Eighteen
It was at least ten minutes before I finally dragged myself back to the kitchen. Edging was exhausting stuff. How did James do this on a daily basis? I mean, I thought I was tough, but life as a sex slave was going to compare favourably to one of my monster gym workouts if that was the kind of thing I could expect. So, even if they didn’t let me orgasm over at CB, at the very least I wouldn’t be putting on too much weight. Rolling my eyes at the ridiculous train of thought, I decided to focus on food. Getting his Majesty’s dinner in the oven was probably important if I wanted to have a chance at a reasonably nice evening.
“Aren’t you supposed to be crawling?”
A familiar female voice nearly shocked the living daylights out of me, and I immediately tried to cover up all of my various naked parts, which was a problem, as I only had two hands. Quickly running for cover behind the dining table, I used one of the solid wood chairs as a shield while I tried to figure out why in hell Miss Sharkey would come and visit me here.
“You’re going to have to work on that. The gentlemen at CB will expect you to be very comfortable with nakedness. I thought James would have trained you a little better by now.” She eyed me imperiously, and I think my internal organs began to wither and die.
“I’ve only been here a day, and you’re my boss,” I squeaked. “There are some people who shouldn’t see you naked, and you are most definitely one of them.”
“I’ve seen plenty of naked bodies before, Lois. If it makes you feel any better, you’re going to be seeing mine later.”
“I’m going to what?” Castrating was once again firmly back on the cards, and James was going to rue the day he met me. Did the man not think it sensible to run this kind of scenario by me first? Shit, shit, shit.
“Right now, you’re probably thinking this is the worst thing that could ever happen to you, but it isn’t, Lois.” Sharkey then proceeded to turn her back to me whilst she headed over towards the oven. Fiddling with the dials, a light suddenly flared on and a low drone emitted from its direction. Opening the fridge door, she then pulled out a large casserole dish. Folding a tea towel over in two to grab the dish, it was inside the oven before I could blink.
“We’re having Ratatouille, in case you were wondering,” she said.
I wasn’t, but I kept that to myself.
“James is a marvellous cook. You’ll be getting a little slice of heaven whilst you’re under his roof. He was professionally trained in France. Food still means something over there, I hear.” The oven door slammed shut smartly.
“Where did he learn all his other professional skills?” My voice might have held a teensy bit of sarcasm. Seriously, how did a person go from MasterChef to assassin?
“They came later, after someone tried to disembowel him, or so I heard.” Miss Sharkey then went back to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of white wine, and busied herself with opening it.
“It wasn’t my intestines they were after.” James sauntered into the kitchen looking perfectly calm, cool, and collected in his trademark black tee and blue jeans. Was there any other version of the man? I gritted my teeth. Of course, he had known Sharkey would be here. I was the only one kept in the dark around these parts.
“Lois, you should be on the floor. You’ve already earned so many swats this evening, I can barely keep count.” Motioning with his index finger in a downward movement, I sighed and did as I was bid. There was two against one. I was doomed.
Meanwhile, Miss Sharkey poured out a large glass of wine and handed it to James. “What were they after?”
He smiled at her. “Something a little lower.”
“Ahh. Dipping it about in the wrong place, were we?” She raised an eyebrow and smirked at him.
“I was dipping it about in the right place at the wrong time.” His smile was rueful. James then took a generous swig of his wine and grimaced. “What the hell is that?”
“Pino Grigio.” She twirled her own wine round and sniffed at it dubiously.
“It’s vile. There’s a bottle of Puilly Fumé on the door. That was meant for cooking.”
Miss Sharkey took a small sip and frowned. “It is vile, but I enjoy watching a man suffer. Drink it up and be a good boy.”
James stiffened, and his demeanour suddenly hardened. “You’re Lois’s superior, not mine. Remember that I’m doing you a favour here, not the other way around.”
“Relax, darling. I’m just teasing you. However, I didn’t come here just for the fun part, I’m afraid.” She looked pointedly at me.
James walked quietly over to the stainless-steel sink and tipped the contents of his wineglass down the plughole. His head dropped for a second, as if he was bracing himself for the worst. “Give me the bad news.” Although his voice was calm and devoid of inflection, there was an undercurrent of something there. For the tenth time, I wondered just how much it would take to ruffle this man’s feathers.
