The Contract (Nightlong #1) (25 page)

Somehow I knew there was a reason my lover was so tightly compact, so fit. Why had he arrived that night in such a dramatic fashion, but now stood outside the grounds of Pernox in broad daylight, evidently at risk of sniper fire or something of that ilk – not a care in the world.

Striding to us, bypassing Shay entirely, Roman stomped over and furiously demanded, “What the fuck, Dante? What the fuck?”

“I take it you found tracking devices.”

“Yes I fucking did.”

“Let’s go inside,” my lover suggested, “and I’m sure if you hand over your keys to Shay, she will carefully deposit your vehicle in a garage round the back.”

IN the house, we sat in the breakfast room at one of the many tables. Earlier that day I’d asked Dante how he knew Roman outside of fixing. He said Roman’s older brother Kaleb went to private school with Daltrey. Kaleb and Daltrey were almost as close as Daltrey and Dante. When I asked which school Dante had attended, he said, “There were several. I ended up at a comprehensive eventually, much better. More people like me to fall in with. I still achieved ten A grades.”

“What is this place, a spa?” Roman demanded, looking around.

I poured us all some tea. “I affectionately term it the Pussy Palace.”

“What?” he barked, still not calm.

“I met Dante when I was a dominatrix… of sorts,” I began explaining, “and this is a house for dommes to recuperate their days away inside… after administering to the clowns of society and feeding their carnal desires all night.”

“Sounds gross.”

“It really is,” I chuckled, eyeing Dante knowingly.

My fiancé growlingly ignored my insinuation.

“I’m the fixer,” Dante said, cutting to the chase, “or I was. Until my business was robbed from me, my team murdered, my accounts stolen… you get the picture.”

“Pardon me?” Roman looked on the cusp of bursting a blood vessel.

“It’s true,” I said, firm in my manner.

“Now… your vehicle. How many tracking devices?” Dante pressed on, ignoring Roman’s surprise.

Roman nodded briefly. “One under my chair, one under the upholstery in the boot, too.”

“Pretty standard. Not someone who fears getting caught,” Dante mused, “otherwise they might have tried popping out one of your veneers, or maybe a dashboard light or something.”

“I scanned the whole car, there were only two,” he assured us, “now, why is someone tracking me?”

“Easy question. Hard answer,” Dante replied.

“What does that mean?” Roman exclaimed. “I’d rather have all the gory facts, you know?”

“I needed to find out who’d swindled me, so I asked a friend if he knew anything. He said he knew nothing except… he suggested I consider my most important clients and I immediately thought of you, seeing as though you’re the richest and most famous, too.”

Roman looked afraid, his eyes moving from mine to Dante’s, all our cups of tea so far untouched. “I don’t get it.”

“It was a hint.” Dante looked sinister, his eyes zeroing in on Roman’s.

“A hint?”

“In my line of work, you come to learn that nothing out of the ordinary ever happens without a prompt. No result off the charts happens without intervention. After this friend put you in my head, I looked back and got to thinking… too many coincidences. Too much going on and all involving you. My love here, Cleo… let’s say someone put it in her head that you were rich and all powerful and her escape route from a despot she used to be enslaved by. Let’s say the despot never knew that the idea had been specifically planted in her head… by someone with a plan.”

I looked at Roman, feeling confused. “He’s lost me, too. Don’t worry about it.”

“What exactly are you saying?” asked Roman, his finger jabbing the table.

“I’m not sure yet, but it all has something to do with you.” Dante sat back from the table, as cool as a cucumber. “And by the way, the bugs in your car are most certainly the work of a law enforcement agency. No outlaw carries out a job in such an infinitesimally puerile manner. I’d have taken your wheel off, buried the thing in a hollow nut, bolt or pipe or something.”

Roman clutched his thick mop of brown hair and complained, “The law, seriously?”

“What have you got yourself involved in? Come on, tell us,” Dante asked, playing Devil’s Advocate.

“Absolutely nothing dodgy. Only… the person I thought was you asked for a lot more money. I guess it could look suspicious, me withdrawing a load of money.”

“How much are we talking?”

He looked around, making sure nobody was looking or listening. “They messaged me a day or so ago, asking for a ’mil. Something about extra expenses. I’ve had to withdraw from a few different bank accounts… in cash. I haven’t got the total amount yet, but when I do, they said for me to post it to a PO Box in one of those cardboard mail boxes. Special delivery.”

“Really?” Dante seemed surprised, stroking his chin.

“It’s not so much the amount but the inconvenience of getting it all in cash. So I don’t know what has made me suspicious in the eyes of the cops… unless they figure I’m doing business with the fixer and they want to get to him through me?”

