A Cut-Throat Business:A Chastity Flame Adventure

K. A. Laity

(sample chapter)

For the Queen of Everything

1

Daddy's girl. That's what she'd always been. As she sprinted down the dark street,

the phrase kept repeating in her head. Her heart beat a tattoo in her chest and her lungs

burned as she raced along. Adrenaline filled her veins as she sought a way out, away

from this, but she could still hear his footsteps behind her.

Daddy's girl. He had grinned as he said the words, onto her wavelength, her

weakness, in just a few minutes of conversation. She had actually been pleased. He was

smarter than they usually were, the men who fluttered around her like moths to a flame.

She always found it easy to charm them, to make them desire her.

You'd hardly believe she had once been a plain tomboy. Her well-toned legs

might be a legacy of that time, though exercise these days meant helping her maintain the

look that turned heads. Right then she wished she'd worked more on pure endurance

instead of shapeliness, because his seemingly tireless steps got closer as she grew tired.

She skidded around a corner and her terror exploded. It was a dead end.

Panicking, her gaze darted back and forth, looking for some break in the brick walls that

lined the narrow lane. With a glance over her shoulder, she stumbled forward into a

ragged trot, eyes wild as she hoped there must be a way out of this. Someplace to hide

would appear, like it always did in bad dreams, in movies, just when there was no more

hope. Then a bin or a box would be there where you hadn't noticed, and behind it a

narrow passage that led to freedom.

Her heart raced faster as the sound of his footfalls came closer.

Bricks, bricks, more bricks: up too high, a few windows with broken glass. If she

had wings, a rocket, a fiery dragon—her thoughts were getting wild, hysterical. Isn't that

the word they always used, the word only for women? She had such contempt for her

gender. She had felt hunger and contempt in equal measures for men, those she desired

and those who desired her.

He paused at the entrance to the narrow lane, staring at her. Earlier, she had

preened as his interest became plain, but now she wished she had never seen him.

"Come to Daddy," he growled, in an obscene parody of the fatherly approval she

craved.

There had to be some way out! She ran to the far wall, overly conscious of her

own panting breaths. Her fingertips scraped against the bricks in vain, her overheated

brain suggesting that there could be some kind of secret exit if she applied the right

pressure. What was that movie where the bricks moved and opened, revealing a secret

alley? When she realised it was one of the Harry Potter movies, a giggle began in the

back of her throat.

This is what it's like to be hysterical. Her giggles grew. No wonder they said a

joke was hysterical when it was good. She stiffened when she heard his step so close

behind her. The giggles becoming little gasps. She sank to the ground, hands up in a

defensive posture.

"Now, now. This won't do." He grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet.

How she had admired his height and the strength evident in his shoulders when

they met at the reception. She had been bored out of her skull, despite her boss' promises

about rich, eligible men. Most were on the far side of fifty and the slope on that side of

the hill looked steep. His hair was perfect. That was what she had noticed first; the tall

forehead above the crowd, a cut that spoke not only of wealth, but of taste and precision.

That precision now meant the soft black gloves that covered his hands.

"That's better, my sweet." He cooed the words as if that would soothe her.

Now that she knew his truth, there was only terror. If her heart had pounded

loudly before, she feared it would break right through her chest now. "Please..."

He smiled. There was something so utterly inhuman in his face. The smile looked

like the grimace of a predator and she knew at last that's what he was. She pulled back,

but the grip on her wrist was too strong.

All those nights in the gym working on her body and all she had ever cared about

was the look of it. Shouldn't her arms be stronger, too? She tried to yank her wrist away,

which surprised him, but she did not get loose.

"Naughty child," he said, leaning closer. "Mustn't try to pull away from Daddy.

He will have to punish you more." He wagged a finger at her with his free hand as she

continued to struggle against his tight grasp. Her other hand scrabbled at the bricks as she

attempted to skitter away from him.

Then she hit the other wall and knew that she had been cornered. Maybe there

was a way to reach him, to stop him. She swallowed and did her best not to look into

those eyes and their shiny blankness. "I have to be somewhere—" She stammered the

words out. Invention came slowly. Lying usually proved effortless. "They're expecting

me...home." A cough choked off her words.

"Tut, tut, musn't lie to your papa. We went over all this in the car." He stretched

her arm out, lifting her to her full height once more.

