Sexy as Hell Box Set (65 page)

“Yes, you have, and I enjoyed it, especially when…”

“When?”

“Just before we left your flat, before we got on the plane and you wanked me off as you put it in. That was incredible, I don’t know how I stayed standing.” His words had tumbled out breathlessly, like he’d been reliving the moment all over again.

I smiled. “So what else have you learnt on this little adventure you’ve had with me?”

He frowned. “You make it sound like it’s over.”

I pushed his head, made him rest his cheek back over my right breast. “I think we both know it is. You’re not cut out to be a submissive, you’re only tolerating the pain because you think it will get your cock into my cunt.”

“No, that’s not true. I
have
come to understand linking pain with arousal, felt the endorphin rush when I orgasmed with a raw arse, the heady sense of—”

“
Shh, Ollie, shh.”

He went to lift his head again, but I batted it down, stroked his hair.

“Fucking me was the deal,” I said. “You organised this holiday to Italy for me and I said I’d let you fuck me if you did.”

He was silent.

“And you can still have your prize, in a minute, but what else have you learnt, Ollie? When you move onto your next woman, no doubt as sappy as darling Catherine, what will have changed?”

“I don’t know.”

“So think about it.” I kept my tone calm and patient. He really was like drawing blood from a stone sometimes.

“I think I’d like to have a go at giving out some sensual pain. Not with the whip or those damn sadistic gloves, just my hand. I suppose I have an idea how much pressure works, how much is too much.”

“That sounds like a very valuable lesson.”

“Yes, and I know that when someone is tied up and you tease them to the point of orgasm over and over without letting them come it becomes actually physically painful.”

A stab of guilt hit me. I’d done that to him all day yesterday. Fiddling with his cock, letting it harden to bursting and never quite finishing him off. I still hadn’t. But I wasn’t about to apologise. It had been a lesson, and he’d gained knowledge from it, so no harm done. Besides, he’d probably stroked the goat in the shower earlier, the moment I’d released him. “What else have you learnt from me?”

He sat, weight propped on one locked-straight arm. “I’ve learnt that…” He rested his other hand over my left breast. “That when you look at my cousin, you don’t look at him with your eyes, but with your heart.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, what a load of fucking bullshit.” I bashed his hand away and sat, back stiff against the headboard, arms folded and chin up.

He sighed and gave me a hideously sympathetic smile. “Zara, I know you think I’m some flash city boy, full of smarmy one-liners aimed at getting girls into bed and money in my wallet. But I’m not a total ignoramus.”

“I’d say you are, the way you’re talking right now.”

He placed his hand on my shin; his palm was warm on my flesh. “I have a reasonable idea of what went on with you and Victor now that I’ve had the same treatment, but what is it about
him?
Why has he got under your skin and I haven’t?”

“He isn’t under my skin. Neither of you are.” I frowned.

“We look alike, act similar, comparable interests, were both not short of a bob or two, so what’s he got that I haven’t, eh?”

“You don’t look alike.” I frowned harder.

“You don’t think so?” Surprise tugged his eyebrows up.

“No, he…his irises are much bluer than yours, more like the English sky on a perfect midsummers day…why are you smiling?”

He downturned his mouth. “I’m not. What else is different about our looks?”

“He’s a fraction taller than you, his hair a little longer and it sticks up when he shoves his hand through it. Yours doesn’t, it just flops down again.”

“And?”

“And the dink, in his chin.” I touched my own chin. “It’s a little deeper than yours, probably because he has a habit of rubbing it when he’s worried he’s upset someone.”

“Oh, Zara, can’t you see?” He slid his hand up my leg to my knee.

“Shut the hell up.” I felt like a fox cornered by hounds, no way out, nowhere to hide. Mentally I was stalking the perimeter of a cage, hunting for an escape. I found it. “Just fuck me will you, Ollie. Take what you’re due.” Sod sloppy seconds, he’d brought that on himself.

“Zara?”

As if on cue, he ruffled his hand through his hair, and as I knew it would, it feathered back neatly into his carefully maintained style.

“Come on,” I said, “take what you’re owed and then we’ll consider lessons over between us.”

“Over?” He nodded and pressed his lips together. “Yes, I think that’s definitely for the best.”

“It is.” I hoisted my dress up, spread my legs and fingered my pussy. “Grab yourself a condom and get inside me. Come on, quick sharp, I haven’t got all day.”

He stared at my pussy, wrinkled his nose and then shook his head.

I blinked long and slow, hardly believing what I was seeing. “Ollie?”

“No, Zara. I won’t fuck you.”

“What?”

“I won’t fuck you because it’s not right for me to. I don’t want to be part of yours and Victor’s whole messed-up relationship. And while I’m already embroiled in you, I feel I can get out of your web if we haven’t actually shagged.”

I snapped my legs together. I’d never put my wares on display and been refused before. Oh, wait, yes I had, by Ollie’s bloody cousin. What was it with the Partridge boys?

“Your loss,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I didn’t care. “It’s not like I offered it because I’m attracted to you or that I wanted you to fuck me.”

“You’ve made that pretty obvious, to be honest.” He stood from the bed, walked to the French doors and tugged them open, letting a cool breeze and the scent of grass meander into the room.

“I didn’t have to be attracted to you to teach you,” I said, studying his broad back and the way it tapered like Victor’s to a neat, slim waist.

“No.” He turned. “I suppose you didn’t, but it would have helped. Maybe that’s the difference between me and Victor. You taught him lessons in discipline and submission but all the time you were attracted to him. You wanted him to do well so you could reward him with a good, hard shag or treat him to a blowjob if he performed a task or—”

“The utter crap coming out of your mouth knows no bounds.” I reached for my iPhone from the bedside table, pretended to read a text. Ollie wasn’t getting to me. Not one bit.

