Under His Influence Read online

  “What…are you doing?” she managed to ask. The collar was tight but padded; she could speak but excessive movement would not be easy.

  “What does it feel like?”

  “You’ve got me tied to this chair. What are you going to do? Are you going to kill me? Please don’t kill me.”

  “If I meant to kill you, I’d have done it long ago. Relax, Miranda. It’s going to be the story of your life. The story of the millennium. And you will get to tell it, in the end. But not for a long time yet, my sweet.”

  “I’m not your sweet. Please tell me what the hell is going on! Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you keeping me in this…bondage device?”

  “Alas, Miranda, so many questions, so little time to answer them. I have to get away. I do have Russian business deals to attend to—just in Park Lane rather than Moscow. I don’t want to be late for the oligarchs now, do I? Ta ta for now, sweet Mimi Leblanc. I’ll be back.”

  She felt his intense presence dip towards her and, before she knew it, he had deposited a lingering kiss on her lips which, having no way of turning her head, she could not elude. “Oh, but before I go…” he said after surfacing with a deep, satisfied sigh. Mimi heard the tearing shriek of sticky tape being unrolled and then there was dense black latex over her mouth, covering John’s breath on her lips so that it mixed with hers inside her throat for as long as she was gagged. “Nobody would hear you scream anyway,” he told her helpfully. “I just like the look of you like that. Mmm. If only I could stay. The things I’m thinking we could… Oh. Well. Business first, pleasure later, eh? Ciao, bella.”

  Chapter Eight

  Anna thought the hammering and buzzing came from her dream at first, another of those crazy dreams in which she was tied and spread-eagle at the devil’s mercy while her newborn child lay screaming in a Moses basket. Somebody had come to save her, she thought groggily. Someone had come to fight the devil and free her soul, and her child.

  But no, she realised, rubbing the blear from her eyes. It was somebody at the door. God, what time was it? She checked her watch, embedded in the skin of her wrist after sleeping awkwardly on it, and saw that it was after seven. Could she really have been asleep for five hours? Outside, it was still raining, and downstairs, standing on the porch steps, head half-sheltered by a pizza box, was Liam. She supposed Mimi would go and let him in, but after a further half minute, it seemed that this was not going to happen, so she smoothed down the clothes she had slept in, dragged a comb through her hair and made her sleepy way downstairs.

  “Liam, hi. Where’s Mimi?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Liam entered the hall gratefully, dripping all over the marble floor. “Isn’t she… Christ! This is some gaff you’ve got here.”

  Anna smiled, the gracious lady of the house. “It’s huge, isn’t it,” she admitted, slightly shamefaced. “I still get lost sometimes.”

  “Perhaps that’s what’s happened to Mimi. Can we try and find her before the salami goes slimy? Though I’ve got a feeling the cardboard’s wet through anyway. Maybe we should ring for another.”

  “Yes. Probably. Just put that down somewhere. I’ll check her bedroom.”

  Liam grinned, loping along in her wake. Checking Mimi’s bedroom was exactly what he’d had in mind for the evening. But he supposed formalities would have to be observed first. Dinner and conversation and all that.

  “Why don’t you wait in the big sitting room?” Anna showed him into a luxurious white-and-cream chamber the size of a small aircraft hangar. “Put the telly on if you like. She’s probably in the shower.”

  But Mimi was not in the shower, or the bedroom, or the kitchen, or any of the more obvious rooms of the house. Anna frowned, then went back to the kitchen to extract a four-pack of lager and a bottle of ready-mixed elderflower cordial from the fridge.

  “Might as well have a drink while we’re waiting. Either she’s somewhere I haven’t thought to look, or she’s popped out. Perhaps she needed to collect some more stuff from home. I’ll text her.”

  “Okay.” Liam watched Anna pressing keys on her mobile phone silently. The fact of her pregnancy stood between them, pumping awkwardness into the air. “Congratulations, by the way,” he said when the silence seemed to have gone on forever. “You know. The baby. That John doesn’t mess around, does he?”

