The Contract (Nightlong #1) Read online

  He kept a separate bedroom for himself, with just a simple wooden bed, a wardrobe and some drawers with a few spare pieces of clothing should he ever need them – plus a trunk containing all his play clothes. I heard him in his own en suite showering and thought about sticking him in the ribs with a knife, but perhaps nothing would push through that hard exterior. Besides he never stayed long enough after a session for me to catch him unawares. I think the bed was there just in case.

  In my own room the first thing I did was get rid of my vile boots, which needed more care than an antibac wipe or two. I unhooked my latex corset and unzipped my leather hot pants, removed my gauntlets and false eyelashes, then stepped across the room towards the en suite. I wasn’t dirty but I felt it.

  Switching the shower on, I tied my long hair back while waiting for the jets to warm through.

  Once freshened up, I walked downstairs in a cashmere sweater and jeans. He waited for me in the kitchen.

  “I poured you some wine.”

  “Thanks.” I caught his eyes for a second but no more.

  I hated this man with a passion.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Fine.” I shrugged, taking a seat at the kitchen island, the wine much needed.

  He’d showered and smelt of ginger and lime; also wearing Tom Ford, no longer his real self.

  He was a monster but the suit cloaked the wolf. The subservient pet was actually a domineering arsehole. He must have been all kinds of in denial.

  “I don’t like it when I see the house in a mess when I visit… and when I see you like this, well I don’t like it. Not a bit.”

  Fuck you, dickhead.

  “Lot about life people don’t like, but they deal with it,” I replied in my obnoxious manner.

  “With no make-up concealing you, I see no life in your eyes and I don’t like it. Where has your joy gone? What can I do to make it better?”

  Let me go free…

  If I thought I could say it and get away with it, I would have.

  “I’m… maybe I just haven’t been fucked in a while.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not stopping you.”

  Not wanting this to turn into an argument, I batted him off. “I know. Look, I’ll try harder. Okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay. Catch you later.”

  He grabbed his briefcase from the counter and left the room without another word, or a kiss, or a hint of any sort of fondness whatsoever.

  Like I said… monster.

  I sank my glass of wine before refilling with the bottle he’d left out.

  Sinclair was a man with everything at his fingertips, including me. He’d even had our agreement framed and mounted to the kitchen wall behind glass that was bullet proof and smash proof (I’d tested that one out with a hammer)… basically indestructible. I stared at the constant reminder of my imprisonment and knew anger, bitterness and regret were wasted emotions. I had to get clever. I had to get out.

  ***

  I woke the next morning with my head resting on my arms at the kitchen island. Aching, I roused slowly and saw two empty wine bottles to my right side, a bunch of scrawling notes to my other.

  “Not again.”

  I couldn’t keep doing this to myself.

  Sliding off my stool, I padded wearily to the living room next door and sank into the deep, soothing cushions of the sectional seating, angry with myself for not sleeping here instead. As the cushions hugged my aching body I looked around and wondered why the plush surroundings didn’t suffice anymore. A 50-inch TV affixed to the wall, stacks of DVDs and satellite channels galore. Shelves and shelves of books, all of which I’d read.

  Then it hit me: I felt lonely.

  So, so alone.

  Why was he doing this to me?

  Scanning the drunken notes I wrote down last night in a fit of rage and indecision, none of it made sense. I’d made diagrams detailing how I could build myself a lead casket, fake my death and have myself driven back to Ireland to be ‘buried’ there… but I knew I couldn’t escape. There was a reason he knew all my movements. It wasn’t just the tracker he had placed in my arm after my first attempt to escape, I felt sure he had people everywhere and that’s how he knew he could keep me right where he wanted me.

  After destroying all my ill-made plans on the wood-burning stove in the living room, I headed upstairs.

  Again, I wasn’t dirty, but I needed a shower to revive my senses if nothing else.

