Once Upon A

by Charlotte E Hart

  “I’m prepared for you, for this. There’s nothing you can do to fluster me here. You’re just research.”

  Research. Hmm. I smile again, letting myself rise to my feet to back away as the fabric falls down her legs. And then I just watch her prone body as it fidgets a little, waiting for whatever reaction she might offer to help me see her more succinctly. She’s submissive; that much is obvious, but she’s less than ready to offer her soul on a plate because of a quick display of strength. And she’s too intelligent for that approach anyway. She’s devious; she’s clearly had to be. Presumably multiple pennames and fake accounts has provided a myriad of hidden depths, causing brattish behaviour, all of which is occupying more of my thoughts than it should be.

  “How much do you want from me?” I eventually ask, smiling at the way her feet part slightly the moment I speak, her heels widening for no other reason than her own needs. “For your research?” Fucking research. The thought aggravates me for unknown reasons, make me back away and check the fury that wants to erupt on her skin.

  “Everything that he started upstairs,” she muses, quietly.

  I back away further, my eyes still trained on her shivering ass and the way the silk flutters in the breeze. Everything that he started upstairs. That I can do. And more. With pleasure.

  Chapter 10

  Alana

  “ Then we should go back to the party,” he says, suddenly by my side and holding his hand out like a gentleman, as if the last ten minutes of being hauled, prodded and poked never happened. I stare at him, not ready to move for some reason and letting my body try to understand why. I’m leaning over a table, having been dragged here, and yet something about the whole situation feels fine. Relaxed even. And I’m not even trying to work out why I was ready to let him fuck me with no thought for protection, or voyeurism. Or why I enjoyed a complete stranger spanking my arse as much as I did. I’m evidently enchanted by the entire debacle.

  “Why?” I mean that. I do. We could just stay here and carry on with this, or he could kiss me with those lips of his, rather than just letting them skim my thighs, which caused all sorts of reactions—ones no other man has ever managed. “What’s in there that I need to understand?” I find myself lifting my arms onto the table in front of me so I can rest my cheek on them, still staring at his magnificence and resting myself on the stone as I smile. Perhaps I’m flirting. I don’t know. Or maybe I just want to get on with the research that’s relevant to my book. Or perhaps I’m just dreaming that last part is true and I’m not feeling butterflies in my stomach that have no right to be there.

  “It’s a part of who I am. You said everything, Alana.” Christ, he’s handsome. And the dark skies around him only multiply that. There’s a soft twinkling of lights highlighting the sheen to his hair, the shadow of them reflecting back at me from his eyes, only deepening his handsome façade. One could easily fall for such an animal if one was stupid. I’m not. I can’t afford to be. He’s the sort I write about, the sort we all write about. Mean looking, dirty, but with an air of class that announces his right for women to tumble at his feet. It’s an air that makes one do unusual things, without thought or opinion. Something I appear to have done up those stairs under another man’s hands, quite irrationally. For Blaine.

  “I don’t need to understand who you are, only what you can do with your hands, which appear useful.” God, that sounds brash, but it has too. There’s nothing else here. There just can’t be.

  He frowns, brushing at the lapel of his tux and dropping his gaze from mine.

  “Is that your version of a blush?” His mouth quirks a little, perhaps amused at how forward I’m being with him. He might be a sadist, but he’s also a man, one I need to feel relatively in tune with for this to happen. “Because it’s adorable if it is.” He bursts into a small chortle, closing his eyes and then looking up at the sky.

  “Adorable.” It’s not a question, more a reiteration of the word, one that makes me question why the hell I would use that term given the way he’s shoved me about. But there is a sense of instability there somewhere, as if he’s confused about something, perhaps questioning what he’s doing with me at all. “You’re going to be trouble for me, aren’t you?” The continuation causes my smile to broaden. It’s unlikely I’m the one who’s trouble here. He’s the one who creates pain for fun.