“Dumortier is up to his old tricks, and we need to up your schedule a little. You had three weeks, you now have one.” Sharkey then downed the contents of her glass in one fell swoop. It was almost as if she was expecting what was about to come next.
Cowering behind my chair, I watched the storm begin to brew in James’s face. Everything started with his eyes, which were now black, but then there were a dozen lines on his face, a stiffening of his back, and a straightening of his shoulders. The wine glass stem he had been gently gripping was now being crushed beneath his fingers, and I wondered, for a brief moment, if it would stand up under the strain.
“I can’t send her in there with a week’s training. The mission is already suicide. That would be utter madness.”
James had perfected his glower, but Miss Sharkey didn’t seem overly affected by it. There was a slight tapping of her French manicured nails upon her crystal glass, but nothing more to indicate that she gave two hoots as to his concerns.
“Tell you what, why don’t you throw in a tombstone as an advance purchase, and we just send her in green?” James sneered at her and began walking forward. His body language was threatening and I, for one, was glad I was hiding behind the dining table.
“He’s going for two hundred girls this time, James. We can’t let that happen.” Miss Sharkey carefully set her wineglass down on the kitchen counter and crossed her arms against her chest. This was something I understood. A display of power. Good for her. I didn’t think it would be of much use against James, though.
“You haven’t been at all worried by his business ventures before, Sharkey. What’s got your panties in a twist?”
“You’ll just have to untangle them later and find out, James.”
Raising his head slowly, he shook his head. “She won’t be ready in a week. My decision is final. You want to train her up, be my guest.” James indicated my cowering body with a flourish of his wrist.
“Let’s ask Lois and see what she says,” said Sharkey.
Great. They were dragging me into their argument now. This was just what I needed.
“Let’s not.” James’s tone was clipped. “Lois wants to get herself killed, and you’re actively encouraging her.”
“I do not,” I said, almost outraged.
“Shut up,” they both replied in unison, without either of them looking at me. Great. I was officially a nobody.
James then yanked open the fridge door and pulled out another bottle of wine. The good one, I assumed. He then proceeded to open it, and the room was painfully silent as he concentrated on his task. There was me hiding behind my chair, careful to keep my gaze pointing downwards, and then there was Sharkey, with her folded arms and bored expression. This should be interesting.
Taking a generous gulp of his freshly poured wine, this time he sighed appreciatively. “So, what aren’t you telling me, Elizabeth?”
There was a long pause as Sharkey considered her answer, which gave me a chance to try and figure out how they were on a first name basis.
“Why don’t you try to fuck it out of me, James? We both know you’re good at that.”
“I don’t fuck these days, or haven’t you heard?” His voice was terse, his back to her as he refilled her wineglass. My eyes were now up off the floor, and they would dearly have loved to have caught a glimpse of his face, but he was not playing ball. How annoying. Still, I gathered she was here for a while, judging by her earlier comment, so by the end of the evening I’d have a rough idea of whether or not they’d been together. Although it was difficult to admit, if they had been ‘a thing,’ it would bother me. There would be no point examining the ‘whys and wherefores,’ mostly because I knew I wouldn’t like them.
“What a shame. It was one of your best talents, darling. Let’s hope someone can change your mind.” Sharkey began unbuttoning her black, sheer silk blouse then, and I wanted the floor to explode upwards and suck me ten miles underground. Actually, make that twenty.
“Two weeks. I can work with two weeks.” James didn’t look at her chest, which was now fully on display, revealing a sexy black lace bra that must have borne an expensive designer tag.
“Lois, can you pay really careful attention and listen to everything James tells you? If you can, you can take the intensive James Leveritt course and be out of here in a week. Does that work for you?” Again, she didn’t look at me. Her voice was aimed over her shoulder in my direction, but her eyes were firmly on James.
“Say no, Lois.” This time, he did look at me, and his eyes were pleading. Why? Why did the man care whether I lived or died? Most of the people in my business were hardened to such things. Casualties were an unfortunate but regular consequence in the little games we played. If James had been one of Sharkey’s trainees, he’d have patted me on the head, pointed me in the direction of Carte Blanche, and his conscience could then rest easy. This didn’t appear to be the case, and I couldn’t understand why.
