Sexy as Hell Box Set (82 page)

I hadn’t pushed it, though. I knew her well enough by now to know once she was folding in on herself
. The only way she’d open up again would be when she was good and ready to.

“Your destination, sir.” Our boat driver moored up beside a wooden pier that had thick red rope on silver struts acting as handrails.

“
Grazie
,” I said, stepping out and then holding Zara’s hand as she did so too.

The young driver let his gaze slip down her body, from her delicate shoulders to the mounds of her breasts, her trim waist and her legs that went on and on. Legs that I liked wrapped around
my
hips, and my hips alone.

I frowned at him. He glanced at me, caught my stare and quickly turned. Bastard. I clenched my free hand, knowing that if society wouldn’t
judge me, I’d have socked him one just for looking at her. Enjoyed seeing him land in the still black water with a dull splash.

Damn, if that was how I was feeling, God only knew how I’d cope inside this place, especially if Zara insisted on stripping and joining in the action. Me, I was thinking it would be a bit of voyeurism, but with Zara, and a place overflowing with BDSM opportunities, that wasn’t likely to be the case.

The hotel was tall and thin. Like every building petering left and right, it was stuck to the ones next to it and the only way to the entrance was on the elevated pier we were now standing on. At the door, a huge arched affair, were two tall torches, their flames flickering high into the night.

As we approached, Zara’s heels clacking on the decking, the door swung open and scarlet-hued light spilt out.

“Put your mask on,” I said to Zara, attaching my own, full-face mask.

She did as I’d asked, settling the straps behind her ears and adjusting her hair so it sat smoothly over it.

For a moment we paused, stared at each other. Now I had no idea what her mood was; her eyes were only just visible through the slits and the pouting pink mask lips had an expression of willful stubbornness about them.

She squeezed my hand tighter, continued to keep her head tipped up to me as I checked that my plainer mask, with a hooked gold nose, was on straight.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I,
er…yes.” She shivered and juddered in a breath.

“Sure?”

“Let’s just go in.” She stepped forwards, tugging me with her. Her shoulders were set stiff, her back poker-straight. Was she summoning the courage to go into the ball or was she bracing herself to tell me about this other, secret layer of her past?

A woman in an elaborate bronze and black mask greeted us on entry. It took me a minute or two to sort out the details of our admission, in Italian, and then we were directed through to a lounge area that had high ceilings, dark window
s and candles burning from large black sconces fastened onto the brick walls.

A dozen or so people sat around in various states of undress. I didn’t look at any of them. Instead, with my hand pressed against Zara’s back, I steered us to the bar.

Flutes of champagne were set out, as were tall glasses of water. Each held a straw that could be passed through the mouth opening of masks. I opted for water—I needed my head clear for this. Zara took champagne; I guessed she was hoping for a little fuzziness.

“Do you think Geoffrey and Helen will be here now?” I asked, studying a picture on the wall of an overweight woman masturbating. In the shadows around her, endless faces could be made out; an enraptured audience, watching her, licking their lips, feasting on her with their gazes.

“Nah, I doubt it. Geoffrey is a late night kind of guy. He enjoys the evening building up to the main event. Says it turns him on to know he’s got something good and hard and painful coming.”

Again a twist of jealousy hit me. I hated that she knew that about Geoffrey. He was such a wanker. And besides, he wasn’t a sub anymore, so that might not be the case
now.

“I’d say we’re safe until after midnight,
Victor,” Zara went on.

“Like Cinderella at the ball,” I said, turning from the picture and taking in the room with a little more interest.

Several of the couples were twisting around each other. Clothes were scattered on the plush pillows and the backs of the deep sofas. A few ball-goers glanced our way. I wondered if any of them were Helen or Geoffrey but of course I had no way of knowing, the same as they had no way of knowing who we were.

“
Come on, let’s go through this way, Victor.”

“Why do you keep saying my name?”

She paused, looked up at me. “I’m just reminding myself it’s you behind that mask.”

“Of course it’s me.”

“I know that. I can hear you, smell you.” She placed her hand on my chest. The warmth of her palm spread through the cotton of my black shirt. “And I can feel you, but still, I need your name on my tongue while you’re wearing a mask.”