  “You think I’m trouble?” I eventually say, finally moving my body to an upright position and stretching my arms. “I’m just writing a book. That’s all. I’m here to learn. I’ll take everything you have as long as it’s relevant to my story.” He nods, his eyes darting over my frame again as his cuteness recedes, flattening out to his more normal expression of detachment. “I won’t fight or give up, Blaine,” I say as I rub at my arm, still feeling his grip on it long after his fingers have left my skin. “I don’t need romancing with grand gestures.” Not that I think I’ll get them anyway. “This is work for me, and not hard for you, I assume. Treat it like a job.” He pockets his hands, a frown beginning to encroach, proving I’ve offended him somehow. I don’t know how. I thought he’d want it this simplistic. Easy. “I just need my story and then you can go back to whatever it is that you do with your time.” I say that with a finality I’m not sure I believe is true, but regardless he needs to know that’s all I want from this. There’s no romance here. I don’t expect it. There’s no story that needs to evolve or be considered, only what’s significant to my novel. Whatever this is, and whatever his abilities in and out of the bedroom, I don’t want him thinking I’m going to be a hassle.

  I wrap my arms tighter around myself, watching him watch me, and wondering what’s coming next. There’s no need to go back in there. I’m not interested in his friends, or any sense of who he is or where he’s come from. I’m not affording myself the possibility of falling in love with this sort of man, and I’m doubting he wants anything like that from me anyway. He’s just a research requirement to me and I’m a job to him. He has to be that way.

  “Are you on any medication?” he asks, completely out of the blue. It throws my confidence, wondering what the hell that’s got to do with anything as I contemplate my answer. I’m not, nothing other than the pill and the amphetamines anyway, and they’re definitely not prescription. In fact, I doubt the little guy who gets them for me has any medical qualifications at all. And I can’t tell him about them anyway. It’s illegal. Not that I’m sure what these people do is all that legal either.

  Maybe I should tell him.

  “No.” It’s the sensible response. It’s not like he needs to know. We’re not a couple, are we? And I haven’t got a problem with it. I could stop anytime I like. I can’t really see its relevance in all honesty. I flick my eyes around until they land back on him, hoping my lie goes unnoticed. He just keeps staring, a deliberate threat engrained in his eyes that might have something to do with more spankings. He more than likely knows I’ve lied, doesn’t he? Perhaps I should tell the truth? Or perhaps not. “Well, only the pill,” shoots out of me, my hands waving in boredom to pronounce my righteous assertion. “You know, for pregnancy?”

  He just continues to stare for a while, making me feel more uncomfortable by the second as I attempt to stare back. It’s an interesting feeling, bringing with it an underlying sense of discord that makes me want to look away. It’s something some of them seem to have about them, Blaine especially. As if they’re purposely trying to put you off balance, weaken you. Not something he’s going to manage with me, not for this type of research anyway, but I’m sure he has with others. Maybe that’s what some women want out of all this. Weakening. Although, I don’t know why.

  “You look beautiful tonight,” he says, cutting off my musings and suddenly offering his hand again. A compliment? Nice. Mind you, given he had his hand up my skirt a minute ago, maybe it should have come before the act itself. Either way, I don’t take the hand as I make my mind regroup itself from the peculiar wandering it’s been doing, again. This isn’t a p
layground session of love and commitment, much as I might be have been thinking otherwise at times. It’s business, that’s all. So instead, I walk past it, heading up to the party again for reasons I’m yet to understand.

  “I don’t really want to go back in there,” I mutter, looking at the display of wealth draped around the building. I’ve seen inside now, and while stunning, it’s not helping me attain more knowledge. Well, short of the spanking, which ended up feeling a little humiliating regardless of how arousing it was. But really, all this is just a display of glorified kink. Better than the last venue, no doubt, but I’ve dealt with money for quite some time now. I know it. It’s all fast cars, this time laced with kinky people ambling around. Their spouses, or whatever you call them, dressed in odd clothes, some crawling over the gravel to show their ownership. “I just don’t see how it’s applicable to my work.”

  He stares at me for the longest time, his body switching between relaxed and tense as he paces around in front of me. He stops at one point, turning to face me and opening his mouth, a frown etched in as if he doesn’t like his own thoughts, only to close it and move again. It makes me nervous, which is absurd given the spanking I just took, and the manhandling he delivered after the event. So I just wait for him to settle, wondering what he’s trying not to say. Eventually, he stands still again and looks at me.