Sharkey then took his face in her hands and pulled his gaze downwards, letting them centre on her breasts. Pulling apart her black silk blouse, she grabbed his hands in hers and drew them around her waist.
“You said you’d be able to do this, James. Don’t make me regret my earlier leniency.”
Her earlier what? Now I was utterly confused.
“I can do this, but I need the amount of time we agreed on to do it properly.” There was a distinct snick of a bra strap being released, and I closed my eyes, unable to watch.
“Lois.” Miss Sharkey’s voice was sharp. “We aren’t doing this for us. This is a show, purely for your benefit. You need to get used to watching people getting naked and having sex. Whilst your embarrassment is awfully cute, it will have no place at CB. They will expect you to be very comfortable around naked bodies, no matter what they might be doing.” The emphasis on ‘doing’ left me under no illusions as to what she meant. No, no, no, I whispered to myself.
“Don’t I get a chance to fight you for it?” I asked miserably, and although I knew such an attempt would be futile, it would put off the inevitable for a few more minutes.
“You let her fight you? What madness is this, James? For a start, she can’t possibly hope to best you, and you’re supposed to be showing her who’s boss. Your job is to cross off each damn thing on that list as fast as you possibly can. We aren’t in kindergarten, for fuck’s sake.”
“Say one more word and I’ll walk away, Elizabeth. I’ve had just about enough. We both know that Lois is not cut out to be a submissive, and if she was, you wouldn’t have employed her in the first place. So, I’ll help her get through that transition in any way I can, and as we both know she can’t win against me, it’s not really a problem, is it?”
“Perhaps we could send you instead, James? That might get the job done a little quicker.” Sharkey pouted at him and then winked.
James responded by sucking a nipple into his mouth, and judging by the sharp intake of Sharkey’s breath, he bit her, before caressing the poor little nub better with his tongue.
“I can’t go in, and we both know why, so stop talking crap,” he growled.
“Pity. Dumortier would carve you up so prettily.”
“Shut the fuck up.” He then bent her backwards as his mouth took the other nipple and suckled upon it. She arched gracefully against him and moaned.
I wanted to rip her throat out. Almost frozen into place behind my chair, my body was attacked by an emotion it didn’t recognise. Unfortunately, Sharkey did.
“Looks like your little pet is green with envy, James. I hope you warned her not to fall for you.” Sharkey looked over at me, her eyes gleaming with predatory prowess.
“Oh, I credit Lois with far more intelligence than you, Sharkey. She knows better than to fall for a bad boy. You, on the other hand, barely know your left elbow from your right…”
“Thank you, James. Let’s stick with the plan, okay? I don’t really want to air our dirty laundry here. It was a long time ago, so let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh, I intend to,” he replied, which probably didn’t have the effect it was supposed to, as his hands were all over her.
My hands held the tough oak chair in a crushing grip, and I took out what little frustrations I could upon it. Control this, Lois. They’re making you watch them for a reason, and all will be explained in a moment. Hopefully.
“Lois, get your ass over here.” James’s command had my attention instantly, though I was reluctant to obey it. It would mean displaying my naked body to Sharkey, and office meetings would be a bit strained after this encounter, to say the least. Actually, strike that comment. Everyone here was ninety-nine percent sure I was going to die, so maybe it didn’t really matter. Besides, my boss was rather preoccupied at the minute. A herd of pink elephants could storm through the kitchen and she probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
Getting down on my hands and knees, I slowly crawled over to the pair who were now busily getting naked right in front of my eyes. What new form of torture was this? And why did I suspect this would be the least of my woes this evening?
James pulled his head up for air in order to address me once more. I tried to keep my expression bland, but it wasn’t easy.
“You need to see a demonstration of what Dumortier is likely to try whilst you’re under his roof. So, you need to watch and take this all in. If you’re still here at the end of the session, all of this and more will be happening to you, because I’ll need to prep you for it. Whilst I realise that this will be an uncomfortable experience as a voyeur, there were no other female agents available that were prepared to go through this with an audience, and that should tell you something. If you want to walk out at any time, feel free, but that’s where it will all end. You either stay the duration or you go home. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded. James was scaring me a little, but I guess that had been his plan all along. Sharkey obviously thought I could handle it, else she wouldn’t be here, so whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad.
