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Serving Mr. Stevens, Part Four: The Price of Pleasure -- An Erotic Romance (Part 4 of 5), page 1

 

Serving Mr. Stevens, Part Four: The Price of Pleasure -- An Erotic Romance (Part 4 of 5)
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Serving Mr. Stevens, Part Four: The Price of Pleasure -- An Erotic Romance (Part 4 of 5)


  Serving Mr. Stevens:

  An Erotic Romance

  By NATHAN STRATTON

  PART FOUR:

  The Price of Pleasure

  ***

  Copyright 2013 Nathan Stratton. All rights reserved.

  Reproduction of this work prohibited unless the author grants permission.

  Approx. word count: 13,100

  ***

  NOTE: This is part 4 of a five-part erotic romance.

  It is not essential to read Parts 1-3 in advance of this book, if you are just looking for a quick, sexy romantic read. However, Parts 1-3 contain much of the back-story for the book’s plot, and provide the backdrop for the relationship between Candace and Mr. Stevens.

  Download Part One: The Contract on Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3DGLR4/?tag=nathastrat-20

  Download Part Two: Lover’s Complaint on Amazon.com here:

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BLTOD34/?tag=nathastrat-20

  Download Part Three: Masquerade on Amazon.com here:

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CCKHV08/?tag=nathastrat-20

  ***

  If you’ve purchased this book, please consider leaving a review after reading it.

  I read all my reviews, and I take feedback very seriously. Thank you.

  Contact Nathan at NSthewriter@gmail.com.

  Look for the FINAL installment of Serving Mr. Stevens,

  “Part 5: Unfinished Business,” in July 2013!

  Part 1: “The Contract" Part 2: “Lover’s Complaint" Part 3: “Masquerade”

  ***

  Serving Mr. Stevens

  Part Four: The Price of Pleasure

  ***

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Out of the Chaos

  Chapter 2: A Thousand Questions

  Chapter 3: Some Small Comfort

  Chapter 4: The Next Morning

  Chapter 5: The Price of Pleasure

  Chapter 1: Out of the Chaos

  Katarina came running up to me from across the crowded room.

  “There you are,” she cried, a frantic look in her eyes. Her mask was

  loose around her face, in danger of falling off completely, but it didn’t seem as though she cared. She looked a mess. I could see a dark smudge of mascara streaking down her cheek.

  “I’ve been searching all over for you. We need to get out of here, and fast.” Motioning towards the back exit, she took off towards it without another word.

  “What? Why?” I shouted over the music as I hurried to keep up with her quickened pace. “What happened?”

  She whirled around but didn’t answer, staring at me blankly as I spoke. She had a deer-in-the-headlights expression that was in utter contrast to her normally confident smile. I didn’t like the looks of this. I grabbed her wrist, trying to snap her back to reality.

  “Katarina,” I said sharply. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  It seemed to do the trick. Coming out of her daze for a moment, she looked at me with terrified intensity.

  “Peter Kearns is dead.”

  ***

  I stopped dead in my tracks. My hand was still on Katarina’s wrist, now with a death grip that made her wince. “You’re hurting me,” she said weakly. At her words, I looked down at my hand; I’d forgotten I was grabbing her. I pulled my hand away in surprise.

  “What happened?” I asked her. There were a thousand thoughts hurtling through my mind, but this question surged to the forefront. It was the only thing I could articulate just now. She shook her head quickly, an answer that doubled as a warning. The pain of my firm grip had jarred her back to earth.

  “We have to go. Now, Candace.”

  The intensity of her tone was what it took to get me moving again. She headed toward the back exit, almost staggering toward it in her half-dazed condition, as if she were waking up from a bad dream. All the grace with which she normally carried herself was gone. I could sense others watching us, wondering what all the commotion was about. I was right on her heels, staring straight at the back of her head so I didn’t lose her in the crowd. But Katarina didn’t bother to look around – she seemed not to notice anything around us. She was simply hell-bent on getting out of there.

  She hit the back exit door with both hands. It opened into a dark open stairwell, completely deserted. After the crowds and throbbing bass of the dancehall, the silence out here felt eerie in contrast. I was right behind her, questions tumbling out as fast as they hit my brain.

  “What happened to him? Are you sure he’s dead? Who told you?”

  She paused, gripping the handrail as if for balance. “He was murdered,” she said numbly, trailing off as she spoke the words.

  “What?” I cried. “Are you sure? How could you know that?”

  She seemed in danger of losing her train of thought again, and I grabbed her arm. Stay with me, I urged her silently.

  But she wasn’t listening. “I tried to call Mr. Stevens. He didn’t pick up. I don’t know where he is.” She turned to look at me, tears welling in her eyes.