“Did those bastards do something to you while they wore masks?” That made sense. What she’d said earlier about me needing to be wearing
one for her to tell me. And outside, she’d shivered—no, trembled when I’d put it on.

My instinct was to rip it off, but I couldn’t, I’d just signed to say we’d wear our masks at all times while at the ball. But this was different, wasn’t it? Zara was unique, she was delicate. I could make an exception.

“I’ll tell you soon,” she said, “but first I want to watch. I’ve missed shows, sex shows. It might be my job but I enjoy it.”

“Okay, but then you’ll tell me?”

She started walking towards a green velvet curtain held back by an iron hook. “Once I’m turned on, I’ll do more than tell you.”

I caught up with her in three quick strides, wrapped my hand around her upper arm. “Once you’re turned on we’ll fight that memory
, too, defeat it, replace it. I promise, that’s what we’ll do, and you just say my name as many times as you want to.”

She shook her head. The pink feathers on her mask fluttered. “No you won’t, Victor, not this one. It will just make you see that we’re really not right for each other. Romance can’t win this one.”

“But love can.”

“Even love has its limits.”

“You underestimate its power,” I said, frowning behind my mask.

“No, I’m just a realist, and I also know that love can destroy. In fact, it destroys many more times than it fixes. I just need to show you that.”

As we sat in the room behind the green-curtained doorway, a wall of glory holes in front of us interspersed with panels of prison-like, barred doors with nothing but blackness beyond, I thought about what she’d said. People filled other chairs—comfy ones, or ladderbacks and the kind seen in a doctor’s waiting room, metal framed with foam-filled leather rectangles for the backrest and a square of the same for the seat—and I was glad thoughts couldn’t be heard or read. No one needed to hear the shit going on inside my mind.

It seemed to me that whenever we were getting close to Zara becoming more open, she deliberately clammed up again or gave reasons why we wouldn’t work. It was as though she didn’t
want
us to work, that if she could find an excuse for us not to, then she was happier. Yet although I’d known her mainly as the snappy, waspish Zara, now that I’d seen the softer side beneath, I was determined to see more of that. Intent on bringing it out so only the sarcastic part of her reared its ugly head on rare occasions and the nicer, more contended side was with her the majority of the time.

It wasn’t that I had it in mind to change her per se, to mould her into the kind of woman I
would like her to be. No, it wasn’t that at all. I just needed her to be happy, and now I’d
seen
her happy and relaxed, I felt it suited her better. To know she was free to be the self she was always meant to have been was something I could only strive to make happen. I needed her help in order to do that, but as the saying went, you could lead a horse to water…

No. I wasn’t going to get defeatist about this. I
would
make her see we were good together, even though she’d insisted she was too broken to be fixed, implying that she’d ruin me just by being in my life. I refused to believe that. I’d be broken without her in it. She just had to be made to see that.

I smiled then. We were both stubborn—her determined to make me see we should be apart, me determined to make her see we should be together. Star-crossed lovers didn’t even begin to describe it. But she was
my
star, one who deserved to shine as brightly as she damn well pleased without fear of her hideous past racing up behind her when she was least expecting it and scaring her shitless all over again. I was buggered if I’d let her fob me off with her crappy reasoning.

I’d fix her if it killed me.

She leaned across and placed her hand on my thigh. “Are you excited, Victor?”

I turned to look at her. Her eyes glittered, and a lightness of body posture and attitude I hadn’t seen in what felt like a long time, since we’d last been together at a show, seemed to pour out of her. So she was happiest when in this kind of environment, was that it? Did the promise of what was to come fuel her? I couldn’t work out whether what those three men had done to her had made her like this or whether it had been in her before that. A person didn’t just become sex mad, did they?

I laughed. I had. Before I’d met Zara, I suspected I’d thought about sex the same amount as any other average man, but since then? Christ, she’d opened up the floodgates and I thought about it more often than not. So people did change, did grow into someone they thought they’d never be. Zara may well have chosen this path whether she’d been taken by those men or not. We’d never know, though. They’d already done their damage and made it easier for me to blame them for sending her hurtling into a future where sex and gratification was all she wanted.

