A Date with The Devil Pt. 03

Chapter Eighteen

(Monday 7th June 2010)

Mary Rose wasn't answering calls tonight because she was in her trendy local wine bar, and in there mobiles were verboten. At the time it was a "London thing". Not that she'd anticipated being there and being incommunicado. Although she was by no means a stranger in that bar, her visits were relatively rare. If it hadn't been for Jo she would never have considered dropping by.

Well, probably not . . .

And not that she really needed her phone.

She was on the damned blower all day. Why on earth should she carry on out of hours?

Judging from her entrance, Jo had different standards for different parts of town. Mary Rose went for an air kiss but, blithely disregarding the no-lips precedence she'd made yesterday in the Blind Beggar, Jo met her with a full lover's kiss.

Hey ho, there went Mare's reputation.

As if she was concerned about reputation. She was often out and about with lovers of both sexes and had a reputation the size of a mountain . . . meaning Himalayan, not merely Alpine. The way she saw it, being out loud and proud with Jo in here could only add to her overall notoriety.

I'm me, was forever her approach. Take me or leave me.

Armed with glasses and a bottle of icy Pinot they took a table. And this time Mary Rose bagged the cop's seat in the corner. Jo sat beside her, taking hold of Mare's hand and planting it on her leg.

'Twice in two days,' she said throatily. 'Folk will be talking.'

As if they weren't after that kiss!

'Let them talk,' Mary Rose replied, inching her hand upwards until it settled in the best position of all: in limbo on that thin band of Jo's warm inside thigh between her stocking-top and panties.

On second thoughts make that: the very clammy band of Jo's inside thigh between her silky stocking-top and an ever-so-slightly damp thong.

Or maybe it was Mare's palm that was clammy . . .

'Okay by me,' said Jo. 'I don't care what they say. We're on your patch, not mine.'

Mary Rose chuckled and inched a little higher. Jo didn't protest.

'I was wondering,' Mare began.

'More roaming than wandering,' the DI replied, arching a sexy eyebrow and sipping her wine.

'That missing heiress; are the results in yet?'

Jo sighed. 'And I thought you were going to ask if my divorce was imminent.'

'You'd have said already if it was. And trust me; I'd be in like a shot. But seeing as it isn't; what about those results?'

Another, even deeper sigh ensued. 'We're still waiting, Jo said after a lengthy pause. 'But her father's convinced she fell into the river and wants it all over and done with. Off the record, he's pressing us to release the body so he can cremate her.'

Her matter-of-fact response made Mare smile, in spite of the grim topic . . . or maybe because of the grim topic.

'Is that what he believes in?' she said. 'Burning the evidence?'

'He comes across as genuinely grieving. I can't blame him, to be honest. I'd probably be the same in his position.'

'So that's the story: She was drunk and fell in?'

'We're still waiting toxicology, as per always. But everything points that way.'

'And we're saying this happened when? Saturday night?'

'Yes. Theory is she called a taxi but a better offer came along before it arrived.'

'By that you mean a better offer from the mysterious Mr K.'

'We're still looking for him, naturally. But I'd be lying if I said the case is still top priority. We seem to be dotting I's and crossing T's.'

Mary Rose nodded. Tragic as it was, the case was as good as closed. Thank God she hadn't passed on her silly suspicions to Heather. Hev was a lovely person but she could be such a grouch.

Way Hev went on, anyone would have thought they were joined at the hip, vows and promises made.

And they weren't joined, were they? Their relationship could never work that way. They'd debated and argued at great length. Free as birds; that was them.

End of.

'That's enough shop talk,' Mare said, topping up glasses. 'Let's talk about us.'

'Are you sure it's talking you want to do?' Jo's hand landed on Mare's as she spoke, urging it up a tad.

Electric jolts of excitement raced through Mary Rose. Here they were in a public place and Jo wanted her to . . . to touch and . . . and . . .

'Oh,' she went, breathlessly.

'Go on,' Jo purred, 'surely a bright girl like you can multitask. Surely you can drink vino, talk and feel at the same time.'

Duly encouraged and with a (long lost) reputation to live up to, her hand hidden by the table-top, more or less, Mary Rose explored. And she was not disappointed. Jo's pussy was engorged with hot blood and throbbing.

And oh my, wasn't she wet!

'I want us to try something different tonight,' the DI said, her voice huskier, sexier than ever, rising and falling in time with Mare's undercover stroking.

'Different?'

'Look in my bag.'

