by Kait Jagger
She almost gnashed her teeth then; yes, she enjoyed these demonstrations of his superior strength, but being tied up to within an inch of her life? His fingers were on her left ankle and she briefly considered putting up more of a fight, before realising it wouldn’t help and might well make things go worse for her. He bound her left and then her right ankle to the end of the bed, leaving just enough slack for her to raise her knees at a right angle.
The mattress rocked slightly as he climbed on top of her, straddling her waist. Still wearing his suit, damn him.
‘Comfortable?’ he enquired solicitously. ‘I’m not too heavy on you, am I?’ To which she pursed her lips and said nothing.
‘There are eight basic knots, Luna,’ he continued, reaching his hands under her back and feeding a cord through. ‘The overhand, the half hitch, the half knot, the square knot, the sheet bend, the figure eight, the slip knot and the noose.’ The rope tightened under her breasts and his hands moved to her chest, beginning to work there. ‘Of course, there are innumerable permutations…but I think the old standards are the best, don’t you?’
He tugged at the cord on her chest briefly, as if testing it for tensile strength, then began pulling a cord up to her neck. ‘The slip knot and the noose, two particular favourites of mine…’
And so it continued, him patiently working on her, lifting her off the bed occasionally to thread the rope around her back, and later her waist, and then down her stomach, past her sex and underneath her buttocks. Blinded as she was by his scarf, she lost track of what he was doing – she only knew that with each pass, with each efficiently tied knot, every competent tug, she grew more constricted, more bound. Only her hands and feet were actually tied down, but her body felt…subjugated.
His hands finally stopped on her and she pictured him looking down on her. Pictured herself yoked beneath him. It was a harness. He had created a harness for her.
She moved and the cords moved with her, against her. She lifted her leg and the bindings around her waist tightened, the cord digging into the tops of her thighs. Then his hands were on her again, reaching for her breasts, pulling the rope up from underneath them till it rested on top of them. Her nipples felt…strange. She thought of him working on her chest earlier, realised he’d tied two knots in preparation for this. She moved again, felt them press down on her each time she drew breath, the knots insinuating themselves into her aureoles.
She arched her back, twisting in his creation, and his hands grasped the binding at her waist, drawing her up. The bedspread was actually damp beneath her, so great was her arousal. He was between her legs now, kneeling. She heard him unzip his fly, then felt his cock, rubbing against her.
‘God, you are wet,’ he said, sliding his penis along her rhythmically. Luna lifted her head off the pillow, stretching her bound fingers into the empty air as the knots teased and constrained her nipples, his hardness sliding ever faster against her. A guttural noise rose from deep within her.
She came the very second he entered her, the cords at her wrists and ankles singing against the metal rails, her breath coming in gasps as the muscles in her interior undulated uncontrollably. He was still for a moment, feeling her contract around him.
‘Open your mouth, Luna,’ he said, and she promptly complied. She’d have done anything he asked, the way he’d made her feel. He gave her his tongue and she returned it with hers. His cock began to move in her, slowly, as if he was trying to restrain himself, make it last. Keeping his mouth against hers, he removed his penis till its head rested on the entrance to her vagina. He partially reinserted it, inhaled and withdrew again.
Then he entered her fully. She tilted her hips to accommodate him and he moaned with the feeling of it, losing his mastery of himself. His hips pumped twice, three times, and he shook and arched within her.
After that, he immediately removed himself from her and set about untying her. He left his scarf for last, and when he removed it and she opened her eyes, blinking at him, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. As though he knew that any other gesture would be wrong; too little, not enough.
‘You’re still wearing your clothes,’ she said.
He looked down and said, ‘Hmm, yes. There is something about fucking you when you’re like that. A suit just seemed right. It felt right, that’s for sure.’
‘I want to watch next time,’ she said, and he pulled her into his arms, chuckling.
After a moment she said, ‘I need to brush my teeth,’ but didn’t move.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he asked.
‘Yes please.’
