The Contract (Nightlong #1) (16 page)

The satnav beeped as we neared the destination and I watched the countdown to the point where the device had placed a flag in the road.

“Arriving at destination.”

Sexton pulled the car to a stop and we halted on the brow of a hill. To either side there were no road markings, just rugged countryside and fields. Beyond fields there was woodland and the odd country house situated in the distance. What was once the Post Office had clearly been demolished, just a lot of scorched earth left behind.

“It’s a wild goose chase,” I whispered.

I was thinking about calling Dante when a car shot past us at a ridiculous speed – then the driver beeped their horn several times and in a sort of rhythm, like it was a message.

“Follow that car, Sexton,” I said, and he nodded because he had to do everything I said. Being the boss’s girl meant he was my slave as well as Dante’s.

“Okay.”

We chased the car with ease, it being such open countryside, it wasn’t difficult to follow the lead with nobody else around. We followed its path, trailing around winding roads for about two miles before the car pulled up at some gates leading to a mansion. Following close behind, we were allowed entry too and as we drove behind the Lexus which had tooted us earlier, heavy gravel crunched beneath the car and Sexton cursed, “Bloody paintwork will be battered by this surface.”

Oh how he loved that car. Like it was an attachment, really…

“Maybe they have too many boy racers round these parts,” I said, and when we both looked behind us to see the mansion gates closing us in, he raised his eyebrows as I did – with scepticism.

“Well, if we’re to be turned into mincemeat tonight, it was nice knowing you Charles Sexton.”

“You too, Cleo.”

A sixteenth-century mansion came into view and I grew yet more eager to know all about the world Dante was King of. I was desperate to know more, in fact.

The driver of the Lexus stepped out of her vehicle and removed a flat cap to allow her long blonde hair to fall down her back in waves. Her clothing resembled that of a horsey person; riding boots, tweed, jodhpurs, rakish neckerchief.

She was stunning.

Walking towards me with her hand held out, she smiled a toothy smile and her handshake was as warm as her welcoming voice. “Cleo. It’s wonderful to finally meet you. We’ve been waiting for someone like you.”

“You have?”

“For what feels like forever.”

“Forgive me, but are you Shay?” I asked the woman, more and more freaked out by the second.

“Yes, I’ll be looking after you.”

“Okay…”

She motioned at the vehicle. “I see he loaned you his driver. Preferential treatment, hmm?”

Stepping immediately into character, I fiddled with my fingers in front of me and shook my head. “I think he wanted to ensure I got here… I don’t think he believed I would actually come of my own volition.”

She laughed with real amusement, like she meant for me to think she and Dante had a private joke about the girls in his employ. “Why ever wouldn’t you come?”

With raised eyebrows, I suggested, “This is his way of letting me go, I suppose.”

“What?”

I hoped she believed that I’d turned up dressed and looking like this to hide my inner sadness, my grief.

“I’m his domme, or was,” I began explaining, or rather concocting, “and suddenly, he says he needs to go away, go… where, I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. So, here I am. We both know he needs
it
… so… I don’t know. I reckon he’s found somewhere else to get
it
. You know? Otherwise why send me away?”

“I don’t understand. You were his domme?”

Ignoring her inquisition, I rattled on, “I’m not stupid. He said this was a spa I could stay at while he’s away, but… there’s no sign on the gates. It’s like he’s tossed me aside and now… here I am. It’s… I don’t know… like he’s got tired of me or something.”

She nodded, her hands folded in front of her, mirroring me. “For all intents and purposes, this is a spa… albeit a very private, unlisted one. If ever the cops come a-calling, which they haven’t done yet, all they will find is a primping palace inside those doors. All-female palace, too. No funny business.”

I nodded.

“How long did he say he would be gone?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” I said, looking at the floor, “he barely tells me anything.”

“But you know what this
spa
masquerades?”

“When you say it like that, I have an idea… I sort of knew he had this place, but never knew where it was.”

“He keeps his secrets, doesn’t he?”

“Hmm-mmm.” I stood mostly looking at the floor, pretending to be hiding my sad eyes from her.

“Well it is a day spa… but not. You know… other things go on beneath ground.”

“Dungeons… dragons, that sort of thing?”

She winked.

“I think he’s bored of me and now he thinks he’s doing me a favour, putting me up here. He probably thinks some dishy banker will snap me up instantly and… that’ll clear his conscience, right? I thought we were making so much progress, you know? But he turns on a die.”

“He does.”

