Personal Protection Read online

  “With my life, sir,” I told him and meant it.

  “You are not what I wanted for my daughter, what I expected when I learned who…

  “I understand. I’ll do my utmost to prove to you that she hasn’t accepted second best.” Even though I know you’d rather she was with a man, I thought.

  His rheumy eyes took in every facet of my face. “You’d better, because even if I don’t know where to find the bastard that did this to her, I know where you live!”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less, sir.”

  He nodded and went back into the living room with great dignity.

  I looked at both women in wonder and found them smiling. My chivalry had found an echo in my lover’s father. If I let him down, I’d hand the gun to him myself. I’d deserve it.

  I got Tori into the car, cushioned on a duvet I keep in the boot for stake-outs, and pointed the bonnet towards my home. I wasn’t sanguine about the security at her house. I hadn’t been there when she needed me. I wouldn’t let her down with ignorance now.

  I’d discover who the perpetrator was. And when I did, I’d find out everything there was to know about them and a way to pay him or her back. Shooting would be too quick. What I had in mind would be much slower and more thorough. They were going to pay.

  3

  The Illuminations twinkled as I drove along the promenade. Tori, swathed in my old sweatshirt and jumper two sizes too big, against the cool September night as well as her internal chill, pressed her nose against the window. The bulk of the newly refurbished Miners’ Rest Home twinkled invitingly with lights enough to rival those set up for the tourists.

  “Are you going to check your pager?”

  “No.”

  She turned away from the window. Though I kept my eyes on the road I was aware of her scrutiny. I jumped when her hand touched me, which was entirely the wrong thing to do. She recoiled into herself, curling into the tiniest space possible, trying to disappear. I slapped on the indicators, took us into a side street, pulled over, then reached out to her.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to react like that. You just startled me.”

  I managed to coax her into my arms. Somebody blew their horn at the car and I gave them the finger in the rear-view mirror. She looked into my face.

  “It isn’t your fault that you weren’t there. I don’t blame you.”

  “I know, Tori, it’s just that…

  “It’s your life, it’s what you do, protecting people. Not to have been there when I needed you makes you feel helpless. For such a small woman, you have so much presence, so much attitude.” She stroked a finger along my jaw. “I almost expect to wake up some mornings and find you’ve grown stubble overnight and that there’s more between your legs than there was when we went to sleep.”

  Don’t think I haven’t dreamt about it. I’m one of those lesbians who loves women because I felt I was destined to be a bloke. I got given the wrong body. I’m not a dyke because some guy did me wrong. I like blokes – I just wouldn’t want to sleep with one. Maybe I think of them as brothers, or the competition? Tori seemed to be suggesting as much.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to come over all macho, it’s just how I am.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t have you any other way. You make me feel safe.”

  There’s not much you can say to that. It’s one hell of a compliment. I hugged her.

  “You can’t put your life on hold because I got hurt. You have a job to do.”

  “I can’t just leave you and go haring off after some stranger!” I protested. “Let them call somebody else! You’re more important.”

  “Dean will fire you.”

  “He can’t. He’s not my boss, he’s my partner. I’m only responsible for myself.”

  That was crap. If I let the business down and the client base abandoned us, he could sue me for negligence.

  “Please,” was all she said.

  I swore softly and got out the pager. I dare you to refuse anything to a woman who speaks to you in that tone of voice, with that look in her eyes. I turned the thing on and it updated. Four more calls. Every ten minutes. All the same number. Dean.

  I picked up the car phone and dialled.

  “Finally! How is she?”

  “As well as can be expected. Thanks for calling, Dean.” I meant it.

  “What kind of a shit would I be if I didn’t? If there’s anything I can do…”

  “Not just now, but if you’re up for getting who did this…”

  “That sounds like quite a story,” he said, cautiously.

  “We’ll talk later, OK? Can you call the client and tell him something came up, that I can’t take the job?”

  “Of course. He still hasn’t been in touch?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need your services. I’ll call and make sure.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  This conversation was going nowhere. He said, “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. Keep me updated?”

  “Always.”

  “Ciao for now, then.”

  “Ciao.”

  I hung up.

  Tori smiled at me, her bruised-looking eyes spoiling the image. “That wasn’t so painful, was it?”

  “All right, I was acting like an adolescent boy. I’m sorry. Just kick me if I do it again.”

  “No way! You might kick me back! And your martial arts training gives you an unfair advantage.”

  “I’d never..!” I stammered, horrified.

  She pulled me close and held me tight. “I know you wouldn’t. It was meant to be a joke. In very poor taste. You’d never do anything like that. I never meant to imply you would.”

  I never physically fight with my affairs. I don’t always know my own strength but I do know what I’m capable of. Even play-fights can degenerate into real violence. I never want any woman to accuse me of that. Another reason why this crime was all the more heinous. That a woman might have done this.

  Even my lovemaking tends towards the vanilla. I only penetrate a woman if that’s what she wants, and then I only use my hands. Or my tongue… And nobody gets to penetrate me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a stone butch. I like somebody to return the favour. There are just some things I won’t do. Fucking a woman with a foreign object is one of them.

