1
Brian wakes up, completely disorientated. Gawd, but his head hurts something awful. What did he drink last night? He can’t recall taking any poppers or smoking any weed, but there’s definitely something in his system. His vision swims, and he can’t get the room in focus.
Then his eyes snap open. Really pop open, as if there have been transparent shutters on them before which have now been tautly released to reveal the stark reality around him.
And what a reality it is.
Brian takes in the unfamiliar walls of the bedroom he is in. Lavender wallpaper, the kind with little forget-me-nots. Mirror over a white dressing table. Chintz curtains with a pattern of repeated forget-me-nots. What is this theme? Some kind of ‘forget me not’ message?
There are framed photographs on a white dresser. Unfamiliar photos of unfamiliar people.
The reality slams into his gut like a sucker punch.
He is alone in the double bed, but there is an impression of a body in the mattress beside him. Someone has slept here. He is covered with a blanket, but underneath, he is naked. His c**k is limp. When his hand suspiciously strays down to touch it – to find out where it’s been – his palm comes away sticky.
His penis has been someplace all right.
Here he is, Brian Morton – stud extraordinaire, a man who has woken up in more strange places than he cares to count – in a strange bedroom. And he’s f**king scared.
This has to be a first.
Worse still, he can’t remember what happened last night. She has slipped something into his drink again, he’s certain. And he had let her. Not because he’s gullible, but because it was pointless. She was going to do it anyway. And she has already done all the damage to him that she can. He might as well let her do whatever she wants to him so that he can extricate Sam out of this mess.
Sam.
His heart shrivels when he thinks of her. She doesn’t know he’s here. Doesn’t know he’s doing this because she trusts him implicitly. So he has to be extra careful not to let her know. But he doesn’t yet know what Delilah’s terms are. Delilah Faulkner. He can only think of this woman as Delilah Faulkner, not the sweet, bruised Adie he once knew and betrayed.
He can’t fault Delilah/Adie for wanting to get back at him. Rage like this burned deep and hard, like the stoked furnaces in the bowels of the Earth. How many women out there has he hurt so badly that she has no choice but to nourish a long-lasting hatred for him like a dagger in her womb? How many of them are now plotting a vendetta against him and all those he held dear?
He deserved what he was getting. But Sam! Just leave her out of this! But he knows it doesn’t quite work out that way. In a fall-out, a lot of innocent bystanders get hurt.
It’s your mess. Now clean it up.
That is what he’s doing, he tells himself grimly. He swings his long legs over the side of the bed. Something needles the confines of his skull, and the sharp pain makes him wince and pause slightly before getting up.
He studies his body in the mirror. He knows he looks good, and that’s a major part of the problem. They all want his body. Him. In college. At work. In clubs, bars, the street. They all want what he can’t give them, and when he won’t give it to them, they go on a slow boil. Most of them forget and move on. Some never did.
He is learning that now.
He wonders if he can slip out of the apartment. He wonders if she is still here, and if she would let him. Is his part of the deal done? Will she let him escape now?
It’s never that easy, his inner voice warns him.
His clothes are not in the bedroom. They are not on the floor in some discarded heap, and certainly not hung across the back of the chair, neatly folded. He grimaces. He goes to the bathroom to take a long piss. He needs to shower and shave, but he will be damned if he’s going to ask her to let him use her soap. So he gargles and rinses out his mouth, and that’s about it.
He has no alternative but to go out there to face the fire.
Gingerly, he opens the room door. He steps out. The lounge of Apartment 501 is tidy. Preternaturally so. Delilah is a neat freak. The kind who would implode if there is so much as a cushion out of place. He wonders where the hidden security cameras are – the ones which have so nicely caught Sam on tape. He surveys the ceiling, but as much as he squints, he can’t see evidence of any.
Is Delilah now viewing him live on camera?
The thought of it spooks him.
He finds his clothes in a neat pile on the sofa. She has folded them up for him, confirming his mental image of her as a compulsive. He takes them self-consciously and starts to dress himself. Black sleeveless tee. Tattered, well-worn jeans. He starts to shrug on his leather jacket, when he hears her voice:
“Going somewhere?”
She is standing at the doorway of the kitchenette. She wears a simple dressing gown. Silk, with a sash in the middle. Her cle**age is pronounced and her hair all tumbling and vivid and red. She resembles a temptress from hell. A succubus sent to draw men to their shipwrecks.
He stops himself from running a nervous tongue over his lower lip. He’s usually not afraid of women, but this one scares him. It’s as though she is no longer fully human, and that the laws of rational thought no longer apply to her.
“I have work,” he offers lamely.
“So do I, but I took the day off. Called in sick. Want some breakfast?”
So she’s trying to play normal and nice-like. He can live with that. To refuse her would be to trigger off some complex thought process in her tangled brain, and she would irrevocably take it out on Sam. He hates being blackmailed like this. Hates having his strings jerked around by this vicious puppeteer.
But he has no choice.
So he says, as casually as he can muster, even though all his senses are on full alert for the tsunami that would hit him: “Sure.”
She turns, expecting him to follow without a word. So he is to be her lapdog. This makes him unspeakably gloomy.
There are already two place settings on the kitchen table. Neat, as to be expected. Not a napkin out of place. A pot of artificial flowers forms the centerpiece of the table. The entire kitchen is filled with the smell of just-fried bacon, and this is what Delilah places in front of him as he seats himself. A plate of bacon, just crispy at the edges, with two eggs sunny side up, and a dollop of baked beans.
Just like that. As if they are a couple.
“Go ahead, eat,” she urges him. She places a similar plate, only with half the servings, in front of herself.
He wonders if she has drugged his food again. But he eats anyway, eyeing her out of his feral green eyes. She eyes him too, like an adversary across the table.