  “We can leave if you prefer,” he says, a completely emotionless expression gracing his face, as if he’s shut me out of understanding anything, not that I understood anything anyway. “Are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Understanding who you are.”

  “I’m learning who you are, not me, aren’t I?”

  He smirks, turning away from me and heading towards the car park as he tugs at his bow tie. I follow, not really understanding why he’s smiling but reasonably sure it’s something I’m going to find out soon enough.

  We arrive at a dark grey sports car, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. It’s long and low, fast looking, just the sort of thing I’d imagine of him. It makes me question the amount of reality anyone really wants to read, whether they’re actually interested in a normal guy, one who’s sweet and well mannered. The sort who holds hands because that’s what he knows of love, rather than one who does it because it’s required of him for some display of macho intention.

  “Are you getting in?” he asks, leaning across his seat to look at me. He’s got that undone look going on as he sits there, beauty and masculinity pouring from his being as he raises a brow. Yes, I suppose I am, rightly or wrongly. I gaze out the window as the door clunks into place beside me and he reaches across me, grasping hold of my seat belt to help me put it on. Sweet. I smile a little, tickled at this offering of chivalry, given his proclivities.

  “Quite the charmer, aren’t you?”

  He smirks, but it doesn’t reach is eyes. In fact, something seems to change the instant the seatbelt engages into its hole. All warmth drains from his features, not that there was ever that much. Something hardens. His eyes maybe, or perhaps his jaw as he hovers in front of me and looks at my lips, licking his own.

  “You know what you’re doing, Alana Williams?” I nod in response, not entirely sure I do, but needing my book regardless as I watch his smile peter out to something infinitely more nasty than bored.

  He leans back away from me, sliding on some driving gloves and then reaching into the glove box by my knees for something. The vision of him in the gloves makes me titter, as if we’re in the nineteenth century about to drive off on an adventure. And now he’s probably going to offer me chocolates, or a drink, maybe even make me remove my knickers and give me a vibrator, something to give myself an orgasm with as we drive to our destination. What he pulls out throws me—a small bottle and a handkerchief. I watch as he empties some of the liquid onto the material, rubbing it together to increase its spread. “Breathe it in,” he says, offering it to me with no emotion attached to any feature as he winds down his window. My face screws up in astonishment. Breathe in unknown liquid? I don’t think so. I look back at him, my mouth gaping at his boldness and ready to leave unless he finds some explanation for this insanity. There’s a slight lift of his lip, one that doesn’t fill me with any confidence at all. “You want a story, let’s give you one.” My story? He’s doing this for my story? I shift about in my seat, glancing between his eyes and the material in his hand, wondering why this has anything to do with my unfinished manuscript. “I want you unprepared, Alana.” My brow furrows as he lays it in my lap and switches on the engine.

  “Is that chloroform?” I eventually ask. Although why my mind’s even considering any of this, I don’t know. Could it be any more ridiculous?

  “I’m not telling you what it is. You’ll have to trust me.” He engages reverse, leaving me with nothing but the low growl of the car and the feel of leather beneath my backside. I glance at him again, watching the way his hand spins the wheel around. “Trust is the first thing you’ll learn about our kind, Alana. You have to trust.”

  I pick it up, glancing around the car park as we begin to drive out, and looking for other normal people, all the time wondering what the fuck I’m even thinking about this for. This is abduction, isn’t it? And even if it isn’t, I have no idea where he’s going to take me, or what he’s going to do to me when we get there. Trust. Quite the word given what he’s asking me to do.

  “You’re asking me to knock myself out for the sake of my story?” He starts to increase our speed as we leave along the gravel driveway, stones clipping the edge of the metal work as we go. He doesn’t look at me, but keeps his eyes trained on the dark road in front of us, his foot speeding us further into a night that appears to have an ending I don’t know about.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything, Alana. You’re the one who asked for my help, not the other way around. Either do it, or I’ll take you back to your average existence. Your choice.”

  The screech of the tyres as we round a corner and head out onto the open road is powerful enough to have me glued to the seat, trying to maintain my balance as he increases the speed and I watch his arm changing gears. I look at the material again, already starting to smell an acetone chemically scent waft under my nose. He’s right, I suppose. I’ll just have to trust him.

