Sexy as Hell Box Set (36 page)

I’d never taste him again.

Never.

With the show ended and both of us respectably dressed, I stared at Victor across room four and wondered how the hell I was going to break the news. He’d managed the Swedes’ show very well—better than I’d thought he would have—yet I had so much more to teach him, to show him. But I couldn’t continue this way.

He’d gone paler still, as though I’d already uttered those horrible words, and I frowned. He really didn’t look right.

“Victor?”

I walked towards him, outstretching my hand ready to settle it on his forearm. He turned his head to look at me, slowly, as if time had forgotten how to tick, and an uneasy feeling quickly balled in my stomach.

“Victor?”

He lifted one hand to his chest, splayed his hand over the centre.

“Are you all right?” I asked, about four steps away from him now.

My legs threatened to give way, but his didn’t seem to give him the luxury of a warning. His knees buckled, his eyes rolled up. I reached him just as he slewed to one side, collapsing onto the floor, his head cracking against the wall.

“Victor!” I screamed.

For a clever, successful bloke I could be incredibly thick sometimes. What the hell was the matter with me? I’d barely taken any of my tablets this last week and ended up firing off so many extra heartbeats my blood pressure had dropped and I’d passed out. The worse thing was, and I hadn’t admitted it to the paramedics or the doctors, that I’d somewhere, in the recesses of my thought process, known the crisis was brewing but ignored the symptoms for the sake of staying at Eden Street and indulging in what I now knew to be sick voyeurism.

I fired off an email to Mary, telling her to cancel my appointments for the rest of the week and re-schedule them for the New Year. I needed a break—that was the first thing my night in hospital had told me. Staring at insipid green curtains and listening to the incessant
beep-beep
of a cardiac monitor had been a big kick up my kinky backside.

Reaching for the teapot, I poured another brimming cup of Earl Grey then pushed my laptop up the table and stared out of the window. Fat snowflakes were falling silently over London, melting into the river and layering the rooftops like icing sugar.

The second thing my night on the noisy, over-heated coronary care unit had taught me was that I needed to ditch Zara-bloody-Watson. Sure, she’d messed with my body—shoved things up my arse, sucked me off until I’d felt my eyeballs were going to get suctioned out of my cock along with all of my innards—but she’d also screwed with my mind.

Big time.

She’d bamboozled me with sex, addled my brain with Dominance and submission rules and had taken over my every waking thought with dreams of her being mine.

But that could never happen. That fact was as clear as crystal. Zara belonged to no one.

So for the sake of my sanity, my business, my health and my future, I had to remove her from my life the way I turned down annoying clients with ridiculous expectations of me. I couldn’t be someone I wasn’t. Do things that were undoable. What was it with people expecting me to step so far from my comfort zone and capabilities? Where were the normal people who liked conversations about movies, walks in the park, and trips to nice restaurants where they could eat a meal and not a cock?

I sipped my tea and shifted on my chair, refused to acknowledge the stirring in my trousers as I thought of that night at The Savoy. It was difficult not to, though. The evening had turned out to be a first for me. Not just a blowjob beneath a fine linen tablecloth, but my Master’s voice had had an airing, slicing through the cold dark summerhouse like a whip I’d found coiled and waiting in the shadows. It had felt good—more than good, it had been bloody amazing.

But there, that was it. Confusion. One minute I was Master, then the next her slave, obeying her and bending to her will. I just couldn’t handle the turning tables. Who the hell could? Relationships were complicated as it was, without all the extra, fucking weird baggage Zara brought with her.

No, there was only one thing for it. A clean break. Our time together would have to come to an early end. No more. Anything less than that and I didn’t think I’d make Christmas on this earth.

The doorbell rang.

I glanced at the clock. Three p.m. I wasn’t expecting anyone, hadn’t even told Ollie that I’d been in hospital. What was the point? He’d only worry like he always did about my heart condition, and I knew I was fine, just a dope for being so caught up in a woman I’d forgotten to take something vital for sustaining life.

Sighing, I replaced the cup in its saucer and padded barefoot across the apartment.

I slid the lock and opened the door.

I stared at her. She’d been the last person I’d expected to see today. She was the one person I
never
wanted to see again.

“Can I come in?” she asked, brushing a few flakes of snow from her fluffy coat.

“Why?”

“Because it would be polite of you to ask me, Victor.”

I shrugged—what the hell—and turned, leaving her to make her own way in.

Again I sat and stared outside. The snow was heavier now, swirling too as squalls threw it left, right and upwards.

She shut the door. I heard a cupboard bang in the kitchen, the clink of china, then she appeared next to me and helped herself to tea.

“Cold enough to freeze monkey nuts out there,” she said.

I didn’t reply.

“
So.” She splashed milk into her cup from a small silver jug. “Are you going to explain what happened?”

“When?”

“Oh, don’t play thick, Victor, it really doesn’t suit you.”

I sipped my tea. “I collapsed, no big deal.”

“Not for you maybe, but you scared the bloody shit out of me. Keeling over like that, all pale and clutching your chest, I thought you were having a fucking heart attack.”

“Well I wasn’t. And there was no need for an ambulance.”

“Like hell there wasn’t. We couldn’t wake you up. I thought I’d killed you with a blowjob, for crying out loud.”

I huffed. “You’re good but not that good, Zara.”