She found him a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, sitting on the toilet and brushing her own teeth while he brushed his. After he’d spat out in the sink, he said, ‘I’m hoping this means you’re going to let me stay the night.’
She nodded, mouth full of toothpaste. Then she took her hair down in front of the bathroom mirror while he sat on the loo watching her, one leg crossed rather fetchingly over the other. She told him about Rod writing REDRUM in the mirror and he suggested a cure for her morbid fear of the room.
‘Very hard to be afraid of a place where you’ve had sex,’ he said, resting his hands on top of his knee.
‘That’s right, because there’s absolutely no reason to think there might be a man dressed up like an old lady behind the shower curtain, watching you have sex, holding a butcher’s knife in his hand,’ she said, hastening down the hall towards her room.
Later, after he’d taken off his clothes and climbed into bed with her, he told her he was spending two more nights at the Dower House before returning to Stockholm on Sunday.
‘Will you please just stay with me there those nights?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘No more arguing about this?’
‘No.’
‘Miss Gregory,’ he said, wrapping his legs and arms around her, ‘do I need to tie you up more often?’
‘Maybe.’ She smiled into his cheek, then put her mouth on his. They stopped talking for a while.
Chapter Twenty–Four
Eight-year-old Tilly Waverley was riding her pony around the outdoor sand school, her mother Helen shouting instructions at her.
‘Keep your hands together!’ she yelled from the middle of the ring. The rain was coming down in sheets and Tilly looked thoroughly miserable in her soaking wet fleece and black riding helmet. The Marchioness and Luna, meanwhile, were standing in the comparative comfort of the adjacent stable wall, under an aluminium awning.
The sand school was laid out with a series of trotting poles and low cavaletti jumps, around which Tilly was negotiating her way hesitantly, her face a study in sodden trepidation.
‘For goodness’ sake, Tilly, get your chin up,’ Helen shouted.
Lady Wellstone had asked Luna to come with her down to the stables, a pretext, Luna suspected, to get them both out of the office. The Marquess had taken residence there on Monday morning and here it was Wednesday and he was still in situ. There wasn’t really enough room for two of them and whereas in the past her Ladyship might have insisted he move into the conference room, for now she seemed reconciled to sharing. So here she and Luna stood, the Marchioness clad in a Burberry jacket with a scarf tied around her head, and Luna shivering in her warmest down jacket.
‘Push your bottom into your seat…that’s right.’
Lady Wellstone had ostensibly come to the equestrian centre to watch her granddaughter, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. Eventually she said, ‘The consultants have told us John needs an operation.’
Luna turned to look at her, but the Marchioness’s eyes continued to follow Tilly around the sand school, so Luna followed suit, asking quietly, ‘Do you feel able to tell me…?’
‘It’s cancer. Lung cancer,’ Lady Wellstone said. ‘I’ve been telling him for years that cigarettes would be the death of him and now…’ She adjusted her scarf, hand trembling slightly.
‘What do the doctors say i
s his prognosis?’ Luna asked.
‘It isn’t good, Luna. But if they remove part of his right lung, it may buy him some time. There are drugs the doctors have said they can try, experimental drugs.’
‘Have you told…?’ Luna nodded to Helen.
‘No. The girls know that John is ill, but we haven’t told them the full extent. I suppose we’ll have to do that soon. And Florian…’
The guilty flush of pride Luna experienced at learning that the Marchioness had entrusted this news to her before the family was quickly subsumed by thoughts of Florian Wellstone, and what this news would mean to him, the heir presumptive.
Little Tilly was starting to whine a bit, on her pony.
‘When will they operate?’ Luna asked.
‘John needs to build his strength up, put some weight on first. If he can do that, they’ll operate first thing in the new year.’
‘Tell me what you need me to do.’ Luna heard the fervency in her own voice and the Marchioness appeared to as well, because she smiled a little.
‘Help me keep things as normal as possible,’ she replied, gesturing slightly towards her daughter and granddaughter. ‘For everyone’s sakes, I can’t afford to let things…fall apart.’
