CHAPTER ONE

'Betrayed'

 

Tamara was just gorgeous. It was the only word for her. Matt had been bowled over by the tall, leggy vision of female pulchritude from the first moment he'd set eyes on her. Five feet five inches in her bare feet, she had legs which went up and up forever, a gorgeously sexy bottom, wide hips, a slim waist and firm, thrusting, large nippled breasts which would have done justice to any Playboy centrefold. A natural blue-eyed blonde, Tamara's beautifully classic Anglo-Saxon features were crowned by a wealth of long, shimmering hair falling over her shoulders like a cloud.

Oh yes, Tamara was gorgeous, all right. The trouble was ... she knew it!

In the beginning it had been good. Matt had met her while working as a security guard for her stepfather's property development company. They'd clicked immediately. Tamara, the spoiled rich kid whose mother had died before she'd even reached her teens and the young, quiet ex-soldier, just hadn't been able to get enough of each other.

There were dinner dates in expensive restaurants Matt could normally never have afforded, drives in the country in Tamara's Mercedes sports, tickets for the latest West End shows etc., all showing Matt a glimpse of life in the fast lane he had never in his wildest dreams thought to experience. He soon learned that, where the Honourable Tamara Heys-Grant was concerned, money was certainly no object.

What Tamara wanted, she got.

And what she wanted right then, was Matthew Ryan.

With Tamara pulling the strings, Matt applied for and got an executive job within the company's security department. It was a job which Matt found to be well within his capabilities. Tamara' stepfather, Sir Richard Grant, had proved a different matter, though. Matt didn't like him and, despite the promotion, it was obvious Sir Richard didn't like him. It wasn't just that the man was arrogant and overbearing. Matt had served under similar men before and coped well enough. No, there was something else; something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Still, he told himself, it was Tamara he was interested in, not her stepfather.

On Tamara's nineteenth birthday, Tamara and he bought a house on the outskirts of Oxford and, despite Sir Richard's protestations that she was too young, they moved in together. For a while everything seemed to be perfect. There was no talk of marriage, but the sex was good and everything else in their life seemed pretty idyllic. From the very start, though, Tamara had made it clear that sex would be on her terms only. Not that she ever denied him; indeed her own sexual appetite matched and sometimes even surpassed his. Her favourite position, though, was 'on top', definitely controlling the pace of the action. Also, to Matt's great disappointment, even the very thought of fellatio proved to be a definite turn-off for her; as was anal sex. No way would she allow him to put his penis anywhere near her mouth or her bottom.

Strangely, though, the reverse seemed to be a great source of pleasure for her and she would never refuse him when he wanted to worship her with his lips and tongue.

Totally besotted, Matt never complained. His new life was pretty well everything he had ever dreamed of and, if there were one or two things she didn't really like to do, he would happily go along with that. Tamara only had to smile and everything took on a golden glow.

Then it happened! Six months into their relationship, she went out one day and didn't come back! There seemed to be no real reason for her disappearance and Matt nearly went out of his mind with worry. For the first few days he searched everywhere he could think of; their friends, places they'd visited, some they had intended to. He went to the police who, used to dealing with domestic upheavals, were not particularly helpful.

No one had seen her, it seemed, not even her stepfather. Then, exactly a week after she had gone missing, Matt had a visit from a man who identified himself as Tamara's solicitor. Tamara, evidently, wished their relationship to end and required him to leave the house without delay. If he agreed and promised not to try to bother her again, a generous settlement might be made. The cheque he offered to Matt was made out to three times the amount he and Tamara had paid for the house and was signed by Sir Richard, so Matt went to see him straight away.

Sir Richard was blunt, his acid dislike of Matt now fully on the surface. He was used to bailing out his arrogant and wayward stepdaughter from the frequent messes she made of her life, he said, and wasn't about to change now. Tamara didn't want Matt any more. He couldn't see the problem. The message was clear. Take the money and get out of the house and his stepdaughter's life!

