Page 56 of SIN Bone Deep

“I think I know who it was, Mal. A man whose wife and child came to my aunts for help. He’s been harassing us ever since. He came to my workplace, and a bunch of his friends tried to burn down our house. The police won’t help. They say they don’t have enough evidence to help.”

“You think this man ran you down,” Mal tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Yes. I think that would make sense. I need to stop him, somehow, as what will he do next, Mal, and to whom? I’m pretty sure he’s going to kill his wife. He might kill my family too.”

“Ugh,” Mal sighed heavily. “Very well then. I will help you to find out if this man tried to kill you.”

“Thank you, Mal,” I was relieved. “I will be much happier when I know whoever ran me over isn’t going to be a danger to anyone else.”

“It’s a good opportunity for you to practice your new powers, anyway,” he decided. “We’ll go tonight and pay this man a call.”

He turned on the music, ending the conversation, and I had little choice but to sit back and look at him. I knew that this was just one of his faces. There would be another that he wore in the pits of Hell, just as Ender appeared in grim form cloaked and hooded, but where shadows parted there were horns and bone. Which face was the true face? Or were they both just different aspects of the man?

This face of Mal’s, however, was beautiful. The beauty was a ploy, a lure to those who sold him their souls, for too often humans equated beauty with trustworthiness. His beauty was different to that of Ender’s. Where Ender was pared back, understated, and almost ascetic in the shifting shadows, Mal was lush, vivid, and decadently spotlighted wherever he went. Ender’s skin was pale, his bones sharp, his cheeks hollow, his voice quiet and his mannerisms subtle. Mal was loud, and flamboyant, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes bright with dangerous humor.

I was not sure I trusted Mal. But I was also not sure that I trusted my own judgment, as I had trusted Ender, and he had betrayed that trust and me by not revealing what he knew of my approaching death, and then by standing by and letting it happen.

I looked away from Mal at the shifting scenery, my eyes stinging with tears and my heart twisting within me.

I did not want to go shopping. I wanted to go home and lay on my bed and cry. I needed time to process and absorb what had happened to me, to grieve the loss of Ender, the loss of innocence, and the loss of the girl I had been. I needed time to understand what Mal had done, and how that had changed my life. I needed time to learn how to live with those changes.

Mal turned down the music as we entered the city. “Almost there. This is going to be fun.”

He had taken us to one of the expensive shopping streets in the city. Here the windows were glossy, the stonework ornate, the signage discreet, the street parking overflowing with prestige vehicles, and the pedestrians all wore designer labels.

I felt grubby in my maxi dress, windblown hair, and underwear still damp with Mal’s cum. “Mal…” I looked at him in a silent plea. “This is…”

“Perfect,” he pulled neatly into a park, and got out, rounding the Porsche to open my door. “Let’s go shop, my naughty little witch,” he purred tucking my hand into the crook of his arm and leading me across to the nearest glass door.

There was a doorman who opened the door at our approach, standing crisply to attention in the uniform that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe combined. The door shut behind us with a whoosh, sealing us in. It was deathly still inside. The subtle background of classical music took the edge off the silence, but not the judgemental expectation of the staff who all stood poised and waiting.

In addition to the doorman, half a dozen salespeople stood positioned at certain points of the shop, and there was a man whose sole task it seemed was to hold a tray with two different types of bottled spring water and a crystal glass on the palm of one hand.

The expressions on the salespeople’s faces were set to professional neutral, but they had evaluated us both, and their attention was on Mal who led me across the room with him as he peered into the glass displays. They knew who was paying, and that he could afford to do so.

“Hmm,” he straightened and swept his eyes around the staff. “We are going to need a change room. She needs everything from the skin upwards. Begin.”

“This way, madam,” a woman stepped forward immediately, whilst the rest of the staff scattered but for the man bearing the tray of water and the doorman.

Mal took a seat, arranging himself elegantly. “No,” he said when the man offered him the water off the tray. “We’ll need something stronger than that.”

“Mal,” I said, for the woman was trying to lead me to an area at the rear of the shop.

“Go on, Nyx. Have fun. I’ll be waiting to see each and every item.” His attention was diverted as the first salesperson swept up holding a lingerie set on hangers. “Do you have it in red as well?”

The changeroom was massive, mirrored on three sides. I stood looking at the woman and she at me as salespeople poured in and began to hang the clothing off ornate hooks set off the mirrors’ frames.

“I… uh,” I was hideously embarrassed and did not know whether to start undressing or not. I knew what they thought of me – the gauche mistress of a wealthy man. What was embarrassing was that it was the truth in so many ways – Mal had made clear his expectations of our relationship.

“I am here to assist in fitting the clothing,” the saleswoman said with a hint of a smile. And to make sure that nothing was stolen, was unspoken between us. I did not belong in this shop and was tolerated there only because Mal had brought me. “If madam would undress?”

I was not offered a choice on what to try on - that decision was made by Mal in the main room, and each outfit was built from the skin up. I was expected to walk out into the main room in the outfit, shoes, and accessories. Mal would yes or no, or adjust the items, and that outfit would be removed, whisked away, whilst I began to dress in the next.

The clothing began as day wear, suitable for a range of events, but each outfit was far sexier than anything I owned. Watching myself reflected in the mirror, I felt like the succubus that Mal had turned me into. The sexiness was subtle and sophisticated, nothing that I wouldn’t be comfortable wearing out in public, but it was there in a way my normal clothing did not possess.

The sexiness increased as we moved into evening wear, some pieces far more revealing than I would have selected for myself, but with the champagne buzzing through me, I was far more confident than I normally would be and swaggered out to parade myself before Mal without hesitation.

“Beautiful,” he approved, his eyes catching fire. “That one needs diamonds, I think. Our next stop.”

---