‘I understand. And Mr Lundgren’s proposals for Arborage? Presumably they go on hold?’
‘No,’ Lady Wellstone said firmly. ‘We proceed with them as planned. The Marquess and I are completely agreed on that.’
Tilly had begun shouting at her mother, and this finally drew the Marchioness’s attention.
‘Matilda Augusta Waverley,’ she shouted, walking down to the sand school. ‘You stop that this instant! That pony of yours needs exercise. How would you like it, being cooped up in a stable all day with nothing to do?’
Tilly sniffled, dragging a cable of snot along the arm of her fleece. Her grandmother had spoken; the time had come to buck up.
Predictably, Luna hadn’t heard from Stefan at all since they parted at the Dower House early on Sunday morning, him heading to Heathrow and her off around the estate in her running clothes. She didn’t know how much longer these little ruses would fool anyone who bothered to notice her comings and goings.
Interestingly, Stefan’s employees were rather better than him at staying in touch, Bibi Myers having emailed a few questions about the board meeting in early December, and James MacGregor, who was spending much of the week at Arborage holding meetings with its finance team.
After returning from the stables, Luna went along to the conference room to check on him, finding him standing next to the window on his mobile. James smiled at her as she entered and said into his phone, ‘She’s here right now, actually.’ Ah, Luna thought, apparently this was as close as she was going to get to speaking to Stefan this week.
‘Did you look at that weather report I sent you?’ James was saying. ‘Thirty-five centimetres on the ground and it’s still falling…Oh, come on, I’m catching the 6.30 tonight, we could be on the slopes by lunchtime tomorrow…’ James held the phone away from him and said to Luna, ‘There’ve been early snows in Sweden and we’re trying to convince Stefan to do this month’s team meeting in Åre – it’s a ski resort up in the north.’ Luna could tell this idea wasn’t getting any traction on the other end of the line. James tried another tack, saying, ‘Luna thinks that sounds like just the kind of team-building exercise that will motivate your staff, don’t you, Luna?’
‘Absolutely,’ she laughed.
Stefan was on the phone fast enough after that, barely waiting till she’d gotten back to her desk to ring and assure her he intended to fly back to London on Friday.
‘James spoke out of turn,’ Stefan said. ‘You English get very excited by the prospect of snow.’
‘It sounds like you Swedish do too,’ Luna said, smiling. ‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘Well, I—’
‘You wouldn’t deprive your staff on my account, would you? Because I really don’t mind. As long as you get Bibi to do all the arranging for you…’
‘But if I do this, I won’t get back to Arborage till Saturday, and I have to fly to Berlin on Sunday.’
‘Did you think I expected you to spend all your free time with me? If Nancy had invited me and the girls to come to New York this weekend, you’d want me to go, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, I feel the same. I want you to have fun. And James, too, obviously.’
And so it transpired that, rather than spend Thursday night exfoliating anew, Luna spent it at a cinema near Piccadilly Circus with Rod and Jem, watching a Japanese manga film. She’d finished work just in time to hop on her bike and get into town, a decision she regretted when they went for a meal after the film at a lovely little Italian restaurant and she was stuck drinking water while they finished off two bottles of wine.
Luna made herself a silent promise later to retire the bike for winter as she accelerated up to 70mph on the M4 heading west from London. Even with her thermals on, she was freezing by the time she pulled off onto the B road that led to the estate. The road narrowed to little more than one lane, crossing an old stone bridge outside of Deersley and continuing through steep hedges towards Arborage. As she negotiated a sharp bend within a half mile of Arborage’s gatehouse, she slowed down to 20mph, and it was this that saved her.
Coming out of the bend, a 4x4 came thundering along the road in the opposite direction, taking up so much room that Luna had no option but to veer immediately to her left, straight into the hedge.