  While waiting for the shower to warm, I caught my naked body in the mirror. I’d chosen to believe that he didn’t have hidden cameras in this house but sometimes, I wondered. I wouldn’t put anything past him. What if he had cameras hidden in the ceilings and every night, he sat at home watching and laughing as I scribbled down plans of escape – plans which I knew would never work.

  There was no escape.

  I looked at myself. Twenty-four. A woman. I’d met him a girl, but now I was a woman. My body went disused and unloved as I remained trapped and entangled in Sinclair’s web. I wasn’t tall, I wasn’t particularly anything. I was just a woman. I had modest hips, a smooth but soft stomach. I liked my breasts which had suddenly filled out when I was twenty-one. Sinclair had noticed and told me to go and get measured for a bra. I almost fell over when they told me I was a 34D. I left Ireland with little tits and skinny hips but now, six years on, I’d maxed out on pizza, curry and chips – using his credit card. He never mentioned my fuller figure, except for that time he said I needed a better fitting bra.

  Seeing the shower was finally producing steam as the water rose to perfect temperature, I might have jumped right on in but I needed something to take the edge off – a cure for my aching belly, my sore heart, my weary limbs. The insanity driving me up the wall was so familiar and only one antidote would do. So… dashing to my bedroom closet before I set the fire alarm off with too much steam, I grabbed my favourite sex toy from a box and darted for the bathroom once more.

  Shutting myself inside the en suite, I stepped behind the screen and under the spray. As water hit my pebbled nipples and rove down my body in rivers, I lifted a foot to the edge of the bath and slowly sank a rampant rabbit inside myself.

  Beginning with short thrusts, I sped up the settings gradually, enjoying myself leisurely.

  This was the one joy I had, after all.

  The tip inside me began to swirl and I felt the walls of my sex begin to clamp and knead. When I pressed the little nodes to my clit just that bit harder, I cried out loudly. Every ounce of strength I had dragged a flood of blood to my belly. Every inch of me shook as my core reacted violently to the various points of stimulation a sex toy could provide.

  Smiling to myself for a little while afterwards, it wasn’t long before reality slapped me in the face again in the kitchen, as I ate my cereal and drank my coffee, scowling at the contract staring at me from across the breakfast bar. I was Cleo Patrick, Kept Woman. More like desperate woman.

  EVERY other morning of my life was spent at a hairdressers in Covent Garden, getting my usual blow dry. My hair was another thing customised by Sinclair: long enough to touch my bottom. Washing and drying it was a challenge I happily gave up to my hairdresser, Solange. Sinclair’s driver always collected me from home at ten o’clock and picked me up afterwards at noon from the café round the corner. Sinclair hated me frequenting cafés but it wasn’t in the rules that I couldn’t. Besides, sitting in cafés gave me time to think.

  Some mornings I’d sit in the salon alongside a rocker like Ronnie Wood or a breakfast TV presenter and I’d absorb their conversations like water to a dry riverbed, because I hardly got any other conversation. No doubt people looked at me and made their assumptions, or maybe they looked right through me. Solange was accustomed to the way I answered questions with short answers, the way I sometimes nodded and blushed when she remarked how pretty I looked. I was just a humble Irish girl, not used to the compliments of London women cheering each other on hourly. I’d never known such gregari
ousness.

  Solange knew I didn’t like talking chitchat but I appreciated her handiwork, so a lot of our time was spent exchanging polite smiles and quietly laughing as we both eavesdropped on other people’s conversations. I might have used my hairdresser as a confidante – but how did I know I could trust her to keep my secrets? I didn’t know who else Sinclair had on his payroll (such as someone sent to spy on me). It was obvious he would hear about it if I used a hairdresser as my outlet for bitching about him. He knew everything.

  Sinclair owned a clothing giant so he was desperate to avoid any bad press (like people finding out he was kinky as shit) and I sure as hell didn’t want my picture ending up in a tabloid. One of the things about the contract I couldn’t have been more in agreement on was Clause 7: Do not contact any family members. As far as I knew, Ma and Da didn’t know where I languished and I wanted it to stay that way. Living this life had its upsides and not having to run back home to Ireland with my tail between my legs was one of them.

