Page 20 of A Dance With Devils
“My home, Ally cat.”
The bottle gets thrown across the cabin in my direction and her feet are off and flying towards the bedroom again, the door slammed just as quick. I snort and watch the liquor glug across the carpet, part wondering how long it will take her to realise there’s no lock on the door if that was her plan. Not long at all it seems because she’s walking back out less than ten minutes later.
“This is fucking kidnapping!” she shouts, storming passed me towards the pilot. I watch her go, intrigued with her attitude change. “It’s not right. And up here certainly isn’t. Do you see wings on my fucking body?”
Unsure who she’s asking that to, I stare out the window again and listen to the noise that begins erupting in the front until she returns and grabs another bottle. Silence again as I look at her. She’s shaking, shivering. Barely noticeable but for the wisps of dark hair that keep shuddering against the low lights bouncing around in here.
“Here isn’t frightening, Ally cat. Where you’re going is. Calm down.” Her mouth opens, hands gripping the bottle as if she might just throw it again. “I wouldn’t try it. I’m in no mood for games yet. Sit. Relax. Talk your way through it if you like.”
“To you? I don’t think so.”
“Why not? I’m the only one here to talk to.”
Silence again as she thinks about that. Perhaps she sees me as the villain now I’ve taken her. She’s right to. I am in some ways. But that’s how reality is for me. It’s full of immoral men doing ruthless things to people. Husbands beat their wives without permission. Rape and pillage continues through the ages regardless of the now civilised world we’re flying across. The masses below profess their disgust at the thought, trying to contain their feelings for immorality by ignoring primal urges. I don’t need to do that. Never have. I have lawyers, and those lawyers have more lawyers.
And I am Malachi Jones.
“You’re married.” she suddenly says.
My brow arches, eyes dropping to the wedding band I’ve yet to take off. Force of habit when I get into a suit. Not something I usually wear when I’m going where we’re going. The suit or the ring. But having fucked and played with some filth in a back alley, I felt the need to clean up, show the appearance of presentable for my heroic endeavours.
“Scarcely.”
The answer, or my depressed tone around the words, seem to make her move towards me slowly, her hands still clinging to any solid surface she passes. She sits opposite me and wraps the sheet tighter, careful to tuck it all around her legs and feet.
“Do you think that’s going to keep me away from you?” I mutter, snorting at the thought.
She straps her belt into place, tugging it violently. “Marriage should.”
“I meant the sheet. My marriage makes little difference to anything.”
She frowns and stretches to peer through the window, tipping the bottle she’s brought with her to her lips. “I don’t like being exposed. Put that together with flying and I’m a fucking wreck. This is not my happy place.”
She drinks again, shrugging herself into the seat and turning away from the window. I give her the time to process, think and relax. It’s not like we’re there yet. Another hour or so at least, if time is ever a consideration to me at all. It isn’t really. Schedules don’t mean anything. Clocks barely tick to lead the way. Time is just of my own making, nothing but a continuous stretch forward into monotony unless I change its route onwards.
A sigh eventually falls from her, her shoulders rolling in the same moment. “What is all this Malachi? Who are you, what do you want?”
“Only our bargain fulfilled. Your part is yet to be honoured.”
“You fixed my electrics in about seven minutes. That should equal seven minutes of skin.”
“And yet you agreed to a week.”
“I don’t think Iagreedto anything. I said I’d think about what your statement meant.”
It doesn’t matter if she agreed or not. The woman in the alley didn’t agree to the kind of treatment I gave her either, but she didn’t complain after it. She mewled and kissed me, tried to pretend she was living another life where her lover made her squirm and orgasm – several times – under duress. And then she asked me if I had an apartment close by, somewhere we could continue. I did. I had an entire building nearby. And the townhouse.
We didn’t go to either.
I would have done if she'd been this one in front of me now.
“Seven minutes isn’t enough time for anything significant,” I muse.
“It should be. If you’re good enough.”
My lips twitch, eyes looking back at her rather than the window I was gazing through. “What could you do for me in ten minutes?”
“Will you take me home if I show you?”