“You can’t deny Victor has got into your heart, Zara. If he hadn’t, not only would you have no interest in being here, you also wouldn’t look at Catherine like she was a competitor.”

“Huh, Catherine, as if she could ever beat me at anything.” I flicked through my contacts, just for something to do.

Ollie put his hands on his hips. “I think she already has. It’s
her
in that room with Victor right now, doing goodness knows what with him. Sure to be kinky as fuck, because Victor’s tastes have changed lately.”

I opened my mouth to ask how the hell he’d know about Victor’s sexual antics.

Ollie held up his palm in a stop signal. “Oh, we share everything, always have been as close as brothers. I know more than you think. Much more.”

I refused to give him any leverage on that comment, smart arse. I put my phone down so I didn’t throw it at him. It would cost a lot of money to replace.

“So you see, Zara,” he said, “my curiosity has been seriously piqued now that you’re wearing that collar.”

He stepped closer again, touched it.

I flicked my whole body away from his fingertip. “Get off.”

“You see,” he went on, “that’s another thing I’ve learnt. You’re no sub. Well, not under normal circumstances anyway. So who the hell managed to get a collar on you, and why on earth would you bring it to Italy?”

“It means nothing, it’s like jewellery, you know, a fashion accessory.”

He screwed up his face, creating wrinkles around his eyes and brackets around his mouth. “Please, I’m not thick, I know the symbolism of a collar in your world.”

I reached for the collar. Unbuckled it with shaking hands. I’d show him what was what. If he was going to bait me he’d get the full bite of my great white attack.

“There, it’s off.” I chucked it across the room. It whacked with a thud against the wall. A part of me had torn open as I’d done it. I treasured that collar, it was the only physical thing I had left of my first experience of submitting. “Happy now?” I glared at Ollie.

“Happy now I can see the truth.” He fingered back my hair, his gaze narrowing in the mark on my neck. “A buckle rub, right?”

“Yes. I told you that.” I pushed him away.

He sighed. “Listen, it’s over between us, whatever shit crazy thing we had going on. Finished, finito. I’d like to get to know you more, find out why you’re such a screw-up, maybe even help you, but it’s clear there’s only one person you’re going to let in, and I might look like him, walk like him and talk like him…” He turned, strode to the door. “But I’m not him.”

Panic went through me. Was he going to see Victor, tell him what he thought he knew about my heart? “Ollie, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going for a stroll. I’ve always wanted to visit Tuscany and now I’m here I’m going to damn well do that.”

“You’re not…”

“No, I don’t think I’m going to discuss any of this with Victor. My pride has taken all the beatings it can cope with. I’ll leave you to sort out your fucked-up situation. Don’t worry, I’ll take one of the many spare rooms for the rest of the week, and if you want to talk, need a hug, well, you know where I am.”

“Why the hell would I need any of that?” I
tsked at the ridiculousness of it.

“Like I said, there’s got to be a reason why you’re so fucked up. No one gets like you without having had some serious shit going on in their past.”

He left the room, shutting the door with a soft click. I stared at my black silky dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back of it and squashed his words about the past way down low, where they belonged.

I sighed. Ollie wasn’t mine to play with anymore. That was both a relief and a disappointment. Perhaps if he’d been as honest as he’d been in the last ten minutes throughout our time together, he could have stood half a chance of being another Victor.

I had to keep my distance. Zara didn’t know I could see her or that I was even here at Café Deano. She was ordering coffee, espresso no doubt, and as she spoke to the woman behind the counter her long hair, caught up in a ponytail, swished slightly, caressing her back.

The collar was gone.

A passerby, an old lady pulling a red plastic trolley, looked at me suspiciously. She was probably wondering what a tourist was doing in her town out of season. I nodded congenially and stepped deeper into the shadows of a doorway.

Zara didn’t look out of place in Italy, she fitted right in with her olive skin, dark eyes and coal-black hair. What she was wearing was stylish, too, quite demure for her—a short denim mini and a white blouse with puffy long sleeves. She’d added a grey waistcoat over the top of the blouse and done up one button so it cinched in at her waist. Her shoes, for once, weren’t ridiculously sexy stilettos, but then again she had been strolling around the small high street for an hour, mooching in and out of shops. Her usual sexy spikes wouldn’t have been much good for that, or so I presumed.

She took her coffee, a tiny white cup and saucer, and sat near the window, luckily facing slightly away from me. She’d people watch from there, I knew she would. But would she really have the gall to pick up a bloke in another country? Ask him to lick her cunt?

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A message.

Can you pick me up some sparkling water please, darling? X

A fizz of guilt burned in my stomach, but I shoved it away. Catherine had invoked so much guilt in me these last few hours, since the tree episode, that I couldn’t actually deal with it all. It needed padlocking in some lead-lined box until I was ready to face it.

Sure. I’ll be back soon as I can. Just looking for a supermarket. Hope you’re feeling better x

Well that was true enough, the last part. I did hope she was feeling better. After lunch she’d come over all queasy and hot. She’d had to lie down and take an anti-histamine tablet. She said she must have had an allergy to one of the ingredients in the steak lunch but she wasn’t sure what as there hadn’t been any onion in the sauce and Zara knew she was allergic.

I felt bad for her, I really I did, especially when I’d noticed a rash on her neck and chest. But I just had to follow Zara, see what she was doing. Had Ollie been going with her to town then maybe I wouldn’t have, but he’d marched through the kitchen with a purpose in his stride I hadn’t seen for several weeks and announced he was going to be out walking all afternoon and wouldn’t be back until sundown.

So what could I do? Zara was like a draw, and a confusing soup of curiosity, desire, jealousy and protectiveness had welled within me as my taxi had followed hers on the short trip through the vineyards and around the lake.