Dark Desires (Dark Romance Boxed Set)

by Cerys du Lys

  Their voices faded and were replaced by the sound of a door closing. Anna dragged in a ragged breath, fighting the sudden tears. Although Tristan had left her in anger, she had hoped against the odds that he would come for her. She had assumed he would not want Andrew Gallagher to have her.

  But what a silly assumption that was! Once more she was struck by her own foolish naivety. After all, why should Tristan come for her? He wanted her body, and he had taken it; what else was left?

  Her soul stirred in anger. What else was left? Why, everything!

  But he didn’t think she was worth saving. Her heart sank as quickly as it had risen. She was left alone, to save herself - did she think she was worth saving?

  She dithered, the wine and the water in her hands, looking this way and that. Here was her chance. Tristan was not coming for her; Hugh and Andrew’s plan was useless. She could run. Slip out through the scullery, make her way out onto the public highway, find her way home. No doubt she would be cast out, but she still hoped her family might find a situation for her, somewhere quietly out of the way.

  She almost turned. She almost ran. But upstairs, a beaten, injured woman was lying slumped against a wall, and she needed Anna.

  Anna didn’t know enough curse words to adequately express her feelings. She screwed up her face and took a deep breath. She would take the wine and water to Mercy, see that she was all right, and then she would run for her freedom.

  But barely had her foot set upon the first stair when the door opened again. She ran, all idea of hiding gone, trying to escape up the stairs, but there were strong arms around her and the jug and the bottle fell to the floor, crashing to the tiles. She was hauled backward, her legs kicking out, all her breath squeezed from her by the grip around her body.

  “What are you doing?” said Andrew Gallagher, low in her ear. His voice made her recoil in horror.

  “Mercy-” she gasped.

  “No mercy for you,” he laughed, amused at his joke, and relaxed his grip for a moment. She pulled forward but he was only toying with her. He grabbed her arm, spun her around, and crushed her to his body once more, but this time she was facing him.

  She craned her head back as far as it would go to avoid him, but he pushed his face forward and nuzzled against her skin like a dog, laughing with delight at her aversion to him. She wanted to gag as his right arm held her tight but his left hand roamed freely, pulling at her clothing, squeezing her breasts, and plunging between her legs to grab at her crotch.

  I cannot fight him, she realized. And I know what he is about to do. And last time this happened… I survived. And this time, I vow that I will survive too.

  And she went limp.

  His hand continued its assault. His face was against her neck. His lips wetly mewed against her skin. But Anna withdrew deep within herself, to her core, and abandoned her body to its temporary fate.

  Gallagher was huffing against her throat, his teeth grazing on her. She half-closed her eyes and let them blur, so that she saw nothing but pale and dark shapes moving. She inhaled deep to the pit of her stomach, letting her body relax. She was not here; she was floating, elsewhere, her mind free and empty.

  Then he was pushing her to the floor. The cold, hard tiles beneath her brought her consciousness back for a moment but she paused, rallied, and retreated once more. He was straddling her, undoing his belt, then leaning forward over her. She could smell him, feel him, hear and see him - yet at a distance.

  It was flesh, it was dirt, it would fade away and die as did all things.

  He was speaking, and she heard him dully, as if she were listening through a thick velvet curtain. “Whore,” perhaps he was saying. “Bitch. Open your eyes!”

  She let her lids part but her eyes were not seeing.

  “Whore, beg me, scream for me,” he said, slapping her. She let her head snap to the side, absorbing the blow, not a whimper escaping her mouth.

  “Whore!” he was saying, his voice fainter and fainter as she fell into herself. Hands on her. Fabric tearing. Heavy breath upon her. Legs forced apart.

  No Tristan to save her. No one but herself - and she was somewhere else.

  “Whore…”

  Fingers in her pussy, fingers in her mouth.

  Then another blow to her face, and the dark shape above her receded. She heard his invecture rain down upon her, and she blinked to let her vision clear slightly.