  So instead of spinning webs of lies and setting myself up for a fall through one of the holes I’d forgotten to sew up, I decided instead to make no friends, nor enemies. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake and several white lies combined could end up uncovering the black one. It was why I was so alone. I didn’t have the memory to be a good liar and I didn’t like lying, either.

  No doubt some people thought I was a kept woman, keeping such a low profile but always having my hair done at a celebrity salon. Every other day. In Covent Garden. Honestly, didn’t they know I had nothing better to do? Lucky you and your freedom! I wanted to scream.

  Anyway I was still suffering from the two bottles of wine I’d had the night before and Solange noticed.

  “Heavy night?”

  “Yep, don’t ask.”

  She was finishing up straightening the feathered pieces of hair framing my face when we overheard two guys beside us. One was the salon director, while the other guy looked like one of those football pundits you occasionally see on the telly.

  “Yeah mate, rumour is he’s about to sign the deal of the century. You can’t imagine how much money he’ll make per second, let alone per week. No wonder his private parties are becoming legendary.”

  I looked at Solange through the mirror in front of us and her eyebrows raised in curiosity. It was funny how she and I knew one another so well, without words. Six years of not speaking had made us masters of reading each other’s physiognomy.

  “Don’t you think it’s ridiculous? How can they justify these sorts of salaries?” The pundit’s hairdresser said.

  “Mate, I don’t know, I just know… he’s pucker, this Roman Cornish. We gotta keep him in the country. He’s an asset to the game if ever there were one.”

  “I don’t think people will continue to pay astronomical ticket prices if Chelsea keeps losing!”

  “Guess we’ll see. Jury’s out anyway… a pal told me the lad can’t keep it in his pants. If you ask me, he needs a real woman to pin him down and sort him out. A guy like him will need a woman to help steer him through this world. He’d better sort out his priorities or Chelsea won’t sign the deal and the country will lose the greatest winger of all time.”

  It amused me that the guy obviously understood we could hear their conversation and yet talked so candidly anyway. Maybe Solange and myself were invisible, or maybe the pundit bloke didn’t expect a girl like me to be eavesdropping on a conversation about some barely post-pubescent footballer still obsessed with his willy. My only other conjecture was that the heady, potent combination of bleach and hair products had made Mr Pundit’s tongue loose.

  “How’s that?” Solange asked, holding a mirror behind my head so I could see the full effect.

  “Amazing, thank you. What would I do without you?”

  She raised one eyebrow, a quirk of hers. “You’d still have fabulous hair, but without the Solange touch.”

  I brandished my plastic bearing the name Cleo Patrick to pay the woman at reception and as I walked to the café, I couldn’t help but think about Roman Cornish.

  Sat with a mug of chai latte, I took out my phone and searched for him online. Google brought up several articles about him renewing his contract with Chelsea and potentially breaking records with his new salary. Him and his bosses were yet to put their ink to the contract, but it was as good as a done deal already.

  Wikipedia told me he was only twenty-three, pretty close to my own age. He trained with Arsenal’s youth team, being a native Londoner, before being snapped up by Chelsea after demonstrating his skills as a goal scorer in his first match playing for England at seventeen.

  I stared at his picture but his visage didn’t evoke any feelings in me. Roman was dark and ruddy, but no way handsome. I saw an easy target, someone I could tempt with all my powers of seduction. A young man with all the world at his feet… all I had to do was seduce him, then latch onto him strong enough to make him propose. I’d never thought of it before but it could work. I could escape this way. Why didn’t I think of this before? Cornish was bound to be gullible enough to fall for my charms… and loaded enough to break the hold Sinclair had over me!

  Maybe I’d always thought that one day, Dante Sinclair would change. Maybe I had imagined that deep down, he was as lonely as me, aching for love. Six years on however, I knew he was never going to change and the longer I waited, the more chance there was of me actually taking a blunt object to his head and running like hell away from London.