“You catch on quick,” Dante remarked.

Roman tugged his collars in both hands, pride in his eyes. “Thanks.”

“The new fixer hasn’t been as careful as you,” I told Dante, “whoever he is, he’s already made enough mistakes to draw the eye of the law his way.”

“It’s the worst kept secret that I’m gay. I just… I don’t want it in the press, that’s all.” Roman hunched over, defeated.

“I understand,” I told him, holding his hand.

Dante gesticulated. “Cleo’s right, the thieving bastard that stole my gig has drawn the wrong sort of attention… somehow the police have linked him to you. My team was twelve-strong and each a talented hacker, none more so than one in particular. The seeming one-man band who did this won’t want to hang around if they’re under scrutiny, they’ll just want to get away.”

“In a way, this wipes your slate clean,” I said, looking Dante firmly in the eye, “you could even work with the police, if this conjecture turns out to be more than smoke.”

“Is there a reason you don’t want them to know,” Dante asked Roman.

“Despite the obvious?”

“Well, it’s obvious the football world is a patriarchal world, yes. But no reason beyond that?” Dante pressed.

“I guess I’m not ready to tell my family.”

“You’ve had a terrific season,” Dante reasoned, “you just signed a five-year deal. So what if you prefer cock instead of pussy? If you want to help us, we need you to come out. It’s the only way. Forget the money. I don’t trust the Royal Mail and it seems to me, the fuck who stole my business and killed my people is about to come undone all by himself.”

Roman looked dismissive of the idea and mumbled, “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Listen,” I began, “I know what it’s like to go out on a limb. I came to London with nothing much in my back pocket, just a hope and a dream. I had this image in my mind of all the Irish poets to come to London and make it, and I wondered if I could do the same, you know? Just think of all those guys out there you could be a role model for.”

“Irish fucking poets, really Ciara?” Dante exclaimed, playfully mocking me.

Roman pointed. “Did he just call you–”

“Yes,” I slapped both their hands, “you know, like WB Yeats… meeting his contemporaries at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Can you imagine seeing him and Oscar Wilde in the same club? Oh my god!”

“I love Oscar Wilde!” Roman exclaimed, turning to look at me, sat in the chair next to him.

“You do? What’s your favourite?”

“
The Importance of Being Earnest
!” We both shouted, more or less at the same time.

“YES! YOU KNOW IT?”

“God, don’t you just love it when a story steals your heart, then leaves it mangled.”

“God, yes!” he exclaimed.

“Hello, I’m still here, guys.” Dante tried to look all manly, feeling sort of left out no doubt.

“It seems like Roman might have to stay for dinner and drinks tonight. We can pretend we’re poets, can’t we?”

“I wish I could, but I can’t Ciara,” Roman apologised, “and if that is your real name, it suits you better… as did your real hair.”

I pouted, saying nothing. He was right on all counts.

Roman stood from his chair, his tea gone cold.

“I’ll show you out,” Dante said, and I began sipping at my own cold tea, wondering if there was any such thing as a friend.

I could have used one right then.

WHEN ROMAN’S CONFESSION HIT THE
Guardian
a couple of days later, Dante laid next to me in bed in the attic and showed me on his phone, whispering, “This is your doing, baby.”

“You’re the one that suggested this to him.”

“Yep, the new and improved moralistic Dante Sinclair, all because of you.”

I cuddled him harder, burying my mouth in his neck. “What do we do now?”

“We wait… and in the meantime, we make love.”

“I can handle that.”

Dante spooned me, palming my breasts, my arm raised behind me to tease some fingers through his hair. His erection against my bottom was so tender and intimate as he rained kisses over my neck and shoulder.

“Do that thing I like,” he asked, and I reached my hand down to tap my fingertip at the sensitive hole in his penis. “Just crazy… that drives me just crazy.”

My breathing picked up and his hands swept faster over my body, squeezing my hips and my belly. When he grabbed my breast and squeezed hard, I lost all control and threw one leg over his, pivoting so he could nudge himself inside me.

It was pure heaven as he entered me and I reached back for him, needing him close. I arched against his chest and put my hand on his buttock, drawing him closer.

“How do I show you, Ciara? I don’t know how to show you how much love I have for you.”

“Just stay with me,” I breathed, “just like this. Your strength makes me feel strong.”

“Everything I am is yours.”

“Ah, Dante…”

I got carried off on the lilting, silent melody of our union, our bliss, and I turned my head and accepted his soft kisses against my pliant lips.

Sometimes it was so easy, just being together seemed enough.