  He stood above her, taunt and angry, and spat three times. It hit her shoulder and splattered on her chest.

  Then he whirled around and strode away, and she sank back on the tiled floor and closed her eyes to count to ten, then twenty, then fifty, before getting to her knees and attending to her half-torn dress.

  He had not taken her. She gazed about dully, feeling wonder at the edges of her mind. He had not had her, though he wanted to, and he could have.

  The water jug was broken and shards littered the floor, but the wine bottle was made of stern stuff and had rolled to rest under the lower step. She picked it up, remembering that Mercy still waited for her. Anna decided that she would not chance the wrath of Gallagher again, but she still owed Mercy this one small kindness.

  She ran up the stairs, turning the events over in her mind. What power had she, indeed, that could thwart a man’s lust not by her actions - but by her inactions!

  Back in the room, Mercy was still as she had been left, and if she had heard any of what had transpired on the stairs, she gave no sign. She didn’t question where the water was. Anna offered her the bottle and immediately realized she had no way of opening it, but Mercy smiled lopsidedly and waved her fingers at her belt, where Anna saw a corkscrew. Keys and corkscrews; the accoutrements of a very particular mistress of a very particular type of house. Anna herself almost smiled at the nonsense of it.

  Mercy gulped down a good quarter of the bottle of wine, and gasped, letting her eyes roll and close. Anna remained squatting for a moment, watching.

  Mercy would sleep, she realized. And it was time for Anna to make good her escape. She left the bottle clutched in Mercy’s slackening hands, ensuring it was well-propped against her legs for support, and rose to her feet.

  But as she turned, there was Gallagher in the doorway, his face blank this time.

  “You are not going anywhere.”

  “You cannot keep me locked in!” she flared at him. “I shall beat down the door.” I have a key, she thought. Do not let him know.

  “You may try,” he said. “But my staff are all around, and Hugh himself is being set to guard in the corridor, for we expect … visitors.”

  “Tristan, you mean?”

  “Yes,” he said, finally a flicker of cruel emotion showing in the curl of his lip. “But he will not be coming for you. You’re ours now, and he cares not.”

  If she hadn’t heard the exchange between Hugh and Gallagher, she would have thought that he bluffed her. As it was, she knew he spoke the truth about Tristan not coming for her; if he truly was coming, it was on another matter. She wondered how. Yet it still hurt. “I will be free,” she hissed, though as much for her own courage as for him.

  He didn’t even bother to reply. He shrugged, stepped back, and locked the door.

  She stared at the wall, and her hand crept to her belly, feeling the outline of the key there. But what use was it, when Hugh was patrolling outside? She was safer within.

  With a sigh, Anna spun around, and lifted the bottle from Mercy’s unresponsive hands. The wine was spicy and warm, and she poured a long draught of fire down her throat. He was not coming for her, and she was alone.

  No - not alone. She heard a movement behind, and turned her head. Hugh was standing there in the doorway, leaning on the frame. Not safe - not even in here.

  “He’s going to come for you. I’m going to go and get him. That’s what you want, isn’t it, this tall dark hero to rescue you?”

  She pressed her lips shut, tasting the rank wine on her skin. She knew Hugh was playing a game, though she w
asn’t sure what. He lied. She knew it.

  “He’ll come for you, oh yes. That tall dark hero. That tall dark murderer.”

  She wanted to know more, but refused to ask.

  He shrugged, amused by her apparent indifference. “Oh yes, he killed someone. I suppose you think it was some kind of justified killing, don’t you? I suppose you are imagining he might have been a soldier. Or even some dreadful accident from his prize fighting days. He was a good man in the ring, always an amateur as the best gentlemen always are. No, none of these things.”

  Hugh took one step into the room and she stiffened. He stopped, swaying slightly. He was drunk, she realized.

  “He killed his own sister, you know. Ask him. When he comes for you. Ask him when you’re going to be next.”

