Chapter Ten
In which Alec gets a tour and Fee nearly takes a ride.
Fee …
Though he wasn’t one for pets, when I was a wee girl Grandad had two dogs. One of them was a decrepit hound who mostly spent her time making sure the goats didn’t eat their way out of their pen. She was a fierce, wiry old girl, and all it took was a small growl, raising her lip to flash a fang and every animal on the farm fell in line.
Grandad said he kept her about to be my role model when I was growing up, as Grandma was already gone and my mother was the wrong sort of bitch.
The other was a mutt who was the result of a mangy stray jumping the fence to have his way with a neighbor’s prize-winning Irish Setter before dancing off into the night, uncaught and unrepentant. Sadly, the poor pup had his father’s looks and his mother’s brains. One time I had to save him from being run over by a backhoe that had been rented to remove a stump, which he had decided was the perfect thing to take a nap under. He bounced out, a second from losing a leg, covered in motor oil, which ended up all over me, licking my face, the farm hand’s face, Grandad’s face, and ready to play fetch.
Grandad said he kept him about because he reminded him so much of my Da.
I thought about that dog as I pulled the truck onto the farm road, after Grandad and I had gone to town to get some radiator parts and a few other things and nearly had a heart attack at the sight of Da and my kidnapped Godking taking a lovely afternoon stroll through the bean rows.
It had been a beautiful morning.Driving to town, watching the gold of the fields from the surrounding farms fade into the moss green and gray of empty land, was always a pleasure.A peregrine had raced along over the top of the truck for a while, then veered off looking for rodents.On the way back in the quiet I could hear the funny, raspy sound of a corncrake, answered by another, though I wasn’t able to spot them
That had put a smile on my face, rare as they were these days.
Da stopped from where he was gesturing at the irrigation ditch and waved, a big, sweet smile on his daft, old face. Davies copied him, so they were waving in perfect sync, his smile being a little too toothy for sweetness. He may have looked like a British lion, but that was only a costume, the man was pure wolf.
“JESUS BLOODY WEPT!” Grandad bellowed, then made a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan.
It was all I could do not to switch gears and chase the two of them around the Italian Borlattis and flat runners, but I had too much respect for the crops. Instead, I pulled next to one of the sheds, my hands so tight on the steering wheel I thought my knuckles would bleed and in a calm and pleasant tone said, “Can you get your shotgun, please?”
“Don’t you have that hand cannon of yer man’s in your handbag?”
I swear for a moment I thought Davies could hear us, because just then he turned and even from the distance I could tell he was staring dead at me, impossibly green eyes piercing, and still showing all of those wolfy teeth.
“I do, but it would scare Da if I pulled it. He already knows you’re trigger happy. ”
He snorted, “Aye. Do you think Martin’s let him use the phone? Or is it just the Grand Tour he’s taking him on?”
“I’d say since the SAS isn’t paratrooping into the potatoes, probably not. You know they would have no sense of humor about someone taking one of their prize pig billionaires.”
By the time I joined them, Da had them closer to the house, in the massive herb garden that was on the side away from the animal barn. If the goats had their way they would eat all of the plants down to the soil, self-marinating from the inside. Davies stood there nodding, an exaggerated look of interest on his face as Da explained that the farm used to have fields of lavender, but that after his mother had died no one else had the heart to look after it. “It’s still Fee’s favorite, though, isn’t it?” He slipped his arm about my waist and kissed my cheek.
“Yeah,” I said. I tried to not vibrate with too much rage. It wasn’t Da’s fault that the grown-ups had been keeping things from him. Though a less dim fella might assume someone being kept under lock and key and chain was not a normal guest.
“I bet you were a cute little thing, running about these fields, learning to love the land.”
Davies, despite standing knee-deep in fragrant, golden yarrow plants, wearing ancient overalls whose trouser part were too short, with one of the straps undone, managed to look regal. At ease. A tattoo’d, shockingly fit Godking surveying a tiny corner of his fiefdom.
I very much wanted to stamp on one of his feet and my head throbbed so hard I thought I might be having a stroke.
“Your father is quite the tour guide. He told me things about Cutrager carrots-”
“Kuttiger carrots,” Da gently corrected.