***

LATER that night, I got a harsh dose of reality. We’d been careless. I knew it. We got carried away too many times during the period we were meant to be being careful. I’d known I could be pregnant because I hadn’t had a period since starting the pill, but I’d not yet entertained the idea that being pregnant was even a possibility. I mistakenly imagined that starting the pill might mean I didn’t get periods…

Sat on the toilet in the dark, I endured the awful cramps in my stomach as my body rejected my baby, leaking it out. So many clots, I knew it was a miscarriage.

I thought about trying to hide what was happening but he was going to realise something was wrong.

I didn’t even have any sanitary towels with me.

It was the middle of the night and it felt like razors chasing through my gut – still not half as bad as the ectopic pregnancy.

Maybe I shouldn’t have had those two vodkas the other night but it was only two drinks and I wasn’t aware then that I was even pregnant.

The blood seemed never-ending.

My feet positioned in front of me on the toilet seat edge, my head pressed tight between my legs, I rocked backward and forward on the seat, trying to endure the agony. I tried to make myself as tiny as possible, just a little ball. Willing it to pass, I moaned quietly but there was a moment I heard something and realised he stood watching, wondering what was going on.

He looked horrified.

A path of blood was behind me, where I’d been unable to stop it falling down the insides of my thighs on the way to the toilet.

“Are you okay?”

“I can’t get off the toilet because I don’t have any period pants with me or for that matter any sanitary towels.”

Grabbing a robe off the bathroom hook, he said, “I’ll go get Shay.”

“I need some strong painkillers too.”

“Okay, no worries.” He sounded calm and level, my saviour.

He came back a few minutes later and came to me with some pills and water first which I swallowed down immediately.

He switched the bathroom light on and the shower, motioning for me to get off the toilet. He helped me inside the shower and whispered, “Take your time, honey. I’m just going to change the bed.”

How could he be so calm? I was losing our child from my body!

I sat on the shower floor and huddled in a corner, waiting for the painkillers to work, waiting for relief. For this to be over. I heard him return to the en suite and he exclaimed, “What in the heck?”

I looked up and saw him looking down into the toilet which I’d not flushed.

“I just thought it was… it was…”

“A bad period?”

He nodded.

“No, I’ve lost our child.”

I buried my face in my knees, not wanting to see the disgust in his eyes. I heard the toilet flush and him squeezing out bleach from the bottle. I heard scrubbing next. Scrubbing on the floor. Scrubbing on the bathroom mats. He traipsed into the bedroom and scrubbed the floorboards in there. All the while the shower ran in thick ropes over my neck and shoulders, taking the edge off the pain as I refocused on the sensation of water battering down my back.

It was about ten minutes later I could finally breathe again, the painkillers dulling the throb, the cramps. The ache.

I left the shower and wrapped a towel around me, wadding some tissue between my legs.

Walking back to the bedroom, I found him replacing the bedding, out of breath and upset.

“Shay went out for some stuff for you. The girls here rarely have periods.”

“Okay.”

He finished putting on new pillowcases and smoothed out the covers before coming to my side. He put his hand on my cheek and a tear rolled from my eye.

“I should’ve worn condoms; it was stupid of me, I’m sorry. I just get so carried away with you.”

“Dante!” I cried and he pulled me tight in his arms.

“It’s going to be okay, it’ll be alright. My beautiful girl.”

I fought to contain my emotions and let out some deep breaths, keeping my grief locked inside. I only wanted to know when this would be over. If I had an endpoint to look ahead to, I could handle that. He had to know I was useless and could never provide him with a child. I just had to know when he planned to let me go, so I could make the most of him while I still had him.

A knock arrived on the door and Shay entered carrying a bag full of stuff.

“Thank you so much,” Dante said, “I won’t forget it.”

She nodded briefly before retreating, having been dragged from her bed at such an unsociable hour.

Dante emptied the contents of the bag on the bed and started tearing open packets of stuff. He pressed a pad inside some knickers and knelt before me on the floor, ready with the underwear. I held his shoulder and put one foot in, then the other. He pulled the panties up my legs and quickly whipped out the sopping tissue almost hanging there before the pants were all the way up. He virtually ran to the bathroom with the wad of tissue, threw it in the loo and flushed, then washed his hands. Shay had also bought me a hot water bottle and Dante claimed it, then went back to the bathroom to fill it. I stood around like a lost child with nothing to do, nowhere to go.

He pulled off my towel and put his robe around my body which was so warm with his heat, it was almost as good as a hug. He led me to the bed, helped me inside and pressed the hot water bottle to my stomach. The bottle too hot to touch skin, it felt perfect as the heat slightly throbbed through my robe and to my poorly body.

He stood there in his boxers and bare skin, begging with his hands in his hair, “What else do I do?”

