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  ‘And you wore them when you met him?’ He asked.

  ‘Yeah, I did. It was a Saturday morning and I told my parents I was off to do some studying with my friends and I had my rucksack filled with books, I did that quite often so they didn’t think anything was different. I put on my underwear and then put some jeans and a dark top over them, I folded my dress up in my bag and set off. I was really nervous but I felt confident because of the underwear, I hadn’t really had any experience with boys but I felt all grown up in my lingerie. I got the bus to the train station and got changed in the train toilet. I remember there was a conductor hitting the door and asking me to come out so he could check my ticket, I guess he thought I was hiding to avoid the fare but then when I came out he ran his eyes up and down me as I handed it to him. I’d done my makeup and hair and put some heels on I’d picked up, they weren’t too high so I could walk fine in them. It felt great to have his eyes on me, it made me think he saw me as a woman rather than a girl and I did a little strut as I walked back to my seat.’ She said.

  ‘Then you met the guy at the other end?’

  ‘He picked me up from the train station, well it was just around the corner. Looking back, I think he wanted to avoid any CCTV.’

  ‘Probably. But how did he keep the knickers?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Afterwards I gathered up all my stuff but wasn’t really paying attention as he was hurrying me out of the door. He dropped me around the corner from the station again and drove off. I didn’t know anywhere other than the station so I just walked to the platform and waited for my train. I was sore and kind of in shock I guess, I was just in my own little blank world. Then I got on the train and sat down. I was like that for a little while and then I remembered that I needed to get changed and I needed the toilet anyway. So, I went to the toilet and I just remember it stung, a lot, there was blood and then when I went to pull my knickers up I wasn’t wearing any. I hadn’t realised I wasn’t wearing any when I went into the toilet which was weird. I checked through all my stuff and couldn’t see them so I just put my jeans back on, I can remember the seam hurt where it pressed against me and I was nervous that the blood would show through but they were dark, I just knew that if I walked inside the house in a dress my parents would start asking questions and I couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘Did they say anything when you got home?’ He asked

  ‘Dad picked me up but I was crying by the time I got home and they asked me what was up. I said nothing, I’d just fallen out with one of the girls and wanted to be left alone. They’d got a teenage girl in the house so they were used to tears and me going to my room. I went up to the bathroom and got showered again, then went through my stuff properly. I couldn’t find my knickers so I just put the bra, dress and shoes in a bag and threw them away the next morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry princess.’ Dan had been holding her hand while she talked but now he squeezed it harder.

  ‘It’s ok babe. I was daft and shouldn’t have gone there.’

  ‘No, don’t think like that. He was the twat in all of this, you were a kid.’ Dan said.

  ‘Well it makes no difference really, it happened. It’s a long time ago, it’s just that I still wonder if he has them.’

  ‘The knickers?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Yeah like some kind of trophy or whatever, you hear about sickos doing stuff like that. Keeping little mementos, like if he did it to other girls he might have a collection or maybe I just left them there. I don’t know but it always bugged me because and I know it sounds stupid, but I really liked the underwear. I felt so good in them and then he fucked it all up.’

  Dan pulled her close to him when he saw tears start to pool in the corners of her eyes, he buried her face into his chest and kissed the top of her head. He held here there while he felt his shirt grow wet against him.

  He leant his head back on the sofa, trying to ignore the voice in his head but he couldn’t. It grew louder, pulsing between his ears, ‘What now? What now? What now?’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The microwave pinged, ninety seconds of radiation had warmed Jaz’s burgers but for some reason part of the bread always stayed hard while the rest flopped around like a limp dick. He used a tea towel to hold the hot plate while he scraped them onto a fresh one. The packaging said they needed to stand for thirty seconds before being eaten but he couldn’t think of what human would be able to eat them within two minutes. He closed the microwave door, picked up the bottles of Cobra from the kitchen worktop and walked into the hall. Jaz stopped, his hands full, he turned and realised it would be easier to get toilet paper rather than kitchen roll. He walked through the hall and up the stairs. They creaked a little under his weight, an old house with old house noises. He would have preferred a swanky modern apartment but this would do until his antique business picked up.

  He turned on the landing, pushed the back-bedroom door open and walked inside, he put the plate and beers down on his desk and pulled the curtains closed. There was nobody who could see into the room but he still wanted secrecy, he flicked the light switch and the bulb blinked to life. Jaz pushed the on switch on the top of his Lenovo desktop and turned his monitor on. He sat back in his chair and typed his password into the prompt box.

  ‘For fucks sake.’ Jaz said to himself remembering he’d forgotten the toilet roll again. He stood and walked into the bathroom, unrolled some paper and walked back to his desk. Windows had opened and his VPN was connecting, he watched as the progress bar filled and then flashed green when his connection was secure. Jaz opened his browser and asked the search engine to tell him his IP address, he nodded when it told him he was in Valencia, Spain. Nothing like an extra level of security.

