Never: an erotic retelling of Peter Pan (50 page)

That left only Xavion unaccounted for.  

Was he alive?  What would his motive be for  abducting Wendee?  To protect her from Belle? 

That thought heartened Long Shadow as he began the task of inspecting the minutiae, sifting through the expected in a search of the unexpected. 

The large patch of wetness drew him.  He knelt to touch a finger to it.  It was clear.  He sniffed the finger.  Then lifted the fur and sniffed it.

Seawater?

His head shot up.  A moment later he was outside running towards the cliff-top, uncaring of Christophe's reaction.

He skidded to a stop at the edge and looked over.  It was there.  A dark shape gliding through the crystalline water.

A submarine.

Fear stalled him again, but he overcame it more quickly this time.  Looking to the sun, he gauged the time then returned his attention to the submarine, noting its direction and speed.  He watched it until it was out of sight.  Then he started back to the camp.

DeMartande would return by nightfall.  Long Shadow would go to him then and tell him what he'd seen.  There was no other choice.  He needed DeMartande to save his Wendee.  Later, when she was safely back on the island, they would escape.

Long Shadow felt a pang of remorse for the betrayal of his cause, but that was a small matter compared with saving the life of his woman.

Christophe looked up as he re-entered the clearing, a dissected camera in his lap. "You all right?" he asked, glancing back the way Long Shadow had come.  "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry,"  Long Shadow fought to keep his voice even.  "Thought I heard the chopper.  This all has to be fixed before he gets back."

"Don't I know it," Christophe complained, his head lowering again to tinker with the blind box.

Long Shadow watched him.  The boy's face was tear-tracked but his task occupied his mind, all thoughts of grief apparently forgotten. 

Long Shadow knew his own grief wouldn't be so easily dismissed.  If anything happened to his Wendee he knew he would not want to live.  And in that thought came a fierce satisfaction.  His mission might yet be accomplished, but not in the way it had been planned.  If his love died here, Long Shadow would die also.

And he would not die alone.

Chapter Thirty

Dee sat on the hard wooden chair, her back stiff, her shoulders aching from the tension of holding them immobile for over an hour.  Lounging beside her on an overstuffed chesterfield was Armande DeMartande, one of her captors.

"He's such a perfectionist, don't you think?" Armande asked, gesturing with a meaty, be-ringed hand at her other captor, his partner Lariat whom Dee could see clearly through the two way mirror she and Armande faced.

"Yes.  Very detailed," she admitted with grudging admiration as Lariat, with a large brush in hand, highlighted with blusher the cheekbones of the man who stood, bound hand and foot, before him.

That man, that captive, was Xavion.  But the change Lariat had wrought in him was so disconcerting Dee found it difficult to look at him for more than a few seconds.  It was easier to return her attention to the artisan, now reaching for a lipstick, dithering for a moment before selecting a pearlescent shade of coral pink which he applied with a fine brush to Xavion's stiffly held lips. 

Dee watched Lariat's thin fingers intently, fascinated by their translucent quality.  More like the tentacles of a deep sea creature than anything belonging to a human, they moved with an odd fluidity - a stickiness, as though once having touched something, they found it difficult to disengage.

Dee hadn’t yet 'been' with Lariat, not that he hadn't intrigued her - a ruined English Lord who, in his faded black tuxedo, looked more like an anaemic, overgrown schoolboy than a member of the aristocracy.  With his colourless scraggly hair and washed-out watery eyes, everything about Lariat was pale, even his voice which had the habit of fading out in the middle of a sentence, as though he were continually drifting back to some confusing past.            

To Dee, Lariat was like the melancholy inhabitant of a Poe story, driven to madness by the wretchedness of humanity.  He fascinated her.  But Armande would not let her mate with him.  And Armande was her new master.

So it was with some wistfulness that she watched Lariat's ministrations, pouting her own full lips as he filled in the line of Xavion's, undaunted by her Champion's jaw-clenched resistance.

"Watch closely,
cherie
, and you will learn," Armande instructed quietly, and Dee nodded.  She wanted to learn.  She had already learnt much from Armande.

