Flipp gripped the lapels of Rocky’s leather jacket, digging her nails in hard.
“It can’t be true. I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it, darling. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Twelve
“You’ve seen the news, I take it?” Laura threw the morning’s Gazette down on the breakfast table, where Jeremy sat, head in hands, staring at a piece of cold toast.
“Of course I’ve seen it.” He took in the headline—Dockside Drama: Local Businessman Critical After Gun Battle—and replaced his forehead in miserable palms.
“The inside. Michelle Roberts taking everything back.”
“Yes. I know,” Jeremy wailed. “What I don’t know is what the hell I’m going to say to my editor. He’s called me in for a meeting later. He is going to want to throttle me with my own intestines. I’ll be lucky if I come back alive, let alone in gainful employment.”
Laura put massaging hands on Jeremy’s shoulders. “You’ll be all right, Jez. You were just using your journalistic instincts. The editor will understand. You’re a brilliant investigator.”
“Cordwainer will sue for millions.”
“If he lives.”
“Yeah. I suppose there’s always that silver lining. Though when the only thing you’re holding out hope for is a man’s death, things aren’t looking great, are they?”
“It’s not your fault, Jeremy. It’s that crazy bitch from the hotel. You weren’t to know she’d drop you in it. Though I have to say, she did strike me as a little…volatile.”
Jeremy sighed. “Volatile. I wonder what Cordwainer said to her. I wonder if he offered to chain her up to his wall again till death do them part, or something.”
Laura wrinkled her nose. “I heard there was something like that going on between them.” She swallowed down a lump of bile, remembering her father’s part in the perverse arrangement. “Perhaps if he pegs it, she’ll come good again. At least Daddy is delirious with joy this morning. Went off to the building site singing.”
“At least somebody is benefiting from my downfall,” grouched Jeremy.
“Oh, lighten up,” Laura said, taking her hands off his knotted shoulders and dismissing his concerns to pour herself a coffee. “You’ll be fine.”
“Will you still stay with me? If I lose my job?”
“I won’t stay with you if you keep the job, Jeremy. I want you to move on. Work for a national, perhaps get into television. I like your ambition. You shouldn’t be stuck here in Goldsands. I was planning to come with you. I wasn’t planning to stay here until the salty fucking sea air kills my complexion stone dead.”
Jeremy laughed despite his anxieties. “I wish you were my editor. I wouldn’t mind getting hauled over the coals by you.”
Laura’s Crimson Petal lips widened into a feline smile.
“Okay. Let’s do that. I’m your editor. You come and confess to me. A little practise run won’t go amiss, I’m sure.” She turned her back and swung her hips into the living room, throwing a saucy glance over her shoulder before shutting the door.
When Jeremy knocked, she was reclining on his sofa, legs crossed, pretending absorption in her mobile phone.
“Enter,” she said. She tried not to smile. She mustn’t smile—it ruined the effect. But this was such a luscious bonus for a postapocalyptic Wednesday morning—how could she help it? Besides, it gave her the perfect opportunity to punish her lover for failing to split up Rocky and Flipp. Not that that seemed particularly relevant anymore. She and Rocky were history, and that was that. Time to dust off, pick up, start again. With Jeremy.
“Ah, Weill.” She sat up as a hangdog Jeremy slunk into the room. “We have things to discuss, don’t we?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jeremy said, trying to stand tall and brazen this uncomfortable interview out.
“What do you have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I thought—”
“Sorry is not quite good enough, is it?” barked Laura, bringing her shoulders forward as if preparing to spring at her unfortunate cub reporter.
“The source gave me the information in good faith. She had paperwork. She had a convincing story. I’m sure she was telling the truth, but she’s been got at—”
“Good…faith?” Laura spat. “A tissue of lies, libellous in the extreme, but she gave them in good faith? This is a huge error of judgement, Weill. One I cannot possibly overlook. You do understand that you need to be punished, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” whimpered Jeremy.
