Last Week: A Dark Romance Page 12

  I knew she was in danger, that much was obvious. I didn’t know that fifteen years later, to keep her safe, I’d abduct her from her house, carry her naked to the boot of a car, bring her here, tie her up in the cellar, leave her screaming for her freedom. Back then, I had no idea any of that was going to happen.

  All I’d wanted to do back then was protect her from what was happening in the house. I usually didn’t give a shit about kids. But there was something about her. I still remember the argument. Her mother was demanding he back off, yelling at him for wanting to take her away. “You can’t stop me seeing my own daughter.”

  “I can if you’re drunk when you turn up. You stink of booze, Zoe.”

  “Fuck you. You don’t get to tell me how to live my life anymore. I’m taking her.”

  “Try it.”

  It wasn’t my place to take sides. I knelt beside her in the garden. “Hi,” she said, smiling up at me. “Want to play?”

  From playing in the grass to bound in my basement in fifteen years. Life is pretty strange sometimes.

  She began to scream again, bringing my attention back to the present. “If you keep quiet, I’ll take the bag off,” I said. “Scream and I’ll spank you again. I can do this all day to an ass like yours.”

  She kept quiet. She might have been crying. It was hard to tell. Her shoulders were hitching but she was silent. I reached down and took hold of the bag on her head, pulling it upwards, sliding it off her messed up hair.

  She twisted her neck round as her head came into view, glaring at me with such venom that I almost fell backwards. She hated me. Sheer, unadulterated hatred. I didn’t mind. When she realised why I’d brought her here, she wouldn’t hate me, she’d thank me.

  She looked beautiful, even with her features twisted in a mixture of rage and fear. The fear enhanced her innocence. The rage made her look sexy. It was an intoxicating mix. As I looked at her, her eyes widened, her brow furrowing as she opened her mouth and said quietly, “I know you.”

  ONE

  BELLA

  When I first set eyes on him, I was naked. It feels strange now to think that my first reaction wasn’t fear. But then, why would it be? I had no reason to suspect what he was going to do to me, that he was going to kidnap me and do all of those things to me.

  It was another beautifully sunny day. The spring had been hotter than usual and it had turned into the hottest summer in as long as anyone could remember. By the time August came around, the grass in my garden was dying, yellowed and parched, no matter how often it was watered. The flowers were wilting and so was I. I’d been inside all morning, working on my book.

  Procrastinating would be a better way of putting it. The work had consisted of everything but typing. I’d rearranged my desk, organised the bedside drawers, swept the kitchen floor, the open laptop shouting at me to come and start actually hitting the keys. I finally succumbed after every item of crockery I owned had been washed up, dried, and put away.

  I managed to get halfway through chapter seven before the heat inside the house got too much for me. “Just an hour,” I told myself as I went upstairs to change into my bikini. It wouldn’t kill me to sunbathe for an hour. I’d get the rest of chapter seven done afterwards. What was the point of working from home if you couldn’t enjoy the sun from time to time?

  I was in my bedroom when he arrived. Having removed my clothes, I was just reaching down to pick up my bikini top when I caught sight of movement out of the window. It was a removals van. I paused to look, watching as it pulled up outside next door. Behind the van, a red car stopped and a man climbed out of it, arching his back before he turned towards the van. He glanced my way and I ducked out of sight, not wanting the first impression I gave my new neighbour to be that of my tits flashing him through the window.

  He had to be my new neighbour. The way he was directing the removals men couldn’t be interpreted any other way. A new neighbour. And a handsome one at that. Once my top was on, I looked out less shyly, watching as he walked up the path to the front door and unlocked it. He looked hot, very hot. Six foot at least, solid looking, tidy black suit, dark brown hair over a face that screamed mature, confident, all the things a man should be. I felt a fluttering deep inside me and I became very aware that I was wearing nothing on my bottom half.

