Angelique Rising (24 page)

             
"Then what?" she whispered dully.

             
He cocked an eyebrow at her in surprise at her failure of imagination.

             
"Why then, Lexa, we play."

             
"And then?"

             
"Then you go home."

             
"When?"

             
"When I decide."

             
"No, that's when you kill me."

             
"If I were going to do that, why would I trouble myself securing your consent on both paper and video?"

             
To keep me hoping,
she didn't say.
To keep me compliant.

             
"I understand," she crumbled, seeing her only chance to stay alive. She would have to
be
compliant. Do whatever he said no matter how horrific. Lull him into thinking she wasn't working to escape, that she actually believed he would release her. Look for her opportunity. His guard down, he'd make a mistake. She'd run, her terror would lend her strength.

             
"I have a pen," he said smiling the smile he saved just for this moment, "and if you've forgotten what your signature should look like, I have many examples of it."

             
She signed.

             
With Donald walking behind them, and the monster firmly grasping her arm, he escorted her back to the peach bedroom. And when Malcolm Cochran said
open
, Lexa did.

             
And a part of her soul was crushed.

*****

              Wyatt did not mention to Angelique what the mother superior had told him about her suspected origins. That night he did however tell Johnson who, surprisingly, accepted it straightaway.

             
"We'll have our work cut out for us," had been his response. "But the convent won't be a problem, we can get that place spiffied up easily with five million dollars. Perhaps if a hidden safe place is ever temporarily needed for Mrs. Cochran, the convent can be utilized."

             
"No, I don't think I want her to ever be around that priest, Wadzniak, again. I don't know what happened the last time, Angelique wouldn't say."

             
"She tried to kill him."

             
"Angelique?"

             
"Well, maybe. While you were getting information out of the mother superior, I was getting it from the nuns. Seemed that when the priest returned, the nuns noticed she was up in the chapel tower --with a quiver full of arrows and one pointed right at the man."

             
"Did she--"

             
"No, the nuns judiciously moved around him so she couldn't get a clear shot, hustled him inside. It was later that night they voted to give her the going-away money. They've no idea if she really would have done it but they weren't going to take any chances."

             
"Living with an angel. She's going to be quite the handful for us, Johnson."

             
Wyatt saw Johnson's unspoken question.

             
"Not for a moment," Wyatt said. "I don't regret marrying her for one single moment. Just the opposite."

             
"Yes," Johnson said, "I rather thought that. There will have to be rules though," he sighed, "she won't like it. She's used to total freedom, running around doing what she pleases."

             
"Rules and a
creative
angel. My my. No marriage book for
that
.
"

             
"I suppose you will have to make it up as you go along, sir. The most important thing will be information, knowing what she's up to, what she's getting into."

             
"Head off a threat before it becomes one you mean."

             
"Precisely."

             
"You're very circumspect, Johnson. I know what it is you're saying. You want me to be
demonstrative
with her, lay down the law. I suppose there's really no other choice. I think I want to look at those archives first though, the other cases. See what happened, what the mistakes were, the successes."

             
"I'll start on that. Perhaps it will be a question of money, of scholarly donation."

             
"If it is, pay what needs to be paid. If it isn't, find another way. I will not lose her Johnson. I won't. Whatever it takes, we are going to keep her safe."

             
"This Wadzniak apparently got into the Church's archives, he maybe has the information. If there's no other way--"

             
"Only if there's no other way. The two of them have too much history to bring him back into this if we don't have to."

             
"I understand, sir. I'll only go to him if I can't get the archives from Rome myself."

             
"Well it's been a long day. And my little cherub is waiting for me, I'd better go. Good night, Johnson."

             
"Good night, sir."

             
Wyatt left his study and walked into his bedroom knowing he wouldn't be entirely surprised if Angelique was asleep. Being around her, he always had the feeling that she lived
intensely,
burning so brightly that when she did sleep, she
crashed.
But she was awake, sitting on the bed in a turquoise teddy smiling at him a very clear he-knew-what-it-was-she-wanted hopeful smile of anticipation. His brow furrowed.

             
"That teddy --it's not like what you usually sleep in. New?"

             
"Um... yeah. I thought you might like it."

             
"Don't tell me you're finally using the charge card," he grinned.

             
"Um..." she said.

             
And he didn't know why, but he knew he hated that turquoise teddy.

             
"Where did you get it?"

             
"Gift," she answered beckoning him into bed with what Wyatt suspected was the well used and extremely effective husband-distracting methodology used by wives for centuries.

             
"From who?"

             
She clumsily tried on a new face.

             
"Thanks for letting me spend the money on the convent, Wyatt. That was--"

             
"Who?"

             
She bit her bottom lip.

             
Don't open it here, put it away upstairs in your bedroom and open it later.

