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Gone.
I see it in Electra’s frown and then she walks inside the room and there’s no sound. No voices.
Oh, God. What am I even doing?
I see my reflection in the mirrors and I don’t even recognise myself in the shameless, wanton woman looking back at me. It shocks me to the core. I can’t do this.
When he was there, watching, I was high on it. High on the thrill, the letting go, the idea of someone getting off on this as much as me, but he’s gone and I’m...
‘It seems your little friend has left us to it, Kitten.’
She’s coming back into the room and I’m already at the table, about to scoop up my things.
‘What are you doing?’
I spin to face her, my hands clutching my clothing to my chest. ‘I’m sorry... I... I think I need to go.’
She folds her arms, purses her lips and narrows her eyes on me. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘I’m... I’m...’
‘We don’t need your playmate for this...and you only need to use the safe word and I’ll let you go.’
CHAPTER THREE
Two weekslater
Valentine
IWANTTOthrow my phone at the wall when the alarm wakes me. I’m not ready to be awake. Two weeks of barely sleeping, and when I do sleep my dreams are lurid, wild, my body making up for four years’ abstinence as it replays that night two weeks ago. A mixture of the real tangled up with my own vivid imaginings that make Olivia an almost permanent fixture in my head.
I unravel myself from the sheets that cling to my sweat-drenched skin. I have to shake this and soon. I may not be the one who changes the bedsheets, but it hardly feels fair, my housekeeper having to do it on a daily basis. She thinks I’m sick. I’m nowhere close.
Unless you count the fact that my obsession is somewhat twisted:Olivia, the submissive.
My body fires, determined to punish me for my celibacy, and in the most extreme way possible. I fight the image, the heat back, but my feet still drag as I make my way to the kitchen.
Caffeine—that’s what you need. Caffeine and the gym.
It’s my usual routine: up at five-thirty, coffee, gym, I leave, housekeeper arrives. Though lately she’s here before I go, with concern shining in her wise old eyes.
I load up the coffee machine, set it to go and stalk to the floor-to-ceiling glass that overlooks the Thames and find my mind wandering. Already back to her. Proving my point, but I can’t stop the thoughts.
Is she also awake, somewhere in the city? Looking out over a similar view? Is she happy? Content? Still searching for the elusive fix that will make everything feel better?
I push my fingers through my hair, shake it out and stretch. Try to banish her from my mind. I said no to the board, to my mentor. She will be someone else’s problem. Someone else can fix her. Someone who can be trusted to control their basic instincts where she’s concerned, instincts I thought long-since dead.
‘Turn on the TV.’
The penthouse comes alive, the TV blaring to life with the news channel, though my focus remains inward. I’ll go at it hard in the gym, up my reps, my run, anything to burn—
‘Sources say the Bugatti Olivia Carmel was driving struck the central reservation of the M40 at around four this morning...’
The fine hairs on my neck, my arms prick up, goosebumps forming with the sickening roll in my gut. I grab the remote, turn up the volume.
‘...it’s believed she was travelling alone to her home on the outskirts of Oxford when the crash happened.’
Camera footage fills the screen of a crumpled vehicle being pulled out of a ditch. There are police cars, floodlights, a fire engine, an ambulance...