  I thought back to the moment he had kissed me, before he left the mirrored room. “He was with me,” I said. Or was he? I realized I still didn’t know for sure if the man who’d had his way with me in mirrored room was Mr. Stevens, or someone else. I shook the thought away – it had to be him. I felt it with every fiber of my being. “But…”

  Katarina looked at me with frightened eyes. “I called Carl to come get us,” she said. “He’s coming with the car. We have to get down to the ground floor.” So there was a plan, at least. It was a relief to hear those words. She pulled free of my grasp, already headed down the stairwell, her heels clicking hard on each step.

  I realized I was still wearing the masquerade mask from the party. I yanked it off and tucked it under my arm. I needed to be able to see clearly to get down the stairwell in the dim lighting, and for some reason removing the mask seemed to help me think straight. I knew that Mr. Stevens was still up there, somewhere, and God knows what was happening to him.

  But I had to put that aside for now, and focus on getting the two of us to safety. If Katarina knew Mr. Kearns was dead, then so did many others. It was only a matter of time before the word spread, and surely someone at the party would mention the two women who’d run out of the room like they’d had wolves on their heels.

  I watched Katarina hurrying down the stairs below me, balancing precariously on the heels of her stilettos. I knew she was running on pure adrenaline. This wasn’t good; I needed her clear-headed. I stopped her again on the landing.

  “Katarina, breathe,” I implored her. “Please. Just breathe.”

  My words were meant to calm her down, but I didn’t get the response I was looking for. Instead she burst into tears and ripped off her mask, throwing it on the floor and then crushing it under her heel for good measure. I’d never seen her lose her composure like this. Her mascara was all over her face, and her lipstick was smeared down the corner of her mouth. Her cheeks were blotchy with the force of her crying. She was a beautiful woman, but in her current state of devastation, she looked like a different person entirely. “I don’t know what to do!” she cried, sobbing. Her voice was shaky, on the verge of frantic. “Where is he?”

  It was the question on both of our minds: where was Mr. Stevens? For now, it seemed I would have to be the voice of reason, even though inside I was just as panicked as she was. “Look, we’ll figure it out, okay? We’ve got time. It will take a while for Carl to get here. We’ve got time to try and find him.”

  Katarina shook her head. “We can’t go back in there.”

  “We’re not going back in there. Let’s just go downstairs and try calling again. Come on, let’s walk,” I coaxed her. “Slowly.”

  She nodded, her tears subsiding a bit. She carefully walked down the stairs, slower now, and steadier on her feet. Now that I had calmed her down a little, I had time to think for myself a bit.

  Peter Kearns, dead? It seemed unbelievable. I’d been speaking to him an hour ago, with Henrickson at his arm. They’d been a creepy pair, that was for sure. I immediately thought of the stories I’d heard from Carl of Mr. Stevens’ past. How his mother had held the company together, or tried to, while that conniving Kearns tried to make it his own. If anyone would be glad to know Peter Kearns was gone, it would be Mr. Stevens’ mother…

  Or Mr. Stevens himself. As soon as the thought came unbidden into my mind, I squinted my eyes against it and tried to force it away. He’d been with me – I had to trust my instincts about that. I knew it was him, mask or no mask. But even so, he’d left me alone in the mirrored room – and I’d taken my time after his departure, staring into the mirror and collecting myself as I always had to do after our passionate encounters.

  Could that have been enough time for him to find Kearns and kill him? Or, even more unbearable – had he killed Kearns before coming to seduce me?

  I pushed these horrible thoughts out of my mind and tried to stay calm as I followed Katarina down the long stairwell. It seemed to be endless, and far too dark – a complete mismatch for such an opulent building. When we got to the ground floor, Katarina headed straight for the sidewalk. If she noticed the looks she was getting, the attention that her streaked mascara and tear-stained face brought from pa
ssers-by, she paid no attention.

  The car pulled up just as we came out onto the street. Carl stepped out, his eyes immediately widening with alarm.

  “…Miss?” he asked, his face clouded with worry. He rushed around the car to open the passenger door, but he didn’t get there in time – Katarina had already opened it and climbed into the back, saying nothing. Carl looked at me, asking a silent question.

  “We’re okay,” I said quietly. “Just drive.”

  Carl nodded and stepped back from the car, waiting for me to enter. He closed the door behind me, and Katarina and I looked at each other as he came around to the driver’s seat. As soon as he sat down, we almost immediately lurched into motion.

  “Where would you like to go?” he asked from the front seat, somehow keeping a level tone. He seemed unfazed and in-control. I wondered what other dramatic scenes he’d witnessed over the years as the Stevens family driver.

  “Let’s go back to my place,” I blurted out. It was an impulsive decision, but it made sense. The Stevens building seemed too risky, for some reason, and I longed for the familiar comfort of home. I pulled out my phone, tapping quickly through the address book to find the number I was looking for.

  My fingers shaking, I whipped off a frantic text to Mr. Stevens: Where are you? What happened? I took Katarina home for the night. Please get in touch with us. Tell me what you want me to do.

  My phone offered up a shrill, hollow ‘beep’, indicating my text had been sent. It was such a small, pathetic noise, not comforting at all. Worry gnawed at my stomach. How could things change so much, so fast? There was nothing left to do for the time being. Now, all I could do was wait.