She knew immediately she was for coming off. Surprising, really, how quickly the mind reacts when it has to; she actually managed to partially get herself up on the bike’s pegs to ensure she went into the hedge rather than risk sliding between the bike and the 4x4. Over she went, headlong into the dense bracken, which snapped and sagged under her weight. It was a credit to her helmet and Gore-Tex suit that the hedge itself hardly hurt her, but when, after a few seconds of thanking God she was still alive, Luna struggled to her feet on the muddy shoulder of the road, a sharp pain seared through her left shoulder. A pain she recognised; the shoulder was dislocated, she was sure.
Adrenaline coursing through her body, she looked in the direction of the 4x4, now some 100 metres away. She could swear, even in her pain, that she saw the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. And then it was gone, and she was left in darkness.
She stood in shock for a moment, unable to think what to do next. She had dislocated her shoulder before and the previous time had managed, with help, to pop it back into its socket. Grimacing with discomfort, she tried flexing it, even tried lifting her right hand to the shoulder and manipulating it. It hurt too much – she wasn’t going to manage it herself. She thought of her mobile, zipped into her left trouser pocket where she couldn’t reach it. Nothing for it but to leave her bike and walk to the gatehouse for help.
Two hours later, she was sat on a hospital bed in the A&E department at the local hospital, waiting for the consultant. One of the security men on the gate had driven her to hospital, but she’d sent him back after calling for reinforcements.
Suddenly the swinging doors of the unit opened and a wild-haired woman dressed in a khaki jumpsuit with a snakeskin belt and purple brogues walked in.
‘I’m here now, everything’s alright!’ Kayla announced.
Kayla sat with Luna for the next half hour, holding her good hand and keeping her eyes averted from the unnatural bulge in Luna’s other shoulder. ‘Every time I look at it I start seeing spots,’ she declared queasily, fanning herself with a hypertension pamphlet. Kayla was decidedly not the first person Luna would normally call in an emergency. That would have been Jem, but given that she and Rod had probably moved on to a third bottle of Pinot Grigio after Luna left them, she couldn’t bring herself to ring her.
And Kayla had her uses. After deciding they’d waited long enough, she went nuclear with the nurse on duty, insisting that Luna needed to see a doctor. He came along shor
tly thereafter, a short, softly spoken junior doctor who looked to be about twelve and didn’t immediately inspire Luna’s confidence.
‘I think it’ll be pretty straightforward getting this back in,’ he said, holding Luna’s arm gently and studying her shoulder. ‘But would you like something for the pain first? We can put you into twilight sleep—’
‘No,’ Luna said firmly. ‘Just do it fast, fast as you can.’
Kayla, meanwhile, was looking thoroughly alarmed and had just started saying, ‘Are you sure you don’t want—’ when the intern grasped Luna’s arm more firmly and quickly rotated it. Luna cried out and arched on the gurney, but then felt the shoulder joint slip back into place. The relief was immediate, and she nodded to him, gasping, ‘Thanks, that’s much better.’
Only to hear a thud on the floor next to her. Whereupon Luna and the junior doctor looked down to see Kayla, passed out beneath them.
It was Kayla who got the lion’s share of attention for the next several minutes, ending up briefly on a gurney herself, before vomiting into a bedpan. The junior doctor was most solicitous through all of this, even arranging for jelly to be brought up from the hospital cafeteria for the two of them.
‘You see what I go through for you,’ Kayla said after she resumed her seat next to Luna’s bed while the junior doctor went off to get them drugs to take away.
‘I know, you’re my rock,’ Luna replied. For good measure, Kayla took a couple of photos of the two of them on her phone to send to Jem and Nancy. The one of them holding a bedpan made Luna laugh wincingly, clutching her shoulder to keep it still. Shortly thereafter, her pocket vibrated and Luna said, ‘Can you – can you just get my mobile out?’
‘Whoa,’ Kayla said as she removed the phone and passed it to Luna. ‘Four missed calls from Stefan.’
‘Ah,’ Luna said, debating with herself what to do. She pulled him up on her contacts list and pushed call.
