Act of Exposure (20 page)

Stephen would
want to know about this. But first, she needed to ask a few
questions. Smiling, she made her way over to the threesome whom she
would, under ordinary circumstances, much prefer to avoid.

'Carmel!
Darling!' Archie kissed both of her cheeks.

Douglas took
her hand, kissed both the back of it and her palm. His eyes
betrayed what he was thinking.

Hardiman
greeted her too. 'Nice to see you again - without your friend.'

Abby smiled. Valeria had learned nothing much from him.
Could
she
learn
more?

Instinctively,
she knew that if she was too alluring, too obviously offering him
the chance he had missed on their previous meeting, he would back
off.

Be as you were
, a small voice said
inside her head.
Be as offhand with him as
you were on that first occasion
.

'Do I know
you?' She held her chin high as she said it, her head slightly to
one side.

His smile was
slow. At first it didn't look as though he would bother to explain
the details of their last meeting. Mixed responses seemed to
flicker in his eyes and around his mouth. At last he gave in.

'I asked to
meet you. If you remember rightly, you introduced me to your friend
and went off with another woman. A tall blonde in a grey trouser
suit. Do you remember now?'

'I might do.'
Her dark eyes gazed at him very steadily. Her expression betrayed
nothing.

'Are you
available for supper?'

'I might
be.'

Although she
would have liked to talk to both Archie and Douglas, Oliver
Hardiman was a bigger fish to land. Somehow she had to know more
about him, more about his part in the Swan and Swallow affair and
the death of Carl Candel. She began to play up to him, provocative,
teasing, until he suggested they find a little privacy. So, like
Valeria before her, she went with him to his room at the Ritz.

Once the door
to his room was closed a slight nervousness gathered in her
stomach. If this had been the Railway Hotel and Stephen with her,
that nervousness would quickly have turned to excitement. Instead,
she only felt apprehension. Sex was a possibility; even so, she had
to keep her mind clear, had to be ready to learn anything she could
about this man.

It surprised
her that he did not immediately kiss her, clasp her to him, or rip
off her clothes. But he did none of those things. Calmly and
purposefully, he walked to the bedside table and took out a large
black leather bag.

She heard the
sound of a zip being undone, then saw him glance over his shoulder
at her before taking out the bag's contents and laying them out on
the bed.

He turned to
her, his hand undoing his tie, his blue eyes flickering and seeming
to concentrate on her navel rather than her face.

'I want to
wear these.' His voice was almost apologetic.

Abby stared.
There it all was laid out, neat, tidy and sordid on the bed.
Leather bits and pieces that would restrain rather than cover
anything.

You've never done anything like this
,
she said to herself.
You've never got
involved in inflicting pain on anyone, and yet this man is going to
ask you to do it. Can you do it?

She thought of
Stephen and immediately told herself that she could. That she had
to. This man knew things, things that could save Stephen's
reputation and throw some light on the people behind his disgrace.
So she smiled and asked him what he wanted her to do.

He was a hairy
man, so she was glad that he didn't hug her or try to kiss her. He
was also not the most generously endowed of men, and what he had
hung, listless and unimpressive, between his lean thighs.

'Tie me up
first,' he ordered, 'then tell me you are going to beat me until I
do what you want and say what you want me to say.'

Good grief!
She was surprised. Act one, scene one, and she was in with a good
chance of having him tell her exactly what she wanted to know. Of
course, she would have to be subtle and form her questions in a
casual manner, so that he didn't realize what she was up to.

As directed by
him, she slid a pillow beneath his bottom and tied his wrists to
the headboard and his ankles to the foot of the bed.

'It's in the
drawer.'

Even as he
said it, she could see the tip of what she definitely knew to be a
whip poking out above the rim of the drawer. It was only about
eighteen inches long and had nodules of spiky rubber all along its
length.

As she held it
before her eyes, she ran her finger down it and felt the hardness
of the nodules and the sharpness of their points. She smiled and
narrowed her eyes. Her thoughts about how to proceed were slowly
falling into place. It was almost as though she were in court and
about to cross-examine a particularly difficult witness and one she
didn't like.

'I'm going to
enjoy this.'

Immediately,
she knew she had said the right words.

'Oh please,
mistress. Please don't beat me.'

'Quiet!' The
whip sang through the air and landed with a sharp whack on his bare
behind. 'Speak only when you have something useful to say, slave.
Dirt. Pig! Is that clear?'

'Yes.'

She lifted the
whip again, beat him again, and watched with interest as the hair
on his behind shivered and curled into the crack between his
buttocks.

'Mistress,'
she said. 'Call me mistress!'

The redness of
his behind intensified as her whip landed again. He cried out, so
she hit him again. His cry reduced to a whimper.

'Do we now
understand? Will you now speak only when you have something to
say?'

'Yes,
mistress.'

'That's
better. Now. Where shall we begin?'

As she spoke,
and even when she had stopped speaking, she trailed the end of the
whip over the pinkness of his behind. His flesh quivered and it
pleased her.

Now for the
set piece. Now for finding out.

'Do you
consider yourself a powerful man, Oliver?'

'Yes. I
suppose so.'

She hit him
again. 'Yes or no.'

He whimpered a
bit more convincingly than before. 'Yes.'

'Are you also
a wealthy man?'

'Yes.'

'What do you
do to make yourself so wealthy, Oliver? Is it something wicked?
Something evil?'

'I don't—'

His voice
broke off as the whip again landed on his buttocks, the fine end of
it licking like a small flame between his thighs.

'Aaaagh!'

Now his cry
really meant something.

'Are you a
cheat, Oliver? Have you ever taken something that wasn't
yours?'

'No.'

