Hunting Truth (26 page)

Lucas stood staring at the wall. He no
longer looked angry; he looked broken. I looked at Carter and
caught his eye. He looked distinctly uncomfortable for a second but
then quickly took charge. He barked orders at the guys to search
the server and all hard drives and removable storage devices that
they could find within the building for any footage that may have
been taken from inside this, or any of the other private rooms.
They obeyed instantly. Then he walked up behind Lucas and, looking
distinctly uncomfortable, squeezed his shoulder briefly before
looking embarrassed and making a hasty retreat. Clearly Carter knew
the severity of the situation. Of course he would—he was Lucas’
right-hand man. He probably knew more than I did.

I walked over to Lucas and stood in front
of him.
He looked a
million miles away, and probably wished he was. I slipped my arms
around him and rested my head on his chest and hugged him gently.
At first he remained frozen, as if he hadn’t even noticed me, but
then his arms slid around me and he returned my hug. I lifted my
face and kissed his neck, squeezing him a little tighter.
Gradually, I felt him begin to relax. His tense, taut frame sagged
a little and his breathing became deeper before he rested his cheek
on the top of my head. “Oh Issy, it’s hopeless,” he sighed. “I’m
going to lose everything. I can’t fight this, it’s pointless to
try.” He suddenly hugged me to him so hard that I could barely
breathe. “But I’ll be damned if I’m losing you. Maybe I can hide
some funds—not enough to be missed, and we could emigrate,
somewhere remote where Joel can’t find us. We could make our own
paradise in the wilderness. In fact, if he has my company and my
assets, I doubt he’ll even bother trying. And even if he does,
we’ll be too far away from here to be affected by any fallout if
those photos get published. What do you say?”

He sounded excited, almost
childlike
, but I
couldn’t feel the same. I knew he’d be miserable hiding away and
keeping a low profile—he’d done that for so long, trying to evade
Joel’s cruel attempts to derail his businesses. It wasn’t fair for
him to do it again. And though I wanted to be with Lucas more than
anything, did I really want to give up my life to live in the
wilderness? Wasn’t Lucas my life now? He was but I feared that the
stress and pressure of such a situation would tear us apart anyway.
The situation seemed truly hopeless as well as blatantly unfair. I
needed time to think it through. “When’s the deadline for you to
hand everything over?”

He looked at his watch. “I have a little
over forty eight hours. We could do it, Issy.”

I didn’t want to crush his enthusiasm. I
hated seeing him looking so broken. “Lucas, can we go home now
there are others in the building? I think we need to think
carefully before we make a decision.”

He gripped my upper arms and held me at
arms’ length, an expression of confusion and hurt upon his face.
“What’s there to think about? Besides, I want to stay here to see
whether Carter’s crew can uncover anything.”

I sighed, attempting not to sound
exasperated. “What
’s the
point, Lucas? Does it matter whether you find footage to prove that
these rooms had cameras that recorded secretly? Does it really
matter how those photographs came into existence? The fact is, they
exist and they’re in the hands of a psychotic blackmailer. It
doesn’t matter how they got there. Knowing that won’t change the
fact that he has you where he wants you. The only thing that
matters is what you do when time is up.”

“
It matters to me,” he said, simply. “I
want to know how he got hold of them and any other information he’s
in possession of. And I want to know who helped him because my gut
is telling me that he had inside help. And I want to make them pay
as well as Joel. Big time. Even if it takes me years to achieve
it.”

His face had darkened, his eyes were black
and glossy—and not in a good way. “So not only are you going to let
him have the business you worked so hard for, the wealth that you
have accumulated, but you’re also going to let him destroy you
through your need for revenge? Lucas, you’ve played that game once.
For fuck’s sake, that’s what got you into this mess! If you’d left
Joel alone to run your father’s company and ignored his attempts to
ruin you, you’d not be in this mess.”