  He stepped back, and locked the door. His voice drifted through. “I’m going to fetch him now. You ask him…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tristan was in a foul mood. He had stalked out of the warehouse, leaving Hugh whimpered there, shouted a few choice expletive-packed orders at the men, and ignored the offers of passing cabs. He walked with his head down and his legs flung out angrily, not caring who he barged into. He got to his club, glared at the door, and realized he did not want to go in there and speak to people he knew.

  So he spun on his heel and half-ran to the nearest lowly tavern, but he stopped dead at the entrance there, too. He didn’t want to be drunk.

  But he didn’t want to be sober.

  Fucking hell.

  He walked on, but more slowly this time, and without any destination in mind.

  Hugh, fucking Hugh, he could kill him. Gallagher too. Even the Earl of C.

  And yet - without them, what fun would life be?

  Hugh wanted domination, money and power. He didn’t understand Tristan’s sheer joy in the game of it. If they merged gangs, as Hugh wanted, yes - it was true - they could hope to be the most powerful in London.

  Who would they rival?

  Tristan shook his head. Enemies were good. Rivals were good. They forced you to keep on your toes, raise your game. Who would watch a horse race with only one horse?

  Maybe I am being unfair. After all, Tristan reminded himself, there are always new gangs springing up. Mostly they fail, or we crush them. But at some point, we would be challenged.

  And yet… I still do not want to work with Andrew Fucking Gallagher. He’s a common thief and a petty criminal. He runs whorehouses that are simply stables of slaves to be abused. Yes, yes, I am a frequent visitor to brothels myself; but I have standards. He has none. No finesse about him at all.

  Whether he wanted to merge with the Earl of C.’s gang or not, however, he was going to have to find Andrew Gallagher.

  He had something of Tristan’s; Anna.

  Tristan groaned, still walking aimlessly, oblivious to the sideways glances that people on the streets gave him. Anna. The sweet, beautiful, innocent whore; so new, so fuckable, so full of fire.

  Well, that fire would be well and truly put out by now. And why should he care? Gallagher and his men were only doing to her, what he himself intended to do.

  But if Hugh had stolen Tristan’s least favorite horse, and passed it to Gallagher, Tristan would have been furious - and this, he told himself, was exactly the same. It didn’t matter that it was a woman, or a horse, or a painting, or a loaf of moldy bread. Something of Tristan’s had been taken, and revenge had to be had.

  Because this wasn’t the first time Hugh had tried to play him, and Tristan was not going to be anybody’s plaything, not any more. He was not part of their games.

  He stopped short, and rubbed his face. Too much thinking, too much planning. He needed to act.

  First, he went back to the warehouse, and as he expected, Hugh had gone. Tristan questioned the surly foreman but no one knew anything, or so they claimed.

  No matter. Tristan felt sure he would have gone crawling straight to Gallagher. He knew the whereabouts of most of Gallagher’s whorehouses, and their headquarters in a range of low buildings near Horseguards’ Parade. Where first?

  He went to the headquarters and watched from a distance, but it seemed to be business as usual. He grabbed a boy and paid him to go and ask for Gallagher; the boy returned with a bloody nose and a resentful air. “He ain’t in, sir.”

  Tristan tossed him another coin for his pains, and decided to go from whorehouse to whorehouse.

  The first was suffused with languor and torpor, the girls barely stirring from their beds and couches, and he knew nothing was happening there. But he grabbed a lanky woman with pale hair, and demanded to know where he might find Gallagher.

  She didn’t even try to prevaricate. She simply blurted out an address.

  Suddenly armed with the right knowledge, Tristan paused. So he knew where Gallagher was likely to be; and there was a high chance Hugh, and Anna, would be there. Not certain, but he knew that their plan had been for Tristan to go after Anna. They were hardly likely to have made it too difficult, after all.

  So now, Tristan needed a plan. To rescue Anna? To drag his errant brother back to the fold? To beat him, to kill him? To show Gallagher he was not to be trifled with?

  Or to merge gangs, and ultimately take over?

  Tristan decided that first of all, he would return to his house, and prepare himself. For whatever may happen.

