Personal Protection (6 page)

It was a new experience for both of us, and Tori’s desire not to have anyone tiptoe round the subject was a great help. As part of her determination not to let it turn her into a victim,
and partly in order to make herself feel better, she resolved to continue with her usual routines as nearly as her still painful condition would allow. Since Dean had not been in touch to do more
than ask after my lover, it seemed I had no client. Tori hadn’t felt like being alone, but she didn’t want to stay at home with me holding her hand either, so I found myself tagging
along with her to her daily appointments.

Few people realise what it takes to keep a dancer looking the part. I know I didn’t until I accompanied her. To start with we went swimming. Not just fooling about in the shallow end doing
handstands and the occasional width. I thought I was fit until I had to keep up with her. Even aching, she cut through the water like a seal. I gave up and watched after the sixth length. She did
twelve laps and stepped out of the water glowing, and looking better than she had since I’d encountered her at her parents. I was too happy to see her well to feel jealous.

We followed that with a visit to one of those cute ladies’ gyms: you know the sort, all Lycra bicycle shorts and cropped tops. While Tori did her step workout and aerobics for an hour and
a half in a skin tight, hot pink leotard, I lifted weights in a baggy T-shirt and old track pants with worn out knees. Instructors never like it when a woman can bench press a Volvo. I was about as
popular as an Ebola carrier in an intensive care ward.

When I went to take a shower, the changing rooms cleared except for Tori. The ‘dyke alert’ must have gone out as a result of my performance. (And she wondered why I don’t
normally go to a women’s gym!) Still, it gave us some quality time in the shower. Tori seemed to have stopped bleeding and was anxious to continue pushing the bad memories out, replacing them
with something new. So the visit wasn’t a complete waste.

A light, nutritious (yuck!) lunch followed. Tori usually eats what I think of as proper food when she’s with me. But this wasn’t a dinner date. Perhaps I was seeing the real her for
the first time? I haven’t seen that much green stuff on a plate since Dean’s last lunch. It occurred to me that the two of them have more in common than I cared to admit. Was I dating
the female equivalent of my working partner? Too Freudian for me!

By far the worst was the waxing session after lunch. Tori’s mixed parentage meant she didn’t need a sunbed to give her the dancer’s obligatory fake tan, and her body was so
nearly hair free that it was smooth as silk. I suppose I never gave much thought to how it got to be that way; I just enjoyed the benefits like a chauvinist, relying on my lover to always be
beautiful and perfect for me. But unlike most men, I’ve now had a glimpse of the pain that goes into keeping it that way. I watched Tori strip to pretty (and revealing) underwear from a stool
she insisted I occupy in a corner of her cubicle. I watched her lie on a towel-covered vinyl couch while a nosy, too chatty beauty parlour assistant heated goo in a pan, applied it to Tori’s
legs, allowed it to set, then ripped it off! I thought my stomach was coming out with her hair! I couldn’t watch. I had to wait outside. When they brought in the electrolysis equipment to zap
her more persistent pubic hair, I had to go and sit in the car.

Straight women and femmes have my undying admiration. Periods, pregnancy and beauty treatments: you are the stronger sex. Never let anyone tell you otherwise! I don’t even have pierced
ears!

Tori was grinning ear to ear when she came out. I tried to hate her, but visions of what I’d just seen kept coming back to haunt me and I couldn’t.

I don’t know whether she deliberately arranged it that way, or if it was for my benefit, but the rest of the afternoon was filled with restful visits to a hairdresser and manicurist.

No stylist would touch my short barbered locks. My idea of hairdressing is to wait until the stuff is falling into my eyes, march in off the street and demand a dry cut, now, and if they
can’t do it, leave.

I’ve also been known to take scissors to it myself. So I just sat quietly said yes and no at appropriate times during the conversation and waited while my lover had the full monty on her
long auburn tresses.