“And you need to be seen to be punished. I can’t have any of my other reporters thinking that I am the kind of editor who lets this kind of slipshod behaviour pass. So you are going to open the office door, Weill, and leave it open, for the newsroom to hear. Go and open it, please.”
“Ma’am.” Jeremy trotted over to the living room door and let it slightly ajar.
“Wider, Weill. I want the sound to carry farther than a few inches.”
He pushed it half-open and checked for Laura’s reaction. She gave him a stern nod.
“Remove your belt, Weill, and hand it to me.”
Jeremy fumbled with the buckle, agitated with excitement, and pulled the leather from the loops, handing it sheepishly to Laura, who was standing now, watching him, grave-faced.
“Thank you. Now you will lower your trousers and pants, please.”
Jeremy obeyed, revealing a coy semierection, hardening with each brisk command that came from his lover’s lips.
“What’s that, Weill, you disgusting little pervert?” She pointed derisively at the tumescing cock.
“It’s my penis, ma’am.”
“It’s what you call a penis, Weill. Not sure if I’d call it that. Ugh, turn around and grab your ankles. You’re getting a good, long strapping for your journalistic sins, Weill. Let it be a lesson to you—and to the rest of the newsroom.”
Meekly, Jeremy bowed, gripped his ankles and presented his rear to Laura’s mercies. She doubled the belt and let it travel slowly around the muscular buttocks, drifting down the crack so that he twitched and almost fell forward, flicking it against the backs of his thighs so he had to part them just enough to stroke the smooth leather against his tightening balls.
“Don’t expect me to go easy on you,” Laura warned, and with that, she closed her fist around the end of the strap, swung it back and let it whip down, squarely in the centre of Jeremy’s bum, drawing a thick red line from edge to edge.
Jeremy released a fluttery little sound from his throat that could be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Not hard enough, thought Laura. I can fix that.
She put more muscle into the next stroke and laid it directly over the first. Jeremy grunted and rocked a little on his heels. Better.
Laura’s native sadism kicked into action, and she decided to concentrate each blow on that same strip of skin, plying the belt over and over, watching the weal redden and deepen, trying for a louder, more frightening swish and crack each time she pulled back her arm. Jeremy began to snuffle and yelp, then he began to breathe deeply, low sighs accompanying each exhalation, but Laura did not want to stop until he was begging, crying, blubbering for mercy.
“Ahh, not there again,” he finally relented when Laura aimed yet another stroke at that stripe of unfortunate epidermis. “Please.” He thrust out his bottom farther, as if encouraging her to aim lower, just to grant some relief to that poor sizzling strip.
“Here instead?” Laura found the spot directly below her purpling handiwork and decided to paint that a similar colour, laying the strap on again and again until once more Jeremy pleaded for a change of location.
It took five minutes, perhaps longer, for the entirety of Jeremy’s bottom and upper thighs to be flushed a uniform deep crimson, hot to the touch and presented to Laura’s satisfaction.
“Thank me,” she ordered, reaching out with a weary arm to check the temperature of his skin.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he mana
ged, his breathing rough and voice uneven.
“Properly. On your knees.”
He did as he was told, prostrating himself at Laura’s feet.
“Better,” she sniffed, prodding him with the toe of her patent leather boot. “I think the whole newsroom heard that. They’ll know why you’re squirming on your ergonomic chair while you type your apology for tomorrow’s paper later. Won’t they, Weill?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And they’ll know you deserved it too, won’t they?”
“Yes’m.”
Poor Jeremy. His cock was harder than granite. Still, she wasn’t sure he’d suffered enough yet. Release was still a distant prospect for him.
“So, you’ve been punished. Now you need to show me that you’re serious about making amends. I think you know how to do that.”
Laura sat back comfortably on the sofa and eased her skirt up her thighs, exposing her thong-covered pussy.
Jeremy was indeed familiar with the drill, and he shuffled forward, eager to please his beloved mistress. He kept his hands behind his back and let his face slide between Laura’s long, slender legs, taking deep lungfuls of her scent.
