Destroy Me (13 page)

She took hold of her case, pulling it by the wheels into the security check point. She went inside. She didn’t look back at Brenton.

Later, at the departure gate, she read the note.

“
You will be safe there. This is for the best.
”

She burst into tears; she didn’t care if people heard her. Her heart had been taken from her and ripped in two. Barely sentient of anything around her, an airline hostess touched her arm gently, asking her if she could board the plane now, being one of the last left in the lounge.

Like an automaton, she walked robotically toward the tunnel and entered it.

Chapter Eighteen

Landing in the early morning at London Heathrow Airport, dismal rain greeted the disembarking passengers. Typical English weather. Tara made her way through the quiet terminal, pulling the small case Damien had packed for her. She had cried sufficiently throughout the flight, glad for the darkness in the interior of the plane that had enabled her to hide her upset from the other travellers around her. Fortunately the flight had not been at all packed and she had lain down across the seats and watched a recent cinema release. Though it was a mediocre thriller, she had felt the pain of the tortured lead character, resonating with him in the darker moments of his struggle. It only made her sadder, her heightened state of sensitivity overwhelming her.

Damien had torn her flimsy world apart. He had ripped her open and pulled out her insides, failing to put them back together again. She was destroyed; and she yet she refused to admit her defeat. He had killed someone for her. Hadn’t that been enough to bond them irreparably? Did he think she could just go back to her London life now and forget him? He misjudged her badly. And yet, it had been the perfect excuse to break the ties with her and rid her from his life.

Clearing customs quickly at this hour of the day she walked toward the underground, looking again at the address Damien had written out for her, of the apartment he had leased for her.

He would know where she lived, and yet his note made it clear that he had no plans to visit.

“
You will be safe there. It is for the best.”

Why did he write that? He
had
kept her safe. Had risked his own life to protect her, without hesitation. It didn’t need to end this way.

She saw again the details of a bank account, opened in her name, with a balance of $100,000. She should have been happy that he had provided for her, that he had set her up so that she could quite easily go for a couple of years at least without worrying financially, without even needing to work if she chose. Whilst it did take the struggle out of her future situation and ease her circumstances considerably, it had given her the sickening feeling of having been treated like a whore, admittedly an expensive one, or some mistress that he had tired of and wanted rid of with minimal fuss. That was not who she was; she could not keep his money. Whilst he was virtually a billionaire, she had never been after him for his money. She had fallen in love with Damien and his dark desires. He had opened her up to a new world of forbidden pleasure and their tumultuous encounters had taken her to the extremes of sexual abandonment with his dominant demands of her. How could he throw it away as though it were nothing?

And now she was back in London, with few friends, and no family; completely alone. She took the elevator down to the underground. Though she had Damien’s money, she was unused to spending frivolously and the thought of getting a taxi all the way into the centre of London felt an extravagance.

The address of the flat he had chosen for her was in a part of London that ordinarily she would have never been able to afford to rent. It was also in close proximity to the company she had worked for before leaving to be with her fiancé in Washington three months ago. It was just a short walk from the flat to the office. He must have known she might want to go back to her old job, and had made the commute to work extremely easy for her. Bitterly, she thought how easy he had made it for her to slot back into her old life, as though they had never met.

She had received confirmation from Jacob, her old boss, that he would welcome her back to work whenever she was ready. At the time, before all the trouble with Marc Chambers, she had been desperate to return, to get away from Damien and his arrogant coldness toward her. That was before she had glimpsed a vulnerability in him she could never have imagined existed, and discovered that he lived a life of hidden pain.

Buying a ticket at the machine, she made her way to the platform. Early workers were standing around waiting for the train. When it arrived she found a seat; the carriage quiet at this time of day.

After about forty minutes and a change of trains, she reached street level at St James’s station, and began to walk to her address.

Entering the street she looked up at the grand buildings, and felt only a deep sense of loneliness.

At number 21 she stopped and made her way up the outside steps, opening up the front door and greeting the concierge, then taking the elevator to the top floor and finding apartment F.

Opening her apartment door Tara felt miserable. It was beautiful; immaculately, expensively decorated and furnished. A large lounge, and a bedroom with a double bed. She looked at the bed bitterly, images taunting her of the last time she had spent with Damien in his bed, falling asleep together after the most passionate, unrelenting sex; meeting their deepest, ever-growing desires for each other; her fingers spread across his chest as his muscles tensed, a sheen of sweat covering him as he made love to her, never taking his stormy green eyes off her.

And then she had not seen him again.

She kicked her case across the floor of the lounge.

“Fuck you Damien. You bloody bastard.”

Was this her future? In a flat paid for by some cold hearted billionaire on the other side of the Atlantic.

She went into the lounge and fired up her laptop to see if she had Wi-Fi.

It took a while, during which she resisted the impulse to throw it across the room.

Her temper was far worse than his.

She still thought in terms of him and her, when in reality ‘they’ didn’t exist.

She pushed the computer from her lap onto the couch, grabbed the apartment keys and ran downstairs to the street. She needed a drink.

She looked for the nearest convenience store and bought a bottle of whisky. Carrying it back along the street she wanted to rip off the top of the bottle and drink it as she walked.

She was turning into a mess. She stopped herself, retaining her last semblance of decorum; her dignity, she felt, had disappeared when Brenton had handed her the ticket at the airport and smashed her dreams into pieces.

Back upstairs she drank straight from the bottle as she connected to her emails.

Jacob had sent her another email, telling her to come in on Monday. There was nothing from Damien.

She grabbed her phone, to see if there were any messages from him; they could have been delayed in coming through where she had switched it off on the plane, but there was nothing.