She stalled, cup halfway to her mouth. “Why are you being so mean?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are.” She put the cup down and pulled out the chair next to mine, sat. “I was frantic with worry. The ambulance men told me not to come with you to the hospital. They had tests to do. Then when I rang the hospital they said because I wasn’t next of kin they couldn’t tell me anything, and you didn’t answer my texts until this morning and—”

“Yes, and if you recall I asked you in my text to stay away. That I was home but needed to rest.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. Heat from her palm seeped into my skin and travelled around my body in a shiver of desire.

Desire I no longer wanted.

“I can help you rest, Victor,” she said, her voice quieter. “Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at certain relaxation techniques.”

“Yeah, right. Well how come when you’re around I only ever feel stressed? As though something new is always going to come charging out of the forest and knock me for six?” I shrugged, but the movement didn’t dislodge her hand as I’d intended.

“But I thought that was what you wanted. To see new things, feel a different type of pleasure.”

“What? How could you possibly know what I want? When have you ever asked?” I pushed back the chair and stood. Placed my hands on my hips.

“Victor.” She frowned. “Don’t get in a state, I don’t want you collapsing again.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, it was a one off. I forgot to take my bloody tablets that’s all.” Bugger, why had I said that?

“Tablets?” She rested her elbow over the back of her chair and twisted to look up at me. “What do you mean tablets?”

“Just what I said.” I bit down on my bottom lip, hard.

“I know what you said, but why do you need tablets?” She dropped her gaze down my body, as though looking for a weakness or imperfection she hadn’t noticed before.

“It’s nothing, all right?”

“Well clearly it is, and Victor, if you’ve been keeping a pretty big detail about yourself from me, your Mistress, I think it’s high time you came clean.”

“Bloody hell, don’t you get it, you’re not my Mistress. Not anymore, it’s not what I want.”

She flinched, as if physically slapped, but quickly recovered and set her face in a hard expression. “I will only ask you once more, Victor. What are the tablets for?”

“I’ve got a
dicky heart, that’s all.”

She stared at my chest.

I breathed deep and thanked the Lord that today, after some intravenous drugs, my heart was back to normal and I didn’t have to put up with the trip-trapping I’d had to of late.

“Your heart.” She stood, the legs of the chair scraping on the wooden floor. “Jesus, Victor, you should have said.” She placed her hand over my chest, looked up at me and searched my eyes.

For a moment all I wanted to do was fall into her, gather her in my arms, make love to her the way I had that first night she’d come to my apartment. But I couldn’t, that was never going to be enough for Zara. She wanted control, too much control… and so did I. “I probably should have,” I said, studying the way the middle dent on her top lip bowed deeply, creating a sexy little crater next to her tiny mole. She really did have a mouth that was made for kissing. I lowered my head, feeling a magnetic draw to her.

She pursed her lips. “Yes, but instead you kept it from me.” She moved away, and the loss of her body heat was like a sudden draught whistling into the room. “You lied.”

I crossed my arms. Frowned at the back of her head as she reached for her tea. “No I didn’t.”

“Oh, yes you did.” She sipped then replaced the cup. “You lied by omission. The things we were doing…fucking hell, do you really think they’re for someone like you?”

“What the bloody hell does that mean? Someone like me?”

“Someone like you.” She spun and waved her hand at me. “With a weak heart, a health problem, a defect.”

Defect, what the hell? “I haven’t got a weak heart—”

“Like fuck you haven’t. Last night you watched a sex show and had a blowjob and were so excited your ticker couldn’t cope and you collapsed. If that isn’t a weak heart I don’t know what is.”

“I have a perfectly strong heart, it just beats too fast sometimes and I have to take medication to keep it regular.”

“Well clearly the medication doesn’t work.”

I glanced down at my feet. Wriggled my toes against the floor. It did, when I took it properly, but I wasn’t about to divulge that bit of information because then I’d have to admit why I hadn’t been remembering it. I really didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that snippet.

“Now what aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.

“Nothing.”

She stepped up close, cupped my chin and yanked my head up. “I know you too well, Virgin, tell me.”

“I’m not a virgin, don’t call me by that name.”

“So tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, Victor Partridge. For once, be honest with me.” She put her face so close to mine our noses practically touched.

“I’ve been more honest with you than with anyone else I’ve ever known.” I stared into her dark, witchy eyes, wondering how I’d let them cast such a powerful spell so many times.

“I don’t believe you.”

I jerked my chin from her grip. I wouldn’t be hypnotised by her again. “Yes you do, we’ve been together every night this week. You know damn well I’ve shown you things, a part of me, that I’ve never shown anyone before.”

“That might be the case, but you’re holding back now.”

I tutted. She wasn’t going to let up. That was one of the most annoying things about Zara, and there were many—she was like a little terrier when she sniffed out a scent, just didn’t back down. “I just forgot to take the damn tablets, okay?”

She parted her lips; her eyes widened. “You forgot?”

I stepped away, to the window. “Yes, I’m not perfect, no one is.”

Tower Bridge was disappearing under the cloud of snow descending on the city. I wished she would just disappear too. I needed to rest, I needed to get back to normal.

“I know you’re not perfect, and neither am I…” She paused, came and stood next to me. “But you forgot to take tablets that keep your heart beating properly? Victor, come on. That’s serious stuff.”

I tensed my jaw, feared for my teeth. “You distracted me. It was your fault.”

“What?” she asked quietly on an outward breath. “My fault?”

“Yes, all this crap about showing me your world, teaching me new things. Am I a sub or a Dom? You messed with my head, Zara, and I just can’t have that. Not when it means I can’t function in my day-to-day life.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears, clenched her fingers beneath her chin and closed her eyes for a second. “So,” she said, looking up at me. “What are you saying?”