“
Oh, so it’s my fault that I’m being
blackmailed?” he spat venomously. “Well, thanks for your support,
Issy. The one person I thought I could depend on to get me through
this thinks I deserve it.”

I felt my fists clenching but before I
could open my mouth to retort angrily, a loud, deliberate cough
sounded from the doorway. We both turned to find Carter, looking
uncomfortable yet again.
He clearly wasn’t having a good day either.

“Have you found anything on the tapes?” Lucas
demanded.

“
Not exactly, but we’ve found something on
a hard drive. You’d better come and see for yourself,” he
replied.

We both made to follow him but he turned
and said, “I think it best if just Mr. Hunter came with me,
ma’am.”

Indignation raged inside me and tilted my
chin. “Not a chance, Carter. This affects me too.”

He looked to Lucas and when he didn’t
respond, said reluctantly, “As you wish.”

I followed them back into the main
clubroom and then to the
security room which I noted was devoid of anyone else.
Carter strode inside and leaned down in front of a monitor, taking
the mouse in his large hand. Lucas and I stood either side of him
as he clicked open a folder and hovered the cursor over an MP4
file. “Are you sure you want to see this, ma’am?” he asked
suddenly.

“I am,” I replied firmly, although I had
begun to wonder whether it was a good idea, given that they were
searching for footage of sexual activity that had taken place
supposedly in private.

Without further ado, he
double
-clicked the file
and instantly an image of a woman lying motionless on a bed and
covered in a sheet of the deepest red appeared. It could have been
Ava; if not, she was very similar in appearance, but it was hard to
tell for sure because the room was dimly lit and the camera was
obviously some distance away. Then a rear view of a naked man came
into the shot. I knew instantly who it was.

“
Pause it and
wait outside,” Lucas said, his tone brooking no
argument.

I thought he
’d changed his mind and was talking to me but,
before I could protest, Carter paused the video and straightened.
Without a word, he left the room and closed the door
quietly.

“
Issy, I don’t think you should see the
content of the video. I’m sure you can work out what it’s likely to
contain. The only reason that I want to view it is to see whether
it contains the footage on the still photographs that I’ve
received, and I think it might. Believe me, I have no desire to
view it for any reason other than that,” he said
quietly.

“
So that
’s Ava then?” I asked, nodding towards the
monitor.

“
Yes,” he replied simply, and I felt my
stomach begin to churn.

I knew I shouldn’t. That I probably
wouldn’t like what I saw but a part of me wanted to see him in his
dominant role with someone else. To see what he did with Ava and
maybe compare it to what we did together. That part won out. “I
want to watch it. It’s not like I haven’t seen porn before,” I
said, attempting to sound nonchalant although my stomach was
turning somersaults at an alarming rate.

I heard him release a long breath but he
didn’t move. I thought he was going to overrule me until finally he
bent and took the mouse in his hand, clicking the play icon. As the
clip played, I noticed that he straightened and kept the distance
between us, showing how uncomfortable he was feeling. I briefly
wondered whether he knew I was bluffing but I was more interested
in what was happening on the video.

Lucas approached Ava and bestowed kisses
across her collarbone as he deftly lifted up her arms with one hand
and retrieved a pair of handcuffs with the other. He began to kiss
her lips hungrily as he slid one cuff around her wrist. There was
no sound but I could almost hear the click when it snapped shut.
Ava
’s head jerked in
recognition of what he’d done but she didn’t show any sign that she
didn’t want it. The other cuff was just as smoothly placed around
her other wrist and Lucas held them by the chain. I couldn’t see
how but he somehow attached the chain to the frame of the
bed.

Then he lifted his head and walked to the
foot of the bed where he proceeded to kiss the sole of her foot.
She pulled it away hastily—I guessed she was ticklish. Lucas
grasped it and kissed it again. Once more she pulled it away. He
shook his head and bent down, retrieved something long and slim
from under the bed, and attached it to that foot. Then he lifted
her other foot and attached that to the other end of what looked
like a metal bar. This meant that her feet were held what looked
like a meter apart.

