Sexy as Hell Box Set (81 page)

Victor was to thank for that. I was certain of it. Did he know that he could fight demons in his sleep? It was quite a feat. One worthy of a steed and a suit of armour if I was honest with myself.

Circling his taut nipple, I watched it flex slightly beneath my touch. A familiar dart of longing hit me. A longing to be closer to him, inside him, him inside me. But it was more than physical, this longing. It was our minds. It seemed I was starting to let him in. He had one foot through the door of my memories and now he was pushing at it insistently, inviting himself in.

Or was he? I’d told him about my three bastards, about the shed, about the dog. He hadn’t tortured me to make me speak. Hadn’t told me he’d…no, I wouldn’t go there, not now. Not when I’d woken up feeling warm and gooey. Yes, gooey, that was how I felt. Soft and pliant and ready for my man.

I pushed upwards and slithered over him, chest to chest. Kissed his cheek and then nuzzled my way to his ear.

“Wake up,” I whispered. “I want you.”

He stirred and his breathing changed.

I smiled against his temple and
rested my mound over his cock. He was soft but within seconds his shaft came to life.

“You want me?” he whispered, his voice super-sexy sleepy.

“Yes. Now.”

He roamed his hands over my back, up to my hair and then down to my bu
m. “Seems like you’ve got me,” he said, shifting his hips so his cock settled between my legs.

Damn, he could get hard quick
, I had to give him that.

The sheets
rustled as I positioned my legs either side of his hips. The movement of air brought with it an intoxicating aroma of Victor. His bed-warm skin smell, his arousal, his faded cologne.

Lust coiled in my belly, and I p
laced my hands flat either side of his head, stared down at his face as I took his cock into my pussy. His hair was mussed, his stubble dense, and his eyes had a languid, happy glaze to them.

“Best way to wake up ever,” he said, pressing his head into the pillow and then shutting his eyes tight. H
e tensed his hands on my buttocks and bent up his legs, cradling me over him and then pushing into me.

I smiled, loving his reaction to me. Seeing pleasure on Victor’s face, hearing it in his voice was an aphrodisiac all of its own.

As he filled me I couldn’t restrain the groan that journeyed up from my chest. It was a nurturing, completing sensation. I felt whole with Victor; him inside me made me feel right.

“Ah, yeah,” he said, the tendons on his neck straining. “Zara, yes, make love to me like this every fucking morning, will you.”

“Victor,” I said, stuttering the last syllable of his name as he reached full depth.

I
scraped my clit against the wiry hairs on his groin. My entrance was stretched taut around his thick root.

He opened his eyes. The blueness of them, as it often did, took my breath away. I could do nothing but stare back at him. Take not just his cock into my body but let him see into my soul as well.

It was a damaged soul; he’d only scratched the surface of the mangled, tragic, rusted fibres of me. They were beyond repair, or at the very least scarred to the point of no hope.

“You’re so pretty in the morning,” he said.

“You can’t really see me.”

“I can. I can see all of you.”

He didn’t blink; neither did I.

Could he really see all of me? I felt like I was drowning in him. Falling into the inviting depths of his ocean-blue eyes. Dropping, falling, slipping beneath the tide without resistance.

He gritted his teeth. “Bugger, I’ve never had much stamina for morning sex, and you, doing that with your hips…fuck.”

“Come,” I said, grinding on him harder. “I want to watch you come.”

“But you…”

“I don’t want to. I just want to watch you come, Victor. Please, now.”

I sped up my wicked little hip thrusts, no longer concentrating on the build up of pressure in my clit, but just focusing on rippling my pussy muscles around his cock. The colour rose on his cheeks, and he bit on his bottom lip, whitening it he was pressing so hard.

“Come, come hard and fast and inside me so deep you’ll stay there forever,” I said, shifting one hand so I could stroke his hair. It tangled in my fingers and I clutched at the soft strands.

“But…?”

“Do it.”

His eyelids drooped. He gritted his teeth. “Ah, ah, ah, okay…yeah…”

“Open your eyes.”

He did, and as he crested up to his climax we stared at each other. Our gazes locked, his soul laid open to me. Part of me wanted to look away. Seeing the absolute depths of another person’s vulnerability was hard to witness. But he was unwavering, and as his orgasm had his chest ballooning and a grimace balling his cheeks, he concentrated on me. Showing me everything, every part of his beautiful, healing soul that was like a pile of shimmering, perfectly cut diamonds, a rainbow cloud of sugar mist that was more beautiful than anything I had seen before.

How the hell did that compare to what he could see in my soul? I was a slag-heap of old coal, no good to anyone. Far from being a rainbow of colours I was a dark, dank fog that hid the way
from for poor unfortunates who wandered my path.

I was no good for him.

I could see that now.

No good would come of me being in Victor’s life.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing, I told you that about ten times already, Victor.”

I shook my head. Ever since my perfect wake-up call, Zara had been distant. I didn’t know what the fuck had happened—well, apart from a pretty awesome fuck, that was. I’d offered to make her come, several times over after she’d treated me to a delicious moment of unconditional bliss, but she’d refused. Locked herself in the bathroom for nearly an hour and then appeared in jeans and a black sweater and asked which sights we were going to see first.

I’d paced to the window, stared out at the beautiful skyline.
Two gondolas meandered past as did a water-bus. It had taken me several seconds and a great deal of willpower not to go over and shake her. Rattle out the stubbornness, the closedness that she’d allowed to wash over herself.

Where had the Zara of last night gone? The one who’d told me about her monsters and let me fight some of them with her?