  And when he got home, and heard that Hugh had been there, asking for him, still trying to play some game, he knew for certain he had to go to Gallagher and end this; in the way that he chose, not them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Anna tended to Mercy. The woman moaned in her half-sleep, and Anna passed the dregs of the wine back to her. Never had Anna drunk so much - the scant half-bottle that she had consumed was making her head spin.

  But she was aware of herself, underneath it all. She brought cushions to where Mercy still sat, and eased them behind her back, marveling at how thin and bony the woman was. Her spine was like the fins of a fish. She paced the room, staring out of windows, through the dirty glass. From time to time, she came to the door, and paused, her hand upon the door knob.

  Who was without, waiting in the corridor? Had Hugh gone to find Tristan, as he promised? The man was a liar. Or was Gallagher there now, wanting to finish what he had started?

  And her fingers would drop from the cold ivory knob and she would resume her pacing.

  The windows offered little hope of escape. Three stories above the narrow street; the fall would surely kill her. Still, she entertained some fantasies of breaking the glass.

  She wasn’t even sure why. Her body ached for some release, some mass expense of energy - for action, she realized. Now, at last, in her short life, she craved action.

  Her own directed action.

  She could have laughed. She was finally understanding what it was to be free - here, now, in her captivity! She was just as much a prisoner as she had always been - no more and no less. She looked back over her stultifying life and saw that only now, was she aware of her potential.

  Her capacity for action.

  She clenched her fists, and paced, and glared, and paced again.

  Tonight, she said to herself at last. This cannot last; I cannot endure this. Tonight, I shall effect my escape, in the darkest time just before dawn.

  And if I am killed in the attempt?

  Her stomach twisted. Part of her wanted to declare that there was nothing worth living for anyway; her maidenhead gone, the man she still lusted after just a hollow ghost to her, and no future to speak of. All she had was her sense of betrayal and that ache that came from knowing, full well, how foolish she was.

  But there was some fire, though small, yet within her, and she wondered at it. Why did she want to escape? Even now, why did she crave life?

  Doomed or not, she knew that she had to make the choice - to try.

  ***

  She let Mercy have the last of the wine, and as the hours passed, and the room darkened, her head cl
eared. Mercy began to stir and groan, and Anna helped her to the couch where she laid down. She was in clear discomfort but Anna drew a dirty cover over her, and stroked Mercy’s shoulder gently until she slept once more.

  Anna took to listening at the door for footsteps or voices. From time to time, there was muffled conversation, and distant doors opened and closed, but nothing came close to her room.

  She was in keenest agony waiting for the night to lengthen and pass. She wanted to try the door, peep out and see who was on guard, but she didn’t dare spoil her planned escape by acting in haste.

  Patience, patience, she urged herself.

  The business of the house must be conducted in a distant part, she realized. For surely the whorehouse’s busiest time would be now; the men frequenting the establishment would be making noise. And as she listened, she did discern more footsteps and more voices than before.

  And then - suddenly - as she rested her head against the cool wood of the door frame, a commotion had her heart leaping to her mouth. She started back, cold sweat freezing instantly on her skin.

  There were shouts, and then the worst sound of all - a pistol shot echoed, and a woman began to scream. Behind her, on the couch, Mercy mumbled, and shifted.

  Anna hated the fact that her first thought, indeed her hope, was that it was Tristan come to rescue her. What foolish nonsense - oh, the weakness of women, she berated herself. He will not come for me.

  I wish that he would.

  No.

  This is my chance, she told herself fiercely.

  She pressed her ear to the door once more. There was shouting, and running footsteps right past her door - they continued, and diminished. Another pistol shot!

  Heart in her dry mouth, Anna slowly eased the door open. The corridor was dark but light came from the far end, yellow and flickering, like lamplight.

  She knew the way to the main stairs, the route she had taken to find water and wine before, but a house like this was certain to have a back set of stairs for the servants. She turned the opposite way to before, and crept along, into the darkness.