“
I’m not excited yet,” I said, putting my hand over hers and giving it a little squeeze, about to add that my main concern wasn’t sex or getting off at this moment but her. I kept quiet, though. Too much of me professing how much I cared might piss her off, send her inside herself. And now she’d opened up, albeit in a different way, I didn’t want to push her backwards.

“I’m sure you will be soon,” she said, turning to look at the wall ahead. “Those holes there, you do know what they’re for, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes, for people this side to reach into and touch whatever’s on offer. Knowing my luck, I’d put my hand in and find a hard cock.” I smiled, going for lightness.

“And that would be a problem?” she asked.

“Well, yes. I’m not into cock, you know that.”

“So if you reached in and touched a cunt, would that be all right?”

“No! No it bloody wouldn’t!” I frowned, knowing she was trying to wind me up but failing not to let her. Damn her. “The only cunt I want to touch is yours and you know it.”

“But don’t you want the excitement, that thrill just before your hand comes into contact with someone else’s body part, of not knowing what you’re going to get?”

“Um, quite frankly, no. Why, do you?”

“No.”

So why the hell had she asked? If she didn’t want to touch anyone else either, what had been the point in that conversation? It struck me then, hard and fast. She’d been making sure it was only her I wanted, that even with temptation handed to me on a plate—or onto my palm if I put my hand inside one of those sodding holes—I didn’t want it. I reckoned she’d need constant reassuring over the coming years, always seeking the surety that I wasn’t going to stop loving her and move on to someone else.

“I’m glad you said that.” I squeezed her hand again. “Even though I wouldn’t stop you from getting up and having a good old rummage around with whatever was behind that wall, I wouldn’t like it.” I decided to be honest and risk her mood souring. “I’d be eaten up with jealousy that it wasn’t me you touched, that you were getting pleasure from someone else.”

“I see. But I already taught you that sometimes it doesn’t matter who you’re touching or who you’re having sex with, they can be just a means to an end, a body you use in order to get your kicks.”

“Yes, you did, and I understand what you mean—caring for the person doesn’t come into the equation in that situation, yes, I get that—but needing that other person, having to resort to unseen faces, strange hands and cocks, isn’t necessary anymore. You don’t
need
them like you did before when you had no one. I’m here now. I’d like to think I’m all the cock, hands and mouth you need.” I inhaled deeply then let the air out slowly; it sat stuffily between my skin and mask. “But if you do find you need strangers then…well, we’ll have to discuss that, won’t we.”

I couldn’t deny her anything, I’d known that from the start, shortly after I’d denied her request to lick her cunt. If people saw me as a mug for allowing her to gad about having sexual contact with other people when we were a couple, then it was something they’d just have to get over. Yes, I loved her that much. I was willing to share her. Be carved up with jealousy, but I’d share her all the same.

She sniffed. “You’re prepared to take me on knowing I might go to Sexy as Hell one night and shag a customer if the urge to have a no-strings fuck got hold of me?”

“Yes, if it made you happy. It doesn’t mean I don’t care enough about you. Quite the opposite. I care too much. What you want is the most important thing to me. I know people would say I had no self-respect, that I was willing to be trampled over and used, but I don’t see it that way. Having you in my life and sharing you, if it comes to that, is better than not having you there at all.”

“Fucking hell,” she breathed. “I had no idea.”

I frowned harder behind my mask. “No idea about what?”

“The level of…the depths it goes to.”

“It?” She really had to learn to use that word more.

She didn’t answer right away, and I wasn’t about to supply that word for her. I might be willing to be with her on this journey of healing, but some things she just had to do herself.

“Love,” she whispered, as though the word
had been bitter on her tongue, alien, something she found odd saying.

“It goes pretty deep, yes.” I stared through one of the barred doors, sure I detected movement in the inky blackness.

“I couldn’t abuse that,” she said. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Good, but if you ever… Look, all I ask is that you tell me if you need something more, to give me a chance to provide it before you go off looking for it elsewhere. Deal?”

“Deal.” A slight pause. “Oh, look. Little lights have come on.”

