The Contract (Nightlong #1) (4 page)

I arrived at the tall fence at the end of the garden, looking up as it stood in the way of my freedom. One, last barrier. Looking down at my throbbing arm, desperate for the painkillers to work so I could tackle this without screaming, I willed some sort of miracle.

I knew there was nothing for it.

Sensing Dante close by, I knew he might come over tonight to check on me. An imbalance in the force, his vibrations were so close… I knew he was near.

Maybe he even had microphones in the house?

I couldn’t risk mucking this up.

I had to go!

I climbed the high fence, wincing in agony as I did, the new stitches pulling as I strained myself to climb the eight-foot bastard in my way.

“Cleo, WAIT!” I heard him shout.

So, he had returned.

Like we had a mental bond, I’d known he would return.

Well, fuck him
.

It was too late.

I ran down the alley behind the houses and was grateful to myself for making use of my home gym equipment which he’d encouraged me to use to keep up my strength for his benefit.

Once out of the alley behind the row of houses, I looked down the residential street I found myself on and knew I wouldn’t be able to get all the way down the road without encountering Dante, who was no doubt circling his way around the street to get to where I was. He knew the lay of the land as well as I did. I’d tried this once before, but this was different now… I had seen the bastard for what he really was and now was my chance for escape. I’d do anything for it this time.

I spotted one of the houses had its bins out front and I ran across the street, opening the various waste units only to find them all mostly full – except for the one containing compost materials.

Hearing a car screech down the street, I didn’t think.

I just jumped in.

As I crouched, surrounded by a stench which reminded me of the flat I’d lived in just before I met Dante, I remembered how I came to meet him. It was like it was yesterday and yet, also a hundred years ago…

MY day job back then had been beyond banal but it paid. For a girl who ran away from home without any higher qualifications, I was lucky I was earning a semi-professional wage at all. Earning barely £17K as a data processor wasn’t great though, because the room I rented in a shared house cost more per year than my salary. I had to subsidise my living somehow, if I wanted to work and live inside any one of the numerous boroughs of London.

Inputting figures all day long was easy, it was repetitive and didn’t ask much of me, so I had some energy left for my evenings and instead of wallowing, I decided to earn extra cash in a fun environment. Bar work led to work as a hostess at a private members’ club and one night, one of the girls told me about the pay she got as a dominatrix. It was all off the books, she said, and the hostess stuff was just something to keep her hand in legit work and help out a friend.

“How do I get into it? I mean… I don’t know anything about that sorta craic. To be sure I only ever knew one lad in that way, you know?” Like I’d jumped off the boat only yesterday, I’d yet to shed my strong country accent. London had only been my home for mere months.

“Oh, there’s nothing you have to do but play games and it’s all safe. Each girl has a room, a role they play, and the guys pay for you to tease them. Maybe hold small talk. That’s all.”

I looked at the girl, who called herself Trixy, and asked, “How much d’ya get paid?”

“Hundred quid a pop. They pay the house way more than that, though. Easy money for permitting clients their fetishes, their desires, their…” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “…dirty, polluted sex games.”

We both sniggered. “Sign me up. I’ll give anything to get the landlord off me back. I am a bit behind already.”

“Sure?”

“Sure!”

“Well, you got the looks for a mouthy schoolgirl, for sure. Pure and innocent, you,” Trixy said in her West Country accent.

“What’s your speciality?”

“School ma’am,” she said, winking.

“Don’t get any ideas,” I said laughing, and she told me she’d have a word with her mate at the dominatrix ‘rooms’ and then let me know.

It was mere days later I was given a lesson on how to be a naughty schoolgirl with pigtails and pleated skirt – combined with lethal high heels, freckles and a school bag full of ways to humiliate men.

Bubble gum in their hair. (Yep… some asked for that.)

Drawing on them in pen.

Putting training bras on them.

Letting them smell old, washed-out white knickers that were stained (I had some of those actually, given I was living on mostly fresh air).

Teaching them how to press a sanitary pad into knickers.

Demonstrating how to insert a tampon (without actually inserting).

Wearing old-school wrinkled hosiery with rips in them. (Sometimes I let them take those away.)

I sometimes let them plait my hair or put ‘teenage’ make-up on my face or nails.

It was incredible what men wanted to do!