Laura lay back and prepared to enjoy the service. Soon Jeremy’s devoted face was burrowing into her thighs, his hot breath dampening the satin stretched over her clit. His nose pushed and his tongue dampened the fabric. Laura thrust her hips forward, grinding into his hungry face, showing him what she wanted next.
He received and understood the message, and his tongue’s wet tip foraged a path under the elastic, tasting the tangy juices within, lapping them up.
Laura abandoned herself to the pleasuring, feeling the slippery muscle tangle itself in her lips and suck at her clit. The way his face bumped and rubbed in her crotch was more than even the tightest-strung mistress could resist and, one by one, every nerve ending in her body gave itself over to the sensual stimulation.
She made him work, wore that tongue out, rubbed his face down until she could hold out no more and she granted him the favour of her orgasm, purring contentedly and rotating her hips, pushing his head down until he half suffocated in her copious flow.
“Mmm,” she said, letting him up for air. “Now, then. Stand up.”
He rose unsteadily, his cock still a thick pole, longing for a dip.
“Look at you. Poor boy. You need it bad, don’t you?”
“Please,” he whispered.
She shook her head and he groaned. “Fetch me the cock cage, Weill.”
He hobbled over to a chest of drawers and withdrew a leather-and-ring contraption, moaning and whimpering as Laura fitted it over the hard erection, restraining it in the silver hoop.
“Now the butt plug.”
He bent over obediently as she lubed him up and slid the large rubber plug into his twitching arsehole. Then he was ordered to pull his underpants back over his tender bottom and dress himself for the office.
“Now, then, my darling.” Laura stood and held him close so that the trapped cock dug into her pelvis. “You are going to the office like that, and you are giving your editor your resignation. When you come back, you will apply for jobs in London. And then, if you’re a very, very good boy, you might get to come. How does that sound?”
“I can’t…go to the office…like this…” Jeremy gasped, staring down at his incriminating trousers.
“Yes, you can. You will. It’s not as if you’re going back there, is it?”
“What about my reference?”
“You’ll get your reference. I’ll get on the case. Don’t worry.”
Jeremy, strung so taut with frustrated lust that he could barely speak, flapped hands at Laura. “You’re not…that influential…are you?”
“Oh God, Jeremy, really. For a journalist, you don’t know much, do you? Lawrence Francombe was my first boyfriend, you know.”
“My editor?”
“Oh yes.”
“But he’s…”
“Old enough to be my father, with grown-up children and a wife on the council? Yes. That’s why he likes to do what I tell him, darling. If I ask him for a reference…”
“Christ, Laura. You’re…”
“Incredible? Yes, I know. Now get yourself down to the office. And tell Francombe I sent you.”
Jeremy fell to his knees and kissed Laura’s shiny feet with grateful passion.
She reached down to ruffle his hair.
“You know, I hate to say it, but perhaps that Flipp creature did me a favour after all.”
“How’s your head, soldier?”
“How about you come here and I show you?”
“Sounds like an offer.”
Flipp edged over to where Rocky crouched, checking the oil on his bike in the car park of the Travelodge where they planned to spend the night.
He reached a gloved hand back for her, capturing her wrist and bringing her down onto the tarmac where they wrestled briefly until she was overpowered. The natural next step was a kiss, but their matching motorcycle helmets foiled nature.
“Perhaps we should check in?” Flipp suggested, giggling as their rounded heads clashed.
“Is that a euphemism?”
“No.” She flapped a hand against his leathery chest, then allowed him to pull her up off the ground and into Reception.
The room was basic but still more luxurious than anything either of them had experienced for some time. Flipp’s tiny bedsit had reeked of mould, while Rocky’s flat was dark and full of flimsy rickety furniture. In the Travelodge, the bedding might be threadbare, but it was clean, and it clothed a full-size, comfortable bed.