  “Do you often do this? I mean, it was in your glovebox.” He doesn’t answer that. He just keeps on driving without even acknowledging I’ve spoken. I glance around again, looking for something in the car that might help make this seem somewhere near acceptable. There’s nothing. It’s as devoid of expression as him, which only furthers my nerves, but I do need my story. He’s right about that. How can I truly appreciate sensation and feeling if I’m prepared for it? I can’t. That other guy nearly gave me the same experience upstairs, and that was because of the unknown, I’m sure.

  I lift the material, gingerly sniffing at it as it hovers about a foot from my face. I’m sure this is stupid. It’s one of those things people tell you never to do. But this is Blaine Jacobs, not some faceless stranger who’s grabbed me in the middle of the night. He’s right. He is the man I’ve asked for help. I said no one else would do, that I trust him to do this. How bad can it be?

  “Closer,” he says, now with a small sense of frustration lingering in his voice as he revs the car again, pushing us further into the dark and swinging us onto a country lane. “Breathe it deeply. Cover all of your mouth.”

  I widen the material from its scrunched position, looking at him as I do and bringing it up to my lips as I watch the world flash by behind him. The chemical has a sweet tinge to it as I take in my first deep lungful, and the second pull leaves me slightly breathless, my head buzzing as if I’ve had too much to drink. The third seems to increase my pulse, sending a shock of panic through me and making me pull my hand away. He reaches over, his eyes firmly fixed on me as he pushes my hand back into place so I can keep breathing it in. There aren’t any words from him, no sense of reassurance or passio
n, only that slight lift of his lip again as he stares at me and not the road. It’s all I see as an odd sense of sickness takes over. I feel woozy, and the car’s quiet all of a sudden, almost silent, its noise disappearing until all I can hear is my own heartbeat thundering inside. His eyes narrow as his hand increases the pressure again, my own hands feeling lax all of a sudden as they begin to tumble away. They’re just slits of shadow now, matching the sky behind him and blending into one with it, the occasional flicker of a star dispersing the blackness, and then they’re gone, too.

  That’s all there is. Black.

  ~

  It’s quiet here, peaceful. So much so that I can almost feel the sun beating down on me, reminding me of all the holidays I haven’t been on. Why haven’t I done that? I’ve got money, enough for me to travel to most places if I choose to. I should holiday more, live more. I don’t know when that stopped. It must have been after my second trilogy. I went home to England, and then travelled Europe for a while, enjoying my first experience of real money and spending it accordingly. I went to Paris first, then the holy land, then Denmark I think. I can’t remember. It was lovely, though. I travelled on my own with a backpack and nothing else to hinder me. I wasn’t stifled or ordered. There weren’t any deadlines. I slept when I wanted to, ate when I wanted to, relaxed when I wanted to. I wrote Bailey’s Scorn while I was there, allowing the sentimentality of the holiday romances to take me off into hot nights of passion under clear blue skies. The book still does well. Seems people like a good old fashioned holiday fling. Perhaps it’s their way of escaping reality’s mundaneness. Something I’ve given up trying to achieve. I just write it for everyone else now, for some reason forgetting that I might need it, too.

  My head lolls back against something, probably a beach towel. I don’t know, and in this fuzzy state of consciousness I don’t really care. I’m just happy to stay here, relishing the temperature around me and thinking of things I should change as my feet dangle in cold water. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, or even where I am. It smells of salt air, though, possibly a lakeside, or the sea. How did I get here? I try to open my eyes, crinkling the corners to purge them open, but they just stay shut, the light that was around me seeming to disappear into darkness. They’re sore, as if they’ve forgotten how to open, or they’re glued shut. I pick my hand up, ready to rub the sleep away, but hear a clunking sound and then feel something grating against my wrist, hampering my movement. I stretch my face, opening my mouth wide to help my eyes free themselves of the sleep, but nothing happens. I tug my arm, wondering what’s holding it down, and then try to move the other one instead. That’s the same, held back by something, and once again the movement causes a clinking sound of some sort.