  The height of the window meant at least no one outside could tell but I felt as if he knew. Even without him looking my way, I felt he was judging me, seeing me as nothing more than an underdressed child. I shook my head. Why did I even care what this stranger thought? I was eighteen. I was an adult. If I wanted to bend over and moon him, I could. He wasn’t the boss of me. No one was. Apart from my agent. I could flash my ass and press it against the window. Now that would be a way to break the ice. And the window.

  He did look my way just as I thought that and I found myself blushing. Our eyes locked for the briefest of seconds before he vanished inside the house. I was frozen to the spot for a long time afterwards. He had looked so damned sexy, the way he’d looked at me, in that second, I thought I’d happily flash him if he told me to. I’d have done anything he told me to.

  Not that it mattered. He was about twenty years older than me. Probably married. No doubt the wife and kids would be following on to join him. The house was far too big for one man on his own, especially with a removals van that size. It was a family moving in. It had to be.

  The word family caught in my mind, sticking in place as if it was coated in glue. I felt a flare of jealousy. I had never had a proper family, not really. An aunt doesn’t count.

  I turned away from the window and began tying my bikini bottom in place. Once it was done, I grabbed a towel and the sun cream and then headed out into the garden. The sun lounger was waiting for me in the middle of the lawn and I sank onto it, enjoying the feeling of heat soaking into my skin already. Bees droned in the flowerbeds, somewhere in the distance a lawnmower was starting up.

  I rubbed sun cream into my arms, humming quietly to myself as I did so. Once I was sufficiently covered, I closed my eyes and lay back, letting my mind wander.

  It wandered back to him. My new neighbour. What was he like? Would he be friendly? The suit he’d worn told me he was a professional, maybe a lawyer. The car looked expensive. The house was expensive. He had to be earning enough to pay for both. Would he hate living next door to a creative type like me? Would he even notice that I existed? Or would he be too busy making big bucks and screwing his secretary?

  As I thought about him, my mind drifted in on itself until I was daydreaming. I was upstairs again only this time I didn’t put the bikini on. I came down and went out into the garden naked, feeling him watching me from his house. I laid down and he tiptoed over, staring silently whilst I pretended to sleep.

  I felt myself getting hotter, though I told myself it was just the effect of the sun’s rays on me. He’d watch me. I’d let my legs slide apart and feel his eyes on me, staring hungrily as I flashed him, pretending I didn’t know he was there. Then he’d…

  God, I was like a schoolgirl with a crush on one of her teachers. I had seen him for about ten seconds and already I was fantasising about him. It was ridiculous. I told myself to stop. No one that old would be interested in someone like me. No money, no prospects. Just her aunt’s house and a quarter finished book that would probably get panned anyway. If it wasn’t for the last dribbles of my advance, I’d have been working for minimum wage somewhere, not sunbathing. I should get back to work. I should get the bloody book finished and stop mucking about. How many eighteen year olds managed to even get a publishing deal? But then how many eighteen year olds have an aunt working for the publisher in question? I should be grateful for the opportunity and get to work.

  In a minute, I thought to myself. The sun felt just too nice to leave. I didn’t want to sit inside in the gloom and until someone invented a laptop screen that worked outside without turning into a mirror, I couldn’t sit in the garden and type.

  I think I drift
ed off for a while. If I’d been awake, I’m sure I would have heard him approaching. But the first I knew of his presence was when a deep voice next to my ear said, “Good afternoon.”

  I bolted upright, blinking away the fuzz from my brain as I turned in the direction of the voice.

  There he was, further away than I’d thought, leaning on the top of his fence, smiling over at me, the leaves of the trees behind him waving lazily as if they were saying hello as well.

  “Hi,” I said, thinking again how hot he looked. “Hi.” I cursed myself for sounding like a parrot, wanting to remove the grin from my lips but being unable to. “I’m Annabelle. Bella.”

  “Good afternoon Annabelle Bella.”

  His voice was like honey and gravel combined, the kind of voice that wrapped around you like a warm hug. It made my insides melt.

  “Just Bella,” I said with a giggle.

  “Enjoying the sunshine just Bella?”