  “What a horrible end to a perfectly wonderful evening,” I mused to myself in the backseat.

  Chapter 2: A Thousand Questions

  On the ride back to my apartment, Katarina sat very still on the far side of the car. She didn’t talk, didn’t look at me – she didn’t even seem to be thinking, just staring blankly ahead. I caught a reflection of her face every so often, illuminated by streetlights in the car window. Her eyes were distant and dull, staring off into space. From somewhere in the recesses of my memory, I recalled that soldiers and burn victims could fall into a state of shock after a trauma, and that it was imperative to snap them out of it if you could. I wondered what in the world I could do to break her out of this. I had never been confronted with something like this before. Three days ago, I’d been a barista. I nearly let out a bitter laugh at the thought. Life had taken many twists and turns since I met Mr. Stevens, but this was by far the sharpest turn yet.

  Carl didn’t talk much during the drive, seeming to sense that we both wanted silence. At one point, stopped at a red light, he looked back at me and seemed poised to ask a question. “…Kearns is dead,” I said sharply, cutting him off before he could ask. “And we don’t know where Mr. Stevens is.” He blinked a few times, but said nothing. We looked at each other for a long moment. He turned his eyes back to the road ahead, not asking me to elaborate.

  When we turned onto my street, I could feel the weight lift somewhat from my shoulders. Katarina, too, seemed to be doing a bit better. We stepped out of the car together, Carl and I helping her step to the curb gingerly.

  “Can you stay here?” I asked him. “We might need the car later… if he calls, or…” I trailed off, realizing all over again how little we knew about what to do next. But Carl, bless him, put up his hands as if I didn’t even need to ask.

  “Of course, Miss,” he replied. “I’ll be here with the car if you need me.”

  Once upstairs, Katarina seemed to come around. She went to the bathroom to clean up a bit, and I started a pot of coffee. It seemed the only thing I could do that made any sense. I kept the phone on the counter, with the ringer on high, so that I could hear it in case Mr. Stevens sent a text back to me. Of course he’ll text you back, I scolded, trying to convince myself. The fact that he hadn’t contacted either one of us yet worried me more than I wanted to admit. And the more worry Katarina saw in me, the more frantic she might become. One of us, at least, had to try and remain calm.

  But even so, my heart was racing as I thought about the things that might have happened. I tried to assess the situation logically. With Peter Kearns dead, the first person the police would look to would be Mr. Stevens. There was some definite history between the two of them, very public, and the bad blood went back for decades. No investigator would possibly let that be overlooked. I tried to prepare myself for the fact that Mr. Stevens would most likely be a ‘person of interest’ in the crime, at least at first – even if he had done nothing wrong.

  But what if he had?

  The question that had been nagging at the back of my mind had come back in full force now that I was alone in the kitchen, despite my best efforts to push it away. I hadn’t known Mr. Stevens long, but his raging temper was already crystal clear – I’d seen that from our very first conversation. And besides, the way he’d looked at Kearns during the party left little room for doubt about his feelings towards him. If I’d been able to see that, surely other people had seen it too.

  But murder? Was Mr. Stevens capable of such a thing?

  Just then, Katarina came out of the bathroom. She looked to be doing much better, now that her makeup was washed away and she’d combed her hair. If not for the tears, she would have appeared almost as put-together as she did when she’d greeted me at the party. But when she sat down on my couch, I saw that her hands were still shaking hard. Following my gaze, she pressed them between her knees in an attempt to keep them under control.

  “Nice place,” she said, in an effort to return to normalcy. Her eyes flitted around and took in everything about my place, but still she somehow seemed to be a million miles away.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Coffee?” I had already poured her a mug. I held it out to her and she took it carefully, as though she didn’t trust her hands just yet. She blew over the top of the coffee and ventured a delicate sip.

  Her eyebrows raised in surprise. “This is… delicious,” she said.

  I laughed. “Yeah, I know. You forget I was a barista before I signed the contract with Mr. Stevens. Great coffee’s just one of the perks of the job.”

  She gave me a weak smile. I sat down on the couch beside her and watched her as she took another sip, this one a bit heartier than the last. Some color came back to her cheeks, and she closed her eyes to savor the taste of the coffee. To my relief, she was finally coming out of the shock of discovering Kearns’ death – and that meant I finally had some hope of getting some answers from her.

  “What happened back there?” I asked her.

  Fresh tears seemed poised to pop into her eyes, but just then, a miraculous thing happened. Katarina took a deep breath, straightened her back, closed her eyes and pulled it all together. I watched as the change overtook her. It only took a few moments. All of a sudden her hands stopped shaking, her mouth set in a firm line, and her shoulders straightened up, strong and tall, as though she was ready to march into a room with the full force of Mr. Stevens’ authority behind her. She opened her big blue eyes and turned them to me.

 
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