The mere mention of her name had Lakota's body tense in need, and he adjusted his hardening cock. He couldn't muster a physical response to any other woman, but all he had to do was think of her, and he was instantly hard enough to pound concrete. If he needed any more proof of what a colossal fuck-up his life had become, this here was it.
"It's long overdue, in fact, Percy." He smiled at the other man's triumphant "Yes" down the phone before he disconnected it and pushed the door to Selina's bedroom open.
There on the bed lay Selina. She had somehow managed to tie herself to the bedposts, and from his vantage point he had a perfect view of her bare cunt. Rather than excite him the view made bile rise in his gut.
"There you are and so pleased to see me, too. Do you like my little surprise? I'm all yours to take. Ravage me, darling." Selina positively purred, her eyes glued to his rapidly waning erection, and she licked her lips and thrust her breasts into the air. Impressive as her tits were, the action left him cold, and she pouted when she realized his body was not co-operating with her plans.
She smiled up at him and licked her lips again.
"I'm sure I can help you get all eager again. Let me suck you off. I'm told I'm an expert."
"I'm sure you are, Selina, but I told you before I'm not interested."
He stalked past her, ignoring her angry huff, and snatched her bath robe off the back of the door. "Cover yourself, and have some dignity. We're supposed to be at a meeting with Mr. Hassan as you well know. We haven't got time for this, even if I wanted to fuck you, which I don't."
He bend down to untie her, and the minute he freed one arm she flung it round his neck and tried to pull him down for a kiss. Her overwhelming perfume clogged his lungs, and he drew in a much needed gulp of air, allowing her access. She thrust her tongue into his mouth and rubbed her nipples against his chest, and Lakota almost gagged. He pushed her away with more force than strictly necessary, causing her to bash her head against one of the wooden pillars holding up the canopy.
Selina laughed.
"Oh yes, I heard you like it rough. Need to slap me about a bit to get that cock hard again. Go on. Hit me, hit me hard. Put your mark on me, my big strong savage."
The air was filled with the musk of her arousal, and Lakota pulled back in terror when she took his hand and placed it on her breast.
"Pinch me. Bite me, as hard as you want to. Make me bleed…" She panted her arousal and grabbed hold of his dick through the fabric of his trousers. Lakota reacted on instinct and slapped her ‘round the face, leaving a bright red hand print on her cheek.
Selina screamed and then laughed.
"Yes …yes, hit me again, harder. Make me come, baby."
The drawbridge of the fortress he kept his heart in clanged to the ground with an earth shattering kadunk as the truth hit him square in the gut. The one glaring discrepancy in the damning newspaper revelations had been the claim that he was sadist. He wasn't, and he never would be. Miriam had needed pain to get her off, and lots of it. He had complied with her wishes, but it had taught him a valuable lesson about himself. He could no more hurt one of his subs on purpose than he could strike a child.
No, it was Selina who needed that particular kink. Selina who would have read the signs, and…
He stepped away from her and ripped his tie clean off. He needed air to breathe. There was no fucking air in this blasted place.
By the time he'd gotten the window open and had filled his lungs with the crisp night breeze Selina had managed to untie herself completely. The look of triumph in her face turned his stomach.
"It was you, wasn't it? You ran to the fucking papers?"
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
"Oh, it took you this long to figure that out, my poor dear? Of course it was me. You didn't honestly think that insipid mouse you married would have the gumption to sell her story, did you?"
Lakota closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. Anything to stop him from giving into the impulse to wrap his hands around Selina's scrawny neck and watch her miserable life ebb away in front of his eyes. He could almost taste her struggle and panic, the exact moment when he pushed her too far to the point of no return, her galloping heart beat under his fingertips, until it slowed and stopped, until she hung under him like a rag doll.
"Alice has more gumption in her little finger than you'll ever have."
Selina laughed.
"Oh sure, that's why she ran out on you. The poor little thing. That's why you’re getting a divorce."
"We're not divorced yet, Selina. So your insane plan is not working. You might as well give up now and walk away with some of your dignity intact. Act like the lady you're supposed to be for fuck's sake."
Selina's inhuman screech in answer chilled him to the bone, as she advanced on him like some sort of madwoman.
"So, tell me, what will your precious little Alice say when this hits the newsstands?" She turned round to show him the mark left by his hand and then rammed her head into the mirror on the wall without any warning.
"Fucking hell."
Glass shattered, and Selina stumbled. He caught her and picked her up, mindful of the glass on the floor and her bare feet. The side of her face was bleeding heavily, and in seconds his white shirt had turned crimson.
He swore again, and Selina's evil chuckle rang in his ears as he called for an ambulance.
The last thing she said before she passed out was, "If I can't have you, nobody will."
****
Alice pounded the pavements to the beat of Bon Jovi in her ears. Nothing beat an early morning run to chase away the cobwebs. The rush of the air on her sweat soaked skin, the burn in her muscles as she pushed herself to cover the last mile it would take to return home.
She smiled to herself. If anyone had told her a month ago that she would be willingly running, and in the mornings no less, she would have called them insane, but it was the only thing that stopped her body's painful state of arousal after yet another night spent in erotic dreams of the Lakota kind.
