“Thanks.”
“Enough of this love-in. You need to be on your game with WHM, and this morning you haven’t been. Anything I should know about?”
“Anything... like?”
“You tell me. It’s not like you to be so... distracted. I need you on point.” His gaze was razor-sharp. “Is it Stuart? Has something changed?”
I tried to fight back a smile but my mouth wouldn’t listen. “No,” I said. “Nothing’s changed with Stuart. I’m sure he’s happily hanging out in Babies-R-Us choosing rattle-toys with Carly.” And I’m happily hanging out in Freaks-R-Us with Rebecca, my brain added. “Everything’s good.”
“Then I’ll put this morning down as a one-off. Keep focused, Cat, I need you with me.”
“I’m with you,” I said. “You can rely on me, James.”
His smile was all genuine this time, tension forgotten, and all over again I noticed how fine a cut James Clarke made in a suit. Musk and linen and dark, dark eyes, brooding and smoky and goddamn gorgeous.
Masque, James, Masque, James. Between the two of them my sanity stood no hope in hell. I never recalled singledom feeling this damned crazy before.
***
“Cara said she’s been with him, and she’s not got a high-tolerance. You said it yourself, a slap and tickle. He hasn’t fucked her up, has he?”
“Fucking hell, Lyds, not this again.” Rebecca fake stabbed me with dramatic hand gestures, scowling like a lunatic. “Seriously, Masque is NOT for you! There are a shitload of men out there who’ll give you a slapped ass and a fucking good time.”
“But I want him.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about or what the fuck you’d be up against.”
“I’m not asking you to set it up, I’m just asking that you take me there again.”
“Sign up if you want, it’s a free country.”
My heart dropped. Four hundred a month, not likely with Mum’s track record of emergencies. “You can take me as a guest every month, you said so. Or Cara could.”
She sighed. “So, I take you back to Explicit. Then what? You’re going to march up to him and say ‘Hey, Masque, I saw you beat the fuck out of some redhead on stage the other week, how about you slap my pretty little ass and tell me I’m dirty?’ Is that your plan?”
“I dunno,” I admitted.
“You have no idea who the hell that man is. He’d eat you for breakfast, Lyds. He gives Cara a slap every now and again as a favour to me. Do you want to be a favour, too?”
“No. I don’t want to be a favour.” I choked back the irritation. “Do you think I’m too ugly for him? Is that it?”
She got up in my face, eyes deadly serious. “No. I don’t think that. That’s ridiculous.”
“What then?”
“I’ll slap you myself if you keep going on, Lyds.”
I brushed her aside and put the kettle on. “There’s something in me. I can’t explain it. I need this, I need him.”
“You don’t need him.”
“The way he was with that woman, it did something to me. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“He’ll hurt you, Lydia. Bad. Really bad. Dirty fucking bad.”
“Maybe that’s what I want,” I snapped.
She took the coffee mugs from my hands, placed them on the counter and dragged me from the kitchen, right the way through into her bedroom. My insides tickled at the sight of her torture implements, but it wasn’t them she was taking me to see. She fired up her laptop, plugged in an external hard drive from her desk drawer. “Have you ever seen proper marks, Lyds? I doubt it. This is what Masque does. This is what he’d do to you.”
I watched over her shoulder as she enlarged a thumbnail, and there he was. My heart pounded at the sight of his perfect chest, the chimera dancing on his skin. There was a blonde stood facing away from the camera. Her back was a mess, red-raw welts criss-crossed over each other, and below that her ass was purple. Literally purple. Bruises like I’d never seen before.
“He did that?”
“The welts are fresh, the bruising is days old. You want to look like that when he’s finished with you? You’ll hardly be able to sit down for a week. That’s what redhead is feeling right now, don’t doubt it.”
“That’s supposed to put me off, is it?” I asked, crossing my arms.
She spun back in her seat to face me. “Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“Sure, well how about these?” She flicked through some more until she found what she was looking for. On this one the blonde’s face was cut off, the picture stopped at her shoulders. Her breasts were bound and swollen, blotchy with deep red bruising. She had needles threaded under her skin, rows of them leading right up to her nipples.