Max Fielding had settled himself in the main bar at Deuvar, watching the evening's entertainment with his arm around one of Leonora's girls. On stage a slim blonde girl was tied, belly down, across an ornate plinth. Dressed in a low cut leather Basque that nipped her tight, her sex was tipped up for the attentions of her mistress, who's expert tonguing made Max quiver.
All eyes where on the masked dominant woman's hands, where a tiny crop nestled, its handle formed into a thick black dildo. As the girl struggled and writhed the woman alternately beat and fucked her with the device.
The girl's lightly tanned skin was suffused by a shimmer of perspiration, her breasts pressed flat against the plinth. Her face was flushed, wild screams reduced to groans by the rubber gag she wore.
Business in the bar was brisk. Several of the clients, Max knew, had arrived that evening purely for the auction of Emily Lawrence the next day. Leonora was circulating amongst them – the perfect hostess. Distinguished well known public faces mingled with the anonymous rich without a second thought.
Under Leonora's management Deuvar had rapidly become one of the best known open secrets amongst the world's wealthiest and most influential individuals. At Deuvar no pleasure was too extreme – and almost no secret too big to keep.
On stage, the girl on the plinth was sobbing behind her gag, a trickle of creamy juice sliding provocatively down the inside of her thighs as her mistress drove the dildo home. The girl shuddered. Max turned away and made his way up to his suite. He had an important phone call to make.
His female companion lifted an eyebrow in question. Max smiled and ran a finger over her full scarlet lips. "I won't be long," he said. At the door he lifted a hand in farewell to Leonora who was in deep conversation with a Greek oil magnate who had arrived by helicopter. She barely acknowledged him as he hurried upstairs.
Johnson was sitting at home considering what he ought to do next. In front of him was the latest faxed report from his man at the hospital. It made disturbing reading. He glanced at it, poured himself a scotch over ice and then picked up the phone.
Hospitals were large anonymous places. People and names got lost in the system. He shouldn't have to check the information he had received for himself, but Johnson was the kind of man who found it very, very hard to believe that anyone could do a job as well as he could.
He tapped in the number and after two rings a polite female voice answered. "Good evening, St. Leonard's Hospital, how may I help you?"
Johnson looked at the sheet in front of him. "I wonder whether you could put me through to Hansard ward?"
There was the sound of a phone ringing and then another bright cheery female voice. After the social pleasantries Johnson said, "I wonder whether I could speak to Sister Angela Ruskin please. The night sister -"
There was moment's hesitation at the far end of the line. "I'm very sorry," said the young voice. "I'm afraid you must have the wrong ward. We haven't got a Sister Ruskin working here. Are you sure she works nights?"
"Yes," said Johnson slowly. "She was looking after Jack Roberts, the man who survived the plane crash."
The girl coughed. "We did have Mr Roberts on our ward, but I'm certain we haven't got a sister Ruskin. Would you like me to get Sister Thomson for you? She's been on this shift for years. I'm sure she'd know."
Before he could reply the girl moved away from the phone. A few seconds later the information was confirmed. No-one called Sister Ruskin worked or had worked on that ward.
Johnson didn't listen to any more. His witness, the man in the plane crash, had last been seen with a nursing sister in reception. The same nursing sister who had signed the release papers for Jack Roberts; the last men to see Peter Howard alive. A nursing sister who, it now appeared, did not exist.
Johnson had always believed that Peter Howard was working alone, a maverick with a healthy degree of self interest, a man with an eye for anarchy – now he wasn't so certain.
He had arranged for a diving team to try and locate the crashed plane within hours of the crash – they had turned up nothing. What if Max Fielding was wrong? What if Magenta was in the hands of someone who understood exactly what Peter Howard had been doing?
Thoughtfully he put the phone back in its cradle and stared into his glass. The ice cracked as he lifted the tumbler to his lips. He would get someone to chase up the mythical nursing sister, some-one had to know who it was.
Standing in silence by the hearth was Johnson's slave girl. She watched him with those uncanny ginger eyes, totally motionless except for the rise and fall of her breasts. Tonight she was wearing a sheer white silk blouse and long skirt. Beneath he knew she was naked, the enticing curves of her dark breasts pressed invitingly against the blouse. The clothes did not disguise the fact that she was a wild creature; if anything they highlighted her feral nature, as if some narrow minded missionary had thrust her into them to attempt to hide her natural eroticism.
"Lift your skirt."
It was time for her evening beating. He would make it a good one tonight. He took another cigar from the box on his desk.
Wordlessly the girl's fingers began to work on the fabric, gathering it up to reveal more and more of her long muscular legs. Her sex seemed to crouch between her thighs, sprung and ready for what was to follow. She caught up the material in one fist and slipped her fingers into the coarse hair, opening the lips to reveal the scarlet interior – a gaping orchid that smelt of the sea and the sky. Her clitoris was large, an acorn that nestled amongst the tantalising petals.
He watched as she passed over it, circling and caressing. It flushed shades darker as the sensations coursed through her body.
As she worked, a delicate beading of sweat lifted on her top lip. Her nipples hardened dramatically and pressed through the sheer fabric of her blouse. All the time her eyes never left his. Her lips parted, tongue peeping out, as the waves of delight got closer and closer together.
The smell of female sex, musky and animalistic, floated towards him, making his mouth water. The girl's eyes glittered as her orgasm approached and she moaned softly…
"Stop," snapped Johnson as he sensed that she was teetering on the brink of total release. Her eyes flashed furiously for an instant.
"Come here!"
She approached the table with the grace of a big cat, the smell of her intensifying with every step.
When he had beaten her thoroughly, he indicated the desk and she lay across it on her back, holding tight to her skirt, revealing that wild place between her thighs.
He took a final glance at his whisky and then poured it, ice and all, over the open lips of her sex. She flinched as it flooded over her, the ice biting and chilling as it ran.
He snorted and lunged forward to bury his tongue deep inside her, his fingers plunging inside, forcing the remains of the ice into her feral arcane quim. She mewled as he found the pleasure places, lifting to encourage her master to make every use of her.
He drank in the fragrance and the juices, a heady cocktail of excitement and sharp bitter alcohol. It was a matter of seconds before he felt her orgasm, her sex flooding with a thick milky substance that electrified his taste buds. She began to tremble as he pulled away and wiped his mouth.
"Roll over!"
She moved without a word, her skirt still clutched into an untidy bunch. With her bottom tipped towards him, her sex gaping in anticipation of his cock as he took a hand full of ice chips from the bucket on his desk and pushed them up inside her. She snorted and writhed but did not deny him. The heat from her body began to melt the ice on contact. The moisture, combining with her juices, trickled down her scarified thighs.