Mostly they just wanted someone to talk to and if the guys wanted more heavy play, they would go to the Madam who provided penetration with dildos and other assorted toy-based treats.

If a guy asked me to deface, humiliate, degrade or slap him, it was my job to do that, nothing more. Trixy’s boss Miss Lindy who was the Madam said I wasn’t to touch the guys down below, neither were they to touch me. I would get the sack if I did that, she said, and I was in no rush to disagree. She ran a fantasyland, the BDSM equivalent of Disney as she termed it. She seemed pretty proud of her establishment and it was her right to take any pleasure if there were any pleasure to be taken. Trixy always drove me home at the end of the night and I felt safe. It was good work.

Some of the girls had mentioned there was a guy they all liked the look and smell of. He liked to be called Saint Clair. I was warned he was making his way through all the girls to test out which he liked best and one night, it was my turn with him.

After that, he always came to me.

Then he revealed who he was, and what he could offer me, and I was so desperate to escape working eighteen-hour days that I would have been tempted without Dante being the bonus of the bargain. The data processor job was cool. It gave me a warm place to hide out in all day long and free coffee, crisps, fruit and biscuits… but I was only surviving and I wanted to live. I was already a little in love with Saint Clair, too. He was lovely and always smelt so great. The girls had been right about him.

It was against the rules to pass personal information to anyone but I gave my email address to him and he said he would be in touch.

The day he sat across from me in a café in Camden, I’d read his rules with disgust but he’d told me, “Take it or leave it,” so I’d taken his offer.

It was only a couple of years after I entered the arrangement that I began to realise he was anything but cuddly… and I started to yearn for the warmth of other people. Sinclair gave me no comfort. All he did was expect. His driver Sexton sometimes showed more warmth, with a smile or a nod of his head when he dropped off gifts from Sinclair.

I missed the girls I was stripped from and I missed home. I began to hate him and I dwelled on that hate for far too long. Instead I should’ve left him before he smelt my displeasure. He always had warned me, though… there was no escape.

I HEARD THE ENGINE OF a powerful car die nearby and footsteps hit the ground as someone got out. The clicking sound of what sounded like Sexton’s brogue shoes got louder and a few seconds later, a knock came on the side of the waste bin.

“Miss Patrick, let’s have you before there’s any curtain twitching from the property owners.”

I dared not move. How did Sexton know where I was hiding?

Fuck you
, I dared reply, but only in my own head.

I waited to see if he had the balls to lift the lid and drag me out. What a pathetic man, he was – doing the bidding of his freak of a boss.

I must have had a bad case of Stockholm syndrome… six fucking years.

Wow, I felt mad.

Sexton lifted the lid after three minutes and whispered, “He made me sew stuff into your bags, shoes, coats… virtually everything you own. Plus he told me to say that if you’re going to change your money, you’ll be arrested trying to do so. All your notes from the safe are counterfeit.”

“What the fuck, Sexton? Just go back to the car and tell him I’m not here. Tell him I ripped out the stupid devices… tell him I ran off feckin’ naked if you have to.”

“Sorry, miss. He’s watching and he’s seen my lips moving. He knows we’re conversing and he knows you’re hiding here. He jumped the fence after you, but he was too disgusted to follow you onto another man’s property… and most especially into a bin.”

“For feck sake, Sexton.” I launched myself up and Sexton deftly helped lift me from the inside of the bin.

He smiled awkwardly when he saw me covered in gunk. “Perhaps miss should walk home and shower… immediately.”

I smirked. “Make sure the door’s open. I left my keys there.”

“Yes, Cleo.”

“Show’s over, Sexton. Call me Ciara.”

“Yes, Ciara. Please walk home with haste. You have banana peel on your… your…”

I shook my head to relieve myself of the banana. “You better tell him I am not in any mood for his stupidity after this.”

I stormed off, walking back round to the house via the main streets. I received a few looks as I walked but I ignored them – and I ignored his eyes peering at me through the windows of the Phantom as he and Sexton drove past.

Back at the house I noticed the car and Sexton were gone from the street but all the lights were on inside the house and the door was unlocked when I tried the handle.

I walked in and up the stairs to the first floor where the living areas were. He stood at the doorway leading to the kitchen, filling the frame with his arms folded.

“Ciara–”

“
Téigh trasna ort féin!
” Go fuck yourself.