“So here we are,” announced Flipp, putting down her bags and bouncing onto the mattress. “In a Travelodge, miles from Goldsands, miles from Cordwainer and Pete, miles from all our troubles. Weird feeling. I don’t know if I can get used to it.”
“Freedom,” Rocky mused, sitting down next to her and taking her hand. “It’s new. To both of us. What shall we do with it?”
“Shag.” Flipp grinned as she laid her head in Rocky’s lap and looked up at him.
“Not sure there’s much money in that, sweetheart. Unless you were thinking of doing it professionally. Which I wouldn’t be best pleased about, if I’m honest. I mean, I’m not a prude, but I don’t like to share.”
“I know you don’t, greedy boy. But I don’t want to think about practicalities right now.”
“We’ll be fine. I’d like to get a bit of work as a bike mechanic. You could go to university, like you planned. It’ll work out.”
“Yes. It will. We’ll have each other, and that’s all that matters now.”
“Yeah. And we can go anywhere we want.”
“Anywhere?” Flipp tickled his chin, then ran her fingertip down the tempting curve of his neck, enjoying the slight resistance from his incipient stubble on the way. “This bed is looking good right now. Though I suppose it might not be adventurous enough for you. It isn’t a public beach or a fairground ride or a waterslide. Perhaps we should do it on the window ledge instead.”
Rocky laughed, then gathered Flipp up against his body and laid her down on the bed, holding her at the wrists and crouching over her, signalling his victory with a wide, wolfish grin.
“I’m sure I can make this bed the most adventurous place you’ve ever known,” he promised, swooping down to make playful bites to her neck and collarbone. “It’ll make the Dive of Doom look like a monorail by the time I’m finished here.”
“I like monorails,” Flipp protested, jerking and squealing as Rocky set about tickling all her most sensitive spots, causing her to kick and lash out to little avail. Her screams of agonised laughter filled the room until they turned to heaving breaths once Rocky had terrorised the fight from her and had her exactly how he liked her—acquiescent and underneath him.
“Now, then, let’s have these off, shall we?” he suggested, scooting down the bed and unlacing her Converse boots. He pulled them off slowly, then peeled down her soc
ks and discarded them too before taking her feet, still hot from the long bike ride, into his hands and massaging them. His long fingers kneaded expertly so that she had to shut her eyes and float into the blissful sensations, throwing her arms behind her head, abandoning herself to him. Until he tickled the sole of her right foot with a devilish nail and she shrieked back to life.
“You swine. I was enjoying that.”
“Let’s get rid of these jeans next.” He unbuttoned and shimmied down the tight black skinnies, revealing pale thighs and smooth calves and a plain white cotton thong covering the location of Rocky’s ultimate goal.
Flipp wrapped her legs around Rocky’s, powerful and shiny-cold in their leather casing, enjoying the frictionless glide of her skin against the cowhide.
He pulled her T-shirt over her head and bent to kiss and suck at the braless breasts thus unveiled, nuzzling between them, letting his hair brush and dust her collarbone, neck and chin while she squirmed and sighed at his mercy.
Flipp felt as if she was sinking into the embrace of the bed, revelling in the unusual absence of discomfort and risk. Could this ever get boring, this perfect symbiosis of male and female bodies, this unnatural understanding Rocky had of what turned her on and made her scream? Surely not, not ever.
Large hands found and gripped her bare bum cheeks, squeezing them tightly while a hard, swollen crotch pressed against hers, seeking entrance despite the layers that separated them.
“Take them off,” gasped Flipp, widening her legs, showing him how much she wanted what he offered. He pushed harder, pressing against her mons, trying to slide inside the panty-covered lips as if he had forgotten he was still clothed. His mouth found hers and devoured it blindly while his hands got to work on her knickers, teasing them down so slowly, maddeningly slowly, while she tried to hitch her hips and reach down to help, only to have him remove her hand and place it firmly back above her head.
She moaned incoherently into his throat, rendered mute by the muscular workings of his tongue, but he showed no recognition of her need, nor attention to it, continuing his tormentingly languid lowering of the waistband.
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