Mastering the Virgin Box Set Five: A BDSM Ménage Erotic Romance novel Chapter 15

James

Michael is showing the strain, constantly pacing Richard’s office. I’m about to ask him to stop doing it, but pull myself up short as I realise I’m doing the same myself.

We’ve not heard from Charlotte now for two days.

Beth has shadows under her eyes. Richard has sent her upstairs, supposedly to sleep. But I’m not sure if she will.

And Richard himself…. He looks almost haunted. Perhaps someone who didn’t know him well wouldn’t spot it, as he puts up a show of going about his daily work, but every so often, I catch him staring into the distance.

Francis too, I see watching him constantly, if surreptitiously. Then too, I see her eyes following Michael as he stalks back and forth.

“You’ve not heard from her again?” Anxiety lies layered within Richard’s words.

Michael snarls. “You think we wouldn’t have told you if we had?”

Abruptly the air rattles with the clanging of alarms. Richard sits back in his seat. Michael ducks his head as though dodging the wall of sound. Outside, a siren blares.

“What the hell?” mutters Richard. “Francis,” he yells through the door. “Is there a fire drill going on they’ve not told me about?”

Through the internal window, I see her brows crease as she taps into her desk phone. “No, not today, Mr Haswell. I’m just calling Security now.…” She nods, the receiver pressed to her ear. “They’re reporting some kind of disturbance in the basement levels….”

Red-faced, his patience short, “Well, get them to shut off that racket!”

As the alarms die away, he turns back to me. “Um, what were we talking about? Oh, yes, how Charlotte is returning. So, she’s not told you any details at all? Just a couple of one-line messages to say she’s alright and still on her way?”

“All we know…” I say, “… is that she wanted a top-end smartphone and flashlights.…”

“She planned to travel in the dark?”

It seems reasonable, doesn’t it….

…. all those underground plans of the City she compiled….

“Er….” It’s Francis, her head popped around the door, eyes dancing, wiping tears of laughter away. “…. you’d better all get down to the parking level. You’re wanted there….”

Underground….

The three of us move as one, heading for the elevator.

*****

The journey down seems interminable. A part of me is singing, another part anxious….

How is she?

Is she hurt?

Richard repeatedly laces and unlaces his fingers. Michael looks grim.

What’s wrong with him?

Surely he must be pleased?

The doors swish open to the gloom of a basement parking lot and the smell of drains. One of the maintenance engineers is jimmying up a manhole cover with a crowbar.

He nods politely to me and Richard. “Not had to go down here for years,” he comments as, with a heave and a puff, the cover rolls to one side, settling with a clang.

His grin is broad as he extends a hand down. “Come on, Love. Y’know, there’s a reason they call these manholes. Usually, women aren’t interested in wading through three feet of shite.”

A hand rises from the depths to meet his. He takes the hand and heaves, hauling up an arm, followed by Charlotte on the end of it.

She’s filthy, encrusted in mud….

Mud????

…. Perhaps it’s mud….

Her hair, normally so beautiful, straggles down her body in grey-green snakes which cling and crawl. Every part of her skin and clothing is coated in God-knows-what….

Head hanging, shoulders bowed and breathing heavily, she turns her hands over and over, looking at herself. “Oh…. that was fuckin’ awful,” she pants at the plumber as, standing back at a safe distance, he nods sage agreement.

Then her gaze swings and she sees me, Michael and Richard.

It’s hard to make out her expression through the caked-on muck covering her face, but as her gaze meets mine, I think there’s worry there.