Behind the barred doors, little lights had indeed come on, a sprinkling of them that I guessed were the fairy variety, strung up near the ceiling. They gave off just enough
illumination that the blackness had been turned to grey. Shadows moved, figures, and I wondered whether they were guests or employed to put on shows. If they were guests they had more bottle than I did. No way would I volunteer to stand behind those bars or in what I imagined were little cubicles behind the glory holes and wait for others to come forward and touch me. The sexual thrill didn’t stretch that far for me, but Zara? I could see her being comfortable with that.

“This is such a fucking good idea,” she whispered.

My guts rolled over. I braced myself for what she was going to say next.

“For Sexy as Hell,” she said. “Don’t you think this would go down a storm in my club?
Fifi would enjoy performing behind bars like that, closer to the public but knowing if she kept back far enough, no one could touch her. Bloody tease, she is.”

I thought about Sexy as Hell, the club Zara had created yet one I hadn’t stepped foot in. Had she based the layout like the one she’d taken me to in Eden Street, where I’d seen many things I’d never suspected I would? Or had she modelled it totally differently?

“Do you have room in your place to make one of these areas?” I asked, turning to look at her.

She nodded, staring straight ahead, her mind ticking over the possibilities, I could tell. “I
t’s a big place, I’ve only just got the basics going on, a showroom and a few private rooms. But there’s more space I haven’t utilised yet, at the back so one could be converted easily. This setting, it’s just so primal, so bloody raw, do you know what I mean? It would certainly bring out the animal in people.”

“So recreate it there then,” I said.

“I think I will. It’ll be a little bit of this weekend with me permanently then, wouldn’t it.” She smiled wistfully. “And of course I’ll need a decent architect recommended, you know, to shift the insides around to accommodate what I need.”

“I’m sure I know one who would be willing to give you a hefty discount.”

“Hefty sounds good.” There was a smile in her words. A promise of something in the future that she would need me around for.

A warmth settled over me.
She had a heart. Deep inside her she had a heart that just needed to be taught how to beat freely, to expand and allow another in. To grow and to love. Her comment…God love her, she wanted to take a part of our time together back to England, and not just in her head either. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

“It would
be a nice souvenir of sorts, a room like this at Sexy as Hell,” I said, then wondered whether she wanted it for another reason entirely—that it wasn’t a memory of us being together but a link to whatever desires she might be feeling now. She was so complex that I reckoned I’d second guess myself frequently in the future. I had a lot of learning to do, too, then—I had to learn to trust my first instincts and not question every little thing. Just go with the flow.

“Ooh, I think things are about to start
hotting up,” she said, leaning forward a tad.

I told myself she’d done that to get a better feel for the experience, to study it for business purposes. If it meant it had taken her mind off the past, made her feel better, whatever she’d leant forward for was fine by me. Then again, wasn’t that defeating the object of why we’d come here? Facing the past had been the order of the night. I felt confused by my emotions, pulled between wanting to sort out whatever was in her head and shoving it onto the back burner. I understood then. She must feel like that all the time.

My poor, fucked-up vixen.

“Are you all right?” I asked, glancing around at the other people, their array of masks somewhat unnerving.

Behind them hid a variety of faces, people who could be just like us, or sexual deviants, here to get off for seedier, debaser reasons. The air in the room had changed, had become charged, as though sexual energy were a tangible thing, hanging around us, ready to be plucked from the air should we choose to reach out and grab it. All that finery on the women—silk dresses, sequins, lace—and the suits on the men didn’t seem to fit the environment. To me they would have been more fitting naked—after all, they were here for sex, for kicks, and I imagined it wouldn’t be long before those frocks and suits would be cast aside and soiled on the floor anyway. Yet the masks would remain.

So goddamn creepy.

The skin beneath mine felt hot, clammy from my breaths, and the outer rims of the circles surrounding my eyes had begun to chafe. Truth be told, I couldn’t wait to get the damn thing off. Far from feeling anonymous in it, I just felt pretty stupid, although conversely, I was grateful for the rule that one had to be worn at all times. God only knew what the fuck I’d be witnessing in here tonight, and if it did nothing more than hide my blushes, my expressions, then I had to be thankful for that.

Zara hadn’t answered me, so I restated my question.