Finally. Behind all that overblown, pseudo-scientific pontification, they were a couple of desperate sadists in search of somewhere to act out their grubby, brutal fantasies.
Somewhere like Albermarle Hall.
Across the table, Selena’s birthday surprise blankly rolled a dessert fork between his fingers as a cigarette substitute whilst the vice around my chest tightened and I scrabbled through my clutch bag for my inhaler.
‘Are you all right, Lilith?’ Royce asked, more out of worry that his audience had deserted him than any real concern for my health.
‘A touch of asthma,’ Blaine explained breezily. ‘Is the weather affecting you, Lilith?’
‘A little.’
‘Perhaps you might allow me to massage your chest?’ Royce suggested.
I squirted two shots of salbutamol down my throat. ‘I’ll be fine now, thank you.’
‘Pity,’ Royce leered, and I forced myself not to shudder as unbidden, he began to give my shoulders a compensatory rub. ‘There. Is that better? Selena always says I have magic fingers.’
Finn
The fat, ugly, dirty fucker. He didn’t even deserve to sit within a mile of Lilith, never mind touch her with those filthy hands. I could have had his head through the patio doors in two seconds flat, but right now I had other problems to deal with.
The bloody woman I was due to shag hadn’t stopped in her quest once in the last half-hour. If Selena Clarke thought she was going to give me a hard-on with her constant pawing at my cock through my trousers, she was going to be sadly disappointed. That kind of thing had been strictly artificially induced for the last three years.
My coke-wired heart began to pound. I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to imagine myself out of the room, sitting on the most secluded shore on the island with Bran at my side. Instead of tranquil water and sunlight I saw only Lilith’s trapped and defeated face. I reached into my breast pocket for the next three temazepam I’d secreted there, slipping them into my cheek as I raised my hand to cough.
Royce pushed a small plastic bag into the centre of the table. ‘Anyone else care for an ‘E’?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Blaine said as Selena helped herself. ‘But I’m sure Finn wouldn’t say no.’
‘Sure. Whatever.’ I avoided Lilith’s look of horror as I necked a tab. Part of me was actually quite curious now as to what would happen when all the chemicals in my bloodstream met. I supposed spontaneous combustion was out of the question, but I lived in hope.
Selena watched me closely. ‘You must have quite an appetite.’ As I hadn’t actually eaten anything yet, I guessed at what she was insinuating.
And naturally, so did Blaine.‘Oh, he does. For all sorts of things.’ As Selena gave a nervous smile, my employer moved in. ‘You rather like my Finn, don’t you?’
‘I... no, I mean yes, obviously, but...’ Selena wittered, and looked at Royce for assistance out of the pit she was digging. ‘Sweetie, I wasn’t doing anything...’
The slug in a suit simply gave a tolerant, paternal smirk in response. ‘So, d’you think it’s time we put her out of her misery, Blaine?’ he asked.
Blaine casually topped up her wine glass. ‘Whenever you think is appropriate. It is your night, after all.’
‘Roycie, what’s going on? I don’t like being kept out of things, you know that,’ Selena whined.
I thought he was about to explode with smug anticipation. ‘Happy birthday, my love,’ he beamed.
‘What? I don’t understand – is there a present? Where is it? What do you mean, ‘Happy birthday?’’
Royce chuckled with amusement. He’d have been looking forward to this from the moment he sent off his cheque to Albermarle Executive Leisure Services. ‘Do you remember that little talk we once had, about ,er, what one might do if society’s restraints were lifted, as it were?’
By the bovine expression on her face, Selena evidently didn’t remember at all, but with the amount of drugs and alcohol she’d vacuumed up in the last hour, I reckoned she’d be pushed to recall her shoe-size right at this moment.
Her adoring fiancé gave an indulgent chuckle. ‘About what might happen if, theoretically, we managed to find someone of sufficient, er, broad-mindedness – stamina, even – to indulge in a certain scenario? Yes?’ He nodded in my direction to indicate beyond doubt that I was indeed that lucky ‘someone.’