  “Yep.” My mind went completely blank. I could not think of a single thing to say. My mouth opened but all that came out was a strangled nothing. My toes curled as I fought with my brain. All the while he stared at me with an amused expression on his face, though his eyes spoke of something else, something that at that time, I didn’t understand. I understood later what it was, though of course by then it was too late to realise it was hunger. He wanted me.

  TWO

  JACK

  I wasn’t moving far but it was still a hassle. Moving always is. The problem with a quiet life is that you tend to accumulate things. An empty house and an empty life were more my style but both those things would invite suspicion. The last thing I needed was anyone starting to wonder about me. They’d find out far more than they needed to know if they began to look. Under every stone is darkness, down there you find a lot of things that only grow in the shadows, things nobody wants to see, things nobody needs to know about, things that would get me locked up for a very long time if they were found out.

  So I had stuff. Stuff was normal. Stuff kept everyone thinking good things about me. It was stuff that no one needed. I had ornaments and pictures in frames, I had a perfectly ordinary house full of perfectly ordinary things, things that said nothing about who I really was. And now I had to shift them all.

  All of the things I owned were crammed into the truck in front of me. Boxing it all up had taken far too long even with the removal firm helping but at last I was on the move. It felt like a very long drive, the air conditioning doing its best to battle the overwhelming heat of the day as I crawled away from Griffin Street for the last time.

  Traffic lightened as the truck headed out of the centre and into the suburbs and I followed, glancing around me at all the other quiet houses, the low fences, the neat lawns. What secrets were hidden behind those doors? Was everyone like me? How many of them were hiding things? I’d learned long ago that no one is what they appear on the surface. Everyone has darkness lurking inside them. I’m only different in that I admit it to myself, I don’t lie and pretend to be all good and pure and all that bullshit.

  I’m good at hiding it though. Very good. That’s why I’ve been able to settle into this life for so long, stay out of trouble. That’s why I was able to have a perfectly civil conversation with the removal men when we arrived. None of them knew what I had planned. None of them knew that I’d chosen this house for a reason, a reason that had a lot to do with the cellar under the kitchen, a cellar ready to use.

  I had barely stepped out of the car when I saw her. The bright sun meant she was almost entirely in shadow but when I glanced up at the house next door, I saw movement in the upstairs window. A young girl, no more than eighteen. A smile flickered across my lips. Just what I wanted to see. She would give me just what I needed.

  I headed inside, pausing on the doorstep to look up again. She was still there. She was watching me. This was going to be easy. Once I was in, I began sending boxes to one room and then another before leaving the men in overalls to get on with their job. I had other things to think about.

  Some people might have been excited to be in their new house for the first time but there was something far more exciting for me to mull over. The girl next door.

  I headed upstairs and checked in each room, nodding to the man making his way back down for the next box. From the back bedroom, I could see into next door’s garden and there she was, catching my eye and keeping it.

  The sight of her took my breath away. Laid on her back with her eyes closed, wearing only a bikini. I was hard in an instant. I stood and stared at her, my eyes moving down her body, taking in the swell of her chest, those flawless tits trapped in stretched fabric that would come off so easily if it was grabbed. One twist of my hand and it would be gone. Then the v between her legs, the triangle of cloth protecting the place my cock yearned to be. It had been only a few seconds of looking at her body but already I wanted her, I needed her, I had to take her. She would be mine. She would be safe from a world that might hurt her. I’d protect her. I’d only hurt her if she deserved it. If she asked for it.

  “Where do you want this lot?”

  I looked back over my shoulder and there was one of the removals men holding an armful of shirts. “The box split,” he said, a slightly sheepish expression on his face.

  “Through there,” I replied. “And be more careful with the rest.”

  When he was gone I walked back downstairs, heading into the back garden. I wouldn’t be disturbed out there. I crossed the dying lawn to the fence, leaning over it and taking a closer look at her. She really was beautiful. So innocent she had no idea of the risk of sunbathing in so little with me next door. She had no idea what I was already planning for her, punishment for flaunting her body like that. She looked as if she was asleep but there was only one way to find out.