“About Kuttiger carrots, thank you Martin,” the great English prick half bowed to my Da, and it was all I could do not to punch the smile from his face, “that I could never have imagined I might find interesting.”
“It's the least I could do for someone stuck wearing my old overalls!” Da punched Davies in the shoulder and several emotions passed through those uncanny green eyes, his body simultaneously, automatically, shifting into what I knew was a fighting stance.
I shifted my footing, so I was half between the two of them, my hand in my bag, closing over the butt of his gun. If he touched one hair on my Da’s head the world would have one less billionaire, though for some reason the thought didn’t please me entirely as much as I would have thought.
Then Davies sagged a bit, his expression amused, and laughed, “Appreciate the loan, Martin.”
“Ah, you can keep them. I can get more and if you are making silly bets for the price of a few pints of plain a new set of clothes probably wouldn’t go you amiss.”
A confused frown crossed Davies face, and he looked from Da to me. He started to say something, something that might have been sincere, and then that wolf grin returned to his face and he said, “Hello, Liam, or should I say, Fintan? Good to see you.”
He must have had eyes in the back of his head, since I hadn’t noticed Grandad was now standing on the edge of the patch, shotgun trained on Davies.
“Well, if we are all finished trampling my sage, perhaps it’s time to come back into the house.”
Some time later, after getting Davies back into the basement, now chained to a chair at Grandad’s insistence, I sent one more message to Viktoria. Sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing my temples and willing the fist full of Paracetamol I’d taken to kick in, I listened to Da and Grandad go at it hammer and tongs while Da made up a plate.
He was worried his new friend Alec had missed lunch.
“Da, do you think I’m an idjit to not know there is an entire person in the basement this whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Da!”
“Martin, you’re sweet fella, but Fee clearly got her looks from her mother and her brain from God knows where. And anyways, if you were knowing he was down there then why for the love of God didn’t you ask what there was a man doing in locked in my basement.”
“I thought he was one of those organic, vegan hippie types you get out here, they can be a bit daft. So maybe you didn’t want him about while Fee was here.”
“I can take care of myself, Da.” They both ignored me.
“And you thought I thought having a bit of chain wrapped about him was the solution to that rather than, say having him leave?”
Da looked a bit abashed, “Well, you can be a bit of a strange one yourself, Dad. And Fee. No offense, sweetheart.”
“None taken, Da.”
“Offense taken here,” Grandad growled, going to pick up the finished sandwich and crisp. “At least I don’t have to wear the fecking mask anymore. It itches like a bastard.”
“No, I’ll take it. Davies and I need to talk.”
You wouldn’t imagine that a man chained up in a basement, hands behind his back, wearing old farm clothes - he’d gotten Da to give him a henley before he was taken back to the basement - could look not merely satisfied but smug, but Davies was clearly a man of parts.
“Fee. Feeeeee. Fee. Short for Fiona, no doubt. A pretty name.” When he said Fee I could feel it, like he was licking each letter in place of licking me.
“Very pretty, not mine, but very pretty.” I sat down on the bed, facing him, the plate balanced on my denim covered knees. “There are 3,194 billionaires in the world, a world in which people regularly go to bed hungry. Children go to bed hungry. In which it is harder and harder to grow food because of the environment being murdered by those billionaires. But never mind that for now.
“About 167 of those billionaires live in the UK. One of every, oh, about 415,000 people. Not many at all. And they are important, oh so important to industry, to finance, to the technology, the social world, to the fucking Royals. If one of these precious billionaires disappears there should be chaos, rioting in the streets of Knightsbridge. Corgis and polo ponies living together. Which begs the question, why oh why is no one looking for you?”
“No idea, since you took my phone, and your father lost his somewhere, I haven’t been able to check the news. Maybe one of my foxhounds pissed on Prince William’s riding boots and they are punishing me for it? Hey,” he leaned forward, a golden lock of hair falling on his forehead, shading those poison green eyes, “speaking of going to bed hungry, can I have one of those crisps? Of course, you’ll have to feed it to me...”
His voice dropped straight into my knickers.
Shit.
Nope.
“I thought you might want this more than a snack.”
I pulled his watch out of my pocket and dangled it in front of him, trying not to be too offended when he looked even hungrier for it than he did for me. Or the crisps.