The car! The driver couldn't know what was happening. Surely he would stop it if

he knew. She just needed to scream. A loud shriek would bring the driver and all this, this

—confusion, would be cleared up.

If only her throat weren't so dry.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" He leered, bringing his face closer to hers. She

could smell the cologne he wore. Expensive, French, the name lay on the tip of her

tongue but panic drove it away. "Cat got your tongue? Let me see."

"I-I'm going to scream." Her voice came out as a rasp. It wasn't an encouraging

sign.

He chortled. "If you must, you must." His smile was leonine. The look of

indulgent good humour on his face made her feel more of an infant than his fierce grip on

her arm.

She swallowed again, feeling her words go back down her throat like a lump.

With an effort, she forced the lump back up as a shriek, which began throaty and soft but

gained volume. It was loud enough that he winced, his laugh lines looking more

pronounced.

Someone had to hear.

Abruptly she stopped when she ran out of breath. His smile returned and her heart

sank to her feet as he leaned in once more, a veritable purr in his throat.

Then steps in the alleyway. Her heart sang with hope. It was all a

misunderstanding, surely, but as long as she got away, she didn't care what would

happen. Just let her be free to go home, take three showers and move to another country

and please hurry. She willed the steps to speed up but instead they stopped.

"Is everything all right?" The voice of the driver, she remembered it, that slight

hint of another country's accent in his vowels.

"No, no, I—"

"Everything's fine. We were just getting to the crux of the matter. I think we need

to be alone for the dénouement." He didn't even look over his shoulder. His smile dazzled

again and her throat closed up.

"Very good, sir." Like sands through an hourglass, his steps slipped away into

silence and it was gone, gone, gone – her only chance. And then she was gibbering and

straining and no longer holding back anything, because at last it had become real to her.

She was going to die.

He shushed her, he wheedled and in the end, he simply slammed her against the

bricks as she sobbed, feeling the tears run down her cheeks and bubbles of air popped out

of her nose. She felt the warm urine run down her legs and thought helplessly of the

beautiful Ferragamo stilettos and imagined them photographed at the crime scene, a hitch

in her breath as she realised it would be a murder scene because he had the blade out

now.

It wasn't the shape she could feel, but she recognized the manner in which he held

it to her throat from far too many films where people didn't make it to the end and there

was no siren or flashing lights to show the police on their way, no hero striding in, no

latex-clad woman kicking away the knife, just the guttural muttering as he cooed her

name and she realised that she had given up, resigned herself to her fate. She glimpsed

his face through a fog—or had he already attacked and she was dying, bleeding onto the

black pavement.

No, he held the knifepoint by the side of her windpipe and she shuddered at its

touch, at his touch. "Come to Daddy," he repeated again. Had he said that all along? Had

she simply tuned it out? And then the pain, long expected, came at last and it was bad,

very bad.

Yet all she could do was whimper. The blood pounded in her forehead and

trickled down her neck and toward her cleavage. She wondered if he got off on that, if he

would do terrible things to her flesh after she had left it. Annoyance filled her, that her

body should be abandoned to such defiling. But it was too late, much too late.

She shuddered as he tongued the wound. Her revulsion exploded with the pain.

But he steeled himself and drew back, a smear of red across his lips, which he licked

away with a grin, while drool spilled from the edge of her mouth and a heat filled her

brain like a song.

And she thought she heard dancing feet—or was it drums? Or just the blood

rushing to her head, whatever was left of it? Oh, but there was so much more because the

knife returned and cut through her skin like butter.

She had always thought of knives as tearing, but that was just the cheap knives

she had always had that were never sharp enough for very long. They always squashed

the tomatoes so they squirted their seeds across the sandwich. Something in that made her

laugh, although it came out as a cough, and the blood must be running over his hands,

over the smooth leather he wore because he was sucking the finger of his glove and

looking at her.

The warm wet life ran down her neck and into her cleavage and then she was

falling, and the ground should have jarred more but even as her face hit the pavement,

there was nothing but the knell of a bell so nearby that she wondered if it were Sunday

already and time for church. Mother would be nagging her to get out of bed, to put on her

good shoes, to brush her hair and Daddy would say... What would he say? He would say,

"Come to me, come to Daddy," and she would, and everything would be all right when

she was in his arms again.