Later Tori tried to get me into the spirit of things by ordering me a manicure. I accepted without too much of a fight. Considering the uses I’m usually required to put them to in my
sexual practices, short, carefully rounded fingernails are a must. The manicurist tutted at the length, but dutifully washed, filed, buffed and hand-creamed my mitts. I drew the line at polish,
much to her dismay. She was sensible enough not to talk about nail extensions or gold and silver little fingernails. I don’t have to do anything; people can just tell I’m a lesbian and
leave me alone. Tori isn’t like that. She doesn’t look the part. I’d have been afraid I’d blown her cover that afternoon, if she had been the least bit troubled about being
out. She’s not. Watching them sculpt her talons made me alternately flush with desire and wince in pain, thinking of the uses she puts them to on me. In her current mood I could imagine
they’d be getting a workout sooner than I’d like.

I’ll digress at this point to fill in some salient details. By now I’m sure my tantalising hints have you wondering just what my darling really looks like. And the ape she’s
allowing to bask in her presence.

Victoria Kingston is twenty-five years old, a coffee-skinned, brown-eyed minx. Her waist-length curly hair is natural auburn as a result of her mixed parentage. She’s a statuesque five
foot nine in heels, weighs about a hundred and fourteen pounds, has clear skin, a 36-24-32 figure and a winning personality. Everybody loves her. Nobody can understand what the hell she’s
doing with me. Most of the time that includes me.

And yours truly? I weigh in at about a hundred and thirty pounds, most of it muscle, and top out at five foot four which gives my clients pause. (Remember that scene in
The Bodyguard?.
Kevin Costner amply demonstrates size and weight are not what make us good at the job.) I’m sure my vital statistics don’t interest you. I’ll only say I’m thirty-something,
tan-free, white, have short dark brown wavy hair and such broad shoulders I look like an American football player in full kit. So no shoulder pads in my suits! Unlike the sun in my sky, I
don’t have a winning personality. I’ve been accused of taking life and myself too seriously. That’s probably true. I have frown lines rather than crows’ feet and way too
much silver in my hair. Probably because of the job. Not because of my girlfriend.

“Please can we go back to my flat?”

She was stroking my thigh while I drove as a way of persuading me. If she didn’t stop, the point would be moot, because we’d never arrive.

“Randall, I need more clothes than this if I’m going to stay on at yours.”

“And if we find out nobody has tried to get in, you won’t want to come back.” I put her hand firmly on her own knee when we reached a convenient set of traffic lights.

“You could always stay at mine.”

“We’ve been through this.”

“I’m not made of glass!”

Shit! What could I say to that?

“All right.”

I indicated, spun the wheel and pointed the bonnet toward her home.

I didn’t really want her flat to have been touched, but it would have made things easier if we could have arrived to find the lock plate gouged. I wanted to protect her, but I
couldn’t do it if she wouldn’t let me. She was my lover, not my client.

In the event, I needn’t have worried – or perhaps I should have worried more. While the door seemed shut firmly enough, the rest of the flat showed a more violent face.

Tori stood in the doorway and trembled. All the work she had put in on getting her life back under control was ruined by the sight that met us when she opened the living room door.

The soft furnishings had been slashed. Everything that could be ripped had been ripped. Anything that could be broken was broken. How her neighbours hadn’t complained was beyond me.

Maybe they had? And the police had found nobody here when they arrived. Or perhaps the perpetrator had brazened it out when the law turned up on the doorstep? These were questions for another
day.

I bundled Tori back into the car and drove her to my place, then called Dean and Craig. It was my good fortune that Craig was working the late shift and Dean had closed the office for the day.
They both agreed to come over.

It took a while to calm her down. The boys arrived conveniently as I’d got her settled. I left Craig to keep her company. He is a nurse after all; he should know about hysteria. Then Dean
and I drove back to her flat in his Range Rover.

“Bloody hell! There’s not much we can salvage here.”

“I know. Let’s just do what we can to clean the place up before she sets foot in it again. Empty is better than trashed.”

He was in perfect agreement. The two of us put our backs into it and had everything liveable in about three hours. I was reluctant to leave Tori longer than that. There wasn’t really
anything else we could do. His car had piles of bin bags with the things we couldn’t save in the back and the few clothes still wearable in a hold-all in the front. The bastards had cut the
wires on her electrical appliances. Her tropical fish were dead, her freezer had defrosted, the food was starting to go off and the floor was flooded. Nothing from telephones to CDs had escaped the
rampage.

