Falling from Grace: A Billionaire Romantic Suspense series (The Filth Monger Series Book 1) (3 page)

She passed it across the table to me.

‘Page two,’ she said.

Her face betrayed no emotion, and I took the paper from her without a word. I opened it at the second page, feeling slightly sick from the wine, and immediately felt sicker than I’d ever felt in my life.

Footballers in sleazy sex romp

I recoiled instinctively, and pushed the paper away from me. My breathing got faster, harder, and I began to tremble.

‘You may as well read it,’ Liv said. ‘Get it over with.’

Reluctantly, I picked it up. My hands were shaking so much I could barely keep it still enough to read. Added to which, I had so many thoughts whirling in my mind, it was as if I were in a fog. It was hard to focus enough to take it in.

I went to put it down again, but Liv stayed me with her hand. ‘Read it.’

I looked up at her, then back down at the paper.

‘You have to know what’s gone on, Grace,’ she said. ‘Or you won’t be able to protect yourself.’

I nodded slowly. She was right. I had to know. I didn’t want to in the least, but I had to find out what everyone else already knew.

I took a deep breath, and began to read.

fag
British public (boarding) school institution (now allegedly out-dated), whereby a junior boy is in service to a senior boy. A fag’s chores could include anything, from making tea and taking messages, to more demeaning tasks, such as polishing shoes, depending upon the fag master and his whims. An honourable fag master would also look out for his fag; by protecting him from bullies, etc. Fagging did not usually have sexual connotations.

I saw her again on the news, that lunchtime. My morning hadn’t started well, but she seemed to be having a worse day even than me.

‘Poor kid,’ I murmured to myself, watching her come out the front entrance of Ffyvells. She was just as beautiful, even with her make-up smudged and that tight, wan look. It was no surprise she was with a Premiership player, even if he was only in one of the lower teams. She could’ve had one of the stars just as easily.

She was so delicate; slim and fine-boned, with huge, shocked eyes that peered out from between locks of her hair. It looked as if she’d deliberately pushed it forward, to afford herself some protection. Long tendrils of it twisted across her face, and the sun caught it as she gazed around her, turning it to copper and gold. She looked hunted. Beautiful but defeated. It was a marked contrast from the defiant Amazon I’d confronted in Max’s office, who’d just dared me to look at her after Max had yelled at her like that.

I’d been furious with him, even though she’d clearly pissed him off somehow. He’d had four calls while I was in with him and, looking back, they were obviously something to do with her. After the third, he’d seen her through his window, and shouted for her like she was his fag at school. I’d hated it then, and I hated it now.

He’d never had to fag. He’d had acne, when we’d started school together, and none of the older boys had wanted him. I hadn’t been so lucky, and when I’d taken on a fag of my own, I’d known how to treat him.

Max had ridden roughshod over his, and hearing him yell like that had thrown me back twenty years. I could almost feel the roughness of the starched white collars and the frock coats; taste the vile muck that passed for dinner; smell the musty, echoing classrooms. He hadn’t changed. He still treated his underlings as fags.

I’d tried to smile at her, there in his office, let her know secretly that I was on her side. She’d been too proud to take my pity. She’d just glared. She didn’t need my solidarity. That girl - perfect as she was - I could have forgotten. She was a match for Max. She could fight her own wars. This broken version was a different matter.

As the cameras played on her, she stood on the front steps of Ffyvells, gazing around at the bustle of Lombard Street as if she were seeing it for the first time. She seemed dazed…like she was wondering what the hell was going on. She seemed to have no clue why the reporters were there, how famous she was…or how beautiful.

She’d also been drinking. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but I owned clubs. It was second nature to me to spot when someone was vulnerable, and she might as well have had it stamped across her forehead. As far as I was concerned, it was a cry for help.

