tori home, all was right with my world.

Except for two things. I still couldn’t prove who’d raped Sammi even though we were sure who it was; and Tori’s attacker continued to elude us.

Tori seemed to have succeeded in putting the incident behind her. I couldn’t have done it. The spate of violence at the club had ceased since we’d dealt with Sharon. But it rankled
that I was working for a detective agency and couldn’t solve crimes this close to home. Sammi’s presence was an unintentional thorn in my side because I couldn’t bring her the
closure that she needed. Tori’s mother had paged me every couple of days at first, then once a week, now only occasionally, making me feel more guilty as the time dragged on without
resolution. I felt I’d let them down.

Dean’s dinner party ‘domestic’ was resolving itself in amicable divorce. They divided their assets equally and put the house up for sale. Greg stayed in the place waiting for a
buyer while Sharon moved in with Sammi permanently.

I was looking forward to spending the best Christmas of my life. Then, arriving home from the office one evening, I spied a familiar car in the parking lot. Cecily was back.

Tori snagged me from her apartment as I was about to head upstairs and confront the bitch. A good thing too; I was already pushing up my sleeves.

“Yes, she’s back. No, you’re not going up there to get into a fight. She’s a barrister, Randall, she’ll have you in court so fast your feet won’t touch the
ground. Whatever her other shortcomings, she is good at her job. Think with your brain, not your fists. Besides, she’d probably get off on being beaten up.”

She pinned me against the open door, the soft pressure of those curves a more effective captivity than strength. Her fingers brushed though my hair, which was growing into something we were both
more comfortable with. I closed my eyes, anger draining out of me to be replaced with desire. Tori leaned into me, catching my lower lip between her teeth playfully.

“Better,” she growled, sure she’d got my attention.

Then in an abrupt change of pace: “Your rent’s due.”

“Shit! Our last client’s cheque won’t clear until tomorrow.”

“That isn’t good enough.”

I blinked, desire gone. Money isn’t a game to me. Sometimes I can be too literal. “I can give you half of what I owe…”

“It’s all or nothing!”

“What can I do? I don’t ha…

Even pinned against a door, her breasts crushed up against mine, it took me a moment to shift gears and see what she’d been driving at all along.

“If we can close the door I’ll do anything you want.”

“Promises, promises!”

“Try me.”

We ended up on the kitchen work top. Or rather I did. Pants round my ankles, shirt and jacket open all the way down, tie looped round a copper pan on the overhead rack, watch in the sink. Fuck
it! The damn thing was supposed to be water resistant to a depth of fifty metres; I’d find out if they were lying now.

Tori straddled me wearing nothing but her long hair, an ankle chain and a satisfied expression. “Ummm… You really did mean anything I wanted.”

She trailed chocolate sauce, the kind you get for icecream, around my left nipple then leaned forward to suck it off. I lay back and let her. Sex and chocolate: who can beat it?

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid about Cecily.”

I didn’t want to promise anything of the sort. But she just kept dribbling the stuff on. It was maddening without her mouth to follow. And it was sliding towards my expensive white shirt.
It would be ruined if… “Yes! OK! I promise! Please! Just…”

She grinned and applied her mouth in the nick of time.

Later, after a shower, she sat in front of the mirror with damp hair in a glorious rippling cloud around her.

“Let me brush it.”

“Randall, that is so cliché!”

“So?”

“We’ll never have dinner at this rate.”

“You’re cooking me dinner? You didn’t have to.”

She blushed. “I wanted to make something for you.”

Tori was a great cook. When she cooked for us I was properly appreciative. “Thank you.” I kissed her. “What are we having?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“OK, I can wait. I still want to brush your hair.”

“It never stops at that though, does it?”

That was true. The feel of the weight of her hair in my hands, the smell of it, the feel of it when it covered us both… “If that’s all I’m allowed to do, that’s
all I’ll do.”

She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t say no. “Let me do what I need to in the kitchen. I’ll join you when I’m finished.”

Since I was being honoured with a Tori original I didn’t argue. I busied myself arranging the stool from her dressing table so that I could sit on the bed while I worked and she could see
what I was doing in the mirror. When she came back she’d towelled her tangled auburn locks and slipped on one of those transparent baby doll nighties that always made me want to ravish her.
So much for just brushing her hair.

It did start that way: de-tangling, smoothing and arranging, using my hands as often as on the brush. But the revealing nightie had slipped by the time I was finished. Whether by accident or
design, one café au lait nipple was begging to be noticed. When I grazed it with the bristles it rose to violent prominence. She moaned, snagging my hand and drawing it down the front of her
body, watching us in the mirror, suggesting in a breathy whisper that there was other hair I should brush.

One thing led to another. We found our way to bed.

And a new use for the hair brush which I’m sure the manufacturers never intended.

“Ladies and gentlemen, live from Stringfellow’s, London, the Bird of Paradise proudly presents, Miiiissss Tori!”

The whole place blacked out. A single spotlight hit the stage, illuminating Tori in a feast of skin-tight leather adorned with glittering silver chains. The opening guitar chord of Michael
Brown’s
Black Leather
slid down the scale. The audience roared their approval. Slowly she raised her head beneath the peaked cap and began to strut toward them. I wasn’t the only
one holding my breath.

“Breathe, Randall. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” Sammi drawled, sliding into the seat across from me, a faux cocktail in her hand.

“It’s something I’ll never get tired of.” Tori’s welcome back performance. Could I be anywhere else? “Is there something I can do for you?”

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that!”

Her words and her hand on my thigh snagged my attention as surely as a bucket of cold water dowsing me. I removed the hand.

“I want to talk to you.”

Something in her voice made me give her my undivided. “All right, I’m listening. What?”

“You still looking into who raped Tori?”

“Every bit as much as I’m trying to find evidence to prosecute yours.”

“Thanks, I’ll hold you to that. But that’s not…

I wanted to watch Tori but something in her voice said
now.

She smiled bitterly. “Now you’re interested! Story of my life! OK. Don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Remember that bitch at Lisa’s memorial?”

“Cecily?”

“The very same. Well, about the time you and Tori got together she had an… encounter with her.” She sat back and gave me a speculative look, to make sure I was really
listening. I was.

“Myself and some of the girls at the club asked Tori to go out on the scene one weekend. You had to go up to, where was it? Glasgow? You had a client who thought he was going to get shot
hiking or something.”