  “Good afternoon,” I said and she bolted upright as if she’d suffered an electric shock.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling so sweetly it made my cock throb with need. “Hi. I’m Annabelle. Bella.”

  “Good afternoon Annabelle Bella.”

  That made her laugh and it was an infectious giggle that warmed my entire being.

  “Just Bella.”

  “Enjoying the sunshine just Bella?”

  “Yep.” She looked like she was going to say something else but then she just froze like a child asked a particularly difficult question by a terrifying teacher. It was something I was used to. A lot of women did that when I looked at them. It was amusing to watch her struggle with herself. I let it last for a few more seconds before ending her torture.

  “I’m Jack, Jack Rutherford.”

  I held out my hand over the fence and she got up, walking across towards me. Christ, that body. It was lucky she couldn’t see how hard I was, the fence hiding the bulge in my trousers as I let my eyes trail down her and then back up to her eyes in time for her to take my hand. The feel of her skin made every nerve inside me stand on edge, rigid and ready to spring, like electricity had passed between us in that touch. Her skin was so soft, warmed by the sun, with a weak grip in her handshake, a grip that told me she’d submit easily. Perfectly. She wouldn’t fight me. I was almost disappointed by how easy this was going to be.

  “Hi Jack,” she said, looking down at my hand, waiting for silent permission to let go. I gripped her fingers for a few more seconds before letting her hand slip free.

  “Live with your parents, Bella?”

  “No,” her eyes narrowed as she answered. “It’s my house.” She sounded slightly annoyed, a tone of voice that would earn her a spanking if she was under my roof. No one spoke to me without showing respect.

  A voice called me from the house. I swore under my breath as they shouted, “Where do you want these, Mr Rutherford?”

  “Would you excuse me, Bella?” I asked. “I won’t keep you from your sunbathing any longer.”

  “I should really be getting on anyway,” she said. “My book won’t write itself. It was nice to meet you, Mr Rutherford.” />
  She turned and walked away and I didn’t move until she was inside her house, I couldn’t tear my eyes from that ass of hers as she sashayed, her hips swaying across the lawn to her door. Only when she was out of sight did I twist my head round towards the removals man. It might have looked as if I was paying attention to what he was asking me but my mind was still fixed on her. The image of her in her bikini tormented me. It was the way she’d walked away from me, teasing me, begging me to take her. I would, soon.

  THREE

  BELLA

  I was halfway through my workout when Claudia rang. I paused long enough to answer and say, “I’ll ring you back,” as I panted down the phone.

  “Are you having sex?” she replied. “You sound like you’re having sex.”

  “No!” I squawked. “How likely is that?”

  “It’s not often I get someone breathing so heavily down the phone.”

  “I’m in the middle of my squats.”

  “I bet you are.”

  “I’m going now.” I hung up before she could say anything else and got back to it. I’d eaten most of a tub of chocolate fudge ice cream for supper the night before and I was regretting it, hence the workout being more intense than usual. I’d binged on the ice cream whilst binging on season three of my favourite show. I’d say what show but it’s too embarrassing to admit. I hadn’t planned to eat so much but my mind had wandered as I stared at the TV, my focus shifting to my neighbour. I’d found myself wondering what he was up to. Was he unpacking over there? On the phone to his wife? Wishing his kids a good night?

  Maybe he’d done all those things. Maybe he was in the shower, stripped naked, water running down his rippling chest, trickling down to his…

  That was how I ended up eating so much ice cream and watching TV for so long. It meant I had extra calories that needed burning. I ended my session with half an hour on the exercise bike in the corner of my bedroom, looking out into the garden and definitely not hoping he’d appear in his kitchen and look up at me. His window was directly across and down from mine and if he went in there to make himself a coffee, he’d see the svelte gym bunny hard at work, sweating up a storm. He’d seen me from that window last night, the memory of that was enough to make me blush and pedal faster to distract myself. I still couldn’t believe what I’d done.