Chapter 21
Georgia
A car, the BMW, is still parked in the front circular drive. I notice this when I happen to look out the window in Lazlo’s bedroom. Someone forgot to tell the valet, or whoever parks them for Sir Benjamin. Unless it’s deliberate?
Then I spy the keys on the dresser. A carved antique dresser, of course. Those keys sit in a pile of wallet, phone, underwear, and receipts.
It’s almost two AM before we’ve all showered and Rafe has crawled into bed. After Lazlo and I join him the visual of the keys reappears and that idea re-solidifies in my tired brain.
Run. I really should do it tonight while everyone is shattered.
As if to reinforce how tired we all are, I fall asleep after deciding that then jolt awake and remember where I am—between two snoring men.
3.15 AM, according to Lazlo’s bedside clock.
Sitting up, carefully, quietly, I sneak to the bottom of the bed and slip off, shivering in my panties and bra, while I collect my shoes, that rather over-used black dress, and the coat I was loaned and never returned.
I steal the keys and Rafe’s wallet. The door has great hinges and makes no sound when I open it and exit. I close it equally quietly.
I have some money. Though he only has notes as they aren’t traceable.
I have shoes, clothes, and a heart that’s rattling along, as if ready to scamper away, while I sneak down the stairs in this house where I am the only person awake.
Nevertheless the old walls are making odd sounds in the middle of the night.
The mice are stirring. Or the cats. I’m sure that was in some vintage British children’s rhyme.
I have the keys, what more do I need except courage? Petrol? I will see. If it’s almost empty, I will have to go back inside and find more cash. London is doable. The embassy or bust.
I should never have fled to Clampton, I tell myself, as I ease open the front door.
Something is making the roof above the foyer creak. Something that moves. Possums? Do they have those here? Ghosts. Possible, in England. I hope it’s not ghosts.
I close the door, as carefully as I can, hear a thud as I turn.
And a huge dark monster—Lazlo—stands before me.
“Fuck!” I slap my hand to my chest and step backward, hitting the door. “How… Why did you do that?” I half punch his chest, and he catches my hand and hangs onto it. “You scared the fuck out of me!”
He doesn’t let go of my hand when I try to retrieve it and instead stares down at me.
“How?” I repeat.
“I climbed down. Of course.”
He climbed down the front of a house at midnight, or thereabouts. This man is crazy.
“Why are you creeping around trying to run away at three in the morning, Georgia?”
I stay put, crammed against the cold door.
“It’s obvious what you’re doing.” He lets go of my hand and I snatch it to my chest.
“I’m leaving because I’ve thought this through.
” Lazlo is sensible. I just need to explain this to him?
“What Rafe said about this crime probably being organized by some really powerful people—I think it’s true.
It’s the best explanation. If we keep looking and we uncover something, if we find the person or people at the top, what do you think will happen? ”
“You’re worried about retribution?”
“As in dying? Yes. It’s not worth it. Without me, they have nothing and this will die down. Settle down,” I hurriedly correct the phrase, feeling my heart knocking out the beats like it wants to break my ribcage.
“They.” He savors the word. “Except it’s not they. It’s me and it’s Sir Ben, who I’ve pledged myself to because he saved my life, once upon a time. It’s his dead son, Joseph.” He looks at me, studies me, places his hand at my neck and rearranges my hair over my ear.
It makes me shiver, as a man’s hand doing that often does.
“It’s justice,” he continues. “It’s finding out who killed Joseph and the others. Who arranged for you to be tortured and raped. It’s all of that.”
“Or maybe it’s just death if they find out about us?” I wrinkle up my forehead. “Is it worth that risk?”
He places his other hand on the door beside my head and leans in to whisper to my ear. “Yes. I will protect you. I promise.”
He will? Nice of him to offer, except that might be impossible.
“Hmph.” I twist my mouth. “Just let me go? You can keep, you know, investigating this.”
He sighs. “No, we can’t. You’re it, the only witness, and you know this. Now give me back the keys and turn around. We’re going back inside the house before we freeze.”
Only now do I notice he’s only wearing a T-shirt and underwear.
Should I do what he says or should I run? I suck on my lip as I consider the odds.
I’d get about two paces. I’m being negative. What if I get to the car door then slam it, lock it? I eye the ground between us.
“Not even if I beg?” I ask. “I promise to send you everything, everything I can recall about the boat.” I wait, praying. Last chance.
He shakes his head, slowly. “No. Fuck, no. Stop pushing me and get inside. Give me the car keys.” He holds out his hand.
I sigh. “Okay.” I fumble in my coat pocket for those, and the wallet falls out instead. “Shit.”
Just like I hoped he would, he lets go of my neck and bends to pick it up.
Which is when I step sideways and run down the stairs. The bottom of the coat is flying and I hear him curse as he tries to grab it, then he turns, but I’m sprinting across the driveway with big strides.
I skid to a stuttered stop.
The car door is under my hand and he’s close, so close.
I tug and the door whines, is unlocking, when his hand clamps onto the angle of my neck and shoulder.
He yanks me backward then pushes me into the cold metal and glass of the car.