Her first impression of him - when she'd been dragged aboard his submarine, an aeon, or perhaps only a few weeks earlier - had been his resemblance to Pietre.  An older brother, as it turned out.  A heavier, moodier DeMartande, but with the same dark, autocratic features as her previous captor. 

Yet where Pietre had been reclusive, his brother was a social animal.  Not genial, but verbose.  Dee had learned many things.  That the brothers were not on friendly terms.  That Armande had stolen her on a whim to see how Pietre would react.  That Xavion, whom he claimed to be retraining for his own service, had been a present from Belle. 

There had been many revelations, yet not once had Armande substantiated Long Shadow's claim about Pietre's criminal activities.  Conversely, Armande had stated that both brothers were independently wealthy and had no use for work of any kind.  Dee herself had been with Armande for weeks - given free run of the ship - and had seen nothing illegal.

Admittedly she was a prisoner, but once the 'rules' had been explained and she'd started into the game, her captivity had been more symbolic than enforced.  The pleasures offered were ample inducement to stay, even if the choices were not her own. 

And so she began to doubt the man she'd thought she loved, remembering that Long Shadow had lied to her about other things.  Could his attack on Pietre's character have been a lie as well?  Fostered by jealousy, perhaps. 

Long Shadow hadn't wanted to share her, yet for all his professed love, he hadn't come after her either - hadn't tried to 'rescue' her from these pirates.

Even Belle's attempt to kill her could have been staged.  Dee's injuries had been painful and unpleasant, but she'd never believed they were potentially fatal.  And the resulting fear and gratitude had given her interchange with Long Shadow a piquancy it would never have achieved without the life-and-death scenario that had instigated it. 

These were matters on which Dee had spent much time in thought, and her deliberations had led her to the conclusion that Long Shadow had been playing a part. 

She also accepted now that Pietre was not a God.  He was simply a man who had promised to entertain her with a fantasy - an obligation he had fulfilled to her complete satisfaction. 

If he chose to take his own pleasure in watching her, she of all people could hardly complain. 

Seen in this light, her interlude with 'the pirates' would obviously be a continuation of that fantasy, a realistic kidnapping to heighten her jaded sexual palate - an opportunity she intended to exploit to its maximum sensory gratification.

Emotions had no place in the game and she'd been a fool to let Long Shadow lure her into exposing them.  But as she had done with Billy before, she now pushed Long Shadow from her mind.

Yet he was not banished completely.  His love gift still adorned her neck for a simple, practical reason.  Her life had become a blur of sexual fantasies and she needed a method of differentiating between imagination, dreams and actual events.  Physically touching the talisman grounded her in reality.  It was real, even when her own actions seemed too bizarre to be believed - actions dictated by her master, Armande.

Initially she'd resisted Armande's control, but now her will was his plaything.  In obedience, Dee had discovered a freedom from responsibility that was as intoxicating as it was erotic.

The tiny room before her was one she had often been sent to, and now, seated in the viewing room, she understood why.  Armande would have lain in comfort on the very lounge he now occupied, with Lariat on the uncomfortable chair as suited his masochistic personality, both watching her 'perform' with whomever Armande had sent for the purpose.

Outside the small room, she had raided the showers on several occasions, and once included herself on the menu in the mess hall.  Her days had been filled with these episodes, all explorations of variety and texture, sounds and scents as adjuncts to the act.  Pain and satisfaction, surprise and inventiveness.  She had become a mistress of technique.  The only woman on the vessel, she had been charged with servicing them all.  All except Lariat. 

The omission irked her, but perhaps in time, Armande would reconsider.

For the moment, she had enough to please her appetite - teasing entrees, satisfying main courses, luxurious desserts, not to mention the obligatory 'nightcap' with Armande.

At the end of each performance she would shower and present herself at his suite which she entered without knocking, interrupting whatever he was doing to sprawl across his desk. 

There would be no light in the room except for the desk lamp which he would angle over her body before seating himself in the darkness beside her.  Then he would wait.