  It had been a tiring day but he was in no rush. He would begin with YouTube and a couple of seconds after clicking on his favourites link the window opened to the familiar red and white page. He typed in ‘guess her age’ and the page showed him a selection of videos. He clicked on the newest and a Russian guy began advertising his channel. Jaz sat back and watched, taking a bite of his burger. It was a decent temperature so he carried on eating while waiting for the video to start properly.

  He turned his sound down to avoid the terrible music and watched as the first girl, a still photograph of a petite brunette with a timer counting down. Jaz guessed she was fifteen and was surprised when she was nineteen. The second girl came on screen as he finished the first burger, she was a lot more attractive than the first and Jaz felt a stirring. He guessed at sixteen and was wrong, the screen told him she was fourteen. His stirring swelled and he knew YouTube wouldn’t be enough once he was finished eating. He reached down and pulled his shorts free of his growing excitement and navigated to a porn site.

  Jaz washed the mouthful of burger down with his beer and searched for ‘barely legal abuse’ and almost as fast as YouTube the results came back. Pages of girls, some who looked young and some who were doing their best to, all being fucked. Most of the thumbnails were of blow jobs so he hovered his cursor over them to see what else was in the video. He clicked on the blonde with pigtails and snot dripping from her nose as she gagged. The video started, she was cute but clearly over twenty. She was being kept after class for looking at her phone during the lesson and desperate to get good grades her top came off within two minutes of talking to the teacher.

  Jaz smiled as he watched her gag and heave while laid on her back with her head hanging off the end of the desk. She would do as a warm up and his hand moved up and down as the drool dripped from her mouth onto the camera lens. The more he watched the more he wished he’d hear back about the job at the Comprehensive school, one with showers where nobody would notice a small camera. He kept watching but the thought was turning him on more than the video, it was definitely going to be a schoolgirl night. Jaz emptied the first bottle of beer and dropped it into the bin beside him. He opened the next using the bottle opener screwed to the side of his desk, one handed beer opening was a big advantage at ce
rtain times.

  The video ended and he let the next start automatically. This time it was a duo. A blonde and a brunette, both were over eighteen but would get asked for ID to buy a packet of Benson and Hedges. They were kissing in the blonde’s bedroom when her stepdad caught them both. They were embarrassed for a few moments before fear of her mum finding out had them trying to convince the stepdad not to tell. Jaz kept watching, the clip was dull but the girls were hot. Their small breasts and shaved pussies made them look nice and young, just like the girls would be in his next school. He lay back, tilting the seat backwards as he wondered if he’d find two of them kissing and then they would do anything to stop his video clip going online. He smiled when he realised how many girls would pass through the changing rooms every day. Sure, there’d be some fatties and some spotty gingers but every year had a couple of stunners and even the ugly one’s might would have nice bodies. A few hundred pairs of tits and tight little holes passing under his gaze every day. He throbbed at the thought and wondered if there was an all-girls school he could apply to, maybe even private to see more posh girls with Daddy issues. The video finished and he know he was horny enough to find something more suitable. He closed Firefox and clicked on his TOR browser. It would be slower than he was used to but he needed some fresh material to download for his external drive. The browser opened and connected to the Dark Web, the normal porn sites were fine for a warm up or quickie but right now he needed more. He knew where to go to find exactly what he wanted, the browser was running quite fast today so he decided to start off several clips downloading at once. He knew from the thumbnails they would be worth keeping and he was safe here as you had to upload new material to be able to download. Jaz leaned back watching the files download, they looked pretty in the thumbnails and they would be just the right age for what he needed right now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Emma’s head lay on Dan’s arm, her hands held his as they lay in bed. They fitted perfectly, tangled together when she was the little spoon and she could spend hours together like this. She still didn’t know how his arm didn’t go numb but he was happy with it and she wasn’t about to risk it ending.

  ‘Can I ask you a question? About what happened.’ Dan brushed her hair from his face as his movement caused her hair to stick to his stubble like a spider’s web.

  ‘You can ask whatever you want.’ Emma said.

  ‘Ok. I was just wondering if you ever thought about telling the Police or your parents at all?’ Dan said. ‘I know we’ve gone over it but I don’t really understand.’

  ‘You mean back when it happened?’

  ‘Whenever really, just telling them what happened.’ Dan said.

  ‘No not really. When it happened I just wanted to get home and get cleaned up.’

  ‘What about after that though?’

  ‘No. There was no point really. I looked online and it said that once you wash, the evidence is gone so then it would just be his word against mine.’ Emma said.

  ‘You could have still spoken to someone though, there would have been some evidence, right?’

  ‘It’s not that simple though is it? He would have said I went to his house willingly, which I did. Then he would have said we had sex and me being a virgin is what caused the bleeding and everything else. I’d have ended up in a room being questioned and everyone blames the victim with this stuff.’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t know about that, it happened though, so you wouldn’t have got blamed.’ Dan said not sure he really believed himself.

  ‘Ok then. Do you remember a while ago when some white Brits got killed in America in some dodgy neighbourhood late at night?’ Emma asked.

  ‘In Detroit, yes why?’

  ‘Well what was the first thought everyone had? What did the news report?’

  ‘I don’t know? What’s this got to do with you?’ Dan asked.