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m assuming it to be swearing, which I don’t like.”

“More shite from ye and I swear te gawd, I’ll put a curse on yer lands… yer life, everything,” I warned him, reminding him I wasn’t always from his world.

He didn’t smile, nor did he frown. He was never going to change from being that total arse I hated.

I peeled all my wretched clothes off my back in the hallway and left them where they fell, taking the stairs naked to head for the shower on the very top floor. He watched after me and I looked over my shoulder when I saw him openly gawping at my naked body.

“What?” I begged. “Never seen a woman naked before?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Be a fool, then.”

I didn’t wait for the shower to warm up. I dove in because hot or cold, I just needed to be clean.

Who dated a millionaire and had to wait for the water to warm up, anyway?

A complete eejit that’s who! Me! The dunce.

Out of the shower, I dried and dressed in full pyjamas. I was still shaking from the extraction earlier, plus fresh air outside and a shower had only made me realise how drunk I was from taking vodka and painkillers together.

I tucked myself into bed and felt him watching from the landing. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know he was there.

“Why’d you come back? I told you earlier to stay away.”

“I will always come back,” he insisted, “even when you tell me to go, because I know you really want me here. And because I like to make sure you’re okay.”

“C’mon, Sinclair. Don’t be a feck. You’ve seen me knackers now.”

He chuckled as his weight sank into the edge of the bed to sit down. “I really didn’t think you crazy enough to mutilate your own arm. I should’ve confiscated that equipment when I had chance, but now I’ll have to live with the guilt.”

“You don’t give a shiny shite, dickhead,” I said, my tone jovial because I knew that would wind him up. “
Póg mo thóin
.” Kiss my arse.

“Stop talking Irish, you know I hate it!”

“I AM FECKIN’ IRISH,” I yelled, “and you feckin’ piss me off.”

“CIARA! Don’t unleash the beast, I AM WARNING YOU!” he growled loudly, his chest puffed out, panting.

I stared at him, telling myself he had never hurt me so he was unlikely to now, but I also knew that some people could turn if you pushed them too hard.

“There he is,” I whispered, “the beast you’re suppressing.”

His lips really thin, he spoke with restrained anger: “I can’t curtail the monster inside if you insist on goading him and I can’t be that, not with you.”

“Nobody can hurt me. I’m so numb… because of you. Denying me.”

“You don’t understand, Ciara–”

“I do… I understand you’re frightened of what you are. I think you
are
disgusting and a pig and all those other things I called you, and yet… I’ve moaned into the dark so many nights over thoughts of you climbing me… possessing me… entering me.”

“Ciara,” he warned.

“Tell me you don’t find me sexy, Dante.”

“I find you incredible… but I told you–”

“This can never happen,” I repeated, tired of hearing it over and over. “All because of her…
Gillian
,” I said, sarcasm sticking to his girlfriend’s name.

“There’s no girlfriend,” he asserted.

“What?” I lifted my eyes to his.

He seemed to be telling me the truth when he said, “It’s only a rumour I’ve never denied. She would never deny it, either. Far too much good publicity. Gillian is one of my marketing executives and an old family friend who accompanies me to parties when I need a plus one. Besides she’s been fucking the family gardener since she was fourteen. It helps as a ruse, I guess.”

I swallowed. “Okay…”

“I’m not just a clothing millionaire, you know? I have other concerns… some more dangerous than others. People just think that because she works for me and we’re often pictured looking friendly, we must be together. I assure you, we aren’t. My real life is a closed book, and that’s how I have to keep it.”

“What real life?”

“I run an agency.”

“What sort of agency?”

“An agency that helps people.”

“Are you going to spit it out?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Then don’t!”

I threw myself over the other side of the bed, my back facing him.

“Ciara, the job I do is dangerous. If people knew about you–”

“Why’d you employ me then, if you know it’s not good for anyone to be near you?” I asked softly. “All that nonsense we do, what’s it really all about?”

“What nonsense? None of it is nonsense.”

“Being a slave isn’t who you really are.”

“I’m not a slave, you’re right but I enjoy the role reversal; it gives me release at the end of a stressful day. I employed you to help me relax… unwind. You’ve helped me cope in ways you don’t even know. You’ve been here when other women would’ve walked.”

“So what about the monster?”

