The Silver Chain (32 page)

I smear it over my mouth, breath clouding the mirror. My hand is shaking so much I veer over the edges, making my mouth big and uneven as if I’ve been punched. I touch some stripes of colour onto the soreness throbbing below. It feels so good, the cool stickiness running over me like a tongue. I’m painting myself like a savage going into battle.

What would Margot think, seeing me in her bedchamber, dressed up as her, smearing myself with the same lipstick that once coloured her mouth?

And then I hear the rattle and bump of a car driving up the rocky road below me, and the slamming of a door.

Holy shit. Oh, help. Help!

There is nowhere to hide. I’ll skulk in here but he’ll find me soon enough. There’s nowhere to run. Because I can’t run. This gear is so tight it is threatening to cut off my circulation. I can only stand here and brazen it out.

Gustav’s boots march into the hall and into the salon. His footsteps, the jangle of his keys, the clearing of his throat, everything echoes round the chalet.

‘Serena? Where are you lurking?’

He marches into the kitchen quarters. Is Dickson back, too? Are they discussing sauces and marinades and spits?

Yet again I wish that Crystal was here. She would know what to do.

I tweak and wrench at the rubber, panting with fear and humiliation. All I can do is stick to the plan. The test, remember? I want him to find me like this. I need to know what he will say, what he will do. I stand with my legs apart and my hands on my hips.

I’ve been expecting you, Mr Bond.

And then his feet on the stairs, clump, clump, various doors unlocking down the corridor. Another pause. I scrabble frantically at the trousers. In the mirror my face is still that deadly shade of white, the green eyes a sickly flicker as if there is a pilot light where my pupils should be. These pouting lips are the colour of crushed blueberries.

At last the footsteps stampede up the spiral stairs.

‘Margot?’

An anguished sob escapes my throat. ‘No, no, no. It’s me!’

‘Serena! Thank God! Serena!’ Gustav bangs open the metal door so hard that it takes a chunk of plaster off the wall. He stammers out my name, over and over, then stops dead.

It’s been said so many times. But Gustav Levi really
does
look as if he’s seen a ghost, what little colour he had in his cheeks draining totally away. His eyes sink back into their sockets. His hands drop down limply by his sides, his fingers twitching as if he has just been shot.

‘But what the bloody hell are you doing in here?’

I suddenly feel stupid. And very, very sorry. I try to speak but it’s as if someone has gagged me. The lipstick glues my mouth. I know I’ve done something very, very wrong. Either I grovel, or I brazen it out. And in these clothes, there’s only one way to behave. Like the woman he just shouted for. Like their owner.

Legs akimbo, hands on hips. Toss my head. Look down my nose at him.

‘Looks like you caught me playing dress up.’

My voice is rough, as if I haven’t used it for a long time.

The atmosphere in the space between us crackles with menace.

‘This isn’t a game. When will you learn? I thought this room was empty. This vile crap should be long gone.’

His eyes are wide and staring, his black hair sticking to his forehead, and he’s breathing hard as if he’s run all the way up the hill from the lake. His nostrils flare like a cornered animal’s. I notice he’s shaved himself clean this morning. It makes him look stern and hard. He’s stretching the silver chain taut between his fists.

I look down at myself, the skintight rubber. The nipples poking out like missiles. Lipstick messy all over my mouth. Back at his horrified expression. My body as a weapon.

Margot’s body.

‘I don’t believe you want it gone. It was all laid out here, awaiting the mistress of the house.’ I point at the clothes, the bed, the whips. ‘It’s the same equipment she uses in that film, right?’

His eyes snap with livid red fire. He seems to have grown in height and width. He’s filling the space between us. ‘Who told you that was her in the film?’

‘Crystal told me. She also told me that house in Baker Street is where you used to live. No. Don’t be angry with her. She’s a good friend to you. I peppered her with questions, and she told me about Margot, what she did for kicks. But what I need to know is, why is this stuff all still here, Gustav?’ My voice is shaking. ‘Is this a trick? Am I some kind of bait to get her back?’

I sway on my high heels, and the movement rouses him.

‘Just take that filthy rubbish off,’ he hisses, taking one long step towards me. His fists are still clenched. ‘You have no idea how ridiculous you look.’