  “You aren’t going to tell me off, I hope. I’ve had enough of that from Mimi. Yes, I know it’s soon, but we are married, and having children is what married people do.”

  “My parents weren’t married, as it goes.”

  “Well…that’s…fine,” Anna replied, confused as to where Liam was heading with this point. But it seemed he wasn’t heading anywhere, and they turned their faces to the movie screen, both slightly moody without knowing quite why.

  Mimi had surprised herself by falling asleep. The adrenaline-laced fear swooshing around in her bloodstream had not been able to fight the lure of darkness, and she had drifted off. She dreamed of a garden with a purple sun and strange psychedelic flowers like something out of a sixties Beatles movie. The flowers grew everywhere and they had sticky leaves that clung to Mimi’s skin as she moved dreamily past. She was naked and the purple sun poured a kind of sensual superwarmth onto her, making her want to crush the flowers against her and use them as sex toys. How this would work seemed obvious in her dream, something to do with a stimulating liquid oozing from the petals and leaves. She lay down in the flower bed and rolled around in rapture, pollinating herself, covering her skin in the bright yellow effusion. Oh, the fragrance of it alone was enough to drive her wild with lust. She was like a cat in catnip, limbs thrashing, wanting more and more, until her brain was light and floating and she had achieved an altered state of orgasmic consciousness…and when she came, she cried a name.

  “John!”

  “I’m here.”

  Her eyelids fought their glue, struggling open only to stare into more blackness. Was John here? Had he really spoken, or was that part of the dream? The orgasm had been real enough, she noted, feeling a tacky coldness in her underwear. Mortified, she screwed her eyes shut again. How could somebody in her position, imprisoned in shackles by a man who was most certainly the personification of evil, be having erotic dreams? It didn’t make sense. Her psyche had gone mad, or perhaps she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. She fought to claw back control of herself, knowing that her survival might depend on her staying strong and calm. She was not going to be a pushover, like Anna.

  She knew that her cry of “John” must only have been audible in her dream, since her mouth was taped shut. All the same, she felt he was here somewhere, and that he had heard it. He was inside and outside her head, a deadly adversary. If only he would move, or speak, or give her some clue as to whether he was in the room.

  She did not have to wait long.

  “I can smell you. I can smell the dream you had.”

  Mimi made a sound of humiliated outrage behind her gag.

  “You can’t hide anything from me, Miranda. I know what you want and how you want it. And I know you’re hot for me. Which is gratifying, because I suppose you could say that I’m hot for you too.”

  Mimi tried to flex her wrists, or toss her head, but she was too tightly secured. Her hands were numb and she had pins and needles in both feet. John’s footsteps approached, in front, behind, and then one fingertip traced a slow journey across her hairline and down to her temple. Her skin pricked and flamed, wanting more of his touch even as her head told her to despise it. The trip was curtailed by her steel collar, and John held the side of her face, stroking the cheekbone with his thumb while his breath made the hairs on her head stand to attention.

  “I can give it to you like you’ve never had it before, Miranda. I can make you scream for more and beg for mercy at the same time. I can make you come so hard you pass out. I can make you powerful or I can cut you down. What do you say, Mimi?” Her ear, hot beneath his rasp, transmitted waves of confusion deep into h
er brain. I shouldn’t want him, I hate him, I want him, I want him so badly, I mustn’t.

  He laughed. “Oh, I know. You poor thing. You’re so mixed-up. But sooner or later, Miranda—and I think it will be sooner—all the doubts will melt, because they can’t fight a need as big as the need you have for me, and then you will be mine.”

  “Why would you want me? You have Anna. What on earth is going on?”

  “Oh, Anna, poor Anna. I hate to admit this, Mimi, because it happens so rarely, and I do like to include infallibility in my self-concept, but I’m afraid I made a mistake. It happens. Even to superior life-strains like me.”

  “Life-strains?”

  “Oh, I suppose what you call races. Though there are differences.”

  “What ‘we’ call races? You are more than telepathic. You’re nonhuman.”

  He took his hand from Mimi’s face and clapped. “Oh, well done! I wondered how long it would take for someone to work it out.”