I knew that with a significant amount of eyeliner, my eyes looked big and childlike, and I hoped she saw a femme fatale and not the strong confidence of a woman in love, beneath. She seemed to believe what I was saying, anyway… perhaps because she had never let go of feeling like the scorned woman, herself. If she’d never loved Dante, I was a monkey’s uncle.

I’d been loved by Dante and I’d loved Dante in return so I had first-hand experience that you didn’t get over him. He wasn’t that sort of man. He scorched marks in your soul with his glare, placed embers in your heart that forever ached until he took you in his arms. He made me laugh so hard sometimes I almost peed, and though the least cuddly person I’d ever met, he held me with such power sometimes I felt like nothing could befall me while I had him. I couldn’t imagine how women ever got over him – and woman’s intuition told me Shay hadn’t.

“So, how long do girls usually stay before meeting someone?”

She stared at me, the naïve newbie, a girl who might have imagined the only reason women did this work was to meet a man and secure financial status at the end of it.

I knew some women did this for kicks. I’d sort of been one of those women. These men literally wanted everything and anything. It had always made me super inquisitive as to… why?

“It varies Cleo… but girls rarely meet someone here. They make their money here… then go off to meet someone else. Don’t you realise the arrangement you had with Dante was most likely, rare?”

“Well… no.”

“And his domme? That can’t be right.”

“Why?”

“He’s a dominant.”

“No?” My hands flew to my cheeks.

She grinned, a mocking look behind her eyes. “Since Daltrey… he’s never been the same, so it figures in a way. Once upon a time though, he was no more submissive than the Queen. Now, let’s get you inside. Say your goodbyes to Sexton. No men ever enter through those front doors.”

I rounded the car and bent down a little to look in on Sexton through the open driver’s side window.

“I don’t like this,” he whispered.

“You ever heard of this place?” I asked barely audibly.

“Never. I know the area… but I never, ever heard of this place. It gives me the creeps.”

I wondered what Sexton did and didn’t know… and I also wondered if Dante had some ulterior motive in placing me here, other than for spying. I wondered if… but no, I put that out of my mind. This wasn’t his fantasy, nor mine… it was a nightmare.

“I’ll be okay, you should go. I have my phone… and my purse has a thing in it.”

“If you’re sure?”

I nodded, winking. “She’s just a tiny blonde lady, besides what could these people possibly do to me that Dante hasn’t already?”

He shook his head, unhappy at the thought of leaving me alone. “I’ll stick around for an hour, okay? If you don’t come out, I’ll assume you’re happy inside and I’ll go. Deal?”

“Okay, deal.” I leaned into the car, kissed his cheek and he parked up at the edge of the large driveway, still going steady on the gravel.

“He’s going to wait a few minutes,” I told Shay, “he worries about me.”

She put her arm around my shoulder. “So he should. So he should. Now. Let’s go inside and get a nice warming drink.”

She led me through a stone entranceway and into a great, grand house. What awaited me inside shocked the freaking hell out of me.

MY FIANCÉ OWNED THIS PLACE… it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem… right. It was a nudist camp… not a spa!

Stood alongside Shay in the huge open area of the reception hall, I was astonished by the black and white tiled floors, the huge oak staircase, the feeling that this place was full of antiquities… but I also couldn’t help but gaze as naked bodies roamed freely. I thought I’d seen it all at Cohésion but here we were, surrounded by not just naked bodies… but absolutely stunning naked women. Each one, undoubtedly handpicked. They were all of them immaculate. Dante hadn’t been entirely honest with me because these women were of every variety possible, each beautiful in their own distinct, unique way. I could only hope I wouldn’t stand out as the ugly one.

In my heels I stood at maybe around five feet ten at most so I towered over Shay, not taller than five-three in flats. Looking down on her, I asked, “Have I entered some sort of Sapphic paradise?”

“Follow me.” She smiled.

We climbed the staircase which curved around the oval-shaped reception hall, opulently decorated with a central floor-to-ceiling chandelier column, numerous candelabra and pictures of country life all around.

Feeling overdressed, I tried to avoid the eyes of naked people as they sauntered around with towels over their shoulders, under their arms, or a book in their hands… water contained within a bottle or glass clutched between delicate fingers. Temperate indoors, I began to swelter in my clothes, surrounded by… hot women.

I followed Shay down a long corridor and we climbed some spiral steps into what seemed to be an attic.

“Best in the house,” she said, opening a door that led into a Marie Antoinette-inspired boudoir. All white furniture and clothes horses, modesty screens… a female paradise. A large vaulted ceiling had spectacular expansive windows which no doubt gave great views of the stars at night.

