Toxic - Zoe Blake Page 0,47

the seams and whalebone stay stitching.

This wasn’t an accident.

“The blonde girl, it was her!” I blurted out.

While obviously not meant to kill, they were meant to send a nasty message.

With one of Richard’s men guarding the door to the lounge while he issued orders to the rest of his security crew, Richard wiped the already drying blood off my skin with the warm, wet cloths Maxine had brought. Each time I hissed from the sting, I could see the lines of his face harden.

He was furious.

Very, very furious.

Raising my hand to his cheek, I tried to reassure him. “I’m fine, really. It was just a nasty scare.”

Grasping my hand in his own, he placed a fervent kiss on my palm before placing our clasped hands over his heart.

Just as Richard was wrapping a long length of soft wool over my shoulders, Harris arrived.

“Secure the place. No one leaves,” ordered Richard.

“Should I call the police?” asked Maxine.

“No,” snarled Richard.

Everyone in the room exchanged anxious looks. They knew what his refusal to involve the authorities meant.

Swaddling me in my makeshift blanket, Richard lifted me in his arms. As he stormed out of the lounge, Harris kept pace. “Your Grace, it can’t be her. We took care of that situation months ago,” he declared emphatically.

“Obviously not,” ground out Richard through clenched teeth.

His arms tightened around me. I knew better than to ask any questions.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking… maybe I wasn’t the only woman Richard liked to play games with?

Chapter 18

Richard

“Find her,” I demanded.

The men in the room shifted in their seats.

Harris cleared his throat. “We can’t be certain it’s her. All the reports from Bahrain say she is still on Sheikh Hamad’s compound.”

“I’m telling you. She’s in London. She got into this house,” I raged as I pounded the desk for emphasis, “into my bedroom. And now this attack on Elizabeth? I won’t fucking stand for it.”

“We have a team of men en route to Bahrain now. There were no security cameras at Maxine’s but we are combing the area for CCTV footage. We also lifted some fingerprints from the scene. If it’s her, we’ll find her, Your Grace.”

Turning away, I stared out the window. Dark grey clouds had rolled in. There were already several drops of rain clinging to the windowpane.

A storm was coming.

“It’s her,” I said to no one in particular.

It was Nicole.

Nicole Fleming.

The woman I was with before I found Elizabeth.

At first the relationship suited both of our needs. Nicole was from a privileged family. She had no ambition or need to work, so it reserved all of her attention for me. Something I had enjoyed at first but came to despise.

The only thing we truly had in common was our mutual fascination with pain. In the beginning, I’d thought she understood. My interest was purely in how pain allowed the body to experience more intense pleasure. There was no need to use it for discipline with Nicole, perhaps because I didn’t care enough about her to want to control her behavior.

Things were different with Elizabeth. The driving need to control her and everything in her world still burned deep within me. This fierce need to be everything and all to her. I begrudged the world everything about her… even one of her soft smiles… the world wasn’t worthy of them… didn’t deserve them. They were mine. Everything about Elizabeth was mine.

Things had deteriorated quickly with Nicole.

Suddenly, the kiss of a leather belt or whip wasn’t enough for her. She wanted more. Began to beg me for more pain. She wanted to bleed, to carry my mark. My scar.

One dreadful night, my resolve weakened. I had wondered what it would feel like to have another human being be completely subservient to me, a blood bond. I was a man possessed. The more she begged for it, the harder I gave it to her. We crossed a line that night. I had become Frankenstein and she my monstrous creation.

The next day, I went for a walk in St. James’s Park, wondering if I would ever cleanse my soul of the crimson stain.

That was when I saw Elizabeth. She was sitting there on the grass in the sunshine, reading Frankenstein of all things. She’d looked so innocent and pure… so clean of any corrupting stain. I craved just the sight of her. Returning to the park each day for a week hoping just for a glimpse as I furiously collected all the information I could find about her, until the day