Matt didn't know what to do. He paid the money into his bank, but stubbornly had stayed on in the house, hoping for some clue as to what Tamara was playing at. He wanted to see her - talk to her; find out what the hell was going on, what he'd done to deserve this. For a further two weeks he'd mooned about, hardly eating or sleeping; until one evening he'd had a telephone call from a girl who worked in Sir Richard's office; a twenty five year old redhead named Aimée Foster.

Matt knew the girl vaguely. She was on Sir Richard's personal staff, some kind of confidential secretary, he thought. She said she'd heard about Tamara leaving and seemed quite sympathetic. She hinted that she knew where Tamara had gone. Perhaps they should meet up in a pub somewhere for a drink and talk about it? Eagerly he'd agreed and they'd met as suggested. It turned out to be pretty much a waste of time. Sympathetic Aimée might have been, but she didn't really know any more than he had found out already, just given him a couple of new addresses to check out.

Predictably, they'd both got drunk and they'd wound up in bed together.

Two days later he was arrested. The charge, the police told him, was rape! Aimée Foster was alleging he had beaten and raped her.

Despite all Matt's protestations of innocence, the evidence had mounted solidly against him. Aimée Foster had indeed been quite badly beaten. Police photographs showed her with two black eyes and numerous other facial and body bruises. DNA taken from semen found in both Aimée's vagina and anus conclusively matched his.

By this time he knew that he was the victim of a clever frame up. It was obvious now. The girl he was accused of abusing, of course, worked for Tamara's stepfather. Clearly she had been bribed to set him up. Mentally he kicked himself for falling for it. He should have known. Whatever Tamara wanted, he remembered, Tamara got ... and now it was clear that she wanted to be rid of him, even to the point of putting him in prison.

The trial had been a foregone conclusion and he had been sentenced to six years. He learned quickly in prison to keep himself to himself, his army training standing him in good stead the first few times he was forced to defend himself. After two of the jail's bully boys finished up in the hospital wing with a few broken bones, the word got around quickly that he was dangerous and not a man to mess around with. After that, he was left pretty well alone, though he did manage to make one or two contacts which he thought might prove useful in the future. A model prisoner, he was released three and a half years later on parole with the proviso that he reported weekly to his probation officer and did not go within a radius of ten miles of the Tamara's house.

The years in prison were the bitterest of his life; years during which he had coldly planned his revenge on the people who had betrayed him so cruelly. His prison contacts were useful, one in particular providing him with the means to exact his revenge in spades.

Nine months after his release, months during which he had faithfully obeyed the terms of his parole, even to taking a menial, shift work job in a hospital and meekly attending the mandatory psyche sessions at the local out-patients department, he had taken the first steps, 'scouting' the area where he and Tamara had lived.

The bitch, it seemed, had a new 'live-in' companion, a girl. He recognised her at once, of course. It was Aimée Foster, Sir Richard's confidential secretary. His eyes narrowed with hate as he watched her. No more than five feet tall, she was deliciously tiny in every way. At the time of the trial she would have been no more than twenty-two, which would make her around twenty-five or six now.

Carefully, he had followed the pair to the shops and then back to the house. He watched them on an almost daily basis for a period of three weeks, building up knowledge of their daily routine. The more he watched, the more the sexual chemistry between arrogant heiress and submissive secretary became apparent. Matt was a little surprised but not shocked. It was just that Tamara had never even hinted that she found women attractive.

He pushed the matter to the back of his mind. It didn't really matter. Both Tamara's and Aimée's lives were about to change in ways they would never have considered possible. The contract was signed, the money paid. The subject or subjects should be delivered without serious injury; though some peripheral damage might be acceptable, perhaps even preferable. His skin tingled as he considered the possibilities, grunting disgustedly to himself as thoughts of what he had allowed the spoiled young girl to do to him flowed through his mind. Tonight Tamara would learn about his darker side.