Shay folded her hands in front of herself, watching me admire the room. “If you want that drink, why not change and join me downstairs in the drawing room? All the girls begin to head beneath ground around about this time… to get ready. We needn’t be bothering ourselves with all that tonight, though. Not you and me. My pet isn’t scheduled in so it seems I have a night off.”

“What’s the dress code?” I added hastily.

“In the closet,” she pointed, gesturing at where clothes hung inside (I hoped).

She bowed out of the room, shutting the door as she left so that I had some privacy.

“Why the hell did you agree to inherit all this, Dante?” I said to nobody but myself. “As if I need ask.”

Slamming my holdall down on the floor, I sat on the bed and took a few moments for contemplation.

I couldn’t stay still though so I paced the room, seeking I don’t know… a sign.

Out of the window I saw the Phantom still parked at the edge of the gravel driveway and realised there was no point in him waiting, picking my phone up to call him.

“What’s happening?” he answered.

“It’s Lesbos in here, I swear to god Sexton. I’m just ringing to say you should get yourself out of here.”

“I could but I don’t really have anywhere else to be, you know?”

“Hole up, I reckon. Don’t you have the Knightsbridge keys?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Go there, then. Do you know where Dante is?”

“I dropped him at Piccadilly Circus. He could be anywhere by now. He tells me as little as he tells you.”

“Do what you can to help him if he needs it. I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

“Sure.”

“See you then.” He hung up.

I clutched my hand to my heart and felt tremors of love warble through my body for Dante. How would I survive without him?

IN the drawing room downstairs, it was just Shay and myself. From the closet in my room I’d picked out some lovely silk pyjamas, fluffy slippers and a large dressing gown – all white. After dark it seemed everyone upstairs went downstairs.

Shay still wore her uniform. I assumed it was a uniform anyway, unless she really was just a very horsey sort of person.

“When he bundled me off with Sexton, he gave me a ton of money to spend here, he said. I’m wondering why, when this place seems… self-sufficient?” I asked her sheepishly, playing coy.

“Well,” she said, a mischievous look in her eye, “we sometimes have ourselves a little indoor yard sale with toys on offer. Tools the girls might need. You know?”

“Tools?” I giggled, attempting to remain as non-threatening as possible.

“Instruments… tools of the trade,” she said, smiling.

I sipped at a very nice glass of deep-purple port, which was most certainly warming my cockles. “The only things I have to have are notebooks,” I said seriously, “I can’t settle otherwise. Sometimes I have to write things down, call it the Irish in me or something.”

“I did think there was a little brogue in there somewhere.”

I smiled, finding her company genial. “I left seven years ago. I was only in London for six months before we met, Dante and me.”

“Seven years? Oh my god.” She placed a hand over her mouth.

“Why so shocked?”

“You can’t be older than twenty-three, surely?” she asked, peering at me now I’d taken my make-up off.

Snickering, I flapped my hand. “I’m twenty-five. I was
of age
, I assure you!”

“I see. So you didn’t flee your family or anything?”

“Oh, I fled. I was a good girl, though. I fled when I was an adult so they couldn’t drag me back home.”

Sat in wingback leather chairs by a fire, I suddenly had to check myself. Was I being lulled into a false sense of security? I told myself I was shocked that she’d gotten me talking about my family so quickly – when I never even talked about them with Dante. Sometimes, it seemed much easier to tell strangers all your secrets… which got me thinking…

“Brothers or sisters?” she asked.

“Just a sister, younger,” I said, “eight years younger. We weren’t close and when Ma and Da hated on me, so did she. Kind of gets boring, having all the hate aimed at you all the time.”

“Well, there’s none of that here,” she said, leaning over to touch my hand lightly, “we promote love, not hate, and discipline, not spite. I’m sure you know all about that, having been with Dante.”

Sat barely making an indent in her chair, she had to weigh eight stones or less, but you could see she was strong. Her legs were spindly and she kept crossing them over and over like they were lighter than air, but Shay was deceptive – I could tell. She walked around like she wasn’t afraid of anything.

“So… when will I go beneath ground like the others?”

She shot me an unbridled grin reminiscent of Cruella De Vil. “You’re our guest as far as I’m concerned and after the way he’s treated you, I’ll make sure your living costs here are covered by him. I don’t see why you should be subjected to the same demands as the other girls when it wasn’t your choice to come here. Was it?”

“Not really, but won’t he know I’m disobeying him?” I queried, one eyebrow raised, drinking another sip.

Did she really think I was so naïve?

“He’s never here so he owns it in name and on spreadsheet only,” she said with a smirk, “besides, I run the place. I know it backwards and forwards. The girls answer to me, nobody else. The men who demand services outside of the brochure also have to deal with me. What I say, goes. End of.”