This time he
screamed as the whip bit into his flesh even though there was only
a light redness there. Abby guessed he was losing himself in the
part he was playing. Good. Soon he would be so lost in his
pleasure, he wouldn't really know the significance of her questions
and his answers.

'Tell me all
about it, Oliver. Tell me now!'

Once more the
whip laced across his naked backside. Once more he yelled out then
whimpered before he began to tell her things about the cheating he
had done; recent cheating, cheating that could only relate to the
Swan and Swallow affair.

A coldness
spread throughout Abby's mind. She knew she was breathing heavily,
but not with passion. Anger simmered inside her. She would have
liked to have beaten his backside black and blue, but it was
imperative she played a cleverer card than that. She had to be
subtle if she was to find out anything at all.

Her face
remained impassive as she formed the most important question.

'Who told you
to do this?'

From his
shoulders to his bare behind, muscles tensed and his body hair
stood erect.

'I can't tell
you. They're too powerful.'

Three times
more the whip rose and fell. He cried out. 'No! I can't tell you.
Please! I can't! I can't!'

'Tell me. Tell
me at least what sort of people they are.' This time she made sure
the fragile head of the whip again licked onto his most tender
flesh; the soft velvet sack that nestled so secretively between his
legs.

'A media man.
And a judge.'

It was
tempting to ask what their names were, but she couldn't risk doing
that. Lost in his own sexual perversion, Oliver was in full flow.
There was just one more question.

'Would you
kill to get what you want, Oliver?'

'No, mistress.
I'm not a violent man, mistress.'

He sounded as
though he really were telling the truth.

'No,' she said
softly. 'No. You're not the type to do it to others. You much
prefer it being done to you.'

Hopefully she
would never see Oliver Hardiman again, but as an act of
confirmation that she did not wish to ever have to do this again,
she did the same as Carl Candel's killer had done. The difference
was that the whip she pushed into his rectum was not connected to
the electricity. Nonetheless, he cried out, his buttocks clenching
against the rigid intruder.

He murmured
long, low and in a voice full of pleasure.

Abby made for
the door.

'Don't wait
for me, Mr Hardiman. And don't ever try to proposition me again.
Okay?'

'What!' He
raised his head from the pillow. She could hear the surprise, even
the fear in his voice.

She was
leaving him there for the chambermaid to find.

'You can't
leave me here like this!'

'Don't worry.
They're used to all sorts in this place.'

With that, she
left him. Smiling, she made for the lift, the foyer, and the world
outside. Oliver and his sort were something she wanted to leave far
behind.

She glanced at
her watch. Tonight she had things to do. A taxi first to the house
where she lived as Carmel. The usual quick change, the usual secret
route until she got to where she had left her car.

Once in it she
phoned Stephen to let him know she was coming. He sounded forlorn,
tired. After putting down the telephone, she made an instant
decision. She also phoned Valeria.

Valeria was
the only person in the world - besides Stephen - who knew she had
two sides to her life. But then, so did Valeria.

'He needs
cheering up,' she told her, 'and you did say for me to call if you
could do something for me.'

'What do you
want me to do?'

'Us, darling.
It's something we've done before. Remember that morning when we
talked about leading double lives?'

'That morning
when we had this guy between us and he was wrecked because we'd had
him and he'd had us in every permutation we could think of?'

'You've got
it.'

'I'll see you
there.'

When Abby got
to Stephen's apartment, the lights were already low and sweet music
was playing.

'Oh,
Abby.'

The moment she
was through the door, he clasped her to him. He felt good against
her. He smelt good too. The feel and warmth of his body turned her
on like it always did. A hard bulge pressed into her belly. His
lips were warm and tasted slightly salty. There and then she could
have drowned in his kiss, submitted to anything his body and his
mind might want her to do.

Now
, she said to herself.
I have to tell him right away about Douglas and
the others
. He already knew what had
happened to Carl. Paul Bennet, the police inspector, had seen to
that.

He frowned
when she told him the rest. 'This thing seems more complicated than
I'd thought.' He looked at her hard. 'More dangerous too. You do
realize that?'

She nodded and
felt a warm glow that he cared for her safety. 'I know.'

She described
Hardiman to him, mentioned his name. He shook his head. 'I feel I
should know that name, know the description, and yet it doesn't
spring easily to mind.'

Unwilling to
let him go, to turn from her and fall into despondency, she cupped
his face in her hands. Held him tight.

'My darling,
you are so tense. You need cheering up.'

He smiled and
she felt his face muscles relax beneath her touch.

'You're not
kidding.'

'I'm going to
do something about it. I'm going to take away your tension - all
your stiffness.'

He raised his
eyebrows which somehow seemed to lighten his features. He almost
managed to smile. 'Like what?'

She kissed
him, put all her affection into that kiss. 'You're going to
experience man's greatest fantasy. And you're going to enjoy it. I
promise.'

If it was
possible to melt in her eyes, that was the way Stephen was
feeling.

All day,
despite going about his parliamentary business in as carefree a
manner as possible, it was almost impossible to escape seeing
raised hands, and hearing the rasp of secretive whispers. Eyes
glanced at him, then flitted away, as though they did not wish to
become tinged with the unspeakable, the ultimate horror - the
horror of being caught out!

The look of
her, the feel of her made him less fractious, though the ultimate
worry was still there. Abigail got him out of his clothes and into
the bedroom.

He kissed her,
his proud erection tapping against her belly as she hugged him to
her. She resisted the urge to touch it, to feel its velvet softness
in her hand. A surprise was in store, and he would need all his
strength, all his hardness to cope with that surprise.

'For a while,'
she promised. 'I will make you forget everything except this
pleasure I have prepared for you.' She helped him slide between the
cool cotton of the bedclothes. Then she went to answer the
doorbell.

Stephen
watched his penis sway gently beneath the sheet.