I almost turned away from the screen at the thought. No more. I’d had enough. She had a friend with her, anyway; beautiful too in a black-haired, emo way and oh-so-fierce, leading her by the elbow and pushing her through a wash of reporters to a waiting taxi. And even now, despite everything, she was holding her head proud and erect. With her burnished locks, her startling blue eyes, and her haughty air, she was perfect camera-fodder. The mascara down her cheeks was a story in itself. Fucking journos. Parasites, to a man.

Or woman, I reminded myself, casting my eye towards the door of my bedroom.

It was ajar. Charlotte was still asleep in there, sprawled naked across the silk sheets, an open invitation to some men. Not to me. It was the whole vulnerability thing again, and it was the reason I’d finally agreed to train her in the first place. She’d have ended up hurt, if not dead, if she’d carried on the way she’d started. At least I’d saved her from that.
Not that it hasn’t completely backfired on me
, I thought ruefully, chopping fruit, one eye still on the news.

I’d locked her in when I’d gone to see Max, just in case, but I needn’t have bothered. I wondered when she’d finally wake up. She was so still and peaceful, she could almost be dead. It was the way with subs sometimes, after an intense night of play. Not that it had been that intense. I’d gone through the motions; tying her, punishing her, teasing her submission from her, but my heart hadn’t been in it – never had, really, with Charlotte. It had ended abruptly, too, when she’d begged me to fuck her.

I’d called an immediate halt to play. She’d known the rules from the start, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t do that.

Damn Alex. If he’d agreed to take her on, I wouldn’t be in this mess. But he was right. He was busy enough as an overseer, not to mention the numerous other roles he took on for me.

I’d found it strange, even so, that he’d turned her down. It wasn’t like Alex to decline a beautiful face, or a perfect body. She had both. She was the complete package, in many ways, with long, soft hair that dripped down her shapely back like melted caramel, and eyes to match. But he’d been firm. There was something not right about her, he’d said. She was just
too
eager to learn, too full of questions. I wished now I’d listened to him.

When I’d refused to fuck her, she’d whined so much that, in the end, I’d agreed to let her stay over. That never happened. Absolutely never. But I was exhausted. I’d been in a shareholders’ meeting most of the day, and our session - intense as it wasn’t - on the back of it, meant I simply didn’t have the strength to argue. So I’d let her cuddle up to me, as I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how the hell I’d let her invade my personal time.

It was such an unusual sensation – her soft, bare skin pressed up against me, her hot breath on my neck - that I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there, wondering how I was going to call time on this whole thing. She didn’t need further training. She needed a Dom of her own, one that would take care of her, keep her safe from predators and weirdos and, most of all, from herself.

I must have drifted off at some point, because I remember coming to, feeling her rubbing at my cock through my sweatpants. I’d changed out of my suit, once it became apparent she was going nowhere, but I wasn’t sleeping with her naked. She was staying for comfort, not for a fuck, and I’d made that perfectly clear.

I struggled to wake up, but my mind was heavy, drugged with sleep. Even in that hazy half-state, I was aware of my cock stiffening, involuntarily. Charlotte gave a moan of delight, and began licking at it over my sweatpants, cupping my balls with one hand, while the other pulled at the top of my pants, inching them down across my hips.

I woke fully at this and pushed her head away. She gave a low moan of disappointment… or was it anger? I couldn’t tell until she sat up, fury etched into her face.

‘Why not?’ She pulled the sheets up around her, hiding her nakedness. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I can’t,’ I said, pushing myself up onto my elbow. I felt a complete bastard. ‘I could, but I won’t. I don’t do this. Ever.’

‘Am I not submissive enough for you?’ Her hair, still tumbled from the session earlier, fell in sensuous tendrils across the swell of her breasts. I had to stop myself reaching out. She was doing nothing to ease my aching cock. Judging from her body language, I didn’t think she’d welcome it now, not after my refusing her, and it would have complicated matters beyond belief. I had to keep my self-control. It was who I was.

‘It’s not you,’ I said. ‘Really.’