“I see.” I looked into the distance, digesting her possessive words. This was truly her own dominion. “Dante said you were like me. Young. Needed the money. His uncle found you?”

She pulled her booted feet underneath herself in the chair, seemingly getting comfortable enough for a long chat.

“Yes. I left home like you, sure there was everything waiting for me in London. In a way, I found more than everything. I found him.”

“Him, who?”

“Dante, of course.”

Nodding, I agreed outwardly, cursing her inwardly.

This woman had surely enjoyed my man once upon a time and it made my blood boil. I couldn’t share him. He was mine.

“Still carry a torch?”

“Any female with a pulse, no? None of us are immune to him,” she spoke warmly, grinning.

“Not everyone has had him, though?”

She turned her bottom lip up, showing a slight chink in her armour. “Oh, but there were many.”

“He told me that. I sort of always knew he could never be mine, you know?” I thought that by saying things that were half true, she’d truly believe me in all things.

“Exactly. He belongs to himself. But then, Daltrey got killed… and I guess, there was even less of him to go round.”

“That’s when he changed?”

“No. His spirit just went out, like a light. It was devastating to watch.”

“I bet it was.”

“Yes.”

An uncomfortable silence followed. I didn’t hear resentment or see it in her eyes as we chatted, but I felt the sadness she harboured deep inside her soul. A longing, even. She missed him, it was clear.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes,” she agreed, “as long as it’s not my age.”

I laughed. “Were you always kinky, or… did it grow on you?”

“I’m a masochist. I was born this way.”

“Really?”

“Always.”

“Oh. Okay.”

My blood ran cold, imagining Dante beating her… tying her up. Exacting all sorts of fantasies on her that he never had on me. So far we’d only engaged in soft play. I’d struck him, but he had never done anything to me but slap my posterior. At most, he might have also given me a dead hand or two from pinning me down… but I couldn’t imagine the things she might have let him do to her.

“It’s a choice for you, I take it? Not a persuasion.”

“It was just something I did for money. There are girls who do it for that, yes?”

“Yes,” she said, opening her mostly glued-together hands for once, “most are here for the money and the seclusion from life, for a time.”

“So what about your time?”

Something like regret crossed her face when she told me, “I had my time. Now, I just live to make sure all these girls stay safe.”

“Admirable.”

“I think so.” She rose to her feet, having finished her drink. “I’d love to chat all night, but I must make sure everything’s running smoothly below stairs.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get you some new notebooks, Cleo. The nights are long but the days longer so for now, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I sat staring at the fire, wondering if my life was going to be as boring as it used to be, when I was restricted to living without love, without Dante – when everything seemed grey and pallid as I waited for life to begin – when it seemed impossible I would ever be happy. What sort of employment would I find here? How was I to occupy myself without my fiancé? How would I please myself?

Shay almost got to the other side of the room where the door was when she turned and bellowed, “I completely forgot my manners! Listen… feel free to use the library, or the heated indoor pool. The outdoor pool doesn’t open until July, so a little while yet. If you’re peckish, the kitchen is always open, but beware of Cook, she’s a little scary so try to wait until you know she’s in bed. We don’t allow laptops, mobiles or tablets, or anything of that kind here but for you, I will let it slide, as long as you’re not seen using them in front of the others. We don’t allow anyone off the grounds without an escort and if you want to use the spa, just call them from the phone in your room. They do almost every therapy known to man. Breakfast at eight, lunch at one, dinner at seven, prompt.”

“Lovely, thanks.”

“I’ll say goodnight proper, now.”

“Goodnight.”

She turned and walked out of the room, leaving me to imagine what went on downstairs. How did the men arrive? I hadn’t seen another car pull up since I arrived earlier.

If this was somewhere even the PM came, who knew how they smuggled him in without anyone seeing his face?

Then I thought about poor little Shay, with her tired face, and no doubt a tired heart to match…

Slowly, I rose from my chair and bent down at the drinks table nearby to refill my glass. I walked languidly through the drawing room and out into the reception hall, taking the stairs up as I had done earlier, except now nobody hung around – all the girls otherwise engaged.

I took the spiral stairs and after shutting myself in the attic room, I noticed a stack of moleskin notebooks on the bedside table, a fountain pen and spare cartridges placed alongside those. Shay couldn’t hate me, could she? Not to deliver such a delightful present, and so quickly.

As I lay in my robe, looking up at the stars in the ceiling and with the port in my hand… a story began to brew and I decided on my plan of action.

I was going to write, of course.

I was going to write it all down.