“You know, whoever it was did this before she was raped.”

“That had occurred to me, but I wanted your opinion.”

He sat down at the scratched but otherwise whole table on the remaining hard-backed chair.

“Is that why you left Craig looking after Tori instead of me?”

Time for some brutal honesty. “Not entirely. I meant what I said, about your helping me to catch the person that did this. But I still wasn’t sure how you felt about Tori after the
dinner party fiasco. I didn’t think she needed to wonder about whether you blamed her, at a time like this.”

“Fuck! You don’t believe in pulling your punches, do you?”

“No.” I looked at him.

Dean ground his teeth then grimaced back.

“I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

“OK.”

“OK? That’s it?”

“As far as I’m concerned, yes. You’re my friend. I can see you’re sincere. I’m not a queen. I won’t make you pay for the next twenty years. Life’s too
short.”

This business had brought that home to us all. I could see him wondering how he would feel if something like this had happened to Craig.

“You’re right. We should get together on this. Find out who’s responsible.”

“Tori doesn’t know who it was. She thought at first it might be someone she knew. Maybe an ex.”

“It was a personal attack I grant you, but… I don’t know. It feels wrong, Randall. It really might be something to do with the club.”

I was about to lay into him for his prejudices when he held up a conciliatory hand. “It needs looking into. If I’m right this won’t be an isolated incident. We should find out
if any of the other girls have been victims of similar attacks, anything from this –” he waved a hand around us “– to what happened to Tori. Violence always accompanies the
sex industry. It could be our starting point.”

“And the ex-girlfriends?”

“I’ll look into that. You haven’t got enough perspective. You’ll want to go wading in full of righteous indignation and beat the crap out of them. Getting bound over or
imprisoned for assault won’t do Tori any good, no matter how noble a gesture it might be.”

I turned my back on him full of frustration.

“You know I’m right. Let’s do this properly and get the bastard in a way they can’t get out of. Once we know we’ve got the right one, I’ll happily stand back
and let you kick skittles of shit out of them and swear you were with me at the time. But let’s make sure we get the right one first, OK?” He laid a kind hand on my shoulder.

I really wanted to hit something, but Dean’s voice of sweet reason routine had short-circuited me. He was right. But that didn’t make it any easier when all I wanted was a target.
Which is when I decided what I was going to do tomorrow.

I’d followed Tori to her appointments. She was going to have to do the same for me. Tomorrow we’d go to my gym. Apart from shooting, there is no finer way to get the urge to kill
somebody out of your system.

I rolled my neck and settled the Kevlar vest more comfortably into place as the instructor squared up to me on the mat. It hadn’t been easy to persuade Tori to come. But
what she had seen in her flat convinced her that the violence wasn’t over. I’d shamelessly used that to my advantage. The prospect of sitting on her hands alone, or risking the streets
without me, convinced her a trip to my world wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

Unlike your usual gym, this one has no exercise equipment, no weights to lift, no aerobics classes, step or otherwise. What it did have was a bunch of very determined people wearing their
workday clothes – which in our case meant Kevlar vests and suits – and the occasional padded mat.

It is important that a bodyguard be able to take a certain amount of punishment as well as dish it out. So along with martial arts classes, this place employs a selection of pugilists to beat
the shit out of us. I know what you’re going to say: she lets herself get hit but she can’t watch somebody have her legs waxed? It’s different somehow. Believe me.

“Ready?” my opponent inquired.

“Ready.”

For the next hour I endured a gruelling regimen that made Tori wince, grimace, gasp and swear, before she finally clapped her hand over her mouth and endured in silence.

I felt better about running out of her waxing session at the end of it.

“Was that really necessary?” she asked afterwards in the changing rooms.

“Yes. I’ll be less likely to fold if someone takes a punch at somebody I’m guarding. If someone does floor me I can get back up. It takes the fear out of falling, means you can
do it properly.” I peeled out of my body armour and sodden T-shirt.