He pushed her back on the bed and trailed kisses down her body. Then he began gently undressing her, revealing a breast, then a thigh, going as slowly as he’d promised.
She was shy at first, apologising for each newly exposed morsel of flesh. Had she thought Tyler’s blackmail would be less explicit than it was? Did she know the smartwall was recording every inch of the naked body she was so ashamed of? Surely she couldn’t be so naïve as to think otherwise? He pushed these thoughts away. This was the price he paid for his mission. He couldn’t refuse, and she didn’t want him to.
He was assiduous in his work, soothing and arousing her in equal measure. Undressing slowly, he showed her his naked body as a way of distracting her from her worries about her own. Seeing she was shy, he placed her hands on his tight, washboard stomach and then gently pushed them lower, inviting her to explore.
When he was sure she was relaxed, he ran his hand up her legs and gently teased them open. She sighed and moaned, opening up to him easily. The pills did their trick – he waspretty sure he’d never be able to fulfil his role here without them, regardless of who he was with.
He tried to remember his song, but Gideon, always prudish about sex, had never made him rehearse this scenario. He’d made his own attempts with F, but this was completely different. Thinking of Gerard Lucas-Nash, years ago in that alley behind the club, reminded him that he was good at this. All that was required was for him to give this woman a great first sexual experience. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long and had built up so many fears and expectations about it that he genuinely wanted to do his best for her.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms holding on to him. She seemed happy at first but then began crying quietly.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he whispered, hugging her close.
“You didn’t. You’re the kindest, sweetest, gentlest man. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve for you to be so nice to me when you must be so disgusted by me.”
“I’m not disgusted by you – you’re a beautiful woman, Becky.” Brushing away her tears with his fingertips, he gently soothed her.
“Oh, I don’t mean by this, although I wouldn’t blame you if youweredisgusted by it. I know I am.” She waved a scornful hand at her body. “I meant disgusted byme, by what I’m doing here. I knew what this was, of course I did. But I wanted you so much that I did it anyway. Does that make me an awful person? I think it does.”
He had no answer to that. She’d made her choice knowingly, and he’d had no choice at all. He wasn’t sure if he blamed her or not. She was, without doubt, one of the nicer people he’d be forced to sleep with, but she wasn’t so nice that she’d refused.
Make me a channel of your peace…
She couldn’t be allowed to know what he was really thinking any more than Tyler could. His mask firmly in place, he smiledat her, kissed her neck, and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Gideon would be proud of him.
Later, when she was asleep, he lay awake, gazing up at the ceiling. He felt numb and somehow separate from his own body, which he was glad about as, otherwise, he was sure he’d feel dirty and ashamed. As it was, he felt nothing.
Was it possible to divorce yourself so much from your feelings as to have none? Or would all this squashing them down come back to bite him one day?
Chapter Seventeen
NOVEMBER 2095
Josiah
The next few days were so busy that Josiah didn’t have a chance to speak to Sofie about Alex’s mental state. Inquisitus stormed into all Tyler’s properties and turned them upside down. Yet, as Josiah feared, they came away empty-handed, finding no evidence of the kompromat Tyler undoubtedly had on so many people.
“It’ll take weeks to go through all the files we’ve removed from his servers,” Reed warned as he instructed his team of data-techs to start work. “But I’m honestly not expecting to find it, sir.”
“All that smartwall footage, all those thousands of hours of blackmail material, it has to be there somewhere,” Josiah said impatiently.
“Sure, but that footage is incendiary. If I were Tyler, I wouldn’t keep it anywhere obvious.”
“We’ve been to all his properties. Where else could it be stored?”
“Wherever he thought we couldn’t find it, but don’t ask me where that is.” Reed shrugged helplessly.
There was some good news in that they found more bones, not anything approaching a whole skeleton but enough to getSofie excited. However, the fireplace Solange had crashed into had long been replaced, so there was no way to match it to the injury on the skull.
“The fact he’s been so thorough as to replace the fireplace makes me think we’ll never find these bloody smartwall files,” Reed muttered gloomily, although he didn’t look up from the task of searching for them. There was an energy about this investigation that Josiah had never experienced before. Everyone was aware what was at stake, and they were all invested in it.
He was working long days, which was his usual style during an investigation, but he didn’t normally have anyone waiting for him at home. Alex said he was fine – his number-one priority was the investigation, and he understood how hard Josiah was working on it – but Josiah fretted about leaving him for so long. He’d placed agents outside the house but, aware of hiding Sem’s presence, had given them strict instructions to observe and only intervene if they had concerns. Still, it wasn’t the same as him being there, especially given Alex’s increasingly fragile mental health.
He returned home at 11p.m. one night to find the house immaculate, and Alex in the dining room, laying out a table of food.
“What’s all this?” he asked, bemused.
“You said I don’t cook for you anymore,” Alex explained, his eyes burning with feverish zeal as he began serving up a three-course meal.