“Be a good girl and run to the bathroom, Lois. In the bathroom cabinet you’ll find a black container. Bring it straight back here and don’t open it. Think you can do that?” James was panting heavily as he said it, and I could see that he was as aroused as she was. It might have been a dark thought, but the need to claw Sharkey’s eyes out was strong. I nodded my head, my eyes purposely glazing over the both of them, although the moans still penetrated my consciousness with the finesse of claw hammers. As long as I didn’t see their faces, I’d be okay. As far as new and inventive forms of torture went, this one was quite impressive, and we’d barely started by all accounts.
“Lois, get moving.” James’s voice was now ragged and breathless, and Sharkey’s hand was inside his pants. Oh God. Scurrying forward on my hands and knees, I couldn’t get out of the room quickly enough. The walls around me began closing in, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“You can walk, Lois. You’ll need to be on your feet to reach the cabinet.”
Although I caught his last sentence clearly, I didn’t pay it any heed. My body had turned to jelly, and it would take a moment or two to get it back under control. The bathroom, Lois. You can do this.
Reaching the bathroom cabinet took no more than thirty seconds. I needed more time, but conversely, I didn’t think I could bear to leave them alone for more than a couple of minutes. Would it be worse watching or being left in the dark? Besides, I didn’t have a choice. It was either watch or go home.
Reaching for the bathroom cabinet door with shaking fingers, I located the black plastic container easily. Bar a couple of toothbrushes and some floss, it was all that was in there. Now, did I obey orders, or did I open the box? The temptation to disobey was great. It was probably better to be prepared for what was going to come next, or was it? There was a good chance that even if I opened the box, I’d have no idea of its contents. Hovering with indecision for a moment, in the end I decided to err on the side of caution. If James did have this place rigged out with cameras everywhere, I was going to pay at some point in the near future, and I could take a surprise. Hopefully.
Back on two legs, I raced back through the corridor to make up for my earlier dithering. I needn’t have bothered. When I entered the kitchen once again, the two of them were rolling about on the floor in a state of impressive dishabille. My first thought was to deliver a swift kick into any ribcage I could find, but I contained the impulse. There were bigger things at stake here than a little bout of jealousy.
Moving forward reluctantly, I had to cough several times before I made my presence known.
“Thank you, Lois,” James said, plucking the case out of my hands. His lips were swollen and there was a glazed look in his eyes. If that wasn’t bad enough, Sharkey’s hair was all over the place, and a bright rosy flush crept from her neck upwards. “Sit on the floor over by the dining table, and don’t say a word, no matter what. You might want to remember that anything that happens here in this room will be tame by CB standards, so we’ll have to see if you have the stomach for it.”
“Yes, Sir.” My voice was a whisper. It was all I could manage. I knew something bad was about to happen and I was mentally preparing myself for it. Stumbling backwards, my butt hit the floor in a less than graceful move, but I barely noticed. My eyes were glued to the pair in front of me.
“You needn’t worry about Lois, James. She’s one of the toughest girls we have.”
In response, James wrapped his very large hand around Sharkey’s neck and caressed the hollow of her throat.
“How many times has she been caught and interrogated?”
Sharkey’s hands reached up and fanned her blonde hair out in a halo around her head. She appeared to consider his question, but I knew better. She was already trying to work out where this conversation was going in order to be one step ahead. The woman knew exactly how many times I’d been captured, and it wasn’t a hard number to remember.
“Three times was it, Lois?” Sharkey turned her head slowly to look at me, which was probably wise with James’s hands all over her throat. He looked like he wanted to squeeze the life out of her at the moment, and I couldn’t help but wonder why.
In response to her question, I nodded. Three times. It had been three times too many, in my opinion, but you couldn’t win them all.
“And how many times has she been fucked up?” James looked over towards me as he said it, and I realised he wanted both of us to answer the question.