His black brows are over his eyes like shades. Deep grooves gash the sides of his mouth. I don’t think ‘ridiculous’ covers it. Horror, dismay, disdain are closer to the mark.

‘I would if I could, but it’s welded onto me.’

‘Take it off, Serena, or so help me! What’s happened to that sweet, smart kid?’

Without realising what I’m doing I snatch the black whip off the hook, watch in sick delight as his face contorts.

‘Maybe she’s not all she seems! Maybe she’s all twisted up inside. Maybe she’s been, what did Crystal call it, so badly
neglected
she’s beyond redemption!’

Gustav eyes the whip. Clenches his fists. ‘This isn’t you talking, Serena.’

‘How do you know what’s going on inside here?’ I bash at my head with the handle of the whip. ‘You’ve known me for five minutes. Just tell me the truth for once. Put me out of my misery. Does seeing me dressed in her clothes turn you on? Would you like me to thrash you? I’m not a fool, Gustav. I know you don’t want me. But do you still want her?’

Those black eyes of his, boring into me. A black mist descending over us both. He struggles to get a grip on what’s going on here. Is he daring me to challenge him, or is he too shocked to move? Have I overstepped the mark? I grasp the post of the bed for support. I’m forced to move like a stripper. Something wicked and dark is sliding through my veins. Is it her he sees, or is it me?

‘You stupid, stupid girl.’

He wrenches the whip out of my hand. Then he pulls off one lace glove, hooks the silver chain onto my bracelet and ties it quickly around the brass bed post.

‘Bend over, you little slut. If the only way is to thrash this gibberish out of you then so be it. Again and again, until you beg for mercy.’

‘Let me go! It’s me. It’s Serena! When will
you
learn that I’m not your precious Margot?’

‘Don’t you dare mention that name!’

He shoves me between my shoulder blades so that my face is squashed into the satin eiderdown. Kicks my legs apart, and before I can take a breath he’s brought the whip down on my exposed buttocks, so swift, so sharp that I can only gasp in shock.

‘That feels good, doesn’t it? Admit it!’ His voice is low and guttural like a dog.

I twist on the bed, yank at the silver chain. ‘Yes, alright, yes! It feels fucking great! Do it again! I’m a bad girl! Whip me again!’

The whip fizzes through the air, quivering like an arrow before it makes contact with a fresh piece of my still tender butt. The heat of it spreads through me, probing me and again, so weird, there comes after it, in a kind of calming wake, a sense of cleanliness and peace.

Is this how Margot’s clients felt? A sense of penance and absolution, like those Venetian nuns felt? Or was it a perverted, kinky, never-sated addiction?

Gustav doesn’t speak but thwacks the whip down on me once, twice, three times more, watching me twist and groan with each smack.

‘Enough, Serena? Have those demons fled?’

‘Demons?’

I hear him smack the whip down on the palm of his hand. ‘Whatever or whoever possessed you to come into this room and dress up like that. But it has to stop. The whipping. It all has to stop.’

But as soon as the whipping stops, the clothes start suffocating me again. I struggle round onto my elbows.

‘Yes, yes, all gone. But Gustav, please–’

He pushes me back onto the eiderdown and unwraps the silver chain from the bed post. He seems calm, spookily so, but he hasn’t finished with me yet. He links the chain to the other wrist, then runs it between the two posts above the pillows so that both my arms are wrenched up over my head.

‘I told you I’d had enough so you can let me go now!’ I kick out furiously, but every movement makes the boots tighten on my sore ankle, the rubber snag on my skin, the whalebones dig into my ribs. Excitement knots with panic behind my navel.

He shakes his head, breathing hard, then swipes everything off the dressing table onto the floor, perfume bottles smashing and releasing sprays of musky, overpowering fragrance, necklaces and bracelets and earrings clattering and breaking, diamonds and pearls flying off their strings.

There’s a flash of lightning through one of the skylights above us, the yellow light illuminating the yellow fury in his eyes. Another flash shows me the pair of scissors he is now brandishing like a dagger.

I scream and wriggle, the silver chain biting into my wrists. ‘Don’t hurt me!’

He flings the whip down on the bed then he’s over by the metal rail, cutting all the garments hanging there until they’re reduced to rags of leather and lace. Then he rips one of the sheets from under me and throws it onto the floor, bundles the clothes, the jewellery, the broken perfume bottles, everything onto the sheet.