  ‘The first thing everyone did was ask why they were in a dodgy neighbourhood at that time of night and how they must have been buying drugs. Then people just shrug and say well they shouldn’t have been in that area buying drugs, that’s what happens. Everybody forgot about them being the victims because they were doing something stupid. Whenever something happens to someone else the public don’t want to face the fact that it could happen to them so they look for a reason why the victim is at fault. They think it couldn’t happen to me because I don’t do anything stupid or how they shouldn’t have been in that area at that time or whatever. Victim blaming, that’s what they call it, but basically it means that the girl who meets a guy online, gets dressed up in sexy clothes and goes to his house and then gets raped is just learning her lesson for doing something stupid.’ Emma said flatly.

  ‘Fuck, I hadn’t thought about it before. I just don’t like to think of him getting away with it.’ He said.

  ‘I know babe, I don’t either. It’s just that I didn’t want to be dragged around a station, inspected and asked questions about what happened. My parents would’ve been mad at me for being stupid and forever afterwards I’d be ‘poor Emma, she got raped you know.’ I’d be the slut who meets guys and then cries rape afterwards.’

  ‘Ok I get it now. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. That’s shit. Whatever happened to him you’d be punished again anyway.’ Dan said.

  ‘Yes basically. Everyone knows people have sex. Like when you see an old couple in a restaurant holding hands, people think it’s romantic and good that they’re still having sex but nobody wants to see them doing it or really think about it. My parents know I’m not a virgin but it’s never spoken about. Nobody wants to actually talk about sex in front of their parents. I’d have been made to talk about having sex and I just couldn’t take it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I.’ Dan stalled. ‘I don’t know what else to say really. I just don’t like him getting away with hurting you.’

  ‘I know you don’t and I like that but it’s done and can’t be undone. The best thing is to just get on with things. Forget about it. I have done.’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t think that’s possible though, I keep thinking about him.’

  ‘It shouldn’t bother you, it was before you. If it puts you off me I understand. It’s a lot to deal with.’ Emma said.

  ‘It doesn’t put me off you at all. Neither of us are virgins, it doesn’t make you worse for it. It’s on him.’

  ‘It does make things different though, it’s dirty.’ She said lowering her eyes.

  ‘I don’t see it like that at all. It just makes me angry at him.’ He said.

  ‘Are you sure it doesn’t put you off though? It’s ok if it does.’

  ‘Honestly, I swear on anything. I guess it makes things different but purely because I want to protect you.’ Dan pulled her close to him.

  ‘Ok well thank you. I don’t want you going off me but I’d understand.’ Emma said.

  ‘I’m not going off you and I’m not going to. I just want to do something to him.’

  ‘Well you can’t, it’s not worth it but what you can do is do something to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dan asked.

  She wiggled her bum against his lap. ‘I don’t know maybe something to take my mind of this conversation.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Have you ever seen Dexter?’ Dan said.

  ‘No why? I can’t see me liking it.’ Emma said.

  ‘I don’t think you would but it’s good. I watched a load last week in the hotel.’

  ‘How come? Isn’t it about a serial killer?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Yeah but he only kills other killers, kind of like a vigilante. A guy recommended it to me and I gave it a go on Netflix. He said he reminded him of me because he’s got a boat and apparently I’m a ginger.’

  ‘Aww my little ginge.’ She said rubbing his hair.

  ‘I’m not a ginge, its strawberry blonde at worst.’ Dan said.

  ‘Too dark to be strawberry blonde, its auburn.’ She teased.

  ‘Fu
ck off auburn, it’s brownie blonde.’

  ‘It’s not really brown though. It’s too autumnal to be brown.’ Emma said.

  ‘You’re a tit. It’s brown. Anyway, back to Dexter before we fall out. So, the first thing I noticed is that he shaves in every intro, cuts himself, puts a tissue on it and then by the time he’s eaten his breakfast he’s got a full-on stubble again.’

  ‘So, you didn’t like the intro or you just want a faster growing beard?’

  ‘I didn’t like the intro at all, it’s close ups of him eating and it’s a bit gross. Luckily Netflix skips the intro once you’ve watched the first one so I could crack on with watching. It’s really good once you get past the breakfast so I stopped up later than I planned watching it.’

  ‘I just don’t see what’s so good about a serial killer though.’ Emma said.

  ‘He’s a good character and it’s funny in a dark way. it’s just really good but that’s not the point. I just wondered if you’d seen it.’

  ‘Nope I prefer my musicals and historical stuff.’ She said.

  ‘It’s a wonder we get on you know, neither of us likes the same things.’ Dan said.

  ‘Well they say opposites attract, don’t they?’

  ‘They do and I guess the only important thing is that we love each other and I definitely love you.’ Dan said.

  ‘Aww. I love you too you big red headed hunk.’ She said kissing his cheek.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ‘Dan it’s me, where are you?’ Emma said into the phone, her voice filled with panic.

  ‘Hi babe, what’s wrong?’ Dan said.

  ‘I, I just saw him.’ She stuttered as she spoke, almost hyperventilating.