She began to type an email.

‘
Whilst I appreciate your consideration in setting me up in this apartment, I am not a whore, nor a mistress to be paid off: and given that you no longer require my sexual services, it would seem only right that I return your money to you forthwith.
If you could therefore let me know the details of your bank account, I will return the sum to you
.’

I don’t want your bloody money I want you, was what she really wanted to write.

The drink was doing her no good at all. She lay down on the couch, closing her eyes. She hadn’t slept on the overnight flight and she was exhausted, but she couldn’t bear to go into the bedroom.

Some time later she woke from a dream, Damien’s mouth on hers, his chest towering over her, broad and muscular as he pounded into her, his arms holding her possessively as he fucked her.

Her skin felt hot as she remembered his scent, the memories of him so visceral. She thought of the things he had done to her, his dominant controlled confidence with her, pushing her to the limits of physical pleasure, pushing her to do things she had never done.

Chapter Ninteen

Damien had returned to his house, thankful that Brenton had taken her to the airport. He couldn’t have done it himself.

The quiet of the house suited him with his team of men gone. He could return to solitude now.

He needed sleep after the exertions of the night before; the disposing of Marc Chambers. He would check in at the office later.

Going into his bedroom he smelt her scent immediately. She had slept in his bed the night before and they had spent the day in it making love. They’d had sex all day, but it had become far more than that, and that’s when he’d had to send her away.

She had seeped into his soul, broken through his defences, but she could only lead to his destruction; a heartbreaking tormentor with the face of an angel and eyes of fire.

Damien had demons inside of him, he knew that. Competing with his obsessive desire for her, was his need to keep her safe, to not let her become one more of the dead bodies who haunted his nights; of those he had been unable to save in his life in the Special Forces.

His background had taken him to parts of the world where bombs and mass shootings were a daily occurrence, where people died in front of him. He had been unable to save them all.

He could not let her close for he could not afford to loose her. It would destroy him.

She had cut through his defences; yet he had instigated it from the first moment. He had led her to do so, provoking her. He blamed himself. In his bid for revenge he had forced her to play his game, and though she had done so willingly, goading him, tempting him further to transgress, the careful boundaries he had erected had quickly crumbled.

It had started from that first encounter with her and she had become his co-conspirator.

He couldn’t sleep in this room. He chose another bedroom; he had many, all seldom used. He stripped his clothes off, black pants and a t-shirt. He had burnt the clothes he had been wearing earlier. He had needed to; he couldn’t leave any trace of himself. The authorities would not find Marc Chambers. He had been disposed of; but he didn’t need DNA evidence lying around just in case they came to question him. Only he, Brenton and Todd knew what had happened, and he trusted them implicitly.

He felt no remorse for his actions. Chambers would have killed Tara without a thought; he had already killed innocent people before now. 

He fell asleep quickly, exhaustion claiming him.

The next morning he rose around 6am, showered and quickly headed out. The vehicle they had used last night was gone. He took his Ferrari and headed to the gym, wanting a work-out before going into the office to catch up on what new jobs had come in for them. He wanted in on those jobs; he needed to stay busy.

Inside the office, it was business as usual. He got the team together briefly, and then went into his private office, needing to check his emails from clients.

He had account managers who handled the day to day business, all highly experienced. He was hands-on when he wanted to be but it wasn’t a necessity. The millions he had made ensured he would never need to work again, if he chose, but in truth, he wouldn’t have known what to do with himself. This was what he did; what he’d always done. In his late ‘30’s now, he could see himself doing it until he no longer could physically, and that was many years away.

He was purposefully ignoring one particular email that he had seen. He didn’t open it. It was no longer relevant to him. She was gone. He did not wish to resurrect her.

He picked up his cell phone, and dialled one of his contacts. They spoke very briefly, arranging to meet at the Club. He would be going to Pakistan in the next twenty four hours to facilitate a job.

He left his office and found Brenton and Todd.

Brenton was more like Damien in looks; dark haired, though his eyes were light blue to Damien’s startling green ones. Todd was lighter, his hair a dirty blonde, and his height greater than both Damien and Brenton’s. He stood at least six four. In comparison to them, Todd looked like a giant, though he was the calmest of the trio in temperament.

Together they drove the short distance to the Club, where they were to meet their contact and discuss the operation in confidentiality. Conversation in the car was minimal between them; having known each other for years, they were comfortable in silence.

As soon as they entered the Club, memories came back to Damien; inevitable, unstoppable recollections of the times he had spent with Tara here, of dragging her off to the Library and spanking her hard for her treachery; of performing the sweetest, most depraved acts on her body upstairs in one of the bedrooms; licentious debauchery that had turned rapidly into mutual devotions to each other.

He should have never brought her here.

Chapter Twenty

Tara arrived at work that Monday, after a weekend spent burying herself in books, trying to escape the thoughts of sadness and anger inside her. She had received no reply from the email she had sent Damien.

Dressed in one of the outfits she had worn before when she had worked there, she wished now that she had spent some of Damien’s money and gone shopping to revamp her wardrobe at least, but she hadn’t wanted to go out.

It felt now like she was stepping back in time, as though none of the last few weeks had happened.

She felt hurt and humiliated, though no-one at her old company knew about her involvement with Damien. She knew she could have lived off Damien’s money, but it didn’t feel right to do so, given the way it had been given to her, and she had already contacted Joseph asking for her job back before he had given her the money. Besides which, she would go crazy with nothing to do. She needed some kind of routine, some kind of purpose, and the easiest way to get that was to return, as she had planned.