Jo didn't usually carry a bag, not conspicuously, anyway. Today's was an exception. Today's was big and probably cost half a month's wage. Louis Vuitton would have been proud of a bag like that.

Cautiously, Mary Rose slipped her free hand inside the expensive leather.

'Oh dearie me,' she gasped. 'Don't say you've come across at last.'

Jo laughed.

Mary Rose had another feel. No doubt about it, that was a pair of handcuffs in there.

Her heart leapt. She'd been nagging on about handcuffs for just about ever. Jo had maintained she'd given up her bracelets long ago, when she'd been promoted out of uniform.

But exceptions could arise . . . obviously!

'Absolutely brill,' said Mary Rose, doing her best to whisper. 'When and where?'

'As soon as poss, and at yours; drink your drink.'

Mary Rose had planned on having an early night. But this was too good to miss or even think about postponing. She drained 250 mils of chilled white in the blink of an eye.

Chapter Nineteen

Within what seemed like seconds Mary Rose had dragged Jo into her bedroom. Or maybe it'd been the other way around and Jo had dragged her. But who cared? Whichever way it was neither of them had been kicking and screaming, so why not go with the flow?

Fact was they were in there, fully dressed and mouths locked.

Kissing was, in Mare's considered opinion, an under-rated occupation. Okay, there were lots of better things to do, but kissing was excellent.

Kissing a guy wasn't bad. Kissing a girl, however . . .

Well like wow!

After perhaps twenty minutes of devout necking Mary Rose squeezed Jo's ass. It was not for the first time, but with a certain degree of intent. Instinctively understanding, Jo responded by stopping kissing and becoming bossy.

'Get your kit off,' she commanded.

Mare stared at her, momentarily nonplussed.

'I'm the arresting officer,' the urchin-haired blonde went on. 'And I'm in charge of the bracelets.'

Mary Rose's imagination was a powerful thing. Even so she'd never suspected she would be the girl who got cuffed. No, her fantasies had all had a different slant.

But hey, she could just as easily take as give, couldn't she? Only important thing now was to play the game and not ruin the ambience. Equal opportunities could wait.

'I do like strong women,' she murmured.

'Yeah, sure you do.' Jo laughed shortly. 'Stop resisting arrest and get your kit off.'

Faced with no realistic option, Mary Rose removed her jacket. And she took her time about it. Usually, alone and unhurried, she would drape her Balmain just so on the back of the chair facing her dressing table. Tonight, provocatively slowly, she dumped it crumpled on the seat.

Then she took off her shirt. And it was a man-shirt: expensive and finely made, but masculine. She'd always preferred male shirts to female. Maybe it was the tight fit about her tits; the one which looked and felt so good . . .

'Skirt,' said Jo, very forcefully, 'right now.'

Obedient as ever, Mary Rose removed her skirt, twirling to show off her lacy black lingerie.

'I'm dribbling,' she said.

'I can see,' Jo agreed. 'Get on that bed.'

'Don't you want me to take off anything else first?'

'Good point,' said Jo, studying her critically. 'Take of your bra.'

Mary Rose complied. 'I don't have the world's biggest nips,' she observed, 'but they're probably two of the world's hardest right now.'

'Take off your panties.'

Again Mary Rose complied. 'Should I leave the stockings and garter belt?' she wondered.

'Too right you should. Now get on that bed.'

Mary Rose literally threw herself onto her back. 'Okay, she said coyly, 'I'm all yours.'

Still fully clad, Jo fastened one cuff around Mary Rose's right wrist. 'Note how considerate I'm being,' she said, soft as a whisper. 'Some of my uniformed colleagues slam them on, trying to bruise bones. And that's just my female colleagues.'

'I think I'm going to cum,' Mary Rose replied.

She did, too, soon after Jo threaded the restraints around a vertical pole in the bedhead and secured her other hand.

'This is so hot,' Mary Rose observed. 'It's so, so hot. My God, what are you going to do to me?'

Smiling enticingly, Jo took off her clothes, stripping naked. She was dribbling as well. She already had visible snail-trails on her sexily tanned thighs.

Short blonde hair, blue eyes and tanned skin . . . What wasn't there to like?

Meaning even before her stunning good looks came into play.

'I think this calls for something completely different,' Jo announced.

'You said that already.'

'Did I? Jo laughed, taking a very deliberate, strutting diversion over to Mare's toy drawer. That came as a surprise. Normally Jo didn't do toys; normally she stuck very rigidly to fingers and tongues.

Make that very, very rigidly.

And oh, that rigid tongue . . .

