Anna smiled, the gracious lady of the house. “It’s huge, isn’t it,” she admitted, slightly shamefaced. “I still get lost sometimes.”
“Perhaps that’s what’s happened to Mimi. Can we try and find her before the salami goes slimy? Though I’ve got a feeling the cardboard’s wet through anyway. Maybe we should ring for another.”
“Yes. Probably. Just put that down somewhere. I’ll check her bedroom.”
Liam grinned, loping along in her wake. Checking Mimi’s bedroom was exactly what he’d had in mind for the evening. But he supposed formalities would have to be observed first. Dinner and conversation and all that.
“Why don’t you wait in the big sitting room?” Anna showed him into a luxurious white-and-cream chamber the size of a small aircraft hangar. “Put the telly on if you like. She’s probably in the shower.”
But Mimi was not in the shower, or the bedroom, or the kitchen, or any of the more obvious rooms of the house. Anna frowned, then went back to the kitchen to extract a four-pack of lager and a bottle of ready-mixed elderflower cordial from the fridge.
“Might as well have a drink while we’re waiting. Either she’s somewhere I haven’t thought to look, or she’s popped out. Perhaps she needed to collect some more stuff from home. I’ll text her.”
“Okay.” Liam watched Anna pressing keys on her mobile phone silently. The fact of her pregnancy stood between them, pumping awkwardness into the air. “Congratulations, by the way,” he said when the silence seemed to have gone on forever. “You know. The baby. That John doesn’t mess around, does he?”
“You aren’t going to tell me off, I hope. I’ve had enough of that from Mimi. Yes, I know it’s soon, but we are married, and having children is what married people do.”
“My parents weren’t married, as it goes.”
“Well…that’s…fine,” Anna replied, confused as to where Liam was heading with this point. But it seemed he wasn’t heading anywhere, and they turned their faces to the movie screen, both slightly moody without knowing quite why.
Mimi had surprised herself by falling asleep. The adrenaline-laced fear swooshing around in her bloodstream had not been able to fight the lure of darkness, and she had drifted off. She dreamed of a garden with a purple sun and strange psychedelic flowers like something out of a sixties Beatles movie. The flowers grew everywhere and they had sticky leaves that clung to Mimi’s skin as she moved dreamily past. She was naked and the purple sun poured a kind of sensual superwarmth onto her, making her want to crush the flowers against her and use them as sex toys. How this would work seemed obvious in her dream, something to do with a stimulating liquid oozing from the petals and leaves. She lay down in the flower bed and rolled around in rapture, pollinating herself, covering her skin in the bright yellow effusion. Oh, the fragrance of it alone was enough to drive her wild with lust. She was like a cat in catnip, limbs thrashing, wanting more and more, until her brain was light and floating and she had achieved an altered state of orgasmic consciousness…and when she came, she cried a name.
“John!”
“I’m here.”
Her eyelids fought their glue, struggling open only to stare into more blackness. Was John here? Had he really spoken, or was that part of the dream? The orgasm had been real enough, she noted, feeling a tacky coldness in her underwear. Mortified, she screwed her eyes shut again. How could somebody in her position, imprisoned in shackles by a man who was most certainly the personification of evil, be having erotic dreams? It didn’t make sense. Her psyche had gone mad, or perhaps she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. She fought to claw back control of herself, knowing that her survival might depend on her staying strong and calm. She was not going to be a pushover, like Anna.
She knew that her cry of “John” must only have been audible in her dream, since her mouth was taped shut. All the same, she felt he was here somewhere, and that he had heard it. He was inside and outside her head, a deadly adversary. If only he would move, or speak, or give her some clue as to whether he was in the room.
She did not have to wait long.
“I can smell you. I can smell the dream you had.”
Mimi made a sound of humiliated outrage behind her gag.
“You can’t hide anything from me, Miranda. I know what you want and how you want it. And I know you’re hot for me. Which is gratifying, because I suppose you could say that I’m hot for you too.”
Mimi tried to flex her wrists, or toss her head, but she was too tightly secured. Her hands were numb and she had pins and needles in both feet. John’s footsteps approached, in front, behind, and then one fingertip traced a slow journey across her hairline and down to her temple. Her skin pricked and flamed, wanting more of his touch even as her head told her to despise it. The trip was curtailed by her steel collar, and John held the side of her face, stroking the cheekbone with his thumb while his breath made the hairs on her head stand to attention.
“I can give it to you like you’ve never had it before, Miranda. I can make you scream for more and beg for mercy at the same time. I can make you come so hard you pass out. I can make you powerful or I can cut you down. What do you say, Mimi?” Her ear, hot beneath his rasp, transmitted waves of confusion deep into h
er brain. I shouldn’t want him, I hate him, I want him, I want him so badly, I mustn’t.
He laughed. “Oh, I know. You poor thing. You’re so mixed-up. But sooner or later, Miranda—and I think it will be sooner—all the doubts will melt, because they can’t fight a need as big as the need you have for me, and then you will be mine.”
“Why would you want me? You have Anna. What on earth is going on?”
“Oh, Anna, poor Anna. I hate to admit this, Mimi, because it happens so rarely, and I do like to include infallibility in my self-concept, but I’m afraid I made a mistake. It happens. Even to superior life-strains like me.”
“Life-strains?”
“Oh, I suppose what you call races. Though there are differences.”
“What ‘we’ call races? You are more than telepathic. You’re nonhuman.”
He took his hand from Mimi’s face and clapped. “Oh, well done! I wondered how long it would take for someone to work it out.”