‘Is that the best you can do?’ She gave a harsh laugh, and went to get up. ‘Well, if it’s not me, who is it? Is there someone else?’

Christ, she still didn’t understand even the most basic tenets of our relationship. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t spelt it out often enough. She’d been warned about becoming too close, opening herself up too much. She was in training, but not for me. She was being trained
by
me. To help her find a Master. No self-respecting Dom would’ve touched her before. She hadn’t been submissive. She’d been a push-over.

I sighed impatiently. Surely she hadn’t let herself fall in love with me? How could she? She didn’t even know me. Not that she hadn’t tried. No one had tried to crack me open like Charlotte, but her endless questioning had been in vain. She had no idea of what I was really like, or she wouldn’t have tried it on like that.

She stood up, the sheets trailing after her and slipping to the floor.

‘There’s no one else,’ I said, as she walked out of the room. She didn’t turn around.

She’d gone into the bathroom. I could hear her running the shower. I looked at the bed. It looked like we’d fucked after all. The sheets were hanging off the bed, spilt like milk across the oak flooring, and her pillows were ravaged. I leaned across, pulling them back to rearrange them. It was when I pulled back the bottom one that I saw it, nestled there like a smoking gun.

A video-camera.

Not just an ordinary one, either. This was specialist equipment. It must have cost some. A hell of a lot more than a secretary would want to spend, anyway. And it was set to
record
.

I left it – didn’t even touch it – and sat there, my mind running over the implications. Damn fucking Alex. Who’d he hired to check her out, anyway? It couldn’t be one of the usuals. They didn’t make mistakes like this. Hell, security was everything. We all knew that. Without it, everything could come unravelled. Lives could be damaged – destroyed, even. It didn’t bear thinking about.

I slipped out of bed, and padded over to the dresser. I took her bag and twisted the snap, softly, carefully. Inside were the usual things you’d expect to find in the bag of a woman who cared as much about her appearance as Charlotte did: keys, hairbrush, make-up – Clinique, Estée Lauder, nothing cheap – cash. No credit cards, oddly, but – right at the bottom – the
real
smoking gun.

It was a slim metal box, rectangular, almost hidden in the folds of fabric at the bottom of the bag. I knew what it was on sight. I had a few of my own – white gold, mainly – that I’d been bought at one time or another by various well-meaning, but essentially unimaginative, relations. I didn’t use any of them.

It was a business card case. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t give. I prised at it with my fingernails…I had to get it open. It wouldn’t budge. It was clearly a cheap one, and the mechanism seemed to be fucked. I tried again. Still nothing – not even enough play to indicate I was doing it right.

Finally, it snapped open, revealing a clutch of bright white cards, a red and blue logo emblazoned across them. I knew I had to get one. I tried to tease them out, but they were wedged in.

Just then, I heard the shower stop, and the door of the shower enclosure swung open with a creak, spatters of water splashing onto the marble floor. I tried again to get a card out of the box, but there was no way. It needed a woman’s fingers. I tossed it back inside her bag, snapped the clasp together again, and positioned it carefully back where I’d found it, on the dresser.

I moved back to the bed, grabbing the sheets and billowing them across it. I slipped back under them, and leaned across to take the camera from its hiding place. I turned it off, and tucked it into the hidden compartment in the unit next to my bed. I’d have to get her laptop bag in the morning. I knew exactly where it was, in the living room, next to the sofa. Anything she’d previously downloaded could be on there. I smoothed the pillows over again, and lay down.

Just in time. She sauntered back in, towel drying her hair as she came. She stopped, when she saw me looking.

‘So, this is what you want?’ She turned to where her clothes lay, hanging across the back of a chair.

‘Yes,’ I said, watching as she started to get dressed.

Fuck it. I couldn’t let it end like this. I knew this would be the last time I’d see her and, whatever she’d done, I felt sorry for her. She really was fucked up. Anyway, I needed time to think. ‘No. Come back to bed, Charlotte. Let me hold you.’