This was a different kind of high, but one she desperately needed to be able to function.
Her smile slipped when she jogged round the corner and saw the gaggle of reporters lying in wait in front of her mum's house.
Why the fuck were they back? She slowed to a crawl and tucked her head into her chest and pulled the baseball cap down further. She'd used it to keep her hair out of the way, but it would suffice in keeping her face covered against the flashes hurting her eyes.
"Alice, can we have your statement?"
"Alice, are you surprised at this, or is that why you left?"
"Has he ever hit you?"
"Alice."
"Over here, Alice."
She tried her best to ignore them all, and the icy fist squeezing her chest right now. Something had happened, and none of it was good. One particularly annoying sleaze-bag would not let her get past, and she took grim satisfaction of seeing him crumble after a quick stomp on his instep and an elbow to his solar plexus.
"I said no comment, asshole. Get the fuck out of my way."
The front door opened, and a grim-faced Elizabeth pulled her through and slammed the door shut on the mayhem outside.
"Finally, what took you so long? I was getting worried. I wish you’d take your phone when you take off like that."
Alice accepted the bottle of water her mum handed her whilst speaking and drank greedily before she answered, and looked down her body.
"And where would I keep it, Mum? Besides I don't want to get mugged. What's going on? Why are we suddenly newsworthy again?"
"You haven't heard, have you? I thought you might, being that you run past several newsagents on your route."
Alice shrugged her shoulders.
"I was working things out in my head. I don't pay much attention to what's around me, you know that."
Alice's mum sighed, and her lips pressed together into a thin line of disapproval.
"
Tell me, did Lakota ever hit you?"
Alice choked on the sip of water she'd just taken, and stared at her mum through watery eyes.
"Of course not. I can't believe you would even ask me that. Have you been reading those gossip rags again? I told you already, Lakota may have been portrayed as some sort of sadist freak, but that's not who he is."
"So he's never tied you up, and done … well, you know." Alice watched the flush creep into her mother's cheeks with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment at having this conversation with her now. Sara knew all the ins and outs—well mostly all of them—some things you didn't share even with your best friend, but she was so not ready to have this conversation with her mother. And why did she ask her about this now?
She shrugged her shoulders and feigned a nonchalance she was far from feeling.
"Why do you want to know this now, Mum? Has there been another sordid story in the papers, is that it? I can tell you this much, whatever Lakota and I did, he did with my full consent."
Elizabeth closed her eyes and released her breath with an audible whoosh.
"Oh, thank God. I've been going mad imagining the worst, and that's why you ran and just couldn't bring yourself to tell me. That wouldn't have been the first time you did that." Elizabeth fixed her with that look, and Alice squirmed.
"That was a long time ago, and believe me, I learned my lesson. There is no way I would let an abusive a-hole anywhere near me, let alone Beth." She wiped the sweat out her eyes and stretched her legs to stop them ceasing up.
"Now that we've cleared that up, are you going to tell me why you're asking? Why are they here?" She hitched her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the door and smiled at a sleepy Beth just trundling down the stairs, thumb in mouth.
"Morning there, sweetie. I'd give you a cuddle, but I'm all sweaty."
Beth wrinkled her nose and looked her up and down in disgust.
"Euww, go shower. Wanna watch C-Beebies."
She half turned and almost collided with the hallway wall, before she collected herself, grinned sheepishly, and then trotted into the living room. Seconds later the sound of her favorite children's channel could be heard blaring.
"Turn the volume down, sweetie," Alice and her mum called in unison, and they smiled at each other.
"She will get such a shock to her system when she can go back to school at the start of term." Alice drew her mum in for a hug and made to head up the stairs.
"I really do need to shower, Mum. I can smell myself, and it ain't pretty."
The ghost of a smile flitted over Elizabeth's tense features, and Alice froze with her foot on the bottom step, when her mum grabbed her hand.
"I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to come out with it. Percy woke me up with a phone call first thing this morning. He wanted you to know before you read it in the papers, and encountered that lot out there, I guess, but of course you were gone already."
"Wanted me to know what, Mum? Tell me already, you're scaring me here. Is Lakota all right? Has something happened?" Her voice rose to a shrill shriek at the thought that he might be hurt, or worse, and she'd never even told him she'd loved him.
"I wouldn't say he's all right exactly, though Percy, I expect, has got him out by now, but he was arrested last night."
Alice stared at her mum as though she had grown three heads. "Arrested? Whatever for?"
"Selina is in hospital with severe head injuries, and they say he's the one who did it."
****
Lakota followed the duty sergeant out to the front desk and signed for his belongings. He couldn't have cared less about them, but formalities had to be followed. After an uncomfortable night spent on the narrow cot in his holding cell, bone weary tiredness weighed down his every step. Every time he'd closed his eyes he had revisited that awful moment when Selina had smashed her head into that mirror. There had been so much blood. He could still see it under his fingernails, even though he'd scrubbed his skin raw in the tiny hand basin in his cell.