'Let's call this the order of the day,' she said, holding up Mare's favourite beaded-glass dildo.

Mary Rose couldn't contain herself; she came again, abruptly and very vigorously.

Sight only! How hot was that!!

'Omigod,' she managed. 'What's got into you?'

Jo laughed again. 'Never mind what's got into me . . .'

Still gasping breathlessly, Mary Rose parted her legs. Her tits were, she thought distantly, in need of some immediate attention. But her hands were secured around that vertical pole. Never mind feeling her own tits: she couldn't as much as ruffle Jo's hair.

Or squeeze her in an encouraging sort of a way.

And stroking her bare back was an impossible dream.

All told, it was an exciting situation.

'Fuck me,' Mary Rose urged. 'Come on, girl, give me what I want.'

Jo was perhaps deliberately hesitant. For maybe ten minutes she ran the tip of the glass dildo up and down Mare's slit.

Teasing her and tormenting her.

Her self-control at least partly recovered, Mary Rose held off the next cum. But then Jo's tactics took a turn and the first, smallest bead was pressing into her vagina.

Cue immense orgasm.

Chuckling yet again, Jo pressed in two beads, and then three, four and more.

The sex-toy was eight inches long and had five insertable beads. Mary Rose wriggled and writhed in ecstasy, relishing the feel of all of them moving in and out, in and out, twisting and swirling.

Oh yes; in and out and all about, twisting and swirling, swirling and twisting . . .

Then Jo moved closer still, keeping up the delicious rhythm but adding to it with dozens of deft clitoral lashes of tongue.

And then, when the universe couldn't possibly get any better, her free hand grasped Mary Rose's left tit.

Cue a vertical take-off and a very near-miss on two dislocated shoulders.

Chapter Twenty

(Tuesday 8th June 2010)

It was early afternoon and, Lindsey realized, the first time she'd been alone in sixty hours or more. It was also the first time she'd been able to realize anything, full stop.

Since . . . since whatever had happened Saturday night, Sunday morning . . . she had been in a sort of fugue-like state.

Now, sitting on a bench on Leonard's impressive patio terrace, overlooking the vast, partially wooded grounds of his palatial home, she felt faint stirrings of her true self.

That is to say she stopped being a cabbage and progressed maybe as far as being numb as a hake.

Not that she had anything against fish of any variety.

Hake . . . half a haddock with chips . . . plaice with lemon parsley butter . . .

Vaguely taking in her surroundings, awed in an odd, subdued way by the scale of everything, she did her best to click into reporter mode.

And she failed, quite miserably.

Under normal circumstances Lindsey would have clicked into mode in an instant. Reporting was what she did, what she lived for. Reporting was the ichor flowing through her veins, setting her aside from ordinary mortals.

Not now, though. Right now she could not click or genuinely care about not clicking.

Right now she wasn't even worried about her lack of response.

She was, after all, in extremis.

So what had happened? Had she been drugged, doped or hypnotized? Surely something must have made her so obliging. Surely those last sixty hours . . . spent virtually every second with Leonard and nobody but Leonard . . . must have been for something.

But what did "something" actually mean?

And why on earth was she just drifting along?

Come to that, how on earth could she be preggers?

Lindsey had never so much as missed a period before. She'd taken the usual precautions ever since she left the sixth form. In fact she'd taken precautions long before she'd even decided to join the sixth form. Getting preggers simply hadn't been a possibility.

Except her body wasn't its usual self. She was constantly noticing minor discrepancies, all pointing in the same direction.

Sixty hours and she showed all the signs of being two months knocked up.

Crazy, impossible . . . but true.

Well, it was true insofar as everything she'd ever read in magazines.

As if she was the sort to get caught!

Now, temporarily out of the sphere of Leonard's influence, she wondered if imagination played a part.

Saturday might be blurred in her memory but she could recall key points: being subjected to a lesbian gang bang, enjoying it enormously, hoping that it would go on forever; marvelling at all the marvellous things being done to her . . .

All that fun followed by . . .

Well, followed by what could only have been a charade.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't believe she'd been fucked by a devil. No, whichever way she looked at it, the devil had to have been one of Leonard's little henchmen, hidden behind the goat statue, waiting to appear when the time was right.

Not that the devil had been "little" by any stretch.

But a well-endowed henchman didn't explain everything.

Okay, so it only took a second for a girl to get "caught". Even the most cautious girl could be trapped in the oldest way of all. But no way could this cautious girl be two months down the road. Not in two or three days.

