It could go one of two ways at this point; I was either in for a few hours of being talked at about ‘feelings’, and a lifetime of inadequacy, and how they’d never meant to get to this point, or they’d just throw caution to the wind and go batshit crazy. A sort of hell, whichever they chose.
Gabriel James took away my blindfold and I lurched forward and pinned him against the wall by his throat. ‘You double-crossing little fucker!’ I spat.
‘Splain!’ he gasped, which didn’t make any sense, so I kept on choking him. His fingers clawed at my wrists and his eyes began to bulge. I reckoned that one more squeeze would probably do the job.
‘Finn we can explain,’ said a familiar, placid voice from behind me. ‘Just put Gabriel down before you kill him.’
I couldn’t understand why Nat suddenly fancied a piece of the action, but the way this night was going, nothing made sense anymore. ‘Where the fuck is Lilith, you bastards?’ Gabriel’s mouth kept moving, but the only sound he made was a frantic squeak.
‘This was Lilith’s idea – a last-minute change of plan,’ Nat said.
‘What d’you mean, ‘change of plan’? Either Plan A works here, or we’re all screwed.’
‘I know, I know, but Lilith – she got a note to Gabriel, last minute. Look, everything else is good so far,’ Nat soothed. ‘Henry reckons he got to everyone’s glass with my magic potion at some point, so these guys should all be crashing to earth any time now...’
They clearly weren’t listening, so I turned up the volume. ‘What fucking change of plan?’
Even Nat took a step away from me, as a precaution. ‘Two new guests. Turned up last minute apparently, and she said Gabriel had to… well, to buy you, no matter what. Two American guys? They seemed pretty determined to get their hands on you.’
‘Oh God.’ I swallowed hard against the memory, and finally released my grip on Gabriel’s windpipe. As much as I hated to admit it, Lilith had been right; there was no way I’d have made it through the night.
‘You utter head case!’ Gabriel gasped. ‘Thirty fucking grand to get strangled by a lunatic!’ There was no sign of the Cockney now, just a highly aggrieved public schoolboy. It appeared that I’d throttled the commoner clean out of him.
I ignored him. There was only one thing that truly mattered now. ‘So who the hell’s got Lilith?’
‘Um, some big fella with red hair. Got the room next to me, I think…’
‘Shit. Shit.’ Alasdair Dalziell had bought Lilith, and the night was truly beginning to unravel.
Lilith
‘So where do we start with you, you uptight little slut?’
As far as chat-up lines went, I’d heard better but Alasdair Dalziell’s intentions were anything but romantic. Blaine had led me through the darkness and now I was handcuffed and blindfolded in the presence of a man who clearly had the constitution of an ox, and the intellectual capacity to match. I couldn’t detect the slightest slurring in his speech, when he should have been at least halfway to comatose.
Dalziell stood behind me with his hard-on grinding into the small of my back, and his fetid breath in my ear. I half-expected him to begin licking my cheek, and I concentrated on keeping my breathing steady as he decided what he wanted to do first.
He had clearly decided on mindless violence, and I was grabbed by my waist and thrown backwards. I felt myself falling, helpless, until I landed hard on a bed, and then Dalziell pounced. He straddled my hips and ripped my blindfold away, all the better to observe the terror in my face. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t meant to be fighting this, when instinct was screaming at me to do all that I could to make him stop.
He took a length of rope from a selection of toys beside the bed and threaded it through my handcuffs, then roughly tied me to the headboard. Once he was content that I was secure, he leaned over me to grab his wineglass. ‘Cheers, bitch.’ He took a long drink. ‘First of the night. No point in being too pissed to remember the highlights, eh?’ He sat back, putting his full weight onto my thighs. ‘Now, time to sample the goods, eh?’ He tore my ridiculous excuse for a dress from me in one move and threw it aside, before taking a pair of scissors from the table and cutting away my thong so I was entirely naked; Blaine had clearly provided all the tools for whatever job he had in mind. He refilled his glass.
*****