26. Are you trying to kill me?
Are you trying to kill me?
Vicky
I stared at my phone.
To be honest, I couldn’t quite believe it. In the immediate aftermath of what Darrell had done to me, one of my first thoughts was how my mother and sister would make me pay. I imagined the barrages of texts and phone calls.
When it happened two years ago, they’d made threat after threat—so many, that eventually, I’d flinched every time my phone even vibrated. But now… nothing.
Because Mike had simply tapped a few keys and blocked them.
And then when my aunt rang me a few days ago and went off on a rant about how I’d betrayed the family and upset my sister, how she knew I was mentally deficient, but that that was no excuse, Mike had simply plucked the phone out of my hands, hung up the call, and then blocked her too.
But I was on edge. I wasn’t ready to believe that it could be as simple as that. Or that I was allowed to disconnect from my family.
It had been drummed into me for so many years how lucky I was to have a family that tolerated me at all. So blocking them was anxiety-inducing, but I knew that actual contact with them would be worse.
And anyway, I was happy at the cabin.
Mike had shown me and the girls how to weld.
This involved Mike swearing excessively and commiserating about how he wished he had a girlfriend and nieces who wanted to go shopping on a Sunday instead of burning his workshop down—an unfair assessment in my opinion, as we were all very careful with the blow torch, and only set something on fire that one time .
Then when the girls went home, he phoned Felix.
Apparently, I wasn’t working for the next week, and I was staying with Mike at the cabin.
The thought of not working had never occurred to me. I hardly ever took time off. I told Mike in a very matter-of-fact way that I’d carried on working after the last assault despite my silent panic attacks.
This did not seem to reassure Mike; in fact, judging by the slashes of colour that appeared high on his cheekbones and the angry scowl he directed my way, it may have inflamed the situation.
“Well, you’re not bloody well working next week,” he’d told me, followed by a stream of curse words of different varieties.
Seeing as it seemed very important to Mike, and I did feel a lot safer at the cabin, I agreed.
And, despite the trauma of the weekend, this last week was the best week I had ever had in my whole life. Better than the week I made my first million. Better than the first week I moved into my own house where I could keep my space safe and free from clutter.
Better than anything.
We’d had an argument the second night, though. Mike had promised to teach me fellatio after six more dates—and I’d been counting.
I told him that I counted the welding as a date, even though it involved two eight-year-old girls, and that we should proceed.
He looked horrified and told me I was traumatized, and that I didn’t need to force myself to do anything with him. That he was happy to carry on cuddling on the sofa and watch de-cluttering programmes.
Well, I’d been looking forward to learning fellatio, and Mike had been quite high-handed enough.
I hadn’t actually objected because blocking my family and staying at the cabin were things I really wanted to do.
But him being arrogant and bossy about this caused me to have a rare flash of anger.
I actually raised my voice, something I barely ever did, and I called him a liar and a purveyor of fake promises —something that made his lips twitch in a very ill-advised smile, which spiked my anger even higher.
Eventually, he threw his arms up in defeat, crying, “Okay, okay. You can give me a blow job. Christ. So much for being a goddamn nice guy.”
The anger drained out of me immediately, and I smiled at getting my way, then slid to my knees in front of him where he sat on the sofa.
“Right,” I said. “I’ve read a great deal of background information, but we might have to go over some of the logistics before we start. I would have watched pornography in preparation, but I’m afraid seeing other people naked makes me feel physically ill.”
“Logistics?” Mike’s voice was pitched higher than normal, and his eyes were wide. “W-what sort of logistics?”
“Well, I may have a problem with the ejaculate element.”
“What?” he said faintly, as I started to grapple with the buttons on his jeans.
“I’m not too good with mess, and if my dislike of sauces is anything to go by, I probably won’t like semen in my mouth.”
Mike rubbed his eyes then stalled my hands on his fly with his own. “You don’t have to swallow, Vicky,” he said in a hoarse voice.