We’re both panting from the struggle and the run, and I try to stand and push off from the car, but I get nowhere. After a few tries, I give in.
The crunch of shoes on dirt, the clink of metal, and our labored breaths, are all I hear while he takes the car keys and relocks the car.
“Come.” With my wrist painfully tight under his grasp he marches us back to the front door of the house. I’m half towed and I stumble up the steps. At the last, I trip and drop to one knee as he reaches for the door.
He stops. “Up!”
When I climb to my feet, I find myself pushed into that door again, only I’m facing the timber this time. It’s just as cold, just as hard, and the door handle bumps my hip until I shift aside.
“So I can’t trust you to do as you say you will.” He’s a few inches behind me, his breath searing my neck.
“No, guess not. Asshole.”
“Asshole?” He laughs then adds calmly, “You just sealed your fate. I’ve held back. I truly have. I get these urges, sometimes, but I don’t…do…them. But now.” His fist still holds my wrist, and my skin burns as he twists it into the small of my back and pins it there.
I grimace and hiss, smack my free hand on the door. “Hey. That hurts!”
“Good. You’re not going anywhere because I say you’re not.
Now… Let’s just underline that, so you don’t forget.
” He puts his hand under my dress and slaps my thighs, hard, until I spread them apart.
“This.” With his hand flat on my stomach, he wrenches my lower body outward.
In seconds he’s brought out his cock, rolled aside the crotch of my panties, found my entrance, and shoved himself inside me.
His cock impales, slides, and widens, then keeps going a long way up inside.
Disbelief hits.
That hugeness spearing into me is a choking shock that I’ve barely registered when he’s pulled out and thumped back in. My mouth is wide. My body jars the door, rattles it, and I’m plastered to it, being fucked from behind remorselessly…
Thud. Thud.
And it’s impossible not to get turned on.
I groaned at the second thrust.
Gasped at the third and the fourth.
On the sixth my mouth slips over the door as I whimper.
“Sir Ben,” he rasps out. “Won’t like this.”
Thud. I moan again.
“But it’s your fault. And…” Thud.
“We won’t tell him.”
It’s monstrous. Brutal… And hot. Now, when he rams in, a shameful, wet squelch joins the other sounds of sex.
“Please,” I whimper. “Please.”
“What? Let you come?” He chuckles and does a rapid series of cruel, harder drives, that lift me inches up the door.
“Oh. Oh.” I huff. “Fffuck.”
“That’s it. Beg me again.” He spears in, stops. I can feel the swell of his cock, the sting from the stretch of my flesh, and my wet arousal.
He’s inside me, miles deep, a part of me at this moment in time.
Another jab of his hips and I moan a curse at the door.
If I survive being torn apart by his cock, I know I will come at the slightest stimulation.
The shockwaves of thrust after thrust keep shuddering into me. His mouth at my hair. His hand pinning mine.
Being taken.
All of this to underline…his possession of me.
Fuck.
Mouth gaping, I’m arching backward into him even as he drives in and starts to come.
He crushes in at the last spurt, hitches me higher up the door, then withdraws in one quick motion before he releases my hand and my body.
I slide down, and collapse at the base of the door.
I stay there, kneeling, my hands propped to either side, until he takes my arm and pulls me to my feet.
He opens the door and urges me through, closes it. “If we’re lucky, security missed seeing that. If not, you might get requests.”
I manage a few steps before I halt, lightly swaying. “I’m…” I gesture at my legs where I know come is dribbling. I’ve left a few spots of wetness on the floor.
“The cleaners will get that.”
I can’t help saying, somewhat bitterly, “I thought you were a good man.”
He grabs my lower face, makes me look at him.
“I thought you were good too. You have no understanding of how fucking fascinating last night was to me. I’ve always had needs.
Wishes. Things I wanted whenever I was with a woman.
You showed me some women have those needs too.
You.” I hear him inhale. “I wasn’t going to tell Rafe, because I know what he will say.
Now I don’t know. Behave, Georgia. From now on, you will behave.
Also…” He hooks a finger in the back of the collar and tugs.
“You forgot to leave this behind. It says you’re owned by me and Rafe. Don’t…fucking try to run away again.”
I glare at him.
He only shakes his head and crooks his finger. “Come.”
Scowling at him as we ascend the stairs does nothing to help me. It’s still satisfying. Though the ache in my pussy reminds me of his punishment. If I had private time, I would get myself off in an instant.
At the bedroom door he stops and murmurs to me, “I will know if you get off the bed. If you want to be handcuffed, try it.”
Rafe is still snoring and hasn’t stirred.
He ushers me to the bed, watches me undress, gets me a wet towel and a new pair of underwear that I pull on after wiping myself, then he points at the bed. I climb in. Then he slides in next to me, pulls up the sheet, and lays his arm over me. His heavy arm.
“I can’t sleep like this.” I hiss at him, plucking at his arm, which I can’t move.
“Sucks to be you.” He closes his eyes. “Go to sleep before I decide to gag you and fuck you so hard you’ll be sorry. Wait, already did that…” He trails off and I stare at his face then huff. Then I turn over beneath his arm.
Sleep takes a while to sift in and smother me. Until it does.