“The angry guy? Who smashes glass and can’t control himself?”

“Yes,
him
,” I agreed. God, how I wanted to meet him. Any emotion was better than none.

“He only shows up when you pull stunts like last night… when the thought of you with another man makes me want to–”

It was a triumphant moment for me, having him finally admit he really wanted me. I had to think of a way of making him so desperate for me, there was no way he could deny our love any longer.

“I didn’t want Roman. Not at all, in fact. I’m sorry if I aggravated you.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m not,” I whispered.

“It’s not just you, Ciara…” He began, and I looked intently into his eyes, feeling some confession from him on the horizon, “…in every area of my life I like to know everything and I have to have ultimate control. If you want me to reveal myself, you have to know… my rule sticks. I can’t imagine myself compromising. Surely you realise that.”

“Yes.”

He slid his hand to my cheek and I looked up and into his soul-draining eyes. Mine were a grey-green, like pond water, but brighter on sunny days. Even in the dark his eyes pierced like diamond-studded emeralds, nothing about him ordinary. From his high forehead to strong cheekbones and full lips, plus that long, straight nose and mass of blond hair, he seemed like a dream, and the worst thing was he got more handsome each year.

“I’ve been untouched for six years,” I whispered, “now it’s my turn for some payback, don’t you think?”

“Ciara–” he growled.

I was beyond propriety and beyond caring, not anymore. Alcohol had seeped into my veins that night, but revelation had too and I knew he couldn’t deny me any longer. Not when I knew he wanted it too.

Brazen, I threw the covers off. “You’re meant to be my slave and there’s one thing I’m more intrigued about than any other… and I think right now’s about time to find out.”

“Ciara–” He continually refused to say anything more, even though it was clear he wanted to admonish me fully.

I licked my lips provocatively. “I want to know if you can perform oral sex as well as I think you can.”

“Ciara–”

I narrowed my eyes. “Scared you won’t be able to rise to the challenge?” He scowled. “Pity, all I need is a tongue. Just one tongue, on my pussy. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about what it tastes like?”

A furious heat rose in his cheeks and he refused to speak again. He broke our staring contest briefly and I spotted a moment to whip my pyjama bottoms off quickly. He tried not to look – but he couldn’t help himself.

“What’s a slave if he can’t perform oral pleasure on his Mistress? Useless, that’s what.”

He snarled.

He tossed my legs apart with a big hand – and gave me a hateful look before he licked his lips.

“You’re going to regret this,” he warned, but I laughed.

“Only if you’re bad at it.”

“I’m bad at nothing.”

“Then we shouldn’t have a problem. If anything, you’re going to regret we didn’t do this sooner.”

“Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“I’m counting on it–”

He shifted down the bed and blew warm air on my skin, making me shiver. Scared and a little self-conscious deep down, I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

His teeth sank into my thigh slightly and I jolted, a gasp escaping my mouth. His hands grabbed the tops of my thighs to hold my legs steady, and I hoped I was trimmed enough for his liking – hoped I looked normal enough for him.

No man had ever seen me down there. My first time didn’t really count as me and the guy had been drunk and it had lasted thirty seconds and was barely intercourse, let alone intimate. It was crap, in essence.

The only man I’d ever really wanted to see me like this was Dante and beneath my cool, I was terrified.

He licked slowly up and down the skin where my leg joined my torso, taunting me.

“You’ll beg,” he said.

“A Mistress doesn’t beg.”

“You’ll beg.”

He kissed my mons and I was close to begging – he was so right. I would beg if he didn’t touch me soon, but a large part of me also wanted to defeat him this once.

He kissed the insides of my thighs while beneath my pyjama top, my nipples tightened and I could hardly bear it.

I covered my face with my hands and groaned loudly.

“I’ll take that as begging,” he said, his voice husky.

His two thumbs pulled my flesh apart and he swiped one quick flick over my clit. After that, there was more kissing on my thighs, licks up and down the sides of my sex – but no touch where I really needed it.

Furious, I opened my eyes and looked down into his eyes. He wore the biggest grin and I hated how happy he looked.

I grabbed his hair hard and screamed, “PLEASE!”

He chuckled. “I knew you’d beg.”

I fisted his hair and put him on my pussy, pushing him into me.

His tongue licked furiously up and over my clit and I lost control, shrieking, demanding, begging…