  I realise this makes me old-fashioned. I mean, what is a lesbian without her brightly coloured silicone strap-on? Put it down to age. If a woman wants cock she can be with a bloke. I’m in sex for sex, not power.

  Tori brought me out of my introspection. “Will you take me home?”

  “We’re going to my place.” She was going to give me an argument if I didn’t nip this in the bud. “We don’t know whether they’ve found out where you live. Perhaps they’ve staked it out, and are waiting for you to come back. I’m not happy with your security.” I’d been trying to persuade her to upgrade her alarm system for weeks, without success. “I don’t want to be jumping at shadows all night and neither do you.”

  “I wouldn’t with you there to protect me.”

  “Low blow, babe. You know I sleep like the dead. If I stay, I’ll have to spend the night on a kitchen chair to stay awake.”

  She sighed.

  “I don’t want to wake up in your bed only to find someone trying to stave in my skull with a baseball bat.”

  That was enough to convince her, so back to my place it was. My apartment is like Fort Knox: one of the benefits of working in the security business. Nobody gets in without the keys and the codes.

  She settled back into the seat and watched me drive. I was hard pressed to keep my mind on the road. Being stared at by someone who loves you and is undressing you with their eyes is a wonderful, highly erotic thing. It’s also very distracting. I ran two red lights before she smiled and turned her face out of the window again to let me concentrate. The last thing we needed was to be picked up by the traffic detail.

  I don’t live in Cl
eveleys. I work in Blackpool, but live in St Annes, about twenty minutes away down the Fylde Coast, with high property prices and subsidence problems. One day, like Venice, we’ll all wake up to find ourselves afloat.

  I shared the top floor of a long low building off St Anne’s Square, in a quiet area near the park, with Ashley Hayes, (tall, blond, interesting, but male) a mature law student. He seemed OK, but I often wondered how he afforded the place. Every student I’ve ever met either had rich parents or didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. Maybe he had a nest egg that allowed him to go back to school or something? Or perhaps his barrister lover, Cecily Richmond, was keeping him. He and I had only spoken in passing so my curiosity remained unsatisfied.

  Cecily is one of my exes. Her flexible sexuality had as much to do with our break-up as her predilection for bondage and sadism, and we didn’t have an equable parting. Her taking up with Ash had led to some ugly scenes on the landing.

  Luckily my downstairs neighbour (and owner of the property) was more into security than Tori was. Persuading him and Ashley to find a third of the cost of the alarms and locks I’d installed hadn’t been too difficult. If I could get him to chill out and cheer up (he was always banging on the ceiling complaining about the noise) the place would be perfect.

  I installed Tori in my apartment and went back to the car for the quilt and her ruined clothes. I didn’t imagine we’d get any evidence from them, but Tori might want them, if only for a ritual burning.

  When I returned Cecily was blocking my way. Her hand came out to toy with my tie. The bitch once choked me into unconsciousness with a tie she’d bought me as a Christmas present. Waking handcuffed to my headboard, because I wouldn’t fight back for fear I’d hurt her, to find her standing over me with a paddle, is one of the low points of my life. Sometimes my feelings about violence towards women are as much a hindrance as a help.

  “Hi, lover. Busy?”

  “I’m always too busy for any sick little game you have in mind, Cecily. And I haven’t been your lover for a very long time, if I ever was. Get out of my way.”

  “So butch! Grown a dick yet, have we?”

  She reached for my crotch. I took an involuntary step back and almost fell down the stairs. She smiled as I struggled to get my balance.

  She looked like the perfect designer dyke: long blonde hair and red lipstick, power suits and high heels. That was what had attracted me in the first place. (So sue me! I like high-maintenance feminine women!) But her obsession with dungeon sex made my skin crawl then as much as it does now.

  There’s some history between my past and present ladies. The lesbian population in this town is fairly small. Eventually you find a few girlfriends in common with your current beau. I wasn’t sure what went on between Tori and Cess. Tori’s job meant she didn’t get out on the scene much, so where they met I had no idea. All I knew was it was around the same time Tori started going out with me. Nothing came of it. Every time they meet the claws come out. It’s like being trapped between two sparring cats. All spitting and raised hackles. It would have pissed me off if it hadn’t been so damn funny.

  My encounters with Cecily were less humorous. I never knew what to say to her. I pushed past her and slammed into my apartment. The echo of her vicious laughter made my ignominious retreat worse.

  In the apartment Tori saw my expression. I turned away too furious to try and explain. She was having none of it. She plucked the bundle of cloth from my arms tossed it aside and caught my chin, tilted my face up and back, then stepped away consideringly. “Cecily?”

  Still beyond words, I exhaled noisily and nodded.

  She came back and slipped an arm around my waist and pressed herself against me. “What am I going to do with you?”

  She scraped a fingernail along my jaw. I shivered with desire. Her hand cupped my skull, fingers feathering through my cropped hair. She drew my mouth down to hers.