Thankfully they had given him a different shirt to wear, keeping his blood stained one for forensic evidence. This one was too small, and it reeked of moth balls, but at least it wasn't covered in blood.
He could see a worried looking Percy waiting for him behind the glass partition, and he raised a weak smile at the sight of the fresh shirt hanging over the other man's arm.
Thank God for Percy's efficiency, and his ability to get him out of this hell hole.
"There you are, Mr. Kemnay, you're free to go."
He grunted his thanks at the constable, and with a buzz of the door he was free—for now. If he would stay that way remained to be seen.
"Sir, if I may so, you look like shit."
Percy handed him his shirt, and Lakota swallowed a short laugh.
"As would you do after the night I've had. What's the status?"
"Lady Horsley, though I swear I have never encountered a more misleading title in my life, woke up this morning." He pulled a face that under any other circumstances would have made Lakota laugh. Alice would have found it hysterical. With that brief thought came a wave of misery so acute he struggled to breathe. Alice, who would never want to see him again for sure after last night's happenings. He had been such a fucking fool.
"She is claiming amnesia this morning from what I can gather. How very convenient for her and extremely inconvenient for us. We would stand a better chance if she actually accused you. That way I could tear her miserable little blue blooded behind to shreds. Within the terms of the law, of course." Percy winked at him and steered him through a side door. "This way, Sir. The damn vultures are everywhere, but there are considerably fewer of them ‘round the side entrance. I have a car waiting to take you home."
Home, now there was a thought. The only home he could think of was Alice's mother's place. The tiny three bed terrace was filled with love and laughter, and most importantly the woman he loved. There was no point in denying his feelings any longer. A night spent in jail made a man re-evaluate his choices in life, that's for sure.
However, turning up at Alice's place was out of the question. Which left the Dorchester or his country house.
Lakota sunk into the plush interior of the idling Jaguar with a grunt of relief. Percy ran round the car, and got in the other side, just as they were spotted. His driver put his foot down, and several photographers barely avoided being run over.
"Take it easy," Percy shouted at the driver. "I don't want to have yet more work having to bail you out of prison, too, when you get done for dangerous driving."
Collin's gaze briefly connected with Lakota's in the rear view mirror, and his long term driver and security detail smirked.
"Keep your wig on, pencil pusher. I'm just making sure the boss is safe. Where are we going to?"
Lakota shut his eyes and rested his head back on the head rest.
"Anywhere, I don't fucking care. Just get me out of here."
"Sure thing." The car continued at a more sedate pace, and Percy picked up the thread of their conversation.
"So, like I was saying. Unless she remembers soon and gives us her version of events, which should clear you, but being what she actually did, probably won't, we're all sorts of fucked." Lakota raised a weak smile hearing the ever polite Percy swear like that. "I fully expect her to lie through her teeth. We will have to wait for the result of the investigation and whether the Crown Prosecution Service decides if there is enough evidence to charge you with GBH. Now, on the surface there is, but forensics are pretty accurate these days, so we'll just have to play the waiting game, and hope for the best. A character statement would come in handy here from someone you've been intimate with recently. Your wife springs to mind."
Lakota snapped his eyes open and glared at Percy.
"I want Alice kept out of this. Besides I highly doubt she would be willing to give such a statement on my behalf."
No, she would more than likely drop him in it further. He could still see
the fear in her eyes, the way she had flinched away from him as though he was actually going to hurt her. No, she would assume the worst just like everyone else did. He forced himself to unclench his hands and ignored the bead of sweat trickling down between his shoulder blades. Jesus, just thinking of her reaction to this news had him break out in a cold sweat.
"Actually, Sir, you would be surprised. I spoke to Alice this morning, and the only thing she wanted to know is how you were, and what she could do to help."
Lakota's heart thudded against his breast bone at that flare of sudden hope.
"She did?"
"Yes, she did. In fact, she said, and I advised her against this, of course, that she would check on Selina, and then come and see you. She was most insistent."
"She was?"
Percy smiled and nodded.
"Indeed she was, so may I suggest we go to the Dorchester, and you freshen up a bit. You could scare small children with that look."
****
Alice was getting sick and tired of hospitals. If she never set foot in another one it would be too soon. However she was a woman on a mission, and she would damn well succeed. It's the least she could do under the circumstances, and besides she needed to see the Queen bitch herself. Alice knew she had to be lying. She deliberately hadn't asked Percy for Lakota's version of events, but she knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would not have hurt Selina on purpose. Not even if she had begged for it. That wasn't him. How she could be so sure she couldn't even begin to explain to herself. She just knew that the man she loved was not capable of something as heinous as this. The Lakota she knew felt things deeply, even if he didn't put voice to those feelings. He was honorable and true, and valued his family ties above all else.
And she would tell him so, just as soon as she got that Selina to back down and stay the fuck away from her husband. The door to her private room was left ajar, and Alice marched through without knocking. Selina lay propped up by cushions, a small smile on her face as she scrolled through her phone messages. The white bandage covering half of her face and the top of her head gave Alice a moment of concern before the other woman looked up and her eyes narrowed.
The Billionaire's Unwanted Virgin Page 15