I smiled. “Oh good. Because that is the only aspect I don’t think I could manage. I’m happy about the penis in my mouth element, even if yours is a bit on the large side. I’m sure I can work around it. I’m very task-orientated and a perfectionist, so I want to get this right.”
“Right, okay,” he said, his voice now hoarse, “Vicky, whatever you do will be perfect, I promise.”
I think I did a passable job.
I mean, I kept having to stop and ask questions… a lot of questions, but he didn’t seem too annoyed at having to teach me.
In fact, when I was done, he hauled me up onto his body and cuddled me to him, muttering on and on about how perfect I was, how beautiful. All sorts.
So it can’t have been that bad.
Anyway, I’d do better next time. Although, when I told him that he said in that high-pitched voice, “Holy shit, are you trying to kill me?”
The rest of the week had just gotten better and better.
In the daytime, I still did some remote meetings from the cabin after I had my stuff couriered up from London, including my laptop.
Lottie had stayed at Buckingham Manor with Hayley as it was half term, so she came over and sat with me, giving me the signals as if we were in the conference room together.
Her ability to read people wasn’t quite so sharp when she worked remotely like this, but she still managed to identify lies in a couple of the negotiations.
Mike let me watch him sand, varnish, weld and carve in his workshop.
I’d always been told that my staring was a terrible habit. It disconcerted a lot of people, but Mike didn’t seem to mind me staring at him. Every so often, he’d look up and smile at me, or ask me something, or he’d drop his tools and come over to kiss me.
A couple of times he did more than kiss me. Once he even demonstrated his superior upper body strength by lifting me up against the wall and holding me there whilst he took me, whispering all sorts of dirty praise into my ear about being his good girl .
I wasn’t sure what I was doing that was so good, seeing as I wasn’t the one putting any of the effort in, but I accepted the praise anyway.
Another time he bent me over the smooth wood of his workbench.
Afterwards, I informed him that I actually ranked that position at a firm number two, just after the holding me up against the wall thing, and that I liked how he held me down and when he fisted my hair.
He’d muttered, “I’m not going to survive you,” in a choked voice.
In fact, the more he held me down, the more secure I felt. Just like the tight hugs, it made me feel safe.
So, from my point of view, the sex was great. I wasn’t sure Mike thought the same. He certainly said he did, but I was extremely inexperienced, whereas I knew Mike had had loads of sex.
I’d heard girls talking about him at The Badger’s Sett in the past, and I’d seen his girlfriends before, both in London and Little Buckingham.
They didn’t look like the types to have to pause mid-fellatio to ask whether a hand should be employed over the area that the mouth doesn’t cover, then wondering aloud if you have the required coordination for that to be possible, and then finding out that no, you really do not.
I mean, Mike hadn’t seemed to mind at the time, but I knew people didn’t always say what they meant, not like I did.
He'd taken me to his mum’s on Monday night, which I’d been worried about.
Hetty had always been nice to me, and she was very kind the day of the wedding, but I didn’t really know her very well. Then when I got there, I was shocked to see Lucy and Felix sitting in Hetty’s kitchen waiting for us, as if Felix being in Little Buckingham mid-week wasn’t a never event.
“But who’s running the company?” I asked a valid question, seeing as we were both here.
“Don’t worry, Vics,” Felix told me, giving me a firm side hug. “I’ve been there today. We came down for the evening.”
“Why?”
Felix had frowned at me then as if I’d grown another head.
“What do you mean ‘why’? Vicky, we wanted to see you. We were worried about you.”
“Oh.”
As far as I was concerned, Felix’s interest in me did not go further than our business partnership. I made Felix a lot of money, end of story.
“Are you okay, hun?” asked Lucy, giving me her own tight hug after a brief pause and a nod from me.
“I’m fine,” I said, bewildered by all the attention.
“You wanna see some of my new maps?” Lucy asked, and I smiled.
“Yes, please.”
Lucy was a successful author of epic fantasy. She knew I loved how she structured her worlds, and the intricacies of the maps her illustrator created for her.
And then the dogs ran in and bombarded me.