  Her other hand dropped between us to unzip my fly. My eyes, which had closed when she kissed me, snapped open. I tried to pull away but she tightened her grip. Her eyes were open, watching my expression, needing to know I still found her desirable, wanted to be touched by her, no matter what had happened to her. I stopped struggling. She slid her hand into my damp underwear. I caught my breath. Her fingers began an insistent rubbing. I tried to hold her eyes but I couldn’t.

  My head tipped back and my eyes closed, my breathing nothing more than staccato catches… Then I was somewhere else: a place of white noise and blood-red light, where the body I inhabit every day was replaced by a single nerve ending, pure sensation that began and ended with Tori’s fingers. A throbbing pulse built and built until it reached a crescendo and carried me away. Tori had to shift her hands quickly to hold me up as my knees buckled. I came, and came back to myself, drenched. She propped me against the door, kissed me, then licked her sticky fingers, zipping up my fly as an afterthought.

  “You looked as if you needed that, and I… I needed to know I still could.”

  “Glad to be of service.” My voice was a hoarse croak.

  She tried out a smile. It didn’t touch her eyes. “Are you OK to stand by yourself?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good, then if you don’t mind, I’ll take that bath. Perhaps you could find the gear I left here last time? Much as I like your clothes, they do smell of petrol fumes.”

  “Point. They’re heading for the laundry. I keep meaning to put them in a plastic bag but I never get round to it. Go ahead; I’ll bring your stuff.”

  “I was rather hoping you’d keep me company.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Randall, you didn’t hurt me. I don’t think you’re capable of hurting women that way. Right now the idea of soaking in a bath full of bubbles with your arms around me has a particularly strong appeal.”

  Shit, what can you say to that? I went for the safe approach.

  “OK, I’ll be there. Go and get started. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve found your clothes.”

  I only had a shower cubicle, toilet and wash basin in my bathroom, because of the size of my apartment. A couple of years ago I’d read an article on space-saving designs and the place now had an almost unique feature. The bedroom area was on a raised platform with a false floor. The double bed slid sideways on runners giving access to a sunken bath. Tori was in love with the idea. She thought it was great that she could spread the bed with a pile of bath towels so that we could go straight from the fun in the water to fun on land without having to get dry in between.

  By the time I arrived with her clothes, the bed was awash in the deep white pile of bath towels. Candles added an intimate light to the room. The scent of some aromatherapy bath oil complemented the aroma of the beeswax church candles. I felt the tension melt out of me. I was disarming the smoke detector when Tori came out of the bathroom wearing one of my robes, carrying a pack of sanitary towels. Her eyes were dark holes in her face.

  “You’re still bleeding?”

  She nodded unhappily. I set her clothes down out of the way, hugging her again.

  “Do you really want me in the bath with you while I’m like this?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I told her firmly. “‘Granny’ recedes in water. If it’s more than your period brought on early, we need to know. You’ll need to see a doctor.”

  She whimpered and curled into my shoulder.

  I stroked her back. “We’ll give it a day or so. See what happens. If it doesn’t stop and it doesn’t turn into a conventional period, I promise I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m sorry to be such a child about this,” she sniffed, close to tears again.

  “You’re not! In your place, I’m not sure I’d be dealing with this half so well.”

  “You’d never get into this position in the first place.”

  “I’ve been close! Cecily…

  She looked up. “What?”

  I shivered. “It’s not something I like to remember.”

>   “Please. It would help me to know that I’m not the only one. If it’s even happened to someone as capable as you…

  Shit. Well, if it would show her I understood what she was going through. “OK. Get in the bath. I promise then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  Warm water lapped around us. I sat with my back against the enamel, she between my legs, facing the taps. I worked my fingers into the tension knots in her neck and shoulders. She allowed this quiet pursuit for a time, then leaned back. I was forced to stop. Crushing my breasts pleasantly between us she said, “So tell me.”

  Tori has an interesting way of sugaring the pill, I’ll give her that. I slipped my arms around her, cupping her breasts, stroking the buds of her nipples with my thumbs to temper the bitterness of my memories.

  I met Cecily two years ago as she came barrelling out of court number one at the Old Bailey. She was working for the Crown Prosecution Service, celebrating her first case and her first win, having successfully nailed my former client to the wall. (I didn’t know he was a gangland king pin when I’d taken the job. Story of my life.) She had just thrown her wig into the air with an unseemly whoop as the doors closed behind her. I caught the wig and her simultaneously. I set her back on her feet, took one look at her and knew.

  My suspicions were confirmed when she allowed her hand to linger just a moment too long on mine as she reclaimed her wig. Then she openly checked me out. I was flattered.

  “My chambers, half an hour.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied as she sauntered off, inordinately pleased with herself. Perhaps I should have taken the hint then, but damn it, I had just gone from being her prey in the witness box to being the prey of a sexually aggressive dyke in the middle of a bastion of straight law. It was one hell of a turn-on. I could not refuse.

  It took me forty minutes to find her office. The building was a labyrinth I was unfamiliar with. I should just have followed her after she’d propositioned me. But I didn’t want to seem too eager.