  “Or you’re just deluded. A madman. Works just as well.”

  “Oh, come on, Miranda, that’s unworthy of you. I thought you were bright. That’s why you’re here. You’re a smart girl, unlike your drippy little friend.”

  “She’s your wife! You vowed to love her.”

  “Oh, vows, schmows. You humans take everything too seriously. I mean, ‘forsaking all others’—is that a life sentence or what? All the same, I’m looking for my brood partner, and I think I might have found her.”

  “Brood partner? What a revolting term. And have you forgotten that Anna is expecting your child?”

  “Oh, I know. A mistake, as I said.”

  “But…but…”

  “You’d be spluttering if you were saying that out loud, wouldn’t you? I know. I don’t expect you to understand me. I just expect you to want me.”

  “Anna wants you. Anna loves you.”

  “But she’s a mistake, Miranda.”

  “You keep saying that! Why? Why is she a mistake? And what on earth is going on? You’re obviously embroiled in some huge plot, but what is it? Where do we fit in?”

  “I wanted a journalist. I was looking for a journalist. It’s why I was in that bar, the Dolly. Because it was opposite a newspaper office and, sooner or later, an attractive and available young cub reporter was going to trot in and, when she did, I’d be ready. But Anna isn’t a journalist.”

  “No, she’s a sub-editor. Why did you want a journalist?”

  “I want someone who can help me influence the media. I need a few stories planted here and there. And I need access to the man who owns your paper.”

  “Rodney Merchant? But he lives in the U.S. now. You’re in the wrong country.”

  “I know that now. Even my research falls down sometimes. But it’s too late now. Besides, he comes back for meetings all the time. I want your editor to introduce us.”

  “Anna said you’d already met Prendergast.”

  “We didn’t get on. We had some ideological differences.”

  “So your plan is crashing about your ears. You married the wrong woman and you can’t get the editor on your side. I’d give up if I were you. Go back to wherever it was you came from.”

  “Life-strainist,” he accused. “Go back to where you came from? You sound like one of those shaven-headed men never seen without a pit bull terrier and a can of Tennants Extra. Shame on you, Miranda. No,” he continued, resting his chin on Mimi’s head, holding her by the shoulders so that her skin crawled with inconvenient longing. “I can’t go back. Ever. But I can stop them coming here.”

  “Them?”

  “My fellow planetarians. I can stop them coming down here and colonising your tatty little world. All I need to do is repair the hole in the ozone layer.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “You see that I have many reasons for wanting to perfect my project, Miranda. But I need money. More money. Lots of it. And if you can get me Rodney Merchant, I can get the money.”

  “I… This is so much to take in… I can’t think… Can you at least release me from this awful chair? I’m beginning to understand you, John, but I need to know more. Much more.”

  “You don’t need to know anything, Miranda. You just need a bit more of this.”

  He nuzzled the side of her face and then he peeled off the gag and replaced it with his lips, intense and searching, holding her captive with his teeth and tongue. Mimi had no means of resistance, and she was not sure she could have fought him off anyway, once the kiss started doing its treacherous work on her body, bringing it to his complete subjection. All conscious thought flew out of her head and she was in an alien place, a place of dark, erotic rapture that beguiled her like the devil himself. This is what he did to Anna, a tiny voice of dissent, waking up, squeaked from a corner of her brain. This is how he enslaved her. But the voice was weak, and Mimi did not know how long she would be able to hang on to it.

  “Weird. I wonder what’s happened to her?” Liam flattened his second empty beer can, not entirely able to concentrate on Grease on the TV screen.

  “I’m a bit worried,” Anna said, turning huge scared eyes to him. “I’m all alone here, and I haven’t heard from John, and now Mimi… I hope she’s okay. She’s okay, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, sweetheart!” Fat tears were rolling down Anna’s cheeks. Liam put an awkward arm around her, hugging her to his chest. “Mimi can look after herself. She can look after the whole world if she sets her mind to it. She’ll be fine. Don’t cry. Please.”