“Just once,” Sharkey said, her eyes flickering back to mine, making sure I hadn’t been telling her fibs all these years in the many debriefings we’d shared.
“Just the once,” I lied, without a blink, tremor, or even the slightest inflection on any of those small three words. Looking straight at James, I almost dared him to challenge me. Thankfully, he didn’t.
“What happened?”
“Oh, I think she got…” Sharkey was cut off before she’d barely begun.
“Shut up. I want Lois to answer.” James pressed against the hollow of her throat in case she was in any doubt as to his seriousness.
Loath to answer, I did so anyway, because I knew this was something James would already have read in my file. “They didn’t feed me, didn’t let me sleep, left me handcuffed to a chair for the whole time, and played about with some waterboarding.”
James nodded, as if satisfied with my response. “Did they drug you?”
“Not to my knowledge, but the last couple of days were hazy.”
“I’ll bet. Well, I have bad news for you. Dumortier likes drugs. If you’re not exceptionally lucky, he’s going to shoot you up with all sorts of things for his own personal amusement, and I’m going to give you a heads up on what you might expect if you decide to play naughty.”
“Oh, I fully intend to do everything he tells me to.”
James pressed his lips together and shook his head, then gave Sharkey a filthy look. “You haven’t told her anything.”
Sharkey shrugged. “We need her. There isn’t anyone else, and what’s the point of scaring her off before she has an idea of what she’s in for?”
“Always looking out for your best interests, aren’t you, Elizabeth?”
Flicking the latches of the little black case open, he then raised the lid, and I had to crane my neck in order to see what was inside it. Swallowing tightly when I saw a box full of vials and needles, I sat back on my heels in shock. It was nothing less than I’d expected, but the thought of witnessing a real-life torture session right before my eyes was not a pleasant one.
“You’re going to pump her full of drugs?” My voice was small and far, far away. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this.
“Yes. I’m going to pump her full of drugs and then humiliate the shit out of her. You have a problem with that?” James looked at me very carefully.
“Am I allowed to have a problem with that?” It was a rhetorical question.
“You already know the answer to that. Feel free to stop this before it begins, Lois. I’m sure Sharkey will thank you for your kindness later.”
“She won’t, and stop stalling, James.” Sharkey tried to raise her head up, but James pushed her back down again, putting pressure upon her windpipe.
“Shut the fuck up. You’re here for decoration from this moment forth, and you know exactly what you signed up for.” James’s head snapped back to mine, and his eyes bored into my head. “Well?”
“No. I don’t have a problem with that, Sir.” I had to force myself to look at him. This was a side of James that I was not going to like, but I guess that was the point. He was trying to show me what Carte Blanche might have in store for me. It was a valid training session, and I was going to have to sit back, shut up, and take it.
“You will soon enough.” He ran his finger over the selection of glass bottles in front of him, as if deciding what to use first.
“Did you know Dumortier’s nickname is ‘The Chemist?’” James didn’t wait for my reply, because he already knew the answer. Sharkey had deliberately kept me out of the loop. Scrap that. She’d kept me in the dark, down the bottom of a very deep cellar, with a blindfold, earplugs, and my hands tied behind my back for good measure. Elite Encounters was beginning to look like child’s play compared to what CB had in store for me.
“Alain likes to play with minds as much as he plays with bodies, Lois. He’ll knock away all your inhibitions with a single shot, and then manipulate you in any way he sees fit, generally with an entourage in tow. He likes to play to an audience. Can you tolerate being humiliated on a regular basis?” Plucking a syringe from the case, James then chose a vial and carefully pulled it free from its plastic casing before setting it down on the floor. He then grabbed a Ziplock bag out of another compartment and took out a sterile wipe. I stared at him in sick fascination. What the hell was he going to do next?
Using the wipe to stroke a wet line across Sharkey’s wrist, he looked at me. “Interrogators, also known as torturers for the purpose of this exercise, have used a wide variety of drugs to get their subjects to sing over the decades. Have you had any experience with them, Lois?”
“No.” It was loud and firm. I was quite proud of myself, considering.
“Then you’ve been pretty lucky so far.” He threw away the wipe and picked up the vial.
