“I’m sorry, sir,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to. I tried to tell her… tried to tell her the truth but she wouldn’t hear it!”
The waiter was hovering, uncertainty across his idiot face as I gestured him over.
“Scotch,” I said, and snapped my fingers. “Double, neat. No ice.”
Carolyn watched him as he retreated, clearly dumbstruck as he busied himself behind the bar with my drink.
“People crave order,” I told her. “Looking for that governing force to take control. Some find it at work, following all the little processes and procedures.”
Nobody said a word as the waiter returned with my scotch. I tipped my glass at him in thanks before I downed it in one and placed it back on his tray.
He didn’t hang around.
“Control,” I repeated. “As I was saying, some people find it at work. Others find it in much more… intimate places.”
I landed my hand in Rebecca’s hair as a demonstration.
Her whimpers of happiness at the contact were borderline embarrassing in their volume, even for me.
I tugged her head back far enough that I could meet her eyes. Her pupils were dilated beautifully.
“If you ever speak another word of me or my establishment, Rebecca Lane, I’ll take every fucking penny you own and punish you so fucking badly, you’ll never want to know a man again.” I brushed my thumb across her cheek, the heat of my lit cigarette close enough to her skin that she could feel it. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I understand you.”
“On your feet,” I ordered, and she pushed herself up from the ground with no finesse whatsoever.
I pointed to her empty seat and she sat, hands in her lap and her eyes still firm on me as I shifted my attention to the girls opposite.
“Obedience is at its best when it’s given gladly,” I told them. “Rebecca, hold your hand out flat for me.”
She did as she was told without hesitation.
She knew what was coming before I moved, sucking in a breath and holding it deep as I twisted to face her.
She gritted her teeth and trembled as I stubbed my cigarette out so fucking slowly in her open palm, dragging out the pain.
She closed her fingers around the butt like I’d awarded her a gift. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
“Next time I have to call on you, there will be no second chances,” I told her, and got to my feet. “You’d do well to remember that.”
She looked fucking horrified as I pulled some notes from my wallet and dropped them on the table top for the bill.
“Sir, please,” she whispered, but I ignored her. I turned my back and stepped away from the table, caring nothing for how she panicked and jumped to her feet.
“Fucking hell, Rebecca, sit down!” her sister snapped, and I smirked to myself as I headed out of there.
There was no fucking way Rebecca Lane would sit back down. Not now.
“Sir, please!” she cried. “Please, sir, don’t leave!”
“Rebecca!” her sister snapped again, and my smirk widened.
“Sir, please!”
I didn’t even raise my hand in acknowledgement before I stepped out onto the main pier walkway.
I knew what was coming before I heard it, but the pleasure never grew old.
“Please, sir!” she screamed as I walked away. “Please, sir, I’ll do anything you want, I swear!”
Another pause and this time I closed my eyes to savour the moment.
“Please, sir!” she screamed again. And this time her voice was beautifully fucking raw. “Please, sir, don’t leave me! I love you!”
If only I believed love fucking existed, I may well have believed her.Chapter Twenty-OnePaigeI didn’t know what to do. What to think. How to be.
I stared at Rebecca Lane as she called after him, at a loss as to how things had arrived at this point from what should have been a friends’ donut meeting.
This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t have been caught red-handed digging for stories about him. Because it was obvious what my intentions were. A coincidental meet-up surely didn’t cut it. Not a hope in hell.
“Rebecca, what the fuck?!” Carolyn asked, and her face was a picture of exasperation.
Her sister shook her head but didn’t say a word. She was shivering so hard I could see it from across the table, still staring down the pier after him when he was long out of sight.
“You can’t be fucking serious!” Carolyn continued. “That isn’t love. He’s a freak. A sadistic piece of shit. A… a…”
Instead of finishing she reached across the table and grabbed Rebecca’s cocktail. She downed it in one and slammed the empty glass on the table.
I felt it right the way through me. Her concern.
I knew all about sisterly worry and how it snaked in your stomach so bad it made you vomit.
“It is love,” Rebecca said, turning to us with a face like death. She dropped into the seat he’d left empty, slumping down like he’d taken her spine with him. She was nothing but a mass of deflated limbs as she fought back the tears.