  It’s all very well for Liam to say, Anna thought, but he was no reassurance. The same words from a steadier person might do the trick, but he was such a goofball. Still, perhaps he knew what he was talking about, and listening to him was better than listening to the fearful voice in her heart.

  “Have some pizza,” he said, a note of desperation in his tone.

  “It’s cold.” Anna sniffed, but the offer did seem to shock her out of the worst of her lamentations. “Yuck.”

  “Cold pizza is the breakfast of champions. What are you talking about?”

  “Ugh, I had a lucky escape from you, didn’t I? Thank God I met John.”

  “Oh, thanks a bunch.” Liam pulled a droll face and punched her gently on the arm. “Well, if the pizza’s no good, perhaps you’ve got some snacks in that giant state-of-the-art kitchen Mimi’s told me about.”

  “I suppose I might have some peanuts or something. To be honest, I don’t know what’s down there half the time. We get everything delivered, and Luana puts it all away. Shall we go and have a look?”

  In the stainless steel and granite desert of the kitchen, they opened cupboard after cupboard, finding strange and wonderful things.

  “Boquerones,” he said. “What?”

  Anna laughed, squinting at a jar of molluscs in some kind of jelly. “I can’t even begin to guess. What the hell are these? They look like snails. Are they snails?”

  “You can’t eat half of this, I bet,” Liam reminded her. “What is it you’re supposed to not eat when you’re pregnant?”

  “Unpasteurised eggs and cheese, pâté, shellfish, liver, oh, loads of stuff, I can’t even remember it all. Alcohol, of course.”

  “Blimey. Glad I’m a bloke. Is it really worth it?”

  Anna’s face crumpled and she sat down on a kitchen chair, trying to breathe through the urge to cry.

  “Sorry,” she mewled, scrunching the tears from her eyes. “Hormones. Just a bit emotional.”

  “Anna!” He pulled up a chair next to her, crouching towards her, his expression one of earnest concern. “There’s lots of things you can eat. And drink. I’ll make you a smoothie. That’ll be good for you, won’t it? What fruits do you like?”

  “Oh, it’s not about the food thing, you idiot. I just feel so alone, and so scared sometimes. And when I woke up this morning and John wasn’t there… I just had this horrible feeling that perhaps I’d never see him again and…” She broke down completely, bawling on the smooth cold surface of the
kitchen table until tear puddles formed.

  “Anna.” Liam’s voice was pained. “Don’t be daft. Of course you’ll see him again. He’s in Russia, not, not, oh, the Bermuda Triangle. And he loves you. He’ll make sure he gets back as soon as he can. And I suppose maybe the mobile network isn’t very good where he is. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”

  “But what about Mimi? The mobile network in Highgate isn’t that bad.”

  “No. No, I suppose not. Look, if you want, I’ll stay with you tonight. Nothing dodgy.” He put up a hand rapidly, though he was sure Anna would have taken his offer in the spirit intended. “Just as a friend, y’know. I don’t want to think of you all alone in this rattling old place. I’ll stay with you till Mimi gets back. Yeah?”

  “Thank you,” she said, fishing out her mobile and checking it miserably for messages yet again. Nothing.

  “So,” said Liam, once the storm of weeping was past. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

  “Oh, I don’t care. I suppose John wants a boy. I want what he wants.”

  “Wow. Really?” Liam ducked his head back, his surprise evident. “That was all very sudden, wasn’t it? Meeting him, marrying him, getting pregnant. How did you know he was Mr. Right? It always takes me ages even to realise I fancy someone.”

  Anna giggled. “I know. I suppose…feminine intuition.”

  “But he must have known too. And he’s not very feminine.”

  She laughed again. “No, he isn’t, is he? But he knows what he wants. He’s that type of man. A go-getter. I suppose he’s used to that kind of pace of life, in the City and all that. They’re always yelling and jostling and running from one deal to the next. I suppose they learn to live life on the run, and grab what they fancy when they see it. There’s something to be said for it, I think. Life doesn’t pass you by. You and me, well, we’re used to just pottering along, aren’t we? Get bored, get a coffee, have a lazy long weekend, lie in bed staring into space. John would never see the appeal of that.”