  Dante was older than me and at first, I’d judged the lines in his face as cruel and ugly. As time had gone on, I’d realised something traumatic had made him old before his time and whatever had happened to make him the way he was, he was never going to tell me about it.

  Six years ago, I didn’t realise some men don’t change.

  My phone rang and it was him. I wanted to ignore his call, but I couldn’t. “Yes, Sinclair.”

  “Are you okay? Just checking in.” I detected a slight edge of worry to his tone, but ignored it.

  “Enjoying my chai as usual. And you?”

  “I was thinking about Paris this weekend… and I remembered some of my… items, got a little tatty last time we were there. Sexton will take you, so would you mind picking up some new things for me?”

  “Sure, I’ll do that.” Because you are paying me to.

  “Thank you, sweet pea.”

  I hated when he called me that. “Bye.”

  The next notification on my phone was from the driver, Sexton, letting me know he’d pick me up in five. I spent those next five finding out what else I could about Roman Cornish. If he was like other footballers, he’d surely stay in a hotel prior to home games. A hotel I could bump into him inside. Hey presto, he sees me in skin-tight cloth with my rack on show and my legs waxed, my lips painted bright red… and he’s gushing already. All I needed was an insider to tell me where he was at all times. A friend of his, perhaps? If the partying rumours were anything to go by, he’d surely pick hotels with large suites or maybe he even had a favourite haunt – a hotel he always stayed in. I searched all the hotels local to Stamford Bridge and as a wildcard, a few of the more exclusive ones that were another mile outside the near perimeter, too.

  If Cornish was the partying wild man everyone suggested he was, he was looking for a fantasy lover, wasn’t he? It was lucky for him I knew exactly how to play the fantasy. Pity I was going to steal all his money and use it to sneak away from Sinclair. Maybe I wouldn’t see the con out, maybe I was insane and latching onto anything that might help me get free, but I could have fun trying to escape… surely?

  Two

  BEING A LADY OF LEISURE meant I had a lot of free time but since Sinclair always insisted on Sexton driving me everywhere, I didn’t feel as free as I ought to have felt. The contract said I could have sex with other men but it felt like I couldn’t, not really. In a way he’d be observing because he always knew where I was, every hour of the day. Even if I wanted sex with some random strange
r, I would want it to happen with nobody’s knowledge so in a way, I was sex starved and crazy because he had me over a barrel there, too. I could have sex with another man – but not without him knowing. The thought of him knowing about it gave me the creeps.

  I spent most of my spare time reading or watching films and I had stacks of notebooks in my bedroom, filled with ideas for stories. I had so many ideas but none of them stuck. I could’ve written thirty novels by now, being trapped in his house, but not one idea had stuck for long enough that I could produce even a short story. My mind was too scattered all the time, with no real direction. I couldn’t describe the feeling except I imagined being in limbo felt pretty similar. Sort of yearning for escape but at the same time, knowing you can’t leave. My whole life was in limbo. If I wrote a novel, would it even get published? Would he let me release it?

  I hated Sinclair.

  I couldn’t walk freely around London like I wanted to. Sure, Sexton would take me to galleries and museums but I’d always be badgered by him on my phone, making sure I got back to the car at the designated, agreed time. I’d left the small Irish village I grew up in not only to escape an unloving family, but also to immerse myself in culture and hopefully, find love.

  All I’d found was a cage.

  Cohésion was the BDSM haunt we often frequented in Paris but other than there, our time together was mostly spent at the place he’d put me up in. In Paris he took me to restaurants and sat, quiet and thoughtful, across the table from me. In London, he didn’t take me anywhere. We were never seen together in London. I had to explore the city all alone. It didn’t feel like I imagined it would. You know, like in the movies where people run down streets together, over cobbles and round corners. Stealing kisses in doorways. Instead everything just felt dour and grey.

  It was true he didn’t require much more of me other than to basically not have a life – but six years of this had gradually gnawed away at me. I was a strong girl. I’d coped before in traumatic circumstances, but surely Sinclair couldn’t expect me to live like this forever?