Leonard was fooling her. Maybe it was hypnotism or maybe it was something else . . . drugs or sheer force of personality, perhaps. Whatever it was, it came down to mind domination.

Yes, that was it. She was nauseous thanks to Leonard's will or narcotics. Her stomach wasn't really expanding; at least not for natural reasons. Any swell was being induced by the power of suggestion, not human nature.

Normally Lindsey would have reacted violently to the very idea of being dominated. Despite her petite frame she had a fiery spirit. But not now; now it was nowhere to be found.

Now it was easier to simply drift.

*****

Leonard meanwhile, was in his luxuriously appointed study. His guest, Nino, was enjoying a glass of Etna Bianco with him. Not the world's finest grape, in Leonard's biased opinion, but very fair. And all said and done, it was the thought that counted. Whatever Bruno said about his countryman, Nino did after all consider himself Sicilian.

'This girl,' Nino remarked apropos of nothing. 'There will be no trace? No chain to follow?'

'Not leading to me or you,' Leonard replied. 'She will be coming here anonymously. As long as you take her without making a scene, nobody will ever know.'

He held out his mobile, letting Nino see a snap of Mary Rose in all her glory.

'I expected milky-white skin,' Nino said with a grin.

'Not this one. This one's the tanning type of redhead. Fancy it?'

'Nice tits,' Nino conceded, 'and nice everything else, too. Sure there are no strings?'

'I'm not sure, I'm positive,' said Leonard, 'so long as she never resurfaces.'

'Don't worry. She won't.'

Leonard poured more wine. 'There's urgency about this. If you can do it this week I guess I can give a discount of fifty percent.'

Nino laughed. 'I guess I can live with that, but what about the other one?'

What indeed?

Leonard sipped chilled vino. 'I need to keep her for another week or two, maybe three. She owes me a . . . . Well, a delivery. But after that she is all yours.'

'Do I get her on the same terms?'

'Nino my friend, you can have that one for free.'

Chapter Twenty-One

(Wednesday 9th June 2010)

'And then,' Mary Rose said into her phone, 'when I expected her to do her midnight disappearing trick, she told me it was my turn.' Mare laughed. 'Well, I wasn't going to miss a chance like that was I?'

She prattled on a while, telling Hev about her mastery with a strap-on.

As if Hev really needed telling.

'Jo doesn't usually like toys. But incapacitate her and . . .'

Seeming to enjoy the tale, Heather let Mare repeat it in even more intimate detail before playing her trump card.

'I had a policewoman girlfriend at uni,' she said casually. 'DC Stuffypants played all sorts of games with me and her cuffs. Naturally, I always had to smack her bare bum first . . .'

How unfair was that! Every single time Mary Rose came up with a "new" experience Hev had already been there, got the T-shirt!!

'This is the first I've heard of it,' Mare growled.

'I'm sure I've told you about DC Stuffypants before.'

'She must have slipped your memory. One among millions and all that. Or is it more like zillions who slipped your memory?'

Heather . . . bugger her sexy ears . . . laughed.

Dozens, thousands, millions or zillions, Hev wasn't likely to be too ashamed; the way she saw it, the more the merrier. As for being pure and chaste . . . How nineteenth century was that! Shame simply didn't come into any of her equations.

Not that having sex was anything for a girl to be ashamed about, obviously. After all, fifty percent of sexual participants were female, weren't they?

Well, not when Hev was involved . . .

Maybe more like ninety percent . . .

As soon as it occurred to her, Mare added: 'My cop is a DI. At least I can pull rank on you.'

'Mine still had her uniform from her days on the beat,' Heather replied smugly. 'And it still fit her like a glove. Sometimes she'd dress up in it for me.'

That was too much to bear. 'I hate you, Hunter; how many times are you going to shoot me down in flames?'

'You love me really.'

'Right I do, in your dreams.'

'You do, actually, several times a night, every night. And all of those dreams are ace.'

'Huh!'

'Mare,' said Hev, sounding earnest as she abruptly changed subject: 'Please tell me that you've had second thoughts about Friday night.'

'I beg your pardon.'

'Please tell me you've thought better of it. Please, Mare. Goodness only knows what sort of folk you are getting involved with. For all you know . . .'

'You honestly think I might have reconsidered?' Mare cut Hev's latest grouch off with a laugh. 'That is really coming out of Dreamland.'

'But Mare . . .'

'No way, Hev; like hellers am I backing out; Shagging a crypt full of Satanists is the only way I can get one over on you.'

'Mare . . .'

'Bye Hev. Tell you all about it Saturday night.'