Now, sitting in St Mark’s square, I had a beautiful woman who might as well be wearing one of the porcelain masks the Venetians favoured so much for all I could read in her expression.

“I was thinking we’d wander over to the Doge’s Palace when you’ve finished your coffee,” I said.

“I’ve finished.” She stood and stared across the quiet square.

A few tourists ambled at the opposite end, around the Basilica entrance, but compared to my last summer-time visit, the place was practically deserted.

“Oh, okay.” I finished the last of my decaff and then shrugged into my jacket that I’d hung on the back of my chair.

The sun was out but it wasn’t as warm as the day before. The winds from the lagoon had picked up and blew in with a nose-nipping chill.

We stepped away from our small table and chair set and I took her hand. She didn’t snap it away exactly, but I couldn’t help but think the idea went through her head.

“Are you worried about seeing Geoffrey and Helen?” I asked.

She laughed, in a brittle, scornful way. “No, I couldn’t care less about them.”

“Oh, okay then, that’s good.”

A scurry of pigeons moved out of our way as we walked.

“I can’t imagine Geoffrey will be interested in seeing sights,” she said, “not if there’s something going on that satisfies the darkness in him.”

“The darkness?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

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

Okay, so that was definitely a nettled tone, but I’d let it pass—for now.

“I was just wondering what you meant by his darkness.” Could I say the next bit? Would she scarper if I did? Sod it. “Is it like your darkness?”

“My darkness?”

“Yes, you know.” I swallowed, tightened my grip on her hand. “The shed darkness. You said you wanted me to remember where the shed was
. Is there more we have to cast light on?”

“So this is the Doge’s Palace you’ve been harping on about,” she said, gesturing to the gothic pillars and adornments towering over us.

“Yes.”

“And how old is it?”

“The oldest section is fourteenth century, but don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not, we’d finished that subject.”

I’d had enough. I’d tolerated this for days, weeks, and now these final few hours of her frostiness, when I knew there was warmth beneath the polar icecap, had flipped me over the edge. I grabbed her to me. Tight. Held her so she couldn’t get away. “Stop this crap. I won’t stand it for another second.”

She gasped, flattened her hands on my chest. “Victor.”

“I mean it. Whatever goddamn rubbish is swirling around your head, you better get rid of it, or what would please me even more would be if you told me about it.”

“
Please
you?”

“Yes, please me.” I lowered my head. “Just consider it an order from your Master.”
People were walking past us. I didn’t care. I kept her close, watched as that one word settled over her. “Your Master,” I repeated, hoping it was drawing her in, reeling her closer and not casting her into a deep, black place that I wouldn’t be able to pull her in from. “Remember when I told you what to do and you did it? Perhaps that’s the only way for me to go with you now. Make you do as I tell you.”

Her jaw clenched and she began to shake. She shut her eyes and rolled her lips in on themselves.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Panic rose inside me. “Zara, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes you did.” She kept her eyes closed. “You want to make me do something. Tell you something.”

“I want to help you. I thought you knew that.”

“I do know that.” She opened her eyes. “But, my Master, I have realised that I’m beyond help.”

Now that kind of talk scared the living daylights out of me. Especially when said with such conviction. “No, I don’t believe that for a second. I have helped you. What about last night?”

“Last night.” She gave a sad smile, the kind that made my chest actually hurt. “Was just the tip of the iceberg. The dog was just the start of it all.”

“So we’ll figure out the next thing.”

“No. We can’t.
You
can’t.” She touched my cheek. “It’s too much to ask of you. You’re a good soul. I’m wrecked. If we carry on then you’ll join me on the scrap heap, and although I’ve done a lot of bad things in my time, letting you become a pile of useless waste is not something I could live with. It would be the worst thing I’d done by far.”

“I think I can be a judge of what I can and can’t do.” I shook my head. “And you, for the record, are not a pile of useless waste, you must know that.”

A ribbon of wind lifted her hair, slid it over her face.

I pushed it back behind her ear and whispered, “Just talk, just tell me, we’ll take it from there.”

She stared at me intently for a moment, and then looked over my right shoulder. “Take me to the ball, the masked ball, and then I’ll tell you. You need to be wearing a mask.””

Damn, that masked ball. I’d forgotten about that. I had a meal at a restaurant near the Rialto Bridge booked for later with plans on a romantic
nighttime gondola ride back to the hotel. “You really want to go?”

“You really want me to tell you how fucked up I am?”

Jesus, I knew she’d said there was more, but how much more? And could I cope? Of course I could. She was my woman, and I would walk to the ends of the earth for her, or bend over and let her lick my arse as it had turned out.

“We’ll need to go mask shopping
then,” I said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a shop that sells them around the corner from here.”

An inconspicuous word, plus some monetary encouragement, and the hotel concierge had revealed the location of the weekend-long masked ball. It was in the Castello District, an old hotel that had been revamped for gatherings of the discreet variety.

We travelled there, not by gondola, but one of the hotel’s private taxis
, a smart white boat with a quiet engine and cream leather seats.

Zara held her white china mask in her lap, fiddling with the cerise feathers that plumed from the right
-hand side. The colour of the painted lips matched the feathers as did the new, skimpy dress she wore. She was pink tonight, but not baby pink, or candyfloss pink, she was a shocking, violent pink. I hoped it wouldn’t match her mood for the entire evening.

She’d mellowed a little, though, after we’d purchased the masks and I’d spotted the dress in a small boutique by the
Santa Maria dei Frari
that she’d ooed and ahed over. Perhaps I was getting somewhere with the romance after all. Or so I’d thought, but as we’d eaten pasta and sipped a glass of early evening white wine, her mood had darkened again.