             
Robert. It was his birthday gift to her. She was wearing his damn teddy!

             
"Don't move," he commanded her. He reached down and carefully placed both his hands inside the front of the top piece of the teddy. And then slowly, not looking away from her eyes, he methodically ripped it down her chest. "Sit up," he said. "Turn around."

             
"Wyatt, I--"

             
"Turn. Around."

             
She did and felt his hands reach into the back of the teddy. And then she heard and felt him tearing the back of the teddy into two pieces as well. He then simply placed one hand under each of her arms and pulled away both pieces of the shredded teddy leaving her naked on top. And she knew that wasn't going to be the end of it.

             
Wyatt systematically split each side of the matching panties too, then pulled them out from underneath her leaving her totally naked with him glowering down on her.

             
"That was a perfectly good teddy set," she protested.

             
"And now it'll make perfectly good rags. I don't get it. The guy was never intimate with you but he bought you
that?"

             
"There are different kinds of intimate, Wyatt," she said sliding under the blankets to hide her nakedness.

             
"No. There's not. How was
he
intimate with you?"

             
"I'm not going to tell you."

             
A challenge. And he knew just how to deal with it.

             
Wyatt got undressed, turned off the lights, and climbed under the blankets with her. Immediately she nuzzled herself up to him, he'd been right about that. He could almost feel her body humming with a mesmeric current she wanted it so much. Languidly he began stroking her, feeling an exhilarating shiver crawling along her skin. He threw back the blankets to see her flesh, all of it, almost aglow with excitement.

             
"You like, May-May?" he whispered seductively in her ear.

             
"Umm...." she cooed. She liked, definitely liked.

             
And he continued touching her. He knew what she was fond of, what she adored, and what sent her stratospheric, and most importantly he knew how to read her signals, knew precisely where she was at. And he brought her right
there
and it was precisely
there
as she was about to slip over the precipice that he stopped.

             
"Wyatt!" she gasped, "why did you--"

             
"How was Robert intimate with you?"

             
"It doesn't...
ooh
...
"

             
He was moving inside her again but only enough to keep her
there
but not
over
there. It was torture of the most delicious kind.

             
"How," he thrust slowly, "was he," again, "intimate with you?"

             
"Oh... Wyatt...
please."

             
"How?"

             
"My hair," she finally shrieked. "He discovered my hair thing! Oh
Godd
...
"

             
"Your hair thing?"

             
"Please..."

             
"What about your hair?" He felt her insides quivering, he once again stopped, left her hanging.

             
"I have an exaggerated grooming response," she squawked, "it puts me
out.
Wyatt!"

             
Well well well. Something that put his little angel
out.
But she was not going to be out now, nosiree.

             
Wyatt loved his wife until she released so violently she writhed in his arms, as he too detonated within her. He waited a bit but then he started experimenting. He stroked her hair. He ran his fingers through it. And he could see the effect what he was doing was having on her, Angelique was gurgling, she seemed helpless, her eyes glassed over, her entire body relaxed almost to the point of immobility. And then she was asleep.

             
Yes, he understood now. Robert had caressed her hair, riveting her, probably then kissed her, mistaking her response for rapture, captivation. But you can't get much further than that with a virtually stuporous woman. How frustrating it must have been for him, so near to her, controlling her, then... nothing. Out like a light, foiled every time. Wyatt smiled. It was, he realized, a tool. How-do-you-control-an-ornery-angel? Wyatt Cochran knew what the punch line was.

             
"Oh baby," he whispered at her sleeping form, "I so own you."

Chapter Nine

             
Lexa did everything the monster demanded. She made his video. It consisted of the two of them on a large chaise lounge outdoors by his pool, smiling, festive drinks at their side. Donald filmed it. Malcolm had his arm around her in it, his hand on her back holding a Taser to her spinal cord. The gold ankle bracelet she wore glinting in the sun was actually chaining her to the lounge. He'd given the bikini to her, what there was of it. Altogether he'd made her watch three other women do the same video and she'd been right --the little actress that had disappeared had been one of them.

             
She wore the costumes he gave her no matter how demeaning they were. She recited the lines like she meant them, the words he told her to say all a betrayal of her own humanity, her own right to personhood. She enacted the endless permutations of fantasies. But for her what was real was her screams with the pain he inflicted --choking, electrical, ropes, gags. And when he left she would walk, sometimes crawl, to the shower, turn it on and curl up into a little fetal ball on its floor for hours waiting for the horror to pass into unconsciousness. Sometimes when he left and she was coughing up blood Margret would enter and tend to the housekeeping. Lexa abandoned her feeble attempts to get Margret to help her. Days slipped past without dimension and in each one Lexa's hands trembled worse than the day before.