Disclaimer: I don't own these and I make no money from this.
Rating: NC17
Summary: Carteret and Hari, hmmm…
Thank you so much Jen for your invaluable help beta-ing me up, shame my punctuation and stuff just never seem to improve!
Please feel free to comment, anything you feel the need to say about what you read good, bad or whatever...
The Road 11
Hari hated London.
There were far too many unpleasant memories of her mother here, too much of her father as well
She'd done her duty visit, stayed clean and sober. Dressed like a Sloane Ranger and played the dutiful daughter. All she had to do now was see Arnie and she could go home again, get some work done.
The last few days she'd been fidgeting and prowling, she needed to get back to her studio. She itched to start the new canvas. Ideas were buzzing in her head, the machine, speed, and the body tense, tight.
She wanted to paint Ricky. He'd never let her, of course, but quite frankly, fuck him.
She could see him as the bike itself, moulded into it, no, actually part of it, leaking from the shining metal, like liquid flesh
All this she could see in her head. Now, she needed Uncle Arnie's little pills. He always had what she needed.
Not what she wanted, but what she needed, the colour and flow would not come without them.
And Uncle Arnie made her pay, in his own way.
He wasn't really her uncle, he was some sort of a cousin, but he'd been one of her mother's lovers just before she died, and she had insisted that he be called uncle. He was, in fact, only about 5 or 6 years older than she was. And, he was a bastard, greedy and self satisfied. His greed wasn't for money, that he had. No, it was for people; he ate you up with a possessive glee. Owned you, made you dance, jerking the strings that he knew, kept you functioning.
That was his drug, ownership.
The restaurant was Arnie's favourite, at the moment. It had a courtyard filled with hanging baskets of trailing plants, a discreetly obscene fountain and the food was divine. He was at his usual table in the most sunlit corner.
"Hari, angel! How are you, you look like shit." Arnold Carteret looked over his mirrored shades at the diminutive blonde and smiled. He so enjoyed his exchanges with Hari, she hated him, blamed him for her mother's suicide. It wasn't his fault; the stupid bitch would have done it eventually anyway. It just so happened he'd supplied her with the means. But Hari was different from her mother, she was stronger, a very talented artist, and she was anybody's.
Well, not quite anybody's, not his. He would however, remedy that at some point, when the time was right.
He'd watched her, her self-esteem issues were enormous. Probably to do with her mother, not that he cared. She was just so damn sexy. It was unconscious, nothing deliberate, studied or calculated. But the way she moved was sinuous and disturbing. Even now, when she was dressed like someone's nanny.
"Uncle Arnie." She air kissed, and even that made her want to heave. "I don't suppose you have…
"Sweetie, you know that for you I always have exactly what you want." He reached into his pocket and drew out a bunch of small envelopes. "There, consider them a birthday present." He smirked and held out the buff coloured bundle in front of her, not giving it to her, but dangling it.
"It's not my birthday." She kept her voice light, smiling, not letting the revulsion and abasement she felt seep out.
"Pretend, for me." He sighed theatrically. "You are such a darling little thing, are you sure you won't let me fuck you? I could do all those little things that mummy liked so much?" Oh, how he liked saying that and watching her squirm.
"Quite sure." She snatched the little paper packages from his carefully manicured hand. "And I'll pay." She slid the small roll of notes across the table, at him. She may need him but she would not owe him.
"You are a perverse little thing, aren't you?" He could wait.
An hour later she was on the train, she was going to paint Ricky as the machine, as speed.
Now she had the means.