I almost said “nothing” but he looked so forlorn and manic. Spillages had been mopped away, and flushed, and pads would catch the rest of what was left of our baby. It seemed that everything was gone and unseen, so it couldn’t hurt us anymore. I was hurting however, and it was mostly because I couldn’t help but look back and be reminded this wasn’t my first time… and I’d never allowed myself to cry the last time. Not one drop.

I held out my hand and asked, “Come and hold me.”

He climbed into bed, kissed my lips and held me, the hot water bottle pressed between us both.

“Does it hurt?”

“It did. It’s going now.”

“I’m so sorry, Ciara.”

“It’s my fault.”

“It’s nobody’s fault.” He held his hand underneath my hair and massaged my scalp, soothing me, and I rested my cheek on his shoulder.

“I shouldn’t drink but I sometimes can’t help it.”

“You weren’t to know, Ciara.”

“I know, but…”

“If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine… for leaving you in this house alone, making you vulnerable and upset and not telling you this is my place… and… it’s all my fault if it’s anyone’s, not yours. Do you hear me?”

“But it feels like my fault!” I cried and burst into tears.

I cried loudly and he actually cried with me.

“Fucking hell Ciara, I’d die for you, I can’t imagine spending my life without you. You’re my wonderful girl and I hate seeing you like this. I can’t take it when you cry… I can’t take it when you don’t tell me why sometimes, when you think I’m not looking, you seem so sad.”

I got myself breathing again after crying so hard in his arms, letting it all out, all of it. I vaguely explained, “I made one mistake and they never forgave me. Just one mistake in my whole life. One. It had to be that that one mistake cost me my family and my ovary… and now another baby. Sometimes I drink hard to forget what they did, how they made me feel. Like dirt. Like… fucking dirt, Dante.”

“If you were dirt, I wouldn’t have given you your own house. I wanted to lock you in my tower, hidden away just for me, forever. I loved you the moment I saw you. I’ve always loved you and I’ve had the honour of watching you grow into a beautiful woman and I feel… I feel like I don’t know why fate gave you to me, when I don’t deserve you. You’re the purest, richest spirit I’ve ever known. I love you so much, Ciara I can hardly breathe knowing how much you’re hurting right now.”

His chest heaving up and down, I couldn’t take it either. I rolled away to the other side of the bed and asked, “What if I can’t go through this again… what if I can never give you a child?”

He moved up behind me and felt inside my robe for my belly, rubbing my soft flesh with his rough, strong hands.

“I’m your servant. I will do whatever you say, go wherever you go. Do whatever, for you.”

“You’re my what?”

He turned my face to his and kissed me gently. “I always have been, always will be.”

“Then you know just what I need,” I said, and rolled back over into the sheets.

He spooned up behind me and caressed my tummy in his hand, stroking in circles until I felt my eyes flutter, my body seeping into a restless but necessary slumber.

I spent the next day watching films on the small TV in the lounge downstairs which Shay had made vacant for me. She came and sat with me while Dante went out for more pills and sanitary towels. She even hugged me, let me cry on her shoulder, and told me it was going to be okay. I was growing to like her, actually.

While pretending to sleep on her shoulder in one of the couches, Dante returned to check on me, bags rustling in his hands. I kept my eyes closed, thinking I’d fooled them both I was completely fast on.

“She okay?” he asked.

“She will be.”

“She will.”

“You really love this one?”

“What do you mean,
this one
?” He almost growled.

“Don’t act whiter than white.”

“I can count my lovers on one finger. The rest were fucks.”

“So… you really love her?”

“It’s not just love… it’s necessity.”

“Necessity?”

“Without her, I’m just that bag of nonsense I used to be.”

Shay slipped from beneath me, putting me gently down on a pillow. I peered ever so slightly out of my right eye to watch her waltz to where he stood, her arms folded as she approached him.

“Even if your ability to remain faithful has changed, you haven’t. What are you going to do? Get a real job? That’ll be a laugh.”

He shook his head at her. “Get. Out. Right now.”

“Fine,” she sneered, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

When she was gone from the room and her footsteps in the corridor long gone too, I sat up and propped myself up with a few pillows.

He smiled when he saw I was awake and came over to hold my hand.

“You shouldn’t get angry with her, it’ll just give her false hope. Indifference is the only antidote to love, Dante.”

He puffed out his chest. “I don’t know how to get through to her. Being nasty with her seems to be the only way.”

“How about being nonchalant, then she’ll know for sure she can’t get to you, whatsoever.”

“Maybe.” He looked away from me.

“Come here,” I asked, and he held me close, pulling me onto his lap. I buried my face and my hands in his hair and swallowed gulps of his ocean scent. “What do we do next, Dante?”