He sat back, schooling his expression, “Why? ”
“Because you didn’t hurt my father, when I know you could have. And I did a little research and I know this was your father’s. It seems fair.”
Putting the plate aside, I got up and walked behind him, and strapped the watch to his wrist, the supple leather groaning as I may have pulled the strap a bit tighter than was strictly required.
“Thank you, Fee,” he spoke softly, more serious, more intimate, than a whisper.
“Now, tit for tat,” I said, sitting back down, knowing now he was going to be looking at my tits, “the real reason they aren’t looking for you.”
“My being gone would be bad for all sorts of my businesses. Crisp. Please.” He said the last with a grin.
I picked up the largest crisp and held it out so it brushed his lower lip. He snapped it up in two quick bites of those wolfish teeth. He must have been starved.
“You mean the server farm,” I held out another crisp, this time he opened his mouth, eyes meeting mine, looking as innocent as a boy kneeling for First Communion. The tongue that licked out to take the crisp proved the lie of that, as it barely touched the tips of my fingers.
The electricity of that touch went both ways, and his irises dilated so only the finest ring of emerald remained.
“Not so much that, I have a partner - an idiot but a well-funded one - for that project. How about a bit of that delicious looking sandwich? I could savage that filet.”
Rather than hold the entire thing up to him, I ripped off a hunk of bread and chicken and held it out.
He leaned back, his body sagging loosely against the chain, a brow raised, his head cocked to the side. Appraising me.
I leaned further forward.
He lifted the full chair and chains with only a flex of his legs and moved it back, so his mouth was just beyond my fingers. Then he let his mouth open, a touch, so I could see his tongue brushing the backs of his teeth.
I stood. He let his head fall back, offering me his neck, his mouth, whatever I wanted. Rather than leaning over him, I straddled his legs, and sat, dangling the bit of sandwich over his mouth. Raising himself a little, he took the bite, his sucking in my fingers. Soft, wet, and with a little teeth.
His cock, thick and stone-hard and long, long enough to hurt if it were free and I were on it, nestled itself along the seam of my jeans. I didn’t pretend. I was, again, impulsive.
Snagging Davies’ golden hair, I raked my nails on his scalp, and ground down as he ground up, his hips free enough to circle, to drive me crazy. My mouth now just above his, now the thing he wanted.
“Kiss me, Fee. I consent. You righteous types are obsessed with verbal, full, and uncoerced consent, so have at me.”
The pure ridiculousness of the situation briefly broke in on the equally pure, soaking wet pleasure of rubbing myself along that… that… cricket wicket he had in place of a penis. “Don’t you know there is no consent under capitalism, Mr. Davies?”
For a moment he stopped moving, meeting and we stared at each other, our faces close enough for our eyelashes to tangle, for our heaving breaths to align, and then, at the same moment, we both laughed, and laughed, and laughed our way into that kiss.
The laughs stopped like a record scratch, as my lips fell onto his and his tongue slid in, clever and teasing, tickling the silky skin on the inside of my lips until I squirmed against him, my clit, all of me, so sensitive that the slight brush of my nipples on my t-shirt, on his chest, started those tiny, electric pulses that could so quickly turn into my coming.
I started to move like I was riding.
He moaned and spoke into my mouth, encouraging me, wanting me to come, wanting me to pull him out and put him in me, wanting me to push the chair over and ride his mouth. Wanting.
So much wanting for a man who had everything.
I, who had nothing, was ready to give it to him when my mobile chimed, the special ring I had for my extralegal and activist friends. Then it chimed again, and again, and kept going.
“Ignore it,” Davies ordered. I wasn’t good with orders, and anyway, if I was getting that many messages something was probably very wrong.
Bending backwards, which caused him to give me the kind of groan that even the memory of would keep me warm even if I were in Antarctica, I reached for the mobile that had fallen onto the floor and saw ten messages from Viktoria.
The first one was so panicked she had written it in Cyrillic, which I don’t understand.
The rest of them were in English, and were all variations on the same theme.
“This is bad, this is very fucking bad.”
“You are lucky to be alive.”
“None of you will be alive for very long.”
“You need to let Davies go.”
“You need to get Davies to his people.”
“Call me about Davies. NOW!”
“Or kill him, destroy the body, and hide for the rest of your life.”
Needless to say, it was a bit of a mood killer.