‘They’re killing me! These clothes. I can’t breathe, Gustav!’

He straightens, panting hard, then he kneels on the bed, pulls my hair off my face, yanking my head up close to his.

‘Can I trust you to stop this now?’ He flips at the collection of whips hanging on hooks above the bed, knocking them off one by one. ‘Has Serena come back to me?’

I nod dumbly. He bends each whip over his knee and snaps it in two.

Then he’s at my feet, yanking the boots off and throwing them onto the pile, ignoring my squeals of pain when he lets my sore ankle drop. He pins my legs down under his knees and tugs at the rubber trousers. But now he can see that they are welded on. The body heat has made superglue of my sweat. He can’t even get a grip. His fingers just slip off. My blood is sluggish as it struggles to circulate. My nipples burn. I am deranged with lack of oxygen. Every laboured breath makes the corset tighter.

Pain has finally overtaken pleasure.

The emotions inside me are like unravelling wire wool. Fear at the anger in his voice and the tightness of the silver chain imprisoning me on Margot’s bed. Submission, because he’s caught me doing something wrong and he’s enraged. Relief, because he’s here, taking charge. Lust, because there’s animal fire in his eyes. Creeping despair, because I don’t know who he sees.

He starts to cut one rubber leg then the other, slicing as if he’s ribboning courgettes. Thunder crashes the clouds together, percussion drumming in the sky. My ribs are pushing uselessly against the corset to get air into my lungs. The bed seems to be bucking. The room jumps every time lightning strikes.

I stop straining against the silver chain, even though it’s biting into my wrists. I let my arms rest on the crumpled pillows under my head while the rubber, the thong, the whalebones work my body to a froth. I lie still because there’s no juice left.

There’s a glint of metal in the air, and then he starts cutting again. The scissors run across my stomach. I go rigid as the cold blade snips against my skin, travels up my ribs, my spine, back over my breasts and hips until the corset falls away at last. As my body expands and settles back into its proper contours and air fills my lungs again, the tattered ribbons of black rubber fall round me like strips of dead skin.

‘I promise all the nonsense is finished, Gustav,’ I whisper, yanking at the silver chain imprisoning my wrists. My nakedness feels too exposed. I try to close my legs. ‘But you need to let me go.’

‘Never!’

Gustav is hunched over me, pale and angular, his mouth slightly open, teeth glinting. He looks like he’s ready to sever my jugular. He reaches under my neck and starts to unbuckle the dog collar, but then he stops. His eyes hold that impenetrable blackness again, his Halloween look. The only sign of life is the beating pulse in his neck.

No wonder. He has a naked girl spread-eagled and helpless beneath him. If he’s all man, as Crystal assured me, this will be one temptation too far.

He leaves the collar on. I come to my senses and start to wriggle and kick. Quick as a flash he tugs me further down the bed so that I’m right underneath him. The silver chain goes taut and I can’t move my arms at all. My bare breasts curve into the air, rising with my frantic breathing. The rigid red points of my nipples are impossible to ignore.

‘You’re mine, Serena. You’re not going anywhere.’

‘Tell me, just tell me!’ I suck in more breath and kick my legs out in desperation. ‘Is it Margot you still want?’

‘Don’t you
ever
say that name to me!’

His voice is a deadly hiss echoed by the wind whistling round the chalet. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He runs his hands over my stomach, my hips and thighs, digging his fingers into my flesh, pressing right through the skin to the bone, runs them up the tendons at the top of my legs which scream with tension as I try to close them.

‘Answer my question!’

‘That name is like a dagger.’ He leans down to snarl his mouth against my ear. ‘What I saw just then was my worst nightmare.’

He doesn’t blink. It’s as if he’s never seen me before. His face is streaked red with lust. He wrenches my thighs open, one hand cradling my chin in a gesture that would be tender if it wasn’t also forcing my head back down on the pillow. What’s he afraid of? That I’ll lunge up and bite him?

The dog collar must still give me that evil vamp look, even though the rest of me is stripped bare. One band of studded leather can make me look like a slut. I’m turned on by that, and so is he.

I’m hypnotised by the distance in his burning eyes, as if he’s at the far end of a very long tunnel.