He then bent and kissed her foot again but
she didn
’t pull away. I
couldn’t understand why until I noticed that he’d placed his palm
on the bar and was holding it down. He kissed her foot repeatedly,
intermittently running his tongue up and down her sole. She was
clearly attempting to move away but was unable to do anything but
arch her back slightly and thrash her head from side to side. Her
lips were moving but I couldn’t tell whether she was admonishing
him or begging him to stop. Both probably, given the look of
satisfaction that Lucas wore when he finally ceased his tormenting
. . . or so I thought.

He walked over to a cupboard and retrieved
something. He had his back to the camera so I couldn’t see at
first. When I saw a brief flare of bright light, I guessed he had
lit a candle. When a warm glow followed, I knew I was right. He
took it over to the bed, a smug smile on his face, and placed it on
Ava’s flat stomach. Grinning cockily as he moved away, he returned
to the foot of the bed and resumed his assault on her feet. This
time only her head moved and I could see the strain of keeping
still on her face as she appeared to be clenching her
teeth.

When she
’d proved she could do it, Lucas must’ve decided
to push it further because he began to suck her big toe as his
fingers tickled the bottom of her foot gently. I saw the toes on
her other foot begin to wriggle and then curl over completely as
she tried to absorb the sensations. I gasped slightly when my own
toes curled but that was nothing compared with the heated, tingling
sensation I felt between my legs.

Lucas must have heard my gasp because he
turned to me and demanded to know whether he should turn it off. I
felt my cheeks flush as I tried to reassure him that it was
okay.
I could hardly
tell him it was turning me on.
Oh my God! Watching him with another woman
is arousing me and they’re not even having sex yet! Get a grip,
Issy!
Why
the hell would that turn you on? Because you remember how good it
felt when it was your toes he was sucking and nibbling, that’s why.
Oh thank fuck for that . . . I’m not a voyeur . . . I’m just
jealous that it’s not me . . . I want it to be me!

Lucas narrowed his eyes, clearly aware
that something was going on and I hoped he assumed I was finding it
hard to stomach
. . .
and not that I was getting wet.
Oh jeez . . . now I’m getting wet. What’s
wrong with me? How the hell will my body react when he’s fucking
her?

I fought hard to remove those thoughts
from my head and I
’d
almost succeeded when Lucas removed his hand from the bar as he
licked up the inside of her foot. Immediately, Ava jerked her foot
away, pulling the bar and her other foot with it. The candle, which
must have been holding quite a lot of hot wax by then, tipped over.
The molten wax extinguished the flame as it began to pour down one
side of her groin and then continued its escape . . . all the way
to her pussy. Her back arched as it ran across her most sensitive
of places, cooling and hardening as it went.

It was over in seconds but the effects on
Ava were longer lasting.
I could see how rapidly she was breathing but it was the
hungry look on her face when she lifted her head and said something
to Lucas. He shook his head, looking distinctly
uncomfortable.

“What did she say?” I asked without
thinking.

When he replied, his tone was dark and
brooding. “She demanded that I use a cane to beat the solid wax
from her . . . body.”

“
Oh,” was all I could manage, but I thought
that sounded kind of hot. I knew what cooled wax felt like, and the
feeling you get when it cracks and leaves your skin. A mental image
of having it beaten off before being ravaged by Lucas flew unbidden
into my mind. My pussy clenched so strongly that I almost gasped. I
forced the picture from my mind and focused on the
screen.

By that time, a rapid exchange of words
was taking place on screen. Neither of them looking happy. I wanted
to ask Lucas what was being said but I wasn’t sure it was a good
idea. I could feel tension radiating from his body. Whatever was
being said, it was obviously causing him some considerable
discomfort to watch it back. Movement on the screen caught my
attention. Lucas had walked to a chest of drawers and took out a
black leather flogger. Man, he looked hot. Again, my imagination
tried to take over and I felt myself flush.
Get a grip, Issy!