Hetty had two massive golden retrievers. I’d only ever seen them from a distance before, and I always thought they were beautiful. The younger one, Samwise, was so excited to see me, that he jumped up on my chest and licked my face.
Mike pulled him off, shouting at him to get down, but I just dropped into a crouch so that both dogs could get at me, throwing my arms around their furry necks in turn.
Samwise got over-excited again and toppled me over, then decided to sit with his front paws on my chest, his weight pinning me down whilst the older dog, Frodo, licked my face.
“Oh my God!” shouted Lucy. “Bloody hell, Mum. You need to train those dogs. This is getting ridiculous.”
Mike pushed the dogs back so I could get to my feet.
When I looked up, Lucy and Felix were trying to push a fat pony out of the kitchen.
The dogs were still rubbing up against my legs, and I sank my hands into their thick fur.
“Sorry, love,” Hetty said, not really looking that sorry at all. “My fur babies can be a little much. It just means they like you.”
“Mum,” Mike snapped. “Vicky doesn’t want to be?—”
“I don’t mind,” I said, smiling down at Hetty’s “fur babies”. There used to be a black Labrador at Buckingham Manor. I loved him more than anything.
I found touch more difficult as a child, but not with animals.
When we were halfway through supper, the fat pony pushed his way in through the double doors and ate my salad with its velvety nose.
It was one of the best meals I’d ever been to. I hadn’t laughed that much in years.
The next day, we ate at The Badger’s Sett again, but instead of heading straight home, Mike walked us over to Pete and Emily’s house, so we could watch the hedgehogs.
Margot came over twice. She didn’t cry the second time, which I thought was progress.
For some reason though, Mike didn’t seem totally comfortable around Margot. In fact, he seemed to watch her like she was some sort of unexploded bomb when she was near me.
And her visits seemed to provoke some sort of anxiety from him. Like he was worried about something. As she was leaving the second time, I saw them through the window, having what looked like a heated conversation by her car.
I couldn’t hear what was being said, but Mike looked agitated and was frowning down at her whilst he spoke.
I’d asked him about it afterwards, but he just shrugged it off.
Then, thinking he was trying to be protective again, I reassured him that Margot was always kind to me, and that he had no cause to worry about her around me.
“I know that, love,” he’d said softly, still with that worry in his eyes. “She loves you something fierce. Believe me, I know.”
And Mike’s reaction to my offer to buy him a new van after it broke down for the second time was also strange. He was vehemently against it, to the point of being ridiculous.
I honestly could not understand his attitude. It was totally nonsensical that he didn’t have a working vehicle.
“I invest in businesses all the time,” I told him when he’d tried to kiss me into silence, which to be fair, had been working well for him thus far.
He’d stiffened and pulled away when I mentioned investing.
“I don’t need your money, Vics,” he told me. “I’m not with you because of that. Understand me? I want you for you.”
I frowned at him. “Of course I know that, Mike. I would never have such a low opinion of you. You’ve got more integrity than any other human I know.”
Something had flashed across his expression when I said that. I wasn’t very good at reading emotions. If I had to guess, I would have said it looked a lot like fear, but that couldn’t be right.
What did Mike have to be afraid of?
But before I had a chance to ask him, he’d grabbed me to him in a bear hug so tight I had trouble breathing.
“I mean it Vicky,” he said into my hair, his voice gruff. “I only want you. Right?”
My reply in the affirmative was muffled by his shirt, but it did seem to settle him down enough that his arms loosened, and I could take in some much-needed oxygen.
Mike was really cagey when it came to anything to do with the business finances.
I mean, finance was my jam, as Lottie would say.
If anyone could help him balance the books it was me.
It was also clear to me that Mike needed to expand.
He couldn’t cope with all the orders coming in.
He needed to expand his workforce, and he needed a delivery driver. But he was stubborn.
I was stubborn too, so I wasn’t giving up.
But meanwhile, I was something I hadn’t been in a long time, if ever.
I was happy.
So happy, I let my guard down.
I forgot who I was, who Mike was, and that someone like him was unlikely to be with someone like me without a reason.