“I’m good at what I do, James. There is no ‘luck’ involved.” How this man had the power to annoy me to the point of fury, and in no more than ten words, was almost impressive. I kept a lid on my temper, though. There wasn’t enough space to lose it in this room.
“You can tell me all about luck after you’ve finished your next assignment, Lois, because you’ll need to be the luckiest woman alive in order to do what you’re planning and get out alive.” Removing the soft metal cap of the vial, he fished out another wipe to clean the top of the bottle. He then grabbed the syringe and tugged the cap of the needle away with his teeth. Punching the tip of the needle into the top of the vial, he depressed the plunger completely before slowly extracting a few cc’s of clear liquid.
“Well, I guess I’d better give you the whistle-stop tour,” he said, slowly withdrawing the needle from the vial. Unable to tear my gaze away, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this, but that didn’t concern him in the least.
“There’s Sodium Pentothal, which is a barbiturate, and in light doses it can be used as a truth serum. You’ve got to be careful with that one, though, because if you give your subject too much, you’ll send them to sleep.”
If only, I thought.
“Alain will use that if he feels you’re a bit uptight during ‘play’ sessions. He’s also fond of Sodium Amytal, which will have you squawking out your life history in no time at all, and the particularly nasty Scopolamine. That’s the one you have to watch, by the way. As far as truth serums go, it’s about as good as it gets. One slip of the tongue is all it will take for Dumortier to find out why you’re really under his roof, and when that happens, we might as well forget you ever existed. If that doesn’t scare you, it will also rob you of your own free will, so you will be helpless beneath his hands. You will do anything he says without a moment’s thought. Oh, and one other thing: whatever you do, don’t let any of Alain’s goons administer the drugs. Some are less careful than others, and a relatively tiny overdose of Scopolamine will kill you. So, whatever you do, try not to make any enemies in that place.”
James paused after his verbal tirade, as if expecting me to run. I have to say that whilst the idea was tempting, I was made of sterner stuff.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park when I signed up for this, Sir. I’m prepared to take some risks in order to eliminate him.”
At the moment, Dumortier’s death was the only thing driving me, and it was a constant fire burning deep within my gut. I would not rest until that man was eliminated from the face of the earth. If he wanted to take me with him, I was prepared for that, too.
“Then you’re an idiot.”
Sharkey decided to pipe up at that point. “James, whose side are you on? You’ve wanted to take out Alain for years. No one to this date has been able to get closer to him than you, and even you couldn’t manage to wrap your hands around his neck. Now that we have a valid chance of ending his life, and a willing participant to do so, can we stop trying to scare her off?” She gave him an indignant look, but he paid her little heed.
“I’m extremely reluctant for anyone to go in there because I have first-hand knowledge of how hard the man is to kill.” James pointed the needle towards the ceiling, tapping the syringe a couple of times to move any air bubbles to the top. He then squirted a tiny arc of liquid out in order to remove them. “I also don’t want her to go in there because he’s a complete and utter conscienceless bastard.”
“That’s the reason I am going in there,” I whispered quietly to myself, but as the room was silent, everyone heard me.
“No, that’s the reason you think you’re going in there. Sharkey’s reasons for sending you in are quite different from what she’s told you. Trust me.”
Sharkey grabbed James’s cheek, stroked it a couple of times, and let his eyes focus on hers. “James, can we get with the plan? Whatever the reasons, Dumortier needs to be put down. Let’s concentrate on that.” She gave him a quick pinch to let him know she meant business.
“Fine.” Though by the tone of his voice, James was anything but fine. “You ready?”
“Yes,” Sharkey said in a very calm tone. There was a sparkle in her eye that made me wonder if she was almost looking forward to what was to come. Surely not? When it was my turn to go under the needle, I didn’t think I’d be wearing a smile upon my face. I had far too many secrets to hide.
Gently pressing the plunger of the syringe, James delivered the drug into Sharkey’s wrist. He then removed the used needle and placed it into a plastic sharps box ready for disposal. At least the man was a professional, if nothing else.
Turning to me once more, James said, “Whilst we’re waiting for that to take effect, I might as well fill you in on a few other drugs that you might have the pleasure of experiencing over at CB.”
I nodded. I’d rather go in f